Watching God’s Kingdom Come

WOLFL-2024-10

Transcript

Have you ever wondered about what’s the most prayed for request among believers? Both what they pray for and what God would like it to be? Do you wonder what God wants us to pray for most? You think about that much? When I was your age and I read through the Bible repetitively, one thing I did was I marked every prayer, every person that prayed, what they prayed for, how much they prayed, how long of a prayer it was. And I tried to compile the top prayer requests, because you go, if you’re in church very much, you have a lot of prayer meetings, you have small group prayer meetings, you have big group prayer meetings, you have concerts of prayer and all that. And I started trying to figure out what it was, if I’m supposed to pray without ceasing, what I’m supposed to do with all this prayer time.

Back to last hour. Can you guys remember last hour? You weren’t gone too long. Okay? What? What is that request that comes right at the front of the Lord’s Prayer? In fact, it’s the very first request in the Lord’s Prayer. Does anybody know what it is? It’s three words. Yeah. Say it louder. You’re right. Who said that? Someone said, Thy kingdom come. Who was so bold to say that? Yeah, but it’s after that. That’s the second one. What’s the first one? Thy kingdom. That’s the most prayed for request, and it’s required by the Lord. He says after this manner pray. So, I want you to think about we’re supposed to be actually praying every day for God’s kingdom to come.

What does that mean? What does it mean for God’s kingdom to come? If you’re praying for that, what are you asking for? Now, I applied it with, control me. That’s an application, but what’s the interpretation of that verse? What did it mean when Jesus said it? What does it mean for the kingdom of God to come? That’s what the whole fifth chapter is about. Okay, so that’s why I’m telling you this.

We’re supposed to be watching God’s kingdom come. So, we are going from Christ’s church in Heaven in chapter 5 and into, we’re going to end with, seeing the answer in chapter 6, the Tribulation happening on Earth is connected to the prayers of the saints.

Did you know right now bad guys, and I guess you could say bad gals, I mean there must be some bad gals, but bad guys are basically winning right now in the world, right? I mean without impunity the Boko Haram or whatever it’s called in Nigeria is constantly kidnapping hundreds of schoolgirls and doing horrific things to them in Nigeria. All of these things that are going on, you read about in Afghanistan, in Sudan, millions of people are starving right now in Sudan because of the horrible civil war. Look at Ukraine. Almost every day you hear about another volley of missiles going in there and look what’s going on in the Gaza Strip. The whole civilization is just crumbled, and water is everything. It’s just like horrible things are happening. The Tribulation is when God comes in to settle, to make, I don’t know how to put, to make right all the injustices. There’s a lot of talk about justice and all the injustice. When is God going to settle everything and fix everything? It’s the answer to these prayers.

Here we go. We’re the church on Earth. The whole time we’re here, we’re supposed to be praying, Thy kingdom come. Not so much those words but longing for God’s kingdom to come. Now, how can we see His kingdom come today? By leading someone to Christ. You understand, the kingdom of God, Jesus said, is within you when you get saved. Leading someone to Christ is an answer to that prayer.

We can’t change society by political means. Do you remember that story about the little girl, was it? That put her finger in the holes in the dike? Or was it a boy? Was it a girl? There’s a story about the dikes in, that’s holding back the sea in Holland, and there was a leak in it, so they put a finger in, then they put another finger in, and then they put their foot, and then they couldn’t stop it. That’s political activity. You’re trying to plug holes in society, and finally you run out of ways to plug it, and then the whole dyke breaks and it goes. How do you permanently change society? One person at a time. So, God’s kingdom coming for us is not political. Us bringing in His kingdom is leading people to Christ because it transforms them, and they become the best citizens.

