Acts 9, verses 1-6 where the
apostle is given his imperative and we'll back up and work through
our text. And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughters
against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest
and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues that
if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women,
he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed,
he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shined round about him
a light from heaven. And he fell to the earth and
heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? And he said, Who are you, Lord?
And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you persecuted. It is hard
for you to kick against the pricks. And he trembling, astonished,
said, Lord, what will thou have me to do? The Lord said unto
him, Arise, go into the city, and it shall be told thee there
what thou must do. Thus is the reading of the scriptures.
If you have your outline in front of you, the caption of verse
one is still Saul. This is where we left off last
week. Still Saul. And the reason why we make mention
of that statement is because it opens up with Solos. That's
his name at the present. And Solos. Yet breathing out
threatenings and slaughters. As we open up verse 1 of chapter
9 we have already noted that Saul is following the same pattern
That we saw him engage in in chapter 8 verses 1 and following
where he went into every house wreaking havoc Destroying the
Christians that Greek term to destroy means to demolish their
agenda it means to Thwart their purposes and it also means to
put them to death if you notice verse 1 It says, and Saul, yet
breathing out threatenings and slaughter. Now, why would Luke
put it in that kind of construction? Because Saul here is a representative,
and at this point he's an emissary of the devil. And the devil's
objective with regards to the church primarily, but not exclusively,
is to destroy the church. The goal of the devil is to destroy
the church. Our master taught us this in
the gospel of John, right? The thief comes not but to what?
Steal, kill, and to destroy. And in that same gospel, that's
John 10. In John chapter 8, we are told,
and we'll learn this over the next two weeks as we go through
the book of Revelation, that the role of the devil is that
he was a murderer from the beginning. He's a liar and he's a murderer,
and his objective is to steal, kill, and destroy. And when it
comes to the church, it appears that, particularly in this context,
this is a no-holds-barred approach on the part of the devil. His
goal is to destroy Christianity. It has always been that way,
and it's that way today. So, as you and I are talking
about the assault of one man upon the church of Jesus Christ,
we're gonna embellish this, not in an unlawful way, but in a
biblically exegetical way for you and I to understand that
it is the normative experience of Christians in this world to
be persecuted. Mark that, child of God, that
the context in which the church is spreading, it's preaching
the gospel, Much salvation taking place as you see in the life
of Philip, in the life of Stephan. We closed out with Philip last
week and we're opening up now with Saul, yet breathing out
threatenings and slaughters. So on the one hand, salvation
is occurring. We saw a glorious testimony of
that with the Ethiopian. But now we are observing Saul
assaulting the church. He's assaulting the church with
such vigor and passion that I say he's a symbol of the devil. Now
when we use that term the devil the word devil means adversary
That's what the word devil means now. Sometimes an adversary can
simply be an individual who in the flesh holds a position of
enmity towards you or God or bow like you can have an adversary
and That adversary is not necessarily possessed of the devil So be
very careful We love to make the devil ubiquitous, and we
ought not to do that. That's part of our paganism,
the traits of paganism that are inherent in our fallen nature.
Many of us have backgrounds where our culture is pagan, and paganism
is the exaltation of the devil in virtually every form of life,
meaning that we see the devil in everything, and that's unbiblical. So sometimes an individual may
be your adversary, but it does not mean they are possessed by
the devil. Oh, I know we would love to attribute it to the devil,
but sometimes it's just fallen nature. It's just fallen nature. Fallen nature is sinful, too.
And according to Romans 8, it also is hostile to God's law.
So when a man or woman is not subject to God's word, they can
act like a devil, though not be possessed by one. Is that
true? That being the case, we might
also say that Christians, when they are trapped by their carnal
propensities, can be devilish, though they are actually born
of God. Can we say that? So when we say that a person
may be devilish, we are not saying that they are possessed of the
devil, necessarily. There are times when your brother
in Christ or your sister in Christ, and certainly your spouse in
Christ, will be your adversary. Sometimes right and sometimes
wrong. So the term adversary, diabolos, is not always referring
to some kind of demonic expression or demonic possession. Don't
fall prey to that. We have to rise above those notions
because the devil doesn't, he doesn't operate everywhere present. It's not always a demon behind
everything. Please be careful about that. In this context,
however, What we are sure of is that Saul is an emissary of
Satan because he's first and foremost, not yet born again.
Secondly, he has a virulent, hostile, religious zeal against
the church of such level that he consents to their death. He
was there consenting to Stephen's death. You guys remember that?
He was consenting to the death of Stephen as chapter 8. And we were looking at, I'm sorry,
the latter part of chapter 7 when Stephen cried out over in chapter
7. And it says chapter in chapter
7, verse 59, A stone Stephen calling upon God saying, Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit. And Saul was consenting unto
his death, and he was wreaking havoc. against the church. That's verse 1 of chapter 8.
And Saul was consenting unto his death. What's going on inside
this man that he is so hostile to the people of God that he
would kill them? Well, he's threatened. His whole
lifestyle, his whole identity, his whole persona is threatened.
And often when you and I are threatened, we will push back
on that thing which threatens us. We've talked about this before
in terms of psychological temperament. And this is true in, again, in
a context where we're supposed to be family, brothers and sisters,
even married, you can be in a very confident mode of rest, where
you are in a wellbeing, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually,
and you're confident. And then you have your guards
down because you're in rest mode, rest, you're resting, you're
fine. There are no apparent adversaries, no one causing you problems or
no one threatening your life. But as soon as a threat arises,
whether that threat is real or perceived, we go into what is
called fight mode. You guys understand what I'm
talking about, where you start to defend yourself. Now, that
defense does not have to always be audible. You know, this is
true. You can go to defending yourself
in your own mind. You're sitting there with someone,
your spouse even, and you enter into a disagreement with them.
Guess what? The walls go up and you go to
fighting against him or her. You guys are in a warfare right
there, three feet apart in the same car at war. Now the war is silent, but it's
still real. Because in your mind, you are
arguing, opposing, you are resisting whatever he has said that you
disagree with, right? Then it can rise to the level
of you responding audibly and getting into a major debate and
a major conflict. I'm simply saying that as we
think about Saul, I want you to think about him from the standpoint
of what's moving him to be so persistently hostile against
the church. He's under threat. He's under
threat. His well-being is threatened.
His persona is threatened. See, he's part of the Sanhedrin,
part of the leadership of the Jews. He's part of that body
politic that you and I have been identifying since we've begun
the study in the book of Acts that I call the false authority. He's part of the false authority.
