Letters to the Churches Introduction

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Okay, give me one more second here. Those of you online, we're gonna get started.
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Per, good to see you. Stephen Elliott, nice to see you. Good to see you. And just so you know, the people of Kongsvinger can actually see you.
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I'm projecting onto a television over here so they can see you. So if you pick your nose, they will see it.
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So just keep that in mind. So good etiquette regarding nostril cleanage is a good thing here.
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So, you know, I always make sure that if I'm gonna be picking my nose, it's not while I'm on camera.
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So. And the
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Lord God said, that's Brody, to the max. I have now offended many people.
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Okay, let us pray. Help us to grow in the knowledge of your dear son, our
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Lord Jesus Christ, to remain firm in the confession of his blessed hope, to give us the love to be of one mind and to serve one another in Christ.
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Then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable, nor of the rage of the arsonist Satan, whose torch is almost extinguished.
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Dear Father, guard us so that his craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith. Grant that our cross and suffering may lead to a blessed and sure hope of the coming of our
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Savior, Jesus Christ, for whom we wait daily. Amen. Amen.
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So today we are going to begin a study of the book of Revelation, which I think is actually quite timely, due to the fact that so much is happening in the world.
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And not only that, because I seem to have upset the delicate sensibilities of the
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Prashites, who are a doomsday cult. And so they believe that pre -millennialism is a requirement of Christianity.
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Not only pre -millennialism, their particular brand of it, which they have identified
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John MacArthur and myself and Doreen Virtue as three parts of the devil's triangle.
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So I want you to know that as I'm teaching you, apparently I'm deceiving you, and that I am one of the super secret weapons of the devil in these last times to convince you to take the mark of the beast.
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Hey, hang on a second, my eyes need to roll. Okay. Okay. So I know that sounds insane, and the reality is is that their view is insane.
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And that is not historic pre -millennialism. And I used to be pre -millennial. I used to believe in the rapture and things like that.
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And if you were tuned in a few weeks ago, then you'll remember our Sunday school lesson was something
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I titled like a crash course on eschatology. And if you haven't already listened to that Sunday school lesson, then
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I would like you to do so. Not now, but you know, hang on, be right back. But not at this second, but maybe it's the next thing you do.
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Go back into the archives of Kongsvinger. Is that up already, Josh? Or it'll be up this week?
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Which one? The crash course on eschatology. Oh, it's not up yet?
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It was the week before. No, I'm very far behind. All right, so it's not up yet, so you can't listen to it.
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You had to have been here. But that's okay. It'll be up like Monday or Tuesday. So keep an eye out on the
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Kongsvinger website, a crash course on eschatology. And you're gonna note something here, and this is an important part, is that when we take a look at the end of the world, we always follow the primary rules for biblical exegesis, number one, context.
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But here's another rule that I don't talk that much about on Fighting for the Faith, and the rule is this, that clear passages always govern unclear passages.
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Clear passages always govern unclear passages, and a passage that is off -topic cannot unseat a passage that is on -topic.
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Let me give you an example of that so you kind of understand what I mean. So if you're familiar with the weird biblical arguments put forward in favor of women's ordination, women's ordination, the enterprising twister of God's word would take you to the book of Galatians, and the book of Galatians says that in Christ there is neither male nor female, there is neither
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Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free. Voila, we can now ordain women.
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And you sit there and go, that's bizarre. And the reason why is because when you look at that text in context, it's not about ordination, who's qualified or who's not qualified.
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It's about a reality in Christ that in Christ we are all equals. So the idea here is that you cannot say that men take a primary role in the kingdom of God and that Christ favors men over women.
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That's bizarre, that's ridiculous. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.
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And Christ doesn't judge us based upon our race. So if you are born and you are genetically
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Jewish, you do not have an inside track with somebody who is full -blooded Gentile.
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That's just silly. And so that's the point of that text. So taking the Galatians text to overthrow the clear text regarding women's ordination is out of line.
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It's out of line and it's a misuse of scripture. So the only passages that have anything to say regarding whether or not women should be ordained are the passages that are clearly talking about who is qualified to be a pastor in Christ's church.
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What are the qualifications and what are the duties and whether or not somebody meets those qualifications.
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And so then when you point that out, they usually move the goalpost and they'll attack you and say something like, so are you saying that women are incapable of understanding theology better than men?
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And you sit there and go, did you fall on your head when you were born? This is not even an argument because that's not the point.
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The point is that Christ is the head of the church and he's the one who gets to decide who does what and what their responsibilities are.
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So it's never about whether or not women are more capable men or less capable.
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In fact, I would note one of my mentors, theological and apologetic mentors, was the late
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Gretchen Pasentino. And she was a formidable, and I mean formidable,
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Lutheran theologian and Christian apologist. She was world -renowned and she knew her stuff.
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And so I learned a lot from her, but never once did she preach a sermon to me. And you know, never once at all.
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She taught me in theology classes. She taught me in classes that her and her husband
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Bob held and they were just gloriously gifted theologians and Christian apologists and I learned much from them.
