Book of Revelation - Ch. 16, Vs. 12-21 (12/30/2018)

And you get all that, it's just free stuff. It's like Red Dash, it's free.

Get your own, how high is it? 96. Can you get the

Bible you want? Okay, that seems to be on. Is it okay now?

We're good. Perfect. Are we ready to start? Yes sir. Okay, we will begin in the middle of Revelation chapter 16.

But first a quick prayer. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for all our many blessings.

Thank you for giving us a place to come where we can be able to study your word.

Thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit to guide us. Thank you for giving us your Son to bear the sins for us so that we don't have to bear them ourselves.

Thank you for all the things that you have given us, for all the things that you will give us.

Protect us and keep us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So, we'll begin at verse 12.

And you will recognize that we actually did this last week as well.

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates. And the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophets or the false prophet.

For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

And then verse 15 does a little change of pace. Behold, I come as a thief in the night.

Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.

And we've dealt most of the last Sunday with that verse. Looking at the blessings that come along with the curses, there are bad things that are happening.

There's going to be a series of things that are indescribably bad.

But with all of those judgments comes blessings. It turns out there are seven blessings just in the book of Revelation.

Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.

And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew Armageddon.

We began exploring the bowl judgments leading up to the battle of Armageddon. And as we made our way through Revelation 16, we finally have reached the point where the seventh bowl is about to be poured out.

And when that bowl is poured out, there'll be only four things that remain before Christ sets up his millennial kingdom.

And they'll occur rapidly. One, two, three, four, fast.

One right after the other, almost together. They are these. Christ's return to the earth.

That's going to happen when the angel pours out this seventh bowl.

We won't talk about Christ's return for two more chapters. We'll spend a couple of weeks going through chapters 16 and 17, well, finishing 16, 17 and 18, before we get to the 19th chapter and it said, behold, the white horse.

But those two things, this pouring out of the bowl and that coming of the Lord Jesus Christ happens simultaneously.

The next two chapters are going to be talking about not the judgment itself, but what it is that's being judged.

All right, so the first thing we'll have is Christ's return to the earth. We'll have a great earthquake. We'll talk about that a little bit today.

And we'll have the conclusion of the battle of Armageddon. And then there'll be a sheep and goat judgment.

And then the millennial kingdom will be set up. So we're going to drop back to chapter, not chapter, well, yeah, chapter 16, verse 17.

And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air. And there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven from the throne saying, it is done.

Now I want to focus on two phrases. Into the air and it is done.

Why into the air? Well, they poured the rest of the bowl of judgment on the things that were going to be judged.

Okay, everything, but specifically one thing. What's the one thing that's getting ready to be judged that has not really ever been judged before?

Turn to Ephesians 2, verse 1. And we'll go off on a little tangent as we always do and then we'll come back.

But we will not leave until we get the question answered. And you, he hath quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world.

We will take a little bit of time with that, the course of this world, but what we're dealing with right now is what?

According to the prince of the power of the air. The children of the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.

I'm going to read that again because I interrupted myself and I got confused. And you, he hath quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world.

According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.

He's telling, Paul is telling these Christians that you used to be just like the children of disobedience.

You walked according to the prince of the power of the air, as did they.

And who is that prince of the power of the air? That's Satan. And what about the course of this world?

What is that? According to the course of this world.

What is that? I'm sorry. Following the world, not the

Lord. That is correct. It's the world's order. That's humanity's standards and values derived apart from God.

Sometimes we call that humanism. Yeah, we call it us and the world.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the, it's the values and judgments, values and standards determined apart from God.

Humanism. The prince of the power of the air, of course, is Satan. Now we have three great enemies to our salvation.

They are the world, the flesh, and the devil. You've heard that a thousand times, right?

The world, the flesh, and the devil. For Brother David, huh? Brother David says that a bunch of times.