He's part of the false authority of Judaism. And because of that,
every time he's confronted with these Christians moving out in
the proclamation of the gospel, he feels like he has to do something
to stop it. Now, what is a contemporary model
or paradigm of that today? Right now it's Islam. Islam is
a major paradigm of that. There are other paradigms, but
Islam is a major public paradigm of hostility against Christianity. Is that true? On such a level
that they are willing to kill Christians and they are doing
it in a very barbaric way right now. Why would they rise to the
level of killing Christians? Because Christianity as a propositional
system threatens Judaism. Christianity says that there's
one way to God. if we actually believe in propositional
truth and Christianity's claims of an absolute exclusivism, exclusivism
of salvation being accomplished only in a relationship with Jesus
Christ would actually expose Islam for being false. It would
at least challenge the proposition that Islam is invalid. And so
long as a man or woman has a persona or a standing or an identity
or a worldview that can be challenged and your worldview being challenged
threatens you, you're going to fight for your worldview. You
guys hear what I'm saying? So long as your worldview can
be challenged and that threatens you, you're going to fight for
your worldview. So this is Saul. And fascinating this is because
as I am going through the contemporary media archives and looking at
the manner in which Islam is assaulting the world basically
right now, radical Islam, they are functioning in the same kind
of MO that Israel did against the church. With the same kind
of threatening and slaughters. Threatening and slaughters. And
in the Greek that word slaughter there is an advised word. It
means to murder. to murder, to kill, almost in
a sacrificial way. And this is why Islam takes individuals
who are from the West and frequently Christians and cut their throats. So there's this beheading thing
starting to emerge again in Islam that has its roots in ancient
biblical paradigms of dominating people groups. It's why Revelation
20, speaking to the millennium paradigm, talks about the beheading
of the saints. It uses that language. That's
an old Semitic terminology of which the Jewish people and the
Arabics, the Semitic people used to demonstrate a kind of, as
it were, killing off or hostily stopping a movement. Remember, John the Baptist was
beheaded. And when you behead someone,
what you're seeking to do, not only demonstrate that your God
rules over their God, but you are seeking to instill fear into
the minds of those who are a part of that system. Because beheading
is a gruesome act when it is visually observed. And so the
text says here that Saul is yet breathing out threatenings and
slaughters in the present indicative verbal. That means that's what
he's doing. He was doing it in chapter eight, he's doing it
now. And notice the language. Against the disciples of the
Lord. Do you see that against the disciples
of the Lord? I'll say something about this
before we unpack verse 1 in our outline because I want to show
you the larger spiritual paradigm here If you've been following
me through the book of Acts what you understand is that the book
of Acts is the earthly counterpart to the book of Revelation You
you cannot understand the book of Revelation without in any
cogent fashion without recognizing the connection between the language
in the book of Revelation and the manifestation of the church
in the midst of the world in the book of Acts. The Acts narrative
is the premise for the historical correspondence to the language
in the book of Revelation. That's why I just went to Revelation
chapter 20 about the beheading. We'll be going back to Revelation
11 in a moment to deal with the beast who rises up against the
prophets of God who tell them the truth to kill them. And I
am saying Saul here is a model of that for us right now. Threatenings
and slaughters. Threatenings and slaughters.
Matthew chapter 23 verse 34. This is what our Lord Jesus said
would occur. And as we are meditating upon
this in the comfort of our Western seat, and privilege. You and I are to do what the
Hebrew writer says very, very earnestly and we are to pray
for them who are being persecuted. We are to pray for them who are
being persecuted as ourselves also being in the body. Did you
guys hear that? You are to pray for those who
are being afflicted and persecuted as ourselves also being in the
body. Here's what our master said. Wherefore behold, I send
unto you. This is Christ. And guess who
he's speaking to Jerusalem. He's speaking to the very same
Pharisees and Sadducees of whom the apostle Paul saw right now
was a part of behold. I send unto you what prophets
and what wise men and what scribes and some of them you shall. That's
future tense. You shall kill and what? and
some of them you shall scourge in your synagogue and persecute
them from city to city. Is that what Paul is doing? From
city to city. Christ was speaking in the future
tense to the false authority of the Sanhedrin and the high
priest who at that time had the authority over the church. He
said, you will persecute from city to city my service. Paul,
I'm Saul right now is going from Jerusalem to Damascus. Damascus
is some hundred and fifty miles away. That's how hot he is. Go back to our text. I don't
want you to miss that. I want you to think that this
is just some dude upset. He's on a major mission to stop
the church. Threatenings and slaughters against
the disciples of the Lord. Now, when Luke uses that phraseology,
we ought not to let that pass. Because when we talk about the
people of God who are authentically the people of God, we're talking
about men and women who are students of Christ. Do you see the word
disciple? That's an alien term to Western
Christians because Western Christians are technically just church folks. Most Western Christians are just
church folks. So I want you to think that one
through with me. Mathathides is the Greek term for disciple,
and a disciple is a learner of Christ. It's a follower of Christ. He's one who learns of Christ
and therefore follows him because he learns him. He becomes a disciple,
a person who is modeled after his mentor. His mentor is Jesus
Christ. You know what that means? If
every Christian was a disciple, every Christian would be able
to tell every other person who asked him about Christ with deep,
comprehensive knowledge. Because every Christian would
be what the text says, a disciple. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? But I would assert that in our present generation, the
vast majority of Christians are not disciples. They're just church
folk. Like they couldn't spend a lengthy
amount of time sharing the word of God concerning the person
and work of Jesus with the average person. Like watch this saints. I just want to put this in your
hearing. To be a disciple of Christ is for you to pay so close
attention to Jesus that your objective is to become just like
him. To be a disciple is to put on Christ, to learn his ways,
to learn his doctrine, to learn his life, to mimic him. That's
what it means to be a disciple. In fact, you cannot be an evangelist
in the biblical sense of evangelism without first being a disciple.
Because the aim of evangelism is to make disciples. But a person
who is not a disciple of Christ cannot even begin to bring another
person into discipleship process because they're not a disciple.
So the difference between Western Christians who are nothing but
church folks and the people of our text is that these people
in our text took Jesus seriously. Are you guys following me? so
seriously that they are outspreading the word because they are disciples. You know what that means? There
are Christians 24 hours a day. You know what that means? That means like the whole of
their life is summed up in the rule of Christ. Like they don't
do Christianity on the weekend and during the week do secularism. They're Christian 24 seven. Am
I making some sense? So that's why Luke would have
us to understand that the threat to which Paul is now giving this
much attention to is the fact that there is teaching going
on of such nature that it's impacting people's lives and changing their
lives. And these people now are manifesting
an allegiance to Jesus that constitutes a 24 hour a day lifestyle. Now, when you meet people like
that, they become light and salt in the culture. Did you hear
me? they become light and salt. I'm gonna help us see this a
little bit more as we get to verse two, but I certainly want
you to grasp what Paul is dealing with, Saul rather. Saul is dealing
with real Christians who are doing the real work of being
real disciples of Jesus Christ. And that is a threat to any religious
system and particularly Judaism, of which by now we're in the
ninth chapter from chapter one to chapter nine, we're dealing
with five to 10 years. You know, Jerusalem is filled
with Christians. You know, the Sanhedrin, the
high priest, Caiaphas, and Annas, as we'll meet here in a moment,
they are perturbed with this increasing, growing body of disciples. Every time they turn around,
new disciples. And Saul is so zealous for Judaism that he is
hunting them down wherever they are, Matthew 23, from city to
city. Now notice what it says. Notice
what it says in our text. You can stay at the PowerPoint
for a moment. It says, And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings
and slaughters against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high
priest and desired of him letters to Damascus to the what? Synagogues. And see, that's what our master
was saying. They will drive you out of the synagogues. They will
take you up in the synagogue. Here's what he meant. And this
is important for you to remember. The gospel was to go into all
the world, but it was to first start where? In Jerusalem. Then
Judea, which means that Christ intended for his believers to
be sprinkled like salt in every one of the synagogues in Israel.
