76 - Between the Rapture and the Return, Part 3 | Striving for Eternity | Andrew Rappaport

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77 - Millennium and the Eternal State, Part 1 | Striving for Eternity | Andrew Rappaport

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

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You can find out all about that ministry at strivingforeternity .org.

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This is our school of systematic theology. The class that we're going to be going over right now is

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God's Program for the Ages. This is syllabus book number four. If you want to get the syllabus, you can get a syllabus at our store at strivingforeternity .org.

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You can go to the store and pick up the syllabus there. The syllabus will allow you to follow along with all of the notes.

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We are right now in lesson number eight, lesson eight, which we are calling the

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Events Between the Rapture and the Return. We are looking at specifically now the events on earth during the tribulation.

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With that, I know that some are already upset just with the words that we've mentioned, things like tribulation and rapture.

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Boy, are you upset with me. I know. It has been an interesting thing how people have been responding to these classes.

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I don't mean the videos because they're clearly not watching the videos.

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How do I know that? Well, because in each of these classes, we have tried to be really clear and spent a lot of time trying to say, please don't make end times a big issue that you separate over and make into this big deal.

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And yet, we have had to block people from Facebook, block people and report people on YouTube because they're seeing just the word rapture and they're flipping out.

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I ask, have you watched the first five minutes where we say, look, we've taught on millennialism, we've taught post -millennialism, we're teaching pre -millennialism, we're teaching all of them.

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It's amazing that no one's upset. The people that are upset with us now weren't upset when we were teaching the other views that was their view.

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They probably weren't paying attention, but they also probably weren't investigating to see what else. It's interesting because one young lady, well,

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I don't know how young she was, but one young lady has made it her personal mission that she's going to expose us for the heresy that we have.

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Yeah, okay, get a job, get a life, something. But the reality is she hasn't even watched the first five minutes of any of the videos.

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She's responding to the title of the video. I asked her, did you watch the videos on all millennialism and post -millennialism when we taught those?

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Were we fair in our explanation of those? I openly admitted that because of this, the view of pre -millennialism, there's more detail and it takes more explanation.

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Yes, it's the view I happen to hold to, but I don't hold to it so strongly. I've been really, really clear that these are things that I hold to, but not like I'm going to fight over it because I don't think these are issues we can be really, really clear about.

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I am amazed at the people who are getting so upset with us just because the title is the events between rapture and return and they're like going nuts.

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They're going to expose us for being false teachers. Here's my encouragement.

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If you want to expose us as false teachers, please at least know what we teach, at least watch some of the classes, the videos, look at really at all of them to see if we're teaching all the positions and if we're doing it fairly.

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That's what we're trying to do here and it's actually taken longer to get through this lesson only because we have to keep doing this.

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We have to keep explaining to people that they need to take a chill pill, relax. It really has blown me away how many people are just overreacting in this area and getting very upset over it.

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I encourage you to chill out. Learn what you can learn from the different views, from all the different views and then

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I would say you study the scriptures to show yourself approved and know what your position is. I'm not telling you you have to hold to mine.

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I'm not telling you so much of where mine really comes down on every issue. This is an area that if you look at all of the theology, all the different areas of theology, this is the one that I probably take the least opinion on because like I said before and I'll say again, in the first coming

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Christ, the Jewish people thought they had it nailed down and they got it wrong because the prophecy, interpreting prophecy is not as clear until it happens.

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We can look back at the first coming and be like, boy, was that clear. They didn't think so and the things we think is clear in the future, people that live through it are going to go, yeah, you didn't have it right and we think it's clear.

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Hindsight is always better, okay, always 20 -20 they say. 20 -20 vision is good vision so hindsight is always perfect is what that argument is.

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So the issue being is we're really trying to focus in on just high level views of the different views.

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Really like to move on if we can and I hope to finish this up this week so we can get into some more controversial things like the millennium and the eternal state and so, you know, but we'll end up finishing up these classes on our systematic theology.

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Should be I think about 78 classes, what are we on now, 76, so we have 76 classes already in systematic theology and I've said this throughout this class,

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I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that you do not just watch this class as if this is the end all be all but you really should go back to class to lesson number one, why?

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The first couple lessons were focused on the attributes and nature of God and I have said throughout this that all of our theology should be focused and developed through a proper understanding of the nature of God.

