Sunday School: Letters to the Churches Part 1

If you want to open up your Bibles to Revelation chapter 2, Revelation chapter 2, that's where we're going to be today.

And there we go. Let us pray. Help us to grow in the knowledge of your dear son, our

Lord Jesus Christ, to remain firm in the confession of his blessed word. Give us the love to be of one mind and to serve one another in Christ.

Then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable, nor of the rage of the arson of Satan, whose torch is almost extinguished.

Dear Father, guard us so that his craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith. Grant that our cross and suffering may lead to a blessed and sure hope of the coming of our

Savior Jesus Christ, for whom we wait daily. It is in his name we pray. Amen. Okay.

Close this up. Okay. Not everyone is muted.

Okay. Hold on a second here. Let me make sure that everybody is muted. Mute all.

There we go. Everyone should be muted. And let me double check this. I'm not going to allow people to unmute themselves.

There we go. Okay. So one of the things we always have to make sure is before we get started, we need to make sure that everybody is muted and nobody can unmute themselves.

Got it. Okay. Good to know. Okay. So last week we began a study of the

Book of Revelation. I should let you know, I'm going to say this publicly because it's actually one of the most hilarious things

I've experienced in my life, is that James Aloysius Prash Jr. of the Prashites, one of his generals, a fellow by the name of Joshua Chavez, has posted on his social media that I need to be investigated as a pastor, and even gave the phone numbers of the leadership of the

AALC, and encouraged their followers to call the leadership of the AALC, and the investigation needs to be done for this reason, because I have threatened to send

Care Bear Jesus to tattoo their foreheads with the mark of the beast. Why are you looking at me like this?

So, yeah, in case you don't know, Care Bear Jesus is the name that I've given for Dorian Virtue's vision of Jesus, which means it's not a real vision.

Dorian Virtue's vision of Care Bear Jesus is as real as James Prash's claims to actually having

Jewish ancestry. But what's really funny is that what I said as a means of basically saying your guys' eschatology is bonkers, that you even think that Care Bear Jesus is a thing, they have interpreted it as that I'm really going to send

Care Bear Jesus to do something to them. It's just absolutely bizarre. Why are you the name -calling of Care Bear Jesus?

Well, I didn't call, I called Dorian Virtue's vision of Jesus Care Bear Jesus, and I actually did that while being interviewed by her regarding it.

And so, did an interview with her, walked her through the biblical text, showed her that that vision was not from Christ.

She's since renounced it, she's repented of it, and I refer to it as Care Bear Jesus, which is a way of basically saying that ain't

Jesus. So, the Prashites, though, are not thrilled with the idea that she has repented, and so they keep moving the goalposts and changing the narrative.

And so, her vision of Jesus is still, in their mind, something that is being promoted as true.

And it's not. She's publicly repudiated it. So, I just bring all this up because eschatology matters.

It's not a primary doctrine, but the reality is that there's so much damage that has been done to the body of Christ in the name of eschatology.

I would point you to somebody like Harold Camping. How many people sold their homes, quit their jobs, to go let the world know that the rapture was going to happen in May of 2011?

It was a huge black eye on the body of Christ. And what ended up happening is a whole bunch of people were completely disillusioned.

Harold Camping, the day after, basically holed up and said that he had miscalculated, and he rescheduled the rapture for later that same year.

And then that date came, and that date went, and it didn't happen.

It didn't occur. And so, with what's happening in the world today, with COVID -19, all the political upheaval, the

Black Lives Matter, protests that are going on, there are people out there, for real, fomenting fear and discord, and have claimed to have cracked the eschatological code.

They know what's really going on. And they've figured it out. And they've even pinned their names on who the different characters are that are now arising and are supposedly in line with the

Book of Revelation. Last week, I noted the fact that when I was working as a bank teller in Seattle, a

Vietnam veteran who came in every week to cash his disability check, he had lost the use of his legs in Vietnam.

And every time he got his check from the government, he disappeared into a bottle for a while.

But every month, he would show up like clockwork. And one day, I was cashing his check, and he looked at me and, no joke, for real, said,

Do you think Nancy Reagan is the Antichrist? What did he say to that?

And the answer's no. You know, it's like, what? Which universe? Yeah. So the idea here is that you'll note that, especially people who hold to the pre -tribulational eschatology, they have a constant habit of trying to basically look at the world that's happening around us to try to figure out which chapter of the

Book of Revelation we're in. That's not the purpose of the Book of Revelation. So at the beginning of this study, and I actually put a

YouTube version of this study up, Eschatology 101, we always take a look at eschatology by looking at the clear passages, the clear passages that are non -symbolic, that are to be understood at face value.

Those are always the passages that govern eschatology, which means we interpret the

Book of Revelation through Matthew 24. We do not interpret

Matthew 24 through the Book of Revelation. And last week, as we began our study in the

Book of Revelation, we noted something very fascinating, and that was that John, who wrote this back at the end of the first century, he considers himself to already be part of the

Tribulation. The Tribulation has begun. The Tribulation began when

Christ ascended. The last days started 2 ,000 years ago.