I don't know if that is exactly a biblical quote, but I kind of quoted it like it was. Well, the world is not like, it's not like the trees and the rocks and the waterfalls and the lakes and all the beautiful things we see in God's creation.

That's not what the world is. That's not the world we're talking about. That's not the world that is hindering you from coming to Christ.

What it is, is the world's system. The world's standards.

Humanism. The Lord is getting ready to do away with that. The flesh, unfortunately, will remain with us even after this event.

And then the devil. The seventh angel poured out his veil, vial, into the air, preparing the way for the removal of Satan from his position of power.

That's why he poured it into the air. That's where Satan's power was, is. At which time, two of our great enemies will be removed.

At least for the time. When the millennial kingdom begins, where is

Satan? He is in, kind of like, he is in the bottomless pit bound and held there for a season.

And the season is a thousand years. And then he'll be released for a smaller season.

And he'll come back and be a problem again for just a bit. And then he'll be cast into the lake of fire with the

Antichrist and with the false prophet.

And the second thing God will do, or Jesus will do, when he binds

Satan and throws him into the bottomless pit, is he will install a new world order.

The only thing left to stand between man and God is man's own corrupt flesh.

And I think, I always wondered why it was that Satan had to be let back out at the end.

Just to let us know how bad we really are. How bad our flesh really is.

That in a thousand year reign, without Satan to tempt us, with an almost perfect environment, with a perfect set of standards, ruled by a perfect ruler, we rebel.

Or lots of us do. Well, let's look at things that can't influence.

Things that can influence. You can't be influenced by a bad political system.

Because the political system is established by Jesus Christ himself. We've got a perfect world order.

You can't be influenced by Satan.

He's bound in chains in the bottomless pit, along with many of his other demons.

You can't be influenced by Antichrist because he's in hell already, in the burning lake of fire.

The false prophets, they're all gone. The only thing left that can influence you is your flesh.

So I think, I think it is your flesh. I don't think there's anything to influence you in a negative way except your flesh.

Now, will everybody be influenced in a negative way? I don't know. I wouldn't think so.

I wouldn't think so. Yes, sir. Yes.

Because if he were not, if he were bound and his minions were still roaming free, then we would not be in this perfect environment.

And it wouldn't, it wouldn't show just how... This is a depravity of man thing,

I think. Now, I may be wrong. And I probably should have quoted Acts 17 and 11 to start with.

But understand that. It's your duty to search the

Scriptures daily to see if what Brother David and myself and everybody else that you hear tells you is

Scripture. And for me, and I know for Brother David as well, when we're wrong, which

I'm wrong way more often than Brother David, I want to be corrected.

Because I don't want to continue to be wrong. I want to be right. Yes, but you, but you, but you want to understand you're right.

And it's an issue of, it is an issue of growth. But you, but you, but you talk with me.

Well, I'll accept.

I think my, I think my judgment is I'm sometimes wrong. I'll disagree with you on that.

I am sometimes wrong. And you know, sometimes you're wrong because you want to be wrong.

Because you defend something so much that you're bound up in it. You want it to be right.

And when you defend it, even after you know it's wrong, that's the real problem.

Okay, we're going to look a little bit ahead at Revelation 20. I'm just going to read it.

And I saw the angel come down from heaven having the key to the bottomless pit and the great chain in his hand.

And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years and cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal upon him that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled.

And after that, he must be loosed a little season. So he's not able to influence anybody now.

Satan is cast into the bottomless pit. He's sealed up for a thousand years. And Jesus is getting ready to and will install the new world order.

He shall rule them with a rod of iron. As the vessels of a potter, they shall be broken to shivers.

That's Jesus will rule them. In Revelation 12, 5, it says,

And she brought forth a man -child, that's Jesus, who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

And her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And if we look at Revelation 19, 15, it says,

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron.

And he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God. So it's not just that the people in the nations obey the new world order because they all want to.

They obey because they have to. Okay, we're going to look back now at 16, verse 17 and look at the very last thing that it says.

