158. When Does The Apocalypse Begin?

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 158,

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Apocalypse Then. And you are back.

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Welcome back to the podcast. I'm back from Myrtle Beach, where my family was down in South Carolina, where we were soaking up some beautiful 80 -degree sun.

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Now I'm back in 38 -degree Massachusetts. But I'm excited, and I'm excited to be back because I'm eager to jump back into this incredible book called

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The Book of Revelation. Now, as you know, we've already covered a couple episodes here, and what we've done basically is we've laid a sort of theological and eschatological foundation for everything that we're gonna see in this book moving forward.

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So if you missed those, I would highly encourage you to go back, check them out, because they're gonna be foundational for what we're gonna cover moving forward.

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But if you did miss it, here is a very brief recap. In episode one, we kind of shattered the myth that Revelation is a book about future doom, gloom, despair, newspaper prophecies, and all of the rest.

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And instead, we saw that it's actually a book about hope, a book about dominion, and a book about victory through Jesus Christ.

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And after spending 19 weeks in the glorious chapter of Matthew 24, we demonstrated last, in one of the first episodes of this series, that Revelation is not a cryptic code for 21st century dorks that are hiding away in their bomb shelters.

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No, it's a symbolic book. It's a first century prophecy about first century events written to real churches, seven, in fact, that were anchored in the

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Asia Minor Providence. They're not announcing future judgments, but imminent judgments on the apostate

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Jews who had become enemies of Christ through crucifying Christ and murdering his bride.

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So we highlighted that. And we also, in that first episode, highlighted the timeframe markers, which will come into play next week a little bit more fully, things like soon, quickly, and near, which are words that actually tell us when the book of Revelation occurs.

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If John is saying, in AD 68, let's say, that's when he wrote it,

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I don't know, maybe it was 67, maybe it was 66, my point is, if he said that in the 60s, that these things are gonna happen soon,

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Jesus is coming quickly, behold, the time is near, then 2 ,000 years later is a little bit ridiculous.

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I think we all can agree that words mean what they mean. Now, we also saw that in addition to the book of Revelation being understandable, the book of Revelation having these timeframe references, we also looked at how

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Revelation is John's Olivet Discourse. It's his apocalyptic version of what

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Matthew does in chapter 24, Mark does in chapter 13, and Luke does in chapter 21. It's John's Olivet Discourse, which means that it's not about modern -day chaos and planes falling out of the sky, it's about Christ's first -century battle against his enemies, the

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Jews, and in so defeating them, setting up his kingdom that won't ever end. So we saw that in episode one of this

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Revelation series. Now, in episode two, before we got too far into things, because let's be honest, you could cover

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Revelation for years. I'm reading Ken Gentry's book right now, The Divorce of Israel.

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300 pages before he even gets to verse one. 300 pages before he even opens up the book of Revelation.

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It's all background material, and we could do that. We could look at how Revelation is about the kingship of Jesus, how it's about a worship service, how

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Ezekiel's themes that he covers in his book is what Revelation is. We could cover episode after episode after episode, but my goal in this is not to make scholars, but to make saints who love this book.

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So we did cover one theme before we got started, though, and that is the kingship of Christ.

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And we looked at the entire biblical narrative, all the way from Adam's failure in the garden to God's unrelenting promise that he is going to raise up a human king that's gonna be better than Adam, that's gonna inherit the covenant promises of Adam and Noah and Abraham, who's gonna wear the scepter and the crown that was promised to Judah.

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He's gonna be the coming prophet that Moses prophesied about. He's gonna be the king in the line of David who's gonna sit upon his throne, and he's gonna be the hope of the prophets.

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And what we saw is from Genesis to Revelation, the testimony of God is unanimous.

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God is going to install a real human king descended from the line of David who will crush the serpent, who will command the nations, who will bring the world under his reign and authority and rule, and he will transform the world into the garden paradise of Eden that Adam was supposed to but failed to.

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And we see that that's not ethereal, that's not allegorical, not metaphorical. That is the boots -on -the -ground reality of the book of Revelation.

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That's the throne in Zion, the government resting on the shoulders of this new Adam Jesus. It's the book that doesn't punt his kingdom into the future 2 ,000 plus years.

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It's a book that heralds the inauguration of his kingdom now. It erupts with this theme in time and space in the

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Gospels, and when the king comes and steps onto the scene in the book of Revelation, we see that he is going after his enemy, he sits down on his throne, and he reigns through his royal bride, the church on earth until all the world is under his dominion and authority.

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Revelation is about the kingship, the climactic kingship of Jesus. So, that's our first two episodes.

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Now, today, we're gonna be moving forward, and we're gonna be moving forward on the back of those two episodes, and we're gonna be now opening the book of Revelation, chapter one, verse one, and that's all we're gonna accomplish today, but we're gonna see how

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Revelation is rooted in the Old Testament, we're gonna see how it's fulfilled by Christ, we're gonna see how it is the marching orders for the church, we're gonna see how

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Christ is not waiting to reign, he's reigning now, and all of that is gonna help you and I understand this book more clearly so that it comes alive.

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I don't want, I don't want this channel to produce a bunch of egg -headed nerds who just sit in their ivory towers.

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If I wanted to do that, I could leave the ministry, and I could go get my PhD, and I could just go teach at a seminary.

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I don't wanna do that. I want average Christians, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, teenagers, children,

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I want people to be able to see these videos and think, man, Revelation seems really confusing, but these videos are really helping me understand it.

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They're helping this book come alive to me. It's not a confusing, Gordian's not puzzle anymore, but I'm seeing that Jesus is having dominion here.

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I'm seeing how this affects and intersects with my own discipleship, and my love for my wife, and my love for my family, and my desire to live out the great commission in my own life.

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I want Revelation to matter to the church of Jesus again. I want Revelation not to be the book that you skip at the end of your yearly, your year -long reading plan.

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I don't want Revelation to be lumped into the same category as Leviticus and Ezekiel.

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I love those books. What my point is, is I wanna see people love the book of Revelation, because the book of Revelation teaches us so much about who we are in Christ.

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We're not victims, we're victors. We're not dominated, we're bringing the dominion. This is what this book is talking about, and this is why this book is so needed right now in the church, because we've adopted for way too long a loser mentality that needs to end, because we are not the losers of history, folks.

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We're the victors, and we're more than conquerors because of him who loved us, because of the lamb that was slain, because of the king that reigns, because of Jesus.

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The book of Revelation does not throw a Greg Maddox curve ball that leaves you standing confused in your cleats.

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The book of Revelation climaxes what the entire Bible has been saying all along, that our

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God reigns. So that's why we took a week to focus on that. Now, in today's episode, we begin the long and glorious task of walking our way through the book of Revelation, one verse at a time.

