We will learn things that will
conflict with our worldview, that will conflict with our understanding
of Scripture, that will sharpen us, sometimes weaken us. But
Lord, through it all, we will be strengthened. Father, I pray
that as we open our hearts, that we would love You more abundantly
and see You more clearly. And Lord, as You open our minds,
that we would understand You perfectly. through the text of
Scripture. Father, keep us from the temptation
of pride. Keep us from the temptation of
haughtiness. Keep us from the temptation of
rejection of Your Word when we learn these truths that are biblical
and scriptural that we might not turn against them because
they do not fit with our historical traditions. And Lord, we pray
these things in the name of Christ. Amen. All right, if you will. Start to write. We're going to
write some things down tonight if you have something to write
with. If not, for your joy and for your pleasure, I decided
to just post these things online. So weeks one and two, the audio,
are online. And I'm just going to do it.
So there they are. If you go to the church website,
you look under teaching, there they are by date. And if I need to separate them
and put them by particular class, I can do that. No, not yet, I'm sorry. No, I
do not. I was supposed to send them to
you, and then he offered to print them as well. Alright. Chapter 1, verses 1 through 8, is the prologue. You can write all this stuff
down, or you can go get it off the internet. in a couple of
hours. Then after the prologue, after
this introductory comments and the explanation of who we are,
we see John starting in verse 9 of chapter 1, I, John, your
brother and partner in tribulation, all the way through chapter 3,
verse 33, we see the vision of Christ amongst those churches,
and we see that call and command of those churches to faithfulness.
After that, in chapter 4 through the end, or through chapter 5,
we see a vision about worship in heaven. And in that vision,
we see two sets of seven. And then after that two sets
of seven, we see two interludes. I just want to give you sort
of the idea of how this thing's set up. Those things in chapter
6, all the way through chapter 8, we see seven seals. Six seals, one interlude. The
vision of God's servants, the seventh seal, the judgment, the
thunder, the lightning, all of these things. And then we see
the seven trumpets at the end of chapter 6. Six trumpets over
there in chapter... if you start looking there in
chapter 10 and by chapter 12 we've got another interlude.
There's a vision that recounts or recapitulates the story of
God's people in conflict with evil. Then chapter 15, we see
the seven bowls are interrupted by a vision of God's conquering
justice and conquering people. And there's no interlude then
after that. In chapter 17 all the way through
chapter 19, we see the vision of Babylon the harlot. In 19
all the way through 21, vision of Jesus Christ as a judge. In
chapters 21 and 22, we see the new Jerusalem, the bride, the
faithful ones. And 22, starting in verse 6 all
the way to the end of the letter, we see what's called an epilogue
with the picture and the image of the new heaven and the new
earth. You might think, well, what are we going to get all that?
I just want you to see it. I mean, that's really it. That's all
it is. It's just these small little pictures. with these judgments,
with these trumpets, with these bowls, and then these interludes
that explain it, recapitulation, what that means is it's restated.
So we see these pictures, and as we go through these things
starting next week, it'll make good sense to you. And at the
end of the course, one of the things that you probably should
be able to do is be able to, in some sense, whether you know
all the verses or not, you ought to be able to outline basically
the letter or the book of Revelation. You ought to be able to outline
the parts of it. But tonight as we continue, I want to ask
the question, why is eschatology important? Remember last week
we talked about end times. The week before we talked about
humility. We really need to understand that if you took and look at
Revelation throughout all of our lives, really the preoccupation
with last things, Eschatology is the study of last things.
End times are important because if we define it the way it's
supposed to be, it is not just the end, but what is it? It's
the culmination. of the beginning. It's the culmination
of all this, the end of all this, and the beginning of the next.
So end times are important because a believer, as a church, as a
Christian, our hope is not in the end, but our hope is in the
new beginning. Our hope is not in just getting
to heaven in our spirits, but the hope is when our Lord Jesus
Christ comes to earth and raises our bodies to life, immutable,
eternal, and we live forever with Him. Now see, a lot of times
we forget that. We forget that the Garden of
Eden in all of its splendor, the creation of the world in
all of its perfection will be established. You say, well that
sounds like a Jehovah's Witness doctrine. It is, but they took
it from the Bible. The difference is they believe
that it's one of these things where Certain numbers of people
will live certain places. Certain numbers of things will
happen with certain people. They even believe, like the Mormons
even believe, that certain peoples can have their own worlds and
their own universes as gods. That Jesus actually used to be
a man and he worked himself to divinity. Eschatology is important to the
church because it is the culmination of everything we hope for. the
end of things in this life. Isn't that what we pray for?
Is that not what Paul prayed for? Lord, come quickly. Isn't that not what he said when
he was faced with death? When he said to the Philippians,
I don't know what I should choose, for I'm stuck between the two. Death, which is far better for
me that I may be face to face with the Lord, or to stay here
with you, which is far better for you. I guess what I will
do is I will stay. Eschatology, it should be studied. Not the way we've taught it and
learned it over the last 75 years, but the way it should be taught
according to the Scripture. Eschatology, in its perfection,
in its purpose, creates a harmony and an adhesiveness to the entire
Bible. If we look at the beginning,
and we see often times we say, in the beginning, when God created
the heavens and the earth. The earth was what? Void and
formless. Darkness. Water covered the darkness. Water covered the depths. Water.
And the Spirit of God hovered over the depths of the earth.
And then God said what? Let there be light. We see an
allusion to that first account in the Gospel of John. In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was
with God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And
we have seen the glory of God, the glory as of the only Son
from the Father, full of grace and truth. We see John even then
writing in his first epistle, that which was from the beginning,
that which we have seen. So in that sense, we look and
understand that end times then, if we have a beginning, end times
is important because it brings the Scripture together. It brings
the truth of the Gospel to a culmination. When we have eschatology, we
understand that the end of Adam's rebellion comes at the return
of Jesus Christ. Adam is the father of our fall. Adam is the father of our nature.
