Not really visitors, but a couple
of visitors. They've been in Congress. They've
been here a long time. Good to have you with us. Remember
those who requested prayer. I had to give prayer to Tommy
Stevens. And also remember Alita and Harley. Her family says Inez is fading. She's on the, they're just keeping
her comfortable right now. So remember them in prayer. It's
a tough time for families when loved one gets in that bad of
shape. So, remember them in your prayers, if you will, and seek
the Lord's help for them. Happy birthday to Wanda Vance
this week. Her and her and Sam's birthday are pretty close together,
weren't they? I think it was last week, wasn't
it? Yeah. Let's begin our worship service
with hymn number 209, Grace Greater Than All I've Seen. 209. Marvelous grace, how I love thee
more. praise is greater than all Grace is greater than love. Praise! Praise! Praise! Praise! Praise! Praise! God's grace, grace that is greater
than all our sin. Dark is the sleep that began
the night you may God's grace, grace that more
than fills within. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace
that is greater than all our sin. We bestow upon all who believe,
you that are longing to see His face, we'll use the light His
grace receives! Praise, praise, God's praise! Praise that the Father and King
within! Praise, praise, God's praise! Praise that is greater than all
our sins! I'm going to read verses 11 through
17. the last vision given to John.
And I saw heaven open, behold a white horse, and a sea that
sat upon it was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness
he does judge and make war. His eyes were a flame of fire,
and on his head were seven crowns. He had a name written that no
man knew but himself. He was clothed with a vesture
dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. The
armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed
in fine linen, white and clean, and out of his mouth broke a
sharp sword. With it he should smite the nations,
and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and he treadeth the
winepress of the fierceness of God Almighty, and he hath on
his vesture a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And I saw an angel standing in
the sun, and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls
that fly in the midst of heaven, come and gather yourselves together
unto the supper of the great God. Let's pray. Our Father,
we praise you for mercy, for grace, of ruined and wretched
sinners who, without hope and without help in this world, who cannot of themselves move
one eye over or closer to Thee, who by nature are an entity with
Thee, who care not for the things of
God, and God is not in all their thoughts. And we are thankful that where
sin abounds, Grace did much more about it. Grace for the chief
of sons. Mercy for the ruined. Father, help us to be thankful
every day, every hour, for the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ
came into this world to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.
We couldn't put away our sin. We couldn't make ourselves righteous
and holy before them. We could not cleanse our thoughts
or our hearts. In fact, nothing about us was
fit for heaven. So much so that a new creature
must be made in the likeness of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Father. And what you required of humanity,
you supplied and accomplished for me. Help us now to worship
you in spirit and in truth. We pray for those who are sick,
those who have been added to the prayer list. We pray especially
for Annette. As she seems to be in the last throes, we ask,
Lord, you be with her, be with her family. The best of you can lead us,
you ministers to among us. comfort as only you can. We are
so feeble in these efforts. We can say words, hug, and cry
together, but only you can touch the heart, the mind, and the
soul. We ask you to do that, if you would be pleased to do
so. Help us this day to gather here, to catch a glimpse of him
who's worthy of all praise and honor. Cast us down in the dust
where we belong, but lift our eyes to see him who's altogether
lovely, the chiefest among 10,000, the lily of the valley, the rose
of Sharon, the bright and morning star. He who is altogether lovely
and worthy of praise, our blessed savior. who sits at thy right
hand, having purged our sins. We praise you and thank you that
you sent him into this world to do what we could not. Help
us now to worship you, we pray in Christ's name, amen. Let sin consume us, Jesus is
mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory
divine! Hear our salvation, the taste
of God! Lord of His Spirit, wash me with
Thy blood! This is my story, this is my
song. Praising my Savior all the day
long. This is my story, this is my
song. Praising my Savior all the day
long. These hymns of rapture, not words
from my side, they do descending, free from above. They urge on mercy, this urge
of love. These hymns of glory, this is
my song, praising my Saviour God. This is my song, praising God's
faith. ? Pure and happy and blessed ?