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And today, quite literally, one verse, but each week, we're gonna be taking a particular portion of scripture, and we're gonna be expositing it.

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That word exposit means to draw out. So we're gonna be drawing out what the original author,

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John, meant to say to the original audience, those seven churches in Asia Minor, and we're gonna see how that message fits perfectly in the eschatological hopes and dreams of the first century world, how it has nothing to do with B -52 bombers or Apache helicopters.

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We are going to see how it affects Israel, not modern Israel, but ancient Israel, and we're gonna see how it affects us, the bride of Christ, the church.

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Again, not my goal in this series. We did it in Matthew 24, where we went really, really deep with two hour -long episodes and 19 episodes for a single chapter.

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My goal with Revelation's a little different. But my goal is not to do two and a half hour -long episodes, although those are great, and I think that everyone enjoyed them and were benefited by them.

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But because Revelation is so much more complicated, I wanna now make it so much more simple.

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I wanna take this passage, or this book, passage by passage, verse by verse, and I wanna break it down in a way that's helpful, in a way that's encouraging, and in a way that actually builds your confidence that whether you're a scholar or a layman, you're an old man or a young boy, you can open up the book and you can glean something from it because you've now understood the key to understanding this book.

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It's not a cipher code for you to interpret 21st century geopolitical politics.

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That's why you're confused about it. Instead, it's a window into a moment in time where the old covenant world was failing and falling apart and fading into oblivion.

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And Jesus is rising a new covenant world, a world where His bride, the church, will spread

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His dominion to the ends of the earth and His glory will cover the earth as the water covers the sea.

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I want you, I want me, and I want the church to be able to see that, to be able to taste that, to be able to rejoice in that.

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That's why we're doing this series. Not so that we can puff up our chest and think, oh, look how smart we are.

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We've mastered revelation. That's not the point. I don't care about that. If you want an exhaustive treatment on it, go read

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Gentry, go read Chilton, go read James Stuart Russell. There's plenty of people. My goal is to bring it down and to make it beautiful and to take away the complexity and to help people really truly understand this very complicated book.

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So I hope that if this is encouraging to you and it helps you, praise God, that's my point.

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Also, before we get started, I wanna say thank you to everyone who's been watching these videos, everyone who's been sharing it, everyone who's been helping in any way, liking, sharing, subscribing, clicking the bell icon, or being a member of this show.

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All of your support has been super helpful. 95 % of the comments have been super encouraging.

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And I really believe that God is blessing this effort. I believe it with all my heart. That's why we do it every week.

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So thank you from the bottom of my heart. And now let's jump into today's episode by talking about what revelation actually says.

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So with that, this is how the book begins. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which

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God gave him to show his bondservants the things which must soon take place.

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And he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant,

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John. And now with that, let's begin with part one, revelation as apocalypse.

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Now, the very first word of this book is where everything begins. And it's such an important word, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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Now, in the original, there's not an article. So it doesn't say the revelation. It just says revelation.

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And the Greek word for that, I know I said that this is gonna be easy. And I promise you when I use

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Greek and when I use grammar, I'm gonna make it understandable to you. The Greek word for the word revelation is the word apocalypsis.

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Now, apocalypsis is not what you think and what I think when we hear the word apocalyptic.

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When we hear that, we think of chaos. We think of hunger games.

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We think of mushroom clouds and atom bombs and Mad Max movies and the book of Eli. And we think about all of that sort of end of the world apocalyptic scenario.

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And that is just not what the word apocalypsis means. It doesn't mean war.

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It doesn't mean plague. Doesn't mean famine. Doesn't mean death. Doesn't mean disaster. Doesn't mean any of that.

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That's a vision of a genre, the apocalyptic genre that Hollywood has sold us.

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It's definitely a vision that dispensationalism has poisoned the well of the American or Western church with, absolutely.

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But the word apocalypsis doesn't mean disaster and it doesn't mean end of the world and it doesn't mean nuclear bombs.

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It's not that. In fact, it's pretty ironic.

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The word apocalypsis, where we get our word apocalyptic, means an unveiling.

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It means a pulling back of the curtain. It means, the word actually means that when you see something for the first time, when it's always been there, but now it's with clarity.

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It's that moment where, maybe you've watched one of these videos. It's so, they're so cute.

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When the baby, and they know that the baby has like eye issues, so that he can't, or she can't see clearly, and they'll put the glasses on the baby and then the baby sees his mother for the very first time and it unveils, it takes away the confusion in his eyes and he sees his mother and he smiles.

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If you've ever seen one of those videos, they are so cute, they're so beautiful, because what those eyeglasses are doing is unveiling the truth, revealing the truth.

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That's what the book of Revelation is designed to be. It's not meant to be a stained glass window that you can't see through.

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It's meant to be crystal clear. It's meant to reveal truth. It's meant to unveil the confusion that was going on in the first century church.

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But here's the real irony in that. The very book that was designed to bring clarity, that was designed to bring truth, that was designed to reveal what was about to happen is the very book that now we think is the most confusing, the most unclear and the most secretive and the most esoteric.

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But John didn't call the book a great mystery. He didn't call it a sealed up secret scroll.

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He called it an apocalypsis, which in the original

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Greek language meant that it's a book that is designed by its very fabric to reveal things, to make things clear, to end confusion.

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It is not a labyrinth of pictographic imagery. It's a lamp unto the feet of the first century church.

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And John's intention was to make the truth clear to the people.

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And he says that in the first verse, using the word apocalypsis, but he also says it in the first two verses and even in the third verse, where he says, blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and heed the things which are written in it.

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John says, and we'll talk about this more next week, John says that you're blessed if you read this, not confused, not broken, not upset, not discouraged, not frustrated, not whatever else.

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He says that you're blessed if you see and you read and you hear and you observe the things that were in this book, because this book is never meant to obscure truth.

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It's meant to reveal it. He says, heed this book that's meant to reveal the truth.

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John expects the church to understand this book. He expects the church to be blessed by this book.

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Why? Because they needed its truth in their day in a way that we bring confusion to it today when we apply it to our day.

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It was applied to them. It was written to them. It was an unveiling for them.

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It was bringing clarity for them. But when we rip it out of its first century context and world, and we put it into the 21st century, and we think that it's about our world, untold amounts of confusion happen.

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This word, apocalypsis, it shows us that it's meant to be helpful to the people that it was written to, not to us.

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So your first assumption when you come to this book is I have to enter back into their world and not just read this book and make it about me and my world, because if you do that, the book makes no sense.

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The hermeneutical key, which means the interpretive key, is that you and I have got to go back into their world to see what unveiling this book is talking about.

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Because when we see what it means for them, then the application is gonna make so much more sense for us.

