Doctrine of Revelation

Well good morning guys. I see some new faces, so some of you may not know me. It's been about a month since I've been here because of all of the stuff with COVID, but also I was on my annual vacation, so I've been gone.

My name is Keith. I'm the pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, and we also have an academy. We have the Sovereign Grace Academy, which many of Set Free's more long-standing participants have become students at the academy.

After you're done with your 150-day initial program and finish phase one, if you're interested in pursuing more theological education, you can join our school and there is no cost. Once you bless out, then you're welcome to come.

We have a two-year rotating program where we teach not only through the Bible, but we teach theology, church history, ecclesiology, which is the doctrine of the church, and understanding church life and ministry.

And if you are desiring any kind of ministry work, it would be a great foundation for you. And like I said, the great thing is it's seminary-level training with no cost. The only cost, of course, is a book.

Every course has a book you have to buy that goes along with your Bible. So that's just something. And again, I'm not here to try to win you to the academy. I'm letting you know what and who we are. Yes, sir?

Quick question. Can I get a job and still attend class?

Yeah, it's only one night a week. It's Thursday nights. And we go for eight weeks, and then we have a four-week break because the class technically lasts 12 weeks, but the last four weeks is independent study and the writing of a research paper.

So you do eight weeks in the class, then you have four weeks to write your research paper and turn it in so that you get graded. Once you get your grade, if it's above a C, then you would get the certificate and pass.

The Purpose of Theology and the Need for Doctrine

So the reason why I bring all this up is a few months ago I was talking with Pastor Mark, and I've been teaching here now for almost two years, and I have been through the book of James, verse by verse, taught through the book of James.

I've been through the book of Galatians, taught through verse by verse. And I said, I want to start a program for you guys that's sort of a miniature version of what we do at the academy, sort of a snapshot of what we get on a larger scale in our school.

And what this is going to be is this is going to be a 12-week rotating class. So every 12 weeks we start over. And the reason why we chose 12 weeks is because I don't see all of you all the time because some of you are on work lessons, some of you are here.

So if you miss a class, you'll get it the next time. And by the time you've been here six months, you should have at least taken every class at least once. And so that's the mindset. Now you may have taken a couple of classes twice, and that's fine.

These are foundational things that you need. These are foundational principles of the Christian faith that are important. And so if you have to take a class twice, I was in seminary. I took several classes twice because I loved them so much, and I loved the professor, and I wanted to glean more from him.

And every time I took a class, even if it was the same class, I took archaeology three times. It was the same class, but every time I learned something new about biblical archaeology. So it's just a blessing to be able to learn in a rotating way, you know, and learn in a way that's encouraging, and hopefully this whole class will be encouraging to you all.

I also want to introduce my son. He's sitting up here. I've decided my wife and I, as we were on vacation, we're a homeschool family, so our children are with us all day. And I have three small kids, and I have two older kids.

My oldest son is in the Air Force. My daughter is in college to be a medical assistant. And then my three smaller children are eight, five, and three. Well, two. She's about to be three. And my boy is going to start coming here with me so that he can learn how to sit and listen, and hopefully through this will himself begin to absorb some of this information.

I have two girls that are at home with their mom. So this is J .J., and if he acts up, I'm going to have one of these guys take you out and have a talk with you. Okay. What's up, J .J.? Say hi. Uncle Bobby?

Yeah. All right, so if you take out your worksheet, we're going to start walking down through the worksheet, and each week you're going to have a sheet. Now, these are for you to keep. If you have a notebook, keep them in your notebook.

If you don't, if you have a place in your room, maybe keep them there. I'm not going to grade these. I'm not going to take them up or anything. This is simply so that you have information to carry away from here.

A lot of people I know take notes while I teach, and I'm grateful for that. This just gives you a starting point for your notes and keeps you on the same outline that I'm using. So today we're going to start.

It's Principles of Theology and Doctrine. And we're going to begin week one with the Doctrine of Revelation. But before we do that, I want to ask this question. And please answer, but I want to ask that you keep your answers quick, because it could take forever if everybody answered really long.

