Apologetics Session 22 - Eschatology - Part 1

I'll start us off with prayer. Lord God, I just thank you for this day. I thank you for all the blessings that you've given us,

Lord. I think about all those that are ill today, God. I just pray that your hand would be on them, that you would just bring healing to those that are sick.

I think of Drew right now, and Jill, and God, the loss of their dog,

Cupcake. God, I just pray that you would be with them, God, both physically and emotionally.

And anyone else who's unable to come tonight, Lord, that is sick,

God, I just pray that you would be with them. Lord, I know that COVID's been going around again lately, and I just pray that your hand would be on them, that no one would be seriously ill.

God, I pray for this night. I pray that you would teach us through your word,

Lord, that we would have a good night of review and discussion, Lord. I pray all these things in your son's name, amen.

All right, so today we are going to begin the eschatology study.

So eschatology is a fancy word. It's the doctrine of last things. It's basically end times doctrine.

And so there's a lot of controversy around it, and there's a lot of different viewpoints.

But what I wanted to do today is start with an introduction of eschatology.

This entire study, the two weeks or three weeks that we take to go through it, is going to be a very surface -level discussion about eschatology.

It is a very deep topic. We could spend months on this topic going through it.

And obviously, we can go as deep as you like, but I wanted to sort of start off with sort of an introduction.

I'm actually gonna try and get through the entire book of Revelation today in a very summary fashion, and then go through some of the more popular views, including one heretical view that I wanted to highlight just for contrast.

So eschatology, again, the doctrine of last things or the end times doctrine.

There's a lot of popular views. A lot of them center around something called the millennium, right?

And we're gonna talk a bit more about that. And so there's gonna be like three major views that hopefully at the end of tonight,

I will be able to sort of introduce, and then we'll dive into next week a bit more deeply. But there's even sub -views within those sort of, there's three sort of millennial views.

There's premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism, and then there's sub -views within those.

So there's a number of views in the premillennial camp, some in the postmillennial camp, and the amillennial camp is kind of off by itself.

But we're gonna do a very high -level introduction of these views and kind of talk through the pros and cons of them, what proponents say, what scriptures they use to back them up, and so forth.

And with the exception of the one heretical view that I'll cover, all of the rest of the views are inside baseball.

So I talked about this when I talked about the soteriology class and said, if you're orthodox in your soteriology, but as far as like predestination and free will, you have differing views, that that's inside baseball, that we shouldn't divide over that.

And this is also a topic that, again, with the one exception that I'll call out, is inside baseball.

It is stuff that, as Christians, we should not divide over it. And because there's a lot of symbolism and apocalyptic language in Revelation, it's also not something we should be too bent out of shape about, or it's not something we ought to kind of get our back up if someone disagrees with us.

We should sort of hold these views very loosely. I hold my view, I have one, but I hold my view very loosely as well.

I could be convinced to change my mind later, and that's okay, as long as we hold to a few specific things that are essentially

Christian orthodoxy. So what is eschatology and why is it important? So definition eschatology is the study of what the

Bible says is going to happen in the end times. And again, I'm gonna keep emphasizing this.

This is not something that we should divide over. It is a view that we can have differing opinions on.

But just because it's something we ought not divide over, it doesn't mean that it's not an important topic to study, because how we understand eschatology has an impact on how we live our lives and what we expect to occur in God's plan as he's wrapping things up on earth.

So what I wanted to do is actually start with a whirlwind tour through Revelation.

I'm gonna probably not ask folks to read individual scriptures. I'll probably read them myself, just for the purposes of time, because we have 22 chapters to get through in this short period of time.

But I didn't wanna assume that everyone has read or understood what the different chapters in Revelation are talking about.

And so I kinda wanted to give a brief summary of each of the chapters and what they're talking about, so that we can then use that to inform the discussion next week around the differing eschatological views.

So, starting at the beginning of Revelation with Revelation 1, we start with a prologue, right?

And so I'm gonna read the prologue, which is Revelation 1, one through 20. You guys can feel free to look it up on your phones.

I use the ESV. So, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place, made it known by sending his angel to his servant

John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near.

So that's the very, very beginning, the prologue. And Revelation is interesting because it's a book that begins and ends with a blessing.

And so when you get to Revelation 22, we'll actually see a blessing at the end as well.

The next section is called Greeting to the Seven Churches. So in verse four, it says, John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne.

