if you will take your bibles
and turn to revelation chapter twenty two this week's lesson
and next week's lesson will conclude our study in revelation if you
would like to listen to those and i don't know if you know
this or not and i don't know exactly how you do it but if
you go to my site on Free Grace Radio. It'll have sermons by
text, I think it says, over to one side. And if you hit that,
it'll give you all my Genesis studies, all my Exodus studies,
Revelation, everything that I did in a single book will be there
in its order. So you can click on that and
then you can, if you missed one or whatever, you can go back
and listen to them. Now, our study today will include
two verses of Scripture, verses 18 and 19 of Revelation chapter
22. And our subject this morning,
our study, is on two subjects. There's two subjects set forth
in these verses. First of all, the Word of God. The Word of God. This is the
foundation of our faith. This is the rule of our faith
and our practice, right here. The Word of God. And then secondly,
the revelation of Jesus Christ, which is why this book was given
and preserved. Revelation 22, verse 18. For I testify unto every man
that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any
man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues
that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away
from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take
away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city
and from the things which are written in this book. In Revelation
19, verse 10, John tells us that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The
testimony of Jesus is God's testimony. It's God's testimony. It's preached
by men. It's taught by men. But it's
God's testimony. And therein lies the danger when
a man preaches the truth and you reject it, you've not made
him a liar, you've made God a liar. Because he testified those things
as though God did beseech you by him. Be you reconciled to
God. In 1 John chapter 5 verse 11,
he said, this is the record that God hath given to us eternal
life and this life is in his son. He that believeth on the
Son of God hath a witness in himself. What witness? The witness of the Holy Ghost
revealing the Gospel to him. Hebrews 10, 15 and Romans 8,
16. He that believeth not God hath
made him a liar because he believeth not the record that God gave
of his Son. And this is the record right
here. That's why it's so important
to me if I tell you something to show you in the word of God
where that's declared and where that's stated. The testimony
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. It's the very spirit of life
and the soul of the book of God and it is by definition the gospel
of Jesus Christ. He's the Son of God and the Son
of Man. And John said, if we receive
the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. Lots of men hear a man and they
say, you know, I like him. I like him. I like his delivery. I like what he's saying, and
so on. And that's all well and good.
I hope the Lord will give you that impression. I don't want
to be the obstacle in a man's not believing. I want to be able
to teach and tell men these things without becoming an offense myself. But the witness of God is greater.
It's greater than my witness. And it's important for me, for
you to know, that the things that I'm teaching is what this
book teaches. For this is the witness of God
which he hath testified of his son. God testified in Genesis
3.16 to Adam and Eve of the virgin-born seed of woman coming into this
world to overcome both Satan and his seed. False religion,
fallen men, unbelieving rebels, all put down by this virgin-born
son of God. In Genesis chapter 6, God destroyed
the world, all but eight souls, which he preserved in an ark.
Is that ark not a picture of Christ? Peter said it was. He
said it was. In Genesis 22, God commanded
Abraham to offer his only begotten son upon the altar of worship.
And in his heart, he did exactly that. He had that knife drawn,
ready to plunge it into his son's heart. But God stayed his hand
and provided in his stead a substitute, another picture of Christ. He's our representative and substitute,
dying in our room instead. And on and on it goes with these
ancient prophecies that pictured and typified our Lord Jesus Christ. They pictured his priesthood,
In the old priesthood, his priesthood was pictured. He's pictured in the sacrifices,
in the year of Jubilee, in the City of Refuge, the Tabernacle,
the Lamb slain, circumcision, and on and on it goes, the Mercy
Seat, the Ark of the Covenant, all through the Old Testament.
The testimony of Jesus is a spirit of prophecy. You can't read the
Law of Moses and get anything out of it apart from Christ.
All you're going to do is pick and choose here and there and
find a few moral lessons and try to get them applied to people
and try to make people strive to do this and strive to do that
and then warn them with threatenings of the law and so on, which never
did work on anybody. And then let me draw your attention
to the various ways and words that the Holy Ghost uses to define
this gospel. This gospel is the gospel of
God. That's what Paul said. He was
separated under the gospel of God. It's God's gospel. It is the gospel, Acts 20, 24,
of the grace of God. You can't preach a gospel without
grace. If you're not preaching grace,
you're not preaching a gospel because it's the gospel of the
grace of God. It's the gospel of your salvation. You can't talk about salvation
apart from any kind of understanding of the gospel. The gospel is
the gospel of your salvation. It is the everlasting gospel.
We have religions in our day that begin the gospel with the
birth of Christ. That's not the beginning of the
gospel. It's the everlasting gospel.
And it is the gospel of the kingdom of God. God rules. Christ is
king in his kingdom. It's the gospel of his son and
the gospel of peace and the gospel of Christ. It's also not only
the gospel of Christ, but it's called in the scripture Christ's
gospel. It belongs to him. It's the glorious
gospel. Now I'm going to tell you something,
it's not in my notes, but when I watch a television show where
the man is begging that congregation to walk down the aisle and accept
Jesus as their personal savior or sign a pledge card and join
the church or come down and talk about turning over a new leaf
and all these kind of, where's the glory in that? There's nothing
glorious about that. You do the same thing when you
decide to go to college, don't you? Well, you can't equate going
to college with coming to Christ. This gospel is a glorious gospel. Everything about it is glorious.