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Now, this word apocalypsis doesn't just show up in the book of Revelation. In fact, we'll talk about this more in a little bit.

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It only shows up once in the book, in the very first word of the book. So this word is not just native to John.

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But it is a book that shows up elsewhere in the Bible, and it really does actually mean what

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I just said it means. For instance, in Luke 12 too, Jesus says, there is nothing covered up that will not be apocalypsis.

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Revealed, same word. So English translators know what this word means.

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It means revealed. Amos 3 .7, God promises not to act without first revealing his secrets to his servants, the prophets.

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Again, same word. Paul uses it in Romans 16 .25 and in 2 Corinthians 12 .1

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to describe mysteries that God has made known. And now, in Revelation, the same word is being used that God is shining his revealing light on dark things so that they will be revealed.

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This book is not a roadmap for modern America. It's not a blueprint for how to interpret

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World War III. It's not a barcode on your wrist or on your forehead so that you can buy groceries.

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What's being unveiled is a first century reality where the old covenant world was waning and the new creation kingdom of Jesus is waxing.

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What's being uncovered by this book, what this book was designed to do is to help

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Christians living in the first century understand that judgment was coming to Jerusalem, that destruction was coming to the temple, and that the ascension of Jesus's kingdom was rising.

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John is not writing to people who are wondering about what

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Vladimir Putin is going to do next. That's a joke. He's writing to people who are watching the smoke rise from the chimney stacks of downtown

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Jerusalem. His audience isn't worried about microchips and neural link and satellites and AI.

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They're worried about survival. They're worried about what's going to happen to my life when the temple's not there.

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What am I going to do? Where am I going to worship God? What am I going to, how am I going to be right with God without a temple?

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They're asking, is this really the plan? Jesus promised that the plan was to end the old covenant, to end the mosaic economy, to end the temple, the sacrifice, the priest, the feast, all of it.

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But I don't see any evidence of it. They lived for 35 years clinging to the promises of Christ and they were confused.

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Why hasn't it come yet? Why hasn't the old covenant mosaic economy been torn down yet?

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Jesus told them that that mosaic world was a scaffolding that was meant to unveil the true building.

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It was temporary. It was never built to last. The priesthood always pointed to something better.

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The temple always pointed to something better. It was a bandaid on a broken people that was meant to hold them over until Christ the true healer arrived.

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And after 35 years of waiting for Jesus to return, waiting for him to destroy that old covenant world, people in those churches, those seven churches in Asia Minor, they were starting to get discouraged.

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So this book was written to give them hope that the promises of Christ have not failed, that Jesus really was going to come back again.

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And he was gonna tear down the entire system of temples and priests and sacrifices and feast and clean and unclean food laws and all of it was gonna be torn down to make room for the real, for the real temple.

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Christ is our temple, John 2, 19. So the old temple that existed in Jerusalem had no more use.

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He came to eliminate the sacrificial system. Why? Because Christ is the final sacrifice.

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He's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He came to eliminate the

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Levitical priesthood. Because why? Christ is our great high priest, Hebrews 4, 14. He came to eliminate the festivals.

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Why? Because Christ is our eternal feast. He's our eternal Passover at the Lord's table, 1

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Corinthians 5, 7. The apocalypse isn't just about the salvation of the world out of the clenches of defeat in the future.

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It's not about that at all. It's about the putting down of that old world so that a new world could rise with Christ at its center, with him being our temple, our priest, our king, our feast, our sacrifice, our prophet, our everything.

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The book of Revelation is about the fall of Jerusalem because we needed a better Jerusalem.

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It's about the fall of the whore because we needed a better bride. It's about the final grains of the old covenant sand slipping through the biblical hourglass so that Jesus' kingdom, the kingdom that had been promised from the very beginning would come on earth as it is in heaven.

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Don't miss this. They were waiting, the first century church, they were waiting for an entirely new world to dawn.

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And they had come to Christ and they had abandoned the temple and they had rejected the priesthood and they had declared allegiance to the king of kings and the

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Lord of lords. And they were dying for that. Their family members were being hunted down for that.

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Their synagogues were turning them over to the Romans who were crucifying them.

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And in the midst of all of that, yeah, erase that part. And in the midst of all of that, they were asking themselves, did we get it wrong?

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Is Jesus really gonna fulfill everything that he said? Can we possibly even make it to the collapse of Jerusalem, much less survive in a world where Jerusalem doesn't exist?

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You have to remember that you and I don't have an affection for Jerusalem like these first century

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Christians did. Every Christian who converted from Judaism to Christianity, every

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Christian who was a Jew, who held onto the Mosaic types and shadows, but then gave them up for Jesus, who is the true and better.

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They grew up with Jerusalem being at the center of their universe. Jerusalem is where you go to meet with God.

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Jerusalem is where you go to offer your sacrifices. Jerusalem is where you go to offer your tithe. Jerusalem is where you go to meet with the priest who represents you before the father.

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Jerusalem was everything to them. So 40, almost 40 years after Jesus makes these stunning promises, you can kind of empathize with the church for asking the question, did

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I misunderstand what Jesus was saying? My family's dying because I'm holding onto this belief.

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Is this really what Jesus said? And in Jesus's mercy, he inspires

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John to write this book to show his people exactly what is getting ready to happen to the

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Jews who've become his enemies, to the old system that is now out of date and ready to be put on the shelf.

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And this book is about to encourage them, hang on, because I'm coming quickly, soon, and the time is near.

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That is why the book of Revelation begins with the word apocalypsis, because Jesus is not wasting time.

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He is getting to the point immediately. I am writing this book so that you will not be confused anymore.

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I am writing this book so that you will not be unclear about what I am doing. I am writing this book to anchor you, to buffet you, to encourage you, to strengthen you, to build you up.

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I'm writing this book to unveil and reveal what you've been asking.

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That question that was in your heart of hearts, that doubt that was starting to linger, I'm writing this book for you.

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We do this book a great disservice when we make it about us instead of our brothers and sisters in the first century who were the first generation of Christians, the very first church who was struggling and who was barely hanging on, and they needed this book.

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And in that sense, we exist as Christians because of their faithfulness, and their faithfulness is in large part because of this book that Jesus wrote to encourage them and to reveal things that were happening to them.

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Let us not rip this book out of its context any longer, but let us enter back into the moment that our brothers and sisters were in 2000 years ago and see how

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Jesus very lovingly, very beautifully, very graciously spoke these words to them to make it clear what he was about to do for them.

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That's what apocalypsis means. And all of this leads us now to our second consideration, which is part two, the context of the apocalypse.

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Now we already seen that apocalypse doesn't mean kaboom, but it means unveiling.

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And now in part two, we need to ask ourself, well, what exactly is being unveiled? And why is that really that important?

