Cowards And Conquers Of The End-Times Church — Steve Gallagher

The Book of Revelation and the End of the Story

Of the book of Revelation today. And I suppose the book of Revelation is my favorite book. I've certainly spent more time in it than any other book. I just love the book of Revelation. It's just such a powerful site.

Aren't you grateful to know where things are headed? You know, if we were facing the things that we've heard about, but we didn't know how the story ended, think how demoralizing and how difficult that would be.

But we know the story. We know how it ends. We know basically, maybe not all the details, but we have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen. And you know, the book of Revelation is, if I could put it in real simple terms, it is the story of how God is going to bring all things under subjection to Jesus Christ.

And I appreciated what Brother Mark said about the kingdom theology deal. And you know, I do believe that God is going to pour out His Spirit in a wonderful way, but it's not to somehow take over the kingdoms of this earth.

That's ridiculous. I agree. But anyway, what the whole book of Revelation is about is God is giving to His Son this world and all these different plagues and you know, pouring out of these different plagues and so on.

And all that is about is bringing to a culmination this world system, which John called Babylon. And that's what it's all about, okay? But there is a message in the book of Revelation, and that's what I want to talk about today.

And it kind of goes along with what I shared with that pastor last night, and that's what I'll get to here in a while. But there is a message in the book of Revelation that you see it all the way through.

Once you become acclimated to what is being expressed in there, in the book, you start to see it. The book basically opens up saying, blessed is the man who reads this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it read and pay attention to its message, for the time is near.

You know, so that's kind of how things open up. Now, if we were doing inductive Bible study on Revelation chapter 1, you know, K. Arthur would tell us, well, one of the important things you need to do is find out the who, what, why, where, and when of the chapter, you know, and all that sort of stuff.

So in that basic mindset, let's just look at the who and the what here of this statement. Who is this being expressed to? It's being expressed to those who hear and read this message. In other words, Christians, right?

That's who it's being expressed to, not to pagans or whatever. It's being expressed to Christians. Now, throughout the book of Revelation, there are three groups. First, there are those who dwell upon the earth, as the NAS says it.

It is the unbelieving world out there, and there are billions of people who want nothing to do with God. They are headed in a direction. They will end up in Armageddon one day because they are in rebellion to God's authority.

They want nothing to do with God's authority or anything else with the Lord, and they make no pretense about it. Okay, we understand that they are there. Then there's this tiny, infinitesimal little group called the saints, a word that is used 13 times in the book of Revelation.

Anytime the Lord is talking about his people in the book of Revelation, he uses this term, and it's really not that way throughout the rest of the New Testament. The term is there, but it's not used like it is in Revelation.

And then there's this third group. It's like a weird hybrid, and Brother Mark mentioned the harlot church, and that's what I'm talking about. You see it in Revelation 17, where this harlot is riding the beast.

It's a hybrid of Christians who are in the world, both. You know, saints are separated from it. Those who dwell upon the earth are given over to this world system, and this hybrid, they're in between.

They've got one foot in the world, one foot in the church, as we've heard said before. But really the reality is, I think I said this maybe last night, outwardly they are professing believers. They say all the right things, you know, hey, we're going to have church tonight, hallelujah, praise the Lord.

And, you know, all that sort of stuff. It's the religious system we just heard about. But inwardly, their hearts are given over to the spirit of the world. So this message that is going forth through the book of Revelation is a message to Christians.

Not to those who dwell on the earth, they're not interested, but to churchgoers, apostate Christians, and to saints. All right, so what is the message? Here it is. You want to know? Could you act like you care?

Okay, here it is. You must conquer. That's the message. You must be an overcomer. You must be committed to victory. You must go into this battle, which will intensify in the days ahead. You must go into it with the mindset that I will be an overcomer.

Is this dangling around my ear, making me look funny? No? No, you just look funny anyway, okay. So the book of Revelation begins, you know, with an introduction there in the first chapter. Dave will straighten me out.

And then we go right into seven messages that Jesus has for these different churches. And basically at the end of each of those messages, Jesus says something, to him who overcomes. And then he makes some wonderful, glorious promise, doesn't he?

