Okay, today is week nine of our
Revelation study. And what we're doing tonight,
as I told you guys, and I've sort of delayed it a little bit,
if this thing will play, or record, or whatever it's supposed to
do. I don't know. See if you can get a thing to
work for me, Doug. Thank you, sir. We're going to open the
floor for questions about Revelation chapters 1 through 8. And so
that's what we're going to do. It's very informal. You ask a
question, and if you don't have questions about that particular
text, I guess I'll take questions from something else or we'll
recap some stuff and go from there. But that's what we're
doing to start tonight. So ask away. Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. that the things happening in
chapter 6, 12 through 17 are the same as 8, 1 through 6. Okay. That
chapter 6 are the same events as chapter 8. Okay. I will answer that. And I can
take a few, or I can do them one at a time, or whatever you
all choose to do. So you don't even have any questions now? Okay, well, we'll take that question
and then you can ask another one after we get through. Basically,
and I'll reiterate a little bit about what she's referring to,
in Revelation chapter 4, we see worship in heaven. So
worship is happening currently in heaven. We understand that.
Based on what we see in John's... what is being revealed to John,
John is getting glimpses or pictures of the happenings that are happening...
happenings that are happening... of the happenings currently in
heaven. You'll see also that Chapter
5, we see God's decrees. We see something that's happened
in eternity past. God has a scroll as the king
sits on the throne, and there are decrees on that scroll. That
is the will of God being acted out. There's only one person
that can fulfill the will of God, so that is the one who is
like a lamb, who is Jesus Christ. The seals of those scrolls are
present human history. And as those seals are being
opened, that's when we know Chapter 4 talks about the King, which
is God, being worshipped. Chapter 5 talks about the Lamb,
who is Jesus Christ, who is being worshipped, who is worthy to
take the scroll and do the will of God. And then Chapter 6 talks
about these seven seals, and here they are. Number one, the
seal number one, let me look here. Chapter 6, seal number
1 is a horse, which is the horse to conquer and conquering. The
second seal, another horse comes out, is taking peace from the
earth and calamity is happening. Opening the third seal, the third
living creature say, come and look behold a black horse. This
is goodness. death and destruction. The fourth
seal says, come and behold a pale horse and this rider's name was
Death and Hades and they were given authority over the court
of the earth and famine and pestilence and wild beasts and all these
things. The fifth seal, I saw then those who were crying out
to the Lord, when are you going to bring recompense? When is
the judgment day coming? Those are the prayers of the
saints. Then the sixth seal, we see the destruction of the
earth. We see all of the end of the cosmos, we see the end
of the heavens, we see the end of the earth. And so we know
then what's happening as chapters 4 and 5 show who the objects
of worship are and who is worthy. The decree of God in chapter
6 as well as chapter 7 and then chapter 8 and then as well as
chapter 9 go hand in hand and this is why we believe that.
because we understand that God has sent, and remember when I
taught this a couple of weeks ago, especially chapter six,
God is the creator of the devil. He was an angel, he was the most
majestic angle, angle, he was the most majestic angle, he was
a right angle, angel, and he rebelled against God with what?
We argued this one time, one third or two thirds of the heavenly
host? One third, all right, we always argue that, and we're
like, see, y'all are still at odds on that, you think it's
two thirds, don't you? Oh, okay, it is one-third. That's Pam's
quick answer. So a third of the angels in heaven and Lucifer,
who we know as Satan, which is the adversary, that's what that
means, the devil, the enemy, they were hurled out of heaven,
no longer worshiping God, and they were hurled to the earth
in order that they might seek and devour people. Well, there
was no people there. There was no real earth there
in that sense. So Satan's demise and Satan's
existence as a fallen angel was before there was time, before
there was creation. So God creates the heavens and
the earth and all that's in it, and he creates man and woman,
he puts them in the garden, and then they're tempted and then
they fall, and we understand that God, by His discussion with
Satan in the book of Job, the only thing that the devil can
do is that which God allows him to do, permits him to do, and
purposes for him to do. So in this text of chapter 6,
we see that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is sending the enemies
of God to bring calamity, to bring pestilence, to bring war,
to bring famine, to bring why? The wages of sin is, say it,
death. The wages of sin is death. In
Adam all die. So this is what's happening presently
in the world. Are there not people starving?
Are there not people dying? Are there not people getting
sick? Are there not wars? Are there not pestilence? But then at the last,
the 6th and the 7th seal are actually the Day of Judgment.
The 6th seal shows the destruction of the earth. The 7th seal shows
silence in heaven, which is what we looked at the other day. So that's all happening, but
from what point of view is this taking place? Y'all remember? Well, let's look on over. Chapter
7 is the seal. The question is, who can stand?
So if God's going to destroy the world, Who's going to stand? The sealed who are in Christ.
They're innumerable. We won't go over that to answer
Michaela's question tonight. So, in that, all of that except
the last seals, the last two seals, are present day. From
the time of the fall of Satan, or to the fall of man specifically,
until present day, there's worship going on in heaven, and there's
calamity and life and pestilence and everything. I mean, this
world is horrible. running people over with cars,
stabbing them with knives, shooting with guns, burning. There are
fires running amok in Tennessee. People are dying. People died
in Hurricane Matthew. I mean destruction of property.
We've got people that hate each other because of the color of
their skin, or the texture of their voice, or whatever it might
be. It's evil, wicked world. And we are not of it, but though
we live in it we have to tolerate it. We are hated because we follow
Christ. It's just like the Scripture
teaches us that people hate us because we are righteous in Christ.
because they hate our Master, they hate our Lord, they hate
our Savior. So in that then chapter 8 begins the bowls. And I mean
these trumpets, the bowls are coming up. And these trumpets
as we saw the commands of the angels of darkness, we'll just
use that word to help us understand. The fallen angels Jesus commands
to bring judgment against the earth. The wages of sin is death.