Do you realize Christians don’t fight against the government? Christians don’t rebel against the government. Christians don’t despise the rulers. Christians don’t speak evil of those who rule over them. What did Peter say about Nero? Under inspiration, by the way, they’re filming our class. And they told me they’re coming, and they said, don’t even, be bothered by them. And I said, I’m not bothered by them at all. I think it’s fun that I’m going to get to see movies of you guys and see you paying attention. But politically it’s a temporary fix. But in the first century, Peter said, honor Nero. He actually told everybody that. And Paul went a step beyond. He said, be subject to Nero and all of his authority. He didn’t call him names. He didn’t protest him. He didn’t do anything like that. He said, honor the king. Why? Because God set up Nero. God set up Domitian to put John on Patmos. God raises up rulers and puts them down. So, what are we supposed to do? We feel there’s injustice there’s wrong behavior in our world. What do we do? We declare what’s right, and then we lead people to Christ. So, that’s our job. But, chapter 5 tells us, here’s what’s coming.

Now, it says in chapter 5, and this is beautiful, “And I saw at the right hand of Him who sat on the throne,” we’ve already covered that throne and the rainbow and the lightning and everything, “a scroll, written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.”

The best way to understand this is think of a roll of paper towel. That’s what scrolls were like, and they would unroll a little, first, they’d take the end of the paper towel, and they’d seal it like that was the first seal. If you broke that, you could unroll the paper towel until the next seal, which was inside, holding it from opening any further. And when you broke that one you could get another kind of section of the paper towel out and each of those, notice what it says. It was written, sealed with seals, written somewhere it says, on both sides. It was written within and without, and so this, the scroll, had this message on its unrolling.

What is the scroll? Some theologians say it’s the title deed of the universe. That’s an interesting thought. Could be. But what do we see in chapter 6 it is? It’s the battle plan. It’s what I wrote here, Jesus is forever the Lamb of God that’s bringing the kingdom in. Now look. I heard the strong angel proclaiming in verse 2, “Who is worthy to open the scroll?

And no one in Heaven or Earth was found to open the scroll.”

So, verse 4 is a testimony. John said, I wept much, because no one was worthy to open and read the scroll and look at it. But one of the elders said, don’t weep. And then look at the bold. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed. So, Jesus is introduced as that Lion of the tribe of Judah. But then look what John does. Verse 6, And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne, and of those four living creatures flying around, and in the in front of those twenty-four elders sitting on their thrones stood a lamb that had been slain.

There’s a Greek word that we would translate in English massacred. Now if I say massacre, what do you think? Is that kind of one of those nice westerns where they shoot someone, and they talk, and they gasp and then they smile and then they go like this, and they close their eyes. That’s a peaceful ending. That’s not a massacre. A massacre is what on TV they say, graphic images, beware, don’t look at this, you’re going to see people that were crushed in the earthquake or crushed in the car accident or blown up by a bomb. That’s a massacre. Now catch what you’re reading. What does Jesus look like in Heaven? Does He look like all those beautiful pictures and Sunday school materials with that golden brown hair and the big blue eyes and the pretty smile and that perfect complexion? Is that what Jesus looks like? A Renaissance Reformation painting of Jesus, just the one that loves everybody? What does He look like in Heaven? He looks like He’s been massacred. Think about that. How did Thomas come to faith? Jesus said, look here at My side and plunge your hand into that huge gaping spear hole that’s in My side. Look at My hands. Put your finger into the holes that I have in My hands where the spikes were. Look at My feet. Have you ever thought about that? Do you think all that went away? Do you think it ended when Thomas looked at Him and poked his hands in? This verse says He is a lamb that looks massacred.

Yes, sir? [Dr. Barnett takes a question from the room]. How come we get such good questions out of this half of the room? Did you all hear what he said? He said if He’s in a glorified body, I thought all of our imperfections went away with our glorified bodies, right? Isn’t that what we think? Do you think that this could be instructive? That Jesus is showing us something? That perhaps when we think of glorified, we think of our imperfections as what? Bad, right? What does God think of them? Differently than we do. Paul said, when I am weak is when You are strong. And Jesus is showing us, see I always wonder what I should emphasize, okay? Forever, we are going to look at Jesus, and we’re going to see what our sins caused, because Jesus was punished by God as if He committed every sin I’ve ever committed, and as if He committed every sin you’ve ever committed. And He bears in His body, the marks. He showed them His glorified body that could walk through walls. His glorified body that was able to go anywhere. Jesus showed up all over the place. And I don’t think He walked between the places. There was great distances. He was up in Galilee, then He was down meeting over here, and then He goes over there, and then He shows up out in the desert with Paul. And so, He’s all over the place in His glorified body.

