Well, it's lovely to see you
all here. Welcome, one and all, and welcome especially to Alan
and Christine. We are thankful to the Lord for
bringing you all this way, that you've come all this way to preach
the Lord Jesus Christ to us. We are thankful that that is
what the Lord has laid on your heart. The purpose of us gathering
together, the purpose of the Lord's people always gathering
together is that they might have the Lord come and visit them.
We looked at a verse on Sunday morning called, speaking of Simon
declared how the God at first did visit the Gentiles. In the preaching of the Gospel,
the one thing that we long to see happen is that God will honour
his promise to visit his people, and he visits them with a purpose.
He visits the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his
name. The gathering of the Lord's people
together is a gathering where we trust that He will honour
the glory of His name in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ
and that we might gaze upon the Lord Jesus and might find in
Him all that we need for life in this world and life for all
eternity. So we do pray the Lord's blessing
on you. I might just open in prayer and then we're going to
sing number 46, Norm. Okay. Our Heavenly Father, we do come
into your presence completely and utterly dependent upon you
to do something for us that we might know you, that we might
have eternal life that's in knowing you and knowing the Lord Jesus
Christ. And Heavenly Father, we just
look to you to fulfil the promises that you've made to your people. as David said long ago, Lord,
do as you have said. Father, we commit ourselves into
your hands. We do thank you for sending your servant all this
way across the world to come and speak to us. But most of
all, Heavenly Father, we pray that it would be you who speaks
to us, speak to us through your word. that the Holy Spirit would
take the things of the Lord Jesus Christ and cause them to be revealed
to our hearts and our souls, that we might worship Him, we
might rejoice in Him, that we might find ourselves with our
lives hidden with Christ in God. So we do commit ourselves into
your hands with expectation, Heavenly Father, and thankfulness. for we pray in Jesus' name and
for his glory. We're going to sing number 46
and then without further ado Alan will speak to us and then
we'll... ? Rejoice, rejoice, the dead are
safe, rejoice ? ? Jesus, the Savior reigns ? ? The God of
truth and love ? ? When he at the chalice reigns ? ? He took
his seat above ? He rules over death and hell,
the keys of death and hell are to our Jesus here. Lift up your
heart. Lift up your heart. and take you servants off to
their eternal home. And we serve you, child, with
all the angels' Give me a moment. Well, so good to be with you.
Such a privilege, it really is. We've been talking about this
on and off for quite a long time, but now here we are. We were
dreading the flight, and it turned out to be not that bad, really.
We were dreading, you know, if it was that bad going to America,
how's it gonna be going three times as far? And it's, honestly,
it's been fine. So, so far, so good. So we're
enjoying it. And I've been set, well, I've
been, I've willingly accepted I wouldn't call it a challenge,
but we would like it if you could. And I thought and thought and
thought, yes, go on, we'll have a go at this to try and cover
the message of the Book of Revelation over a number of messages. It's,
as I say, so good to be here with you. Just a little bit about
us, where we're from, we live in a medium-sized town about
40 kilometres north of the centre of London, it's called Wellingarden
City, and we've got a tiny little fellowship which basically consists
of us our two oldest sons, their wives and children and a couple
of other ladies that come along with us and we meet in our conservatory
on the back of our house but we do what Don Faulkner's church
does which is we stream it onto the internet and so we've got
a congregation that's in many, many other places so although
we're very, very tiny in number ourselves there's a lot more
of us out there but how did we end up as we did? Well, it's
as I know so many of you, the experience of you is having been
in churches which purported to preach the truth and proclaim
the truth and maintain it, increasingly you find all sorts of errors
coming in. And the simplicity, you know, as it says in 2 Corinthians
11, or 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 11, the simplicity that is in
Jesus Christ. You are so soon moved away from
the simplicity. And that's it. Because the Gospel,
the message that we preach, the truth that we delight in, you
know it says rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ? Yep, believers
rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ, because He is everything to us.
He is our everything. He is our all in all. Like Happy
Jack, you'll have heard the story of Happy Jack, you know, I'm
a poor sinner. What are you? What are your credentials? I'm
a poor sinner, and nothing at all. But Jesus Christ, he's my
all in all. That's it. If you want to know
what's your doctrine, what's the deepest doctrine, that is
it. That's the deepest doctrine. Jesus Christ is my all in all,
and we rejoice in him. So it's so good to be here, it's
so good to come amongst you. It feels like, you know when
they let the apostles go that have been imprisoned in Acts
chapter 4 and it says when they let them go they went to their
own company and this very much feels like coming to our own
company it really does because what's the marks of the true
people of God? what are the marks of believers?
it says again and again in the epistles three things faith,
hope and love faith, what sort of faith? lots of people claim
to have faith don't they? Well, there are all sorts of
faith. What are we talking about? We're talking about what Paul
said to Titus in Titus 1, verse 1. He said, it's the faith of
God's elect. That's the faith of God. Where
do you get the faith of God's elect? What do you have to do
to get that? God comes to you. God comes to you, it's the gift
of God. You are saved by grace, through faith, and that, and
not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. They have
faith, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, faith that He's the one
that answers all of our requirements before the living God. And having
faith in Him, we have hope. The verse that we just sang,
the last verse that we just sang, He's coming again. This is what
this book of Revelation says. Behold He cometh. He's coming
again. Behold He's coming with clouds.
That's our hope. There's a hope of eternal glory,
that this life is not the sum total of things. That this life,
and then death, Paul said, he said, if in this life only we
have hope, we are of all men most miserable. But we don't.