Even earthquakes and the fact that animals die and there's
thorns and thistles. We see that in the scriptures where the work
of the soil is not going to produce what it was intended to produce
because of sin. The sin of man has affected everything. We see
in Romans chapter 8, though, that Paul argues and gives clear
instruction that the world was not subject to sin because of
its sin, but talking about creation, but that the created world is
actually subject to the fall and the sin of man, and because
of that it's been corrupted. So that in the end, in the last
day, God will restore all things and recreate them new in the
vision and the glory that he intends for his decrees. And
so then as we see these trumpets, as Jesus Christ commands the
angels that have fallen to do judgment on what? Earth. Then
we see from the heavenly perspective there are angels who are given
trumpets as if they were commanders in an army who are given trumpets
to herald the coming of the commands of the king. So in that now,
we start seeing these seven trumpets. And we didn't even go through
them, did we? No, we didn't go through them at all. But if you
look at them very quickly, the first trumpet was blown. What
happens? Hail and fire mixed with blood
thrown upon the earth. The second angel blew his trumpet
like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the
sea. The sea became blood. The third angel blew his trumpet.
The star fell from heaven blazing like a torch. The fourth and
the fifth and so on. And next week we'll go over these
trumpets in detail. But what does it look like there?
So here we've got worship in heaven. And then we've got the
seal opened up and these angels that were bringing destruction
upon earth, as we'll see when we get into Revelation 18-19,
they're cast into the lake of fire. The fallen angels with
others will be cast into the lake of fire. And so as we're
now seeing these agents of God through these angelic angels
or these heavenly angels, these are the angels now who are bringing
what upon the earth? Destruction, judgment. So in
the same time the seal of six and seven are happening, this
new trumpets are actually showing the depiction of what's gonna
happen. Does that make sense? Okay, so then at the same time
before this trumpets, we see the prayers of the saints being
answered. And that's what I spoke on last week, is that the angels,
the messengers of God, they prepare, and keep in mind, these are images,
these are pictures to help us see the work. It's not an explicit
detail of how God does them. These are not, God's not going
to have an angel and then he's going to shoot some stars down
and then an earthquake starts. I mean this isn't literal, this
is imagery, this is a picture to show us the sequence of events
as well as the present day events. So as we see this particular
stuff taking place, we then see that angels are dealing with
and God is working in His purposes to receive and answer the prayers
of the saints. And one of those prayers that
has not been answered yet that every one of us wants is when
God brings all things under the feet of Christ, which is the
day of judgment, which is what these trumpets then begin to
reveal. But keep in mind, too, that as
we see Paul and the apostolic authority of the New Testament
teaching about the day of the Lord, what does he teach us?
Is it going to play itself out over several weeks or months
or years? No. The destruction of the world and the Day of Judgment
is an instantaneous twinkle of an eye, Paul says to Thessalonians.
And what's really crazy about where we are starting the next
text in 2 Thessalonians, we actually start to look at the second coming
of Jesus Christ in very explicit detail from Paul's perspective
to the people of Thessalonica. So it's going to be good that
you guys are here on Tuesday nights because you'll start to
see a big comparison in how to do that. So that's why we know
that these are one and the same events. So you don't have the
destruction of the earth and then the angels doing something
else. Does that help you there? I might
have been overkill. Like I said, I've been known
to be verbose. Danny? Well, there are several iterations. Okay. We haven't gotten there yet,
but I will show you in, oh, let's see. Is it Revelation 13? Let me look
there real quick. Yeah, Revelation 13, it talks
about the number of the beast or the identifier of the beast.
His number shall be 666, which is the number of what? Man, what
have we learned in the first few weeks of our class? I know
it's been eight or nine classes, but in the first few weeks that
were a little confusing because it was a lot of stuff. I went
back and listened to those things too, and I could have broken those
up into small little bite-sized sections. I apologize, but I
want y'all to get everything that I know before I die. So,
y'all just keep on getting it, and I'm dying soon, so please.
But we learn several things about Jewish style of writing and apocalyptic
writing. One of them is that anything
that's done in triplicate is very important. It's also compounded
in its value. So if I say, man, that was great.
That means that was great. This pizza was great. If I say
this pizza was great, great, great! I mean, you know, that's
over-emphasis. That's what happens in writing.
So anything that's triplicate, what else is in triplicate in
the book of Revelation? The Word Holy. ascribed to God. So the number of man is six.
That's the day on which man was made. Man is intrinsically evil,
rebellious against God. So man, in a sense, is not good.
So this is not just a representation of evil, but evil, evil, evil.
And that's what it's talking about. It's not necessarily that
we would be able to see a number. I mean, if somebody pops into
the history of the world and got sixes tattooed to their neck,
there he is. I mean, you know what I'm saying?
I mean, that's too easy. That's what Hollywood wants you
to believe. But that's not the intention of John in that regard.
When we see someone who's very worldly, very humanistic, very
secular, we know that those are the spirits of what? Antichrist.
And what do we see in 1 John? Remember we talked about 1 John.
John's gospel, John's letters give us a better insight to John's
apocalypse. And so when we look at John's
letters, especially the first epistle, we see the first mention
of Antichrist there. And the first mention of Antichrist,
he says, as you have heard, Antichrist was coming into the world and
has already come into the world, and not just one, but many. And
this is the spirit of the Antichrist. Anyone who says that Jesus has
not come from God in the flesh is the spirit of the Antichrist.