But listen, when I was a youth pastor, I answered that very question you asked, by telling the students about, and I’ll tell you. There’s this young lady, a little girl actually, and her mother looked like a marshmallow. You ever roasted a marshmallow on a fire, and it puffs up and turns crinkly and everything? That’s what her mother’s face looked like. She was deeply scarred because she had been in a fire. You ever seen someone that’s been burnt? It does something to your skin. It makes it look like a marshmallow. And she had been in a fire, her hair burned, her face burned, it almost killed her, and this woman had a little girl. And the little girl loved her mom, and would walk with her until she got to middle school, and then she started saying to her mom, Mom, could you drop me off here, and I’ll walk the rest of the way to school? What had started to happen? The kids were saying, who’s that freak that’s walking with you? And the little girl got embarrassed. And by the time she got to junior high, it was- drop me off a block away. She didn’t want mom within sight. So, mom waited until junior high and then said, honey, you notice mom looks funny? And her junior high daughter said, I do. And she said, I’ve noticed you don’t want me to walk to school. She says, I don’t. Drop me off. She said, do you know how I got this way? And the little girl said, no. The mother says when you were six months old, you were in your crib in our house trailer, and the fire, the gas blew up and started the trailer on fire, and she said, I was in this end, and you were in the back end in the nursery, and she said, I ran through the fire, I took you out of the crib, wrapped you in a blanket, held you close, and walked back through the fire, and this is what happened to me, by saving your life. It permanently ruined my face, burnt my hair, and I nearly died. The next day, the mother pulled up, of course, the girl could hardly talk, and the mother cried and everything. The next day, she pulled up a block away and the girl says no, drive me to the front door. And the mother got her out, she says, no, please get out. And she took her down the road and she said, this is my mother. She died nearly in a fire. That’s why she looks this way. She’s scarred because she saved my life. Her mother became for her a trophy of saving her life as a little six-month-old child.

Why do you think John points out that the Lamb looks martyred, massacred in Heaven? Because we’re forever. Part of our redemption is singing forever. Let’s get into it because we’ll never get done. Is singing forever what Jesus, the price He paid for our sins. So, I don’t know if every scar that every one of us have is going to be in our glorified body, except in Heaven, we all recognize each other. Because the new that’s used is a new of the same, not new of different. And so, we are in a new, celestial resurrection body. But when we’re with Jesus in Luke 16, Moses, or Abraham looked like Abraham. That’s what, Lazarus saw him and said, that’s father Abraham. He says, yeah, that is. And when Jesus had Moses and Elijah in the mountain, they look like Moses and Elijah. So, there’s something, though they’re glorified, there’s still something, much of which we call our imperfections, that will still be with us. But let’s talk about the implications of Christ looking massacred.

First of all, when we’re praying in Matthew 6:10, we’re corresponding with Matthew 6:33. Matthew 6:10 says, Thy kingdom come. Matthew 6:33 says, Seek first the kingdom of God in your life. And everything else will be added to you. Revelation 5 connects those and says God is launching at the return of Christ, His promised rule of the Earth. So, the next verse we get to, the massacred Lamb, now we’re in verse 7. He comes and takes the scroll.

And God’s scroll contains His plan for defeating Satan’s occupation of Earth. But not just that. It’s the answer to all of our prayers.

 By the way, what does God do with our prayers? Will our prayers show up in Heaven?Look at this, God’s perfect kingdom comes, but it comes in conjunction with something else. It says, and when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures, twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, they each had a harp. That’s where the sitting on a cloud playing a harp comes from. We aren’t, we don’t do that. And look at the next line and golden bowls full of incense, that’s interesting. But look at the next line, which are the prayers of the saints. When you and I pray, where do they go? What happens to them? Did you ever think about that? God collects them, all of them, and God is waiting. Did you know He answers every prayer? Every prayer you’ve ever prayed? He answers it either yes, no, or wait, but He answers them all and He collects them all. And there they are. They’re in those golden bowls on the slide in front of you. And they’re mixed with incense, and they are answered, as God in His perfect time, we’ll see a little bit later, dumps out these prayers and they show up on the Earth causing His justice and His wrath to be poured out on these people. And they sang a new song.