And they were. You know what Paul knew? Saul
knew? He knew that Christians were
sitting in synagogues looking for an opportunity to tell the
teacher in the synagogue that that text you're reading is about
Christ. Because that's what they were
left there to do. To show men and women that the scriptures
were fulfilled in that man from Nazareth called Jesus. And Saul
knew that should this sustain itself as a method of ministry,
It would damage the purpose and design of Judaism. And it certainly
did. And we'll see that as we move
through the book of Acts as well. But under this first point, we
have the red horse of what? Persecution coexisting with the
white horse of what? Proclamation. Okay, so I'm gonna
show you two truths. Keep your hand here and go with
me in your Bible to Revelation chapter six. Revelation chapter
six. is I want you to see the heavenly
counterpart to the earthly correspondence of our text. So for those of
you who may think you have a sound structure to the book of Revelation,
I would encourage you to examine that premise carefully. And if
you want to, you can set it aside for the moment. We won't debate,
argue about any kind of eschatological paradigm presupposing your interpretation
of the book of Revelation. We'll leave that alone for a
moment. Here's what I will say. You don't have to have any eschatological
paradigm to know what the book of Revelation is about. You don't
have to pay allegiance to whether you have a post-millennial or
millennial or pre-millennial view to understand the central
theme of the book of Revelation. The theme of the book of Revelation
is the rule of Jesus Christ over the world for his glory through
the church. That's the theme of the book
of Revelation. Christ is Lord over the world
to his church. And subcategories under that
theme is this, the church is in the world and so long as the
church is in the world, it will go through what? Tribulation.
That's right. So streaming through the book
of Revelation is real deal language. It's real Christianity. It's
the Christianity that has hallmarked most of church history. Again,
I say, as we begin to look at these few verses, that Western
Christianity, as you and I know it, largely with the kind of
freedoms and liberties and kind of framework of government that
we have is an anomaly in most parts of the world. For you and
I to be able to assemble together a whole lifetime, a whole lifetime,
and never be under threat of the government is unheard of
in most countries. We are over a hundred people,
a hundred people in here. We are able to assemble week in
and week out. And you never wonder, wonder if, uh, the police can
be at the church on this Friday. You never think like that because
of special Providence, because of historical events that have
taken place in the past, that past that have laid the foundation
for freedom of religion in America. Um, you and I worship God in
a free context. This is not the theme of scripture.
And neither is it the tenor of the Christian life throughout
church history. The tenor of Christian life is
what we're reading. And guess what? What we're reading
is coming here one day, real soon. You need to know that. And so it's important that we
get ready. That's why God gives us the end
from the beginning so we can get ready. Cause we all ultimately
come to these ends. Okay. And so I want to show you
this, this sort of a, this simultaneity that goes on between war and
proclamation of which Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24, there
shall be wars and rumors of wars. There will be earthquakes in
diverse places. There will be famines and pestilences. And
then there will be those who will take you up in the synagogues
and beat you and persecute you and kill you. And the gospel
will be preached into all the world as a testimony. And then
the end shall come. Christ gave us all of the horsemen
right there. All of the horsemen of the apocalypse
were in that statement. The red horse of war, the black
horse of famine, speckled and gray horse of death, and then
the white horse of the proclamation of the gospel. All of it was
right there. Matthew 24 is to be attached as an addendum to
Revelation chapter 6. Let me show you what I'm saying.
Look at what it says in verse 1. And I saw when the lamb opened
one of the seals. Who opens the seals? That's right,
he has the authority to open them because of his shed blood.
His shed blood gives him the right to be the ruler of the
universe. And I saw as one of the lambs
opened the seals and I heard as it were the noise of what?
Thunder is a symbol of God's power and authoritative voice.
One of the four beasts saying, come and see. And then we read
the next verse. And I saw and behold a white
horse, you see that? So it says a white horse and
he that sat on him had a what? And a crown was given unto him
and he went forth conquering and to conquer. The vision of
this first horse is traversing through the world in a warlike
fashion, always conquering. It's the first of the four. Now
what this white horse corresponds to is the preaching of the gospel.
The white in the book of Revelation, the white is never ever associated
with the devil. As we deal with color codes in
the book of Revelation, the white always is associated with the
triumph of Jesus Christ, the reign of Christ, the righteousness
of God in Christ, and the righteousness of God's elect. As you learned
last week, God gives us white robes. We ride on white horses
with a king who will come on a white horse on the last day,
sword protruding from his mouth, destroying his foes. But in Revelation
chapter six, verse two, this war is not a political or social
war. This is a spiritual war. And
this bow is the bow by which he shoots arrows. And these arrows
are the arrows of biblical truth that Christ shoots into the hearts
of his foes. everywhere he plans on subduing
sinners to himself. The Old Testament correspondence
to Revelation chapter six is Psalm 45. Psalm 45 clearly affirms
this text and it speaks to the success of the gospel as it goes
into all the world, drawing men and women to Jesus Christ by
the power of the gospel. We'll go there in a moment, but
notice what it says. And he went forth conquering
and to what? The word there is not chaos from
which we get the term Nike. It runs through the book of revelation.
It means to overcome. Christ is the one who overcame
death and hail. He has the authority over it.
He has the power over everything. And because he has all power,
he has the right to commission his church to go into all the
world with the gospel. And wherever the church goes
with the gospel, it conquers through him. Do you guys see
that? conquers through him so I am
making a strong assumption of interpretation that that basically
great against the tenor of our present contemporary eschatological
view which calls for Revelation chapter 6 to to be the Antichrist
that is generally your premillennial dispensational view but I have
debated many of them and have told them how do you establish
an Antichrist interpretation upon a crystal centric book.
How do you establish an antichrist conclusion on a text of scripture
that has his correspondence in Matthew 24 with the one who is
going to send the gospel into all the world? How do you have
an antichrist interpretation when the other white horse text
in Revelation 19 is clearly alluding to Jesus Christ? And how do you
have an anti-Christ interpretation when your point of passage is
Psalm 45? Go with me and your Bible to Psalm 45. Because in
Psalm 45, it speaks to this, I believe it does. Now listen
to what he says here and see if you cannot, you guys cannot
see the parallels there. Listen to what it says. I'm going
to read verses 1 through verse 5. Are you there? And then verse
6 and 7 actually Clearly is affirmed in Hebrews chapter 1 Identifying
Jesus Christ as being equal with the father though distinct in
their personhood and the father giving him the throne of dominion
over the universe Psalm 45 1 my heart is indicting a good matter.
Anytime you're thinking about Jesus your heart's indicting
a good matter. I Speak of the things which I've
made touching the king who is the king in this context is Jesus. I Oh, it's David in the Old Testament
text. But you guys know what Psalm
40 verse 7 says, right? Lo, I come in the volume of the
book is written about me. My tongue is the pen of a ready
writer. That's the analogy of the person who wrote down the
chronicles, the history, the events that took place are transcribed
during those historical narratives or epics in the days of Israel.
The prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 9 comes across an angel who had
a writer's inkorn in his hand, and that angel wrote down the
names of all those in the city whom God had preserved from judgment. So God writes, as we learned
last week, God has a book, doesn't he? And God writes in his book,
doesn't he? It's a metaphorical language
that God keeps accounts. Listen to what he says. He says
concerning the King and the writing that David is exercising, you
are fairer than the children of men. Now that can only describe
one person. For those of us who are in love
with Jesus Christ, there's only one person fairer than all in
the world. His name is Jesus. No contentions
with that, I hope. Now notice, you are fairer than
the children of men. Grace is poured into your lips. We acknowledge that Christ is
full of grace and truth. And the word was made flesh and
dwelt among us. And we beheld the glory, his
glory, the glory of the only begotten of the father, full
of grace and true. Your lips pour out grace. Therefore,
God has blessed you forever. Is Christ blessed by the father
forever? Now notice what he says, gird
thy sword upon your thigh, O most mighty, And with thy glory and
thy majesty, do you see that? And in thy majesty, ride prosperously,
ride successfully, ride triumphantly, ride victorious. So that's what
the word prosper means. Listen to what it says. Because
of the what? And meekness and righteousness
in your right hand shall teach you terrible things. Here's the
analogy, watch this. Your arrows are what? Now see,
now notice in Revelation 6, he had a bow, didn't he? In that
state, in that text, the bow is what is necessary to shoot
the arrows. I've had to debate again, pre-millennialists
for years. And they would say, yeah, it
says it has a bow, but it doesn't say have arrows. And we go, we
call that in logic and argumentation, we call that begging the question.
Okay, it's simple. If you're not thinking it through,
you mean he gonna have a bow? and not have arrows, right? You might as well say he had
a quiver, but didn't have arrows in the quiver. So obviously,
because he has a bow, he would have arrows. And the corresponding
text here will tell you the designated target of those arrows. Your
arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies, whereby
the people what? Fall under thee. And most conservative
theologians have seen this text as speaking to the war in the
spiritual dimension where Christ is subduing his foes under him,
bringing them into gospel submission. Let me help you. We're getting
ready to see a man who has been pierced through his heart by
the arrows of the gospel and brought to his knees, made to
say to the king, what will you have me to do? Are you hearing
me? There is a battle that goes on in the world and it's a battle
for God's elect. It's a battle for sinners all across the world.
And it's a battle of subduing those sinners and bringing them
to Jesus Christ through the preaching of the gospel. And when the gospel
is preached, your heart must first be pierced by the arrows
of biblical truth. Are you hearing me? And so this
is what's taking place in our texts whereby the people fall
under the, and then to allude to who we are talking about,
we are told in verse six and seven, Thy throne, O God, is
forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is
a right scepter or a righteous scepter. They could have translated
that same word. Thou lovest righteousness and
hatest wickedness. Now watch this. Here is the two
persons of the Godhead. Therefore, God, your God, hath
anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. We
have here God the Father. Anointing God the Son because
of the triumph of God the Son at Calvary and because the triumph
of God the Son at Calvary Will redound to the salvation of men
and women around the world God has anointed him King and this
is why in the book of Revelation We see him riding as it were
on a white horse now. He's riding not personally. He's riding through the gospel
It's the gospel that he's sending in his name through all the world.
Are you hearing me? And if you're a child of God,
you ought to know that because the gospel came in power one
day and subdued you. Let's go back to our text. Listen
to the language in chapter six, verse one, verse two. And I saw
and behold a white horse and he that sat on him had a bow
and a crown was given unto him. Do you see that crown? I've talked
about it before, but I have to allude to it now because a lot
of you probably just don't, you know, you don't know the interpretation.
There are two crowns in the scriptures. One is called a Stephanus crown. And the other one is called a
diadem crown. A diadem crown is the crown of
political rule. A diadem crown is the crown of
political rule. That crown is what is talked
about in Revelation 19 when it says, and he had many crowns
on his head. That's a diadem crown. In this text, it's called a Stephanus
crown. Now, what is a Stephanus crown?
It's a crown of victory. When you win a race, it's a crown
that's given to you after the race is won. And what it's speaking
to is the singular and exclusive race that Jesus had to run in
order to redeem his people. Of which after he ran that race,
his heavenly father crowned him with glory and honor. And so
he sits as a conquering vicar on his white horse, subduing
sinners around the world. When Jesus Christ comes to you
and me, he does not come as a mere servant seeking to bring us to
himself. He comes as a victor, as a king,
as a ruler, as one who has already won the battle himself. And so
he brings us or subdues us by virtue Of his own crown rights
and I saw and behold a white horse and him that sat on had
a boat and a crown was given unto him And he went forth conquering
and to conquer if we were to do a fuller development of that
last clause What it would sound like is this In john chapter
6 jesus said and this is around verse 37 38 all that the father
giveth me Shall come to me and he that cometh unto me. I will
in no wise cast out If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto
me. John 6, 40, and this is the will of him that sent me, that
all that seeth the sun and believeth on him shall have everlasting
life and will never perish. What is he talking about? The
sure victory of the gospel, wherever it goes to save sinners and become
the object of God's grace because of the triumph of Christ. This
is the white horse. Now notice what it says in verse
three. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the
second beast say, come and see. And there went out another horse
that was what? That's right. And power was given
unto him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth. Now you'll notice that the white
horse in verse one and two is not described as creating war
or disturbing peace or killing anything, only conquering. Verse
three, however, says this red horse takes peace from the earth.
You got that? It takes peace from the earth.
And this is what Jesus meant in Matthew chapter 24 in Luke
21, Mark 13. and there shall be wars and rumors
of war. That means there will be killings
and murders and violence and much bloodshed. And that's the
way it's been in our world since the days of Christ. You guys
know that, right? War after war after war. Look in the Middle
East right now. It's horrible. Bloodshed everywhere. But that's
the normative condition of a fallen world status. Watch this. The red horse has been riding
ever since Adam and Eve sinned. The metaphor of the horse is
always a metaphor of power and of war. Conquest. Dominion. This here is what we would call
a Neo-Zechariah imagery or symbolism because Zechariah actually addresses
these same horses in his apocalyptic language of Zechariahs 1 through
4 as well. And so we're talking about power,
power as in the context of war. Now watch this. And this red
horse, when he was given Well, no, this is it and power was
given to him that sat there on to take peace from the earth
and that they should kill one another See it now watch the
latter part Watch this and there was given unto him a great the
word is mega in the original sword ramp fire sword a great
sword And this is a sword of murder, a sword of violence.
The sword was the great symbol of war and conflict in that day,
not machine guns, not tanks, arrows and swords, the sword,
the sword. And so what we're talking about
is the horse that actually dominates and influences political powers
to go to war with one another. So Matthew chapter 24 is being
fulfilled again, right here in this text. under these horses.
I'll let you look at the other two just to affirm that what
we're dealing with is this fourfold imagery of war, of bloodshed,
of betrayal, of famine, of death, and of the conquest of the gospel
simultaneously. And you'll see all that in the
book of Acts as we go along. Is the church under war right
now in the book of Acts? Are they being killed? Yes, they
are. They're being persecuted everywhere.