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Two doctrines, two areas of doctrine that most people love to study is salvation and end times and there's lots of speculation on the end times and I know people love to study it and get into trying to figure out all these details, you're seeing

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I'm not giving a whole lot of details as we've been going through it because I don't know we can be as clear as some people try to make it and so I really want to caution folks in that way but, you know, when people start at the end of the systematic theology and then want to build everything through that view is bad, bad, bad.

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Start at the beginning. We want to start with the nature of God and build off of that. All of the doctrines should be rooted in an understanding of God's nature through scripture, okay?

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And so that is the encouragement. So let's take a look now where we were, let's do a quick review.

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We looked at the events that happened in heaven, looked at that two classes ago, last class we looked at the events on earth.

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We're looking at what's called the tribulational period as some would hold to it. We said that this period of time which is yet future to us would be a time of preparing

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Israel, the nation of Israel for Messiah, in other words that people that hold to this view would say that church would be raptured up, there wouldn't be a church influence in the world and that God would start dealing with the nation of Israel again and so this time is to prepare

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Israel for the second coming of Christ for their Messiah and it'd be a time of judging the unbelieving world for their sins.

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We talked about some different events. One of the things we talked about was the revealing of the

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Antichrist, his rise to power. We saw that this Antichrist is going to be a Gentile leader, he is going to be a military leader, he'd be a wicked leader and he'd be a powerful leader.

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But we saw that it's the revealing of his rise to power. We saw that there's going to be a covenant for seven years that people that hold to this view would see that this would be the beginning of a seven year covenant between this world leader and Israel and as we'll see in this class that people that hold to this view would see that halfway through, the midway point, that covenant would be broken.

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We'll get to that in a bit. That the tribulation would introduce the first four seal judgments.

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We looked at this last class that we said there's seven seal judgments in Revelation, seven trumpet judgments and seven bowl judgments.

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We looked at the first four seal judgments last class and we're going to pick up on the last three seal judgments and then we're going to look at the trumpet and bowl judgments in this class.

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And so we saw that there'd be 144 ,000 Jewish missionaries, 12 ,000 from each of the 12 tribes.

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People that take this view would take it literally that there's literally 144 ,000 Jewish people that will be evangelizing the world outside of Palestine or Israel.

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And then lastly that there'd be martyrdoms among all the nations for the first half of that tribulation, that's the fifth seal.

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So now we start looking at really the last two seal judgments and this is what we're calling the middle of the tribulation.

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If we could put up that chart, there you go. So this chart what you see is just a good picture.

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If you have a syllabus, you have this chart in the thought questions on page 41 and the task, the homework for you is to see if you could identify these different seal, trumpet, bowl judgments on this graph.

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So basically what you have here is what's happening in heaven. You see on heaven that the judgment seat of Christ and the marriage supper of the

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Lamb. You then see on earth that there's the rapture, that would be the church that God raptures up.

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And then you see there the first four seal judgments. There at least what we can tell, what we assume with this view is that those four seal judgments are pretty rapid fire.

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There seems to be a time gap between the fifth seal and then the sixth and seventh, there's a seeming like a longer period of time and sixth and seventh come again, rapid fire right in the middle of that three and a half year, the middle of the seven year tribulation which would be three and a half years there, and they usher in both the trumpet and bowl judgments which seem to kind of come rapid fire.

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Again the first four trumpet judgments are going to seem to be very quick. First four bowl judgments are going to be very quick, followed by what many think would be the fifth trumpet judgment, then the fifth bowl judgment, and then again a little bit of a gap in time until again overlapping the sixth and seventh, both trumpet and bowl judgments.

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And at the completion of all of those judgments would be the return of Christ, He would return to earth, and as those who hold to this view would say that He would return for a literal thousand year kingdom that we'll look at probably next class.

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So with that in mind, now that you have the big picture, let's focus into this middle period.

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This period that we're seeing really just before the three and a half years, just before that covenant is broken, that's what we're calling this middle period.

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Now why do I break this at this point? It is because some people, there's two different views of the rapture that people hold, well there's actually like more, way more, but there's three or four main views that we looked at before.