Adam and in Adam all die. But in Christ, all are made alive. Even in the rebellion of Adam
we see in Genesis chapter 3 where God promised a Savior. He promised
a Savior, therefore Jesus came and that Savior lived and died
and rose again and says what? I am going to return. So we're
looking forward to that day. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. I believe the church ought to
be very concerned about last things. I believe the church
ought to be very concerned about end times teaching. Because it
really defines who we are, and it also defines how we will spend
eternity. It defines how we will actually
be with Christ forever, and ever, and ever. And so for so many
people who say it doesn't really matter about what Revelation
is saying, I say that cannot be the case. For if we consider
the fact that some people believe in soul sleep, Some people believe
that there is no resurrection of the dead. Some people believe
there is no recreation of the world. Some people believe that
all the prophecies have been fulfilled. Some people believe
that Jesus is coming back as a Jewish king. Some people believe
that the temple is going to be rebuilt and that Jesus will receive
sacrifices. Some people believe all sorts
of things. If we hold to those little examples that I've just
talked about, then what we need to understand is that they contradict
the very nature of the good news of Jesus Christ. They contradict
the very reality of the power of the cross and the finished
work of God through Christ Jesus. So it's not just an issue of
interpretation. It's not just an issue of thinking,
well, these are some people's opinions, which is the problem
to begin with. It's an issue of how we worship.
If we're worshiping a God that's coming back for us, if we worship
a God that teaches us that He will sit everything under His
feet, Ephesians 1.10, if we worship a God that teaches us that we
are able to celebrate the oneness that He's created for us and
given us the authority and the ability to call God our Father,
but yet we will never see Him face to face, what good is the
worship? What are we worshiping anyway? So in order for us to know about
in times and why it's important, we need to learn to read apocalyptic
literature. The idea of hermeneutics, the
word itself, it relates to a scientific method of interpreting text.
Specifically, I mean you can apply it to a lot of different
texts, but specifically ancient texts or texts that are not necessarily
that simple or necessarily that new. But if we have a hermeneutic,
which is the process in which we interpret apocalyptic literature
and it's incorrect, then our understanding of these things
will be incorrect, our worship will be skewed, and we will find
ourselves in a mess. I mean just by a show of hands,
how many of you have ever heard that Jesus was going to sit on
the throne in a temple and have sacrifices? How many of you have
ever heard that before? You ever heard that? Okay, a
few of us. I was taught that my whole life. as a child. I was taught that Jesus was going
to come with an army, and actually was going to come and sit on
the throne of David, and the Jews would give sacrifices to
Jesus. Then after a thousand years,
that Jesus would save the Jews. Why would we do that? Jesus is
the final sacrifice. Matter of fact, the Scripture
says, it is not the blood of goats and bulls that you desire,
O Lord. Christ sufficiently satisfied
the judgment of God by the mere definition of propitiation. He's
satisfied. So if we're going to interpret
it, which we should, are we going to interpret it by being a ditto
head from the guy that taught us ten years ago? The guy that's
teaching us ten minutes from now? Are we going to be able
to read this Bible and read it intellectually, read it in its
genre, read it and interpret it as it is written? Because
apocalyptic writing does not exist for us today in any form,
it is really unknown. And because of that, it's necessary
to understand some basic principles for determining the meaning of
these things. The meaning that the author set
out, John, and the meaning that came to the original hearers
of this text who understood it completely and fully. And it
was a blessing to them. Scripture must be interpreted
in a natural and obvious sense. Now I want you to think about
that for a minute. I don't know who says it. I think it's John
MacArthur. And when I say so-and-so says something and I quote somebody,
it doesn't mean I'm endorsing them. It just means they said
it. OK? If I want to endorse somebody,
I'll put posters up. So you can see the posters. You
see the posters I put up. Just because I say somebody says
something doesn't mean I endorse them or what they believe. But
I think it's John MacArthur who says that the best way to interpret
Scripture is just to simply read Scripture. Just read it simply
for what it says. As Dr. Bill Downing would say,
put up your study Bibles and study your Bibles. And that's
a really good lesson for us to learn on those two things. If
we read a sentence and we understand basically the English language,
that sentence should tell us something. So there's a couple
of things that we need to understand about interpreting the Scripture
in natural and an obvious sense. Five things I want to teach you
tonight, and then I'm going to steal some stuff from a guy who
I will not name because I don't, well I'll name him in a minute.
I'm going to steal a few things because it's easy to remember.
It's an acronym, I mean an acrostic, and it's easy to remember. But
first, I want you to understand a couple of types of things that
we need to know about literature. The first one is metaphor. You
know what a metaphor is? A metaphor is a figure of speech. It's used in an expressive way,
and it's used to refer to something, but it does not literally mean
that. So a metaphor would be like,
the Spirit of God is like the wind. And that's also a simile. Like as. Like as. Jesus says hell is like this. The kingdom of heaven is like
a treasure hidden in a field. He didn't say the kingdom of
heaven is a treasure. And even if He had, that would
have been a metaphor. If He had said, the kingdom of heaven is
surely a treasure and I buried it over there, then we'd probably
be in trouble. But we know it's not a treasure in a field. We
know we can't go digging out some of the farms and find heaven.
We know we can't do that. We know we don't dig into the
oceans and into the rivers and find pearls and say, huh, we
found heaven. We understand that it's some
type of figure of speech. It's some type of literary device
that is used to convey meaning in a certain way. Something else
you need to understand that's very active in apocalyptic writing
is hyperbole. If you know what hyperbole is,
I mean, Sister Angela even asked, was I using hyperbole on a tweet
this week? Hyperbole, question mark? You
know, I said, many or most Christians, and the idea was to quote Christians. Of course not many, most Christians. Hyperbole is a possible exaggeration. For example, I've been sitting
here for 10 years waiting to go to the bathroom. That's a
hyperbole. That's an exaggerated expression.