So why do you think it's important to study theology? Anybody want to answer? To gain better knowledge of the Bible. To know God better. To be able to deliver the message to the people. That's really good.

All of those things are important, and all of those things are true. Know the Bible better, know God better, be able to explain it better. That's right. Go ahead. I was going to say it's the difference between good and bad.

That's true too. And that I would say is probably the most foundational thing. One of the reasons that I think theology... My motto of our church and even my own life is theology matters. Theology matters, because what separates false teaching from right teaching is a right understanding of theology, a right understanding of the Bible.

For instance, I've heard people say, I don't need theology, I just need Jesus. I raise my hand. I say, okay, which Jesus? The Jesus of the Jehovah Witnesses, which is actually Michael the Archangel? Or the Jesus of the Mormons, which is actually a spirit child of Elohim who was himself once a man who lived on another planet?

Or is it the Jesus of the Muslims, who is simply a man but is the Messiah? Or the Jesus of the Jews, who would say Jesus is not the Messiah, Jesus is not the Son of God, He was a false prophet in the first century.

Which Jesus is it? This is why theology matters. Because theology is where we seek to understand what the Bible is. We seek to understand who Jesus is. We seek to understand what the Bible says about these things.

And why we should even trust the Bible. That's why theology matters. And so, when you ask the question, why study theology? I'm going to give you an answer straight out of our textbook. We use the Moody Handbook of Theology, and this is what it says.

Through studying theology, Christians are able to have a clear understanding about the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith. The Bible was not written as a doctrinal outline. Hence, it is important to systematize the parts of the Bible to understand the doctrinal emphasis of the entire Bible.

I know you weren't writing all that, and that's not the answer I want you to write. I would say this, though. The simplified of that is so that we have a clear understanding of the Bible. Why is theology important?

So we have a clear understanding of the Bible. Oh, it's Moody Handbook of Theology. It's from Moody Press. It's a textbook I use in our academy. We have a theology course, and we use the Moody Handbook of Theology.

We use several. We use Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. We use Millard Erickson's Basics of Christian Doctrine. So we have several that we use. But I like the Moody Handbook. It's very simple. It's basic, and it's good for entry-level learners to come in on.

All right, so I want to give you another quote. Now, this one is not from the handbook. This is actually from a pastor. How many of you have ever heard the name Martin Lloyd Jones? Martin Lloyd Jones was a tremendous pastor, and this is what he said.

He said, Whether we know it or not, our main trouble as Christians today is still a lack of understanding and knowledge. Not a lack of superficial knowledge of the Scriptures, but a lack of a knowledge of the doctrine of Scripture.

I'll tell you, when I go to churches and I talk to people, and I do most of my ministry at our church, but I do visit other churches. Next month I'm going to be preaching at two different churches. I've been asked to speak at two different conferences.

While I'm there, I like to talk to people and ask simple questions, just basic questions, like, Do you understand the Gospel? Can you explain the Gospel? Can you explain the nature of Christ? Can you explain the most basic things about the Bible?

What is the Bible? And where did it come from? And how did we get it? These types of questions are questions that we don't often teach anymore. Instead, we teach about Bible stories. You go to a lot of Sunday school classes, and they're talking about Abraham and Sarah, or Jonah and the whale, or Noah and the ark.

It's always some kind of a story. But they don't teach the theology that undergirds those stories. The theology of God. The theology of Scripture. And these things are often left out, and therefore what we have done is we have created a society of people who have heard the stories of the Bible, but don't understand the Bible.

We've created a society of people who have heard all of the tales, but they don't know the theology behind the tales. And so my job, my life and ministry work, is to teach people the theology of the Bible.

General Revelation: Creation and Conscience

So in this lesson, we're going to begin with the doctrine of Revelation. The doctrine of Revelation. It's two sections, and I have only an hour with you, so I'm going to be going not too fast, but I am going to be moving at a brisk pace, because for one hour to deal with these two sections is actually...