Now notice what it says in verse four. And there went out another
horse, I'm sorry, that's it, that's our text. Go to verse
five. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third
beast say, come and see. And I beheld, and lo, a black
horse. Do you see it? And he that sat
on him had a pair of what? That's right. So the balances
in both the Old Testament and the New is a metaphor. And by
the way, the imagery and symbolism in the book of Revelation intentionally
is taken from the Old Testament because the Old Testament is
the context in which we are painting the picture of the one who is
Jehovah's servant. ruling both old and new. So when
the Bible says Jesus Christ yesterday, today, and forevermore, this
is what this Old Testament imagery is affirming, that the Jesus
who's an authority over the church, as described in the book of Revelation,
was the one ruling over the world in the Old Testament. Same Jesus,
same Jehovah Jesus running the universe, running the world,
governing humanity, for the purpose of his father's glory to fulfill
his covenant objectives, both in the old and the new. And notice
what it says. He says, and I beheld a low and
low a black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of balances
in his hands. And I heard a voice in the midst
of the four beasts saying, a measure of wheat for what? And three
measures of barley for what? And see thou hurt not the oil
and the wine. And the allusion is to commerce.
The illusion is to famine. The illusion is to what we would
call inflation, where in times of famine, a piece of bread ends
up costing a whole lot of money. The imagery of the scales is
the idea of we have to adjust because now food is sparse. Why
is food sparse? Because of wars. So I've been
teaching this for a long time. Very seldom will you have famines
occur of any longevity that's merely a consequence of sort
of ecological anomalies, where you have a famine in a land that
will last 10 years. Every now and then you have that.
But most of your famines are the consequence of wars, particularly
in third world countries where they do not have an advanced
or developed technological lifestyle. So what happens is when the enemy
goes into those territories and demolishes their homes, demolishes
their crops, demolishes their livestock, demolishes their lifestyle,
they end up in a famine state. This is what's going on in Africa
right now. What's really amazing to me is we will talk about the
famine going on in Sudan and other parts of Africa, Darfur
and other parts as if it was merely an anomaly on an ecological
level, on a physical level, when in fact, it's been war in those
countries for dozens and dozens of years. And the wars have wreaked
havoc on those people, compounded by the natural acts of nature
bringing in famine. So you may have a famine in the
land, but if you have resources, you can endure famines. Remember
Joseph in the days of Egypt, prior to the birth of Moses,
when God had given him a revelation how to store up the corn. He's
given mankind wisdom as to know how to deal with famine times.
But when you are dealing with war, you have no way to actually
control your food resources. The goal of war is to destroy
your capacity to live. And when we see the sequence
of events here, we see the preaching of the gospel, but we also see
war. Now we see what? Famine. Now the logical consequence
of famine as a consequence of war is what? Death. Don't you
think? People are about to die. That's
the next horse. You do know that, right? That's
the next horse. Look at it. And I heard in verse
eight, verse seven. And when he had opened the fourth
seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, come and see.
See that? And I looked and behold a pale
horse. And his name that sat on him
was what? See it? And hell followed him. That is
the grave. So what happens? When wars occur,
famines occur, people die the most miserable, despicable deaths
by the hundreds of thousands. They just die. They just die. That's what you got going on
here. Listen to what it says. and I looked and behold a pale
horse and his name that sat on him was death and hell followed
him and power was given unto him over the fourth part of the
earth to kill with the what and with what hunger and with death
and with the beast of the earth do you see that and then it goes
to the fifth seal which speaks to the believers in heaven who
bemoan and cry for the evils and the atrocities taking place
in the earth look at verse 10 Let me just do verse 9 and 10.
You've got a context now of Matthew 24. You've got a context actually
of the book of Acts. Because if you were to take all
the components in the four horsemen of the apocalypse, if you were
to take the preaching of the gospel, if you were to take wars,
if you were to take famines, if you were to take death and
go through the book of Acts, you'll find it all there. So you get
a precursor of the condition of the world during the time
in which the gospel goes forth. and cyclically it increases and
sometimes it settles down. It increases, it settles down,
but it never goes away. In the world, you shall have
tribulation. And so listen, and when he had
opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of
them that were what? Slain for the word of God. There it is.
You know what we call that? Martyrdom. That's martyrdom. That's what our brothers and
sisters are going through right now around the world. They're going
through that in the midst of war. In the midst of famine? In the midst of inflation? Are
they not? And the media cameras are not
focusing in on them, but I guarantee you they're comforting one another
with the words of life. And I guarantee you some of them
are endowed with the Spirit of God. In the midst of these three
horsemen riding, the red horse, the black horse, and the red
horse, and the speckled horse, and the black horse, that that
white horse is riding as well. See, the media does not tell
you what valiant Christians are doing in the midst of war. But
Christians already know this is par for the course. This is
amazing. I got a proposition given to
me earlier today in an email about the Christian doctors who
have valiantly chosen to go into places like Liberia and Nigeria
and other places where the Ebola virus is killing people and choosing
to actually be infected by the virus to help those people out.
Well, this is what Christians did in the bubonic plague that
took place in Europe many, many, many, many, many decades ago
when it was killing everybody. They continued preaching the
gospel because they understood to die is to gain. Why would
you just let those people perish? Preach Christ to them. What,
you think they're not gonna listen to you when they've got a death
sentence over their head? Are you guys hearing me? But
do you understand what kind of spirit you gotta have to be willing
to go into that kind of war zone? A biological war zone where you
can't win. See, and if you're buying into
a prosperity gospel, you're going to go in there saying that God's
going to heal everybody. No, he's not. But he's going
to save his people. Because the triumph is not the
triumph of physical healings. The triumph is believing God
in the face of death. That's the triumph. Are you guys
hearing me? That's true biblical Christianity
we're talking about. That's true biblical Christianity.
So I've framed this so that you can see that what's getting ready
to take place in the book of Acts is a marvelous turn of events. Go back to Acts chapter six,
or Acts chapter nine. This individual Saul, at the
moment, is like the rider on the red horse. He's making war
against the saints. It's the brothers under the altar
of that following seal that says how long will you not avenge
our blood on the earth of those that? Persecute the people of
God saw fits that bill doesn't it? But what is God gonna do
the white horse of gospel triumph is about to subdue him After
all you and I were just like Saul before we became Paul's
We were haters of God we hated the gospel we persecuted those
who were not believers, or we simply oppose God. The carnal
mind is enmity against God until it's broken. And so in our first
point, the red horse of persecution coexisting with the white horse
of proclamation, did that make some sense to you? Threatenings
and slaughters, a standing fact, what do we mean by that under
point B of our first point? A standing fact, and that is
this, in the world you shall have tribulation. You guys got
that? Acts chapter 8, one speaks to Saul persecuting the church. And I give you Romans 8, 36 as
sort of a concluding factor. And what's interesting about
Romans 8, 36, which is about to be pulled up on the board,
is that the man who quotes this was formerly the person persecuting
the church. Listen to what this text says.
As it is written, for your sake, we are what? Killed all the day
long. Under inspiration of the spirit of God, the one who was
killing sheep, It's saying now sheep are destined to be killed
Now you don't hear this much in your theology today Do you? Christians are not depicted as
sheep led to the slaughter in our most of our contemporary
churches. They are depicted as Triumphant sons and daughters
of God ruling over everything prospering everywhere they go
Commanding God to bless them. That's unbiblical Christianity
As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long.