We have a hope of eternal life. And it's not a hope like, I hope
it will sunshine tomorrow. It's a hope that I confidently
know. on the strength of what God has
said, that we will go to be with Him in glory. And having that
hope, we have the love of God, the love of God which is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. These are the marks of
believers, and it's so good to come amongst God's people and
to preach and have an opportunity to share these things together
and proclaim them to a wider gathering. As I said, we are
the ones who worship God in the Spirit, we rejoice in Christ
Jesus, and we have no confidence in the flesh. You look at religion,
and you look at where we find flaws in what they're preaching,
increasingly you will see confidence in the flesh, elements of confidence
in the flesh. We have no confidence in the
flesh. So how are we associated? Well,
you know, I know you know. There's the association of all
those that are, for want of a better way of defining it, on Free Grace
Radio. Through that filter of Don Faulkner's
church onto sermon audio, there are the preachers there that
he's happy to have on there as proclaiming the gospel that they
proclaim. And it's not a denomination,
not by any means. Of course it's not a denomination,
it doesn't have its rules and regulations, other than doctrinal
truth. the Gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ, determined to know nothing other than Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. Because in determining to know
nothing other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified, if we stick
to that, we do what Paul said in Acts 20, well, he said in
1 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 2, he said, I was determined
when I was amongst you to know nothing other. What's your Gospel?
Paul, what's your doctrine? Paul, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The Son of God and Him crucified. Okay, isn't there more in the
Scriptures to preach? To the elders on the beach at
Miletus, I think it's Acts chapter 20, isn't it? He said, I have
not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God. How
do you declare the whole counsel of God? You declare the whole
counsel of God by determining not to know anything other than
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. For Jesus Christ is the whole
counsel of God, the whole wisdom of God. In Him dwell all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If you would have life, you find
it in Him. He is the one, He is the one.
And so what's the result of our shared faith? Peter said to the
Lord Jesus in Matthew chapter 19, he said, we've left all,
we've forsaken all and You know, we've joined you and followed
you. What shall we then have? And
Jesus said, well, you're going to reign with me in glory. And
then he said this in verse 28, he said, Everyone that has forsaken
houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife,
or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an
hundredfold. and shall inherit eternal life."
Even while we're here, it's as if we inherit a hundredfold.
We have such a wide family. It is so good to come amongst
you. We've not spent time with these
dear brethren before, apart from a few hours a couple of years
ago with Angus, but we're so comfortable in one another's
company because that's how it is for believers, comfortable
in one another's company. we have fellowship, we share
the love of God's truth. And all scripture is profitable,
all scripture is profitable, but as I said, especially requested,
if I felt led to, to have some studies in the book
of Revelation during this trip, and the more I thought about
it, I thought, yes, yes, I think we can do that. How did I get
into it? How did I get into Revelation? Well, as I'd been preaching,
and I started preaching by virtue of having to come out of another
church that became compromised with all sorts of false doctrine
and we couldn't stay, so we had to come out and then the people
that came out with us, because I'd done some preaching, said,
well, will you preach for us? And so I did and so it's gone
on from there. This is from 2007. And so this
is where we are today. How did I get into it? I had
a sort of a nagging feeling for a year or more that I really
ought to plunge into revelation. And I didn't know what I was
going to say, because I didn't... I wasn't... I mean, I'd read
the book several times, but I wasn't sufficiently familiar to feel
confident that I could stand up and bring a series on it. So we embarked upon it. with
a sort of a, well, we'll see where the Lord leads with this
and we'll see what results from it and it ended up with 27 sermons
and it was a discovery week to week, you know, when I preached
one sermon I wasn't 100% sure what was going to be in the next
one or the one after that and so it went on, each week was
a discovery and I started to get lots of positive feedback
and I started to get lots of encouragement to write it down
in a book And after a gap of about six months after I'd finished
the series, I was just motivated one day to sit down and start
writing, and then you know how it is, you start and you can't
stop, and it just flowed and flowed. And when I got the manuscript
in a reasonable format, I thought, what should I do with it? Should
I just publish it? and make it available to the people that
asked me to put it in a written form. And I thought, I'll tell
you what, I'll ask Peter's advice, Peter Many. What would you do,
you know, to do this self-publishing thing? And I sent him the script,
and it was pretty quick that he came back to me and said,
no, I'm going to publish it as a Go Publications thing. And
so that's where we are. They say you shouldn't judge
a book by its cover, and I hope people don't judge my book by
its cover, because it's pretty dull and grey, isn't it? So I
hope people find something better inside it than the grey cover
suggests they might do. But it's had a good response
so far. Joe Terrell even. Do you know
Joe Terrell? I know Angus and some of you
will know Joe Terrell. He's been to India and he's doing
some things and looking to get some books translated into a
particular Indian dialect. And there's an Indian dialect
that reaches 61 million people. And he asked me the other day,
would I mind? Would I mind? Would I mind if it was translated
into that Indian dialect? Of course I wouldn't mind, I'd
be absolutely delighted if it was used in that way. So that's
in the pipeline to happen to it. So anyway, here we are. I think we've got eight sessions
altogether, haven't we? More or less, plus or minus.
Yeah, we can be flexible, we can adjust it, and you might
have noticed that 27 into 8 doesn't go, and 27 sermons is a lot of
time to try and cram into 8 sessions, but we'll have a go without over-wearing
you. What I want to do tonight in this introductory one is have
an overview of the structure and purpose of the book, talk
about those sort of things and some principles as to how we
go about interpretation and the message that we find from it.
The Book of Revelation is 22 chapters and it comprises seven
visions. Seven divinely given visions
to the Apostle John in about AD 95 or thereabouts. And you wonder, what are these
visions? Well, let me put it this way. they are perspectives
on world history. Either the whole of world history,
from what I would say is the fall in the Garden of Eden, Genesis
chapter 3, right the way through to the end of time, the final
judgment, Armageddon. Right the way through, it's the
whole of history. Or, it's from when Christ came to the end of
time, and the perspectives are a little bit like walking round
the same thing but looking at it from a different angle and
looking at different aspects of it in increasing or differing
amounts of detail. So as you get further on in the
visions, the level of detail of the end of things seems to
get deeper and deeper. We're given more detail about
the end of things as they're coming. Seven perspectives on
world history, and not just that, but the heavenly truth behind
it. Why are things like they are?