The things that Christ prophesied in Matthew 24 have been taking place since Christ's ascension, and they have been taking place with increasing intensity, intensity that are likened to birth pains.

And so you'll note then that the Apostle John, in writing the Book of Revelation, he is writing to comfort us, and that this is a revelation given to him directly from Jesus Christ.

And so you'll note that as we began our study last week, of this we noted the comfort, the focus on the

Gospel, the believing in the face of persecution, and that it was Jesus himself who had these things written for us, and there's blessings associated with it.

Now last week, Roger Monk, let me see if Roger Monk is still here, because I thought I saw him here. Oh good,

Roger is here. Roger Monk asked a question because I had noted that the doctrine regarding the

Rapture has its historical antecedents not in the writings of the

Church Fathers or what the Church has historically believed, but instead that the

Rapture doctrine itself comes from the Darbyites. And so I'm going to point you to a couple of resources because he had asked about them.

And although I'm at odds with some of the things that the

Gospel Coalition have been doing lately, especially embracing critical race theory and kind of going in the ways of the social justice warriors,

I will note this. Back in 2014, there's an article called Will Christians be

Secretly Raptured? And in there, there is a brief history of the secret rapture is listed, and this is kind of a note here.

The doctrine of the secret rapture emerged during the early 19th century through the teachings of John Nelson Darby.

Now there is a, by the way, there is kind of a spurious version of the narrative regarding the history of the rapture that goes to a young girl who had a fever dream that there would be a rapture.

But Darby actually began to teach this concept prior to that little girl's fever dream.

But somehow it's been kind of rolled up into the story regarding the rapture.

Darby was one of the early leaders of the Plymouth Brethren movement, and his teachings became known as dispensationalism.

Darby's dispensationalism distinguished sharply between Israel and the church. And this is,

I think, a critical error on the part of the dispensationalists, and one that we have to take a look at as we understand eschatology.

As somebody who used to buy into dispensationalism and also pre -millennialism and pre -trib rapture, and this is what

I was taught in high school when I attended Maranatha High School in Pasadena, California.

And Pasadena Nazarene was the place where when I was taking my membership classes there as a gift for my finishing the membership classes at Pasadena Nazarene, I was given a copy of Dake's Annotated Study Bible.

And if you have not seen this thing, wow, it'll give you nightmares. But everything is really focused in on eschatology and this idea of the pre -trib rapture.

And the reality is this, is that Scripture's clear. There is only one return of Christ. There's not two.

And that this doctrine regarding the rapture isn't even in Christian history until the 19th century.

And you can pinpoint the person who brought it in, and it's the Plymouth Brethren in particular and Darby specifically.

So the former was earthly. He believed in the latter heavenly. God had two distinct peoples and separate plans for each.

Thus Darby understood Old Testament prophecies as applying only to Israel, the earthly people of God. Rather than spiritualizing such prophecies, he expected a literal fulfillment of God's promise to literal

Israel. So when according to dispensationalist thought, would God fulfill his prophecies to Israel during the millennium and after Jesus' second coming?

So in order for God to resume these plans for Israel, Darby believed God would first need to remove the church from the world.

And that's a big component of all of this. So the whole point of the rapture is it creates in their theology the means by which of the transition point where the dispensation changes from the time of the

Gentiles to God now focusing specifically back to people who are genetically

Jewish. And so that's an important part of their eschatology.

Hence arose the need for the secret rapture. Darby had in effect proposed something new, a two -stage return of Jesus.

Jesus would first come to rapture the church and then return again in invisible glory.

Yes, sir? He's a dispensational premillennialist.

Yeah. Yeah. So came down and established the millennium.

Then Jesus is going off to play golf or something and Satan comes at the end of the millennium. Then Jesus comes back and defeats

Satan. Yes. So it's like the four comings of Christ or something in this? Yeah, no.

And that is one of the arguments against it is that it's not merely a two -fold return of Christ.

It's, you know, in kind of multiple stages. Yes, David? Well, I'm not well read on this.

Well, yeah, that's kind of an issue. And doesn't that put a weight? The thing is that you'll note that people who buy into this pre -trib or this premillennialism have as a habit predicting the end of the world.

And what they're always pointing to is current events and current news stories and saying, this is it.

Now it's starting to happen. But the reality is that we don't know when it's going to be. I just know that the intensity of the signs that we're seeing in our lifetime over my lifetime and yours have increased.

The intensity has increased. But if you look at history, I don't know.

That didn't work out. Just a few years later we had World War II. And these weather people are saying that the weather is getting worse and worse and worse.

Well, I'm sorry to say that I've lived long enough to see stuff that has been worse than what we're having now.

But the people who are making these claims that this is the worst that it ever was are like my kids' age.

And it is true, ever was in their lifetime. But my father told the stories about the 1930s.

And those records have ceased to have been broken yet. And it could be done again.

It could be. And it could be again. And then there have been big hurricanes. Are they increasing?

Or are we just able to point in on them and study them better? I don't know.