It's beginning. It's accomplishment. It's security. Reserved in heaven for you. Everything
about it, it's glorious. And it's the gospel of light.
No light anywhere else except in Christ, he's the light. And I'll tell you this, it's
also called the mystery of the gospel. Has to be revealed on
it. And then there's a divine power
attached to the gospel. The gospel is the power of God
unto salvation, what scripture says. In Romans 15, verse 29,
Paul speaks of the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of
Christ. And he speaks of men established
according to my gospel in Romans 16, 25. In 1 Corinthians 4, 15, he said, I
have begotten you through the gospel. And then he tells us that we're
called by his gospel. And we're told that the gospel
is the sure sign of our election when it comes not in word only,
but in power and the Holy Ghost. It pleased God through the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. John said, in the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The
same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by
Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. And then
Paul goes into even more detail in Colossians 1 telling us that
all things in heaven and all things in earth were made by
Him and for Him. And He is before all things and
by Him all things have their continuance. All things consist. And he that is the head of the
body of the church is he who is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, so that he has preeminence in all things. In
creation, in the everlasting covenant, in the accomplishments
of salvation, in his reign and glory. He has preeminence in
all things. And the prophecy of this book
sets Christ before men as the one mediator between God and
man. Mary's not a mediator. Now, I'm sorry. The place where
I take Kathy to be treated for her cancer is just getting overloaded
now with Catholic material and stuff. And I was reading this
book in there, and they got a certain day set apart to celebrate Mary. And in that, they talked about
her mediation. Mary's not a mediator. The prophecy of this book tells
us that Christ was made of a woman and made under the law to redeem
them that were under the law, that they should receive the
adoption of sons. And as the representative of
Christ's elect as their federal head, he brought out for them
a perfect righteousness and put away their sin by the sacrifice
of himself. The prophecy of this book sets
forth the Son of God as the first begotten from the dead, delivered
for our transgressions, raised again for our justification.
The prophecy of this book sets forth Jesus Christ as the sinner's
substitute, dying in our room instead on the cross. He died
that we might die in him and not suffer that everlasting death.
Dying the just for the unjust. that he might bring us to God.
And a prophecy of God's book sets forth the death of Christ
as particular. He said he shall save his people,
his people, from their sins. And save them he did, and save
them he does. The prophecy of Holy Scripture
sets forth Christ as the enthroned, victorious, exalted King of kings
and Lord of lords. There's nothing in heaven, earth,
or hell that's not actively under his authority. Is that right? He said, in him dwelleth all
the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in him who
is the head of all principality and power. His disciples knew something
about this. Out on that lake that night,
in that storm, this man drives a lot for a living.
You've driven in storms, haven't you? You've driven in storms
when you wished you wasn't even in the car. I know what that
is. And they was out in this ship,
and this ship was being tossed about, things getting broken,
water coming in. They thought it was the end of
time, and they looked, And here comes the Lord in the blackness
of that night. They could see Him with the flashes
of light walking on the water. He wasn't running. He wasn't
struggling. He was walking in the midst of
that storm. And He made like He was going
to go by the ship. And they yelled at Him. And He
turned. And he entered into the ship
and they said, save us lest we perish. And he turned and looked
at the winds and the waves and the lightning and the clouds
and he said, peace be still. And that water laid down just
like the water in that glass. Huh? That sound like somebody
doesn't have any authority to you? Somebody has to have a helping
hand in the things that he does? My soul, he's the king of glory. He's the King of Glory. He's
the enthroned, victorious, exalted King of Kings and Lord of Lords,
and there's nothing in heaven, earth, or hell that's not actively
under His authority and power. They that heard Him were astonished.
They were astonished. They sat there with their mouths
open, for He taught them not like the scribes, but one who
had authority. In him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. What do we fear? The world? Huh? You that know him and trust in
him, what do you fear? What are you afraid of? You afraid
of this world? The world's his footstool. That's
what scripture said. Just a place for him to rest
his feet. You fear sin? In him there is
no sin. Isn't that your hope? You hope you're in him, right?
In him there is no sin. Who do you fear? You fear the
devil? The devil's his devil. He does exactly what the Lord
allows him to do and commands him to do. These are the prophecies of this
book. Will you add to these things?
Will you add to this particular redemption that God's testified
of and make it universal? That's to add to the prophecies
of this book. Will you add to the prophecies
of this book that man is not dead in trespasses and sins,
he's just merely wounded? That's to add to the prophecies
of this book. Or take away. Oh, now, preacher,
a saved man can lose his salvation. You're taking away from the prophecies
of this book. This book says he can't. Well, he can through unbelief.