It's the heavenly truth behind what's going on and what we see.
That's the thing. Seven is God's number of perfection. God's number of perfection. It's
that which is required, bear this in mind, the number seven
is that which is required to complete his kingdom. Because
God's objective is the triumph. That's why I called the book
God's Kingdom Triumphant. It's the kingdom of God triumphant. His objective is for his kingdom
to completely remove the kingdom of this world, which is the kingdom
of Satan and the kingdom of Antichrist. And it's shown in seals and trumpets
and vials, of which there are seven of each. It starts pretty
soon in, when we get the view of history as a whole, there's
a book, there's a scroll, and it's a seven-sealed scroll. This is God's plan. to implement
history which will accomplish the purpose of establishing his
kingdom and destroying, defeating the kingdom of Satan. There are
seven seals, and you have to be qualified to open those seals,
so we'll see that later on. The seventh of those seals opens
up as seven trumpets of judgment on this kingdom of Satan. Why? to accomplish God's purpose of
his kingdom, his glorious kingdom, being triumphant. The seventh
of the trumpets opens up and is revealed as seven vials of
the wrath of God, as the final judgment of God on the kingdom
of Satan, the purpose being the establishment, the unrivaled
establishment of the kingdom of God. And so we'll look at
that in a little bit more detail shortly, but then the other messages
I'm minded to go into, the next one, on the first and second
visions, which I think is going to be the longest piece of scripture
that I've ever attempted to preach on in one message, which is Revelation
1-7, because we've got the first two visions in there. And I don't
know how many sermons I preached on it the first time round, or
when I did the book, but, you know, it was several messages.
But we'll find a way of seeing some truth in that. Then the
next one, Vision 3, which is the trumpets of judgment and
of woe. Do you know, interestingly, I
just saw a news report today in the British press, on my phone,
and apparently there was somebody in Iran, I think, a woman who
had converted to Christianity. Now, I don't know what form of
Christianity she converted to, but she was seeking asylum in
Britain. Seeking asylum in Britain she
said she wanted to come here because she had converted from
Islam to Christianity and she said Christianity is a peaceful
religion whereas the Islam that she was experiencing was not
a peaceful religion. The British Home Office, in judging
her appeal for asylum, it's in the press, it's absolutely appalling.
They said Christianity is not a religion of peace. And they
quoted Revelation 9 about the woes and about the locusts from
the abyss and all of that sort of thing. Because just reading
it without the mind of Christ, reading it without Holy Spirit
guidance on it, reading it just as words on a page, they're saying,
well, it sounds equally violent to the stuff that she was saying
she was converting from. So they denied her access, they
denied her asylum. That's the world that we're living
in. Then we move on to Vision 4, and Vision 4 is very clearly
the Kingdom of Antichrist versus the Kingdom of God. That's in
Revelation 12 to 14. Then we have Vision 5, which
is the vials of final judgment, and that culminates in the Battle
of Armageddon, and that is the end of history. That is, the
view takes us right up to that end point at the end of history.
In Vision 6, we then come back and have another view of a particular
aspect of it. Because God is revealing these
things to his people, because we need to know. We'll look at
the reason why in just a moment. We see the truth about Babylon. What is this really all about?
And it's a different perspective. You know, I think I've mentioned
it in the book, do you remember when the terrorist aeroplanes
flew into the Twin Towers in New York and into the Pentagon?
and I don't know about here but over in UK there was the immediate
news report and then for about the next three or four weeks
different perspectives of it kept coming out. So you'd have
a news bulletin three weeks later from a different correspondent
of a different news agency that saw it from a different angle
or with different underground background knowledge to it. This
is the idea that these are different perspectives on the same overall
thing that God is giving to his people. So we get the truth about
Babylon and its fall under the armies of Christ. Then in vision
seven, the final vision, I'm planning to split that into two,
the first one of which being the thousand years, oh isn't
there a a lot of interest in the thousand years, and Satan's
little season in Revelation 20, and the final judgment, and then
finally, for the final message, the final triumph of the Kingdom
of God. That is what I'm seeking, you
might think, I might, I don't know, this might be so ambitious,
but anyway, that is what we're minded to do. So let's look first
of all at the opening salutation of Revelation. Look at the first
verse with me, because if you get the foundation right, then
the rest start, you know, if you get off on the wrong track,
you're going to veer off down even more obscure tracks. So
get the foundation right first of all. In verse 1 of Revelation
it says, it's the revelation of Jesus Christ. It's something
divinely given of Jesus Christ. He is the subject of it, as he
is the subject of all of the Scriptures. Jesus Christ is the
unknowable God manifested as In John 14, when Jesus said to
his disciples in that upper room the night before he was crucified,
he said to them, Peter said he would never deny him, and then
he said, oh yes you will, before the cock crow, you'll deny me.
And then verse 1 of chapter 14 is, but don't be worried, don't
be afraid, don't be concerned. I am going to do this for you.
There's nothing for you, Peter, to be alarmed and concerned about.
