The Bride Makes Herself Ready — Robert B. Thompson

This morning with praise and thanksgiving, how good you are, Lord, and how wonderfully you have dealt with us, Lord. As the brother said, life is a cesspool, but we don't have to live in it. We thank you for that, Lord.

Thank you for that. We pray for each family represented here, Lord, that your good guardian protection will be on each one, their loved ones, to keep them safe and healthy. We thank you for bringing our brother Bob back safely.

We pray, Lord, for those who are out, the little children, the Church of the Future being taught. For those of us here, Lord, we ask your help today that the Holy Spirit will minister Jesus to each one.

We pray in His name and give you all the glory, Lord. Amen. You may be seated. We'll turn to Revelation 21. I may repeat some of the things that I talked about Tuesday night. And so those who are here, bear with us.

And those that have heard this before, bear with us, because it takes people a while to catch on to stuff. We're going to read Revelation 21, verses 1 through 7. Revelation 21, verses 1 through 7. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them.

They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. Then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. He said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

To him who is thirsty, I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. Now, you notice the comparison with Genesis 1 .1.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Here you have a new heaven and earth, which tells us something important. It tells us that this is going back over the cycle again. Up to this point, it has been the first heaven and the first earth.

Now it is a new heaven and a new earth. And this new heaven and new earth will last forever. As C .S. Lewis says, in which every chapter is better than the one previous. This is where life begins, right here.

The present life, the Adamic, was never meant to be eternal. It is written in the Psalms and in Hebrews, the first chapter, As a vesture shall you fold them up, and they are discarded like dirty clothes in a hamper.

It is a prototype. This life is a prototype. It is not what God means by life. It is something to test us, to see what we will do under pressure, to bring forth rulers, particularly to bring forth rulers, who will govern during the new world.

And one of the worst mistakes anyone can make in life is to put all your eggs in one basket, to view this present world as being what it is, as being the important thing. And the reason why it is good to know this is because sometimes if God is preparing us for an important role in his kingdom, just like when you build a very tall building, you spend a long time digging down, underground, before anything goes up.

The taller the building, the further down you have to go. And so it is. We don't all have the same calling. But if you're called for an important role in God's kingdom, he's going to spend a lot of time on your life, dealing with you.

You can't compare yourself with anybody else. You can't do that. You can't say, no, I won't do this, I won't do that, I will do this, I will do that. You belong to God. He paid for you with his blood.

You belong to him. And what happens is, sometimes, if God is really dealing with us strenuously, it seems like we're losing everything. We're losing everything. Then you have to realize the purpose of this life.

This is not where it is. This is not the important part of your life. It's to work God's will in you, to give you a knowledge of God and his ways. That's its purpose. And sometimes to do that, we have to go through some pretty rugged situations.

Pretty rugged. Pretty rugged. And it's good to realize, yeah, it's true, I didn't get much out of this world. Not get much. Looks like I'm going to lose everything. Not achieve what I thought I wanted to achieve.

Not obtain what I thought I wanted to obtain. But it's okay. It's okay. Because this is not where it is for me. Life begins in the new heaven and the new earth. Then, where I will be, what I will do, what I will be like, all depends on what's happening now.

So, it's just like going to school. If you have a high objective to be a doctor of medicine or a psychiatrist or whatever, you can't just go through grammar school and graduate from high school and hand your certificate, whatever it is you're after, practice of medicine.

Because you have chosen a goal that is past the ordinary. You have to spend more time than the ordinary person in preparation. Those years are not fun. You want to become a master of a musical instrument or a master of athletics or whatever you wish to perfect, you have to deny yourself a lot of things that other people don't have to.

You can get out of high school, get married, settle down, get some kind of a job, make a living, all the while you're grinding the books. You're backing the stacks, looking up stuff, writing papers. Oh, I hate to...

I've written so many papers in my life, I hate it. But, you have to do it. There's no way out. This is the road that you go. You have to go that way. There's no shortcut. You have to go that way. And so you rationalize to yourself, you say, okay, I don't get what I want now, but I have a goal out there.

Sometimes people say, it isn't the goal, it's how you travel. I think that is the biggest bunch of baloney I ever heard. If the goal isn't what you're after, then it invalidates the journey. Well, maybe.

I don't want to get into that. It's good to have a goal. And the Bible holds goals out there. I press toward the mark. And Paul wasn't very happy on the journey, okay? I'm pressing toward the mark. I want the crown.