So the seven spirits is a reference to the Holy Spirit, the seven -fold nature of the

Holy Spirit. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of kings on earth, to him who loves us and has freed us from our sin by his blood and made us a kingdom priests to his

God and father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever, amen. And amen is just a word that unfortunately in political circles where they say amen and ah women, doesn't actually have anything to do with men.

It is amen is just let it be so or so be it. Verse seven, behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him and all tribes of earth will wail on account of him, even so, amen.

I am the alpha and omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty.

And then John has a vision of the son of man. So in verse nine, I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus was on the island called

Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the spirit on the

Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, write what you see in a book and send to the seven churches to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me and on turning, I saw seven golden lampstands and in the midst of the lampstands was one like the son of man clothed in a long robe with a golden sash around his chest.

The hairs of his head were white like wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire.

His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace and his voice was like the roar of many waters.

In his right hand, he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two -edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead but he laid his right hand on me saying, fear not,

I am the first and the last and the living one. I died and behold, I am alive forevermore and I have the keys of death and Hades right there for the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this and for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

So Revelations begins with a blessing and a prologue. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ as it says right there in the beginning.

It was delivered by an angel to John and John seems like surprised that he's like, why would

God give me this revelation? Because he just says, I'm a fellow brother in the tribulation.

It states that the time is near which doesn't necessarily mean it's like short in years but it means it's the next thing to happen in the context of Jesus Christ and the

Messianic timetable. There's a reference to the seven spirits and this is actually a reference in Isaiah 11, two to the seven fold

Holy Spirit and the seven ministries of the Holy Spirit. So in Isaiah 11, one and two, it says and you guys will get all of the stuff that I've written down here by the way just like with everything else that we do so all of this will be in there in case

I saw you were about to take some notes and you're welcome to take notes but you'll get all of this. In Isaiah 11, one and two, it says, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his root shall bear fruit and the spirit of the

Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding and of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the

Lord. So it's talking about like the seven aspects there. So that's when you see the seven spirits, it's actually really looking at the

Holy Spirit and the seven ministries of the Holy Spirit. So John sees a vision of Jesus, right?

Describe Jesus, kind of a scary looking, right? Like a, you know, kind of like you think of like the

Marvel, you know, like the Eternals and stuff where they all have, you know, this kind of like these aspects that are kind of larger than life.

And so he sees Jesus moving among these seven lampstands and they represent these seven churches that Jesus had told him to write the letters to and seven, by the way, is a symbolism of fullness, which is also why, or at least some speculation why the

Mark of the Beast is 666, because it's less than fullness, right?

It's talking about man's deficiency. So he sees

Jesus moving among the seven stars, which are these angels, the angels of those seven churches and then

John is ordered to write down what he sees and send it to the seven churches. And that's basically what

Revelation chapter one is all about, right? So it's basically that introduction and sort of this assurance into Jesus' presence where he's given a command to write down this revelation to send to the seven churches.

So chapter two actually is about covering four of the seven churches.

Now, first of all, these are not figurative churches. These were real churches that actually existed in the time and the messages that we're gonna hear about each of those churches fit the historical and cultural context of the basically geographical location of these churches.

So they were, essentially it would fit historically into what those churches would have been dealing with in their own cultural context.

These churches are also the representative of churches throughout time. So there are types of churches as well as being real churches.

So these messages were for those churches, but they can inform us because as we go through them, you'll see the types of churches they are and how they were either admonished or not admonished as a result of what they were.

So in chapter two, it covers four of the seven churches, the latter ones being done in chapter three, but the first church that was called out, which is the church at Ephesus.

So here, there's actually a map of the seven churches and we're gonna go through some of these notes around kind of the positives, negatives, the commands and what was going on in those churches, but that's kind of a zoomed in view of the seven churches that we were talking about.

The first church is the church at Ephesus. Now the church at Ephesus was a doctrinally

Orthodox church, but it had grown cold. The church, it says it had lost its first love and is called to repent.

So if you look at the actual positives was that they were actually, they had abhorred evil, they were actually doctrinally

Orthodox. They actually followed the teachings, but they had abandoned their first love.

They had gotten kind of legalistic and while they were doing things doctrinally correct, they weren't really loving or they didn't have any feeling or life in them.

Now they were commanded to repent and return to their first love or they will have their lamp stand removed.

So that's the first church that they talked about. The second one was the church at Smyrna.