And I'll just read the first one to the book of Ephesus. Thank you, David. And this is in the living Bible, and I'm only reading it out of this because it just sounds nice, you know, the way they wrote it.

Let this message sink into the ears of anyone who listens to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. This is Revelation 2 -7. To everyone who is victorious, to everyone who overcomes, to everyone who conquers, okay.

To everyone who is victorious, I will give fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God. All right, so this message about being a conqueror through, through the ordeal coming upon this earth is throughout the whole book.

And you see it here and there, and you know, I don't want to get into that. That's not the purpose of what I'm sharing about. But I will bring it down to the last message, or the last reference to it in chapter 21.

Let me read this verse to you. The one who conquers will inherit these things. Now he's been talking about the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, okay, in those first few verses in chapter 21. And then verse 5, he says, the one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

Praise the Lord. That's where we're headed. But to the cowards, and then he goes into a list and, you know, offers up some different people with different sinful attitudes and practices and so on. I'm just focusing on this word, cowards.

But to the cowards, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. Okay, so here's the title of my message today. Cowards, the Cowards and Conquerors of the End Times Church. Cowards and Conquerors of the End Times Church.

And they're right there. Actually, they're throughout the whole book. If you, once you have eyes to see and you're, you know, you get a sight of it, then you start seeing it everywhere. Cowards or Conquerors.

The Present Test of Courage

So let me ask you a question, because this is the overriding question, at least in my heart. I don't know about you. When I hear these sorts of things, the thing that rises up within me is, how am I going to react?

When there is overwhelming pressure to conform ourselves, you know, the message coming through CNN and all the other worldly outlets, conform, conform. And everywhere you turn, you know, even the apostate Christians are pressuring you because you're an embarrassment to them.

You know, and all this pressure to conform, how are you going to react? What about when your family turns on you? What about Christians that you know, when they turn on you? What about the world? What about the authorities, even?

What are you going to do? What makes you think that you're going to be able to handle it the right way? And this is what I'll say, dear ones. Your current lifestyle is a prediction of how you will handle that pressure later.

Your lifestyle, the way you live your life right now is a prediction. You are predicting. You are laying a course. This is where you're headed. Now I want to talk, I'm going to approach this from this standpoint.

I don't like being negative necessarily, but, you know, it'll just be a nice little way to do it. Three characteristics of apostate Christians. And here they are. I'll tell you right up front because they sound nice.

Sacrifice, separation, and sanctification. That's a sign of a really good preacher. You know, when they can get them all to sound alike like that. You know, you guys just, you know, you stare at me with your mouths hanging open.

That's a joke, you know. That means you're supposed to laugh or chuckle or something. All right. This is just a tough crowd tonight, Mark. I was kind of hoping you'd warm them up for me, but maybe it's the subject.

Seriously speaking, these three characteristics, how would apostate Christians handle things? In this area of sacrifice, apostate Christians, I'm going to make this statement. Apostate Christians are spiritual cowards because they are unwilling to put the needs of others before their own.

Sacrificial Love Versus Self-Centeredness

That's the first point. You know, there is something about, well, it's like I shared last night. You know, the self-life in an apostate Christian is fully intact. I know they go to church. I know they read all the latest Christian books, and I know they listen to Christian radio.

But their self-life is basically fully intact. And so because their self-life is intact, you know, they are essentially, they may be nice people, but essentially they're self-centered. And that's just the way it is.

But you know something? It often takes a crisis to prove the mettle of a person's character, doesn't it? A lot of people just get by in life. They kind of slide through life, and you don't really know what they're made of until they are thrown into a crisis situation.

Heroes and cowards don't always stand out in everyday life. Sometimes they have to be put into circumstances that are going to push them one way or the other. I don't know if you remember about a year ago, the captain of that Italian ship, was on a Greek island.

And man, I mean, first of all, he was being reckless. He wasn't paying attention. He was showing off. He runs this ocean liner, this cruise vessel, into the rocks. And then, you know, the ship's captain's responsibility is to stay at that ship.