And he said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes
to the Father but by me. And Philip said, yes, okay, right,
we're beginning to get this. Show us the Father, and then
that will suffice us. That will be good enough for
us. If you show us the Father, that will be good enough for
us. And our Lord Jesus Christ said to him, Philip, have I been
so long with you, and you have not known me? Haven't you noticed
me yet? He who has seen me has seen the Father, for I and the
Father are one. You see, he's the manifestation
of God, and he's the one who became flesh, who became man. He became man for the purpose
of saving a people that the Father had given to him before the beginning
of time, a multitude which no man can number. And as he came
into this world and as he was born as a man, there was the
Godhead manifested. In him dwelt the fullness of
the Godhead bodily. I constantly find this mind-boggling
when I think about it, that there were these disciples, there was
the Apostle John, there was, you know, just fishermen, just
ordinary people of the day, and there they were, leaning on the
breast of the man who was the human manifestation of God. He was God made known to us. He was the Word who was in the
beginning with God. He was the Word who not only
was in the beginning with God, but was God. The same was in
the beginning with God. Without Him was nothing made
that was made. He is the Word. The Word became
flesh and dwelt among us. No man has seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son, this Word, who is in the bosom of the Father,
He has declared Him. And He is the only one of whom
God said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him. If you want to know anything,
hear ye Him. Oh, well, let's... I'll tell
you what. Up on the mountain of Transfiguration, and they
saw Moses and Elijah speaking to the transfigured Lord Jesus
Christ. Oh, what a good place to be. Let's... fit up three
booths because then we'll get some truth out of all different
three of them. No, no, no. Cloud overcame them. They couldn't
see. God shut off that vision from
their eyes. This is my beloved son. Hear
ye him. Him. He is the one that we want
to set forth. All the scriptures speak of him. All of them. This book speaks
of him. you search the scriptures he said to the Jews, he said
you search the scriptures for in them you think that you have
everlasting life and you're right if you want to know about everlasting
life this is the book that will show it to you and then he said
these are they, these scriptures are they which speak of me to
the sorrowful disciples on the Emmaus road in Luke 24 as they
are so sad that their Lord, the one
that they had looked for to be the salvation of Israel, that
they're so sad that he's gone away, he's been crucified, he's
been buried, and they don't realize it's the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
And he opened to them in the Scriptures the things concerning
himself, beginning at Moses and the prophets all the way through.
These are they which speak of him. All of them, all of them
speak of him. The mind of God is expressed
by Christ to his servants. Look what it says here, the revelation
of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his servants. This is God speaking to his people,
speaking to his servants. Who are his servants? His believing
people. You know that from the rest of
the scriptures, you know that from the tenor of the rest of
the scriptures. These are his servants, the people that he
brings to believe in him, to trust in him. He wants these
things to be showed to his servants. He doesn't want them left in
darkness. Why? Think of the situation.
It's about AD 95. All of the apostles apart from
John had gone. They'd all either suffered death
in one way or another, sometimes very violent physical death,
and they'd all gone. And the church was told to wait,
and it seemed as if it was not going to be a long wait, but
here they are. You know, Jerusalem has fallen in A.D. 70, and here
they are in A.D. 95, and it's wait on just a little
while, and things are all coming to an end, and the Lord Jesus
Christ has said he's coming back, and You can imagine them getting
depressed and downcast and downhearted as to why is nothing happening.
And here in exile on the island of Patmos is given to John this
revelation of Jesus Christ. God gave it to Jesus Christ,
his word to his people, to show his servants things which must
shortly come to pass, to show his servants how history is going
to unfold. why they are where they are at
this time. The things that have to unfold
before the Kingdom of God can fully be established and the
Kingdom of Satan destroyed. These are the things that are
going to shortly come to pass. And he sent it and signified
it, signified it in visions. in symbolism. It's pretty clear
where we're meant to take passages literally. I tend to take the
view that there are places which really is talking about real
physical things, and that's the way we need to take them. But
it's very much symbolical. They're signified by his angel
unto his servant John. So in verses two and three, he
says, who bear record. John, the apostle, bear record
of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ. He
is the earthen vessel that God used to pass this message on
to people, believers down the ages, people like you and me.
He bear record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus
Christ and of all the visions he saw, and therefore, Isn't
it remarkable that here we are, what, 1925, 26 years later, here
we have the words that he saw written down, because they've
been miraculously preserved down the ages. God was pleased to
use a man to convey the message of Jesus Christ. Now, all men
who preach, and none feels it more so than me, are earthen
vessels. We just feel like pots of clay.
But it says about treasure in earthen vessels. You know, God
gives his treasure of gospel truth to his earthen vessels.
And the message that we're to preach is that message of Jesus
Christ. Like John the Baptist, what was
his message? Behold the Lamb of God. His disciples came to
him. He wasn't trying to form a separate sect. He saw Christ.
Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. When
his disciples went to Jesus, why did he send them to Jesus?
To see whether he was really the Christ? No, that the disciples
might see that this is the Christ, this is the One. He was only
the forerunner, this is the One. And so, through John, he gives
this message, this message of divine truth about the way things
are. And I believe it's so relevant
to the day in which we live, this message of the book of Revelation. God wants his people not to have
any surprises. When I used to be working in
project management, one of the basic principles that we used
to operate by for the client was that we would try to make
it so that there were no surprises for the client you know you're
going along and then all of a sudden you discover that you can't complete
the project and it's going to cost them twice as much money
to finish it that's a horrible surprise they don't want that
so you keep them informed. Silly example but God wants his
people not to have surprises or not to be totally lost as
to why are things not happening, or why are things happening the
way they are? What's going on? Why is it like it is? That's
why he's given us this book of the Revelation. No reason for
alarm, but he gives us every reason to trust God. Now, let
me just give you some foundational principles for how we approach
this. And I'm not going to be very
long tonight. But the foundational principles
are that the book is about the reality of the history of this
world. And it's the Kingdom of God versus
the Kingdom of Satan. When Jesus came preaching, if
you look in Mark's Gospel, Chapter 1, the start of his ministry,
he came preaching. And what did he come preaching?
The Kingdom of God is at hand. That was his message. Repent!