This church suffers persecution and is called to be faithful in the persecution. There's really no negative words for this church because a church that's under persecution is effectively purified by that persecution.

Anyone who's not really there for the right reasons is gonna bolt at the first sight of persecution.

So there's really nothing negative to say to Smyrna. They're just called to continue to be faithful in their persecution.

The third church is the church of Pergamon. This is the worldly church. So this church is married to the world.

It says it's married to the world and is called to repent. And then the fourth church is the church of Thyatira.

This church is the church that tolerates sin. This church tolerated a Jezebel -like woman that was tempting servants into sexual immorality and sacrifice to idols.

And so this church is also called to repent. And that's chapter two.

Chapter three goes into the fifth church, which is the church at Sardis. And this church is the dead church.

There's no life, no growth, no joy in this church. So they're also called to repent.

And then the sixth church is the church of Philadelphia. This is the faithful church. I thought that was cool because we live near Philadelphia.

But this is the faithful church that keeps God's word. And then the seventh church is the church at Laodicea.

And this church is the apostate church that has accepted liberalism. This is a false church.

And so you can see that these churches, while being real churches that they were writing letters to or writing down what he'd seen in Revelation, these are also types of churches.

There are churches today that accept liberalism, that are accepting what's in the culture and not following God's word.

There are churches that are dead. There are churches that are cold and legalistic. And then there are faithful churches.

There are churches who are under persecution. You can think of churches in other countries that are under persecution, under governments that are not as free as our own.

But overall, the message to all the churches is to be faithful. The message also applies to us, to also remain faithful.

So that's the seven churches. And you can also see on here the

Isle of Patmos, which is where John was saying he saw himself, which is an

Aegean island south of Samos, where prisoners were exiled by the

Roman authorities. John was sent here on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus and received his prophetic revelation during his stay at Patmos.

That brings us to Revelation chapter four. Chapter four brings us to the throne of heaven, the throne of heaven and all the things that are to come.

So God is sitting on his throne. And actually, I have another slide for this. God is sitting on his throne.

And there are 24 thrones around him with elders sitting on those thrones.

Those 24 thrones represent the church of Christ reigning with God, having been rewarded.

And then there's also, if you see the lion and the, you look at seven, six, five, and I can't see the number up there.

I guess eight. Those are all the living creatures, the four living creatures.

So the 24 thrones represent the church with the elders sitting on them.

The seven flames there represent the Holy Spirit. You've got the four living creatures, which are like angels.

They have wings and they all have six eyes and stuff. And then you've got, obviously, the throne of God in the center there.

And then you've got the lamb there in number three, which is Jesus. And then you have angels.

So this is like a vision of heaven that John is given in chapter four.

And then in Revelation chapter five, it shows us the scroll of the lamb, which is the title deed to the earth.

So in Roman times, they would seal a scroll with seven seals, right? So they would roll it up, seal it, roll it up, seal it, roll it up, seal it.

So they had this, and what they would do is they would do this with wills and title deeds, and it ensured that the seals weren't broken until it was time to be read.

So in chapter five, you've got this scroll of the lamb, and no one is considered worthy to open it.

And so John is weeping because no one's worthy to open and read the scroll. But then John is told not to weep because Jesus is worthy to open the scroll.

And so Jesus takes the scroll from the one on the throne, right, and this is signifying that Jesus is redeeming the earth.

He's taking the earth back. And so worship starts to happen in heaven because Jesus is there, worthy to redeem the earth, to take back the scroll, and to read it.

And so that's chapter five. Chapter six is where we start the opening of those seals, right?

So you'll hear in Revelation, you'll hear the seals, you'll hear the trumpets, and you'll hear the bulls, right?

Those are like the three big things, and we're gonna talk a lot more about that later. But the seven seals for the scroll,

Jesus begins to open the scroll, and so this is the breaking of the first six seals are in Revelation chapter six.

So I think I have, yep, here's another slide for the seals.

So the first seal is the first horseman of the apocalypse. He's riding on a white horse, and this seal is the seal of peaceful conquest.

You're gonna get this, Anthony, later, just so you know. This seal is the seal of peaceful conquest.

This is signified by the rider having a bow with no arrows, right? So he's going to conquer, but he's not going to need to wage war to actually conquer, so that's why he doesn't have any arrows that he needs for his bow.

This is the false piece, though, of the Antichrist. So Daniel 9, 27 references this as well.