Although it may feel like 10 years when you've just driven
from Metter and there's kids in there washing their hands
for 20 minutes. I mean, you may feel like it's been 10 years.
It's only been 10 minutes. But we exaggerate. Hyperbole. Jesus uses hyperbole when He
says, it is better for you if your eye causes you to sin to
pluck it out. If your hand causes you to sin,
cut it off. For it is better for you to enter the kingdom
of heaven with less members than for your whole body to be thrown
into hell. Jesus never prescribed nor commanded in any way for
us to cut off our arms and eyes. It's hyperbole. but in the sense
that it teaches that we ought to do anything possible to escape
sin. Ultimately, the only thing possible
for us to escape the threat of sin and the threat of the judgment
of sin is Jesus Christ. And it was not hyperbolic that
the Father crucified Him and put Him in the ground. It was
literal. Another one is satire. Satire
is where I get hung sometimes. Satire, in a way of explaining
it, is just, it's sort of witty. It's language that uses wit to
convey insults or scorn. Sarcasm can be sort of like that. Yep, sarcasm. I mean, like he
used sarcasm to upset his opponent. Or, what is it? Irony is wasted
on the stupid. Those were always good ones.
Satire and sarcasm We often overlook it. We often overlook it in some
sense because we can't imagine Jesus being satirical. We can't
imagine Jesus being sarcastic. Just go through John's Gospel. You can see it for yourself.
He is very, in our word, rude. the Pharisees' dogs. He calls
them brood of vipers, whitewashed tombs. He says, if you knew who
I was, better yet, you say Abraham's
your father, but if you were Abraham's children, you'd know
me, for before Abraham was, I am. How dare You know who your daddy
is? Satan. That's what Jesus said.
You're the children of the devil. Satan. That's a little sarcastic. Another thing that you need to
understand about, some things to understand about the written
language of Scripture, especially in Revelation, what is a narrative? A narrative is a message that
tells a particular act, occurrence, a course of events. The gospel
of Matthew is a narrative. This person was born of this
person, this person was born of this person, this person,
this person. Jesus did this, Jesus said that, Jesus did this,
Jesus said that, Jesus did this, Jesus said that. John the Baptist
said this, the Pharisees said that. That's a narrative, like
most people tell stories. And then I said, and then he
said, and then she said, and then I said, and then he said, and then she
said. And you're like, okay. That's a narrative. It tells
a story. Some of the Old Testament writing. There is some narrative
in Revelation. I mean, I, John, your brother,
departing the tribulation, kingdom of God, I'm sitting here. I heard
behind me a voice like a trumpet. This is what I heard. But yet,
even in that narrative, we see other types of things. We see
metaphor. We see satire. We see other things. So how do
we interpret this stuff? How do we interpret this in such
a way that we're able to understand it? Do we interpret things literal
or literally or literarily? Which is it? Well, what about
L, the literal principle of interpretation? What does the dag thing say?
What does it say? John ate an apple. What's that
say? It said, John ate an apple. Well,
what does the apple stand for? I don't know. Is he in New York,
or is he in the grocery store? If John ate the big apple, that
means he consumed New York City. Well, did he consume New York
City? Or better yet, the big apple ate John. That means the
city consumed him. Was it literally saying that
New York ate John? No. Maybe he's meaning that the
city overwhelmed John. Maybe he's saying that the city
took all of John's money. Maybe he's saying that the city
was just so big it swallowed John up. How do we know? What's a literal principle? The
genres of Scripture, or the devices, are the first step in determining
how to read Scripture. What is the genre of Revelation? It is
apocalyptic. What are the devices used in
any particular text? We have to use the literal principle
to interpret whether or not the writing is literal or figurative. Because writing could literally
be figurative. What it literally means could
be hyperbole. I'm so hungry, I eat a horse.
Right? I could eat a horse. I said that
to a civil engineer one day of great cognitive resources. And she looked at me with a cocked
head, sort of like the Spaniel or the Labrador. And I just kept
talking. And about a minute or two in,
she said, do you really eat horses? I'm like, oh honey, I knew you
were smart, but that's over the top there. Are you being serious?
She goes, I've just never met anybody who ate horses. That
seems gross. I said, no, it's a figure of speech. I literally
meant it as a figure of speech. That's what I literally meant.
I didn't literally, literally mean I was eating horses or that
I would consider it. So we have to understand whether
the writing is literally or figurative, or literally literal. An example would be in Revelation
14. And we just hear this. I'm going to turn there, verse
17 through 20. I'm going to read it real quick and give you an
example. Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven,
and he too had a sharp sickle. Now listen, imagine this, picture
this. He had a sharp sickle, and another angel came out of
the altar. I mean, you get this? There's a temple in heaven, and
an angel with a scythe, like the Grim Reaper. One's coming
out of the temple. One's coming out of the pulpit.
Alright, here he is. And this angel who had authority
over fire, and he called out with a loud voice to the one
out of the sharp sickle, Hey, sickle boy! Put your sickle and gather the
clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe."
I mean, here's the end times, and there's an angel out there
that's master over fire, and one that's got a sickle, and
the one that's got the fire is telling the other one, it's time
to make wine. Is that what's happening? That's
literally what the Bible says in Revelation 14. So the angel
swung his sickle across the earth, and gathered the grape harvest
of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath
of God." Uh-oh. God's making some angry wine.
He's angry. He needs to chill. So he's going
to make him some wine and relax. And his angels are concerned. They're going to help God chill
out. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed
from the winepress as high as a horse's bridle. Wow. Now what is this literally saying?