Repent! Repent of your sins, because
you're citizens of this kingdom of Satan, because the kingdom
of God, which is a kingdom of righteousness and peace, the
kingdom of God is at hand. This book is about the history
of the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of Satan, right the
way through, from the fall in Eden, right the way through to
the final judgment, the battle of Armageddon, the final judgment.
We see in Isaiah 14 the roots of it all. In verse 12 of Isaiah 14, here
we read the Prophet saying, How art thou fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the
ground, which didst weaken the nation? This is God giving his
record of Satan being cast out of heaven for his rebellion and
his presumption. What did he do? You have said
in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my
throne above the stars of God. What pride! What presumption!
I will sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides
of the north. I will ascend above the heights
of the clouds. I will be like the Most High. Yet, God said, thou shalt be
brought down to hell to the sides of the pit. That's where it started,
with Satan. I mean, I know we're talking
about eternity, so to talk about start and finish only applies
to the experience of time. But nevertheless, there was,
if I can use the expression because I can't think of another one,
the time when Satan, in his rebellion, was cast out of heaven. And in
a sense, that's when his kingdom was established, but he came
into the Garden of Eden, in the Fall itself. Do I believe literally
in Genesis 1, 2 and 3? Yes, you bet, I do. I do believe
literally. Doesn't science disprove Genesis
1, 2 and 3? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But isn't the whole scientific
world of the opinion that things didn't need a God, that they
happened by themselves? Yes, of course they are, but why do
they hold that view? The reason that they hold that
view is because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They did not fancy the idea of
the judgment of God. They did not like accountability
to God. And so therefore, under the delusion
and deception of Satan, they came up with whatever means they
could. I was trained as a scientist. I wouldn't say I'm one of the
better scientists. No doubt, I've forgotten a lot of it and
there are a lot of people much better than me. But I would challenge
any, any evolutionist to give a credible account of how not
only the first living cell, but how the first building blocks
of life came into being. So I do not ever let pseudoscience
disturb me regarding the veracity of Genesis 1-3. This is God's
account of how things are. This is God's truth of how things
are. This is his message to his people
as to how and why things are. In the Garden of Eden, that was
the kingdom of God right at the start. That was God's kingdom.
God with his people. I will be their God and they
shall be my people. God and his people. Without any
sin whatsoever. Perfect. Because the nature and
character of God cannot tolerate sin. God is of purer eyes than
to behold iniquity. He cannot look upon sin. It is
in the very nature of God that sin, under His law and His justice
and His holiness, that sin bears a penalty which must be paid.
And the law and the justice of God will not be satisfied with
anything less. It says, the soul that sins,
it shall die. And God had set them there in
the Garden of Eden in this perfect situation of peace and harmony
and fellowship and intimate communion. It's impossible for us to imagine
what it must have been like. No sin. Intimate communion between
man and the creation. The creation in its perfect form.
The creation as God intended it. And it was good. And Satan
came into that situation and he went to Eve. And he said to
Eve, he said, Has God said that you can eat of every tree of
the garden? Yes, says Eve. He said we can eat of every tree
of the garden, but of the tree that's in the middle of the garden,
we must not eat, lest we die. No, he didn't say that, actually. He said, for you shall surely
die. He didn't say, in case you die. He said, you shall surely
die. In the day that you eat thereof,
you shall surely die, is what God said. And Satan said, no,
surely you will not die. And she's seeing that the fruit
was good for food and attractive, and she listened, she was deceived.
The great deceiver deceived her. And so she ate, and it is my
view that Adam, who was not deceived, we know from the New Testament
that Adam was not deceived, Adam, eyes wide open, knew what he
was doing, and for love of his wife. he ate and plunged the
whole of his race and the whole of creation into the authority
over the kingdom of God, this creation, that God had delegated
to Adam in those first two chapters of Genesis. Adam handed it over
to Satan, effectively. He gave him the right to rule
it all. Right there, right at the start.
And from then on, you have, what I've been saying, you have this
war of the kingdoms, the war of the kingdom of God versus
the kingdom of Satan. And Satan had great powers of
deception, and the whole of the human race was deceived by the
lie of Satan. And God just about kept the line
of true faith and true understanding because God had said right at
the start when the fall happened when he pronounced the curse
on Satan when he pronounced the curse on Adam and the creation
because of the sin that had been brought in he said there in Genesis
3.15 he promised the seed of the woman the seed of the woman
that would come and the seed of the woman he said to Satan
you will bruise his heel oh yes it will be painful But He will
bruise, He will crush your head. He will be triumphant. And Satan
knew at that moment that God had a plan. to reverse the fall,
to reverse what he had done. He underlined it right there
at the start by straight away redeeming Adam and Eve, straight
away there, showed them gospel truth. You know, the animal that
was killed, they knew they were naked and they sowed fig leaves
of their own works to try and cover themselves. but God covered
them with the skins of an acceptable sacrifice which pictured the
sacrifice which would be the seed who would come in the fullness
of time as Galatians 4 verse 4 says when the fullness of the
time was come God sent forth his son made of a woman God's
son made of a woman made under his own law subject to his own
justice in this sin-cursed world to redeem those who are under
the law it says In Galatians 3 verse 10, what is it that needed
to be put right? Cursed is everyone that continues
not in all things written in the book of the Lord to do them.
Cursed. Curse, in all things, continues
all the time. Not just one or two of them.
As James says, if you've sinned in one point, you're guilty of
all. You're guilty of all. Well, what about if I turn over
a new leaf? No, what about what's gone? You can't undo what's gone.