The most important harbinger at the end always is the apostasy, the growing rebellion against God.

So here's the deal here too. Why don't those people get right with God and just live all night?

Well, they would say, you're not right with God. Because you attend the Lutheran church. You're not right with God.

But I don't fear this problem that we're having now as everybody else. And the thing is that the point of the book of Revelation is to extinguish your hair so that you're not running around with your hair on fire.

Exactly. We should be listening to this. We should believe and have faith. These kids haven't gone to Sunday school and they've latched on to this eschatology which

I feel is bogus. Yeah, Don. I think Martin Luther was quoted, maybe

I'm wrong, but I think he said, asked what he would do if he knew that Christ was coming tomorrow. Yep.

His response was, I'd plant a tree. Yes, that's correct. And it's questioned as to whether or not that Martin Luther actually said that.

Just so you know, there are some people who challenge the quotation. But you're right. The story as it is told is if Martin Luther was asked, if he knew that Jesus was coming tomorrow, what would he do?

He'd plant a tree. And here's the idea, is that the church itself is under the same marching orders in every generation until Jesus shows up.

So if Jesus is coming on Thursday, and I'm always a fan of thinking that Jesus is coming on Thursday because no one's expecting him on a

Thursday. Everyone's thinking he's gonna be here on a Friday, that makes sense, or maybe a

Sunday, but a Thursday? No way. So if Jesus shows up on Thursday, what am

I supposed to do between now and Thursday? Answer.

The same thing that I've been doing every other day. The church is under marching orders, and the marching orders are this, to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Christ's name to all nations, to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching all that Christ has commanded. How long is the church under that order?

Until Jesus' return. So we are to be busy about that, even in the face of persecution, tribulation, and world craziness, until Jesus shows up.

And the book of Revelation gives us comfort in letting us know that there's, yeah, there's some really wicked stuff coming.

And Jesus has told us ahead of time, the scriptures have told us ahead of time, and we are called in the book of Revelation to patient endurance.

Patient endurance. And what over and again happens is that within the pre -trib camp is that they are constantly saying, this is it, this is it.

Jesus is just around the corner. Again, I point out, by Hal Lindsey.

That thing came out in the 70s. And I remember the movie, Thief in the Night. Had to watch it when

I was in junior high. That thing gave me nightmares. For real, gave me nightmares.

And I still have that song stuck in my head from time to time. Life was filled with guns and wars and everyone got trampled on the floor.

Wish we'd all been ready. Right? And by the way, did

Jesus come back in the 1970s? If you were to read the late great planet

Earth today, all of the geopolitical things that Hal Lindsey was pointing to as prophetic proof that Jesus' return is right around the corner.

Is anybody talking about those geopolitical things today? No, not one of them.

Well, when the 70s came and went and Jesus decided that he was still golfing somewhere behind the rings of Saturn, what did

Hal Lindsey do? He wrote another book. 1980s.

Countdown to Armageddon. Does anyone here believe that the 1980s are now the countdown to Armageddon?

Everybody's looking back at the 80s and what are they doing? They're watching the Star Wars movies, the Back to the Future movies, and people are looking longingly at the really cool fashion that I wore for real when

I was in the 1980s. Kids who are trying to emulate those fashions. But please, please keep the mullet back in the 80s.

Do not bring it forward into now. My only request, the mullet stays.

Do not bring that back. In all of this intense searching of Scripture, they missed the portion of a prophet whose predictions don't come true is done?

Yeah, yeah. Oh no, it's baseball now. That was a ball. You get to go again.

Yeah, yeah. So you get the idea here. So the purpose of the study of Revelation is to give us comfort, and the call in the book of Revelation is for patient endurance.

Why? Because the devil is raging against the church.

And you'll see this when we get to Revelation 12 and 13, that the devil has created two monstrosities for the purpose of waging war against the saints and against the church.

One is the ten -headed beast, and the other is the false prophet, the false beast that causes people to worship the first beast.

And we'll have to look at all of that. And in the midst of all of this, it calls for patient endurance. Why? Because Christians are going to be martyred and die.

There's a time coming where Christ says in Matthew 24 that all nations will hate you for My name's sake.

It doesn't say some or most. It says all. Right now, you can still look at a map and look at the persecuted church throughout the world, and there's hot spots.

You know, Saudi Arabia and Islamic countries, hot spots where Christians are being persecuted,

China and stuff like this. There is a time coming when the whole world will be a hot spot for persecution of Christians.

That's what Christ says. So buckle up is the best way

I can put it. Now, let me do some teaching before I circle back on questions, okay?

You want to say something, Dave? Okay. You just, you know, patient endurance.

Yeah, and I would say this. I would like to remind everybody, if you step off the sidewalk and get hit by a bus this afternoon, it is the end of the world for you.

So just keep that in mind. You know, the standard way in which the end of the world has been coming to Christians is through normal death, you know, by one means or another.

So having read then Revelation 1, we read last week, and we noticed the comfort that was given to us in Revelation 1, and how

Christ is comforting and saying that he has the keys of death and Hades, and he's giving us the mystery of what is to come.