He should be the very last person to leave that ship. He does not leave the ship until every single passenger is safely evacuated and so on. But this guy was on the first boat out of there. He said later, you know, he kind of excused himself and said, well, I tripped and fell into the lifeboat.

He probably tripped over some older lady or something as he was stomping his way through. But anyway, that is a picture of cowardice, isn't it? I mean, it's a natural, in the natural realm, it's a picture of cowardice.

But what about on the other side? One of the most wonderful stories, because it just couldn't be a natural thing, is the story of Corey and Betsy Ten Boom. You know, World War II is going on and Gestapo headquarters is right around the corner from them.

But you know something? When there was a need, these Jews started showing up looking for help. These two little old ladies, probably the most unlikely heroines in the entire Europe, you know, but they went to work.

They knew what to do. You know why? Because for years they had already been living selfless lives. They had already been giving out to other people. They had already been involved in the needs of other people.

So when the crisis broke, what did they do? Just what they've always done. That's what happened. They just did what they've always done. And you know, it's really the same way either way. I don't know if you remember the story in the movie, if you saw the movie, where the minister comes and he wants to get his watch worked on, and they have just gotten this little Jewish baby in, and Betsy says, praise the Lord, the Lord must have sent you, because they live out in the country, and what better place to take a baby and, you know, spare it?

And so this minister, how did he react? Well, that's illegal. You know, I've got my family to think about. This was a man who's supposedly giving his life away for the sake of others, but obviously he wasn't.

You know, because the first thing he could think of was protecting himself. And that's the way a coward always thinks, isn't it? You know, if you go through life looking out for number one in your daily life, what do you think you're going to do when everything's collapsing around you?

You're going to do more of the same, aren't you? But if you have a track record of giving yourself away, being involved in other people, meeting needs, loving people, as Brother Mark said, then what's going to happen?

You're going to do what's been natural for you to do. The track record. That's all that's going to come out of you is just more of the same. Persecution becomes an opportunity for people who have the Lord living within them.

You know, it just becomes an opportunity. I don't know why we would expect the Ten Booms to react to the need of the day any differently than they did, because they had a long track record of being that way.

You know, it's interesting to me also in Revelation 12, you remember the passage, it was talking about Satan being the accuser of the brethren and so on, and then it said that the saints would overcome him, remember, they would overcome him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony.

In other words, even in the midst of fierce opposition and persecution and hostility, they are still speaking forth what Jesus Christ means to me, what Jesus Christ has done for me, how he has rescued me from a life of sin.

They are still speaking it forth. And one other thing, they did not love their life even when faced with death. You know, that's a conqueror. That's someone who has gone through life with that mentality.

But it's a sharp contrast, I mentioned last night that 2 Timothy 3 is a snapshot of the apostate church. It's an end times church, this is what they are like, and what is the very first characteristic?

They will be lovers of self. You know, here you got this group, did not love their life, even when they are facing death, and then you have this group, the apostates, the first thing Paul says about them, when he gets that sight, sitting in that dungeon in Rome, and the Lord just opens his eyes and gives him a sight of what these people look like on the inside, on the inside, their inner man, their inside world, here is what they look like.

And the first thing Paul saw, they just are in love with themselves, soft. You know, just soft, spoiled, self-indulgence. When you think about cowards, really isn't that, there is nothing that will make you a coward like sin and self-indulgence.

It just strips you of your manhood, I guess wouldn't be the way to say it, but what would you say, you know, your nobility of character? Huh? Backbone, yeah, that's a good word. It just strips you, it dissolves your strength of character.

Separation From the World

Okay, number two, the second area that you can see how people will react is in the area of separation, and here is my statement. Apostate Christians are spiritual cowards because they are unwilling to resist the influences and the enticements of this world.

You know, if you can't win the battle with your flesh now, how are you going to win it later? If you can't run with the footmen, how are you going to run with the horses? However it is that Jeremiah says it.

You know, we are living in a time when we still have time, dear ones, to prepare ourselves, to get ourselves in the right mindset. Even if everyone around us is just asleep, which is what scripture tells us will be the case, even if everyone around us is in a sluggish complacency, we can be prepared spiritually.