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Because listen, if we misunderstand what this word means in its biblical context, then we're going to misread the entire book of Revelation as if it's some fear -drenched horror

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Hollywood movie for the modern West, instead of a hope -drenched battle plan for the first century church and beyond.

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So we need to begin with what does this word mean? And here's a really surprising twist. Even though the book of Revelation is literally named the apocalypse from the

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Greek word apocalypsis, that word only shows up one time in the entire book, like I said before, just once, that's it, one time.

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And with that being the namesake of the book, you would expect it to have been peppered all over the place, but no, it opens the book and then it steps off the stage and it's the only time the word is mentioned.

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And I think that's intentional. It doesn't mean that it's unimportant. And it really is in fact the opposite.

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That one word in verse one sets the theological atmosphere for the entire book.

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It's loaded. It's a loaded term. It's like one sperm cell meeting with one egg cell makes a baby.

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This one word is pregnant with purpose. And to understand what's happening in the book of Revelation, we need to know how this word behaves and the trajectory that it sets.

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And the only way that we're gonna know that is if we actually look at other uses of the word in the scripture, because John only uses it once.

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So for a moment, let's look at Paul and how Paul uses this word apocalypsis.

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He uses this word more than anyone. 13 times in the noun form and 26 times in the verbal form.

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And it's never random for Paul. In fact, in the book of Galatians 1, verse 12,

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Paul says that he didn't receive the gospel from men, but from apocalypsis. He received the unveiling of the gospel of Jesus Christ from Jesus Christ himself.

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And when you compare what Paul says in Galatians especially with what

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John says in Revelation, something remarkable begins to emerge because both

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Galatians and Revelation is dealing with the exact same covenant enemy. It's the

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Jews. Both are confronting the same problems. Both are proclaiming the same victory. Galatians, just like Revelation, is a war declaration against the

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Jewish apostate unbelief and covenant arrogance. Paul is speaking of the persecution of the church by the

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Jews, Galatians 1, 13 through 14. He's talking about the pride of the circumcision party,

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Galatians 2, 15 and 6, 13, and the false hope of the Jerusalem that is below, which is destined to be destroyed.

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Galatians 4, 25 through 30. Do those themes sound familiar? Well, they should because that's the exact same thing

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Revelation is talking about. And it's exposing the spiritual rot of the Jerusalem that is below,

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Revelation 2, 9, Revelation 3, 9. It's declaring that she's gonna be trampled by the Gentiles, Revelation 11, 2.

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She's gonna be replaced by a Jerusalem that is from above, Revelation 21, 2. And in both

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Galatians and Revelation, we are told that the true people of God are the ones who live by faith and not by bloodlines, buildings, or old covenant rituals.

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The parallels are striking, not subtle, but overt even.

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And that's where we get to the point, especially the context of the word apocalypsis.

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You may be asking yourself, okay, so why is all of this important? What does it all mean? Well, it means that when

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John uses the word apocalypsis at the start of the book of Revelation, he's not just pulling out a poetic device out of his pocket in order to confuse

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Bible scholars for thousands of years, because it doesn't just signal that God is giving a revelation.

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That word is too generic. Revelation applies to any scripture, divine revelation.

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We think about scripture as God breathed revelation. The book of Psalms is a revelation.

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The book of Leviticus, the book of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel, all of them are revelation.

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They're divine revealed messages from God. But the word revelations doesn't actually go far enough to describe what

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Paul and John are talking about with apocalypsis. Apocalypse is a specific kind of divine revelation that reveals mysteries and uncovers truth for people who are confused.

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And they're confused because the old age is passing away right before their very eyes and the church is being told to lift her eyes to Christ so that she can see the truth.

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Christ is bringing the apocalypsis. He's bringing the unveiling, the revealing.

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He's bringing clarity where there's confusion. That is why this word is used by Paul and why it's used by John.

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It's not about nuclear war. It's not about a technological collapse. It's not about the end of civilization.

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And it's not about the end of the world. It's about the end of a world, the old covenant world, the end of bulls and goats being sacrificed, the end of gold temples, the end of feast and priest.

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It's Jesus saying through Paul in Galatians and through John in Revelation, dear church, let me show you what's really happening.

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Let me uncover what's really going on right now. I am going to vindicate you.

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I'm going to free you. I'm gonna save you. I'm gonna spare you from your pain by crushing my enemies, by elevating you to the status of royal bride and by building my kingdom to the ends of the earth.

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That is what the word apocalypsis is getting at in the book of Revelation.

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And if we don't get that straight, then we're never going to understand when we get to the beast or the trumpet or the bull or the any of that.

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So what we have to do, what we have to do when we get started in this book is we have to understand that the word revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ, the apocalypsis is the unveiling of Jesus's judgment against the

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Jews and Jesus's exaltation of his kingdom through the church's bride. That is the revealing that is happening in the first century world so that the church will no longer be confused.

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That, if we don't understand that, we won't understand the book of Revelation. That's what the word apocalypsis means.

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And that takes us to part three, the origin of the apocalypse.

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Now, if revelation is an unveiling, and if it's an unveiling that's meant to comfort a suffering church and to expose the collapsing old covenant world, then we have to ask ourself the question, where did this message come from?

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What is its origin and why does it matter? And it matters because the authority of the message is bound up in the one who sent it.

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In Revelation 1 .1, the origin of this message is spelled out unmistakably clear when

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John says, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which

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God gave him to show his bondservants to things which must soon take place. And he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant,

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John. Now, what we find out immediately is that this unveiling that is happening is not a man -made document.

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It's not speculative mysticism. It's not an attempt by John to interpret his geopolitical events through apocalyptic imagery like many of the end time charlatans are doing today.

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This is not him trying to soothe the fears of the early church with personal anecdotes and spiritualized images.

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No, the revelation doesn't come from John. It doesn't come from a man.

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It comes from the triune God. That is clear from the chain of transmission in this verse.

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It comes from the father to the son through the messenger to John for the church.

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That chain of transmission matters because it means that the content of the book does not originate from the imagination of John.

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It does not arise from the speculative imaginations and mystical feelings of a man who's high on peyote or ayahuasca.

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It's a product, not of spiritual euphoria or psychological trauma, but it is divine triune communication that is sent from heaven to earth to encourage

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God's people. God in the first century is sending a message to his people from himself, which means that they don't have to guess at what the meaning of the words are.

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They only have to receive them as being from God, fully true for them.

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They understood that God was sending them a first century message about what was going to happen in a first century world, about how the old world that they were living in was going to die.

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And revelation doesn't call upon them to guess or to speculate. It calls upon them to understand what

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God is doing, why God is doing it, and what it means for them. The chain of communication here guarantees that this is not

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John just trying to guess what God might do in the future, but God is telling him exactly what he is going to do.