First order of business then, Christ has instructed the apostle John to be a scribe for him.

And here's where we need to watch very carefully what is happening, and that is that you'll note that these letters are written to specific churches, and as a result of that, these churches then could become, if you would, archetypical churches that still exist to this day.

And so it is a good idea as in reading these letters that Christ has written to these seven churches that you look at your own church, your own congregation, and ask yourself, is our church guilty of the things that Christ is faulting these other churches for?

And you'll note that the call then is for repentance. And there's one particular church that really has gone super far off the rails, but we'll pay attention to the details here in a minute.

So Revelation chapter 2, to the angel of the church in Ephesus write.

Now this is a phrase that could cause some confusion because now you're asking the question, are there angels associated with specific churches?

Are we talking about, you know, like spirits with wings and swords and stuff like that?

Well, a more natural reading of the text is the Greek word here is angelos.

An angel is a messenger. So in every congregation there is a fellow, or maybe some congregations are large enough, they have a couple of fellows.

But in every congregation there is a fellow who is tasked with the job of preaching the word. He is the guy who brings the gospel, who teaches the biblical text.

So it is not doing violence to the text to kind of de -spiritualize this a little bit. To the angel of the church of Ephesus, who is this being addressed to?

The pastor of the church of Ephesus. He is the messenger sent by God. These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.

And you'll note that this is, again, the golden lampstands, this is an invocation of the real temple, the real tabernacle that's in the heavenlies.

Christ is walking among them. This is talking about his holiness. He says, I know your works.

Now stop, full stop for a second. Christ is the Lord of heaven and earth, and he is the

Lord of the church. Does Christ know what Kongsvinger is doing?

Yeah, you betcha. Of course. He knows our works, he knows our strengths, he knows our weaknesses, and he knows the things to which we are being called to repent of if there's things to be called.

And you'll note that Christ, in these letters, where there is something to be praised,

Christ calls out and recognizes those good works. And listen to what he says. I know your works,

I know your toil, and I know your patient endurance. So you'll note that this is a congregation that is doing a lot of things right.

I know how you cannot bear with those who are evil. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you've found them to be false.

Is Jesus rebuking them for finding those false apostles to be false? No. And so you'll note that this church, this congregation in Ephesus has much that Christ recognizes that they should be doing, ought to be doing, and are doing.

And that truth is something that is important to them. They patiently endure, even in the face of persecution, and they are toiling away, as we are, as Christians called to toil.

Preaching the gospel, baptizing, making disciples, proclaiming Christ, teaching all that he has commanded, even testing those who claim to be apostles and are not, and found them to be false.

And I know you are enduring patiently, which is what the major theme of this book is.

For all churches to endure patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you've not grown weary.

You can see the high priority then. This is a church that for the most part, they are on point, and Christ recognizes that.

But watch what he says. I have this against you. You've abandoned the love that you had at first.

Ouch. You've abandoned the love that you had at first. Yeah, so you're gonna note here, this is a big deal that they've abandoned the love that they had at first.

This is not a minor point. This is a big, big deal.

And you're gonna note, this hearkens then to what Christ says in the Olivet Discourse.

When Jesus says that in the last days, because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many will grow cold.

The fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self -control.

So this is an important bit. So here we've got a church that got sound doctrine.

They are easily spotting false apostles. They are not putting up with them and their shenanigans at all, but they have zero love.

That's not gonna work. The central message of Christianity is what?

That's the law. What's the gospel? It's forgiven that God so loved the world.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. You see, we love because he first loved us.

And it's because we have been loved and forgiven that we then in love.

And so you'll note, when it comes to finding false apostles, testing people, patient endurance and all this kind of stuff, if the reason why you're hunting down false apostles or false prophets is to let everybody know how smart you are, that's not done in love.

If you are obeying Christ and finding false apostles and prophets and not putting up with them for the sake of the church, for the sake of those whom

Christ has bled and died for, even for their sake so that they can repent and be brought to faith in Christ, that's love.

But I'll be blunt. I've seen far too many people who their purpose for finding fault or finding error theologically has nothing to do with love for the saints or love for Christ or a call to the gospel or for people's repentance.

The reason why they're warning everybody is because they're the ones who've cracked the code.

They know what's really going on. Everybody else, they're just buffoons. But that's not how this works.

The idea here is that everything, even a sharp rebuke, must be for the sake of the saints.

It must be for the sake of those who are deceived. It must be for the sake of the deceiver so that they can be brought back.

And so you'll note then, let's take a look at a text I think is quite vital in this regard.

Let me open this one up. I'm going to duplicate that. And we are going to go to Titus. And I want you to consider what the

Apostle Paul says here. Consider how sharply he says it and then note here that this is not contrary to love but in accord with love.

So regarding the duties of the pastoral office and who's qualified to hold that office.

This is Titus 1 5. Paul says, This is why I left you in Crete so that you might put what remained in order.

Appoint elders in every town as I directed you. And you're going to note here, here we have a clear text that teaches us that pastors are to be appointed in every town.