? Watching and waiting, only my God ? ? He'll raise the best
from all sinners gone ? ? This is my story, this is my song
? ? Praising my Savior all the day long ? So Esther, would you go? Let us pray. Father, again, we
approach in the name of the magnificent Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Allow us this privilege that you have granted your children,
and what a privilege it is. We, who owe everything to you
and have gained everything at your disposal, would be allowed
to participate in the preaching of the gospel here and in other
places. We pray for our missionaries.
as they stand to preach and proclaim the gospel of grace for every
preacher that does so. Help us to appreciate the fact
you accounted us in this process. We're not worthy, but you've
made it so that we are participants in the great and glorious gospel
of Jesus Christ. Help us now we pray in Christ's
name, amen. so so your attention back to the revelation
of the Lord Jesus Christ. I fully expect, unless you've
been living in a vacuum in the last year or so, or in many years preceding that,
that you have, when you have talked to people who are religious
folks, they've talked about the end days and the last times. use this book in their newspaper
to figure out when and where the Lord is going to come, but
he's not going to tell us that. He wouldn't tell anybody. Nobody
knows the Lord of God when he's going to come. But of late I've
heard the word Armageddon talked about a great deal. We talked
about Armageddon. I expect after what happened
last night that the word will be bandied up again and they'll
use it again many times in the weeks to come. The word Armageddon brings about
almost every imaginable thought to the religious mind. When I
was growing up, I lived in what was called the Cold War Age.
The nuclear war was on everybody's mind, especially the minds of
religious eschatologists, those who studied the last times. They
played on present fears by intimating that Armageddon would be a nuclear
holocaust. It also was declared to be a
war between Christian and non-Christian nations. Ultimately, because
of the great superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States,
it was generally held that Armageddon would be between these two powers
and their respective allies. Armageddon has become a byword
for a battle to end all battles, or a battle that will decide
the fate of mankind. Armageddon is not a battle over
earthly boundaries, nor is it a battle between nations, even
though it is on the lips of many today. Armageddon is described
in our text that I just read as the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and He is described in absolute terms. If you look over
chapter 16 of Revelation, beginning with verse 13, says, and I saw three unclean
spirits, like a frog, come out of the mouth of a dragon, and
out of the mouth of a beast, and out of the mouth of a false
prophet. Now, Bible will live a little. This will try to get
you to believe that these are actual frogs, and so forth, and
actual dragons. But they are symbolic language.
Our Lord said in the very first chapter of this book that he
spoke in signs and symbols. And remember, these words were
used in the time of the seven churches of Asia, to whom this
revelation was written. And they probably knew more about
the mythology and the language and the metaphorical language
than we do today. But he's talking about the world
of Babylon, a great whore who worships what man can do. For
they are spirits of the devils, he says. working miracles which
go forth into the kings of the earth and into the whole world
to gather them to battle the great day of God Almighty. So it's a group of devils gathering
together all those of Babylon to fight against the Lord Jesus
Christ. And they do great wonders, it
says. There's only one group of people in the world today
that are doing great wonders, at least they say they are. And
in fact, it says those wonders would cease after the apostolic
age, but they would be revived by the devils in the latter end.
Behold, I come as a thief, the Lord said. Blessed is he that
watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see
his shame. And he gathered them together
into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. Armageddon. It is in truth represented in
every battle between Satan and the Lord Jesus Christ, between
grace and works, between spirit and the flesh, between every
cane and every able, between the seed of the serpent and the
seed of the woman. Armageddon began in the garden
and will end in the consummate, triumphant return of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now we don't know when he's going
to return, but the language of scripture was so written that
those within a few days after the Lord Jesus Christ ascended
to glory expected his imminent return. He's coming tomorrow. And that's the language of scripture.