So that means that anyone who opposes the truth of the good
news of Jesus, that He is the God of creation, born of a virgin,
living as a human being, and dying for the sins of those who
believe, anyone who rejects Him as coming from God is the spirit
of Antichrist. Why? What is Satan's greatest
desire? Say it again. What's His greatest
desire? To receive worship, to be like
God, to have glory. Because what's the point of Scripture
anyway? From Genesis to Revelation, I
used to say Genesis to Maps, but a heretic started using that
lately and I don't say it anymore. I heard it yesterday. What is
the story? Good news. Redemption. That's
part of the story. What's the purpose? What's the
end game? Bring glory to Christ. Bring
glory to God. The whole reason God created
anything is so that He could receive all the glory that's
due Him, as we see in chapter 4 and 5 of Revelation. So if
Satan's demise was that he didn't... He said, I was going to take
over. He knew better. God created him, and with a word, God could
fail him. But he felt like that the cause of the reflection of
His glory, of the glory of God off of Lucifer, He felt like
he deserved honor. So he gave God an ultimatum and
said, I will be exalted. I will sit to your side. I will
climb the throne. I will be looked at as you are
looked at because I'm just as beautiful as you. That's like
my reflection in my mirror telling me what I'm going to do with
my life. Yeah, I don't think it's going
to work. Or like when I teach chapel at some of the schools
around here, and I teach children. third, three-year-olds up to
seniors in high school. And I do it three different times
when I teach chapel and I teach them about God's sovereignty
over His creation. And I ask the question, what
would you do if you made something out of Plato and you were playing
with it and it came to life and told you what it was going to
do? You'd smash it. You know, or if you had a crayon
and you were trying to draw a cat. And when I'm with young kids,
I'll take a piece of paper and I'll try to draw a cat. And the
only thing I can draw is a kite. So kite and cat are close. So
as I'm drawing a cat, the crayon draws a kite. Well, I throw it
away and I start again. Cat, stupid crayon. Cat. It draws another kite. What do
I do? Well, that crayon draws what
it wants to draw. I break that sucker. So I go
through about six crayons when I give that illustration. I'm
not going to have what I own, my tools and my property, tell
me what they're going to do. That's what Satan did to God.
And so Satan wants glory and one of the great ways he receives
glory is to reduce the glory that's given to God. So when
it epitomizes wickedness and evil, the world, we all, without
faith in Jesus Christ, are objects of wrath. Without the hope of
the gospel, we are destined to destruction. It's not for us
to see how good we are. It's not for us to see how many
good things we can do and outweigh the bad. It doesn't matter if
I steal one penny from the teller with a gun in her face at a bank.
I'm going to the penitentiary for 50 years for bank robbery.
Doesn't matter how much you steal, it's the fact that you violate
the law. And so, if this is the way that the Bible teaches, then
the glory of God is, in the mind of Satan, reduced when he is
able to just make people more wicked. And I use that very lightly
when I say make people more wicked. But in his mind, he thinks that
the freedom he's been given by God to tempt people and to cause
destruction as we see in Revelation 6, that he's actually doing something. We see the fact that, I mean,
imagine now, imagine here is an angelic being spending eternity
past in the presence of God, worshiping the glory of God.
And he looks in the proverbial mirror one day and goes, I'm
just as good looking. I want to stand on that stage
with God and receive some of those accolades. And God's like,
whatever, shoves him out of heaven, shoves him to the earth, and
has him on a chain. He does only that which God permits
him to do. And even in that knowledge, the
devil still thinks, like at the cross, that he won. I mean, imagine
that. God decreed before the world
began to send Jesus the Son to earth as a human being, to be
conceived into the womb he created and to die for a particular people. Who are they? Those believing
ones. These are the ones that we call
the church. By the Lord's grace, I pray you
are the church. Believing on Christ, not your
own righteousness, not your own works, not your own goodness,
not your own ministry, nothing. I don't stand before God one
day and say, God, if I die tonight, God, I was a pastor for 20 years,
and I preached to thousands and thousands of people, and I've
had hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of sermons, and
man, I've really worked hard for you. God's not going to go,
well, by all means, come on in. Here's a big, great place for
you to stand up on the stage with me. No, He's not. If I don't
trust in the work of Jesus Christ, He's going to say, depart from
me, you worker of iniquity. So our hope is in Jesus Christ.
The devil and his number is identified by what he does and what he does
is epitomize what? the work of human beings, the
sin of human beings. So that's, and I'm getting ahead
on that in chapter 13, but in the point that I made about 8,
as we'll see, and that's what I was looking for a minute ago,
there is a number, the number of perfection is 7. And there's
a section here in Revelation where it talks about the beast
saying that his number was eight, and I can't find it, but I'll
get there soon enough. Eight, to say that I'm, to say
that God is perfect and to say I'm perfect plus one is just
like a one-up. It's like my kids when they play
some game and they'll say infinity or something like that. You know,
such and such, no touchbacks, infinity. And I'm like, What? This is so stupid. Stop! I don't
like talk around me that I don't understand. I feel in the dark,
and I felt some secret code that children have that try to murder
us in their sleep, in our sleep. So, and then they'll get really
aggravated, and I've heard it go, affinity plus one. So for
Satan to say, hey, I'm perfect, plus one, that's like a superlative. It's an exaggeration. So that's
what I was talking about, Danny, in that regard. What are the
questions? Yes, sir. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. we'll all be raised, meaning
some will be dead, and we'll be raised in Christ, and some will
be alive when we come to Christ. That's right. Who are His people. Right.
When Paul talks about the last trumpet there, he's pretty much
saying the end game. End game. The final blast. So
he's saying that God's people are still on earth at that time.