It's literally figurative. It's imagery all the way. Literally. It's imagery. You're to imagine
what this is like. You're to imagine. And even if
this were... Is God going to take and... What
are the grapes? What's ripe for the harvest?
Judgment! Wicked people are ripe for the
harvest of judgment. And as we just were talking before
class in Revelation 19, Jesus treads the winepress of the fury
of the wrath of God. So it's Jesus squishing the blood
out of the wicked people. Is He really going to put us
in a winepress the size of the cosmos? No. It's literally figurative. What does it mean? Well, the
winepress is a common motif used to convey massive death. The
sickle is a common motif. The harvest is a common motif
to symbolize massive death. If we take literally the blood,
then we have to take literally the sickle, and literally the
grapes, and literally the winepress. We can't pick in the midst of
a metaphoric sentence and say, this is real. There's not a beast,
but there is a woman. Or there is a beast, but not
a woman. It's a mannequin. I don't know what it is. Maybe
it's just an attitude that the beast has, like a woman. What's
that supposed to look like? A seven-headed woman? Who is
she? Anyway, I'll quit. Literal. What's a literal principle?
What's it literally trying to say? Second thing to think about,
second principle in interpreting this type of text is illumination.
What is God's Spirit showing us? What is God's Holy Spirit
confirming as it also relates to the writing of Scripture?
Because we can easily say, well, the Spirit of God showed me.
That's what every prophet says. There's a new prophet on Facebook,
can't remember her name, Joy something, and she's prophesying
all sorts of stuff. And there's another guy that
just shared something with me, Paul Dame or something, and he's
telling me that 20 years ago there was a prophecy about this
particular time in history and it's all coming to pass and all
this stuff. This is hogwash because every
time a prophet speaks it never comes to pass and everybody forgets
that. Well, it's a new prophecy. No,
this is the same old prophecy they've been barking for years,
and it's never come to pass. So, what do you do when they
say, well, God told me? See, that works for most people.
It doesn't work for us. We know better. God doesn't tell us anything
that's not written in His Word. Hebrews chapter 1, God at many
times in many ways spoke to our forefathers through the prophets.
But in these last days, He speaks to us through His Son. Who is
what? The Word, who dwelt among us,
and the canon of the Word is complete. God cannot contradict
Himself, for He's a liar, and therefore He's not God. So, what
is the illumination principle? God confirms what He wrote. If
we fill in our spirit, wow, that makes sense with the rest of
the Bible. Then we prove it with the rest of the Bible. And then
we know we're right. We have received not the Spirit
of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might
understand things freely given to us by God, Paul tells the
Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Illumination never
goes beyond the text of Scripture. So though there is illumination
that is required, it works through the Scripture. Remember we talked
about the Holy Spirit some months ago on Tuesday night? And the
Holy Spirit actually, the Scripture speaks from and to the Spirit
and teaches. The Spirit teaches us the Scripture,
but the Scripture is not the Spirit. And the Spirit is not
the Scripture. The same way the illumination
of the Spirit never goes beyond the text of Scripture, ever.
Jesus says these things, "...let not your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are
many rooms. If it were not so, would I have
told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go
and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you
to Myself, that where I am you may be also." As Jesus is saying,
literally, there is a house. Is that the point of the text?
People bark on that. I've heard people preach out
of John 14 about the massive size of the house of God. How
big it must be if we estimate over 10,000 years and all the
people that probably could be saved, how big the rooms are. And that's not the point of the
text. We don't want you to be uninformed,
brothers, as we learned in 1 Thessalonians 4 just a little while ago. You
should not grieve about those who are asleep, but you may not
grieve as others who do not have hope. Is he talking about sleep? No, he's talking about death.
Those who are dead. Talking about the rapture there,
if we dare. Those who are alive are left
in the coming of the Lord, but not perceive those who have fallen asleep. For the
Lord Himself will descend from heaven with the cry of command, with
the voice of an archangel, and the sound of the trumpet of God,
and the dead in Christ will rise first. And we who are alive,
who are left, will be called up together with Him in the clouds
to meet Him in the air. And so we will always then be with the
Lord. Therefore encourage each other with these words. These
texts are proof texts for certain teachings of the rapture. These texts are proof texts.
I'm going to come back and take you to my father's house. I'm going
to come back and rise you up in the air and we're going to
be snatched out of this place. But yet, is it really? Do you know
the rapture had never been taught in the entire human existence
until the 1800s? Never been taught. Nobody ever
said the word in the context of theological circles. No one
had ever, ever, ever taught that there was a rapture apart from
the Second Coming. Because if there is, then there's
a third coming. Right? Jesus is coming. Takes us. Comes
back. I guess that's when he goes to
shop for cows and bulls. Goes back. Illumination. Never goes beyond the text. G. Grammatical principle. The third
thing we need to learn tonight is that there is a grammatical
principle. You know what that means? That
means if we don't understand the basics of grammar, we can't
read it. You don't have to know all the
ins and outs of what it's called. You don't have to know what a participle
is, but you need to know what they look like. You need to know
what a subject and a verb is. You need to know how to pick
out the object of a sentence. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven
in people's faces, for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those
who would enter to go in. Who's he talking to? Woe to you! Who are they? In this sense of Matthew 23,
why do I use that text? Because a lot of people, a lot
of people say that he's not talking to them. He's talking to another
generation. Who is he talking to? Is he talking
to somebody in the future? Is he talking to them directly? You build the tombs? and decorate
the monuments of the righteous, you serpents, you brood of vipers,
how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you
prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and
crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute
from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous
blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the
blood of Zechariah to the son of Barakaya, whom you murdered
between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I say to you," verse
36, all these things will come upon this generation. But yet, Matthew chapter 23 is
a proof text for preterism. That means all the prophecies
of everybody's already fulfilled, the second coming's already come
because it's this generation. Or is Jesus talking to someone else
in the future? You know what Jesus was talking
to? You. The Pharisees, the scribes, this
generation. He was talking to them. Grammar
shows us He was talking to them. In Matthew 24 you'll hear wars
and rumors of wars, handed over to be persecuted and put to death,
you'll be hated by the nations. You see me standing in the holy
place, the abomination that causes desolation, that's a big one.