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Can we put that chart back up and maybe we can talk our way through the chart there. So you see this one is what's called premillennial, and you see that that, sorry, pre -tribulational, and so the idea here is that before the tribulation is when that rapture occurs.

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So you're seeing the rapture occurring first, and then all the judgments. Now another view is what's called the pre -wrath view, and that view would pretty much have it just before the sixth trumpet judgment.

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So not really at the midpoint, but just before the midpoint, they would see it before all these wrath judgments that are coming, and that's why they call it pre -wrath, so the rapture would then happen somewhere within that first three and a half year period before the sixth trumpet judgment.

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Mid -tribulational is that the rapture occurs in the middle of the tribulation, which is that three and a half years, which is really that line between the trumpet judgments and the beginning, or sorry, the sealed judgments and the trumpet judgments in between there.

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That would be the view of that is mid, and then post -tribulational would be that the rapture, the church would actually go through this whole seven year tribulational period, and that the church would actually be raptured just before the return.

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So in other words, it's kind of like the church goes up and then comes right back down. Now as you're seeing all these different views, we've talked amillennial, postmillennial, premillennial.

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You have historic premillennial, dispensational premillennial. Within premillennial, you have pre -tribulational, pre -wrath, pre -mid -tribulation, post -tribulational.

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There's all these different views, and those are just the major ones. Each of these have ones within it.

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But you have the preterist view, you have the full preterist view, the partial preterist view. I mean, I'm saying all that to say if you're not picking up the point that there's lots of discussion, lots of differing views on this.

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So let's, please don't be so dogmatic on these issues, okay? It's not, there's so many views because the scriptures aren't going to be so clear with these future prophecies just like they weren't before.

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I've said it before, I'll probably say it again. All right, so if you're in the syllabus, we're looking at letter

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B there, page 39 or so, where it says the mid -trib, the middle of the tribulation.

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So you see number one there, the sixth and seventh seal, I'm having trouble speaking today.

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I'm trying to talk too fast to make sure I get through all this quickly. I will try to behave and slow down.

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All right, the sixth and seventh seal occur together it seems in the middle of the tribulation period and these seem to introduce a period that's known as the day of the

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Lord. And so we have some passages here that we can look at for this. So as we look at this, it says in Revelation 6, 12 to 17, it says here, when he opened the sixth seal,

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I looked and behold, there was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth and the full moon became like blood and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig trees shed its winter fruit when shaken by the gale.

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The sky vanished like a scroll that it was being rolled up and every mountain and island were removed from its place.

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Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall down on us, hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the

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Lamb. For the great day of the Lord, for the great day of their wrath has come down, who can stand?

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Let's also look at Revelation 8, the first six verses there,

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Revelation 8, 1 -6. When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

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When I saw the seven angels who stood before God, the seven trumpet judgments were given to them and another angel came and stood on the altar with a golden censer and he was given much incense and offering for all the saints of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel.

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Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it to the earth and there were peals of thunder, rambling flashes of lightning and earthquake.

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Now the seven angels who had the trumpets prepared them to blow. So what you're seeing here is these sealed judgments and the idea of the sky being rolled up.

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If you take a scroll, lay it out, something that's been rolled up, paper that's been rolled up for a long time and you lay it flat and let go, it will scroll up, it'll roll itself back up.

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Maybe as a kid you did that, you took a paper, rolled it up, got it into that form and then you laid it flat and let go and it would go back to that form.

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That's the idea. The interesting thing that we see here is many believe that when

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Noah's flood occurred that the water came up from underneath and that the platonic plates actually smashed together and gave us the mountain formations that we have.

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So this is talking about an earthquake that basically levels all the mountains. That's a pretty serious earthquake.

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This isn't going to be just some mild earthquake. If it's going to be some where all the plates kind of pull back and all the mountain ranges sink back down, that's one serious, serious earthquake.

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So when people get worried about the damage humans are doing to the earth and global warming and this sort of stuff, that ain't nothing compared to what

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God's going to do. One of the things, so in the seventh seal,

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I'm going to get myself in trouble. I'm sorry, it's a funny joke.

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If you don't have a sense of humor, just tune me out for the next 30 seconds. But this passage in Revelation 8, a friend of mine argues that this is how you know that men get to heaven 30 minutes before women because there's silence in heaven for 30 minutes.