Then we have the second seal shortly after that, and the second seal is the second horseman of the apocalypse and this horseman is riding on a red horse and is the horseman of war.

So after the false piece, there's going to be war, and he takes peace from the earth. Then there's the third seal right after that, which is the third horseman of the apocalypse, and this horseman is riding on a black horse.

So what follows war? Routinely famine follows war, right? So you've got this horseman is the horseman of famine, and that's represented because it talks about buying food in this, and it says that essentially what it would work out is a full day's wages, a man's full day's wages would pay for less food than it costs to feed a single person, right?

So there'll be elevated prices of food. Then you get to the fourth seal, which is the fourth horseman of the apocalypse riding on a pale horse, and this is death, right?

After you have war, famine, you have death, right? And so this horseman is coming in to earth to kill by the sword.

Then you have the fifth seal, which is when the redeemed people are slaughtered by the

Antichrist. So you have the fifth seal, which is the souls of the martyrs, and the souls of the martyrs call out to God for justice, and he tells them to wait a while.

Then you get to the sixth seal. The sixth seal, there are earthquakes, the sun becomes black, the moon turns to blood, the stars fall out of heaven.

I mean, this is some pretty apocalyptic stuff, right? The wrath of God, it starts to be poured out on the earth.

So then you have Revelation chapter seven, and what you'll see in Revelation is there's a lot of like fire hose, like imagery that's shot at John, and John has to write all this stuff down, and he's probably getting like overwhelmed by all of this imagery.

And so there's actually these pauses that are put into the book of Revelation where John gets like a reprieve and a short pause of all the sort of negative apocalyptic stuff that's happening.

And so John's been seeing some like pretty amazing and terrible things, and God gives him a reprieve and shows him something good where there's 144 ,000 that were saved and sealed, 12 ,000 from each tribe of Israel.

So these are Jews, 144 ,000 Jews that were saved, sealed, 12 ,000 from each of the tribes of Israel, and these

Jews go out and start spreading the gospel, and they can't be harmed. God's protected them, they're sealed, they can't be harmed.

And so through their evangelism, there's a multitude of people that come to Christ through their preaching, and heaven bursts into worship because of the multitude, it says like an innumerable, uncountable multitude that are saved as a result of these 144 ,000.

We're gonna talk about certain things like certain covenant theology and amillennialism stuff that actually like this kind of flies in the face of, but we'll get to that later.

Then we go into Revelation chapter eight. Chapter eight, the pause is over, and the seventh seal is open.

And the seventh seal is silence in heaven. So there's all this rejoicing because of the 144 ,000 and then silence.

And the silence is because of the, there's awe over the wrath and destruction that's poured out onto the earth.

So that gets you through the first seven seals of the scroll of the Lamb. And then in the latter part of chapter eight, so chapter eight's not done.

In the latter part of chapter eight, we begin the first four trumpet judgments. So right after the seals, we have the trumpet judgments, which is

Revelation eight through 11. So the first trumpet judgment is the judgment on vegetation.

So the judgment impacts man and animals because we need vegetation for not just eating, but also oxygenating the earth so that we can breathe.

This trumpet judgment is on vegetation, and it actually destroys a third of the earth as well as trees and grass.

So the vegetation is destroyed. Then there's a second trumpet judgment, which is on the sea.

So a third of all the sea creatures die. Then there's a third trumpet judgment, which is on a third of the freshwater.

So it actually causes other creatures to die and causes the water to turn bitter.

Then you've got the fourth trumpet judgment, which is on the sun, the moon, the stars, darkening a third.

So this would have big impacts on the calendar. It would mess up how we measure time, right?

If there's like eclipses and darkening of the sun and moons, so it would have a huge impact on us.

So again, really apocalyptic things happening here. Then we get into Revelation chapter nine.

The trumpet judgments continue. So the fifth trumpet judgment unbinds

Satan from the pit and demons are unleashed onto the earth. And demons will come and torment men that are not sealed by God.

So it torments unbelievers. But they won't kill them. They're like forbidden to kill them.

They just torment them to the point where the men who are being tormented will seek death and not be able to find it.

So they're like in agony. And then the sixth trumpet judgment, which releases four angels.

These four angels come out and they command 200 million mounted troops that kill a third of mankind, right?

So a third of mankind is destroyed. And if you actually look and notice here, when it's talking about all this stuff, it's not mentioning the church in any way.