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But never once did Gretchen Pasentino put on the pretense that she was a female, that she was a pastor or that she had the authority or that she filled the office of pastor.
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And so the idea here is that within the body of Christ, the pastoral office is uniquely held out by Christ as an office to be filled only by men.
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And that does not mean that women don't have a place in church. There are deacons and deaconesses and that women are explicitly instructed within the body of Christ to be an example and to be teachers of younger women.
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And so there's much that women have to offer. It's just that that particular office is reserved according to scripture and according to the
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Holy Spirit and according to Christ, reserved only for men. So you get the idea then. So all of that being said, as we embark on a study of the book of Revelation, we're gonna note that the passages that we've already taken a look at,
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Matthew chapter 24, which is not figurative, it's literal. Matthew 24, which is literal, is a text which is our central text regarding eschatology.
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And then around that, you're gonna have first and second Thessalonians as well as second Peter. These are your clear governing texts as to what the end of the world is going to look like.
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And you're gonna note that the governing narrative regarding the end of the world is that it's likened to a woman who is in birth pains and the contractions just get stronger and stronger and stronger.
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And the thing that's being given birth to is the new world. And the present earth, the present age is going to die in childbirth.
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That's the picture. And so that being the case, those of you who are married, those of you who are women who've had children, you understand the intensity of the childbirthing process and you note that things kind of start off with hmm.
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And they get to hmm. And then they get to ahh! And then they get to, you're responsible for making me pregnant,
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I hate you. You know, and. Sorry.
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Maybe that's just my experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you get the idea. Things get super intense at the end there and that's the idea.
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And so when you consider the eschatology that Lutherans historically hold, it's oftentimes called amillennialism, which
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I think is a terrible name. The reason why, because ahh means no, or no millennium.
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The reality is that we believe that the figures regarding the millennium that are found in the
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Book of Revelation, that they are symbolic of the current age that we find ourselves in, which is basically the age of the new covenant, which began with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ and the beginning of the church and will culminate in the return of Christ.
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If you were to say what is amillennialism closest to, in many details, with like one major exception, with many details, it's similar to a post -trib view of eschatology, a post -trib view.
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So if you're familiar with pre -tribulation, mid -tribulation, post -tribulation, I remember the late
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Walter Martin kind of put it this way. He hated the arguments that went on regarding eschatology. He said, pre -trib, post -trib, mid -trib, it's all tribulation to me.
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He says, I'm a pan -tribulationist, it'll all pan out in the end. And so the idea here is that we do not believe, we do not believe that the church will be secretly whooshed away prior to the devil's little season.
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And that's probably a better way of referring to the Great Tribulation as the devil's little season where he's kind of let loose.
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I mean, what kind of historical precedent is there even for them to whisk away people before judgment is sent upon them?
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Right, right. Well, I'll tell you where the argument comes from. Number one, historically, a pre -trib rapture view doesn't even appear until the mid to late 1800s, you know, with the
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Darbyites. And it really kind of comes about as a result of a dream or vision that a little girl had.
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And it gets, there's a long story behind all of this. But prior to this, there was never this view that Jesus was going to secretly return and whisk away the church.
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And so what ended up happening, kind of concurrent with this, is that that gets wrapped up in, that teaching regarding the rapture gets woven into the big fight that occurred in the late 1800s, early 20th century regarding the fundamentalists.
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And then with the publishing of the Schofield Study Bible, that becomes like the go -to eschatology for evangelicalism and fundamentalism that fought against the liberals.
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And so it's a fascinating thing when you kind of trace it out historically. But historically, the churches never believed this.
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And it creates a weird thing where you have two returns of Jesus rather than one. And that's a problem.
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So amillennialism definitely believes that as we get closer and closer to the end, that the restraints that are on the devil are going to be lifted, and that there's going to be a punctuated season immediately before the return of Christ, where the only way
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I can describe it is all hell is gonna break loose. And Christ, by saying, if those days had not been shortened, then nobody would survive, basically means that the devil, given free reign without any restraints on him, he's gonna basically gonna convince the human race to commit suicide, and he's going to be leading the charge for it.
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So that's what we're looking at here. So things are gonna get really, really bad right before the return of Christ.
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We absolutely believe this. But then the gathering of the saints is describing, one will be taken, one will be left, the separating, that's on the last day, that's not anywhere before the devil's little season, that's at the end of it.
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And so the idea here is that if you were to say, what is amillennialism closest to, you could say it's technically, and I have to put it in air quotes, it's technically closest to the post -millennial view.
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But you gotta note then, where the big separation then between amillennialism and all pre -millennialist views is the belief that Jesus is not going to come and then establish a thousand -year kingdom here on earth and then the end follow of that.
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No, when Jesus returns, it's the end, the end, the end. New heavens, new earth, dead rise, devil flicked like a flea off into the lake of fire.
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And so the idea here is that it's all gonna come to a crashing end with the return of Christ.
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There isn't going to be a reign of Christ here on earth with human beings still being dead in trespasses and sins as a result of Adam's sin, that we inherit this.