And that's what an elder is. These are the presbyteroi. These are the pastors of these different congregations. Pastors are being installed into the churches in the different towns.

And here are the qualifications. If anyone is above reproach, husband of one wife, his children are believers, not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.

An overseer is God's steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant, must not be quick -tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self -controlled, upright, holy, disciplined.

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

So you're going to note here, these are the duties of a pastor. And that is going to include rebuking people who teach contrary to sound doctrine.

So the rebuke itself is not contrary to love, but the rebuke is not the point.

The rebuke is the method by which they are being brought back to soundness of faith.

So here's what he says. For there are many who are insubordinate. They are. They are empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.

And you'll note that the Apostle Paul really seems to be obsessed with those circumcision party guys.

There was sharp, sharp conflict between the circumcision group and the

Apostle Paul, and Paul never once backed down. In fact, the Apostle Paul even rebuked the

Apostle Peter to his face when his actions were contrary to the gospel.

So much for the infallibility of the Pope, right? So watch what he says.

There are many insubordinate, empty talkers, and deceivers. They must be silenced.

You don't understand love. For the sake of the sheep, they must be silenced because they're harming them.

For their own sake, they must be silenced because they are risking their own eternal souls.

They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

And then watch where Paul goes here. This is just like as politically incorrect as it gets.

One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.

It's not a very flattering picture of Cretans. Somebody might say, Cretan lives matter. This is just racism, right?

But watch what he says here. This testimony is true. Rebuke them sharply so that they may be sound in the faith.

The rebuke is not the point. The rebuke is so that they would be sound. So that they would not devote themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth.

So you'll note then, when it comes to a rebuke, when it comes to finding false doctrine, when it comes to identifying a false teacher, or a false apostle, or a false prophet, the rebuke is so that they would be sound in the faith.

The rebuke is for them, not to be against them. The rebuke is for their followers to have their eyes open to the truth so that they would not be deceived.

And have their pockets picked by these people who are teaching for shameful gain the things they ought not to teach.

So to the one who is pure, all things are pure. But to the defiled, the unbelieving, nothing is pure.

Both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works.

They are detestable. They are disobedient. And they are unfit for any good work.

Now another thing here, and this is worth pointing out in this regard, in Luke chapter 17, the question comes up regarding forgiveness.

And I want you to consider what Christ says in this regard. Luke 17 1, Jesus said to His disciples, temptation to sin are sure to come.

And you've got to note here, temptations to sin come in all stripes.

Temptations to sin against the first table of God's law, you will have no other gods.

And temptations to sin against the second table of God's law in relation to our relationship with each other.

Temptations to murder, to adultery, to theft, to bearing false witness, to coveting.

Temptations to sin come in all stripes, including the temptation to sin through false doctrine and other things.

Woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea.

Then he should cause one of the little ones to sin. And so you'll note, Christ here, who's

He concerned for? Technically, He's concerned for both parties. The one who is causing temptations to sin, but He's also very concerned for His little ones, that they would be tempted to sin.

So pay attention to yourselves, He said. And watch this. If your brother sins, rebuke him.

If he repents, forgive him. Oh, and by the way, a rebuke doesn't go something like this.

I rebuke you. That's not a rebuke. Okay? So a rebuke would be something like this.

All right? I've discovered that one of you is on social media spreading lies about another member of the congregation.

The rebuke goes something like this. I sit you down and I say, you're breaking the Eighth Commandment. You need to repent.

You're sinning against your brother or sister in Christ and you need to apologize and you need to be reconciled to them.

And if you say, you're right, I repent. What do you do?

Forgive. Right? And how many times is that?

How much forgiveness do they get? All right. So if they do it again, 70 times in the day, seven times in the day, and then seven times says to you,

I repent. What do you do? You forgive them. So you know, the purpose of a rebuke, the purpose of a correction is not the rebuke.

The purpose of the rebuke is for their repentance. And if they say, yeah, yeah, that's right.

I was wrong. You forgive. Now this does not mean that you cannot pre -forgive them, that you have to hold a grudge against somebody.

But the whole purpose of the rebuke is for them to repent so that they can be forgiven.

Because sin is slavery. False doctrine is idolatry.

So when in your quest to remain faithful to Christ and His word, there is no love, and the rebuke becomes the point, not the repentance, you have no love anymore.

None. And so when we go back then to what Christ says,

I have this against you. You have abandoned the love that you had at first. Listen to what Christ says.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first.

So who's doing the rebuking here? Jesus. To whom?

A church that's become really good at rebuking. But there's no love. So the rebuking church is now getting a rebuke.

And He says to them, repent and do the works that you did at first.

If not, I will come to you and I will remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

I don't know, that's kind of a big deal. Jesus says, I'm shutting down your church. Sick and tired of you guys acting completely contrary to love.

I hear truth, truth, truth, but never love, grace, forgiveness, mercy. The rebuke is your point rather than the repentance.

Jesus says, that's it. I'm going to take your church. I don't know, that's pretty strong.

What do you think? Read it out.

We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates His brother, he is a liar.