And out of the great, and out, and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven from the throne saying,

It is done. It is done announces the climax of the final day of the

Lord that will spread doom over the entire globe. The verb is in the perfect tense,

Gagonen. It means, It is done. It describes an action that is completed that has ongoing results.

It's similar to Jesus' final words on the cross when he said, It is finished.

But it refers to two different things. What is finished?

What was finished when Jesus was on the cross and said, It is finished? The sins of the world were taken care of.

We're taking care of? She said the sins of the world, and I add, were taken care of.

Okay, God's judgment of Christ on Calvary is finished.

Because he paid the price. He paid the price for the salvation of repentant sinners.

The sin debt earned by the activities of the elect were charged to the account of Christ and are now, in some places that phrase is translated paid in full.

Jesus has paid the full price of the sin debt for every one of the elect.

Now, it is done as a whole different thing. The judgment of the seventh bowl which prepares the earth for renewal and brings to doom the unrepentant sinners, the children of disobedience.

It is finished is God's judgment of Christ for our sins. Christ paid the price for the sins of the elect.

Now, I wanted to say that before I said this. It is done. Everything that must be done before Christ judges the unrepentant for their sins.

First of all, who judged Christ? The Father.

Who judges the unrepentant sinners? Jesus. Jesus. Who paid the price when

God judged Jesus for our sins? Jesus did.

Who pays the price when Christ judges the unrepentant sinners for their sins?

The unrepentant sinners. They will pay their own price.

Oh, wow. My battery is getting ready to go down.

And I don't know what's happened. I've got to back up.

Okay, the light came on.

So, I'm going to be okay. And now it's charging. That is panic for me.

You can see the panic. Now, I guess what

I've got to do is to turn it back on. I don't know how that works. I don't know.

Here it comes.

Yay, we got a light. I've got a yellow light, which is a good thing. That says it's charging.

I didn't look when I plugged it up. I don't know whether my cord was bad. I know it's getting bad.

That's why I always bring a spare. I apologize, that's... I don't know anything

I can do to make this faster. I wish it'd give me more warning time.

It just said, you're running on reserve power and it's going down like in 30 seconds.

And then it takes all this booting up time. And I'm not 100 % sure how

I'm going to do this now. So, you can all worry with me.

If there's any... Where were we? We were dealing with God's...

Jesus is paying the price for our sins as opposed to us. Yes, I think so.

I think it does. I think that's what we're trying to get to. Yes, people are...

Okay, let's see now. If I can get this thing to go this way. And...

Whoops, that's not the way. Okay. Now...

Okay. I didn't do it. Okay.

Revelation 21. Well, that's not where we are. Put that one down.

I do look ahead. It's still spinning away doing what it does.

I was reading in a Bible study magazine the other night that they think Paul wrote two more letters that weren't in the

Bible. First in... The two letters...

There are letters... There's one letter in Corinthians that is referred to in 2

Corinthians. I don't know, but... So, there's a missing letter to the

Corinthians for sure. And I thought there were two of those. Yeah. But I don't know. I just... I was reading about that.

But... Raj... Raj or David won. It's the one to go to for that information.

Forget that one. Yeah. You're... Okay. But everything that God wanted in the

Bible is in the Bible. Yes. Yes. That's true.

Yeah. Well, I've now got 23 % and climbing.

And I'm looking for where we are. The last thing... And I really apologize.

I should have... I should have checked my little dot and see if it was burning. It wasn't going green or yellow.

Which means it was working entirely on battery. And you can see how bad this battery is.

It was almost fully charged when we started. It was over 90. And now it was...

And now it's 25. Okay.

And there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven from the throne saying, It is done. And comparing that to it is finished.

It's finished God's judgment of Christ for our sins. God judged and Christ paid the price and we did the sinning.

It is done. Everything that must be done before Christ judges the unrepentant sinners for their sins.

And the sinner will pay his own price. And then we go to verse 16.