Yes. Yeah. So, and that eliminates
the idea of a pre-so-called tribulation rapture as being completely biblically
understood. Brother. Yeah, it is an offense to say
you're God, you're perfect. I've one up on God. That's the
M.O. of the devil. I purposely stayed away from
that, particularly a couple of weeks back. I don't know which
one it actually was, whether it was
week six. I talked about Matthew 24, and
that we'll specifically get into when we start seeing the destruction
of Babylon and the destruction of the world and all of that
kind of stuff over after chapter 15. I will go back in and actually
exegete, I'll actually exegete Matthew 24. in that day. But to give you an idea of where
I believe the scripture starts to stand, and I'm just going
to be very honest, I'm not so sure I understand exactly what
Jesus is talking about in Matthew 24. But I'm very, very certain
that there is a purposeful relationship between the idea that the end
of life is going to be total destruction. Because what you
see here in the apocalypse is you see that the scripture teaches
that everything is rolled up like a scroll. All right, but
before the world is destroyed, the scripture teaches that God
commands the angels to hold back the destruction. And so here's
what the scripture wants us to see right now. We've got the
devil being used and all the fallen angels being used to bring
destruction on earth presently, but we've got the sovereignty
and the providence of God holding back the full destruction. Some
people don't understand. Listen, y'all think this world
is evil? Heck no. This world is not evil in comparison
to what it could be. And friends, I don't believe
we're as evil now as we've seen historically. I mean, you think
about the things that have gone unchecked through. Look at ancient
Rome. I mean, at least half that stuff is still illegal in the
United States. I mean, we're close. We're 50%
there. But I mean, there is a grace
that God exhibits to withhold wickedness, to restrain wickedness
in this world. The amount of people who are
unbelievers in this world far outnumber the church. I mean,
look around. You see what I mean? And if God
were not to restrain them, they would kill us. And they have
in history. I mean, you look, when God has
permitted persecution, I mean, look at the first century. These
people who received this letter from Paul from the Isle of Patmos,
which was written around 90, which was after Corinthians, I mean, these people were dying
because they followed Christ. They were losing their children
to death because they followed Christ. People just don't do
that. on a fad. Christianity today
is a fad for most people. It's a fad. It's a social Christianity. It's a social church. It looks
good to be in church. And I'm not saying that that's
not a good motivator in the beginning, but when you hear the gospel,
you know what motivates us to be in church? I preached on this
a little bit Sunday. Our love for Christ. Our compulsion to
be with Christ's people. And nothing, nothing, nothing
should habitually keep us from assembling together with Christ's
people. Nothing. Even illness. I don't want you
here if you're infectious, but God bless you. I mean, how many
Sundays do most professing Christians just lay out? How many Sundays
do most professing Christians don't want to be in church? And
I know it's tough. Before Grace Truth Planet here,
where were y'all? Fighting and looking and fighting and looking.
And by the Lord's grace, I mean, we're here together, and you
know, there's about a hundred of us when we all come. And the
Lord has been faithful to do that, and we're thankful, but
at the same time, we're not the norm. The Christian is not the
norm. The Christ follower is not the
norm of the world. The unbeliever is the norm of
the world. And when God takes His hand away to restrain evil,
evil overtakes the physical lives of God's people. It always has.
And there will come, just like today, right now, today, this
very day. And I don't know any specifics,
and I don't know any details, and I don't even know for sure
that there was ever even a possibility of me finding out. But I know
without a shadow of a doubt, this day in Afghanistan, Christians
died. Why? Because that's what these
people do when they wake up in the morning. They get up, they
get dressed, they pray, they bow, bow, bow, bow, and they
go out to try to find an infidel to behead. and they kill them. I know that many people in China
have been arrested today because of their Christian faith. I know
that in Turkey right now there are seminary students sitting
in cells this very day who were captured at 22 years of age and
who will never see their families again and after they're tortured
for six months they'll burn what's left of their bodies. Seminary
students graduate to go on mission to Turkey, they give a commissioning
and a farewell service. They'll never see them again.
I mean, it's just like speaking with your parents, Mike, like
your dad. I mean, this is a sensitive thing
to say, but I mean, he told me, you know, I feel like I'm going
to die over there and be buried at the beach, be buried in the
sand or the desert, whatever, the desert. He said sand, and
I'm thinking beach, the desert. There's no beach over there,
you know, nowhere. You know, and that's the resolve
that God's given them, that it's not a cushy thing to follow Christ.
We haven't made an America because during this season of our lives,
we're able to publicly say church. You know why? Because so many
public so-called churches don't do anything to rock the boat
of immoral society. Well, we're not supposed to be
social justice. I didn't say anything about social justice. What happened
in Ephesus when Paul and Silas began, Paul and Barnabas began
to preach? What happened? People were saved. They received
the word and they heard it and God gave them ears to hear. They
believed on Jesus Christ. They were transformed. And so
when they went home that day as a born again believer, trusting
in Jesus, they walked into their house and what did they see?
All their idols. They saw everything that they
used to love and all these spiritual relics that they used to cherish,
and then now all of a sudden they walk in and they go, this
doesn't make sense to me anymore. This is all garbage. So they
take all their idols and they throw it away. And because their
idols have been thrown away, they don't need the incense,
they don't need the oil, they don't need the food, they don't
need the clothes, they don't need the rugs, they don't need the furniture,
they don't need the replacement idols, they don't need any of
the wax figurines, they don't need anything. But guess what
their commerce was? Guess what their economy was?
People who made money off of idol worship. So now all of a
sudden these people who made money off of idol worship, their
business was cut in half. Why? Because trusting the Lord
Jesus Christ was heard and they did and they didn't want to worship
false gods anymore because they understand the one true God is
the true God. And so the response to that was
the merchants of Ephesus started to gather in the public court
area and start to cry for justice. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. The scripture says, what is it,
four hours they chanted? Four hours? I've never chanted
four hours about anything. These people were so outraged,
they gathered in a public place and the governing official stood
there and says, gentlemen, gentlemen, please be reasonable. You're
almost to the point where you're inciting riot because they had
found Paul and we're going to throw him in there and we're
probably going to kill him. Paul's like, I'm going to go
in and settle this. They're like, no, you're not. They'll tear you
limb from limb and burn you on the altar of Artemis. He says,
gentlemen, what have these people done to cause this? Have they
preached against Artemis? Have they preached against our
God or against our laws? And the answer is no. What they
did is they preached the one true God and he transformed the
lives of idolaters. What's going to happen when the
church of Jesus Christ in our present day begin to stand firm?