For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

And this commandment we have from Him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. When Barb and I were in high school, part of this epistle was made into a song.

I don't know if anyone else sang it, but there was clap. Come on, you know the song.

Beloved, let us love one another, love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loveth is born of God, and knoweth

God. He who loveth not, loveth not God, for God is love.

Beloved, let us love one another, 1 John 4, 7 and 8.

Thank you, sir. I accept that rebuke, but I can't repent, right?

I think it was sung here too. You think it was sung here too? Okay, good. So you're gonna know here, this is a big deal.

Let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows

God. Anyone who does not love does not know

God, because God is love. So in this, the love of God was made manifest among us.

So God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved

God, but that he has loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

So by this we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit. You get the idea, right?

So if the point is the rebuke and not the repentance, if the point is being right rather than reconciliation, that's not love.

That's not love. That's something different. So let's keep going.

I will come and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Yet this you have, you hate the works of the

Nicolaitans, which I also hate. I want you to let that sink in for a second here. Did Jesus just say, those are red letters, did

Jesus just say that he hates? Yeah. Now you're going to note here that hating the works of the

Nicolaitans is not contrary to love. Now, who are the Nicolaitans?

Does anyone know? I mean, there's such scant information about them. A lot of conjecture.

Yeah. We think, almost everything I've read said they were proto -Gnostics.

Proto -Gnostics, okay. So what we do know about them, and we know just a smidge from the extant writings of the church fathers, they were proto -Gnostics, so they do not believe that the body is anything that should be considered at all.

That the spirit is everything and the flesh is nothing, and the material world is an accident of one of the demiurges.

And as a result of that, because they believed that the spirit is good and that matter didn't matter, they were known for their sexual immorality.

Because if matter doesn't matter, then gross and egregious sins and treating your body in such a terrible way and the bodies of others in such a terrible way is of no consequence.

So they were Gnostics and Antinomian to boot. The two seem to go hand in hand, by the way.

It's a funny thing. So you'll note that Christ, regarding the

Gnostics who are also Antinomian, Jesus says, I also hate their works.

Notice it doesn't say Jesus hates them. He hates their works. He who has an ear, let him hear what the

Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

Now this is a promise to everybody, not just to the church of Ephesus. Again, how does one conquer?

Through penitent faith in Jesus. Bearing fruit and keeping with repentance.

Everything hinges on salvation by grace through faith alone.

Now real quick, I'm going to take a look at questions. Wow, things got moving pretty quick here.

Okay. Good thing it wasn't Vidal Sassoon Jesus. Yeah, I threatened them with Care Bear Jesus rather than Vidal Sassoon Jesus.

Care Bear Jesus, what a ridiculous thing. Anyway, so constantly moving the goalposts and changing the narrative is classic narcissistic abusive behavior.

Yes, you are right. That is classic narcissistic abuse behavior.

Tony Campbell, we can make a killing in real estate with solid theology. Forget the television commercials.

Only real estate in the new earth. And I'm not sure how the titles work. I can tell you that teaching sound doctrine is no way to become rich.

I know this for a fact. Okay, are the Prashites running around the landscape binding the spirit of Care Bear Jesus?

Not exactly, Roger. But I will say this, is that they do not seem to ever properly address something.

Once they're shown to be incorrect, they circle back and create a straw man and then defeat that and then find a way to just move on.

And so you had Prash out there saying, and also

Chavez out there saying, the Doreen Virtue is teaching this vision of Jesus and Roseboro is promoting it.

And it's like, what planet do you live on? So I appear on Virtue's YouTube channel and she renounces

Care Bear Jesus and I specifically call it Care Bear Jesus. And she recognizes that it's origin is not from God but from the devil, from scripture, which

I walk through with her. And so they just change the narrative. You get the idea.

Will there be an Eschatology 102? Thinking about that, Lewis, thinking about it, how that would work.

But it might involve kind of a long series on the Book of Revelation specifically designed for being streamlined for YouTube.

But that would be along the lines of what we're looking for. Okay, so does a belief in the rapture dispensationalism point of view disqualify someone from fellowship?

The answer is technically no. And here's the reason why, is that we recognize that Eschatology is tertiary at best.

And because the Book of Revelation is so hard to unpack, we don't consider somebody to not be a

Christian if they're holding to these views. But the idea then is that within confessional

Lutheranism, Kiliasm is actually is put down as an invalid

Eschatology. So to be a confessional Lutheran and hold to pre -tribulationism is contrary to the confessions, which

I would argue is contrary to scripture. So, you know, but the thing is is that I don't look at somebody, for instance, my good friend

Phil Johnson, who works for John MacArthur, and Phil and I, we talk with some frequency, we're constantly chatting with each other, and we have widely different views regarding the end of the world and how it's all going to play out.

But the thing is, I don't look at him and sit there and go, well, Phil, since you're pre -trib, that means

I can't consider you to be a brother in Christ. Yeah, yeah,

I always tell Phil that when Christ returns or when he dies, he'll be a Lutheran, so, you know.