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It's a joke. Get over it. We all get to heaven at the same time.

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The idea of the joke is women can't be silent for 30 minutes. Okay, you should see the looks

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I'm getting. All right, so with that,

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I have to recover now. So the idea though that you do see in that passage is as you have these judgments come, there's the huge earthquakes.

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There's a lot that is going on, the leveling of land, and you're seeing that this then brings in, prepares for the next set of judgments, the trumpet judgments.

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And so, actually, can we put that verse back up just for a second? I think there was something else

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I wanted to look at with that. Okay, maybe not.

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So let's go into, if we have Daniel 9. Actually no, let's hold off on that.

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We'll get to that in a bit. But let's look at the six seal judgments. So we were giving the judgments, the first four judgments that we looked at, those seal judgments, we said seal number one was intimidation, seal number two warfare, seal number three famine, seal number four was death.

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That's all in Revelation chapter 6, the first eight verses. Seal number five was martyrdom.

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Okay, that's, again, Revelation 6, this is all Revelation 6 that you see these seal judgments.

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Now we're looking at seal number six in Revelation 6, and it's a heavenly and earthly disturbance.

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And you saw that when we read through that passage in Revelation 6. The seventh judgment is now two chapters later that we just looked at in Revelation 8.

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And when we looked there, we saw that the seventh seal is initiating the ensuing judgments.

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So initiating those next set of trumpet and bowl judgments. That was the idea of the censer and the bowls.

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So what you see here is that this is what people would say is the day of the Lord. It's God's continuing plan for Israel, the way many would see this.

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And this plan includes, this seventh seal is going to include judgments of three and a half years.

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And so this last seal, the breaking of that is basically the giving forth of the trumpet judgments and bowl judgments.

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Okay, and so the thing that we're going to see in this kind of middle period is that the covenant that the

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Antichrist made with Israel, that seven -year covenant, will now be broken and he will demand worship.

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He will demand that people worship him. And this is our passage if we have in Daniel 9, and we'll also see this in Matthew 24 and 2

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Thessalonians 2. Sorry, Daniel 9, 27 says this,

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And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.

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So this is what this Antichrist is bringing, an end to it after one and a half weeks.

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So that's the seven -year period. Remember week is not really a week, it's seven. So for one, seven.

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So it's the idea of a seven -year period. So, he says here that in the half of that, he's going to put an end to sacrifices and offerings.

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And on the wing of abomination shall come one who makes desolation until the decree end is poured out on the desolator.

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So until it's all done, poured out on this person, this will continue.

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Matthew 24, 15 says, So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet of Daniel, standing in the holy place, let the reader understand.

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So when you look at all of what's going on in Matthew 24, he's referencing that back to the case of Daniel, what

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Daniel said. And now Daniel puts this in the future. And there's two possible people that you can look at for an answer to this.

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When you look at Daniel, historically there was someone during the

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Roman period before Christ who came into the temple, a

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Roman emperor who basically put an end to worship, demanded that Israel worship him in the temple.

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And so that is kind of a foreshadowing of this future Antichrist. It clearly can't be the

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Antichrist back then because Matthew, after the resurrection of Christ, refers back to Daniel and says that this person is still coming.

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So we can look at the short -term fulfillment that happened in the temple and see that this future person is going to do that as well.

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So, let's look at, if we can, 2 Thessalonians 2 .4.

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And that says, "...who oppressed and exalted himself against every so -called god or object of worship, so that he has taken the seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself as God."

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So this Antichrist is going to set himself up, actually in the temple, just like the

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Roman emperor did in the times past, and he's going to demand Israel worship him.

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That will be halfway through this seven -year period. He's going to feel he has enough behind him of the world that he's actually going to demand

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Israel give up the belief in the one true God and worship him.

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And that will bring about, that event will bring about the second half of the tribulation where there's a lot more judgments that we're going to see.

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And so, the covenant will be broken and this will bring about an invasion of the king of the north.

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Now, we just know him as the king of the north. We don't know the name of the country. People speculate on which countries it could be.

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It could be Russia, you know, all this stuff. That's speculation. We're just going to go with the king of the north.

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So what does that say? He's north of Israel. That's it, okay? So, let's look now at letter

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C, which is the last half of that tribulation. So now we're going to get into all those judgments. So the seventh seal, we said, introduces the seven trumpet judgments.