When I teach this to our seminary class, I do a lot more on this, so I'm going to have to remind myself that I'm condensing here. But we're going to look first at the concept of Revelation, general and special Revelation.

That's part one. You'll see on your worksheet. And then the second part, we are going to look at how this relates to the Bible, and we're going to look at three terms that relate to the Bible. The term inspiration.

How many of you have ever heard that? Inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy. That's three words we're going to talk about when it comes to the Bible and what those words mean. And we're going to see how that relates to the doctrine of Revelation.

So you guys ready to kick off? Ready to go? Yeah, everybody's super excited, I can tell. I'm palpitating. Everybody's so excited. People don't often get excited. If I came up and told you I was going to tell you six ways to fix your marriage, or ten ways to be a better person, or a hundred ways to make your stock market get big, people would get all excited.

If I say we're going to study the theology of the Bible, people would go, oh. But I'll tell you there's nothing more important in the world that you need to know. Because when you look at all of those other things, all those other things are byproducts.

What you believe will affect how you behave. So if you're working always on your behavior but not on your belief, then it's not going to really matter much. Change what you believe and it will change how you behave.

So let's look first at general versus special revelation. I'm going to use the board. I know this column is an albatross which hangs upon my neck every week because I write. I feel like you can't see it.

But this is helpful to me because I think in terms of charts. So I'm going to chart this out. Okay, so we're going to look at general revelation versus special revelation. When we look at this, we're thinking of the concept of God revealing Himself.

When we talk about revelation, I'm not talking about the book of Revelation. That's one book of the Bible. What I'm talking about is God revealing Himself to man. How does God reveal Himself to man? And God reveals Himself to man in two different ways.

We talk about general revelation and special revelation. General is general in regard to the content and the audience. Same over here. The content and the audience. So let's talk about first content. General revelation is things like this.

Psalm 19 .1 The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. That is a general revelation. Everybody walks out. Everybody sees the sky. Everybody sees the sun. Everybody says in their heart of hearts how glorious this is.

How could this be without a grand designer? How could this exist without a grand architect? Anytime I have a person who is an atheist, they'll say to me, well, I don't believe in God. And I say, well, how do you think the world around us came to be?

And they say, well, it came to be by chance. And I say, there's no chance of that. They say, why? Because if I asked you to look at a building, how do you know the building exists? Because you see it.

But you also know something else by nature. You know that a builder exists because the building testifies to the builder. You also know that an architect exists because the builder had to work off of a plan.

Right? So the building is a testimony to the existence of a builder and testimony to the existence of an architect, a plan. There are certain things that we can presume based upon the existence of the building.

Likewise, when I go out into the world and I look up at the sky and I see the stars, the sun, the moon, and I see the trees, and I see the great wonder of creation, I can say with great confidence that Psalm 19 is right.

The heavens declare the glory of God. So that is one example of what we would call general revelation. Its content is basic. We don't know anything about the Creator except that He is looking at creation.

We know that He exists, right? So that is one example of general revelation. Psalm 97 .6 says, The heavens proclaim His righteousness and all the people see His glory. And you might say, Well, how do the heavens declare His righteousness?

Well, the heavens are constructed in such a way that they demonstrate order. Do you understand how much order there is in the universe? Do you understand how much order there is? In fact, the very movement of the world and how far it is to the sun and how close it is to the sun all relate to our ability to have life on this planet.

There is not life on Mars. There is not life on Jupiter. There is not life on Neptune because they are not within what is called the... Oh, what is it called? The Cinderella? No. Goldilocks. Yeah, just right.

The just right place. And so all of that is testimony to God's existence. We call that general revelation. It's general in its content. It's not specific, but it's general. And it's general in its audience because it's everybody's knowledge.

Now, one of the most important parts of general revelation is actually found in Romans 1. And I want you to see this one. So if you would open your Bible to Romans 1. It's 19 .1 and then 97 .6. So there's two Psalms I mentioned.