One of my best friends for years was Ken Silva of Uprising Ministries.

He was a Reformed Baptist preacher in New Hampshire. And we fought so many battles together against the emergent church movement.

And we oftentimes would coordinate our blogs and things like that when we were working against the emergent guys.

And so I'd just finish an episode of Fighting for the Faith and I'd call

Ken up on the phone and he'd say, oh, that was awesome, you hit him right between the shoulder plexus.

He always had these football analogies. And he says, tomorrow on my blog I'm going to go down the middle and I'm going to take out

Tony Jones, and this is how we'd talk and stuff like this. And so I'd say, well, that's very interesting.

And then we'd always, he'd steer into, so do you think we're getting close to the return of Christ? I'd say, yeah, I think so, but he could still be a hundred thousand years off.

I'm not exactly sure how much more intense it's going to be. And we'd talk about things like this. And I'd say, that's okay,

Ken. When you die, you're going to be a Lutheran. And he goes, well, at least you think I'm going to be in heaven with you. Wasn't that one of the original goals and purposes of the creeds was these are the boundaries.

If you're inside this creed, we're fellow Christians. If you're outside of that Mormonism, then we've got issues and we can't fellowship.

And you'll note that within the creeds, the three ecumenical creeds in particular, so when we look at the

Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed, we believe that Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead.

So where's the line then? Well, the line starts getting drawn when you get to the end of the world and what

Peter prophesies, that there will be scoffers who basically say, everything's been going on the same way ever since the beginning of the world.

Jesus isn't really coming back. That's just some kind of weird, strange thing. He didn't really mean that. That's outside, right?

So the idea then is that within what would be considered consistent with the

Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, is the belief that Christ is going to return. And what ends up happening is that people will say, well, unless you believe that Jesus is going to return, that there's a physical temple that's going to be rebuilt in Jerusalem, and that the

Antichrist is going to do particular things in that specific temple, well then you're not really a Christian. Really.

You know, really. No one's held that view until very recently. And you're making people out to be heretics who don't believe in that particular eschatological prognostication, which only showed up last

Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah?

Yeah. Well, whether you embrace it or not, if Jesus shows up tomorrow, you will be embraced.

Yeah, that's right. Exactly. And so you'll note that as Christians, when do we think

Jesus is coming back? Tomorrow? Maybe this afternoon? I'm ready for that now.

And he might not show up until, you know, the year 3794. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you'll note. The being ready and the patient endurance is now.

It's now. And as we get farther into the book of Revelation, you'll see that this is stuff that's relevant now, not just for like when the final bits start to show up.

This is relevant now. All right, let me take a look at some other questions here. Okay, another

YouTube video describing Revelation much the way 101 did with Matthew, Thessalonians, and Peter.

Okay, Roger says, the Schofield Reference Bible. Yeah, that's it. You know, I think you're right on this.

He says, there's a big problem in another area. It advocated the so -called gap theory in Genesis.

And this has caused a lot of problems in evangelicalism in general. And I would note that the

Schofield Reference Bible was kind of the go -to Bible for a while by the fundamentalists.

And the fundamentalists put up a valiant fight against the liberals of their day.

And it started well. But what ended up happening is a portion of the fundamentalists, you know, they ended up like adding their eschatological view from the

Schofield Reference Bible and made it an ironclad litmus test for orthodoxy.

And it's like, and you'll note that once you do that, your circle starts getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

You know, it's just really crazy. All right, so Luis says, my generation had gaucho pants.

Well, okay. Yeah, nobody's perfect. Okay, Carlos.

Charismatics would push the notion that we have to constantly be ready to ensure that we've confessed our sins to be forgiven at every moment since we don't know when

Christ would return. Now, this is an interesting point, Carlos, because, again, we are saved by grace through faith alone, apart from works.

And when you start talking in this way, you are creating a salvation schema based upon whether or not you have confessed all of your sins.

That starts to sound eerily like Rome. The reality is this, is that we do not fully understand the magnitude of all of our sin.

We just don't. And I'm convinced if God allowed us to feel the crushing weight and guilt for just how sinful we are, we probably wouldn't survive the experience.

And so you are not going to be able to recount all of your sins. Period. So that's not what it means to be ready.

Because then you're sitting there going, well, when I was five, I remember calling

Jane a gunky head and I put gum in her hair. Did I properly apologize for that?

I don't remember. And actually, I didn't put gum in her hair. It was Jimmy who did that, but that's a different story.

You'd never get anything done. Yeah, no, you'd never get anything done. And you know who tried this route?

Luther. How many confessors did he wear out a day? Right?

So you're nonsense. Let me keep reading the question. So if in that very instant you're unforgiven sin, you're left behind from the rapture, who would be raptured?

Nobody, by the way, Carlos. Then if no one knows the day or the hour, if we're constant in need of Christ's gift of faith, grace, and forgiveness.

You see, the thing is, is that we're not called to sweat all that stuff. And this is one of the reasons why I love how the divine service begins.

I forgive you all of your sins, the pastor says, in the stead and by the command of Christ.