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He is going to destroy the unfaithful Jews. He is going to burn down their temple.

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He is going to set their city on fire. He is going to leave it, like Jesus proclaimed in Matthew 24, as an ash heap in the

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Judean landscape. It is a certainty because it's communicated from the mouth of the triune

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Godhead, the revelation of Jesus Christ from God, which gives it absolute certainty.

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Now, the phrase from Jesus Christ or of Jesus Christ in Greek is apocalipsis

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Iesu Christu, which means the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, this is where grammar comes in.

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I don't want you to let that scare you because we need to briefly talk about grammar just for a moment so that we can understand exactly what apocalipsis

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Iesu Christu means. Okay, in Greek grammar, not in English, I guess there is, but we don't talk about it very often.

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In Greek grammar, there is a thing called a genitive case. A genitive case has so many different types of meanings.

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It could be the word of, it could be the word for, and it's not just a fancy way of proving that you know more than other people.

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It actually does matter. The phrase tells us something about the relationship between two things.

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That's what a genitive does. It tells us the relationship between the revelation and Jesus Christ.

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What is that relationship? Now, in this case, the question is, is it a subjective genitive or is it an objective genitive?

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And again, this is gonna make more sense as I explain it. Does this mean that this is a revelation about Jesus that's subjective or is it a revelation from Jesus that's objective?

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And I don't wanna be overly technical here, but this matters because if this is an objective genitive, it would mean that the book is about him.

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He is the thing that is being revealed. This book is about the unveiling of Jesus.

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So if that's what the revelation of Jesus Christ means that Jesus is being unveiled, then it's an objective genitive and that's how we would interpret the book.

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But if it's a subjective genitive, subject, then what it means is not the unveiling of Jesus, but the unveiling from Jesus.

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It would mean that Jesus is the one who is doing the unveiling. So either the book is revealing

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Jesus or Jesus is doing the revealing. This is why it matters on what the grammar means because revelation of Jesus in English could mean both.

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It could mean it's the unveiling of Jesus or the unveiling from Jesus. English is not as clear and as precise as Greek.

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The Greek here is not the unveiling of Jesus.

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Although in some ways it does do that. It unveils him as king. It reveals him as lamb.

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It reveals him as lion. But the main thrust here is that he is not the object of the revelation.

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He is the agent of the revelation. He's the one who is bringing the revelation.

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He is the one who is telling us what is getting ready to happen. He is the one who is breaking apart the mysteries and revealing the things that are getting ready to happen.

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That means that revelation as a book is telling us what Jesus is about to make clear about the first century events that God gave to him to show his bondservants what must soon take place.

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In other words, the father gave something to the son, a message, and the son is now giving it to his people to reveal what's about to happen to them.

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He did not give them the message to reveal himself so that they would understand him.

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The assumption is is that they already know Jesus. Jesus is bringing the revelation to unveil what's about to happen to them.

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So the correct reading is this. This is the revelation from Jesus Christ, not just about Jesus Christ.

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He is the messenger as well as the king. He's the source as well as the subject.

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And that comes to a little bit of a question here. Why does John say the revelation from Jesus Christ?

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Why doesn't he just say the revelation from Jesus? Because that would have accomplished the point. But John doesn't just refer to him as Jesus here.

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He refers to him with his full name, Jesus Christ. And obviously you know that Jesus is not his first name and Christ is his last name.

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Like my name is Kendall Langford. Jesus is his name. Christ is his title. Christ means anointed one.

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Christ means the anointed prophet, priest, and king. Christos in Greek, that's what that means.

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So why is John including the full first name and title of Jesus as being the one who brings the revelation?

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That distinction actually is important. Because we know now that grammatically it's a revelation from Jesus, but it's also, but it's more than that.

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It's a revelation from Jesus who is the Christ. He is the one who is the anointed one.

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He's the one who's been given all authority in heaven and on earth, Matthew 28, 18. This is a unveiling from not just human

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Jesus, but from divine Christos Jesus, the risen king, seated at the right hand of God with power, ruling, and authority.

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The phrase Jesus Christ really doesn't appear very many times in the book of Revelation.

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It's only a few. When those two words are buckled together, Revelation 1 .1, Revelation 1 .2,

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Revelation 1 .5, and then again later in Revelation 24. But most of the time in the book of Revelation, John does not say

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Jesus Christ. He calls him Jesus or he calls him Lord, but he doesn't call him the combined name and title

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Jesus Christ. And I think there's a reason why he's doing it here. Here at the start of the book, he is emphasizing his full messianic identity, his homoousius, his

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God and man bound together in perfect harmony. That is the man, the

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God man who is bringing this unveiling to his church because the book is not just about human

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Jesus. The book is about the divine son, the God man, the king of all kings who is going to bring the only one who has the authority and the right and the power to bring judgment on the old covenant people because he's

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God. And the only one who has the right and the power and the authority to inherit the church is his bride.

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So this is about the Christ, the

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God man, who his dominion is expanding across the earth because he is the only one with the authority and the power and the right as Jesus Christ to have these things.

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That's why John, I believe in chapter one, uses this phrase so many times because he's setting the tone for you and I that this is not just a revelation from the man

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Jesus, which in a sense, Matthew 24, we know that Jesus can't be divided, he's always the

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God man, but Jesus in his humanity is speaking to the disciples in Matthew 24.

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John is amplifying this here in Revelation to say that the veil has been pulled back, the transfigured

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Christ, the Christ in all of his glory, the man that Peter, James and John saw on the

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Mount of Transfiguration, this is the one, this is the God man who is bringing the revelation to the people.

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He is unveiling what is about to take place. And what John is doing in that is he is ratcheting up the authority, ratcheting up the specificity and the clarity.

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And he's saying that this message is unquestionable because Jesus Christ is the one who brought it.

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Son of David, son of God, the one now enthroned and executing his judgment and justice is the one who's bringing this apocalypsis.

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Now, again, before we finish off on this section, I want you to notice the structure of the transmission.

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God the Father gives this revelation to Jesus Christ the Son. Jesus Christ the

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Son sends it through a messenger angel or a messenger to John.

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John in turn then writes this down for the church in Asia Minor, not 21st century.

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This is not generic arrangement, this reflects the covenantal and prophetic pattern that we find all throughout scripture where God is the originator of revelation.

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God speaks to his people through his appointed messengers. The prophets in the Old Testament function in the same way.

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They received the word of the Lord from God. Now John is receiving the word of the

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Lord directly from the Godhead, directly from Jesus Christ, the final prophet of the old covenant age who's bearing witness to its downfall and the arrival of the new.