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That's your blank there. By the way, did I give the blanks? Okay, so the first blank was worship where it says number two, the covenant of the antichrist with Israel would be broken when he demands

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Israel worship him. That's the first blank. This blank in letter C, number one, is the seventh seal introduces the seven trumpet, the trumpets.

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And we're going to see this now in Revelation 8, okay? So the first four trumpets that we're going to see there, let me give them before we put the scripture verses up.

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We're going to have the first trumpet will be earth devastated. The second trumpet is going to be the sea afflicted.

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The third trumpet judgment will be the water afflicted. And then the fourth will be the heavens interrupted.

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So let's take a look at these, each one. So we have all the verses up there, but the first trumpet is in Revelation 8, 7.

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It says, the first angel blew his trumpet and there followed hail and fire mixed with blood and they're thrown down upon the earth and a third of the earth was burned up and a third of the trees were burned up and all green grass was burned up.

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And so this is the earth, the first trumpet, the earth's devastation. We see this is, oh, it's the wrong slide.

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Yeah, that's the right one. Now we need the next verse, sorry. There we go. Revelation 8, 8 and 9.

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Revelation 8, 8, 9 says, the second angel blew his trumpet and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown down into the sea and the third of the sea became blood and a third of the living creatures in the sea died and a third of the ships were destroyed.

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So this is the second judgment called where the sea is afflicted. The next is called, is the fourth, sorry, the third trumpet where the waters are afflicted and this is

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Revelation 8, 10 to 11. And it says, the third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from heaven blazing like a torch and it fell on a third of the rivers and the springs of the water and the name of the star was

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Wormwood and a third of the waters became Wormwood and many people died from the water because it was made bitter.

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Now let me just break here real quick just to say, as we look at this, you're seeing this is not, what's the separation between the sea and the waters?

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Sea seems to be what we would call the oceans and the waters seem to be the rivers, the lakes, all that.

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People say this is some sort of meteor that falls to earth. The problem is if this is a meteor, it's got to be a pretty big meteor because it's saying it destroys all the water sources.

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That's some big stuff. All right, so trumpet number four. This is in Revelation 8, 12 to 13 and this is the heavens interrupted.

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It says there, Revelation 8, 12 to 13, the fourth angel blew his trumpet and a third of the sun was struck and a third of the moon and a third of the stars so that a third of the light might be darkened and a third of the day might be kept from shining.

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Likewise, a third of the night. Then I took and heard an eagle cry and a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, woe, woe, woe to those who dwell in the earth at the blast of the other trumpets that our three angels are about to blow.

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And so you see here, as we've been looking through this, you're seeing that this is now just escalating in order.

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And so during this time, there's going to be two witnesses that will be evangelizing within the boundaries of Israel.

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They're going to be killed and rise from the dead. We see this in Revelation 11, 1 to 14.

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For the sake of time, I'm not going to read all that. Just Revelation 11, 1 to 14.

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You can see that there. So the next is the fifth trumpet is the result of the first four.

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And there's going to be a tormenting of mankind. You see this for the sake of time.

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I'm not going to read that. But it's Revelation 9 and the first 12 verses.

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There's a lot of verses there. So basically, you're reading much of Revelation 6, the whole chapter.

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Revelation 8, the whole chapter. Revelation 9, the whole chapter.

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Revelation 16, the whole chapter. And this is why the reason we're spending more time on pre -millennialism is because like on millennialism, post -millennialism, they don't spend as much time focusing on what these events are because they don't see these as being literal events.

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Now, are some of these figurative? Yeah. I mean, what's that eagle that's crying out? Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know.

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Is it a natural eagle that starts to speak? Did God teach a bunch of parrots how to fly and they look like eagles?

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You know, it's like, you know, can an eagle suddenly start speaking? I don't know. Can't tell you.

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And this is where I don't speculate, okay? Notice the difference that I'm trying to do here.

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I'm giving the views high level without all the speculation that gets people in trouble and people focus,

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I think, too much time on that. So, the sixth trumpet is part of Armageddon.

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That's your blank there if you're looking in the syllabus. The sixth trumpet judgment is the part of Armageddon.