We'll talk about that in Weeks to Come. We pray that our fight
will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath, so if anyone
tells you there he is out in the desert, do not go out. What
are all these things we see? When you see all these things,
you know that it is near, right at the door. I'll tell you the truth,
this generation will certainly not pass away until all these
things have happened, Matthew 24, 6, all the way through 34. The question
is, in chapter 23, if he's talking clearly to what? To the Pharisees. How come in chapter 24, in the
same sentence, in the same paragraph, in the same breath, is he talking
to somebody else? Because see, some of you looked at me confused
when I said chapter 23 is a disputed text. It is a disputed text.
It's a disputed text because if chapter 24 is a disputed text,
23 has to be. If chapter 24 is about future
generations that we've yet to see, then chapter 23 has to be
also the same audience. That's grammatically impossible
for Jesus to speak to the same people at the same time and have
two different audiences. So which one is it? Both or and?
Either or, no. It's either all or none. Another principle we need to
understand and keep in mind when we interpret text is a historical
principle. I talked a little bit last week
about the historicity of Revelation, specifically or explicitly about
the culture, the time, the occasion of the writing, who the people
were, what the... I used the idea about the Roman
cult, the imperial cult of Rome. The idea that Caesar is divine.
He is the Lord of heaven. He is the Lord of light. He is the Lord. And the historical
principle teaches us that there's a historical significance to
this letter. There's a historical significance to this letter in
a culture. There's a historical significance
to this letter with customs. There's a historical significance
to this letter in context. What are those three? Culture
is a particular society, a particular place, a particular time. Custom,
things that are habitually accepted as a practice. The way people
do things, that's a custom. a context, a set of facts or
circumstances that surround a situation or event. For example, Revelation
was either penned in the mid-60s during Nero's rule. Now what
would it mean there? If Nero was the emperor in the
mid-60s when they penned this, then a lot of people would tell
us that he was talking about the destruction
of the temple, which happened in 70. But most of history Most
scholars, most people say that this probably was written in
the 90s, the mid-90s, when Domitian ruled as Caesar. So, how do we
know? We need to look at the culture.
We need to look at the context. John tells his audience here
that they will determine the number of the beast, and his
number is 666. What's that mean? You realize we see sixes, and
we go, oh, there's the number of the beast. There was not a
six that looks like a six in ancient Jerusalem? Didn't look like that. English
language didn't exist. Did you know that? Didn't exist. It did not exist anywhere. So,
it couldn't have been in English 6. It couldn't have been in Arabic
6. It was not. Question, did John
intend his readers to know the name of the beast? Or the people
of 2016 to know the name of the beast. A couple of things to think about
in the sense of that is, what is the principle? What is the
evidence of history? You know, our faith is founded
in historical evidence. This scripture is historical
evidence for our faith. You understand that? We do not
believe, what does Peter say? We do not just go around believing
myths. We don't go around believing things that people have made
up. But we hold to the historicity of the written text of God, the
Holy Writ, the Scriptures of the old days, when the prophets
spoke. We hold to those things. Not
only to those things, but those things which they spoke about
came true in our witness. We saw them. We laid eyes on
them. We laid eyes on Him. We laid
hands on Him. We heard Him. We saw Him. We
saw Him die. We saw Him raise to life. And
He met with nearly 500 of the brethren when He ascended into
heaven. We are witnesses of His glory,
Peter says. We don't just believe myths.
This is evidentiary, historical fact. Something else to consider, a
principle of typology. This is big in the Apocalypse.
This is big in Revelation. Typology. The typological principle,
a type. You know what a type is? A type
is a person, place, or thing that serves as an indicator of
something else. A shadow. A preview. Not the real thing, but resembles
or points to the real thing. So Adam is considered what? type of Christ. Joshua is considered
a type of Christ. As a matter of fact, his name
is the same as Jesus. That's the same name. Jesus is
the English translation of Esau, which is the Greek translation
of Yeshua, which is debated whether it means Yahweh saves or the
Lord saves or what. So typology shows and indicates
Christ. For example, the mercy seat.
Jesus is the mercy seat. Remember, what was the mercy
seat in the Holy of Holies? The Ark of the Covenant. The
Ark of the Covenant is the mercy seat. The mercy seat is where?
When the cherubim of the top of the lid of the Ark of the
Covenant, their wings came together. Remember the wings covered? You've
seen the drawings. How do we know that? Because it's pretty
descriptive in the Scriptures. And where the wings came together
was the mercy seat. They thought, in the precepts
of Judaism, where those wings came together is where they poured
the blood of the sacrifices, the mercy seat, where God meets
man. Jesus Christ is called the mercy
seat. That was no place where God dwelt. God didn't give mercy
on the top of a gold-plated cherubim. God gave mercy through the cross,
through the person, the body of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the
mercy seat. He's a type. The mercy seat is
a type of Christ. Joshua is a type of Christ. The promised land is a type for
what? Heaven, eternity. The promised
land. It wasn't supposed to be forever.
Ethnic Israel is not promised any dirt anymore. It was temporary
anyway. The very old teaching of the
entire New Testament shows that all the things of this earth
are temporal. They're all already rotting away. They're already
gone. So we don't hold to them. What
do we hold? To what they point to. Palestine is also a type
for the promised land. A question then would be, is
John teaching in this revelation that Palestine will be regained?
and build up? Or is He teaching that Christ
will return and bring with Him the true promise land? Which
is it? He can't be doing both. Which is it? What gives the hope
for the church? The typological principle helps
us understand how to read these things in light of Scripture.