But now we're going to actually look at Romans 1. We're going to start at verse 18. Verse 18 says this, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

What truth? Well, that's verse 19. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

Right there. Stop. It tells us the creation and the things that have been made testify to the existence of God. Going on. So they are without excuse. Anapologetus in the Greek. Without a defense. If somebody tells you, when I face God at judgment, I'm going to tell Him He didn't give me enough evidence for His existence.

You tell them that's an absolute lie and that's not going to hold up in court. The Bible says when a man stands before God, he will stand before God without a defense because he knew God was there. It goes on.

For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking. Their hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God with images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

What do men do instead of worshiping the true God? They make idols. People know God exists, but they don't want to worship God as He is, so they make idols of their own hands. And what is the purpose of creating an idol?

Worship. More so, it's giving my power over the God. When I create the idol, who's really in charge? I made Him. He's my God, but I made Him. Therefore, it's an issue of going back to the garden. What was the lie that Satan told Eve that caused her to abandon God's command?

You will be like God. You will be like God. You see, the pursuit of man since the garden... And by the way, this is why I don't think she had any trouble convincing Adam. Because Adam too wanted to be his own God.

Wanted to be his own master. Wanted to be his own sovereign. And so, we see, this text tells us all men know God exists, but instead of worshiping Him, they worship idols. So we call that general revelation.

But there's also another type of general revelation which is talked about in chapter 2 of Romans. And this is the general revelation of the conscience. Turn over to chapter 2, verse 12. All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law.

And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves.

Even though they do not have the law, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. While their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

So what is he saying? He's saying that even the people who don't know God have consciences that have been placed there by God. They have an innate understanding that there are some things that are right and some things that are wrong.

And that understanding is not social, but of the conscience. People say, well, society teaches us what's right or wrong. No. Society demonstrates what people know is right or wrong. And that's why we see our society going down so quickly.

It's because people are suppressing. Go back to Romans 1. They suppress the truth and unrighteousness. They're suppressing what they know is right and replacing it with what is wrong. The Bible says that the height of this is when men call good evil and evil good.

And what is it that we see in our nation right now? The celebration of sexual promiscuity and perversion and the absolute denial of the Word of God. Calling good evil and evil good. That is a violation of the conscience.

And we know it. We do a lot of evangelism activities. We go out to the fair. Talk to people. I've had hundreds of conversations over the years with people. And when I talk to them about the conscience, I say I can prove at least the basis of this passage by your own experience.

Think about the worst atrocity that you can imagine. I'll give you an example. I think it was August 9th of this year. A 5-year-old boy rode his bicycle in front of the house. Another man walks out from across the street.

Neighbor shoots a kid in the head right in front of his sister. I'm not making this up. I am not exaggerating. It hit the news. Everybody was rightfully upset. Wrong! Thank you. Oh, you're the man. That's the right answer.

Because we know that's wrong. Nobody has to tell us that's wrong. We know that that's wrong. But how do we know? You see, if evolution is true, if evolution is true, you are nothing but a bag of stardust.

And your conscience is nothing but the firing of synapses inside your brain. You are nothing but a bag of chemicals shooking up and spread out and moving along. But the Bible says you're more than that.

The Bible says you are made in the image of God, created in His image, and that you have a conscience within you. Therefore, when you see a little boy killed, you know in your heart that's wrong. When you hear that just this past weekend over 60 people were murdered just in the city of Chicago because of violence and hatred, you know that's wrong.

You see, that's part of general revelation. We talk about general revelation. It's a general audience. Everybody has it. And it's a general information or general content. Everybody has a basic information.

This is why across the board, I don't care where you go, from here to Arabia, stealing is against the law. Now over there, they might take your hand, but it's still important to understand it's wrong.

We're not going to tolerate theft. We're not going to tolerate child abuse. Nobody has to tell us that. It's something we know. In fact, how do we identify someone who has no understanding of right and wrong and no care for their fellow man?

Socio or psychopathic. Right? A person who has that part of their brain has either been damaged or is not functioning as it should. But that is the outlier, right? A lot of people think they're psychopaths and really they're just jerks.