That's reality. That's the way life is. That's the way the kingdom is. Because sometimes you're not so happy on the journey, and you'd choose other things to do if you had your druthers. But you have a goal.

And that goal will be worth it when you get there. Believe me, it will be worth every inconvenience, every denial, everything. It will be worth it. So that other philosophy, it's the way you travel, that's the important thing.

That's more foolish talk. That doesn't even matter. So have a goal. And that goal is when God finally gets sick. And by the way, there's been some talk that this means, first of all, this heaven here is not the spirit heaven.

This is the sky. It's talking about the sky. The problem is the Greek language has no word for sky. So they just have or and os, so you have to figure out what it means. God doesn't want to make a new spiritual heaven.

There's no point in that. What he's making is a new sky and a new earth. Just like in the beginning he created the sky and he created the earth. Firmament. And people have said, well, you know, that's too much for God.

He's certainly not going to do away with the earth. And he's not going to do away with all the planets and everything. He's going to make them new. How we limit God. If you want to take a peek at 2 Peter 3 .10, I bet that old fisherman never knew someday he'd be called 2 Peter.

He'd get hitched up to Jesus. He'd become eternal. People talk about you for a long time. 2 Peter 3 .10, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar. That doesn't sound like God is refurbishing the situation.

The heavens will pass away with a roar. The elements will be destroyed by fire in the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Yeah, it'll be laid bare alright. I don't know where the New International Version got that.

I know. You say, well, how do you know it won't be this earth? Well, I know it won't be this earth because the city is 1 ,500 miles high, 1 ,500 miles across the basin, 1 ,500 miles deep, which is a third of the way across the United States, and it's gold.

Do you have any idea? It would throw the earth out of orbit so fast it isn't even funny. 1 ,500 miles. Bob, how high did you fly on your way to? Yeah. You didn't go up 1 ,500 miles? No, I don't think so.

No, I don't think so. That is up there and it would not lend itself. So, the earth will be vastly bigger than anything we imagine at this time. A couple of million miles in diameter without a doubt. And a new heaven.

Well, Peter says it will disappear with a roar. Well, now if we're talking about some kind of hydrogen or something or implosion or explosion or nuclear fission or whatever, and all the planets go and all the stars go and the whole space goes and everything else, I imagine it will make quite a bang.

Yeah, I think that will be a roar and a half. Well, people say, you know, that's asking God to do an awful lot. No, it isn't. He'll just inhale and one will be gone, exhale and the other will be here.

No biggie. Yeah, He can solve your problems. The first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Passed away. Doesn't say they got a new model. When something passes away, it passes away. Right? Amen.

And there was no longer any sea. Now, I said Tuesday night, that's not talking about the literal sea. And I saw a few wrinkled brows because people want me to be absolutely fundamental. And I am absolutely fundamental.

But I said I wouldn't care for it if there was no sea. Now, we spent three days looking at the ocean. And I don't know if the ocean does anything for you or not, but it does a lot for me. And I've often thought what it would be like to be a whale, but I don't dwell on it.

But I... We watched... We saw porpoise out there. They always show up for Audrey and sure enough, here came the porpoise. And... I mean, that's three-fourths of the planet is water. And without that, oh, I can't even picture it.

So anyway, so I says, all right, I'll give the folks something to consider this morning. If we look at Revelation 13 .1, maybe we get an idea of what the Lord is talking about. There's no more sea. Oh no, I want sea.

Lord, please. My druthers. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. Revelation 13 .1. So many believe that the Antichrist is going to be something like Godzilla suddenly arising up in the Pacific Ocean.

Here he comes. Be deceived. He would deceive many people. He might frighten a lot of them, but I don't think he's deceived. They would have an idea there's something wrong here. The most backslid Christians.

I can't go for this. This is simply not God. Now, the sea refers to people. Check it out in Isaiah 57 .20. And it refers to certain kinds of people. Not our kind. Not our kind at all. Isaiah 57 .20. It's amazing.

These pages are so thin it can cover so much territory that one will have the Bible for 20 years and there will still be pages that are stuck together. Isaiah 57 .20. Let me get there. Let me get there.