He says, curse is everyone that continues not in all things that
are written in the book of the law to do them. And John Warburton
200 plus years ago said that that verse stabbed him in the
heart every single day whilst he was under conviction. Because
he knew that he was always under the curse of God. But read three
verses further along, that Christ has redeemed us. Redeemed paid
the price paid the price of justice Christ has redeemed us from the
curse of the law How did he do it by being made a curse for
us? Why for curse is everyone that hangs on a tree he hung
on a cross He poured out his life blood the life is in the
blood and when he poured out his precious blood Blood always
is required for the remission of sins without the shedding
of blood There is no remission of sin and he came and died on
the cross and shed his precious blood for his people so that
the people of God might be saved from their sins, the people that
he gave to Christ before the foundation of the world, that
he might have a kingdom which is populated with sinners who
are entitled, qualified, to be citizens of that kingdom. You
know, we talk a lot about qualifications for citizenship. To be an Australian,
you have to have certain qualifications to be a citizen of the country. You can't just breeze in and
expect to come and live here and get the benefits of being
here. You need qualifications. He came to qualify his people
to be citizens of the kingdom of God. That's what he did. He
came to be made a curse for them, that we might be made, he was
made sin for us, the sin of his people, that he might bear its
penalty, that he might satisfy the justice of God, that his
people might be made the righteousness of God in him. So it went on
from there and divine justice was demonstrated at the flood
and it just so happens that that's another thing that I firmly believe
in because when I look at the evidence all around I know God
flooded this world and why did he do it? Because he said that
sin must be punished and he came and he punished sin and he put
an end to the kingdom of Satan apart from Noah and the seven
souls that were with him in the ark, which is such a picture
of Christ. And you would think that that would have fixed it,
and that would have got rid of all the sin, but no, no. You see,
Noah and his offspring, they were descendants of Adam, and
it's Adam in him, in his sin. All the rest of the race was
cursed with that sin. And so they continued to sin,
and no sooner was the earth recovered from the flood, then we read
about in Genesis 11 about Nimrod. Nimrod, who I think the King
James Version calls him the mighty hunter, but probably a better
translation would be that rebellious panther, that one who hated the
justice of God. And he attempted to set up Babel
and the Tower of Babel, whatever that was, that it might reach
up to heaven. But the The point of it is this, and this is always
to keep in mind as we go through this book, that Satan's kingdom
is an attempt at a Christless world of unity. It's a consensus
of unity in this world that doesn't need anything to do with the
justice of God. You look at the philosophy of
the vast majority of people. In our country, if you're in
any way religious, or you're an evangelical Christian, then
a colloquial phrase for you is that you're a God-botherer, one
who bothers God. Why don't you just leave him
alone, like all the rest of us do, and not bother God? This is the way people think
about things. Satan has continued to deceive people and seduce
them and deceive them. And at the same time, as his
kingdom has gone on in rebellion with its Christless world unity
attempt, A world that sees no need for the establishment of
justice. What is it that alone will establish
the justice of God? It's the blood of Christ, the
blood of His Son. He sees no reason for that, and
you see again and again, trampling the blood of Christ underfoot.
And that's what the world and the kingdom of Satan constantly
does. It tramples the blood of Christ underfoot. It regards
it as irrelevant, a cursed thing, not worth bothering about. That's
his kingdom. Meanwhile, God has his people.
He always does. He calls Abraham. He calls Israel. And from that line of people,
always there were those there. There was a remnant according
to the election of grace, always, that knew the principles of the
gospel of grace. They always knew that God would
send his seed, the seed of the woman, who would bear the sins
of his people, and establish the righteousness of his people,
the Messiah who would come, the Anointed One who would come.
Meanwhile, Satan continues to promote rebellion against God,
deception of the nations. He attempts to establish world
political unity. How does he do it? Ah, this is
where, ancient history, you know, Do you know in London you can
go to the British Museum and you can walk the galleries of
the British Museum in the Assyrian Empire section? Absolutely fascinating. We have displays of the artefacts
from the tomb of Tutankhamen and the Egyptian pharaohs. You
can wander around those galleries and see all those things. Absolutely
fabulous, looking at stuff that's 3,000 to 4,000 years old. Absolutely
amazing. What were all those empires about?
What was it all for? Did it just happen? Did they
just happen? No, it was Satan's attempt to
establish his world political unity, his consensus of unity,
using the conquest of empires. You know, we had the Egyptians
first, and then we had the Assyrians, and after the Assyrians came
the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar, and then after
him came the Medo-Persians, Cyrus and Darius, and then after them
came Alexander the Great and the Greeks, and then came the
Romans. All of these... Why is it like it is? We'll see
as we go through this. This book of Revelation tells
his people this is why history is like it is. You're not just
like a little irrelevant adjunct to the rest of world history.
This is all about God's purpose of replacing the kingdom of Satan
with his own glorious kingdom. Of establishing and proving and
showing his complete authority over all things. So then, that's
what we see unfold as we go through the different visions. But always throughout, although
Satan appears as so powerful, when we get to Revelation 13, It's quite disturbing. It can
be quite disturbing. But you're very, very quickly
comforted that however powerful and fearsome Satan appears to
the purposes of the kingdom of God, God is always superior. He's more powerful. Always. Infinitely
more powerful. He's omniscient. He knows all
things. We keep seeing examples where as powerful as Satan is,
his knowledge of what's going on is limited. What do I mean?
I'll give you an example. You know when Jesus was born
in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, there
came wise men from the east to Jerusalem saying, where is he
that is born King of the Jews? We've seen his star. When we
were in the east we saw his star and we've come to worship him.