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This is in Revelation 9, 13 to 21. So, let's not put that up.

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Let's look at the seventh trumpet is

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Israel's view of the second coming of Christ. So, that last trumpet is the trumpet call for Christ to return and come the second time.

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Remember, I said there's overlap between this and the seals and the censored judgments or bold judgments.

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And so, even though some of these are happening, we're going to look at this bold judgments in a minute, but some of those already happened at this point.

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Actually, most of them, if not all, happened at this point. But the seventh trumpet corresponds time -wise for people that hold to this view to the bold judgments.

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And the first in Israel's perspective, the later is the perspective of the

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Gentiles. So, the idea here being is that the trumpet judgments are a judgment on Israel and on that land for their perspective.

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And then this next set of bold judgments are a perspective of the Gentiles. Can we be 100 % on that?

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Yeah, probably not. But that's the view that some hold to, so need to explain that.

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Alright, let's look at these bold judgments or what's sometimes called censored judgments. The censor was just a bowl, what we would think of as a bowl that would hold incense that they would burn.

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And so, these could be called censored judgments because that's what they were. We don't really have an idea what a censor is, so we typically call it a bold judgment.

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So, the first four bold judgments occur close in time with one another in the midst of the second half of the

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Tribulation. So, we're going to go through Revelation 16, the first nine verses. Before we do, let me again give you the overview of these four bold judgments and then we'll look at each of the verses.

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So, bowl number one is grievous sores. Bowl number two is the sea devastated.

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Again, boy, the water really takes a beating. Why is that? I think because we kind of like depend on water, right?

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Bowl three is the rivers affected. We saw that similar thing before. Bowl four, scorching heat.

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I just remembered what I wanted to say earlier when I went back to that passage in Revelation 8.

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The thing that I found interesting about Revelation 8 when we looked at that was you saw that people that go through this

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Tribulation and go through these judgments, they recognize, they want the rocks to fall on them and hide them from God because they know that God is doing this as a judgment for their sin.

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And what's their response? They want to hide from God. They don't want to repent. They want to hide from God and shake their fist at God.

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That's an important thing because one of the things I hear people like, oh, people would believe in Christ if we just find a way to explain it to them rightly and get good, clever words.

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You know what? Look at what we see here. We see that these rapid fire judgments, boom, boom, boom, mean third of the world, third of the water, third of the land, you know, all this destruction and the people are not repenting even though they know this is

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God's judgment for their sin. They still love their sin so much. They don't turn to God.

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They still reject God. You know, this is something you have to understand, the power of unbelief.

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If God doesn't unveil them to his word, they not only don't want to know

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God, even in this judgment, they're happy in their sin while this kind of destruction is going on.

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Boggles my mind. All right. Let's look at these sealed judgments. So let's look at Revelation 16 .1.

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That's Revelation 9. There we go. Thank you. Revelation 16 .1

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and 2, this first bowl judgment, grievous sores, says, then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, go and pour out on the earth seven bowls of wrath.

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So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth and harmful and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshipped his image.

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That's the first one. You have somehow everyone that has this mark of the beast gets these sores.

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Bowl number two is in Revelation 16 .3. This is the sea devastated. It says, and the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea and it came, became like the blood of a corpse and everything living, every living thing died that was in the sea.

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So this is kind of the ocean's devastation. All the sea creatures are dying. Then we have bowl number four.

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This is the rivers tied. You see, this is why it's tied to the first four trumpet judgments are tied to the first four bowl judgments.

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So now we have in Revelation 16 .4 to 7. Then the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water that they became blood.

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And I heard the angel in charge of the water say, just as just are you a holy one who is and who was for you brought these judgments for they have shed the blood of the saints and prophets and you have given them blood to drink.

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It is what they deserve. And I heard the altar saying, yes,

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Lord God, the Almighty, true and just are your judgments.

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And then the last one that we have in these four, first four is the scorching heat in Revelation 16 .8

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and 9. It says the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun and it was allowed to scorch people with fire and they were scorched by a fierce heat and they were cursed and they cursed the name of God who had the power over these plagues.

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They did not repent and gave him glory. You see what I was saying earlier about this, that these people, they recognize that God is the reason this is happening.

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They recognize it is a judgment for their sin and they don't repent. They don't want

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God, even though they can see the destruction before them. Amazing.