It's written that way so you won't know. But you will look. You will look for his coming. On that day, in the twinkling
of the eyes as described, our Lord will return and will wind
up everything. Time and history. The beast, the false prophet,
and all his cohorts will be done in a flash. This will not be
some drawn out thing, some battle that progresses in stages and
requires military strategy. Just as the Lord spoke the worlds
into existence, He will speak and all that would have and do
oppose Him will be spoken into non-existence by the word of
His mouth. He created the world. He created
the universe by speaking it into existence. And he will speak
his enemies into non-existence. John sees here what Jude described
in Jude verses 13 and 14, or rather 14 and 15. Jude said, in Enoch, also the
seventh from Adam prophesied of these things, saying, behold,
the Lord cometh with 10,000 saints. Enoch lived shortly after the
creation, and execute judgment upon all, and to conceive all
that are ungodly among them, their ungodly deeds which they
have ungodly committed, and all their hard speeches which ungodly
sinners have spoken. He's coming. He's coming to do
that. The return of our great Savior
in the Battle of Armageddon are not events separated by a span
of time. When he returns, he returns to
make war. That's what it says right here.
On that white horse, he comes to make war. When he returns,
the battle will ensue. The enemy will immediately and
summarily be destroyed. The shot will not be fired from
either side. The sword of the Lord will do
the work. There are several things here declared in the passage
we just read in chapter 19. about the victorious return of
the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 11 of that it says,
I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse and he that sat
upon him was called faithful and true and in righteousness. He doth judge and make war. This is where he has been for
the ages, in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father.
Why is he there? He is there because of what He
accomplished on earth. Our Lord sits in heaven because
He's the Lamb slain, slain from the foundation of the world,
but slain 2,000 years ago on Calvary. And there, He secured
the salvation of His elect. He paid their sin debt. He put
their sin away, separating it far from them as the east is
from the west, burying them at the deep of the sea, putting
them behind God, whatever that means. That's also metaphorical
language. It means our sins don't exist
before God. In fact, so much so that he said,
where this sacrifice is made, he will remember their sins no
more. That was a promise of a covenant
made, of the new covenant made in Jeremiah 31. and quoted in
Hebrews chapter 10. Where's he been? He's been in
heaven, because he earned the right to be there. For this cause,
for this reason, Christ both died and rose and resurrected
and revived, that he might be the Lord of the living and the
dead. And everyone here and everyone
that walks upon the top side of this planet is one day going
to bow to me and say that. They will declare His Lord to
the glory of the Father. He ascended to the right hand
of the Father, having purged our sin. And God sees heaven
open. This is no isolated incident,
no secret thing viewed by a tiny audience. The language makes
it clear that every eye shall see Him. That's the language
that says in chapter 1 and verse 7, every eye shall see Him. He comes to be glorified in His
saints. That's what it says in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and
verse 3. 7 through 10, he descends with 10,000 angels to be glorified
in his saints. Who are his saints? Those whom
are sanctified in him, those to whom he has been made to be
their sanctification. They are saints, believers on
the Lord Jesus Christ. They are those who are robed
in white linen and fine and clean in this passage, riding along
with the Lord Jesus Christ. He that is faithful and true
comes riding on a white horse. And throughout this book of Revelation,
the white horse is symbolic and it represents royalty, victory,
judgment, exacted, honor, and glory all enveloped in the purity
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He comes to conquer on a white
horse, that's what it says in chapter 6 and verse 2. He reaps
the harvest on the white cloud that's spoken of in chapter 14
and verse 14. He sits in judgment on a white
throne. Revelation 20 verse 11. Christ is all power and purity. That's what this white horse
means. It says his eyes are a flame of fire. This is symbolic land. You can identify the perfect
vision of the Lord Jesus Christ. His eyes are the searchlight
of truth. He sees things through the eyes
of perfect omniscience and understanding and judgment. He's crowned, it
says, with glory and honor. He's crowned because that's what
kings are. They are crowned. He is our mighty
captain. He is the king of kings. He comes
in absolute sovereignty to judge and make war. You reckon anything's
gonna inhibit him? Absolute sovereignty. He's coming
to the world, this blue orb that he himself created to work out
his perfect picture of salvation through Jesus Christ the Lord
on this planet. He's coming to this thing that
he called into existence to destroy it. Who's gonna stop him? Who's gonna stop him? The outcome
is secure because he who fights for us cannot be stopped. He
cannot be discouraged. He cannot be hindered. He's described
as one who no man knows. He has a name that no man knows. We know him by faith and by revelation. That's the only way we know him.