I mean really, because it's only 1%, less than 1%, that actually make up the actual amount of psychopathy and sociopathy. It's a very small number. Most people are just jerks. They know and don't care.

It's very rare that somebody doesn't know that it's wrong. So we look here, general revelation. It's general in its content, it's general in its audience. But now let's look at special revelation. Special revelation is different because special revelation relates to God making a particular injection into human history.

Special Revelation in Christ and Scripture

Turn to Hebrews 1.

Hebrews 1 .1 says,.

Long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. Right? But then it goes on to say what? It says, But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.

So that passage tells us a lot. And I don't have time to exegete the whole passage, but I can give you the basic. Basically what it's saying is that prior to the coming of Christ, God's revelation was wider and more diverse than it is now.

Why? Because prior to the coming of Christ, God spoke to the fathers. That's being Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, all those people. He spoke to them in different ways. How did God speak to Moses? Thank you.

Burning Bush, right? That was the first time. Different times later, but Burning Bush, right? So we know that's a special revelation, right? Special because of content. He received a special message. But it's also special in regard to audience.

Special means specific. And so it's special in that it only went to one person. You understand? So when we talk about special revelation, it's special in content and it's special in audience. In the same way general is general in content, general in audience, special is special in content.

So the message that went to Moses from the Burning Bush, go to Pharaoh, say let my people go, I am that I am, you know that message that he gave through the Burning Bush, that message was special in regard to the audience, in regard to the content.

Now, we can go further back. Noah received a special message, didn't he? The world's going to flood. Make a boat. Take the animals onto the boat. Protect yourself, protect the animals. I'm going to destroy the world with water.

And there are many others. We could go down the line. Special revelation goes on and on and on and on through the Old Testament, culminating in what was known as the prophet. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel.

Prophets of God who were charged with one purpose, speaking on God's behalf. That's what a prophet is. He's a person who speaks on behalf of God. And so they spoke for God. They gave special revelation to the people of God.

Who was the people of God? At that time, it was primarily Israel, right? And so the prophet of God gave special revelation to the people of God. So it's a special message, special content to a special group.

A specific group. Then comes the greatest of all prophets, the Son of God Himself, to speak on behalf of God, Jesus Christ. And the book of Hebrews tells us that when He came, He became the message for all time.

His message now will not be superseded, will not be progressed. He gives the final word from God as God in the flesh. Jesus Christ comes as the special revelation of God. We see this in John 1. It says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.

He came and tabernacled with us. He made His house in this flesh so that He could fellowship and share with us. And now everything that comes after that is all about Him. You read all of Paul's letters.

You read Peter. You read Hebrews. You read James. It's all about who? Jesus. It's all about Jesus because the message becomes about Christ. That's why Hebrews says, Long ago God spoke in various ways.

Now He speaks to us through His Son because the Gospel of Christ becomes the message for the world. It's no longer just for one small nation in the middle of the Mideast, but it now becomes a message which flows out of that to all nations.

Paul takes the Gospel into Macedonia, into Greece, into Rome. The other apostles take the Gospel east and south and into Africa and Asia. So the Gospel goes out into the whole world, but yet it's still a special message to a special audience because it doesn't come by looking at the sun or the moon or the stars.

It comes by evangelism, by one person telling another person about Jesus. So the message is still special in the sense that it's still a special message and it's still a particular audience. So it's still special revelation.

So when we talk about general revelation, the content is basic to what we know and the audience is general to everyone. But when it comes to special revelation, the content is specific. For instance, we wouldn't know about the Trinity if it weren't for special revelation.

We wouldn't know about justification by faith alone if it weren't for special revelation. We wouldn't know about penal substitutionary atonement if it wasn't for special revelation. You see what I'm saying?

Special revelation is required to know more about God. And so God reveals Himself in this way and in His time. So, special revelation, two passages that you should come to know is 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. And that says all Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for reproof, for teaching, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.