It's not his forgiveness, it's Christ's. How many of all of your sins are all of your sins? It's all of them, right?

Louis says, that sounds like what we were taught in Catholic Church. We had to be ready, caught up on all of our works at any time.

Well, then you're never going to be saved. If works become the basis of your salvation, being ready, good luck.

You'll never be ready. And anyone who says they are is lying. Okay, many thanks for the pointer to the

Social Gospel Coalition article. Yeah, thank you, Roger. I'm glad that that's helpful. And if you

Google, by the way, if you Google Darby and the rapture, you can see that really, this thing is a newcomer in Christian history.

Brady says, false doctrine is idolatry. How does that work with doctrine that would be a secondary or tertiary doctrine?

So Brady here and Heather, kind of think of it this way, is that we go with what

Scripture says. False Jesus, false Christ, false spirit, false gospel.

These put you outside of Christianity. These invoke the anathemas of Scripture. Then you look at Apollos, who came into town and had a bad baptismal theology.

His baptismal theology was all wet. He was still considered a Christian, but he needed to be corrected. And so as Lutherans, we recognize that the

Scriptures make the distinction between primary and secondary. So there's going to be questions regarding this stuff.

And so that knowing where the primary and secondary limits are set by Scripture, it makes it possible for us to sit down with an open

Bible where there is an open question, where there is something that needs to be addressed. And so the idea here is that we don't just start anathematizing somebody because their eschatology is off.

So that's kind of the idea. And so as Lutherans, we don't have a high tolerance for secondary issues within our congregations.

But at the same time, we recognize that the body of Christ is much bigger than Lutheranism.

Much bigger than Lutheranism. And somebody's going to take this quote out of context and say,

Chris Roseborough is an ecumenicist. No.

Now you've got to send Gumby Jesus out. Yeah, that's right. And I would note here, if anyone wants to accuse me of being an ecumenicist,

I would say, no, let me correct you. I'm Catholic, small c. I believe in the universal church.

The universal church is bigger than the AALC or the Missouri Senate or anything like that. That's the idea.

All right. Tony, okay. So response to those selling their property for the rapture, which makes no sense.

Okay, Phil doesn't do the crazy dating thing as the pre -tribber. I gave up pre -tribbing many years ago.

Second Thessalonians 2. Very good, yeah. And you're right, Phil does not. But Phil also is an adept observer of what does happen within the pre -trib camp.

He very much notes that they have this really bad habit of setting dates and things like that. Okay, is the pre -trib what

NAR emphasizes so much with the bride making herself perfect? No. NAR, their doctrine is called post -tribute.

It's post -millennialism. And they won't tell you that, but that's what it's called.

And so post -millennialism, at least vis -a -vis their view, is that the bride has to make herself perfect, has to make herself completely clean before Christ will return.

And so you're going to see versions of post -millennialism in the NAR. You're going to see it in the emergent church movement, and also in parts of the reform camp.

They are openly post -millennial. So yeah, we can talk about that.

But there's this idea that in their view, things are going to get better and better and better and better and better to the point where it's practically paradise on earth, and then

Jesus shows up and says, good job. Way to go. You've really finally cleaned it up to place, and now I can come back, and now

I'm king. Very good. You've heard of the second coming. Yeah. Yeah, so the second coming is like, it's an end -lock achievement.

It's also kind of interesting that everybody, it's not exactly convenient if it's beyond their own lifetime of life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you'll note that there's different versions of predictions, too.

There's specific predictions and then there's vague ones. Harold Camping's predictions were very specific, and then

Hagee and the Four Blood Moons, very non -specific, okay? But who's buying the

Blood Moons books now? Nobody, because, you know, I survived the Four Blood Moons and all I got was a lousy

T -shirt for it. But the idea, then, is that they always do set dates in some way, because there's money to be made in kind of whipping people up into a fearful end -times frenzy, but that's not the purpose of the

Book of Revelation, okay? Let's see here. So, yeah, the

Seven Mountain Mandate is a form of post -millennialism. Would make an interesting movie book sort of the opposite of It's a

Wonderful Life. It was a terrible life. Good point. Okay, doesn't the

Roman Catholic Church teach some form of dominionism? You're wrong to think of Roman Catholicism as kind of monolithic or uniform in their theology.

You can kind of point to their catechism and say that's the beginning point, but I would say this, that the

Roman Catholic Church is as diverse as evangelicalism. There are camps, there are fraternities, there are different groups that teach different things.

Let's just say Rome has been historically heavy on the return of Christ and judgment in relation to purgatory and things like this.

And Jesus, when He comes back, He's going to be pretty upset. It's a good way to put it. So you better get all of your rosaries counted and things like that and say all your

Hail Marys and make sure that your Masses are up to date. But everything works from fear and domination.

But to say that it's a form of dominionism, there are forms of dominionism within Rome, but that doesn't mean that they're the mainstream of their theology.

All right, we are going to end there. Hopefully that was helpful and not too confusing.

We'll continue with the letters to the churches next week starting off with Smyrna. All right, thanks for joining us all.