So the thought is that the church has already been raptured, but we'll get into that when we get into the other views of when the rapture occurs in the

Millennial Kingdom and all of that. So it could be that they were raptured before all this tribulation happened.

We'll see. Then that brings us to Revelation chapter 10.

So in Revelation chapter 10, we have another pause, right? So John saw the seals open, right?

Saw the force, one of the apocalypse, saw all this stuff happen to the point of the wrath of God being poured out.

Then he's given a brief respite where he sees the 144 ,000. Now he's seen all these trumpet judgments come and destroy like the vegetation, destroy a third of sea creatures, destroy a third of the fresh waters, blacken a third of the sun, do all these things.

And now he's given another respite and a mighty angel tells

John not to write down what is said at that time, but tells

John instead to eat this scroll. And the scroll, he says, tastes sweet to his mouth, but bitter to his stomach, because the sweetness is representative of the coming of Christ, but the bitterness is all of the wrath that's gonna be poured out, the devastation to the world.

So he's given a brief respite there, after which we go into Revelation chapter 11.

Revelation chapter 11 introduces us to the two witnesses. I think

John MacArthur said he doesn't know who these people are, but he volunteers to be one of them if God would let him.

Because the two witnesses are some cool characters, right? The whole world hates the two witnesses, but anyone that tries to hurt the witnesses are consumed by fire out of their mouth.

So anyone that tries to harm them, they just open their mouth and poof, they just annihilate whoever it is, right, that's trying to harm them.

The witnesses have power over water, they have the power to shut heaven and cause droughts, they have the power over some plagues.

And so they go around and the beast rises from the pit and kills the two witnesses in Jerusalem, right?

We haven't talked about the beast yet, but we'll talk about the beast a bunch in a bit. So the beast rises up and kills the two witnesses in Jerusalem, they're dead for three and a half days, and then after three and a half days, life enters them and it says all the world saw them and was fearful.

Now, some suggest that how would the whole world see them if not for modern technology, the ability to maybe have this on TV or something,

I don't know. But that's all speculation, but it's neat to think about. But they were dead for three and a half days, then life enters into them, the whole world sees and is fearful.

And then a voice from heaven says, come up. And so they go up to heaven and a giant earthquake happens on the earth, after which we have the seventh trumpet, which ends all of it and Jesus takes over.

So that's the seven trumpets. Also, the last three trumpets are called the three woes, but that's the seven trumpet judgments.

So now that takes us into Revelation chapter 12. Revelation chapter 12 talks all about Satan's persecution of the people of God.

So there's a reference to the woman, the child and the dragon. The woman represents Israel, the child represents

Christ, and the dragon represents Satan. And it says that the dragon hates the, tries to destroy the child given by the woman.

So Jesus came out of Israel to save us. There's a war in heaven between Satan and his demons and Michael and his angels.

Obviously, good guys win. Satan and his demons are thrown to earth, but God protects

Israel. That brings us into Revelation chapter 13. This is a fire hose, guys, but I'm trying to give you the summary and I can send all this summary out to you, but it's gonna be important as we get through the different millennial views and we talk about the seals and we talk about the trumpets and we talk about the bowls and we talk about the tribulation and all of that stuff and the millennial kingdom.

It's gonna be important to at least have a rudimentary understanding of the outline of Revelation.

So Revelation chapter 13 gives us a view of the Antichrist. So it's all about the Antichrist, which is the first beast.

The first beast was given power for three and a half years, which is the first half of the tribulation period.

The Antichrist has a prophet. That prophet builds an idol to the Antichrist and then somehow makes the idol talk, which draws the world to worship the

Antichrist. And you've heard about the abomination of desolation and stuff that Pastor Jeff has talked about.

The prophet, so then the mark of the beast happens at that point. Everyone worships the beast.

The mark of the beast happens, preventing men from buying and selling without it. And there's a lot of people that have tried to read into Revelation a lot of the modern day technology or whatever and say that everything's the mark of the beast.

But I would warn everyone not to look too closely at current events. And not saying that you don't look at current events and think maybe the time is coming, but try not to get too specific.

That can lead people down, predicting when the rapture's gonna occur and stuff. There've been many of those predictions that have turned out not to be true.

But the mark of the beast comes at that point, takes us into Revelation chapter 14, which talks about the victory of Jesus Christ.