We know him because he's written of in this book and God has given
us faith to believe this book. That's the only way we know Christ.
We've not met him face to face. We've not seen him in some stars
or some cloud. on some egg McMuffin, there's
one woman said she saw the face of Jesus. We've not seen his
face. These pictures that they have, this Caucasian guy with
reddish brown hair and a red beard. Our Lord, and that guy's
way too pretty, it says of our Lord that he was uncumbeled.
And no man should desire him. For it wasn't his looks that
brought men to him, it was what he said. He spake as no man ever
spake. His doctrine was pure. He is known by faith and revelation. These words mean that he cannot
be known unless he reveals himself. How do you know Christ? I studied
the book. You're not going to know him
by studying this book. You're going to know him if he reveals
himself to you. Now, he'll reveal himself through
this book. But there are men who spend their life studying
this book and don't know anything about Jesus Christ. They don't
know a thing about it. They know about history. They
know about the times and such. They don't know anything about
Christ. Our Lord said of those who stood
by and laughed at him and laughed at John the Baptist when they
prayed. Our Lord lifted his eyes to heaven in Matthew chapter
11 and thanked his Father. He thanked him. He said, I'm
thankful for this Father. I thank thee Father, Lord of
heaven and earth. that thou hast hid these things
from the wise and the prudent, and revealed them unto babes.
For even so it seemed good in thy sight, for no man knoweth
the Father but the Son, and no man the Son but the Father, and
he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Old Barnard used
to get in a lot of trouble when he said, Gospel of the salvation
is by revelation, but it is. If God gives you ears to hear
the gospel, you're going to find out something that God has done.
You're not going to find out something you should do. The
gospel is not good news if it's something you have to do when
you're dead in trespasses and sins, and have no ability, and
cannot believe, and will not believe, and do not desire God
and hate God. The gospel's not made good news
to you. But if you're lost and undone, have no hope and help
in this world, no hope and confidence in yourself or anybody, or anything,
or any church, then the gospel might sound good
to you. If you're dying, and you know there's no hope in this
world, and somebody tells you there's hope somewhere, that'd
be good news. But the good news is not that
you can do things to get better. The good news is not that there's
some things left undone. The good news, the gospel, the
gold spiel, the good news, the glad tidings of good things is
this. God has redeemed his people by
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not that he's made redemption
possible, because that's a failure on God's part. Now that He's
made salvation possible, that's a favor. Good news is this. And
according to the Word of God, do you believe that? Have you
heard the Word of Truth? The good news of what? Your personal possessive pronoun,
your salvation. What do you hear if you're a
child of God? What do you hear if you're one of the elect? When
you hear the Gospel, you hear that God saved you 2,000 years
ago. That's what you hear. You don't
hear that something might happen Well, there's something left
for you to do. The good news is that God saved you. This is
good news. I'm telling you, it was good news to me. I was a
religious fellow. I was a preacher. I was a sovereign
grace preacher. Didn't know Christ. One night,
a fellow named W.R. Cruz was preaching over in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina. He preached a message, and God
spoke to my heart. And he didn't tell me to be saved. He told me the Lord had saved
me. Through the preaching of this word, I heard that good
news. Revelation, that's how he's known. No man knoweth the Father but
the Son. He to whomsoever the Son will
give. John said it this way in 1 John chapter 3, beloved. What
manner of love is this? That we should be called the
sons of God. He is described here as the same
blessed one who shed his blood on Calvary's tree. Verse 13,
it takes us, he was clothed with the vesture dipped in blood,
and his name is called the Word of God. How's Jesus Christ coming? He's coming as King of Kings.
He's coming as Lord of Lords. He's coming as the mighty warrior.
He's coming as our Savior. He's coming as our Savior. This
is the last element of our salvation. that will be made known to us. He will slay the enemy not only
as a conquering king, but also as a vengeful substitute. A vengeful
substitute. Isaiah chapter 63. Isaiah had
a vision of someone coming. He's a human being. He's the
last Adam, and Adam means red dirt man. Our Lord Jesus Christ
is the very God of very God and the very man of very man. And
I would come from those, this is the, this that is glorious
in his apparel. Traveling in the greatness of
his strength. Here's what he said, I that speak in righteousness,
mighty to say. Who's he talking about? He's
talking about the same ones described here in Revelation chapter 19.