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This reflects a pattern that's there in the Olivet Discourse where Jesus in Matthew 24 tells his disciples what's about to happen to Jerusalem and the temple and the generation who's standing right in front of him.

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Revelation in the same way is expanding upon that same message. It takes one chapter of Matthew 24 and it is going to amplify it into a 22 chapter crescendo.

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A Handel's Messiah, hallelujah chorus kind of book. Through symbolic visions and covenantal judgments and from heaven's perspective,

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Jesus Christ, the faithful prophet, priest and king is going to bring a word through John to the first century church about first century events.

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We learn all of that in the first three words of this book.

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This book is not about the future, it's about the past. It's undeniable when you slow down and you study the words.

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Now, all of this is proven and we'll do this really quickly before we move on to our next section. All of this is proven by what

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John says next. This is the revelation, the unveiling from Jesus who is the

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Christ of God man to show his bondservants the things which must soon take place.

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The bondservants of God are those saints, the faithful, the blood bought church, but specifically this message is for that first century church that was walking through tribulation and great tribulation and was waiting for their vindication.

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This revelation is for them. It was for their time, it was for their comfort, it was for their instruction, it was a divine message from God to them and yes, it applies to us when we understand what it means, but meaning comes first.

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The meaning of the message was to assure them that they were not going to go through the judgments that the

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Jews were going to go through. They were not gonna suffer through the chaos of the downfall and the collapse of the old covenant world.

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They were going to be on the right side of the covenant. They were going to witness the destruction of the temple and it was not going to be a defeat for them, it was gonna be a victory for them.

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It was gonna be a fulfillment for them that the church was not going to be abandoned in the shuffle of the collapse of the old covenant world.

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All of that is right here in verse one and because of all of this, we can read every line of this book with confidence that God spoke,

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Jesus received, John wrote, the church heard and the kingdom advanced.

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The meaning was given to the first century people and that leads us to part four, the purpose of the apocalypse.

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Now, it's one thing to say that the book of Revelation is a message from Jesus Christ, but we now need to ask, why did he send it?

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What was the goal of the Revelation? Well, what was Jesus trying to accomplish by giving this message to his church?

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The answer is right in front of us in verse one. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which

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God gave him to show his bond servants the things which must soon take place,

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Revelation 1 .1. Now, let's unpack this carefully and clearly as we close out today's episode.

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Number one, the initiative came from God. The message didn't start with John.

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He isn't trying to explain what's happening around him. He's not a Christian journalist who's analyzing the headlines.

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The initiative starts in heaven, which God gave him. That is, God the Father gave this message to God the

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Son. It was handed down from God the Son to John who handed it down to the church.

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The message begins in the throne room of heaven, not in the imagination of man. As commentator

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Robert Mounts rightly said, had God not taken the initiative, the human mind could have never understood the real forces at work in the world.

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In other words, apart from God's intervention, the church would have been left guessing in the dark, trying to make sense of their suffering, not understanding the covenant realities that were taking place.

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But instead of that, God did not leave the church in their confusion. He turned on the light.

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He gives them this revelation to explain what's happening, to remind them who's in charge, and to show them what is going to happen to them.

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That's the first thing to see. The apocalypse is not the product of confusion, but the gift of God for clarity for the early church.

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That's number one. Number two, the revelation is shown, not just told. John tells us that the revelation was given to show his bondservants what was getting ready to take place.

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It doesn't say the revelation was given to tell his bondservants what was getting ready to take place. The Greek word there is show, which is decanemi, which means to make something visible, to point it out in such a way that it can be clearly seen and understood.

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This isn't abstract, philosophical, dry theological jargon. It's pictorial. It's flannel graph.

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It's visual. It's illustrated. It's imagery. It's meant to be experienced immersively and not just processed cognitively.

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The word shows up frequently in John's writing, especially in Revelation, where visions and signs and symbolic images are dominating the landscape.

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This tells us something really important here that revelation as a book is symbolic in nature and it's not meant to be read as a newspaper.

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It's not meant to be read as a law book or as a book of random assorted facts. It is meant to be interpreted through the lens of Old Testament prophecy, symbolism, covenantal imagery.

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It is meant to show us the unveiling that's gonna happen in the first century, not just tell us.

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We aren't meant to take everything in this book in a wooden, literalistic way.

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For instance, people will read this book and they will say that the Locust or Apache helicopters,

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I don't think that's actually literal at all. I think that's ridiculous, but we're not supposed to take these images as the image.

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For instance, we don't think that the dragon, like fire -breathing dragon with scales and wings and big talons, we don't believe that the devil is actually pictured in real life as a dragon.

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That is an image to demonstrate what's going on. That's an image to point to the reality of the truth that's literally there, but the image and the reality are not the same thing.

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The image is pointing to what's real, but it's not claiming that every, for instance, is there a literal seven trumpets that are being blown?

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Is there a literal seven bowls that are being poured out? Like, is there a literal seven scrolls?

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Is there a literal mark of the, like, no. The book is filled with symbols that signify the truth, not testify to the truth.

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And that's hard for people because when we read this, we don't think in an apocalyptic way, an apocalypsis kind of way.

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We think about this, that, well, the Bible says that the scrolls are being opened, so there must be real scrolls.

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The Bible says that the lamb is the one who opened up the scrolls. The trumpet is being blown.

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We read these images and we say, gosh, these must be literal, but yet that's not how the genre works.

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The genre works by giving you a truth in symbolic form that points to something in actual form.

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So for instance, if I want to demonstrate to you as an American that we need to defend our country when problems happen, like on the level of a world war,

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America created this mythical figure known as Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam encouraged people to sign up for the military.

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No one actually believed that they were going to go and meet with Uncle Sam. Like, we didn't confuse that.

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We understood he's an image of patriotism. Here's another one.

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The Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty is an image of the concept of liberty.

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She is not liberty embodied. So we understand this in our world, but we have to give the same credit to the symbolic nature of these images in their world because this genre is a genre of symbols.

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It is a genre that is taking symbols and signs and pointing to truth. But if you take those signs and symbols as ipso facto must be literal, you're going to misunderstand what they're saying.

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And this is not just true in Revelation. This is true in the prophets. This is a genre of scripture that communicates through signs and symbols, through pictures and patterns and poetic echoes.

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Like when a poet might say that when the wind was blowing, it was causing the leaves of the trees to clap their hands.

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That's called personification, giving human characteristics to non -human things. We don't believe that the trees were clapping.

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We know what it means that the wind was bristling their leaves together in a clapping like motion.

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The symbol points to the truth in a poetic, in a beautiful, in a sophisticated kind of way.

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This genre is using symbolic visionary language to reveal actual spiritual and physical truth.

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But if we misunderstand the genre, we're going to misunderstand everything. God is not hiding his meaning in this book for us to figure out what the locusts are in the modern day world and all of that.