57 .20. I don't know if I can find it. I'll have to get somebody else to read it. You know, the numbers keep getting smaller. That's a joke. But the wicked are like the what? Tossing sea. So I think what God is telling us in Revelation is that there will no longer be anybody who is wicked.

There no longer will be a sea of people that can be tossed around by demagogues and brought into sin. Everyone will have a measure of Christ. In the new earth maybe 34, maybe 60, maybe 100 but everybody will have some and God will be in every person and that will fulfill the scripture.

God will be all in all. No more sea of people. Everyone will be known. There will be no more mob. No more undifferentiated group. Lord, save all of us purposes. Alright. I saw the holy city. First thing we notice about it is that it is holy.

Very important to God. That means it is free from unclean spirits. There's no uncleanness in it. No spiritual uncleanness in it. It's clean. It's pure. It's holy. It's filled with God. There's nothing unclean in it.

We notice it's a city. There is a city. Now I think the city is both a real city and also symbolic. There's so much in it that's symbolic that is obviously not is talking about other things than just what one would think of.

We notice there's only one street. Well, in any great city there's always more than one street. But there's only one way. And those precious stones in the foundation of the wall, all this attention here is talking about the characteristics of the saints.

And the gates of pearl, speaking of those who have in their personalities an entrance to God because of the things they've suffered, the irritation under their shell. Anybody have any irritation under their shell this morning?

God's making you a gate to God. A gate to God. So, I believe there's a real city and somehow the characteristics of the people are in it. Now what is this city? This city is the church. Now you don't understand that.

You won't understand these two chapters. This city is the church. In fact, when Jesus said in John 14 to in my Father's house, this is the Father's house. This is it. This is the Father's house. It's building.

He's building. What house will you build me? This is the Father's house. This is the glorified church. This is the wife of the Lamb. And it's Jerusalem. Not the same Jerusalem. A new Jerusalem, but Jerusalem nonetheless.

Because whenever God deals in the realm that is political on the earth and has to do with people, it's always Jerusalem. God starts and He never changes because He knows the end from the beginning. Because He knows the end from the beginning, He never starts anything wrong.

He never starts anything wrong in your life because He knows the end from the beginning. You see that? If you knew what you were going to do, you knew how it would come out, you'd make up your mind whether to do it, wouldn't you?

If you knew the end from the beginning. God knows the end from the beginning. So He knows exactly what He's doing. He doesn't keep changing His mind. He knows what He's doing. Get in the rest. Get in the flow with God.

Move with God. You'll have a happy life if you do, but you'll be at odds with yourself if you don't. Coming down out of heaven, or down through the sky from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.

That's the church. That's the bride without spot or wrinkle. Now, how did it get that way? Well, it got that way in two stages. I want to talk about that this morning. When you have nobility, and in this case, there is nobility here.

There is the King, Jesus. And this is His bride. She's never called the bride of the King except in Psalm 45. She's never even called the bride of Christ. She's always the bride of the Lamb. But nonetheless, this is the kingdom of the Lord.

And no bride of a king dresses herself. She's dressed by others. Isn't it so? You've all read about that, or seen it in the movies, or something grabs you and you realize that this is somebody that has been dressed by others.

Beautifully dressed for her husband. Now, Ephesians 5 tells us that the church will be without spot or wrinkle. Everybody knows that. But there's great confusion on that because of imputed righteousness.

We can't make the bridge in our mind. When does imputed righteousness become actual righteousness? How does this happen? We know this bride here, if she's beautifully dressed for her husband, then there are three things that are true of her.

She is holy, she is righteous, and she is obedient to God. If this wasn't true, she wouldn't be beautifully dressed for her husband because the Lord will not have a bride that is not holy, that is not righteous, and that is not obedient to God.

But when we start off as Christians, we have something given to us called imputed righteousness, which means that God calls us righteous when we haven't done anything righteous. But God starts us that way.

So the big problem in Christian thinking, and it's never been really resolved to any great extent, there's been much speculation on it, is when do we pass from imputed or ascribed righteousness to actual righteousness?

How does this happen? And generally the church has looked at it in two ways. One, that when we die, automatically made righteous, holy, and obedient to God. If you stop to think of it, the Bible doesn't say that, but people assume, well, you know, I never could cut it in this light, but when I die, I'll follow the Lord, you know, which is an assumption, and a comforting one, but there's a problem with that, and that is we're making an assumption that there's no sin in heaven, in the spirit realm.