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So the fifth seal judgment, okay, staying again, you know, this is we're just working our way through Revelation chapter 16.

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As we work our way through, we see that the fifth, don't put it up yet. The fifth bowl judgment is darkness upon the earth and it occurs a short time after the first four bowls.

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So this one is darkness. Let's take a look now at the passage Revelation 16 verses 10 and 11.

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The fifth angel poured out his bowl and the throne of the beast and its kingdom was plunged into darkness.

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People gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the

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God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent for their deeds.

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Notice a similar trend. I mean, the judgments are coming and I mean, they're recognizing the pain.

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I don't know what kind of pain it takes to want to gnaw your tongue off. Wow. And yet they don't want to repent and put their faith in Christ.

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That tells you how much they hate God. The sixth seal describes events occurring within the timeline of Armageddon.

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We see this, let's not put this one up just for time, but this is in Revelation 16 verses 12 to 16 and you can see that with Armageddon.

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Then you see the seventh bowl judgment is the nation's view, the coming of Christ.

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This is the religious and political Babylon are destroyed. Okay. And you can see this in Revelation.

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Well, let's yeah, let's go there. Revelation 16 17. It says in the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and a loud voice came to the temple from the throne saying it is done.

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So this is it. It's done. Revelation 18 24 says and in her was found the blood of the prophets and the saints and all who had been slain on the earth.

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So here we get to this final stage and this is what's now ushering in the seventh judgment on the nations is now the coming brings the coming of Christ.

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So it brings an end to the religious political system known as Babylon and it brings in now the the reign of Christ.

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And so Revelation 19 1 to 21 and no, we're not going to read all of that.

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But Revelation 19 1 to 21 you should read it is the full description of the second coming of Jesus in the culmination or the final end of this seven year period.

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Now at the end of this seven years Christ is going to come back for those that hold to this view see that Christ will return and then establish a 1 ,000 year literal kingdom where he will literally reign.

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This is known as the Millennium. So if you hear a millennial kingdom millennium just means thousand and so a millennial rain is a thousand year reign.

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So a millennial the Millennium is viewed as a this thousand literal 1 ,000 year period will it be exactly a thousand years who knows but it's called a thousand year reign and many see that this is that Christ will come back.

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He'll reign on earth as king in the land of Israel, which will take up all of the land that Israel was promised and that he'll reign literally on the earth during this time.

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That is the idea that we have. So with that next class what we're going to look at is this millennial kingdom.

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We're going to take a look at what's happens during the Millennium. We're going to look at what happens in the eternal state.

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In other words, where is it that we're going to spend eternity? So we will look at that.

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If you have questions about this or any of the other lessons that we presented, you can feel free to email us at academy at striving for Eternity .org

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academy at striving for Eternity .org. You can go to the store at the website striving for Eternity .org.

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You could pick up our syllabus there. The syllabus is available for you to for $25 and this syllabus would be book number four.

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I encourage you to get all of them. By the way, if you want to get all four books for the systematic theology class, you can buy all four for $75 or if you want to go through the class on world religions and the class on hermeneutics, that's six books all for $100.

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All of that's available on the website striving for eternity .org. Just go to the store. One way you can support us is to buy stuff on Amazon.

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Smile. If you go to smile .amazon .com, put in striving for eternity ministries as your charity and then

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Amazon gives half a percent of everything you buy as a donation to us. Some people have been spending a lot on Amazon, just saying, but we've been getting quite a bit and we're very thankful for that.

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One of the things that you could do when you're out at the website, you could pick up my book, What Do They Believe? It's a systematic theology in the major Western religions.

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Greatly would greatly appreciate if you got that. It's also available on Amazon in Kindle form.

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If you're out at the website, you can also check out our Bible interpretation made easy seminars. You can have your church or homeschool group or someone come and sign up and in one weekend, it's six sessions, eight hours, and we will teach you how to interpret the

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Bible quickly to really put into practice some things that will help you to understand and know your

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Bible better. And so that will be about it for this class. We will wrap up and pick up next week in lesson number nine, the final lesson of this book.

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We'll probably do it in two weeks. It'll be the last two classes that we have for this. It will be the millennium and the eternal state.

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So until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.