Wherefore art thou red in thy garments, and thine apparel,
and thy garments like he that treadeth the winepan? I have
treaded the winepress alone, and of the people there was none
with me. For I will tread them in my anger, and trample them
in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments,
and I will stain on my garments. For the day of vengeance is in
my heart, and the year of my redeeming is come." He's described as a lamb throughout
Revelation. A lamb of God upon the throne. From the very beginning all the
way through. When worship is made in Revelation, who do they
worship? They worship the Lamb. John, the Baptist, when he saw
Him walking down the road, he said, Behold the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sin of the world. And it says in Revelation
6 that men will hide from Him, not as the one on the white horse.
Not as one, but as the Lamb. They will hide from the Lamb.
I beg the mountains to fall on for fear of the Lamb. Why? Because
this Lamb is the Sovereign Lord of all. The religious, free will
world who have viewed Him with pity and ascribed inability to
Him will see Him return as one drenched in His own blood and
the blood of His enemies. He is the Word of God. I've been doing this for 47 years
here in this place and a couple years before that. And I've yet
to be able to explain that. In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God. The Word was God. The same was
in the beginning with God. And the Word was made flesh,
and dwelt a tabernacle among us, and we beheld His glory as
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Full
of grace and truth. The Word of God. How will you
know God? There's only one way you'll know
God. You'll know Him if you know Jesus Christ. Because He's the
God we know. God the Father Spirit. No man can see Him in thee. He dwells in a light where unto
no man can approach. The Holy Spirit is Spirit. His
invisible power and sovereign Lord, the Spirit of Jesus Christ. But the God we know is Jesus
Christ, because you see, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit are wrapped up in His person, in Him, according to
Scripture. Dwelleth the fullness of the
Godhead. That's how we know God. That's
how we know God. I remember back in the 60s, I
was kind of a goofy kid. I was in service, come home,
and then I told, I'd been to some meeting or something, and
I'd come home and told my mom and dad, I said, I found God.
Mom says, I didn't know he was missing. She knew I was full
of baloney, but anyway. He's God. The word of the Lord. As the word of God, he will judge
and make war. That's what it says here. His
weapon is our weapon, the same weapon we have. This book. We
can't do anything for people. We can't make people alive. We
can't raise them from the dead. In fact, when a preacher stands
in the pulpits, he preaches to dead people as far as he knows.
Even though they may say they trust Christ, he don't know their
hearts, they don't even know his heart. So he preaches the
gospel. It's this word. It's this word
that has power. It's a wondrous thing. It's in our hands to repeat and
rehearse redundantly the same thing over and over again. He's
king of kings and lord of lords. That means every king's got a
king and every lord has a lord. And His name is the Lord Jesus
Christ. This is His majesty. This is
His sovereignty. And as such, He comes to ease
Himself of His adversaries. That's what it says in Isaiah.
But as a big fight to be had, I want to ease myself of my adversaries. It'll take the infinitely less
effort to wipe out this universe than it takes for me to lift
this angel. I'll ease myself of my adversaries. And he does not come alone. Verse
14 says, And the armies which are in heaven followed him upon
white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. If you
want to trace that, you'll find that speaks of those who have
been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Chapter 9, or chapter
7, I think it is, says, These stand before God, clothed in
white linen and clean. This is the pristine righteousness
of Jesus Christ that has been imputed to their account. They
stand holy and righteous before God because Christ has been made
to be their righteousness, and it's the only righteousness that
will stand before God. He rises a captain of a mighty
throne. It's the church. The church is
with him. He'll win the battle with words
in his mouth, but following him on a symbolic white stage of
victory and purity are all the elect from all ages, the sheep,
his folk, the church, his bride. They wear no armor, they need
none. They will not be fighting. In fact, they are immortal. They go out to meet him. Some
are already with him up yonder. Many of them we know and have
known, and their burial plots are around all over this reservation.