Revelation uses the word saints, as I mentioned, the word saints is hagios, and hagios is just simply the word holy. You know, so if you were to say the Holy Spirit, it would be pneuma hagios, and, or maybe it's the other way around, hagios pneuma, I always get, Spanish throws me off, you know, because I know enough Spanish to make me dangerous, and so I always want to put words backwards.

But anyway, holy ones, when God looks down from heaven upon his blood-bought saints, what he is saying is they are holy, because I am holy, and I indwell them. By the way, these things that I'm mentioning, it's not like, you know, muster up your courage and do these things.

If Jesus Christ is indwelling you, living within you, there is a compulsion inside you to live your life a certain kind of way. You almost don't even need to be told, but maybe so. Maybe we need the reminder or whatever, but the Lord is always pushing us in a direction.

I want to read a little piece out of my book, Intoxicated with Babylon. This is the first book, you know, of those two I mentioned to you last night. Let me just read this. First, the corporate body of these separated ones is called the church, Greek, ecclesia, which means out of, and kleitos, which means called.

In Old Testament language, God's called out ones were the congregation of the Lord. In the New Testament, they are the church, the called out ones. Having been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of a son, Colossians 1, they would live separated lives from this world system, set apart as consecrated vessels for God's use.

They would be known as saints. Praise the Lord. That's what God expects of his people, and that's what his people are. His real church, his true body. And you know, in Revelation 18, I think you mentioned this, Mark, that cry.

You can just hear almost the pain inside the Lord. Come out of her, my people. Come out of her. So that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues. Well, who's he talking about? He's talking about the harlot church.

There should be a separation in our lives. What this book is all about is separation. It's the spirit of this world and how it has infiltrated and just invaded every aspect of American Christianity, every aspect from the business side of running organizations or ministries or churches to television, to the counseling field, to materialism, and just on and on and on it goes, how we've been corrupted as a people.

But there's an answer, and God can see us through and draw us out of that. I met a couple last night, I don't know if you're here. That couple that wanted to move into an apartment, are you here? Raise your hands if you're here, I don't see you.

Well, I guess that's better, I can talk about them. They're probably 50 years old or so, successful. And they said to me, this is their words, we have been pseudo-Christians for 25 years. They both went to Bible school and just got into the system and was all about materialism and all that.

And somehow God got a hold of them just a few weeks ago and just started shaking them and showing them the emptiness of their lives, living for the things of this world. How vain and how empty and futile this world is and what it offers.

And so what they want to do is sell all their stuff and their house, they got apparently a beautiful house, and they want to just really downsize and move into an apartment. You know, and that's, man, that was just such a blessing to hear that.

You never hear stories like that. You never hear stories like that, or very rarely, you know. I mean, sometimes a young person, they're going to go into ministry or something. But that was such a blessing to me.

And it wasn't out of some legalism or something's been imposed upon them. No, it came from within. It was a fountain of life that has burst forth within. They have seen a different world that they want to live for, not this temporal world.

Sanctification and Conquering the World System

All right, the third area that you'll see this is the area of sanctification, God working in people's lives. The apostate Christians are spiritual cowards because they are unwilling to allow God to deal with them, to discipline them, and to conquer them.

Dear ones, if you're not conquered by God, you cannot conquer this world system. But if you've allowed God to conquer your self-life, you will conquer this world system and the enemy and the flesh. You will.

You will be more than victorious. That's not just cheap talk that Paul talked about. It can be the spiritual reality of our lives. It should be the reality of our lives to be more than conquerors. And, you know, by the way, at the end of the day, there's only two groups.

I know that there is a segment of the church and 10 ,000 false teachers out there that are just adamant that there's three groups, that there's gray area. But there is no gray area in scripture. It's either or all the way through.

You are either on God's side or you are on the side of this world. And when I say on God's side, I'm not talking about just making a nice little pretense, you know, a show of things. I'm talking about sold out, I am in all the way.

There is no third group, really. There's only two groups and there's only two destinations. Now, this word sanctification in the Greek is hagiosmos and it's just, you know, a form of hagios and all it really means is, you know, the process of being made holy.