It tells us what the Bible is. The Bible is the ultimate example of special revelation. If you hold a Bible, you hold God's Word in your hand. This is special revelation given from God through His mediators, His men, to us.

And so we have this very special book that God has given to us and this is special revelation. There's a video over in China. And I don't know how familiar you guys are with current events and with world events, but China has become ever increasingly harsher on its population as they have become more and more communistic.

And the regime becoming more and more heavy handed. To the point that now, in certain areas of China, you can't even be a Christian because it's been made against the law. They've taken down crosses and pictures of Jesus and they've replaced them with pictures of what they call President, but he's really a ruler, Xi Jinping.

And they put his picture up and they want him to be worshipped. Because in communism, remember this, communism will always be a godless system because it replaces the God who does exist with the state.

The state becomes the most powerful and most all-giving, all-knowing, all-loving entity. The state is who you go to for your sustenance. The state is who you go to with your problems. The state becomes God.

And that is what we see in China. But the reason why I bring this up is because several years ago a video came out of China where a Christian had brought some Chinese people Bibles in their own language.

So it was Chinese Bibles. They had hidden them in their luggage and smuggled them into the country. When they got there, there's a video of them in a room. And they open the luggage and they're literally grabbing and pulling them out and holding them to their chest and just crying.

I mean, just crocodile tears pouring from their faces. And immediately they're going and they're turning to pages and they're reading and they're saying words and they're crying. You don't have any idea what they're saying, of course, in a different language.

But you can tell by the countenance that they are absolutely enamored that they have the Word of God. We, in America, you know, land of the free, home of the brave, whatever. We have grown up with this sitting in the nightstand at the Motel 6.

So it doesn't seem to have as much relevance and importance. We have become... Think about how malnourished most of us are because we eat bad food. Good food is available. Vegetables and meats and stuff are available.

But we eat McDonald's because it's easier, it's cheaper, and it tastes good for a minute. And we get sick. I know this. I went on two weeks of vacation and I ate all fast food because we went to Arizona, had to fly on a plane, had to wear a face diaper, hated that, the mask.

And I had to do all that garbage. And I had to eat while I was gone. I came back and felt awful. Now I already have an issue with weight and whatever, but I don't always eat McDonald's. But for two weeks, you know, it was bad.

That's the way we are here in America. We have the Feast of God's Word and yet we spend our time thumbing through Facebook, reading Twitter, going on to our social medias, or funding through YouTube. We don't understand the value of what we have.

So this is special revelation. This is God's Word. This is the Bible. And again, were I given time, I would be able to explain more about why I believe that. But I want to go to part two now because we're running out of time.

Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Infallibility of Scripture

And I want to talk now about three terms that are important when we talk about the Bible. There are three terms that we need to become familiar with. They're all on your sheet. The three terms are inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility.

Let's look first at inspiration. What do you think of when I say inspiration? Okay, what do you mean? I want to know. Okay, you want to be an inspiration to somebody else. That's good. And I think a lot of times when I hear the word inspiration, I think of like music.

Like I love, like if I got to go do something. I used to fight in competitions. And when I was a young man, I did martial arts competitions. I'd go fight. I played a Rocky theme song. I had it on headphones.

This was before iPhones and all that. This was a long time ago. And I'd have the headphones on. And I'd be listening to da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And that was boy. I had the whole Rocky soundtrack.

And the Top Gun soundtrack because I was a nerd. But I loved it. And so when I was getting ready, I was inspired to get out there and throw hands. That was inspiration. That's not what the word inspired means biblically.

We need to understand there is a difference when we talk about like you inspire me. I come here because you guys inspire me. And I say that because you guys are trying to do better. I'm proud of you. I'm thankful for you.

And I'm proud to be a part of what we do here. And I love you guys. I hope that I'm an encouragement and an inspiration to you. I hope that's a mutual... Well, I love you. So I hope that's mutual, right?

That inspiration. But that's not what this word means. And we got to clarify because words have baggage that get attached to them. And that's the baggage that's attached to inspiration.

The word in the Greek... Well, all right.