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This doesn't make any sense. So this is not how this works. So the idea then, when we look at the book of Revelation, I'll show you how this works.
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When we look at the book of Revelation, when it talks about the devil being released for the purpose of deceiving the nations, this is an imminent thing.
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This is an imminent thing that could happen next Thursday. All right, and so we're not waiting for anything for that to happen.
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Who knows, we might even be in heavy labor now. I don't know. The thing is is that I just work in sales.
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The Trinity works in, they're in management and they never send me memos letting me know how things are gonna go.
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They just, we all got the same orders. So all of that being said, then you'll note then that eschatology, clear passages,
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Matthew 24, first and second Thessalonians, second Peter, these are your clear texts.
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Then Revelation has to be interpreted in light of them. All right, you'd never wanna work it backwards where you try to work
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Revelation first and then go back and make the clear passages fit. This is always, and again, where I think so many people go astray.
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And of course, I remember the days. I remember the days, so when I was in junior high, when
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I was in junior high, so let's see here. This is 1980, all right.
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So when I was in junior high in, yeah, I was seventh grade.
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So in seventh grade in junior high, I was attending a school that was run by the
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Free Methodists. And so one of the things that they made us do in Bible class was watch the movie, what was the name of it,
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Left Behind? Thief in the
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Night, Thief in the Night, that's the one. Thief in the Night, it was called Thief in the Night. And that thing gave me nightmares.
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Holy smokes, that was terrifying. And I still remember the song. Life was filled with guns and wars and everyone got trampled on the floor.
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Wish we'd all been ready. Anyway, yeah, so if you, and here's the thing.
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It absolutely terrified me. And here's the thing, and the thing is is that the book of Revelation is not designed to terrify.
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The book of Revelation, when you understand it properly, is designed to give you comfort in the midst of the trials and the tribulations that we have, regardless of how close we live to the return of Christ, because the things that are in play, magnified at the very end, are already in play now.
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So the birth, the contractions have already begun. They began in the time of the apostles.
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And so the things that the apostles and the first Christians faced, every Christian generation has faced these same things with growing intensity as we've moved towards the end of the earth.
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And so the idea then is that what's written in the book of Revelation is designed to be a blessing. It is designed to be a blessing and a comfort.
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It is not designed to terrorize. It's designed to help give you an insight as to what's going on, why it's happening, and you can sit there and go, what's my job in all of this?
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And so, like I said a few weeks ago, when I was in seminary, one of my seminary professors said that the clear passages are the ones where we figure out what eschatology is and the shape of it, but Revelation is the really wicked paint job on this thing.
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And so imagine eschatology, the shape of it we've already looked at from a couple weeks ago.
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Now we're gonna start to spray paint on or airbrush on this really wicked paint job with a 10 -headed dragon and a beast and a prostitute.
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And yeah, it's just really wild. But the thing is is that this is an apocalyptic text, which means everything is symbolic.
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Now let me check questions here before I get to, who, Roger, oh, that's hilarious.
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Okay, let's see. I hope that God's will act upon me despite your deceit. Oh, funny.
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Okay, so who can see the number 666 on my forehead? Hilarious, Roger, hilarious. Yeah, Timothy learned the faith from his mother.
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That neither disqualified his pastorhood nor qualified his mother to be a pastor. Good point, Evan, that's a great point.
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So yeah, that's right, Timothy, young Pastor Timothy learned the faith from his mother.
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And it wasn't his grandmother, Eunice, as well, yeah? Yeah, so A means without medical terms.
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Okay, so we're not hearing the questions. Okay, so Chris, I would appreciate a note of the source of Darbyism's view based on the girl's dream, thanks.
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Roger, I would have to look that up for you, but I would be happy to do that and email you the link on the
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Darbyites. And I can even bring back my homework next Sunday so that we can share with the group.
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But I appreciate the idea. And I always like to footnote, but I'm doing this from memory.
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But always glad to see you, Roger. Always good to see you. All right, so with that in mind, okay, let's talk a little bit about the genre of what we're looking at here.
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So the book of Revelation is an apocalyptic text. Okay, and so the idea here is that in Scripture, we recognize there are different genres.
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There is historical narrative, and it has to be read as historical narrative. And where the liberals go wrong is they try to get away from what happens in the historical narratives by saying that it's poetic or that it's something different or that it's figurative.
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And this is nonsense. Okay, and then you think about the Psalms. There's true poetry in the
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Scriptures as well. And poetry has to be handled differently than historical narrative. And so for instance, in the
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Psalms, it talks about hiding in the shadow of God's wings. Well, does that mean that God's a big chicken?
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Should we, you know, the answer is no, of course not. God's not a big chicken. The idea then is that poetic language then, we understand, is not pointing to a literal reality regarding God.
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And so passages that are meant to be understood as literal are taken literal.
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Passages that are meant to be understood as poetic and figurative, we interpret it accordingly.
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Apocalyptic texts are going to include the book of Revelation, also the book of Ezekiel, and parts of the book of Daniel.
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And the idea here is that these, they contain highly compressed word pictures.