That's what it really means. And let me just read another little portion here out of this book. Progressive sanctification describes the development of Christian character. It means to mature in the faith.

As the new believer, full of self and all of its baggage of sin, pride, and selfishness, undergoes the sanctifying processes of God, he gradually conforms to the likeness of Christ. Sanctification is how a person is made holy.

It is the process, holiness is the result. You know, that's what the Lord desires to do inside of us. If you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you, I promise you, God is going to be at work inside you. And he will be bringing things into your life.

He'll bring you into different kinds of situations to make you more Christ-like. Holiness is to the soul what health is to the physical body. Freedom from the damaging effects of impurity. That's holiness.

Personal Testimony and Transformation

Now, I don't know if any of you even know anything about me, but I began ministry in 1986. I had been a cop in Los Angeles and totally given over to perversion and, you know, just a blatant, brazen womanizer and so on, and addicted to that lifestyle.

I was in deep trouble and I ended up with a gun to my head. And that's when my life turned around. Praise the Lord. Just another reason to join the, what is it, the NRA, right? But anyway, I had a gun to my head that day and that's when God got a hold of me.

He dealt my self-life a real blow. And then he led me into ministry. I quit the department and began a ministry in 1986, Pure Life Ministries, reaching out to men in sexual sin. And now today, we have a whole facility up in northern Kentucky and with 35 of us on staff, and we have 75 men in this nine-month program, and there's a bunch of other things we do.

And it's all based on, not psychology, it's based on the belief that God has the power to transform the worst sinner. If we were just believing, and we see tremendous transformations all the time. Adam Gardner, my police buddy back there, is one of just thousands, I suppose, whose lives have been changed.

This is a guy who, you know, he works in the inner city down in LA, Atlanta, and, you know, just the worst possible place, and goes into work every night full of the love and the joy of the Lord. Next time you want to complain about how hard it is on your job, try that job, being a sold-out Christian.

He and his wife love God, and that's why he's one of my best friends and why he's been a board member of Pure Life Ministries for years. He went from darkness to light. He got truly saved. He wasn't interested in some half-hearted, compromising sort of lifestyle.

Once God got a hold of him, that's it, man. He heard the message, he saw the light, and he has thrown himself into the things of God. We were talking this morning, he was saying how those first few years, he would spend hours every day with the Lord.

Hours. He was so hungry for God. I'm just sharing one testimony with you. But anyway, I'm way off track now, but the whole point I was trying to get at is, all these years, I've kind of gotten out of Pure Life now, and the Lord has led me in a different direction, more towards giving a message to the church.

But over those 25 years of working in Pure Life Ministries, I've been deeply involved in many, many, many people's lives. You know, when you're in biblical counseling, and especially when you're living with people, you know, live with your counselees sometimes.

You know, this is what my wife and I did. We went to Kentucky, because God told us to. We opened up our home, you know, and brought in sexual addicts to come into our home, and we ministered to them. And you know, you do that for a while, and you start getting involved in people's lives.

You start seeing some things. You start understanding what goes on inside people. So anyway, you know, I've dealt with many courageous souls like Adam over the years. Many stories, many, many stories like that, I could tell you.

But I've also had many cowards that I've dealt with. And one thing I can say about cowards is that usually their greatest fear is looking at themselves, acknowledging the reality of their own hearts. Spiritual cowards lack the courage to face themselves.

That's usually the case, you know. And so that's why they minimize their sin. That's why they blame shift. That's why they justify themselves and rationalize the things they do. That's why all that comes out of them, because we don't want to say that we're wrong.

We don't want to acknowledge that something needs to be changed inside of us. But let me tell you something, dear ones, even though maybe you don't come from a lifestyle of horrendous sin like I've come out of, maybe you don't come out of a life like that, but I guarantee you one thing, until Jesus Christ does a work inside of you, you are not fit for heaven.

I don't care how nice of a person you are. I was up in North Carolina once a few years ago, and I got to ranting and raving, and I started telling those people about an article I wrote that Aunt B, how's that go, Adam?