They're headstones. I've been privileged to bury
many of them and to live with them for a long time. They'll
be on white horses. But as he's coming down, he'll
call out his people from the earth. Now, although a lot of
people talk about the rapture, about jet planes falling and
all that stuff, you can go along with that if you want to. But
here's the thing. When Paul went to Rome, the people, the believers of
Rome went out to meet him before he got there, to come back into
Rome with him, to escort him into Rome. The exact same verbs
and nouns are used to describe the rapture. going out to meet
Christ to return with Him. That's what we do. We come with
Him. We do not know precisely the
succession of these events because they are strange in scripture.
They all seem to take place just before the final judgment and
the Psalms are praises recorded in verses 1 through 10 of this
chapter. Don't hold me to it, but the succession events seems
to run thusly, Christ returns, the dead in Christ will rise
to meet Him in the air, the living saints will be caught up to be
with the Lord, Christ will proceed to judge and make war, and all
who have gone out to meet Him will follow Him in victory. I believe that's the way it's
going to work. Don't quote me on it, because
nobody really knows. The enemies that our Savior comes
to destroy, are identified in verse 19. And I saw the beast,
and the kings of the earth, and their armies gathered together,
and they quarreled against him, and sat on the horse and against
his army. The beast and the kings of the earth. The beast, as we
have seen, if we've read Revelation, represents all antichrist. Who is Antichrist? I can remember
many years ago, my brother, who at the time was busy in eschatology, thought that Henry Kissinger
was the Antichrist. Some of you might not even remember
him or know who he was. Some of you older folks remember
who Henry Kissinger was. Who is Antichrist? Anybody against
Christ? Anti? Christ. Any system? Any person, John said, there
are many Antichrists in the world. There are many Antichrists. Antichrist
philosophies and powers tortured and persecuted the church throughout
the ages. The kings of the earth are those
powers that have aligned themselves with Babylon and have made rich
by our fornication. They operate under the delusion
of the beast and the false prophet. The beast and the false prophet
are the driving force behind the religion of Antichrist. That's
what it says in Revelation 16. These all operate under the false
notion that they are doing service for God. We're doing God's work, they
say. Babylon is not a community organization. Babylon's a religion, a religion with political power,
a religion that runs with the promise of reward, or
against them, with the threat of censure. It's a religion. Religion. It's anti-Christ. What is it to be anti-Christ?
It's to be against what, who Christ is, and what He's done.
You see, His name is Jesus. Thou shalt call His name Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sin. You BELIEVE,
somehow, that you have SOME participation in THAT GREAT THING, your Antichrist. HE, HE SHALL SAVE HIS PEOPLE
from THEIR SINS! You can't get any clearer than
that. If you believe you have something to do with it, you're
in trouble. Because that's how Christ is described. Jesus is his name. That means
Savior. Christ means the anointed. The one anointed and appointed
to do the task of salvation. And he's the Lord. That means
whatever he puts his hand to, none can stay him or tell him
to turn it back. And none can stop him in his
process. He shall not be discouraged. until he has set judgment up
in the earth, says the scripture. He shall not be discouraged.
I know this fake, false, nappy-panty religion of this day in which
men stand in the pulpit and paint Christ as this poor, helpless,
feckless somebody up there in heaven wanting you to do so,
but he can't get you to. That's not the Lord of glory. That's not this king riding on
a white horse Vestor's dipped in blood is king of kings and
lord of lords. That's not him. His hands are
not tied. See, he can't do anything unless
you let him. You can't do anything anyway. Unless he lets you. Unless he lets you. He wants to but can't? No way.