That's the Psalms. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Verse
37, watch this, watch this. Nay, however, in all these things,
we are more than what? See the word conqueror is the
same word that's attached to the white horse in Revelation
chapter six. Do you see it? We are more than
conquerors through him that loved us. See, now Saul is speaking
from the place of a divine intervention, which has actually rescued him
from his own damnation when he was on a projectory opposing
the church of God. He's now identifying himself
or including himself with those who are triumphing in Christ.
He has a right to. He's now God's servant. As we
said last week, true conversion is clearly alluded to by the
conversion of Saul. So we'll spend the next 20 minutes
here talking about what true conversion really is, versus
coming up to the front of the aisle, making a decision for
Jesus, and nothing changes in your life. Let's go back to our
text and work this through. So I may be able to get there
today, maybe not. Point number two, Acts chapter
nine, point number two in our outline, Jerusalem, the city
of blood. Do you see that? So yeah. I'll have to treat this
because this is important for us to understand Jerusalem, the
city of blood, spiritually Sodom and Gomorrah. Now notice that
Saul vehemently bent on pursuing the disciples of the Lord. Where
did he go? He went to the high priest. Where's
the high priest? In Jerusalem. What is the high
priest? He's kind of like the foreshadow
of the papacy. What is the papacy? It's a Neo-Judaistic
construct by which one man basically is the vicar. He is the Pope. He is the head of the church. He's the one to whom you go to
to get authority and right. Now, to go hunt down apostates. Back in those days when you were
apostate, that was a death penalty. It's that way under Islam right
now. You guys know that, right? It used to be that way under
Judaism. Judaism and Islam is like, Isaac and Ishmael whether
you want to accept it or not. That's right. The parallels are
there only it's not so much Isaac and Ishmael it's like Ishmael
is apostate Judaism according to the scriptures Ishmael is
apostate Judaism and Islam are the children of Ishmael if you
want that parallel that'll work and you can work that through
in a gospel context because Judaism was a persecutory system The
paradigm of scripture is unavoidable. What Jesus said about Jerusalem,
which is where Saul is going to get his authority to hunt
down Christians, is that every one of God's prophets are killed
in Jerusalem. That's what Jesus said. So we
call Jerusalem the city of blood, spiritually, Sodom and Gomorrah.
That's Matthew 23, 31 through 37. That's where our master said,
I send unto you my prophets. I send unto you my servants.
every one of them you will kill. And that's why he cried out in
the latter part of Matthew's chapter 23, O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem,
thou that killest the prophets and those that are sent unto
you. So in our present generation where we have a very strong sort
of undiscerning favoritism towards Modern Israel and the physical
state of Israel what we fail to see is the biblical model
of an Antichrist system over against a Christian system represented
in the New Testament by legal religion versus the gospel of
grace But that paradigm is there and you can't avoid it if you're
going to be a sound exegete That the New Testament predominantly
demonstrates that the main antagonist to Christianity was Jerusalem
not only in the gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but all
the way through the scriptures and even into the book of Revelation.
The next to the last church of which we're getting ready to
deal with on Sunday is the church at Philadelphia, of which Christ
must intervene to tell the sisters and brothers in Philadelphia,
as small as you are, I've got your back. And those who call
themselves Jews, but are not, are liars. And I'm going to prove
to you and to them what a true Jew is. So we'll get a chance
for two or three weeks to develop that and understand that Christ
has always laid out what true Judaism is. True Judaism is Christianity. True Judaism is Christianity.
If you're biblical, true Judaism is Christianity. So what we've
got taking place in the book of Acts is a fulfilled Judaism
in the person of Christ represented by the church and a Judaism that
is still stuck in its legal system, energized by the devil because
it doesn't want to die. And so it persecutes Christ who
is the end of the law for righteousness. And it persecutes Christians
who are representatives of Christ, who declared that Christ is the
end of the law for righteousness. And they seek to try to stop
us that they might live. Are you hearing me? That's the
model. And you can take up or adopt
any other model that you want to but if you do you got to leave
the scriptures Because the scriptures only give you one model and that's
the model i'm teaching I've been through all the models ever since
I was 18 years old. I went through all of the models
And the only model that consistently lines up with the scriptures
is the model i'm sharing with you now But this model is not
politically correct in our present day So listen to the uh language
He goes to the high priest and he desires of him letters to
Damascus, to the synagogues, that if he finds any of this
way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them what? Bound to Jerusalem. He's going to the ends of the
world to hog tie liberated Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem.
Enslave them, capture them and bring them back. bring them back
to Jerusalem, not to liberate them, to kill them, to execute
them, to put them in prison. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? This is Saul, who is a symbol of the devil under the
false authority of Judaism, hunting down Christians who have come
to see that Christ is the end of the law. This is what our
text is dealing with. So, Jerusalem, the city of blood,
spiritually Sodom and Gomorrah, Go with me in your Bible now
to Revelation chapter 11 and let's look at it again and get
the picture before we begin to work through the shift. Saul
goes to the high priest. Why? Because the high priest
will give him the bull. He will give him the cannon.
He will give him the law. He will give him the right to
go into any synagogue. You know what Saul is right now?
A lawyer. He's a prosecutor. And he's hunting
down Christians to accuse them of blasphemy. It's not that what
Revelation chapter 12 says the devil does, he's the accuser
of the brethren. The Satan, of course. And notice how Paul is doing
it, Saul. He's doing it under a banner
of legalism. These are letters with the right
and authority to buying Christians. But all of this is spiritual
in nature. So in Revelation chapter 11, notice what it says in verse
six concerning the two witnesses. You guys know we've talked about
that, right? The two witnesses, verse three, and I will give
power unto my two witnesses and they shall prophesy a thousand,
two hundred and three score days clothed in sackcloth. Sackcloth
is a metaphor of mourning, of grieving. They're not partying. They're not triumphing. They're
grieving, they're mourning. When the prophet wore sackcloth,
he warned the nation of judgment. When he wore sackcloth, he was
saying that God is displeased with our ways. Every sincere preacher ought
to wear sackcloth when he climbs into the pulpit to let the nation
know that God is displeased with our nation. Are you hearing me? Here's what he says. Verse two, verse four. These
are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks standing before
the God of the earth. Two olive trees, two candlesticks,
meaning two witnesses. And if any man will hurt them,
there's your opposition, fire proceeds out of their what? Which
means they get the fight back, not with a physical sword, but
with words. And the word that comes out of
their mouth is the word of the Lord, which is like what? Fire. That's the prophetic emblem of
the authority of the prophet in the Old Testament, right?
It's not my word like fire that goes out of my mouth and burns
up the chaff. It proceeds out of their mouth
and devours their enemy. And if any man will hurt them,
he must in this manner be killed. You know what that means? You
and I as Christians, particularly in the role of prophet, do not
have the right to take up the sword to fight and defend ourselves.