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He's displaying his truth through visionary language. It's so important that we see that. That's the second thing.

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The third is that Revelation is for the bond servants. It's for the bond servants of Jesus, of God.

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Who is this message for? It's for the bond servants. That's a made up English word actually that the NESB uses.

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It just means slaves. Bond servant is not a Greek word. The word there is doulos. It's slave.

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This message is for the slaves of God, the slaves of Christ, the faithful servants of Yahweh who are living in the first century being persecuted by the unfaithful servants, the

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Jews. This is a word that is frequently used throughout the book of Revelation to describe the actual people of God.

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Not the beast, the slaves. And while some scholars think that this word refers only to the prophets or to the leaders, the broader use of the word throughout the book tells us that this means the whole first century church.

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Revelation repeatedly refers to all believers as God's slaves. Revelation 1 .1,

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this message is for the slaves. Revelation 2 .20, Jesus rebukes the church for corrupting his slaves.

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Revelation 7 .3, the angels are told not to harm the earth until the slaves have been sealed with Christ.

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Revelation 19 .5, a voice from heaven calls God's slaves to worship him.

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Revelation 22 .3, in the new Jerusalem, his slaves are the ones who are gonna serve him forever. Now, we get caught up in the word slavery today.

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This is not chattel slavery. This is we are slaves of Christ. We are servants of Christ. We are bought and paid for by our faithful master,

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Jesus, and now we owe our life to him through joyful, faithful service. So when the book of Revelation uses this word, slaves, bondservants in the

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NASB, it means Christians. And it specifically means those Christians in the first century who belonged to the

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Lamb, who heard the voice of the Lamb, who followed the Lamb, whose name was written in the

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Lamb's book of life. This book is for the slaves of Christ who were living in the first century. In fact, two verses later in Revelation 1 .3,

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John says that this revelation is for everyone who hears and who keeps the words of this prophecy. Do you realize that this book, when it was written, would have been taken by a mailman from one church to the next and it would have been read on the

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Lord's day? So in a seven -day circuit, or in a seven -week circuit, this book would have been read in Sardis, in Philadelphia, in Thyatira, in Laodicea, in Smyrna, in Pergamum.

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This book would have been read as a part of their Lord's day worship and it would have been on a circuit riding tour.

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So God is literally saying, I wrote this book for my slaves who are going through this tribulation in the first century and as you hear the words of this prophecy, you will be blessed.

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That doesn't mean that we, when we read it today, are not gonna be blessed. We will be blessed if we understand its meaning.

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But the point of the book is that those people who are going through this situation, going through this persecution and martyrdom and tribulation, they would be blessed as they heard the unveiling that God was giving to them about things which must soon take place quickly because the time was near for them.

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So the purpose of the apocalypse is not to confuse us but to clarify comfort and commission the early church in the midst of their great tribulation.

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And in that, the book of Revelation concerns things which must happen soon in proximity to John.

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The phrase that cannot be ignored in this and it cannot be explained away is when

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John, through the revelation that was given to Jesus Christ from God the

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Father says, these things must soon take place. That is not poetic.

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That's not made up jargon that means something other than soon take place.

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That word is obvious that it must, the word must is there.

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It must take place soon which means that the soonness of the event is necessary for the truthfulness of the revelation.

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If the revelation of Jesus Christ to the bond servants in the first century did not happen soon, then the entire faithfulness of the book comes into question because God himself gave the revelation and said these things must soon take place.

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And if they didn't, if we're still waiting 2 ,000 years later for the remote random likelihood that these things will happen in our lifetime, then

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God the Father lied to God the Son and God the Son lied to John and John passed on the triune

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Godheads lie to the first century church. That's the big deal here.

01:06:58

Either God decreed something that was true about things which must soon take place as a part of God's sovereign plan, things that must happen in the first century or God lied and the phrase soon, you can't play with it.

01:07:13

It's entake which means quickly, short or in the near future. This is the word in English where we have the word tachometer like on your car.

01:07:21

This is not talking about something that's thousands of years away. It's talking about now. Things that are gonna happen soon in John's perspective, soon in the first church's perspective.

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Not things that are stretching out over a long period of time but things are coming fast upon them. Like when you press your accelerator down into the floorboard of your car and your tachometer goes crazy.

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Entake means that these things must happen soon. They're about to happen. They're ready to unfold in a moment in the lives of the people who were hearing the book read in their worship services.

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This is what the word means. And it's not the only time

01:07:57

John says it. He repeats this idea and concept constantly. The time is near, Revelation 1 .3.

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I am coming quickly, Revelation 2 .16, Revelation 3 .11, Revelation 22 .7,

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Revelation 22 .12, 22 .20. These things must soon take place, Revelation 22 .6.

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Honestly, if we believe in the inspiration and the integrity of Holy Scripture, we cannot redefine the word soon to mean someday.

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We cannot make quickly mean slowly. We cannot mean about to mean not about to.

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The words either mean what they mean or they don't. These words mean something to the first century audience or they don't.

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And this point is so clear that these words have to mean that these events that the book of Revelation is describing are imminent to the first century generation.

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If not, then the book was designed to confuse them, which goes against the word apocalypsis, which means

01:09:06

God is revealing it to them. Either God is telling the truth and these things applied to the first century or God is lying.

01:09:18

That's the point. That's the point. And perhaps the reason why this is so important, not just for the integrity of the

01:09:26

Godhead, the truthfulness of divine revelation is also because this book was meant to encourage real people who are really suffering.

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The church in the first century was suffering. The synagogues were turning against them. Rome was suspicious of them.

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Their Jewish neighbors were persecuting them and murdering them. The center of Jewish religion and culture was still standing and mocking them, seemingly untouched by the hand of God.

01:09:53

The temple didn't even have a brick out of place. And those first century

01:09:59

Christians needed to know that Jesus was absolutely reigning, that the temple was going to fall just like he said it would and that the church was not only gonna survive it, but they were gonna inherit the world through the faithfulness of Jesus.

01:10:17

This revelation was given to strengthen their hands, to steady their hearts, to show them that God was doing something in the world and they could trust him.

01:10:27

And that this message was not to hide, not to hide, not to obscure, not to be hidden in the shadows.

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It was meant for them to stand firm in, to endure in and to watch and wait patiently because Christ was about to do something magnificent and glorious.

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And when we realized that John wrote this book, probably three to four years before these events happened, this encouragement would have had real teeth.

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Revelation is not a horror story about the end of the world. It is the victory announcement to a struggling church to hang on just a little longer because all the enemies of God are gonna be dethroned.

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Christ is gonna be enthroned and the lamb and the bride is gonna be given authority on earth to bring his gospel to the nations.