See, that's the problem. We think that polemics is the
answer. What's that mean? That means stating an argument
for the sake of argument against something. And I mean, there's
time for that intertwined in some teaching. Like if we get
here and we know there's some ridiculous, like when we get
down the road and there are some ridiculous theologies around,
you know, we might have to say, and so-and-so believes that,
and this is where they come from, and this is how it started. We
may have to be a little polemic, a little negative toward it.
But I'm not going to get up here and just preach all the bad things. Let's
preach the truth and get all this, I mean, and the bad stuff
comes up and we know the truth. We go, man, something's wrong
with this. If I know what sweet tea tastes like, and I pick up
a cup and I think it's sweet tea, the first half second it
tastes like sweet tea, and then I realize it's milk, what do
you do? Spit it out. You don't even recognize that it's milk.
He's like, the same tea. I don't know what it is, but
it ain't what I was expecting. That's what we do when we learn
the truth. What's gonna happen when we preach the gospel and
we hold our brothers and sisters accountable to continually seeking
joy in Jesus Christ? What's gonna happen when people
who are unbelievers start suffering because of transformation? They're
going to hate us. They're going to hate us. The
number one complaint against me moving down here by myself
3,000 miles with my family to plant this church is that you're
going to do a lot of damage to the local churches here. How
is that going to happen, sir? Because you're going to come
with something new and fresh and dynamic, and you're going
to steal members from other churches. I said, I guarantee you nobody's
going to come from other churches. I said, as a matter of fact,
we'll probably send more people to those churches than will come
to the assembly of Grace Truth. Well, that's what they were afraid
of. They were afraid to mess up the establishment. And then
they couldn't hate us on that because they realized it was
like a big fat application to join, you know. And, oh, wow,
these people are serious. What's the membership dues? We
haven't talked about that yet. It's like $1,000 a week. But
we're, I mean, then what? Oh, their polity. What's polity?
How you govern and run yourself. Their polity is non-Baptistic.
Non-Baptistic. What does that mean? It's not
of sound and light, faith and order. Really? Well, not the
Bible, but the bylaws of the Baptist Convention say that polity
is up to the autonomy of the local congregation. What's Baptist? I mean, what does it mean? Well,
they don't believe in evangelism. They've got the only street preacher
in town. I mean, what world? What's next? Why? Why? Why does it matter? Because
the first thing I did when I came here, I've been really trying
to put this together, the first thing I did when I came here was to go to
Elza Baptist Church in Reidsville and to preach six straight days.
Y'all were there, or you were there. Six straight days. Plenary sessions out of Romans.
Just six straight days. And then a Saturday, three sessions
on Saturday and a question and answer time. I think you got
upset about something, didn't you? if I remember that right,
or somebody. What was it? Do you remember,
Pam? Do you remember? You don't? Somebody said something
in one of the Q&A sessions, and several people left ruffled.
I can't remember exactly what I have to ask Luke. He reminded
me of that the other day. And all of a sudden now, and
it wasn't but three years before that, that I went to a church
that Pam was at, and met her. Luke was there, and I did a week
service there for students, for teenagers. And I remember preparing
for like six to eight months to come do this. And the long
and short of it is this. I told Luke, I said, Luke, here's
the deal. I said, your pastor is either
going to love me or he's going to hate you. Why do you say that? I said,
because when I get in there and I preach for 45 to 50 minutes
to his church, and then we have all these, and see the open question
and answer is what kills people. Because you can preach and get
out of town and they can fix that. But when you are allowed
to dialogue with somebody, it changes their lives. It's discipleship. It's not just plenary lectures.
It's actually getting involved in what they're dealing with
and what they're thinking about. And so when I got through with that,
it already set the tone for when I came down here to plant my
church. And I found out later, Lord bless his soul, rest his
soul, this pastor had contacted the local people and said, this
guy's coming from Cali and he's going to twist it all around
and he's going to mess you all up. And so they all showed up to Reidsville
to watch and listen. And when I say that the purpose
of the church is to glorify God, and when I say that the end of
all things is that God wants all the glory and all the honor
and all the praise, and when I say that the mission of the
church is to preach the pure word of God and not mix it up
with programs and plans and parties and try to bait people into salvation,
sending them to a Christless eternity, I step on people's
toes and I call their babies ugly. And when you tell a man
his ugly baby's really ugly, even when it is, he don't like
you anymore. So when the Word of God is preached
and then held to, what would happen if I owned a bicycle shop
and when bicycles first came into production, every small
community that was in that particular area petitioned their governing
authorities to ban the sale and production of bicycles because
they knew that young men were trouble enough And if they could
go and find more trouble quicker and further distances than they
would and the bicycle would bring nothing but debauchery to life. Imagine if I came in and began
to preach against bicycles when everything that we did as a community
revolved around bicycles. What if everything we did in
the community revolved around idol worship? And I suggest that
it does. You know, it's not me. I'm just a mouth. It's God's
Word. God's Word shakes the roots of
our idolatry. When I hear God's Word every
day, and I hear it every day, when I read God's Word every
day, and sometimes lately I've been at two in the morning, I've
been up getting caught up in things I shouldn't be and just
Oh, I'm trying to correct for the world. And we just study
and listen. And all of a sudden I'm realizing
that my worship increases. My sin diminishes. My fire and
fervor starts to grow. My zeal gets stronger and stronger.