That's a whole nother conversation around how the church is gonna
react to the continual departure from biblical truth and morality
and ethics that our nation is engaging in as it continues to
devolve into paganism, gross paganism. Will the church fall
prey to a militant Christianity that will take up swords and
go to fighting for righteousness? If it does, it will lose. If
the church takes up the sword, it will fail to have modeled
Jesus Christ or the apostles. If the church takes up the physical
sword, it will be no better than Jerusalem, no better than Catholicism,
Rome or modern day Israel. For it will say, my power is
military might and not the spirit of the living God and not the
truth of God that comes from God's word. Are you guys following
what I'm saying? So what we have to be careful
about, and you guys see this trend occurring, is the draft
of political diatribe and rhetoric getting you all ramped up to
want to hate on Islamists. Hate on them! And be ready to
go to war, or affirm war, or endorse war, and just kill people
in the name of self-preservation. How many of you are hearing what
I'm saying? This is a challenge and it has always separated brethren. So follow what I'm saying. You
follow, you go through church history, wherever wars arose,
Christians were separated and divided over whether or not it
was a just war and Christians should be involved or not. and
where Christians were compelled to get involved in the name of
self-preservation or protecting the family, things like that.
Many times they slid into a kind of nationalism that actually
abandoned the gospel and simply swallowed them up in a political
agenda that had nothing to do with the glory of God. I'm here
to tell you that's the struggle that we have even right now.
On the other hand, you had other Christians who took a more pacifist
role and said, no, we will pray. And we will wait on God. We will
support our secular institutions who fight wars. And that's exactly
what you're supposed to do. You pray for them. So long as
the war is just, no Christian church should support our president,
our government, our Senate, our Congress in fighting wars that
are not just. When we support our government
with a blank check to kill people, Those people's blood is on our
hand. Are you hearing me? And so long
as we are playing footsies with our politicians in the name of
preserving America, because after all, God bless America, right? Watch this. So long as we're
doing that, we are no better than that harlot church of Revelation
17 that sits upon the scarlet colored beast who will have her
time when the beast is ready to turn and devour her. the political
system always ultimately turns against the church. Are you guys
hearing what I'm saying? It ultimately always turns against
the church. But see, what I'm talking about is easier said
in the context of a nice warm building, cushioned seats, air
condition, and lights, and a Western context where we're several thousand
miles away from the real battle, right? It's more complex and
I'm willing to admit that it's more complex and I'm willing
to actually engage in that dialogue. I'm willing to talk about, not
in this setting, but I'm willing to talk about, as I do on my
Monday show, what constitutes a just war and what place the
Christian plays in a just war to advance God's glory without
falling prey to or defaulting to a political religion. Because
when once we are no better than Rome, are no better than Neo-Judaism,
are modern Israel, than we are the apostate church in the world. That's right. Nowhere in the
word of God does God tell the church to go to physical war. Listen, somebody has to stay
back and pray. Is that true? Somebody has to
stay back and pray. Now, when an enemy comes to our
shores, we certainly have to protect our wife and family and
children. That becomes an easy deal. That's not hard. Do you
understand that? That's not hard. We are designed
to do that. Our job is to lay down our lives for our fellow
men, our families, certainly, and our children in that context.
But these kind of complex, esoteric, very sophisticated campaigns
of going to war against other countries without having all
the data there, and what they do is they ramp you up with the
propaganda machine called the media. and make them bad, us
good. Listen, we can't always be good
and them always bad. Read your Bible. Am I making
some sense? We can't always be good. That's
why we're in trouble today. That's why we're in trouble today.
And so we've tried to play, you know, a mercenary around the
world as a church, and we're suffering the consequences of
it. Listen to this, listen to the language. Verse six, these
have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in their days, rain
not in the days of their prophecy and have power over the waters
to turn them to blood and to smite the earth with all plagues
as often as they will. Woo! Verse six. It's speaking
of two characters in the Old Testament without using their
names. These are mystery persons whose offices are to be considered
not their persons. You know the difference between
an office and a person? The office of prophet and the
person of the prophet are two different things. So in our text,
we have two prophets here whose offices demonstrated the kind
of authority that was depicted by raining fire from heaven and
turning water into blood. That was Moses and Elijah. And
under a hyper literal interpretation by the premillennial dispensationalists,
they're talking about Moses and Elijah returning again to the
earth in the tribulation. That's crazy. That's nutty. First of all, it's an assumption
that the text is demanding that we derive the personhood of Moses
and Aaron. And I'm saying it doesn't. All
we need is their office. For Moses and Aaron are representative
of the law and the prophets. The law and the prophet is the
whole word of God. Because the book of Revelation
is a coded book, the believer understands that what John was
saying in the spirit is those men and women who preach God's
word are like Moses and Elijah. Those men and women who proclaim
the word of God have the authority of Moses and Elijah. Are you
guys hearing me? Moses and Elijah are not coming
back to this earth. They've done their job. But see,
while the New Testament is not completed, the book of Revelation
being that last canon, we are affirming that Moses and Elijah
finished their task, went to glory, came back, and affirmed
it in the person of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Who was there? Moses and Elijah. What were they
doing? They were summing up the reality
that Jesus is the central prophecy of all scripture. So that you
must never fall prey to looking at Moses or Elijah, but looking
at Christ through both of them. Am I making some sense? That's
what the passage is teaching. Luke's gospel says, and they
spake with him About his decease which should take place at jerusalem
peter james and john saw that they had to see it because peter
james and john now will be The vicars are the foundation of
the new testament church. And so there was a transfer of
authority from moses and elijah to them christ being the head
of both So those two being the old testament peter james and
john representing the new testament They have the authority passed
to them through Jesus. Moses and Elijah now have no
more authority. We are to listen to the apostles
now. Am I making some sense? Well,
if I'm not listening to the tape 10 times, it'll start shaking. Been teaching this for 20 something
years. Now watch this. And when they shall have finished
their testimony, the beast that ascends up out of the bottomless
pit shall make war against them, right? and shall overcome them
and do what? Is that what happened to Stephan?
Did he finish his testimony? Did the beast rise up and kill
him? Yes, it did. Will the beast rise up and kill
Paul? Yes, he will. Who's going to kill Paul? Nero,
somewhere around 65 AD. So Saul operating out of the religious
power is now gonna become a servant of God. His name will be changed
from Saul to Paul. He will preach the gospel for
30 something years. And guess who's gonna kill him?
The secular power of Revelation chapter 13. Isn't that true? The secular power of Revelation
13 is gonna kill him. Why? Because Paul said it in
Romans chapter 8, 36. We are like sheep led to the
slaughter. Our job is to die like Jesus did. Listen, you and
I can't do any different than the master. Now don't you think
if the master wanted to turn this world around by a sword,
he could have did it when he was here? Are you guys hearing
what I'm saying? So what I teach is this, if you
don't get a beam in, a lock in, hone in on the person of Jesus
Christ, your theology is easily able to go amiss. If you don't
see Jesus as your model, your paradigm, your foundation, your
structure, your substance, your counsel, you will fall prey to
all of the different options that are out there and they will
be less than what the scriptures are saying. Scriptures are clear. Jesus died, the apostles died,
the church has died, the way people live is by the church
dying. I just had a complete silence
in the house. I have five more minutes, complete
silence. But you know, deep down in your heart, you know what?