Finally, I want you to know tonight this. Scriptural synergy. Scriptural synergy. The whole
of Scripture is greater than the sum of individual texts,
individual verses. What's that mean? Philippians
4.13 is meaningless outside of Philippians. Philippians 4.13
is meaningless if it's not within the context of the writing. What
is he saying? I've had much. I've had little.
I've learned to do better with little. I thank you for your
financial gift. But I can do all these things
in Christ who strengthens me. That's it. That's the context
and the whole aspect of the letter to the Philippians. Paul is teaching
that Christ is a sufficient strength even in time of hunger, time
of need, time of suffering. And that it's better for Him
to refuse assistance from the Philippians rather than be tempted to feel joy through that
or sufficiency through their gifts. Christ is strong for Him. So without the rest of the text,
guess what? We can make it mean whatever we want. If I'm weak
in my knees because they hurt, I can do all things through Christ.
He's going to make my knees stop hurting. No, that's not what
that's teaching. It has nothing to do with it. Matter of fact,
it would be better off to say, when I can't stand any longer,
Christ is enough for me. Don't help me up. Don't carry
me anymore. Christ is enough. That fits.
It's synergistic. Where else does it fit? We see
Paul praying three times for the Lord to take the thorn from
his flesh. We don't know what that was. I'd love to hear commentators
express what that is. But no. Christ answered. Paul and says, my grace is sufficient
for you. You can do all things in my strength. I will strengthen
you to endure this fleshly problem. Scriptural synergy. The Bible
is not a mix of puzzles. The Bible is not a bunch of code
and hidden agendas. The Bible is not a bunch of things
that need to be rebuilt and reconstructed and re-added and reconvened.
The Bible is not anything that has to be worked on in order
to understand, but it is a complete revelation of God. and we can
see it and understand it. Systematically, we can tear the
Bible apart and create any kind of teaching we want. Synergistically,
we cannot deny what the Bible teaches. The reason so many people
are what we know as dispensationalists when it comes to end times theology,
in other words, they believe that God saves people differently
through different times, and that God works through different
people differently for different purposes through different time
periods, is because we have systematically cut the Bible up into pieces.
We have used proof text after proof text, pretext after pretext,
and removed the context out of all of that so that we could
come up with our own agendas. And it's not done maliciously,
it's done lazily. It's done ignorantly. I don't
think anybody who perpetrates this type of teaching in this
grand scheme of things sits back in their recliner at night going,
ha ha ha, the master deceiver. I think they're just deceived.
They're creative. It's easy to come up with things.
Creativity is not needed in the context of the economy of grace.
We don't need to be creative to understand God. We need to
just be simple. Faith alone in Christ Jesus is
compared to the faith of a child. You tell a child a monster's
under their bed, they're not going to go to sleep. You tell
a child that there is not one, they still won't believe you
because they think there's one anyway. You can show them and
it's not there. The same thing happens. You tell
a child that Jesus Christ is God and He died and He rose from
the dead, they believe you. You tell a child you've got something
in your hand when it's absolutely empty, they'll watch you all
day until you open it. What do I got? Let me see. We don't have to be academic
scholars to understand Christ. Praise God. And quite honestly,
scriptural synergy teaches us that we don't need to pull from
other places in Scripture to find proof text for our belief
system. Let me put that in perspective.
If I've got to go to Daniel, and Matthew 24, and Revelation
14, and John chapter 17, and I've got to go to Genesis chapter
3, and I've got to put all this together, and add it up one side,
down the other, and pull this, and pull that, and find the message
on this one, the NIV on that one, the New Living Translation
on that one, and the KJV on this one to make it work, I'm wrong.
But what about Scripture versus Scripture? Always in context. A verse in Daniel, out of context,
does not prove another pretext out of Revelation. Good point.
We don't need it. The readers of Revelation didn't
have those other books. And they understood fully what
he was talking about. We can. Can we glean? Yes. But we don't
piecemeal Scripture back in two until we find a proof for our
belief. We're not following exegesis when we do that. What does that
mean? We're not taking the text out of the text. We're not letting
Scripture interpret Scripture. We're adding
to Scripture and we're pulling out what we're looking for. It's
sort of similar to the way I used to preach years and years ago.
I'd develop my outline off the top of my head. Here's my three
points, six points, twelve points. Here's the truth. And I would
search through a digital commentary or a digital concordance until
I found a scripture that somewhat worked. It's garbage. It's lies. That's
what most interpretation does. How can we apply this? Yeah,
we're not going to get to the dispensationalism, I mean to the other stuff tonight.
Let's put some of this into exercise. In Revelation 13 verse 16, I
mentioned this last week, and I sort of gave away the goat,
but let's apply the literal, illumination, grammatical, historical,
typology, and scriptural synergistic principles to this text. Revelation
chapter 13 verse 16. It says, And it also calls us
all, both great and small, both rich and poor, both slave and
free, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead. Somebody
sent me an expose video and a really poorly done website from 1980
when there was no internet, but it was created then in anticipation
for the internet, and then they put it up recently. You know
what I'm talking about, those bad websites that just look awful.
They're black and the yellow header is blinking, warning,
warning, warning, Jesus is coming. I mean, you know, it's just bad.
pictures of bloody things, and I'm trying to be funny. Somebody
sent to me just the other day about a mandate in certain countries
where they are RFID-ing babies. It's a mandate. And it was put
into a theological forum, and everybody just blew up. Oh, the
Mark of the Beast! Mark of the Beast, the Mark of
the Beast, the Mark of the Beast, the Mark of the Beast. Is that really So,
in John's day, these people's heads were being taken from their
bodies, and John's letter shows up, and they're so excited to
be encouraged by his words, to be empowered by the grace of
God through Jesus Christ, they sat there and thought, wow, one
day they're going to put chips in our face. I mean, there wasn't even such
a thing as a potato chip in the first century. There wasn't even
a thing as a poker chip. There wasn't a chip at all. Chip
was the guy that nobody liked, lived down the street. Had an
attitude. Got a chip on his shoulder. How
do we apply these principles? What's the literal principle?