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And these word pictures are prophetic. And in order to understand these word pictures, you have to understand how they've worked in the past.
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So the book of Revelation requires you to have a good history of the Exodus. The book of Revelation, in order to understand the word pictures, requires you to have previous knowledge of the book of Daniel, especially
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Daniel chapter nine and seven, these are chapters that are vital to understanding the book of Revelation, as well as parts of Ezekiel.
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And the idea then here is that when you read these texts, your mind kind of sits there and goes, what does this mean?
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Because like in chapter 13, it talks about this 10 -headed dragon who's chasing the woman into the wilderness and all this kind of stuff.
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And you're sitting there going, what on earth does this mean? And you'll note then that when it comes to numbers being symbolic, we have a biblical precedent for that as well in the book of Daniel.
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So in Daniel chapter nine, the prophecy of the 70 weeks. Well, 70 weeks is what, a year and a half, all right?
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Was it a year and a half from the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem to the coming of the Messiah?
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No. The 70 weeks clearly was referring to an extended period of time.
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And when you consider the amount of years involved in the fulfillment of the prophecy of the 70 weeks, which was given by the angel
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Gabriel to Daniel, the 70 weeks turned out to be 400 years long, all right?
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So you'll note then we have a precedent from the Old Testament that when we are given time prophecies, the time prophecies are not in sync with the times that we are in, okay?
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So the idea then is that when you look at new numbers in the book of Revelation, we already have a precedent in the
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Old Testament that these are not numbers that are to be understood literally, they should be referring to and evoking a period of time that God has fixed.
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And if you remember, God's timeline or how he experiences time, way different than the way we experience.
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One day for God is as 1 ,000 years for us, right? So that being the case, so 1 ,000 years goes by and God's basically getting up and having a cup of coffee.
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And I'm sure he drinks coffee because I do, you know? So sorry, Roger, I know you're in the
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UK and you may have a preference for tea. I enjoy that as well, but my preference is for coffee.
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So you get the idea. So all that being said, we're gonna recognize then that this book,
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Revelation, has things to say to every generation of Christians from the ascension of Christ until the last day.
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And so we are to look at this book to comfort us, okay?
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All right, all right, let's see here. So the McDonald's had to leave, okay. And then real quick,
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Rachel says, so in Matthew 24, when it speaks of two men in the field, one will be taken, the other left. I know the pre -tribs believe that speaks of the rapture and the believers taken up with Christ and the unbeliever left, but it's really saying that when
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Christ comes back up to set up his kingdom, the believers will stay with him on the earth and the unbeliever will be taken out of the kingdom.
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Okay, so Rachel, I would note this, and this is where I always like to sync it up, and when the audio is up and you have the opportunity to listen to it, so come back to the
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Kongsbinger site on like Wednesday, and you should be able to listen. When you look at Matthew 24, in fact, let me do this real quick, because I can show you this just at the end of it, and give me a second here, duplicate.
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Then Matthew 24 syncs up, the trumpets are the way in which you synchronize
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Matthew 24 and Thessalonians and the other passages, and the trumpets are your thing.
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So you're gonna note here, watch the order of events, so near the end of Matthew 24, immediately after the tribulation of those days.
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The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from heaven, the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
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So you're gonna note, this is not an apocalyptic text, this is, Jesus is just plainly saying, here's how it's going to go down.
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And then will appear in heaven the sign of the son of man, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
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Now I would argue verse 30 is going to rule out a secret rapture here, because everybody is looking up to heaven going, oh my goodness,
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Jesus is coming, okay? It's kind of like that obvious, right? So he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other.
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So here, so the angels go out to gather the elect, and so you'll note then, right before that, sun stops working, stars fall from the sky, moon isn't giving its light, sign of Jesus showing up.
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There's nothing secret about this, okay? And so when the angels get sent out, that is the end, period, okay?
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And then watch this, because I think this is actually kind of funny. Duplicate tab, and let me go earlier into the book of Matthew.
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If you remember the gospel text from last week, we had the parable of the field with the weeds, okay?
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And so Jesus, the angels ask Jesus, didn't you sow good seed, who's done this?
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He says, an enemy has done this, right? And so he says, let both grow together until the harvest. At the harvest time,
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I'll tell the reapers, gather the weeds first, bind them in bundles to be burned, gather the weed into my barn.
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And so you'll note here that first order of business is the first to be taken are actually the weeds, not the weed.
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The angels first gather them up, all right? And so this is an important bit, but watch the interpretation of this.
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So in the interpretation, Jesus says, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.
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Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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Then the righteous will shine like the sun, in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears, let him hear. So you can see here with Matthew 13, this syncs up perfectly with what
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Jesus is describing in Matthew 24, that he's gonna send out his angels, and they will gather his elect.
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So all of that being said, we're talking about one and the same thing, and it's at the very end.
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There isn't two gatherings, there's one. There are two returns of Jesus, there's only one return of Jesus.
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So then watch what Christ says. So from the fig tree, learn its lesson. As soon as its branch becomes tender, it puts out its leaves, you know summer is near.