Jesus comes with the 144 ,000. While there's worship in heaven, then there's a judgment blood bath on the earth where the earth is essentially reaped.

It talks about a sickle going into the earth and being reaped as you would a harvest.

Which takes us into Revelation chapter 15, which talks about seven angels with seven plagues that fill up God's wrath, which leads us into the next chapter where God's wrath is poured out.

And so the next chapter is chapter 16, which leads us into the seven bowls of God's wrath.

So chapter 16 covers the seven bowls. The first bowl afflicts the ones with the mark of the beast.

So everyone that has now taken the mark of the beast is now afflicted as a result of this bowl of wrath being poured out on the earth.

The second bowl kills everything in the sea. So before we talked about the trumpets where a third was destroyed, this is now destroying everything in the sea, right?

So the entire sea, everything in the sea is destroyed. The third bowl kills everything in the rivers and springs.

So again, you had the trumpet which killed a third and made a third of the water bitter. Well, this destroys everything in the rivers and springs.

The fourth bowl causes the sun to scorch the people with fire, but they refuse to repent.

So you can imagine the worst sunburn you've ever had, right? Actually lighting people on fire, right?

So this one is, and you can see corollaries between the trumpet judgments and the actual bowls where the bowl is way worse.

It's similar, but way worse to the first trumpets, right? And then the fifth bowl is poured out on the throne of the beast, right?

So it sends the kingdom of the beast into darkness.

People curse God, but refuse to repent, right? And then the sixth bowl is poured out on the river

Euphrates causing the waters to dry up and then demons pour out of the dragon, which is

Satan, the beast, which is the Antichrist and the prophet, which is the Antichrist's prophet. And this is sort of a view of the unholy trinity.

So you have the dragon, the beast, and the prophet is like the unholy trinity, but these demons pour out and then the battle of Armageddon ensues.

After which the seventh bowl is poured out, Jesus returns, game over, he wipes them all out.

So that's the seven bowl judgments. The seventh bowl was poured out onto the air and then it says from the throne comes a voice, thunder and lightning, a great earthquake splits the great city, collapses the city of nations, islands and mountains disappear, huge hailstones rain from the sky, end of the world kind of stuff, right?

That takes us into Revelation chapter 17. We're getting close to the end, guys. Chapter 17 gives us sort of a different perspective on the end times.

It gives us sort of a religious view of the end times where there is a religion in the end times.

So during the tribulation, there's a false church. And so you can kind of think, this talks about Babylon and the prostitute or the harlot.

So if the real church, the true church is the bride of Christ, then this false church is the harlot.

And so chapter 17 talks about the great prostitute and the beast and ultimately the antichrist wants everyone to worship him, so he eats the harlot and forces everyone to worship him.

That leads us into chapter 18, which gives us more of a financial view of the end times.

So the end times system is called Babylon and it's referred to as Babylon and this is all about the fall of Babylon.

So demons have sort of been spewed out onto the world and have kind of taken over the world and ultimately this system called

Babylon, but it collapses. So the financial system collapses. It talks about there being no more art, no more transportation, no more craftsmen, no music, just everything starts to fall apart.

But in heaven, there's rejoicing because Babylon has fallen. Which brings us to chapter 19, which starts out with rejoicing in heaven, which is really sort of the party beginning in heaven because of the fall of Babylon.

And then it leads us into the marriage supper of the lamb. In verse 11, it talks about Jesus returning to set up his kingdom on earth.

This is the millennial kingdom, is that right? Yeah. This is the millennial kingdom that all of the three big views sort of center around.

So this is the big millennial kingdom that we're gonna talk about later. The redeemed, that's us, return with him to set up his kingdom and the beast and the false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire.

So chapter 19 is, you know, Jesus setting up his kingdom, all good, we get to come with him and he, you know, throws the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire which takes us into Revelation chapter 20, which gets into more about the millennial kingdom.

So during this time, it's thought that there's gonna be people that are living and have children and repopulate the earth.

And even though Jesus is reigning, there's still people that won't believe in Christ.

And so Satan, I guess, rallies these people and has like a final rebellion, right, in the millennial kingdom.

And all those rebels will then be consumed with fire from heaven. It talks about fire from heaven coming down and consuming all these rebels.

And in verse 11 of chapter 20, we get to the final judgment, the great white throne judgment, where all the unsaved are thrown into hell.