Verse 18. And there were voices and thunders and lightnings and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great.

And the great city was divided into three parts. Now there's division of opinion on what that great city is.

I don't understand why there is. And in fact, if Dr. MacArthur hadn't mentioned that there was division of opinion,

I would have not thought anything about it at all. But the great city that he's talking about here is

Jerusalem. And it was divided into three parts. That was not divided for judgment.

The great earthquake came and divided the city into three parts, but that was not done as judgment. That was done for improvement.

There's going to be a lot of things in the new Jerusalem that was not in the old one. There's going to be live running water, a river of water running through Jerusalem, among other things, making it suitable to serve as a focal point and capital for the millennial kingdom.

So that live running water will be available throughout the whole millennial kingdom and Jerusalem will be perfectly set up to be the focal point of the world, of the world's governments.

And the cities of the nations fell. So we've got two things.

The great city was divided into three parts and the cities of the nations fell. The other cities had a different fate.

They were destroyed. And finally, and great

Babylon came into remembrance before God to give her cup, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.

Babylon came in for special condemnation. Condemnation. All the nations, all the cities, destroyed.

But Babylon gets a special dose. We'll deal more with that in chapters 17 and 18.

In fact, chapters 17 and 18 is all about Babylon. And every island fled away and the mountains were not found.

The whole topology will change. It won't be a great difficulty game to Jerusalem anymore. I don't know,

I don't know if all the oceans will be dried up in the millennial kingdom. I know there's a lot of things happened to the oceans before the millennial kingdom was established, during the bowl judgments.

But when the millennial kingdom is present, I think you can probably walk to Jerusalem from any place in the world.

It'll just take a while, unless you walk fast. This powerful earthquake will radically alter all of the earth's topography, preparing it for the millennial kingdom.

And there came upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone weighing about the weight of a talent.

And men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, and for the plague thereof was exceedingly great.

Now, talent is about 70 pounds. That's one of them. There's a silver talent and there's a gold talent.

And the two talents are different weights. But the standard value is about 60 pounds.

So that's a pretty big hailstorm. It's bigger than the golf ball size or the softball sizes we sometimes have in Texas.

70 pounds falling at 126 miles an hour. Yeah. Fixed in their blindness, these survivors of the hailstorm blasphemed

God because the plague was exceedingly great.

And there fell upon men the great hail out of the heavens, every stone about the weight of a talent.

And the men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, for the plague thereof was exceedingly great.

That is incredible, isn't it? These men know that it's

God and they reject

Him anyhow. Fixed in their blindness, the survivors of the hailstorm blasphemed

God because the plague of hail, because it was exceedingly great.

Incredibly, humanity defiantly rejects God. And that's a truth that should give pause to all of those who think that signs and wonders will convince people to believe the gospel.

We have this passage from 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 20.

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world?

Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not

God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them.

Now look at this. For the Jews require a sign. You think if they get the sign they'll believe?

And the Greeks, the Gentiles, seek after wisdom. But we preach

Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the

Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called, both

Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Those who reject the wonder, glory, and majesty of the Son of God, those who spurn the gracious free gift of salvation will not be convinced by any sign.

Nothing that can be done will convince them to believe. In fact,

Jesus said to the rich man in hell, when he asked to send

Moses or one of the prophets to his brothers so that they might believe, Jesus said, if they hear not

Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead, to go tell them.

He said, send Lazarus and tell my brothers what happened to me and what happened to him, so that my brother will make the right decision.

And Jesus says, it won't matter. If they didn't believe Moses and the prophets, they won't believe

Lazarus, even if Lazarus rose from the dead and told them. And I think it's so ironic that there was a man that rose from the dead named

Lazarus, and they didn't believe him.

Nor will the Gentiles be convinced. You can't talk the Gentiles into it either. For the

Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. Neither the

Jews nor the Greeks will be convinced. It's now too late for these hardened sinners.