And I can't wait to step foot out of my house the next morning.
I started texting people at 6.30 this morning waking them up.
Because they talk about how they don't have any time. I had three
or four people tell me in the last three weeks they've got no time
to read or pray. So I just started texting them.
I wasn't going to call them because it ain't fair to their spouses.
But I started texting. Rise and shine. Sun's almost
up. Rise and shine. Rise and shine. Rise and shine.
I'm almost back in Claxton. Come on. Meet me for coffee."
I didn't hear from them, no, no, about 10-30. What is wrong
with you? What is wrong with you? Hey, you want to be accountable
to growing in the Lord, you say you don't have time, so I'm going
to get you up earlier. I mean, that's just a silly little example.
Listen, guys, the more we learn, the more we grow, the more zealous
we are, and the more zealous we are, we begin to have a fire.
And what happens when fire gets around dry, dead material? It sets it ablaze. And depending
on what you want, if you want fire, you receive it. If you
don't, you put it out and you stay away from the flame. What
is the flame? The flame is the Word of God.
And the sword of God's word cuts. And just like this situation
with reading through the apocalypse in a simplistic way, we read
through and we talk about it and we look and see what the
simple application of the scripture is. And then all of a sudden,
reading through Revelation has been one of the most polarizing
things I've ever done in ministry. Tim Oliver is a friend of mine,
he was a member of my church and oversaw, really, evangelism
and conferences at our church in Newark, California. He's always
been on me. When are you going to do the
whiteboard teaching of Revelation again? Get the whiteboard behind
you and all that kind of stuff. So he's excited that I'm going through
this and wants to put it up on his site and everything. But,
you know, I was always afraid of reintroducing Revelation.
Because even in Q&A sessions in the last few years, when we
were at our other building, people have sat there and not even asked
questions, but someone else asked a question. I answer it by asking
more questions and saying, well, what does the Bible say here?
What does the Bible say here? What does the Bible say here?
And just because the text of scripture contradicts what they
believe, they hate me. Because I pointed it out. You
see how that works? So, we're not, we're not going
to escape suffering the more we live for Christ. I mean, you
think, people call churches like ours, you know, all sorts of
names when we first got started, and now there's nothing they
can say. And they can call us weird, they can call us weirdo,
whatever. I can't believe you are in that dark building. I
had one woman ask me, are you going to start having churches
at night on Sundays? And I said, probably after the
first of the year. This was right when I was still working here.
working, when I was still renovating in here, and I was out here late
one night, she said, well I'd like to come. Never seen her,
never met her, didn't know her from Adam, and she asked me this
question, are you going to have a lot of light in this building,
or is it going to be real dark and unable to be, unable to see
like in the other one? And I thought, I didn't even
answer, I was like, what is she talking, I said, oh we're going
to have lots of light. I'm not even, you know, I don't want
to contradict it. She'd heard somebody say, oh, I went there
and you couldn't even see, they got the lights down too low,
it's like a cult. I mean, you know, candles, I don't know what's
going on. And I mean, I guess because the
window tinting was so dark from the outside, people thought we
were just sitting in the dark. Now we did the day after Matthew,
we sat in the dark, but the doors were open. But, I mean, that's
what happens, and these are light scale, these are easy. What's
gonna happen, beloved, when we actually begin to truly start
making an influence in our community? What's gonna happen when we get
back out on the street, and as we go about our day, I mean,
you know, and there's not a place that I go to around here that
they know, a lot of times people either talk to me a lot, or avoid
me. They avoid me because they know
when they get in a conversation that it's going to turn into
something from Scripture, especially if they complain. That's my open.
That's the sales pitch for the gospel. How are you doing? Well,
I'll tell you, I just kinked Obama or Trump or Hillary. And
I'm like, wow, aren't you scared? Man, I'm scared for you. I mean,
what do you do? What do you do when a guy confronts
you about sola fide, faith alone? He says, you've got to be righteous.
And then he posts up on your Facebook page, like he did yesterday.
The boy's jumping on him, like, come on, y'all, let me fight
my own battles. I said, I respect you, love you. Let me just tell
you this real quickly. I'm not going to back down on
the fact that if you think you're righteous enough to inherit eternal
life, you are condemned still. I mean, that's what we do. We
don't let false teachings. If somebody calls my daddy stupid,
I get upset. If somebody tells me my daddy's
a liar, oh, because those two things have never been true of
him, ever. My father has never lied to me,
and I've never known him to lie to anybody. He's one of only
a few people in my life who I've never known to even stretch or
fabricate anything. That's why he's a good man for
the job he's got, because integrity is high when you're in law enforcement,
especially the chief law enforcement officer of an area. And if somebody calls him a liar,
everything in me wants to defend that. You know, when so-called
Christians refute truth, they're calling our Father in Heaven
a liar. Now, we can't fix everything, but friends, we've got to have
that burn in us to try to teach people the truth. And the more
people we teach the truth, the more we grow. And see, some of
us are saying, well, I'm just not there yet. You will be. You
keep growing. You keep learning. You keep coming.
You keep investing. You keep becoming intimate with
the people of this congregation. And God will burn in you a fire
that you will never know how you ever lived without it. And
our little community, as Christian as it is, everybody thinks we're
all evangelized here. But friends, let me tell you
this. The national census, 2012, is that when the last one was?