So it's somewhere around here. We know from the books. When
Daniel was in our place all those years ago, we know from the books
that he's coming now. So where is he? And Herod doesn't
know. And Satan, via Herod, tries to
find out where they are, so that he can kill this child before
he grows and accomplishes his purposes. And so that's why Herod
had all the boy children under two years old killed, just to
try and... it was Satan. You see, if he'd had perfect
knowledge, he would have known exactly where the Christ child
would be born so that he could do something about it. But you
see how he's limited. It's just a little example of
his limitation and yet throughout it all God is omnipotent and
God is omniscient. I just want to say a little bit
more about numbers in the book of Revelation, because we see
a lot of that. I've already said that seven
is the number of God's perfection. Examples why? Seven days of creation. Read Genesis 1, seven days of
creation. Oh, fancy that, we have seven
day weeks, don't we? And doesn't it feel right? Was
it the Soviet Union tried to introduce a 10-day week because
they thought it would be more efficient for the economy and
it caused no end of sickness and it just didn't work and they
reverted back to a 7-day week? We have a 7-day week. The time
for triumph of God's kingdom is 7. I'll tell you what I mean
shortly. As the revisions unfold, there
are seven seals, which the last one reveals itself into seven
trumpets, the last one of which reveals itself into seven vials
of judgment. These are all to accomplish God's
kingdom. Seven is the number of God accomplishing
his kingdom. The number of God is three. You say, am I saying there are
three gods? No, of course I'm not. God said to Israel, Israel,
the Lord your God is one Lord. There is one God, but that one
God is in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is
absolutely clear. So three is the number of God.
And four is the number of creation. How do we get that? Well, you
know, you've heard of going to the four corners of the world,
and we know it's a sphere, so how has it got corners in it?
But it's an expression, and we see in the book, anything which
is symbolizing the creation seems to have the number 4 associated
with it. When 3 works on 4, with addition,
what do you get? You get 7. You get 7. Then we've
got man, whose number is 6. We're told clearly at the end
of Revelation 13 that the number of man is the same as the number
of the beast. It's 666. Why 6? He's one short of seven, isn't
he? He falls short of seven. Man always will fall short. You
see, the six days when things were created, it did not fulfill,
it did not achieve the Kingdom of God until that seventh day
of rest was there, the seven days of creation. Man is six,
he's one short of divine perfection. Think of another number, the
number of God, 3, and the number 4 of creation. I've said 3 plus
4 equals 7, which is the number of God to accomplish his kingdom.
But what about 3 times 4? It's almost like an arithmetic
lesson, isn't it? 3 times 4 is 12. Oh, we've got
12 patriarchs in the Old Testament. I wonder why. Three times whole,
we've got 12 apostles in the New Testament. And then we look
in Revelation, and we see the first vision of heaven, and around
the throne of God are 12 plus 12 is 24. We see 24 elders in
heaven. What's that talking about? It's
talking about the kingdom of God accomplished, because there's
the church of God that he chose in Christ before the foundation
of the world, and there in the vision is that church in its
final state. You know, in Revelation 19, in
the first verse, John says, and I looked and I saw much people
in heaven. If you're a believer tonight,
if I'm a believer tonight, in that vision, outside of this
space-time creation that we're in, John looked and he saw you
and me. there in heaven. I saw much people
in heaven. Because God accomplishes and
has accomplished his purpose. It's just working out. And he's
giving us this to show his servants things it's got to unfold in
the way that he's decreed it will unfold. To accomplish its
perfect purpose of the perfect destruction of the kingdom of
Satan and his rebellion against God and the establishment of
the kingdom of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. So 24 elders in
heaven. Seven represents complete history.
It represents the time from the beginning to the end. And we
see this phrase keep turning up in Revelation. We hear of,
it will be for a time, times, and half a time. Three and a
half. Three and a half. Three and a
half plus three and a half? Seven. You see? It fits together,
doesn't it? Three and a half plus three and
a half is seven. Times time and half a time. That same time is
sometimes given as 1,260 days. 1,260 days? 1,260 days, if a
year is 360 days, 1,260 days is three and a half years. There it is
again. Three and a half plus three and a half equals seven.
You see how it... I know there are people that
write absolutely eccentric books about biblical numerics and all
sorts of things and certain codes and all sorts of rubbish, it
really is, but nevertheless we mustn't lose sight of the fact
that God is giving us these numbers because there's true significance
in it. True significance about the establishment
of his kingdom and the removal of the kingdom of Satan. Six
is the number of man. Seven is the number of God's
perfection. When man tries to achieve perfection, six sevens
are 42. If a month is 30 days, and 12
months are 360 days, near enough, isn't it? For symbolism, remember
it's symbolical, if that's a year, right? 12 months. Six times seven
is 42. 42 months? 42 months of 30 days?
1260 days. We've heard that before,
haven't we? Three and a half years. Time,
time. You see, it all fits together. Ten we see again and again as
the number of completeness, and it's generally in the sense to
do with the created order. So we'll see a lot of things
like that. You might say, you're talking rubbish. Honestly, somebody
that's off his head would talk about these things as if they
had any significance. Do you know, if you think like
that, Believe me, it is Satan's deception. Satan is the great
deceiver. This world is deceived into thinking
that the things that God has said are rubbish, and that they're
not worth listening to. But they are. And the deeper
you look at them, and the more you see the significance of them,
you see how God is accomplishing his purpose. What about then,
finally, the days in which we're living now? And I'm talking about,
I would guess, say from about 1985, 1990 onwards. I might be wrong, but there or
thereabouts. What about the days in which we're living? You know,
it's certainly different from any other days we've ever experienced,
haven't we? It talks about things that are
shortly to come to pass, and then in Revelation 20, verse
3, we hear about Satan, who is restricted in his powers to start
with, is then right at the end released for a little season.
He is loosed from his restraint for a little season, right before
the end. Is it now? I am very strongly
of the opinion that these are the days that we're living in,
that we're living in Satan's little season. Let me give you
some reasons why I think this. Look at world population. It's
absolutely staggering. I am 68 years old in a few weeks'
time, and in my short lifetime, the population of the world has
more than trebled. That's a lot of people. It's
made a huge difference to all sorts of things that go on. World
population ballooning. marks out these days as quite
different to anything that we've... that world history went along
bobbling along at a certain level for a very long time and then
it started to rise in the early 1800s it started to rise from
its long-term historical plateau and it's just ballooned ever
since and three times in my... every one person that was on
the planet when I was a little boy in the 1950s there are now
three people on the planet during that time The level of satanic
delusion about so many things, every aspect of life, you see
it in the news, the culture of society, the philosophy of society. Do you remember, if you're more
than about 30 or 40 years old, the things that you remember
were wrong when you were a kid, and were right when you were
a kid, seem to have been turned exactly the other way round.