They have sold their soul to Satan. These are the ones that were... They are totally committed to Antichrist's blasphemy and idolatrous anti -God system.

They are children of wrath to be separated from the children of God and cast out of the kingdom of God and into hell.

So that's where they will go. You wonder where the children of God will be during the millennial kingdom?

Part of them will be on earth as human beings. And some of them will be as resurrected bodies.

They'll be the resurrected. And they'll be the human living bodies.

But what about the ones that sinned? What about the ones that took the sign of the beast?

They'll be in hell. God's eternal wrath is inevitable.

No one can prevent it, and no one can hinder it from coming. Isaiah said,

Yea, before the day was, I am. And there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

I will work, and who will let it? But there is one way to escape it.

And what is that way? The way is

Jesus Christ. You could be martyred. You could live through it.

But the one thing you must be is you must accept Jesus Christ. That's the only way.

He is the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father but by Jesus. Romans 8, verse 1 says,

There is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the

Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own

Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and forced sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the

Spirit of the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are of the Spirit do mind the things that are of the flesh.

I miswrote, read that. For they that are of the flesh do mind the things of the flesh.

But they that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit. For to be carnal -minded is death, but to be spiritual -minded is life and peace.

Because the carnal mind is enmity against God. For it is not subject to the law of God.

Indeed, it cannot be. So then, they that are in the flesh cannot please

God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If so, be it that the

Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

And then in 1 Corinthians 2, 1 Paul says, And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

That's the way. Until a person believes and understands the gospel, there is nothing more that can be said to him.

Dale Carnegie said this. I quoted this last week and didn't know who it was. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

You can't talk a person into believing what you believe. We can't do that.

What we can do, though, is we can give the word to people and let the

Lord determine who believes and who doesn't. Our job is not to make them believe. Our job is to tell them the truth.

And I'm going to close my part off here.

And we'll pick that up next week. Any comments or questions?

If Christ is not in us, we're not

His. If Christ is in us, we are His. And if we don't know it, we don't know it.

But He has always known it. That's what I like about Brother David's comment about you.

You knew that David was Jesus' before he did. He has quoted that many times.

I knew he had to be. You knew he had to be. And he finally discovered it.

But you know, all the prayers might have been for naught. They weren't, but they could have been.

We don't know. Just because we feel for a person, just because we pray for them, doesn't mean that it's only if He knows them.

It's not if we know them. From the beginning.

From before the beginning, if you can understand what that is. Dave Huber Jr.

and I had a little discussion in the hallway last week. Can you do something? Can you do something out of time?

To do, to do, you have to have time. So, in the world of now, in the world of God, it's futile,

I think, to try to determine what God did before time began. Because you don't do before time begins.

Doing is like time. But that's just me also. I don't know whether I've convinced

Brother David or not. Yes, sir. We hear the statement that if you repeat something enough, people believe it.

But how does that relate to the statement you just mentioned that a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still?

I think it just shows the importance of prayer. A person may be swayed for a while, but he's not going to truly change.

No, he won't change at all unless the Lord makes him change. And I agree.

And, yes, we can believe a lie if it's repeated often enough.

But we can't believe the truth, I don't think, unless we're called to believe the truth.

Isn't that amazing? That's man. Saving grace, saving belief, is not a function of rationality.

It's not the wisdom of men. It is not. Paul's greatest sermon, the

Sermon of Mars Hill, didn't convince the Athenians. He quit trying to convince them.

He laid out the world's perfect message to the

Athenians. You don't read about the Church of Athens, do you? Corinthians?

Galatians? Romans? What about the

Athenians? They were looking for somebody to convince them. And he may have convinced them for a minute. But they wanted to argue the next day because they were into arguing.

I totally 100 % agree with that. We are called to persuade. We are called to present the truth.

And the Lord Jesus will determine who believes. And we can't tell.

All we can do is proclaim the truth. I guess.

You can... I can't... Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for all our many blessings.

us and keep us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.