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So also when you see all these things, the sun being dark and the moon not giving its light, the stars falling from the sky, the sign of Christ, which
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I think is probably just gonna be a big old cross right in the center of the sky at night, you know that he is near, and at the very gates, truly
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I say to you, this generation, the generation that sees these things will not pass away until these things take place.
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Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not. Now concerning that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the son, only the father.
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For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the son of man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when
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Noah entered the ark, they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away. So will be at the coming of the son of man.
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Then two men will be in the field. One will be taken, one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill.
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One will be taken, one will be left. Therefore, stay awake. You don't know on what day the Lord, your Lord is coming, all right?
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So the idea then here is that the amillennial view basically says there's one return of Christ, there's one gathering of the elect, and the separating, and it's all on the last day.
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Period, all right? So this whole schema of the left -behind series, with Nicolas Cage, that was just terrible.
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Oh, before that, there was the Kirk Cameron. Oh, then the Kirk Cameron, yeah. That was the one. It was horrifyingly stupid.
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It's so embarrassing when those movies, the books themselves are embarrassing. But the reality is that this idea that there's two returns of Christ and Jesus is gonna secretly come and swoosh up the church prior to the end, that just doesn't exist.
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It doesn't exist. Instead, we are admonished to, if you're gonna die, you're gonna die.
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Get over it. I don't wanna die. What are you gonna do anyway? And it's a privilege to be martyred.
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So embrace the joy of martyrdom. But you're gonna note how this all then works.
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Okay, so all of that being said, this is the shape then of it. And like I said, on Millennials, we take
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Matthew 24, literally. We take 1 and 2 Thessalonians, literally. We take the book of 2
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Peter, literally. Regarding the book of Revelation, it's apocalyptic. It's not to be understood, literally.
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In much of it, it's not to be understood, literally. These are apocalyptic, very graphic word pictures designed to give us comfort and peace rather than to terrify us because the things that we are facing now,
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Christians have been facing since the beginning. So with that, let's do a little bit of work. The Revelation.
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So the book itself is the apocalypse, the apocalypsis of Jesus Christ.
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This is the Revelation, the revealing of Jesus Christ. It's like taking, you ever see somebody doing one of those things where they're going to introduce their brand new 2021
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Chevy Camaro and they've got a big cover over it and all that kind of stuff and the trumpets and the fanfare and you're not gonna believe what you see.
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And all of a sudden, you hear vroom, vroom and they pull the curtain off and there's, oh.
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Yeah, it's just wonderful. Anyway, sorry. Any muscle car will do, okay.
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I'll take a Mustang, a good Mustang, convertible even. Although a
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Viper, see now, I'm distracted. Anyway, so apocalypsis is like the tearing off of the cover and the revealing, right?
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So the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.
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He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ even to all that he saw.
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Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy. Blessed are those who hear and who keep.
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To hear means to guard, actually. Guard what is written in it for the time is near.
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So you'll note, this is a book with a blessing, right? Read it, read it out loud.
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There's a blessing here for you. And a little bit of a note here. The apostle
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John, he was in exile because of his testimony of Jesus Christ.
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The Roman emperor had put him in prison and there were people who were basically trying to incite the
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Roman emperor to put the apostle John to death, to actually kill him on these charges.
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And the charges were that he was an insurrectionist who was preaching a different king,
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King Jesus. That's historically what we know to be the case. And it's fascinating that when it ended up happening is that several prominent teachers and disciples of the apostle
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John and of the early church were given an audience with the Roman emperor, with Caesar, and they were questioned regarding their belief that Jesus was a king.
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And they explained, he's not the king of anything here. He's the king of heaven. He's also your king, but there's no dominion or whatever.
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And when the emperor finally realized, wait a second, these Christians are not exactly what people are making them out to be, he ordered that the apostle
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John be released from exile. But this is during that intermediate time. And if you were to travel there today, there's a church set up and a place set up where you can actually go into the cave of the apocalypse.
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We know where he received this revelation from because we know where he was exiled. And that particular place on planet
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Earth, let's just say is not very hospitable. Very few places where human beings can hang out.
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So we know exactly where this took place. So watch then these comforting words. Grace to you in peace from him who is, who was, who is to come.
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And these phrase, who is, who was, who is to come, is a funny way of kind of invoking the actual name of God, Yahweh, the
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I am, the self -existing one. All right, the one who is, who was, who is, who is to come, who always will be, always was, was, is now.
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And you get the idea. This is kind of a way of invoking that name of God. And then I want you to pay attention to what comes next.
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And from the seven spirits who are before his throne. This is gonna be an important number, especially when we get into Revelation 13.
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Over and again, you're gonna note that numbers in the book of Revelation that have correlations directly to God are going to be in sevens.
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Seven is the perfect number, all right? When we get to the mark of the beast, the mark of the beast is six, six, six, which is like the unholy trinity.
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It is a number that is deficient. It doesn't reach perfection. It's something different than that. But you're gonna note that God has seven spirits who are before his throne, seven.
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This is gonna be important. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.