The truth is, the spirit realm is the source of sin. That's where it came from. You remember in the garden, Eve was happy, wandering around with all these tree full of apples and everything, and it never bothered Adam, and it never bothered Eve, until somebody came that God did not create from the dust.

A third person. And he came from the spirit realm, where sin had already become sophisticated, already been developed, and to this day, it's common knowledge, at least in the charismatic circles, that our natural evil nature is intensified by what we call demons, evil spirits.

So, how then can death change us from a sinful nature to a pure nature? There's no Bible for it, and it isn't logical. So, that offers us no relief in changing from imputed righteousness, or ascribed righteousness, to actual righteousness, actual holiness, actual obedience to God.

But then, the other is that when the Lord comes, it will happen instantly. And there's no Bible for that. The idea is that when Jesus comes, well, okay, here I am. I've been a careless servant. The Lord gave me a talent.

Was that a talent of gold or a talent of silver in Matthew 25? Well, if it was gold, it was worth a lot of money. You know how much a talent weighs? 75 pounds. When was the last time you picked up 75 pounds?

You ever picked up a sack of cement? Well, some of them weigh 50 pounds. I mean, you give the guy the talent, the guy says, thanks. You give me 10 talents, whoa, you know, put them on a skid or something.

75 pounds they weigh. 75 pounds of gold is a little change in your pocket there. You can put it in for the mission. That's 75 pounds of gold. That's a lot of money. But the guy buried it. He was fearful.

No problem, because when the Lord comes, He'll wave the wand and his fearfulness will be gone. Isn't that what the Bible says? Here this dude came with his talent. I don't think he was carrying it, but he might have been.

Might have been pretty husky. Where is it? Here it is. One of the angels grabbed it. Not to worry, friend. Not to worry, because the Bible says, when I come, I will remove it all. Enter into the joy of your Lord.

Isn't that what it says? What does it say? What does it say? Wicked, lazy... That doesn't sound much like when the Lord comes with a wand, He's going to remove our problem, does it? So another theory shot in the head.

And the same way with the foolish virgins. He didn't come and say, Well, you were foolish, honey, but it's okay now, because good old Jesus is here. I wave my wand, and off goes the foolishness. In comes wisdom.

No, he just closed the door. That's how he solved that. He didn't want any foolish virgins around. How we get from ascribed righteousness to actual righteousness from disobedience to obedience. How do we become beautifully dressed for the king?

That's a problem. And I want to show it to you in two stages. Now, I've talked about this before. And I know some of you have heard it probably 37 1⁄2 times. But it takes a while to coagulate up here.

And I know there's some here that have never heard this before. Alright, we're in Revelation 19, verse 7. And lo and behold, we find another marriage. One in chapter 19. One in chapter 21. Now how in the world, or what in the world, or who in the world, it says, Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory for the wedding of the Lamb has come.

Whoa! So he must have divorced her and then married another in Revelation 21. Well, we know that isn't true. Alright. The wedding of the Lamb has come. And then we come to this very important thing. And this is the crux.

And I feel that God wanted me to stress this this morning. I feel He wants us stressed, okay? This is the burden of the Lord as far as I know. Let the prophets judge. His bride has made herself ready.

Now if you look back at 21, it says, Prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. Revelation 19 says the bride has made herself ready. Now let me explain to you, explain to you what's going on here.

In Revelation 19, Revelation 19 and Revelation 21 are separated by what's called a thousand years, whether that's literal thousand years or symbolic. We'll say it's literal for now so as not to add complexity.

So between Revelation 19 and 21, there's a thousand years that scholars have called the millennium. Now does everyone understand this? Because if there's anything in my teaching, there's a few things that people have an enormous problem with, and this is one of them.

Now, do you understand? Brian, when we have that projector and I was going like this, would it be possible up there for you to make a little diagram as I go along? Is that going to function that way? Oh, with that resounding reinforcement, I will continue.

Oh, but that would be so nice because I am not artistic. I can't even draw a straight line. I can't even draw water out of a well or something. All right, now picture in your mind a thousand year period.

The beginning is Revelation 19. The bride has made herself ready. At the end, after it's over, the bride is beautifully dressed. All right, so you can see how one could speculate that maybe the reason for that thousand years is to make her ready.