That's not this guy. Mark it down. If you believe
that Jesus Christ somehow or that God somehow in any way depends
on YOU to get ANYTHING done, THAT'S ANTICHRIST! No matter how many times you
say His name. It's Antichrist. That's who He's coming to destroy. They operate under the delusion
of the beast. These are all operating under the false notion that they're
doing service for God. Paul the Apostle, Saul of Tarsus,
thought he was serving God. Didn't he? He got letters from
the Sanhedrin, which was the highest religious group in that
group. He was a member of the Sanhedrin. He got letters to
go out and destroy the name of Jesus Christ and put it off the
face of the earth. Put people in jail and have them killed
because they believed on Christ. And if you would ask him, he'd
say, I'm a Pharisee. Touching the law, I was blameless. A Hebrew of Hebrews, I know I
serve in God. But then he ran into Jesus Christ
on the road to Damascus. All that changed. Found out he
wasn't serving God at all. All those who have filled pulpits
and declared the heresy of free will and works of religion are
nothing more than demonic spirits who have slandered the truth
and lied to men about God. They have their place in the
enemy's camp. They will be destroyed. These
are those who Christ will come to destroy. The wise and prudent
debaters of the world, the propagators of the religion of Man, which
is what 666 means. Six is the number of man. And
it's the religion of man that will be destroyed. They will
in their arrogant pride and warped ego presume that their ersatz
confederacy can defeat God. Listen to the language men are
making today. How they talk about God. How they talk about Christ. They hate him. They think they
win. They think they're winning. They think they can, in their
little bit of potential, defeat the great high progenitate. They'll
be sorely surprised when but a word from the master will turn
them into the dry kindling for the fire. Their destruction will
be total and immediate. Verses 17, the Lord saw angels
standing in the sun and he cried with a loud voice, save to all
the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven. Come and gather yourselves
together into the supper of the great God. Well, what kind of
supper is that? It ain't shown yet. What these fowls of the air gonna
be eating? The carcasses that God has destroyed. And he's cooked
them, so it's a cooked meal. It's a cooked meal that you may
eat the flesh of kings. the flesh of captains, the flesh
of the mighty, the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them,
and the flesh of all men, both free and pawned, both small and
great. And I saw the beast, and the
kings of the earth, and the armies gathered together to make war
against him that sat on a horse, and against the archenemy. God
called on the carrion crows, the ravers, the vultures, the
turkey buzzards of the air to come and have a great feast.
What's he done? By the word of his mouth, not speaking, he's destroyed everybody who
opposed him. This is the Lamb of God,
astrided by a wolf. King of kings and Lord of lords. 2 Peter says he's going to melt
the earth with a fervent heat. Melt the earth. But those who
may be preserved will be no problem. God is not slack concerning his
promises. Men's count slackness. But his
longsuffering to us were not willing that any of us should
perish, but that all of us should come to repentance. So the elect
of God is going to come to repentance, but everybody else is going to
melt with the fervent heat. And Peter goes on to say, we look
forward and haste the day of his coming, even as John saw
our Lord Jesus Christ coming in these seven visions given
to the seven churches of Asia. He said, after he heard all that
God was going to do in the destruction, he said, even so come Lord Jesus. Even so come, come Lord Jesus. The angel of the Lord descends
to call out every carrion, crow, and every vulture, and buzzard,
and every winged scavenger to come to a great peaceful prayer
by the wrath of the Lamb. the beast and the false prophet
are taken than them that are deceived by their lies in one
quick fell swoop that was bestewed. Bare faced and bold faced against
Christ will be cast into a lake of fire. Only the dragon remains
and the Lord's dealing with him is recorded in chapter 20. He
ends up there too. He ends up there too. That's Armageddon. It's been going on since Adam ate of the fruit. First Antichrist move, the first
one. King killed eight. It's been going on all along. God destroyed the
earth once for you all. Destroyed everybody but eight
people. because he's God. So he won't
do that again. Next time he does it, when he
comes again. And all the child of God can
do is look. Those who love his purity, look
for the Savior to come and wind this thing up. I wouldn't mind
going to heaven this very moment. You say, do you want to die?
No, I don't want to die. Unless I can die and take everybody
I love with me. I'd go right now. But God's not
done with this earth yet. We're standing here today. In
just a few moments, we're going to go sit down and fellowship
around the table and eat some good food. We'll have a short
afternoon message and then we'll go home. What happens tomorrow? I don't know. Will he come tomorrow? He may. Nobody knows. I'm looking. Ever just stop and
look up at the sky for a moment and wonder what it's going to
look like when that splits open. Try it sometime. Father bless
us to understand and pray in Christ's name. Amen.