Does this text mean something literally to its original hearers?
Did it? Yes. Did it literally mean something?
Yes it did. Then test it. I looked out the
window and it was raining cats and dogs. Is that what I meant? Maybe the girl that thought we
ate horses would probably go, I'd like a cat. Have a bucket. I need some cats. No. What it means is, my goodness,
there is a massive rain going on outside. It's really strong. It's a big rain. What's the plausible
explanation then of Revelation 13, 16? The mark demonstrates
identification to the original hearers. You will know who are
not in Christ. That's the ultimate issue, isn't
it? You'll know who is not in Christ. You'll know who is in
Christ. Because they will be marked on
the right hand or the forehead. The illumination principle says
that the illumination, the action that we have in our minds, oh,
this is what it means, must agree with what? Scripture. If we have an illumination, it
must agree. So the mark of the beast, according to Scripture, which
one fits? Is it a social security number?
A microchip? A tattoo? RFID? Sharpie marker? or maybe their lifestyle, what
they love, what they worship. What they worship? That sounds
good. How do we know if someone loves
God by what they worship? Because Jesus says you'll know
them by their fruits. You'll know them. If you love
me, you'll what? Obey my commandments. If you
love me, you'll love the brethren. I'm saying John does not say
anything about anybody having a physical mark on their forehead
or hand. Does that help? That's all I was taught. Now
what does it mean? We just have to figure out what
the scripture could teach us. Others? I don't know, but none of the
hearers were slaves in that regard. I mean, imagine in the Civil Rights Movement,
before the Civil Rights Movement, how bad it was for African Americans
in this country. Just because of their skin color.
What if you identified for Christ in a country that would kill
you for it? What's the mark? What is the mark? You've got
to give up your faith. You've got to walk away from
following Christ. Getting back to the grammatical
principle, I have a question on verse 16 because it sounds
to me like he's talking about the future. That He causes all? Not that He has caused all, but
He causes all? To me that sounds like future.
I'm not arguing. That's actually present. That's actually a present active
tense. Well he causes them to take the
mark. The worship is the action there.
So the grammatical principle tells us that the mark we placed
on the right hand or forehead. What's the test? Is there going
to be a chip there? What is it going to be? What's
plausible? We know each other by our acts. We know each other by our hearts.
We know each other by our actions. We know each other by our thoughts.
From out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
What do we love with? Our minds, our souls, our bodies. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, mind, soul, and strength. What's plausible? I think people
will know who are, and that goes back to even figuring out what
is the beast. The beast is among us now, y'all. Always has been. The beast is among us now, and
he takes many forms, and the form of the beast is everything
that is not Christ, or is not in Christ. You see that? And we'll see that clearly as
we move through Scripture in the next few weeks, as we start
to really look at the text. The historical principle. John's
message is to have wisdom and insight that they can calculate
the number of the beast, right? You may know and have understanding
and insight. You may calculate the number of the beast. The
test of this historical principle. Could John's readers actually
know the beast if it was going to be a thousand years later?
No. No. And also, could they see
microchips or credit cards or tattoos? Did they go, oh, we
know what this is coming to. Listen, these people, as we talked
about last week, were satisfied with this letter. And they feared
not ever again. You see the point? We don't necessarily
know all the details of what it did mean to them, but we cannot
assume and infer of what it could mean to us outside the synergy
of Scripture. I think the plausible answer
to that is that John meant for his hearers to know the beast
and recognize him with their own eyes. The typology principle. What other mark do we see in
Scripture? What other marks are there in Scripture? You know
some other marks? Revelation 14 says 144,000 will have the
mark of the lamb on their foreheads. So what is the mark of the beast?
It's a parody of the mark of the lamb. Those who are in Christ
who are alive, those who are in the beast are dead. It's a
parody. The beast, as you'll see as we
go through the text, takes the number eight for himself. Perfection
plus one. Holiness plus one. Righteousness
plus one. He is the great. Is that not
the work of the devil? Is that not the heart of Satan,
Lucifer? He wants to take the glory of
God for himself. The head and the hand are symbolic.
in Scripture for thoughts and deeds. Jesus says you will know
them by their fruit. You'll know them by their fruit.
Friends, we know who are and who are not truly professing
Christ to a large degree by what they do and what they love and
what they think about. Do we not? Jesus said it. Well, don't judge people. I'm
not. I'm just quoting Jesus. Jesus judges people. Jesus passed
judgment on all who do not believe. They are condemned already. And
Jesus passed judgment on Israel and cursed them. And Jesus passed
judgment on those who would reject Him. Jesus passed judgment And
Jesus says that we will know them by their fruit. So for us to say what Jesus says
is always right, always true, always synergistic, always beautiful. So maybe the mark, maybe the
mark is symbolic of what these people
do. What about synergy? In Revelation
3, verse 12, Jesus says these words, I will write on him, the
one who overcomes, the name of my God, and the name of the city
of my God, and I will also write on him my new name. So we already get the key to
the language of the Semitic examples of the typology and the metaphors
and the imagery of people having stuff written on their heads
and foreheads and their hands. Jesus writes His name. God says
to Ezekiel, I will write my laws on your hearts. I've seen a lot
of open heart surgery pictures. I've never seen any tattoos. Does Jesus have a sharpie? Would 144,000 have the Lamb's
name on their foreheads? Or is that a symbolic way of
identifying those in the mind, in the deed with Christ, so that
the mark of the beast is identically interpreted? Nobody, you see
what I'm saying? If we're going to interpret this
literal, then our faces are tattooed with Jesus' name, and the name
of His city, and everything. You can't take one and not the
other. It's all or nothing. It's all or nothing. But why
is it so appealing to do the other? Because it makes incredible
paranoia, and it builds pockets to the trillions. The beast of
Babylon builds prophets. through the twisting of Scripture,
to blind the eyes of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the
glory of God in the face of Christ. And people come to faith under
a false pretense of end times every day of the week, when some
silly, God-forsaken prophet comes and stands before them and says,
if you don't turn to Christ, you're going to suffer three
and a half years and take the mark of the beast, and they're
going to burn you alive, and they're going to bring you to life, and burn you
alive. And people are scared. I don't want to do that. I'll
come down. I'll say the magic words. I'll
follow the yellow brick road to Jesus. And they're going to
stand in judgment. And Jesus is going to say, Depart
from Me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. Get away from
Me. And He's going to cast them into
hell with His own hands. And He's going to tread the winepress
of the fury of the wrath of God, because they believe the lie,
straight from the Word of God, from twisted, sick, Prophets
of Satan. And it should scare us to death.