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Notice that this is not in the future tense. And this is an important part of it because premillennialism has a difficult time explaining what
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Jesus is presently doing in heaven other than maybe doing intercessory work. He's our mediator and things like this.
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But here the book of Revelation says that Christ is already the ruler of kings on earth.
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He's already begun his reign. Remember at the end of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says all authority in heaven on earth has been given.
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He doesn't say will be given. He says has been given to me. As you are going, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them all I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
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So you'll note that Christ is already the ruler of the kings of the earth. So is Jesus waiting to reign or is he currently reigning?
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If he's currently reigning, then we're not waiting for him to come and set up his kingdom.
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He's already in charge of everything. And if he's already in charge of everything, and he is, then do we have to worry about anything right now that's going crazy in our world?
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Nope, not at all. You think Jesus is sitting there going, you know, things kind of got a little out of hand here, but don't worry,
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I'll get Trump to fix it all up for us. I heard that scoffing. No, you see,
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Jesus is already the ruler of all the kings on the earth. And then watch these comforting words.
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To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.
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Why do people not focus on Revelation 1? The gospel is so clear and sets the foundation.
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The one who rules all of the earth, the king of kings, Lord of lords, he has, he loved us and he has set us free from our sins.
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He's done this by his blood and he's made us, and we are already, by the way, we are already this.
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He has already made us a kingdom, we are, and we are priests already to God, to his
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God and father. So to him be glory and dominion forever and ever, amen.
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Behold, he's coming with the clouds. Every eye will see him, even those who pierced him.
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All the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so, amen. All right, so it begins with words of comfort, not terror.
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Comfort, reminding us that we are in Christ, that we are forgiven, freed from our sins. We have been made a kingdom, priests to God, and he has dominion and glory forever and ever, and yeah, he's coming, and those who pierced him will see him, they will wail, but even so, he's coming.
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All right, so Lyras writes, so it is considered that the author of the book of Revelations is the apostle
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John or some other John. Very interesting, the point about 666 being a way, the trinity of imperfection.
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First time I hear this interpretation, but it makes sense. Good, and that's just a preview of what's to come, by the way, and so I will say this.
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There are scholars who argue based upon how the book of Revelation is written, and let's just say, as somebody who's been translating and reading
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Greek for 25 years, the only way I can describe the Greek in the book of Revelation is abysmal, okay?
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It was like somebody was writing as fast as they could, and they cared not about certain grammatical techniques, proper punctuation, sentence structure, and things like this.
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It's almost like an Impressionist painting written very quickly. That's the best way
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I can describe it, and so because in the New Testament, the Greek text is so different than anything that we have in the
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Gospel of John or 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, some scholars today argue this has to be a different John, and I go, no, the church has always believed that this was written by the
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Apostle John, but the idea then is that just because the style is different doesn't mean that it's a different author.
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I think this is silly, so for instance, if you've ever read any of my theological or apologetics articles,
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I have a particular style that I use when I'm writing theology, when I'm doing apologetic work, but back when
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I was in high school and I wrote love letters to my wife, they don't sound anything like the theology stuff that I write today.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really sappy, the stuff I wrote when I was in high school. Anyway, but you get the idea, so we human beings are capable of different styles depending on the different thing, and given the circumstances that John wrote this under, he was basically in exile, under arrest, living in a cave, and he wasn't able to head off to Walmart to buy some paper and get a nice gel pen and things like this, so there's a sense in which this book, when you read it in Greek, it feels like it was written very hastily.
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I've gotta get this down before I lose this kind of thing, and so he cut particular corners, and I'll say this is that, so first year
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Greek students, oftentimes when you've finished learning the basics of biblical
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Greek and grammar, the book of Revelation is oftentimes one of the first texts that people who first learn
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Greek will go into, specifically because of how it's written, it's a lot easier to read in that sense.
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The hardest book to read in Greek in the New Testament is the book of Hebrews, and boy, boy, that's just some tough
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Greek. Yeah, 25 years later, I still struggle with Hebrews, that one's not easy to translate, but Revelation's super easy.
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Okay, so we noted then that we begin with comfort. He loved us, freed us from our sins by his blood, he made us a kingdom, every eye will see him, and so here's then the next words, and you're gonna note this is written in the first person.
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Christ is speaking, or God is speaking, I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is, who was, who is to come, the
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Almighty. I am the first, I am the last. So you'll note then, so I, John, your brother, and partner in the tribulation.
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This is an important bit that we've gotta pay attention to here. John is writing this in the late part of the first century, and he is already claiming that he is a participant in and partner with other
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Christians in the tribulation. How long has the tribulation been going on?
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The tribulation has been going on since Christ's ascension. So you'll note here,
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John is not referring to the tribulation as something off into the future that we have to look forward to.
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We are already in it, and when you begin to adopt this mindset, wait a second, if we're already in the tribulation, then you can begin to understand human history a lot clearer, a lot clearer.
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So I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus.
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So if we're already in the tribulation, the kingdom is already being run by Jesus, what does this call for Christians?
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Patient endurance. That's the watchword for us
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Christians, and this text is teaching us that. We need to endure patiently the suffering and the tribulation that we're in.