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And that is what has happened in the last 2000 years, brothers and sisters. Christ has raised up his church from 12 people to 2 .5

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billion, just because Christ is more patient than we are in building his kingdom.

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And he's not gonna do it in a single generation. You're gonna see in your lifetime, the church probably reach 3 billion people in your lifetime.

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Our children are gonna see the church continue to grow more. Our children's children, our grandchildren's children, we're going to see the church continue to do what it's done for the last 2000 years.

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And the reason we're even here today is because God through Christ to John for the sake of the first century church wrote this book to encourage them to hang on in your suffering.

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Don't be confused. Be committed, be convicted and be faithful.

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That even in the first verse is what the word apocalypse and what the whole book of Revelation is about.

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Hold on, I'm gonna reveal to you the things that are about to happen. And 2000 years later, you and I can have confidence that when

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God makes promises, he keeps his promise. When God says things are gonna happen, they do.

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If you read Revelation as if these things happen 2000 years later than what God promised, you have to read it through some kind of cognitive dissonance.

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That God promised things are gonna happen soon and they didn't, but that's okay because soon doesn't really mean soon.

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You have to play theological gymnastics and you have to redefine words and you have to pretzel yourself in a way that really you don't need to do.

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The words mean what they mean. This was an encouragement to the first century church. And because of that, you and I can be encouraged that we live in the kingdom that won.

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We live in the kingdom that defeated the old covenant world. We live under the reign of Jesus who replaced the temple, replaced the sacrifices, replaced the priesthood, replaced the feast, replaced all of it.

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So that now by virtue of us being in union with Jesus as the bride of Christ, we now own the world.

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That's the point. And that leads us to our conclusion. So now brothers and sisters, what are we supposed to do about it?

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After what we've just seen and what we've heard and what we've learned now from the word apocalypses, what are we supposed to do about it?

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Well, we're supposed to take it personally. We're supposed to take it seriously. We're supposed to take it to heart.

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We've spent this entire episode walking through a single verse,

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Revelation 1 .1. And I'm praying that already the fog of Revelation is clearing.

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The symbols are snapping into place. The purpose of the book is beginning to shine. This is not a mystery novel. It's not a horror story.

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It's not an esoteric rambling that only applies to a certain secret club of people who can interpret it for you.

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This is the unveiling of Jesus Christ. This is Jesus's unveiling by the father, delivered to the son, sent through his messenger, received by him, handed and delivered to the local first century church about things that were going on in their world.

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And it was meant to be understood. And it was meant to be obeyed. And it was meant to give you and I fire in our bones and steel in our spines that God, when he makes promises, he always keeps them.

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What we see in the book of Revelation, even from its first verse, is not

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God hiding the truth from people, not obscuring things for thousands of years like a theological time capsule buried for a future people at some point to find, dig up and discover.

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No, God is unleashing truth. He's revealing truth. He's unveiling things that are gonna happen in the first century world of the first century church that were gonna be important to them and that by extension are now important to us.

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This book is not about keeping you scared. It's about making you strong. It's not about you fleeing to the hills.

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It's about you advancing the kingdom stone by stone, brick by brick, generation by generation until the knowledge of the glory of the

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Lord covers the earth as the water covers the sea. The truth of this book is that the old covenant was put down so that the new covenant would rise and you brothers and sisters are the inheritor of that kingdom.

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If Christ is on the throne and you are his bride, then the world is yours in the same way that a husband purchases a house and puts his wife in that house and she transforms that house into a glorious home.

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That's our job. Our king, our Lord, our bridegroom, our

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Christ defeated his enemies, put his enemies underneath his feet and won the world and put you and I in it to make it into his home.

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The true Adam found for himself a true Eve, the church, who is decorating this world and making it beautiful and a fit place for him to live so that when it is a fit place for him to live, our

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Lord will return and our Lord will put to death, death itself. And he and his bride will be joined together in eternal union where we live together in a kingdom fit for a king.

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The church does not exist to lose. The church does not exist to fail. The church does not exist to trip and fall headlong into a rapture.

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The church exists to make the world ready for the bridegroom to come and take dominion of his home.

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The church exists to extend his dominion, to extend his reign in families, in churches, in towns, in counties, in countries and the world.

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So look around you. If the world doesn't look like a fit place for the

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Lord of glory to live yet, then it's your responsibility to decorate it according to his dominion.

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It's your responsibility to cultivate it. It's your responsibility to transform the house into a home.

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That's what the church does in the world. The church disciples men to be fathers, to be husbands, to be good workers.

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The church disciples women to be wives and mothers and creators of culture.

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The church at the center of the universe has one job and it is to distribute the gospel of Jesus Christ to every tribe, tongue and nation and welcome the kings of the earth into the kingdom of the

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Lord Jesus Christ who is the king of kings and the Lord of lords to feed them with the gospel until he returns and he will not return until the entire world has been brought under his dominion.

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So unpack your suitcase. Find a place in your life where you can build.

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Maybe you don't know exactly how to start, okay? If you're a husband, be a faithful husband.

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If you're a mother, be a faithful mother. If you have a job, do such a good job that brings such glory and honor to Jesus that the pagans that you work with have to look at you and say, why do you work so hard?

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Why do you work circles around us? Why do you do such good work? And you can look at them and you can say, because my

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Jesus owns the world and he's given me a responsibility to make this world a fit place for him to live.

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That's the truth. You might get odd stares back at you, but that's the truth.

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Jesus defeated the Jewish apostate people. Jesus defeated the temple.

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Jesus defeated the sacrificial system. Jesus took all those things that were glorious at one point, but when he came, were totally obsolete, he took them, he put them away so that the only thing left on earth would be his bride, the church, who will make this world a fit dwelling for her king.

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Find your place in that mission. Do ordinary, normal, mundane acts of faithfulness every single day.

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Listen, we talk a lot about Jesus is gonna win the entire world. Your job is not to win the entire world.

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Jesus is gonna do that through his bride. Your job is to be faithful where you're at.

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If you have a relationship where you're not being faithful, be faithful there and repent there.

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If you're not being faithful at your job, be faithful there. If you're not doing things with your children like family worship, repent and be faithful there.

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Whatever station that God has called you to, be faithful there, be the bride of Christ there, and turn what is uncultivated into something that is cultivated.

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Build in such a way that if the Lord were to return, the little square inch of real estate that you occupy in your life would be a fit place for our

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Lord Jesus to place his sandals. That's your mission. Because the apocalypse has happened.

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The unveiling has happened. The enemies have been put down and the bride has been given the world.

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That's what the book's about from the very first verse. And I can't wait in the weeks ahead to look at more reasons why this is true and to help you understand this book in all of its glory and splendor.

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Until next time, God richly bless you. We'll see you again next time on the podcast.