Yeah, Aunt B's in the other place. I was talking about Aunt B being in hell, and I thought that church was going to have a riot on me. You know why? Because we want to hold to, my whole point in that little article I wrote was I never saw anything, and she's a nice little old lady, lives in a Christianized nation and goes to a Christian church, but I never saw anything in her life that indicated to me that she loved the Lord.

I never saw her interceding for people or bringing people to the Lord or sharing what the Lord meant to her. I never saw any of that. She's just a nice lady, but that's what people tend to think, and you start pointing that out, and people, you talk about hatred coming at you.

I don't know what it is. It's the strangest thing. If you suggest to people that just maybe you should, you know, just maybe you should examine your heart and make sure that you're a Christian, it's like you have called them every filthy name in the book.

You know why that is? Because the mentality is that we are good enough to deserve heaven. That's a lie from hell. It's probably the worst lie that's been propagated upon the American people is that good people go to heaven.

People like Charles Manson and Hitler, those are the people that go to hell, and that is a lie. You have to face up to who you are and what you are, what the Bible says about you, the fact that you need Jesus Christ, and you need him to do a work inside of you.

Christ's Call to Complete Transformation

I want to read a quote from C .S. Lewis about this. Many people go to the Lord to be cured of some particular sin, which they are ashamed of, or which is obviously spoiling their daily life. Well, he will cure it all right, but he will not stop there.

That may be all you asked, but once you call him in, he will give you the full treatment. That is why he warned people to count the cost before becoming Christians. Make no mistake, he says, if you let me in, I will make you perfect.

The moment you put yourself in my hands, that is what you're in for. Nothing less or other than that. You have a free will, and if you choose, you can push me away. But if you do push me away, understand that I am going to see this job through.

Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs me, I will never rest nor let you rest until you are literally perfect.

Until my father can say without reservation that he is well pleased with you. This I can do and will do, but I will not do anything less. And I say, yes, amen. That's exactly what my experience has been with the Lord and the way the Lord deals with people.

But the wonderful glorious side to it is how he changes us and transforms us from devils who belong in hell into godly saints separated for himself as a bride for his eternal kingdom. Praise the Lord.

So, you know, the reality is the way that the Lord deals with us, I just speak for myself. I would not have the courage to put myself through the things that I would have to go through, the disciplines and so on to become a different man.

I just would not have the courage, the commitment, whatever you want to call it. I wouldn't have it. And I thank God that he takes me and he deals with me and he works in my life through circumstances and so on.

Praise the Lord. Because he will do far more than I would do on my own. I would be so willing to settle for so little. I just would. This is the interesting thing about the Lord. He demands that you love people.

The greatest commandment is that we love him with all our heart. The second one is like it, that we love other people. He demands that you love people. But you know something, dear ones? He doesn't leave you there with this demand that you do something that you don't have the capacity to do.

God never asked you to do anything that you can't do. He puts this demand on your life, but then quietly he comes inside of you and gives you the love for other people. Praise the Lord. And he demands that you separate yourself, that you, you know, get away from all the worldly stuff, that you cut off the television or the internet or whatever it is that's corrupting your soul.

He demands that you do that. But he also comes within and he puts some passion inside you to have him to live your life for his kingdom. In other words, he doesn't expect you to do what you can't do on your own.

And he demands that you become holy. Be ye holy as my Father in heaven is holy. He demands it of you. But then he comes along and he does the work for you. And he transforms your heart. He gives you a heart of flesh, as we heard.

He does the work inside of you. So, you know, I just felt like because of time's sake, I wanted to kind of get through this message quickly. But I wanted to address the question, what makes you think that you will be able to handle what's coming upon this earth?

And dear ones, I want to tell you something. If these things are really what I could say is if the Lord is really indwelling you, then these things are growing convictions in you. These things are happening inside of you.

God is already doing a work inside of you. If you're the real deal, then he is doing that work inside of you. And if this is describing the way you live your life, then when things get hard and bad later, you'll do the right thing, just like Corey and Betsy did.

You don't have to fear it. You don't have to fear the coming persecution. Because God is going to be there. You remember that story that Corey shares in her book when she was afraid of death. And she remembered back to when she was a little girl and she asked her daddy about, you know, what's it like to die?