That's pretty cool. That's not bad. Okay. Here she is over here. Here she is over here. It's a thousand years. Okay. When we use the term the first resurrection, which is a Bible term in Revelation 20, the first resurrection, we're talking about the one that happens here.

So it seems like the bride has been divided into two parts. Because we know Jesus isn't going to marry two brides. Okay, now that's not nice. All right. So we say the bride is divided into two parts. We say that's wild.

That's wild. No, it isn't. No, it is not at all. And there are several major types of the Bible. The type of the Bible merely means a store in the Old Testament that is allegorical or metaphorical. It symbolizes something.

There are several major ones. You don't have to go looking for them with a magnifying glass and peeping and muttering. There are big ones. And the first one is the most dramatic allegory in the Old Testament describing the coming of the Lord is the incident concerning Gideon.

Now, why is this such an important thing? Because you see, you have the lamps in the clay jugs and they're broken and the light comes out, which is symbolic of our being resurrected and the inner light coming out in the day of the Lord.

The Midianites were gathered by a hundred thousand, maybe a million and a half Midianites or more. They filled the whole valley. So the enemy was there in force. And God came and revealed Himself to Gideon.

And you all know about the fleece. Gideon couldn't believe it and put out the fleece and it was dry one time and wet the next and so on and so forth. And then God, then He gathered out of all the couple million Israelites, He gathered out 300 men.

And through those 300, God destroyed the Midianites, joined in the battle and the spoils. Now that is probably the major type that when the Lord comes, there'll be a division. There'll be a small group taken from the whole.

That's just one. If there was just one, I'd say, well, I can't bank on one. But there are several. I'll give you a couple more. But how many remember that when God started out, Gideon had, what was it, 22 ,000 men?

Something like that. And God said, there's too many. There's too many. Too many. Find out who's scared and send them home. Well, pretty near the whole crew left. And they were scared. And so it got down to what?

What was the second level? Does anyone remember? 10 ,000? I don't know, anyway. It got down to another group and God said, there's still too many here. Test them with the water. See how they drink. And I think that's going on today.

I really think that drinking thing, because that's the test of water. And there's water in the land today. There's the Holy Spirit, but people drink in two different ways. Some are cautious. They look around like one group, put their hand down, watch for the enemy, drinking, laughing like a dog.

But most of them stuck their head in the water. All they needed was someone to come and give them a good kick and they'd have drowned. Well, that's what's going on today. People are drinking the water, but anything goes.

You can get down on your knees and bark like a dog and someone will lead you around on a leash. This goes on, people. This goes on. And I feel sorry for people like that. I don't down them or I don't think they're bad people or demon-possessed or anything else.

It's just that God's church today is hungry. They're starving. And anything that seems like it's God, you need to be merciful with such people. They don't mean harm. They're doing what they think is right.

Some of them get blessed and some of them get saved. I talked to one young fellow that had got saved when I was up at Dennis McNally's and he was saved in one of these wild commotions. And I mean that young fellow was really genuinely saved.

So I'm not here to criticize what people do. If they want to roar like lions or beat their head on the wall and so on, you know, so that's better than sitting in church and then going out and doing something wrong.

Whatever. Anyway, we all got problems. How many know that? So, these people were drinking. They were drinking the same. They all drank the same water. It was the same Holy Spirit. It was a different way they drank.

Some got real careless and just stuck their head in the water. They were all thirsty, I guess. But 300 put their hand down and brought it up to their mouth and laughed like a dog. Out of the palm of their hand, God said, these are the ones.

So you see, there's a sifting that goes on. And that tells us something important because today the accent is on numbers. My goodness, if you don't have 30 ,000 people in a meeting, you're not doing anything.

The Lord doesn't always work that way. He got rid of the numbers. He got himself down to an army that was impossible to whip the Midianites. Whip the Midianites. And God got the glory. There's another major type of the division of the church at the coming of the Lord.

And that has to do with the Ark of the Covenant, which was the holiest thing in the tabernacle. And it had been lost from the tabernacle. And so the Jews built the... They moved the tabernacle from Shiloh and built it on a city 10 miles north of Jerusalem.

But it had no holy... It had no ark in the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies was empty. The Holy of Holies was empty. The altar was there. The labor was there. Table of showbread was there. Lampstand was there.

Everything was there. Altar of incense. Everything except the ark. The ark was in captivity. Well, when David became king, he sent for the ark. You know the story. They brought it back the wrong way, and then they finally brought it back the right way.