You know, deep down in your heart, I'm telling you the truth. See,
what I'm telling you is so counterintuitive to our nature because naturally
we want to preserve ourselves. And somehow we can't sense that
we can accomplish the goal of converting souls through our
death, through our suffering, through
our humility. But so long as we are thinking that way, We
are not letting the spirit of God have dominion over our conscience,
nor the word of God dwelling richly in us. For as soon as
the word of God dwells richly in your hearts, you will know
that what I am talking about is a cross centered theology,
which the Bible guarantees overcomes the world. It is for this reason
that Jesus has gone to every one of the churches and said,
hold on. Hold on, hold out. I'm with you. Don't go to war. Stand. Endure. He that overcometh the same shall
eat of the hidden manna which I will give him. He that overcometh
will not be hurt of the second death. He that overcometh, I
will write his name in the new Jerusalem. He that overcometh
will sit me, sit with me on my father's throne. He that overcometh
will sit with me ruling over the 12 tribes of Jerusalem and
join the feast of eternity forever and ever. So now when you think
about those promises that Christ gives to the church, what he's
simply saying to the church is stand in the gospel, right? stand in the gospel. And there's
one other word, and then we'll come back and pick this up next
week. Let me read this through. I'm
going to read the next two verses through, then I'm going to take
you to chapter 13, show you one verse, and then we'll close.
So, and when they have finished their testimony, the beast that
ascends out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them
and shall overcome them and kill them. And their dead bodies shall
lie in the street of the great city, which Spiritually is called
what that's a horrible. That's a horrible Appalachian
to be a tied to a city, isn't it? But it's spiritually Sodom
not literally Sodom Spiritually Sodom now watch this now It is
spiritually called Sodom and Egypt Yeah crazy. Here it is where our Lord was
what? Now, what was he crucified? So
Jerusalem is viewed from a revelatory standpoint, not a Western Christian
standpoint, not a modern 21st century standpoint, a biblical
standpoint as Sodom. You know what Sodom is? It's that jacked up place. You
know what Egypt is? That's a jacked up place. That's
what Jerusalem is. That's what false Christianity
becomes. False Christianity, absent of the Spirit of God,
perverts, like Sodom. False Christianity, absent of
the Spirit of God, goes back into the slavish bondage of Egypt. It goes into a pre-regenerate
state, a bondage. Essentially, it's a picture of
an unregenerate church that looks just like the world. Are you
guys hearing me? and they of the people in kindreds
and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three and
a half days and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in
graves. Do you see that? You know what that's called? That's the metaphor of a dishonorable
death. See, to leave the bodies out
there is to allow them to be ridiculed as being dead and harmless
now. That's what you do when you destroy. There's no honor in it. Are you
hearing me? That's what the beast will do,
destroy. Now go to Revelation chapter 31 verse and you guys
can go home. I can tell you, Todd. So I'm going to show you, I'm
going to show you my point, my ethic around the danger of defaulting
to wanting to take up the sword in the name of some self-righteous
indignation. Be very careful, children of
God, as you listen to the politicians, as you listen to the media pundits
as you listen to the different news. I talk about it frequently.
Make sure you hear everything as accurately as you can before
you draw conclusions, because our media has sides that it has
already aligned with, and it is seeking to achieve adherence
to their system. Be very careful. They speak with
forked tongue. It's what our Native American
brethren had to learn about what happened. It's terrible when
you find out that they got two tongues. Here it is, verse seven. And it was given unto him, this
is the beast that comes up out of the sea. It was given unto
him to make war with the saints. See the context? The saints are
being assaulted, aren't they? And to what? You know what that
means? Kill them. You got that? Our word overcome is our Greek
word in the chaos from which we get the word triumph. But
Jesus already said that don't fear him that can kill the what?
But fear him that can kill both body and soul in hell. See, do
I have to take you back to the anchoring text? Are you guys
already there? May I assume that you already know the anchoring
text? Because sometimes I think Christians do not listen to Jesus. I actually think that we don't
have a body of theology, an anthem of theology that comes directly
from Christ's mouth. By the way, we think, talk, act,
and respond, especially around passages that have to do with
us standing for the gospel in the face of suffering. But Jesus
said, do not fear what they can do to your body. That's a massive,
massive ethic. Don't you think? which none of
us can keep apart from the grace of God. You and I cannot endure
death apart from grace. Am I making some sense? But it's
wholly consistent with who Jesus was and who the apostles were
when they were infused with the spirit of God. See, what I'm
talking about is biblical Christianity here. Now watch the language.
It was given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome
them. And power was given him over all kindreds, tongues, and
nations. Ultimately, the beast will have control over the whole
world. So the book of Revelation gives us a theme, an epicenter,
a point of reference, the ground of the warfare in the Asia Minor
account, in the Middle Eastern account, but it's prophecy reverberates
all the way throughout the whole world. Ultimately, the world
becomes this entity that is unified under a political structure with
its objective of ultimately killing biblical Christianity. Are you
guys following? That's right. Here it is. And all that dwell
upon the earth shall worship the beast whose names are not
written in the book of life of the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. If God hasn't chosen you, if
you are not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if your name
is not written in lamb's book of life, guess what? You love
the world, right? That's what all the texts are
saying. What the text is saying is there are two kinds of people,
people who look to the lamb and people who look to the beast.
Are you hearing me? People who think the thoughts
of the world and people who think like Jesus things. I told you
last Sunday, uh, to have your name written in the lamb's book
of life is simply the registry of citizenry in heaven. It's
simple. It's just like that. And when
your citizenship is in heaven, you act like you live there. So Paul said in Philippians 121,
to die is to gain. Crazy. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. You guys ain't too excited
about that. Here it is. Here it is. Now watch this. And if any men
have an ear, let him hear. Here's the verse I want you to
get. So we can close out on this. Cause see the natural impulse
A man is to preserve his life. Give me a sword. Do you remember
I told you? As the Lord Jesus was headed
to Calvary, he told the boys to go buy a sword. He said, what
did y'all do? Peter said, I got one. I'm ready. Self-preservation is the fundamental
law of nature for those of us who don't have a higher calling
resonating in our being. We are ready to go to water,
preserve our life. He that leadeth into captivity
shall go into captivity. See it? He that killeth with
the sword must be what? Now watch this. Here is the endurance
and the faith of the saints. What is the endurance and faith
of the saints? Not to adopt the policy of fighting with the sword,
which makes us vulnerable to be lambs led to the slaughter.
Like our master. like the apostles, like the early
church. You don't hear about the church
in the Middle East or around the world trying to arm up to
go to war against ISIS, do you? All right, let's close it. So
Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank
you for giving us an opportunity to meditate on your precepts.
I so thank you for bringing all these people out today. Bless
them deep down in their soul with a greater love for you.
Bless them with the security to know that you are our shield
and our buckler, that you are our strong tower and our hiding
place, that you are the one that protects your people. Bless them
also to know that thus far we have been given such a magnificent,
magnificent tenure. We can go home tonight for all
intents and purposes and not be worried about bombs dropping
on our homes or war machines blasting up our families, our
radicals, taking our family and killing them. But this is not
so for our brothers and sisters around the world. So help us
to ever remain sympathetic to them for your glory and honor's
sake. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you.