So that's all in chapter 20. Then we get to chapter 21, which talks about the new heaven, the new earth, the new

Jerusalem. And then finally, chapter 22 wraps things up with the final invitation to come.

So it says in Revelation 22, six through 21, it says, I'm gonna read the whole thing here.

Jesus is coming, it says, and he said to me, these words are trustworthy and true. And the

Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets has sent his angels to show his servants what must soon take place.

And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.

That's again, in chapter 22, the blessing. So again, we're beginning and ending with a blessing here.

In verse eight, it says, I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. It's almost like he's shocked that he's the one that heard and saw these things.

And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me. But he said to me, you must not do that.

I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers, the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book, worship

God. And he said to me, do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.

Let the evildoer still do evil and the filthy still be filthy and the righteous still do right and the holy still be holy.

And in verse 12, it says, behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me to repay each for what he has done.

I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes so they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.

Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches.

I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright and morning star. The spirit and the bride say come, this is the invitation, and let the one who hears say come and let the one who is thirsty come and let the one who desires to take the water of life without price.

I warn everyone who hears the word of this prophecy and this book, if anyone adds to them,

God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of this book, of this prophecy,

God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city and which are described in this book.

He who testifies to these things, surely I am coming soon, amen, come Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all, amen. That's how Revelation ends.

So it ends with a blessing and then an invitation, which is sort of like a final invitation.

And then there was a neat little diagram I saw here which kind of showed the structure of Revelation, which has the introduction in one through three, the seven seals,

God's throne in chapters four and five, and then you get into the seven seals in six, seven trumpets in eight, bunch of signs, seven bulls, fall of Babylon, final victory, and then

God the Lamb and the Redeemer ending in the New Jerusalem and Jesus returning for his churches and then the conclusion.

So it's a cool sort of way to get a quick summary. I know it was like a 45 minute quick summary, but it was about as fast as I could go.

It's a lot of information. I can send this section out if you guys want it ahead of time for our discussion for next week.

Before I let you go, I'm gonna talk a little bit about sort of the three main views which hover around that millennial kingdom.

And then we'll get into the more specific sub views that are taken from those sort of major views.

So let's jump into that right now.

So a lot of the views are centered around this millennium. And then we'll talk about the sub views. But the millennial kingdom is sort of the major distinction between the eschatological views and the positioning of Christ's second coming with relationship to that millennium.

So the first view is premillennialism which holds that Christ's second coming is the next thing to happen.

So the very next thing to happen is gonna be the second coming of Christ. The world will continue to get worse and worse.

This is why premillennialists are considered sort of pessimists with regard to end times because the view is that the world will continue to get worse and worse until the

Lord comes back and raptures his church. And this will be followed by a literal thousand years of raining on earth before the final judgment.

Then you have a postmillennialist view which holds that Christ's second coming will happen after the thousand year kingdom.

The judgment will immediately follow Christ's second coming. So again, premillennialists say

Christ is gonna come, he's gonna rapture the church, then there's gonna be a millennial kingdom, and then there'll be judgment.

And the postmillennialist says, nope, the thousand years is gonna happen first, then

Christ is gonna come back and after coming back and rapturing his church, he's gonna immediately judge the unrighteous.

And then finally you have amillennialism. Amillennialism holds that there's actually no literal thousand year kingdom, that it's figurative, and that the deceased believers are actually reigning in the millennial kingdom right now.

So the thousand years, because it obviously can't be a literal thousand years because it's been 2 ,000 years already since Christ lived and died, right?

So the thousand year kingdom is, thousand just means a long time, right?

It doesn't actually mean a literal thousand years, and that the kingdom is actually in heaven right now, and all of the believers that die are actually reigning with Christ now in heaven.

Like premillennialists, the second coming will succeed the millennial kingdom and then judgment after that.

So from a millennial kingdom perspective, they fall in line with the premillennialists, but differ on whether or not the millennial kingdom is a literal thousand years in here on earth or is in heaven.

So this was a neat little graphic that kind of showed Jesus' first coming,

Jesus' second coming, thousand year earthly reign, final judgment versus postmillennial, Jesus' first coming, thousand year,

Jesus' second coming, final judgment. Amillennial, Jesus' first coming, presently thousand years in heaven,

Jesus' second coming. So if you look at the premillennial, it's just like the, well actually it's

I guess closer to postmillennialism, but whatever. It's a view that a lot of Presbyterians hold, and although some

Presbyterians hold a postmillpreterist view, we'll talk a little bit about what that means later.