That's never happened before, quite like this, in such a short
period of time, isn't it? in the realm of public morals,
in the realm of that which is right and wrong, the things that
even 40 years ago were clearly the right thing to do and clearly
the wrong thing to do, because there was some sort of knowledge.
I remember, not as a believer, but just as a young child in
the village I grew up in, in the north of England, that me
and my friends, even though we didn't go to church and we had
no gospel influence yet, We believe that there was a God in heaven
who saw us. We believe there was a God in
heaven who looked down. We believe that there was a God to whom
we would be accountable. So we better think twice about
what we said or what we did. You don't find that now. You
know, we have multiple stabbings in London. There are 50 people
that have been killed with knives in London this year so far, and
it's only March. And one thing that keeps coming
out is that the perpetrators of these things show virtually
no sign of any remorse for what they've done. All of that sort
of thing seems to have changed dramatically. And then we've
got technological wizardry, which has happened on a scale so dramatic
compared with what it was, and so rapidly. You know, I mean,
don't get me wrong, we make great use of it all the time. We use
the internet, but Just think how it's come. The reason why
it's so relevant is because it's what God reveals to us, especially
in Revelation 13, about the way things are today. John wrote
it, given by God and written down by John, 1900, what did
I say, 25 years ago? Something like that, there or
thereabouts. And it hits the nail smack bang
on the head about the days in which we live. The technological
wizardry. We fly, I mean, 100 years ago,
If we wanted to write a letter home now, I guess it would go
on horseback or carriage to Sydney, and then it would get on a ship,
and it would... How long did the ships used to
take? Six weeks or more, wasn't it, to get back to England, something
like that? And you see how long it would take? Yesterday morning, I brought
up FaceTime on my phone, and I was talking to my grandchildren
as they were going to bed. ten and a half thousand miles
away. See, that technological wizardry has come about just
in, what, ten, less than ten years, isn't it? I mean, we've
got the internet, but what we're able to do with it now is so
phenomenal, and yet this book, this book in symbolism, in signification,
describes it. Doesn't it ring true? Doesn't
it ring true with the way things are? International travel, you
know, which, as I said, was weeks and weeks and weeks on a ship
if you survived the journey at all because of sickness or whatever
else. But now, we got on a plane in London and 21 hours later
we're stepping off a plane in... You know, this is something that
has happened That kind of international air travel is not much more than
about, for the majority of people, it's not much more than about
50 years old being able to do that. It marks out the days in
which we live with the open communications, with freedom of movement around
the planet, with the church By which I mean the Church, which
is the true Church of Christ preaching the true Gospel of
Christ as it is revealed in this book from cover to cover, the
Church, as Revelation 11 says, is looking to all the world like
the two witnesses that are lying dead in the streets. In England,
it's as if the church that preached the gospel of God's sovereign
grace, the true gospel of grace, it's as if it doesn't exist for
all practical purposes. Yet God keeps his people. God
always has his people. He always has his people. As
the book of Revelation shows us, there are small pockets of
true believers in these days, kept in a wilderness separation
from the kingdom of Satan, from this world, and what are they
doing? What do they do? What do believers do in these
days? We're waiting. We're waiting and watching. The
number of parables that talk about that waiting and watching.
Expecting. Why are we expecting? Because,
Revelation 1 verse 7. Behold, he cometh with clouds,
and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him,
and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even
so, Amen. However things seem to be going
on, like they said in the days of the flood, Peter writes in
his epistles, it will be just like it was in the days of the
flood, you know before The flood, it says that they were marrying
and giving in marriage and just going about their normal everyday
business with no thought for God and no thought for the justice
of God, and then in a day God took them all away. And he says,
and Christ said it, and Peter said it, again and again, we
get this message from scripture, the end is coming. The days in
which we live do not go on forever. the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom
of God, will be established in its perfection, a kingdom of
righteousness and peace, which will replace and will destroy
this kingdom of Satan, which will get its just reward under
the justice of God. Behold, he cometh with clowns."
So there In a nutshell is an outline of what I plan to do.
I hope it doesn't sound too daunting or too impossible to get through,
but that's where we're heading. Next time, as I said, it's the
intention to look at chapters 1 to 7 and get the key messages
of what God is doing in these days in which we live. Show to
his servants the things which must shortly come to pass. ? The greatest memory ? ? Where
the eye myself can see ? ? Where the water and the land ? ? From
the clear and shining snow ? ? Be of sin the downpour ? ? Save
a mountain in your hope ? to the ? Make it come to thee for rest
? ? Help the soul to thee for grace ? ? Thou art in the fount
of knowledge ? ? Watch me, Savior, for my life ? ? While I hold
this fleeting breath ? ? When my body shall go to death ? ?
When I squander what I've known ? Thank you, Balan. I thought,
lovely, the next verse on is, I'm the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which was, which
is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. What a great description of our
Saviour. Thank you. Let's give thanks for this food
that's before us. Heavenly Father, we do thank
you for gathering us together. We thank you for the reign and
rule of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we pray that you bless your
words to our hearts, Heavenly Father. And thank you for feeding
us, feeding us with the manna from heaven and feeding us with
this food that's before us. And we Pray again, Heavenly Father,
your presence and your blessing upon our time together. We thank
you for gathering us in the name of your dear and precious son.
We thank you in his precious name. Amen.