That's why it's important. It's not just something that
goes, oh, it's this or that or this or that. It's error. It's
wicked. It's sinful to perpetrate what
God has said when God has not said it. It's blasphemy of the
Holy Spirit and it's unforgivable. You cannot go to heaven if you
blaspheme God. What's the remedy? For God who
said that light shone out of darkness has shone in our hearts
to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. That's the remedy. I didn't mean
to preach. But friends, I know more people
who are stuck in Hollywoodistic eschatology as unbelievers who
purvey this stuff with a gross attraction so passionately that
they will die on the hill of martyrdom for their end times
belief. Then there are Pelagians or Arminians
or cultists or Romanists. I know more Christians who will
curse me to the ground, and have, when I just ask the question,
is Jesus coming back three times? Persona non grata, do you know
what that means? You're not welcome here. I'm officially persona
non grata with three churches in this area. By statement. Because I asked
the question, What does 1 Thessalonians 4 really teach to you? I didn't
even answer it. I just asked the question in
a private conversation. This guy went back and had a
Sunday school class about me. Why? Because I care about people's
eternal souls. If somebody came up to you and
said, you know, when we all get to heaven, are you excited about
getting your own planet? Are you excited that we get our
own planet and we'll have 72 virgins, us men, and then all
the ladies, I guess they'll be one of them? You know, that's
what's going to happen when we go to heaven. And I can't wait
to get there. Isn't that going to be great?
You know, we're going to fly around on horses, too. We're
going to fly down here to hell, and we're going to be able to
snatch people out of hell. We're going to be able to grab them out.
Because Jesus is going to go back there because He spent some
time on vacation down there. And if somebody said those things,
you'd be like, no, no, no, no, you can't believe that. That's
wrong. You're putting your faith in
things. Where'd you get this stuff? You question it. What
is it called? Discipleship. Discipleship is us not all getting
along, agreeing on the same thing, going, amen, amen, amen, amen. Discipleship is a rub, man. Discipleship
is a headbutt. Discipleship is iron sharpens
iron. Iron sharpening iron is not a back rasage. It's... That's what it feels like. That's
what it sounds like. Like fingers on a chalkboard. And that's what
my prayer is in these views of end times. And what's crazy is
I haven't even touched but two issues and there's tension in
there. There's tension. There's tension
with what we've always Wow. Now what does it mean? I've always
heard that. It's just like me and Kristen were talking. I was taught, I
used to teach, I can take this stuff, I can teach this stuff
asleep. I could teach the way we've all
been taught, asleep. But I can't prove it by Scripture.
And that's the trouble. And that's why the church stays
so weak. That's why so many pastors don't touch this letter. They
can't handle the heat. Well now, you mean to tell me
if I don't agree with your eschatological views that I might not be saved? No, but if you believe all the
garbage and you're putting your hope in some stuff that's unbiblical,
if your hope's in stuff that's unbiblical, you are in danger. Your faith's got to be in Christ,
the Christ of the Bible. And if we misinterpret this part
of the Bible, if we misinterpret this person, this view of Jesus
Christ, which is what Revelation is all about, the view of Jesus
Christ and His work, and His sovereignty over history, then
we may very well be misinterpreting the Jesus of other parts of Scripture,
salvifically. You see what I mean? So, what
about the views of eschatology? What about the millennial views?
Well, we can all agree to disagree. But we can't disagree that Scripture
must be interpreted this way. What does it really mean? Quite
honestly, we can't know. But the Scripture can teach us
what we can know. And we do not go away from Scripture. And that's what's most important
with this text tonight. We'll stop there and we'll pick
up next week. Let's pray. Father, Lord, give us humility. Give
us severity in our hearts to pray for those who are lost,
Lord, I pray for those who evangelize through terror and not the good
news. I pray for those who are just
overcome by greed and glory when they try to teach
certain things that makes them seem smarter than other people
or full of knowledge that everybody else wants. Lord, protect us
from that. Keep us from harm. Keep us united. Keep us intimate. Just like these principles that
we're learning, just like these things that we're going through,
just like some of the stuff that we are experiencing in our own
belief systems, Lord, we are filled with Your Spirit. We have
the power to overcome it. We're able to stand, and even
when we're wrong, we're still justified. But Lord, there are
many whose hope hinges on error. Lord, help us to be the voice
of God to teach them, to bring them to an understanding and
a knowledge of truth by sharing the Word so that we might see
more and more come to faith in Jesus Christ. So that the book
of Revelation is not an opportunity for fear, but Lord, an opportunity
for praise. And we pray these things in the
name of Jesus. Amen. I would strongly encourage
you to take