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So he says, I was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
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This is historically true. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, like a trumpet, saying, write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, and to Pergamum, and to Thyatira, to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea, all right?
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Loud voice, like a trumpet, blasting, right? So, you know, Jesus, I mean, notice that Jesus didn't sit there and go, hey,
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John, good to see you again, man. It's been so long, you know. He's, and note this.
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I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. What day of the week is that, by the way? Sunday.
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This is a text that shows us that the earliest Christians, that they had their church services on Sunday.
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He's in the spirit on the Lord's day. So he's in the middle of church, and where two or more are gathered,
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Christ is present, right? So he's in the spirit on the Lord's day, and all of a sudden, Jesus shows up behind him and immediately gives him a command.
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Write what you see in a book, right? All right? So this gets his attention, and like anybody else,
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I'd turn around to see who's talking to me if it sounded like a big old loud trumpet. So I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning,
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I saw, and watch the number, seven golden lampstands. Okay, now wait a second here.
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Something's coming to my, I, you know, I, I've seen this thing called a menorah.
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Have you seen a menorah? How many, how many lamps? Yeah. Okay, wait a second here.
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Okay, if you remember what was told to Moses when God commanded him to make the tabernacle and to build it, it was very clear, and it's also, this is explicitly stated in the book of Hebrews, that what, what
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Moses built was a replica of the real thing.
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The real thing was in heaven. So here we are. We are in, he saw,
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I saw seven golden lampstands. Guess where John is presently? He's seeing a vision of the real thing that Moses made.
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So Christ is in the tabernacle, and there's the seven golden lampstands.
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And you'll note that Christ has a long robe with a golden sash around his chest.
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He's wearing his priestly ephod, okay? Oh, wow, this is getting really interesting when you start to pull in the
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Old Testament here, okay? So the hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow.
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His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace.
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His eyes were like the roar of many, his voice was like the roar of many waters. His right hand, he held seven stars.
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From his mouth came a sharp two -edged sword, and his face was like the sun, shining in full strength.
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Seven stars, sword coming out of his mouth. All right, so when you see something like this, what's the first thing human beings do in the presence of this type of holiness?
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Wet themselves. Yeah, right after they wet themselves, they fall down dead. Okay, it says, when I saw him,
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I fell at his feet as though dead. All right, so I always like to just mock the people who says, yeah, you know,
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I was at Starbucks the other day, and like Jesus appeared to me and said, hey, dude, how's it going, man? It's good to see you, you know?
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Let's talk about that strategy that I'd like to give you for how you can like conquer the next kingdom thing, and you had a decree and declared the end of the coronavirus and racism, you know, this kind of stuff.
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Okay, yeah, you didn't talk to Jesus. That may be some undigested, really bad pizza, but that ain't
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Jesus you're talking to. So you get the idea here. You know, when
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Jesus shows up, John goes, ah! He's on the ground dead. Okay, so Jesus laid his right hand on me.
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Notice the comfort, the care, the love that he has. He's saying, fear not. Why should
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I not fear? I am the first, I am the last, I am the living one. I died, and behold, I'm alive forever, and I have the keys of death and Hades.
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Write, therefore, the things that you have seen, those that are, and those that are to take place after this.
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As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, and the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
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Ooh, all of a sudden, type and shadow of the Old Testament gives way to its meaning. That menorah points to what?
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The seven churches, and you're gonna note then that what will follow in chapter two, the seven churches are gonna be kind of archetypical churches, and so in one way or another, many congregations around the world will kind of fit into one of these archetypes, and you'll note that there is a progression to disobeying and not believing
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Christ that will manifest itself, and so the idea here is as we look at the church of Ephesus and its sin, this then is increased and compounded in the church of Smyrna, on to Pergamum, Thyatira, all the way down to Laodicea, where Laodicea receives no commendation from Christ at all.
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You can almost see that this is, you know, once one thing gives way, it'll lead to the next and to the next and to the next, and so that's where we're gonna end off today.
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This is just setting the groundwork, and you'll note this is comforting. This is something like, okay,
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Christ wants us to be comforted, and don't be afraid. I'm the first and the last. I'm alive forevermore.
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I have the keys of death and Hades. Don't worry. Everything you're going through, and John already makes it clear.
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He's already a partner in the tribulation, already, and we are partners with him in the tribulation as well.
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We are as well. All right, so let's see here. Roger says, I've been to Patmos twice, once on a
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Russian -built hovercraft with an interesting restroom. Okay. Okay.
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Thank you for that detail, Roger, and a US toilet for others.
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Sorry, totally irrelevant comment. Yes, I'm gonna agree. That was, but I'm glad that the thing you remember regarding your trip to Patmos was a toilet.
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It does, you know, having people join us for Sunday school is, you never know what's gonna happen.
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All right, that's great. All right, you have a question, James. No, no.