That's not what the Bible says. Though they believe not, though
they believe not, yet he abides faithful. Huh? of my soul. If we would be destroyed by unbelief,
I wouldn't be here this morning. I'm filled with unbelief. My salvation's in Him, it's not
in me. It's in Him. And having told us all these
things, now He says, don't add to these prophecies and don't
take anything from them. Just receive them as I've given
them. Will you add your willingness
and your decisions and your so-called determination? Will you add your
self-righteous legalism, ritualism, ceremonialism, and any other
kind of ism? If any man shall add unto these
things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written
in this book. And then in verse 19, he addresses
those who will alter or take away from the words of God's
book. When I think about how many translations
that have been made where they've taken whole chapters out of the
Word of God. Why? Because it didn't fit their
doctrine. Taken away key statements, key
declarations, just take them, clear out, you read that whole
translation, not even in there. Some of them, John chapter six
is gone. It's not even in there. They
don't like what he said about all that the Father giveth me
shall come to me. They don't like that. They don't
like God being the teacher. They don't like that. They don't
like being dependent on the invisible God. So what do you do about
that? Take it away. Take it away. It's offensive. That's what Billy
Graham said when they asked him why he didn't preach Calvinism
anymore. He said it was ruining my ministry.
It will do. Ruin mine. I was in Arminianism
when the Lord began to teach me some things and I'm going
to tell you something. When I started talking about those things in
there, I was out the door. sometimes hearing and leaving
out whole chapters and verses. Just as the Jews who saw themselves
as the builders of God's kingdom said it not, the Christ of God,
they called him out, just called him out. And they want to take away all
the words like election and predestination and so on and so forth. God the Holy Spirit has inspired
men to write the Scriptures, and they are complete, sufficient,
infallible, and inerrant. Are they not? And since the Holy Ghost Himself
is the revealer of His own Word, which He has inspired, and giver
of understanding, I see no need to change the Word of God to
make it appealing to men. Do you? And especially to men whose nature
is enmity, it's God to start with and not subject to his word
until he's made subject and made willing. Are the words of scripture important? Are they important? Sometimes
the whole of the faith of God's elect turns on a word, turns
on a word. One of the old queens of England
said, she said, I thank God for an M, because over there in 1
Corinthians it says, not many noble are called, and it could
have said, not any noble are called. And she said, I thank
God for an M. And now he says something here
in this verse that I believe demands our complete attention. He said, and if any man shall
take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall
take away his part out of the book of life, take away all of
his rights, that is his part in the holy city, and from the
things which are written in this book, that is the promises written
in this book. Now we know by the word of God
that when God saves a sinner, he saves him to the uttermost. God's not gonna take his part
away from him. And while this verse may appear
as a saved man losing his salvation, that's not what it's saying at
all. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10 and let me read you
an example of what I'm talking about. Hebrews chapter 10 and verse
38. Now the just shall live by faith,
but if any man draw back, my soul
shall have no pleasure in him. Here's another but. We are not of them that draw
back under perdition, but of them that believe to the saving
of the soul. So that what he's talking about
over here in the book of Revelations is men who profess to have a
part in heaven and who profess to have right to that city and
right to that water. They profess it. But God didn't save them at all.
He didn't save them at all. Those who draw back, only had
the appearance of living by faith. John said this, there was a lot
who did that then and there's a lot who do that now. He said they went out from us
but they were not of us for had they been of us they no doubt
would have continued with us. But they went out that they might
be made manifest that they were not of us. And then listen to
this over in Mark 4, verse 24. He said unto them, take heed
what you hear, with what measure you meet it shall be measured
to you. And unto you that hear shall
more be given. For he that hath to him shall
be given, and he that hath not just hath it by profession. from
him shall be taken even that which he hath." Even that which
he seemed to have. All those who would take away
the words of the revelation of Jesus Christ shall have whatever
part that they claim to have in the kingdom of God taken from
them. Taken from them. Their hope in the book of life
and their entrance into the holy city and any of the precious
things written in the book of God. When men want to celebrate,
I'm talking about false religious men now, want to celebrate these
things in the word of God, they always run to the promises. And
they start talking about the promises. But they never They never talk
about the man, Christ Jesus. They never talk about the glory
of God in him. They just talk about things,
things, talk about heaven. And then from there, they don't
even use the scriptures when they're talking about heaven.
Heaven's just a wish, I guess, is what you'd
say. They talk about fishing. In heaven,
living in a cabin in glory land. One song uses that as it's worth.
Give me just a cabin in the corner of glory land. There are no cabins
in glory land. They're mansions, what Christ
said. Fishing? I don't think so. I
think we're gonna be worshiping him. We worship him now. with what little bit we know.
How shall we not worship Him even more there when all of these
things that blinds us and stands in our way are taken out of the
way? Lord willing, our next lesson
will complete our study in this amazing book and I hope you were
profited by it. I know I was as I went through
and studied this book. and perhaps have at least grown
a little bit in the grace and knowledge of Christ. Thank God
for allowing us to see into its mysteries. Oh, I couldn't tell
you how many people this morning, those who are reading from the
book of Revelation and trying to apply it to a time and got
their graphs up on the wall and showing you all these things
that are just not in a million miles of what this book teaches.
This book teaches us right up front exactly what it's all about.
This is the revelation of Jesus Christ. Not of a bunch of dragons, not
of things that men picture in their minds, all of these things. It's a revelation of Jesus Christ.