But the significant thing is that as long as David was alive, the ark remained in a suburb of Jerusalem called Zion. Now David was a man of God if there ever was one, and he moved by the prophet. He moved by the spirit of prophecy.

And there is no way under Levitical law that you could keep that ark separate 10 miles away from the rest of the tabernacle and be pleasing to God. But he did. And God was pleased. And so you'll keep seeing through Psalms Zion, Zion, like the name of our church.

Zion is a suburb of Jerusalem where the ark was. Which tells us that God at some point will divide His church and there will be people who stand for the ark, you might say, and then there's others who are going through all the things of the Christian church.

Salvation, the baptism with the Holy Spirit, divine healing, you name it. That's a very clear type. And it endured and it didn't change until David died. And they were never brought together. The ark and the rest of the tabernacle were never brought together until something happened.

And what was that? Solomon built the temple. And then the tabernacle and the ark were all brought and put in that temple. And what that means, Solomon's reign symbolizes the new heaven and the new earth.

Because it's a reign of peace and a reign of glory. David's reign symbolizes the millennium because it's the time of the rod of iron. It's the time, there's still war, there's still conquest going on.

I don't call it the millennium, I call it the kingdom age because that's what it is. Christ and the saints ruling with the rod of iron. Which is a Davidic reign. And see, the reason Solomon had so much glory was because David had won all the battles.

Not Solomon. He didn't win battles. David prepared the way for Solomon. So the thousand year kingdom age will prepare the way for the new heaven and earth. What I'm talking about is how we get from imputed righteousness to actual righteousness.

There's a third great type. See, these are the major types here. That when David was anointed king three times. Once by Samuel when Saul was still reigning. And then after Saul died, David was anointed king over Hebron, I believe.

He was king of Hebron over Judah. And then some seven years later, he was anointed king over the rest of Israel and reigned for 33 more years. See, these are major types. So when we say that it is prophesied in the Bible that God at some critical point will divide His church for a season and then bring it together.

Divide it until certain victories are won and then bring it together. We don't have to look for some questionable translation of one half of one verse somewhere. We're talking about major, major types of the Bible.

Which things are written for our admonition. So, what are we looking at here? We're looking at a time when the Lord comes but not all the church is ready for Him. Now, some of the teaching that goes on today, and Lloyd, who's an editor of the magazine up there in Omega, Lloyd Darnton is with us this morning, and I were discussing this.

Because this is in the air, this separation, little groups of people in home groups, and I'm saying this out on the tape because I want this information needs to be spread out to God's people are so starved for God that somebody gets the idea, oh, our little group is called the sons of God and we're supposed to marry the church which is the bride of the Lamb.

Or, we are the manifested sons of God and any day now we're going to become invulnerable and laser beams will go out from us. And everything in between is being taught today to little groups of people.

And the reason that they believe these things, which you say, well, they're off the wall. Well, listen. These people are hungry for God. They're hungry for God. And people don't know what direction to go.

So they get this intimation in the spirit about the overcomers and then it spurts out in these kind of unfruitful avenues and it's only because they don't know any better. They're just hungry for God.

So don't despise people when they get off into these queer things. They are to be prayed for. They are to be prayed for. They're not strong, ready to move the church. They are victims of the situation.

But the Spirit is talking to us today about moving on past Pentecost, about coming past Pentecost, coming out from the casual, lukewarm Christianity and serving God like we mean it. That's what He's asking for.

That's what He's demanding. And it will cause, as God's moves always do, it will cause an uproar among people as people leave churches and this happens and the next thing happens. So that's what's going on today.

Alright, now, back to Revelation 19. What is this? Revelation 19. Now, I use the Old Testament figures, but we don't want to become, you know, real out into left field with them. I'll call this Zion. This is Zion.

This is like a Gideon's army. In Revelation 19, 7 and 8. This is like a Gideon's army, strong people that are called out by the Lord to begin this program of changing from imputed righteousness to actual righteousness.

And that's why the emphasis today, if it's coming from God, it will be on a return to righteous behavior. If a message is really coming from God today, the need today in America is a return to old-fashioned cross-carrying consecration and righteousness.

And anything that is really emphasizing anything else, be careful, because that is what the Spirit of God is talking about. Now, what God is saying to you and to me today, I want you to make yourself ready.