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Yeah, so James here at Kongsvinger has noted that Norwegian Jesus looks nothing like the appearance of Jesus in the
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Book of Revelation. Funny enough, somebody used that as an argument against Norwegian Jesus, saying that apparently the only way we are allowed to depict
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Jesus now is with a sword coming out of his mouth and all of this, you know, what we just saw, which is silly.
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If you wanna go ahead and depict Jesus in this way, you're free to, but we also have the freedom to depict
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Jesus, you know, in the manger. We have the freedom to depict Jesus healing the blind man or walking on the water.
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We have the freedom to depict Jesus hanging dead on the cross, if we want. We have the freedom to depict
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Jesus stepping out of the tomb. We have the freedom to depict Jesus coming to Paul while he's in the ship on storms tossed
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Mediterranean Sea. And so we can depict him in all of these ways. But always and again, we must recognize that our depictions of Jesus artistically are woefully short of who he really is.
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And that in all of their pious desire to capture a glimpse of him, that's all they ever do is really capture just a little glimpse of him.
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Okay, so Louis says, can you go over 2 Thessalonians 7? I learned about the premillennialism from these verses.
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I always got confused about Jesus taking out of the way. So Louis, I think you're talking about 2
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Thessalonians 2, right? Hang on a second here. I'm doing this from memory, but 2 Thessalonians 2.
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Okay, talking about, yeah. Okay, so let's take a look at this real quick. We'll do a little bit of a review. Concerning the coming of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, Paul writes, and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the
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Lord has already come. You see, the whole left behind error started all the way back then. So somebody was sending letters, and they're claiming to be from the apostle
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Paul. You doomcocks, you didn't actually do what was necessary, and Jesus is already coming left, and then you've been left behind.
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And Paul says, don't even listen to these guys. So let no one deceive you in any way. That day will not come unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.
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This is the one who opposes and exalts himself against every so -called God or object of worship, so that he takes his place, his seat in the temple of God.
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And when you look at Paul's theology, the temple of God is referring to the church, not some rebuilt temple in Jerusalem.
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And then this fellow will proclaim himself to be God. So do you not remember that when
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I was still with you, I told you these things, and so you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.
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And so you'll note then that in a clear text, this is not an apocalyptic text, in a clear text, it makes it clear that Satan himself has some type of a restraint put on him.
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He is restrained until his time when he may be revealed. And so this then plays into it perfectly.
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So the idea is when you look at church history, the church spreads quickly like wildfire with very little impediment, and the devil just cannot stand against the people who are going to spread the good news of Jesus Christ around the world.
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And the church grows quickly with deep roots and is very healthy, very strong, so he starts to attack it from within with heresies and things like that.
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But the devil himself has restrainers put on him, and those restraints are lifted.
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I would almost argue progressively lifted over time to where at the very end, all the restraints are taken off the devil, and it's, like I said, it's this punctuated season.
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Lutherans refer to it as the devil's little season. So that the time immediately before the return of Christ, it's haywire, okay?
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Buckle up and hang on, get out of the way if you can, because that's what we're talking about here.
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So he says, the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, presently it's already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he's out of the way.
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So the lawlessness is already at work at the time Paul writes 2 Thessalonians, but there's still a restraint in place, and that's gonna progressively be unrestrained at the end.
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And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
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And so you'll note, just taking it simply, as this is a governing text, to be interpreted literally, because it is literal, the idea then is that at some point the lawless one is revealed, and I would point to 2
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Thessalonians 2 .8 as a text that I would argue, just like Adam was the first man who lived and God breathed into him the breath of life,
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I think the bookend for human history is going to be on the day that Jesus sends the angels out to gather up the elect and to cast the unbelievers into the lake of fire, that the last human being standing will be this man of lawlessness, and that the close of this age will be, rather than Jesus giving the man of lawlessness the breath of life, instead
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Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth. It's a perfect bookend to Adam. So I think that's a good way to look at this.
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And again, this is not an apocalyptic text. This is not symbolic. This is just Paul saying this is what it's all about.
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And so you'll note that even John notes that in his time, in 1 John, that antichrist is coming, but there are already many antichrists already in the world.
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And so Paul then says, the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan, with all power, false signs and false wonders, with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.
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So therefore God sends a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
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So, all right, hopefully, Lewis, that that answers your question. But the idea then here is that, again, this is not talking anything about premillennialism.
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This is just talking about the restraint that's already on the devil that is being loosened and unrestrained with each generation.
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It's just getting worse and worse and worse. And I don't know if you guys have noticed that the present times that we're in, we are in a hard contraction.
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I don't know if we're going into hard labor or not and if Jesus is coming back next Thursday, but I do know that what we're presently going through is exactly what
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Jesus described, okay? Whether or not it's going to ease up and another generation would be allowed to go on,
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I don't know, I have no idea. But when you start to interpret history in light of how Christ lays this out, not according to Tim LaHaye and the late great planet
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Earth and all these people like that, again, you get some comfort so that you can have from Christ that patient endurance to go through the tribulation that even
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John himself has gone through. So, all right, we're going to end there. So great questions.
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Peace to you, brothers and sisters. Glad that you were able to join us today. Glad you're here in Kongsvinger. And so we will see you next time.