Says that 86 plus point something percent of every person in these
counties, 125 mile radius, 86 point something percent are unchurched
by self-proclamation. That means they don't go to church
but once or twice a year. Now that's a federal census that
got that information. The Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association has a statistician department. The Barna Research
Group has a research department. They say it's upwards of 90-something
percent. And get this, in a poll that
was done of a lot of, of a cross-section of evangelical Baptist churches,
just Baptist churches, in 2000, 10 shows that 9 out of 10 active
attending church members in churches in North America cannot give
an answer to this question, how do you know you have eternal
life? So if almost 87% of the population
is unchurched, ergo we could probably say not saved, I mean,
not all of them, just like all the people in the church are
not saved. But 90% of the people in the church can't even tell
you how they're saved or what it means to be saved. They just
come to church. What does it really mean about who are truly
born of God? And the answer is not assimilation.
And the answer is not getting people into the church to do
something different. The answer is not trying to draw
in and bait and switch. The answer is that Christians
need to teach the world the truth. We must evangelize. And so as we grow, friends, as
a shepherd, just like Jesse, we are not evangelistic because
we're pastors. We're evangelistic because we're
Christians. Now what does evangelism look
like? Not everybody's going to be a street preacher and not
everybody's going to be a philosopher pest like me. and question everything
and turn every general comment, how you doing? I'm doing great.
Are you really? I mean, you know, and I'm not as bad as I used
to be, but I mean, that was really sort of my stick. I just got
in there. If somebody looked at me, hey, can I tell you something?
I mean, like David Blaine of Christianity, hey, can I show
you something? Can I show you something? I mean, it was awful. I got thrown
out of so many malls when I was in college, it was unbelievable.
Well, you're proselytizing. Oh, no, I'm just saying, hey.
Sir, I'm gonna call the cops. You don't leave now. So I'd leave
there and come in the other wing. Do it again. Not everybody's
going to be doing exactly the same way, but how many people
do we bump into? At the minimum, when we see people, are we in
prayer? Are we knowing that they, no
matter what they're going through in life, no matter how good or
bad things might be for them, that the only joy they'll ever
have is the eternal joy that's found in the gospel of Jesus?
Are we understanding that every human being that lives in this
life, if he or she does not come to faith in Jesus Christ, they
will suffer the eternal punishment that is rightly due us. But by
God's mercy, someone sent the gospel to our ears and we heard
and believed. Matthew's coming. There's a hurricane
coming. The world was put on notice.
The whole eastern seaboard. Hurry, board up, get out of town.
What are you doing? You're so stupid to stay. And what you told me tonight,
I'm going to stay and watch the ball game. Dude gets killed by
a tree watching TV. I'm going to stay and hold the
house together. Listen, if somebody tells me that there's going to
be a wind coming to Claxton, I'm going to El Paso. Just for
the week. I'll come back and we play pick-up
sticks at James Street. Because I'm not going through
that horror again. Nothing you can do about it.
If we work hard to get people to make wise choices about the
safety of a storm, how much harder, beloved, should we have zeal
to work to tell people about the eternal safety of Jesus Christ
the righteous? We is who I'm talking about. Not you. as a people. And that is part of our goal,
that is part of our mission, that is part of why we teach
these things. We're going to be adding services to our lineup. We're going to be adding teaching
to our lineup. For you who want it, we're going
to give it to you. We got a building? I hate a building
sitting empty six days a week. It makes me sick. What's the
answer to that? Juggling school? No. Teach the
Bible. Carnival training! Nah. Teach
theology. We're going to teach. It's like
Brother Tim said tonight. Hey, even if the whole church
can't come, somebody will. And maybe the community might
show up or something like that. And it's not evangelism. This isn't
what it's for. This is to equip the saints.
Is it evangelistic? Absolutely. I've already given
the gospel three times tonight that I can count. But is that the purpose? No.
The purpose is to train us, to teach us, to put us in a place
where we now can worship fully. Can we not worship more after
we hear the Word of God? Well, I blew the last opportunity
for questions. Do we have anything else that
y'all want to add? Yes, ma'am. Back to Revelation. Okay. Are
we going to ever have physical bodies again? And two, why would
we need them if we're just going to sin?
All right. Let me just, and I'll do this succinctly, I promise.
I'll just think, man, I'll be in five books. Scripture teaches
that Christ is the first fruits of many. What does he mean by
that? He was the first to be raised
to life in glorified body. Glorified bodies are not perishable
human bodies like we have today. They're imperishable, immortal,
eternal. So I think we have distinctive
features. I think just like Jesus did not
look in his glorified state the way he looked in his human state. He was different. According to
the prayer in John 17, Jesus was restored to his glory that
he had before the world began. So in that, that also includes,
I mean, they couldn't recognize him. If he didn't supernaturally
reveal himself to them, they didn't recognize him. Because
looking at his face, they couldn't see him. And so we know that's
a supernatural thing. So we will have physical bodies
in the same way Christ has physical bodies. What are they like? I
have no idea. But I can't imagine we're going to have to deal with
toilet paper. I mean, please, of all things holy, don't make
us have to use the bathroom constantly. I mean, worship service is bad
enough now. Can you imagine a forever worship service and the kids
having to go to the bathroom? I mean, but not to make light
of it, I just, I really think that in that way is the only
way we can understand it because the scripture says that the dead
in Christ shall rise and shall come out of the ground. Jesus
in John chapter 5 teaches that, that they will be raised to life
from the ground and that they will be judged accordingly, those
unto everlasting judgment and those unto everlasting life. Yeah. which is of utmost importance,
this gospel that I gave to you. And it talks about the resurrection
and then how we too also will be raised. But why? I don't know. I just think it's
one of those mysteries of God's decrees. It's happening because
God decreed it. And so because God decreed it,
it will come to pass. The ins and outs of it, we won't
know, but the end result, we shall see. Just like Paul would
say, when we see him face to face, we shall be like him. So,
I believe in a physical resurrection. Matter of fact, it is something
that I think about every day. That I will be raised to life. Not
in a spiritual sense, but in a physical sense. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's different. I mean,
I'm not going to have to wear these stupid glasses. My hair's not going to be spotted
with pepper and gray and my ears. I actually have an appointment
for hearing aids in the next two weeks. So, fire, yeah, that's what Jesus,
that's what it says. Yes, sir? Yeah, shaving. No, the theology beards will
be down to our feet, buddy. You going to need your truck? I hope not. Ozone, we done tore
that mess up enough, haven't we? I don't think we're going
to have baseball either. Yes, ma'am? If we look at, and I'm just going
to use this quickly, the new heaven and earth I believe is
God's restoration of creation because here's God's decree.