There was another neat graphic that I found that showed kind of in a little bit more detail the premillennial, postmillennial, and amillennial views, and even talked a little bit about some of the subviews around pre -trib, mid -trib, post -trib with regard to the sort of second major sort of differentiation is done around when does the rapture happen, right?

So there's the idea of the millennial kingdom, and then there's also a question about when the rapture. So even within premillennialism, there's four views that we'll probably talk about that talk about when the rapture actually occurs.

So some believe that it's before the tribulation, some believe it's in the middle of the tribulation, some believe it's after the tribulation, and then there's a fourth view that is just after the middle of the tribulation called pre -wrath, which is right before wrath is poured out.

And so this was another neat graphic that I found that talks about the sort of the way things work.

So in premillennialism, you have the church age, which is now, then it's supposed to be followed by the tribulation at some point before or during that, or after that, there's the rapture, and then there's the millennial kingdom.

In postmillennialism, you've kind of got this view that the church age and the tribulation occur and society actually improves until the world is essentially one for Christ, at which point

Christ returns. And then amillennialism is the church age, society continues to get worse, but the tribulation is more symbolic and the millennial kingdom is happening in heaven now.

So, orthodox end times views. And we'll save the specific end times views to next week, but the things that we need to make sure that we're following is that there's one heretical view, which

I'll talk more about next week, called hyperpreterism, which denies some of these things that we must believe for it to be a

Christian view. So the three sort of major things is that Christ will return bodily in the future, there is a future kingdom, there is a bodily resurrection of the saints where we will live and dwell with him forever.

We have to believe those things. Any view that denies these things is heretical, right?

It doesn't actually hold to orthodox Christianity. And whew, whew, that was a lot.

Faster ride than your roadie. So, I got through Revelation and the three major views.

I'm sure you guys remember everything I said, and could recount it right back to me.

Again, I'll send a sort of cut version of, I'll send you a final version that has everything at the end of this, but I'll send you sort of a cut version that just reviews sort of the chapters of Revelation that you guys can kind of ruminate on, at which point next week we will actually get into specific post -millennial, we'll cover amillennialism, and we'll cover a few pre -millennial,

I think in total I'll cover six views of, six eschatological views, and then we'll talk about the pros and cons of some of the arguments of each.

But again, a lot of this, with the exception of the hyperparameters view, is kind of loosely held beliefs, people interpreting the apocalyptic language and the language of Daniel, of Revelation, and of Ezekiel, right?

There's different passages of scripture that talk about the end times, Revelation being obviously the biggest one, but there's a lot of differences in how people have interpreted these passages, and it's okay, it's okay to have different views.

I'll talk a little bit about what my view is, there's a view that I hold to, there's a view that I wish, that I would like to hold to, and then there's other views that people in our church hold to, and I'll even talk about some prominent people and what their views are, not that that should sway you, but there are some great theologians that hold differing views for me, that I respect deeply, and there's others that hold views that I think make more sense when you read the text, but again, that's my interpretation.

So, with that, any questions, any...

Didn't put anybody to sleep, but that was a good thing, I guess. So, all right, well then,

Ivan, why don't I have you go ahead and close us out. Father, thank you so much for coming together as brothers in Christ, Lord.

We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to see what your future glory is.

Thank you for Matt, for presenting what the end times are gonna be like, and we pray that we take this and nurture and nourish ourselves with this knowledge, and to raise us in knowledge to have a clearer understanding what end times are, and use that discernment.

And at the same time, we ask that we raise up people who are suffering now, and we glorify you that you've taken a sister home to you,

Lord, that she is in your presence right now, and we thank you, Lord, for that. And we pray for those who do not know you,

Lord, that they would open up their hearts and their minds to what your salvation would do in their lives,

Lord, and we pray for them. And we pray for those who are suffering in sickness and in sadness and in grief, particularly in Drew and Jill right now.

We ask that you put your healing hand on them, Lord, and also help them to find peace in their heart and joy through all the sadness that is happening there.

And Lord, for the remainder, for each one of us, we all have our internal trials and triumphs,

Lord. We give this to you, Lord, and we wanna glorify you in everything we do and everything we say.

So give us a great week, Lord, to do that. Until we meet again,

Lord, we lift ourselves up to you, Lord, glorify and bless you in your name, Jesus name, amen. Amen.