He's self-satisfied in His self-love and self-glory and worthy of
it all. and three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, eternally. And then He said, let there be light. Why?
Because He purposed and decreed eternally. See, God didn't just
come up with that. And that goes back to our Attributes
of God study that we did a while back. He decreed it, so therefore
it is, and then He created the earth with the intention of glorifying
Himself through the redemption of a particular people, those
who have faith in Jesus Christ. So then, at the end of all of
that, in the day of judgment, the Scripture gives the example,
Romans chapter 8 is a big one, that all of creation groans as
in the throes of childbirth or labor pains for it to be restored. And the scripture talks about
being restored. So I believe that the heavens and the new
earth is the image, is the picture, the figure of that picture of
the new creation. I believe that we will actually
live on whatever earth is going to be like when God makes it
new. He's not going to fix this earth. He's going to fold all
this up. And here's the new one. How's that look? There'll be
no sun because Jesus Christ, you see that those pictures,
we don't know the literal essence and how it's going to work. Yes,
ma'am. and church forever? I think so. I believe so. I believe
all of creation will be restored to a grand glory. And wise, you
know, being in church. I mean, I've even thought about
that. And behold, I heard a number and then I looked to see what
it is. And it's a multitude beyond all that I could count. Myriads
and myriads and thousands and thousands of people from every
tongue and nation and tribe. And they were bowing before the
throne and they were worshiping the Lamb. They were worshiping
the one who sat on the throne. And so in this, I'm like, what if
I'm like 60 billion? How far am I gonna be back from
Jesus? Because I'm imagining this as he's up on a stage somewhere
and we're trying to worship, you know, and whoever the Bob
Coughlin is in heaven is leading the songs. I mean, and I don't
like going to conferences that are so big that I have to watch
a screen. I'd rather watch it at my house. I'm gonna, hey,
I'll pay $100 to watch a TV. I'm like, I'll just watch it
at home and see y'all. So that's sort of, a misunderstanding
because I know heaven's not gonna be like that. I know that I'll
have an intimacy with Christ that's absolutely personal, but
yet there'll be billions and billions and trillions and trillions
or google, google of more. So we don't know, we don't know.
It's just one of those things that we ponder and we just are
satisfied that the way God has it. But I know that the act of
worship in the sense that we understand it today is gonna
be completely different than in the sense that we understand
it in heaven. And really what does it, When you look at the Garden of
Eden, and that's the closest thing that we can understand,
they had intimacy with God and walked in the Garden with God,
with Jesus Christ. And they had things to do. And
that's why work is a gift. Even though because of sin it
is hard and it's impossible and it never ends. It's like we go
to bed, wake up, go to bed, wake up. It's like Groundhog Day. We're
just, because of the fall, I believe that there is an intimacy and
a reality of this world, but that Jesus is forever present
physically with all of us at all times. I don't know how that
works or how it looks. Maybe that's when the earth will
be flat. I don't know. That's another joke. Flat, flat
earth. Anyway, well, we've run out of
time, but take more questions down, and when I get through
with next week or something, we might answer one or two each
week. And we'll have another thing. Let me pray, and then
we'll go. Lord, we thank you that we can
fellowship around your word, and we thank you, Lord, for everyone
who have been able to be here with us tonight. We pray for
each of us, Lord, as we pray for each other, the pain we're
going through. Some of us, Father, are physically
tired, sick, and just emotional. Some of us are struggling with
life or marriage. Some of us are just worn out
in our work. Some of us are exhausted. Father,
spiritually, we feel like we can never get ahead and walk
the way you want us to walk, but Father, Some more of us are
suffering because they've lost loved ones. Some of us are worried
about loved ones who are ill and in the hospital. And so Father,
we lift each other in prayer tonight. We thank you, Lord,
that just because you know what we need and just because you
know the things that are on our heart and those people who are
dear to us, this church family, that we love greatly, father,
the concerns and burdens that we each have. Lord, we know that
you know them. And as we pray to you to intercede,
you are working already, giving peace, giving comfort, giving
security, giving hope, giving strength. And so, father, we
pray for each other in that way. And all of us know that as I
pray these very words to you, you hear them and you're answering
those prayers. And each of us know that those
circumstances, while they may not be known to us all, Father,
they're known to you and you are working in them. Father,
help us to be zealous about the Word, that we might go home tonight
and even study. Help us to be just excited. about the future, no matter what
it may look like or how we got it wrong or right. Father, help
us to be excited about the future that is ours in Jesus Christ.
And help us to start this day to be satisfied in Him. We pray
these things in His name. And by His authority, we stand
before you righteous in Jesus. Amen. Y'all got time to sing
one more song? You got a question? Be what? Sun. You know, I alluded to that just
a minute ago. I don't believe that we can really know, but
the scripture says there'll be no sun to give light, because
the light is the sun. But if God recreates the heavens
and the earth, will there be interplanetary stars? I don't
know. I think if the laws of nature
and physics that we know presently continue to operate, then it
will be very similar to our solar system. Yes, ma'am? Say that again. Right, right. And it doesn't
necessarily say that it's absent, it's just not needed for light.
That's why I say it might be a flat earth. That's a joke. Anyway, let's sing a song.