Now see, in this context of God righting all wrongs and bringing justice, the redeemed start singing, and they say, You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals, You massacred Lamb. You were slain and we see forever the marks of Your crucifixion. You have redeemed us. Oh, that’s an interesting word. You know the word redemption? There are multiple words for redemption in the New Testament. All of them tie to the marketplace and slavery.

I have my pen today. I used to, when I was a, remember I was a youth pastor for so many years, I still can’t stand still. I always explain Biblical doctrine with my Bible and my pen. I say, this is, you’re the pen, my Bible is you, and you’re dead in your trespasses and sin. There you are, laying motionless dead. Jesus comes, and the first thing He does is He redeems us. Redemption is this, reaching down and grabbing us in the slave market of sin.

We belong to the devil. We belong to Satan. You know what it says in John 8:44? You’re of your father, the devil. Boy, the Jews did not like being told they’re the son of the devil. They said, we’re sons of Abraham. Jesus said, I can make sons of Abraham out of rocks if I want. You’re a child of the devil until I redeem you. So, there we are, dead. This is redemption.

This is justification. When I’m redeemed, I’m down here in the slave market, justification is my record is erased, and I’m clothed with Christ’s righteousness. Now look, here’s the big doctrine we all need to be concerned about.

Redemption, justification, now watch this one. What am I doing? I’m pulling my pen closer to me. In this illustration, this is you in sin, redeemed, justified by God, Sanctification is God pulling you closer and closer. The more useful to God we are, is by how close we are to Him. The more we reflect Him, the more we obey Him. They are singing right here about this.

Coming to, and the Greek word for redemption is, exagorazó. Agorazó is the forum, the marketplace. Every marketplace had a slave market. Slaves in the ancient world were like blenders, or rolling pins, or rakes, or shovels. A slave was attached to a job. They were not a person, they were not, they were just a commodity. So, you would go to the slave market, and you’d look down, and they all wore, they would stand up on a platform, they’d wear a little tag, and it says what they were. I’m a cook. I can clean; I know how to take care of horses. I’m a therapist, I’m a whatever, I’m a servant, like for meals, or I cook the meal, or I’m a good steward, I pay bills. And people would go through the market and in their culture, they just went down the line and bought what they needed. That buying out of the market is the word ex out of agorazó, the slave market.

So, in Heaven. We’re singing, you bought us out of the slave market of sin, how? Not with gold and silver, with Your blood. Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And You’ve made us kings and priests to our God. And we’re going to reign on the Earth.

That is one of fourteen of these songs that are in Revelation. And if you’re going to be, I heard so many of you are going to be in worship. Some of you say you’re going to, write music and some of you sing and some of you play and some of you’re going to lead and all that. A great study are these four different songs of Heaven. Who’s offering them? You see the four living creatures, the twenty-four elders, it’s twenty-four and four living who receives it, God, the Father, God, the Son, the Lamb, whoever, but that’s what Revelation’s about- worship.

Okay, let’s go back to the big picture. Revelation 4 and 5 is all about Jesus bringing us safely to Heaven, like He promised. And He shows us we’re there, we’re redeemed, we’re standing around the throne, after He finishes the plan, He had for our life. Do you understand, we’re here as long as we are, according to His plan, fulfilling His purpose. And as soon as we’re done, He brings us home. That’s why we have an appointment. We have an appointment with the Lord. And as soon as we finish the course, as soon as we finish His purpose for our generation that we fulfill, He takes us home. And it’s a glorious thing.

Oh, you guys have gotten comfortable. Now we’re going to do the standing thing. Just a second. We’re going to practice for Heaven. Remember I told you’re going to stand around the throne? We’re going to do a few of those practicing. I want you to, you can start standing because I know you hardly have any room and it’s hard to stand up between your tables. And you get to read the words in red after I read the words in white. And what I’m going to read is the verses that talk about redemption. And then what you’re going to read is one application of that. And what I would encourage you to do, some of you are very shy. And you say things very lightly, but I want you to think what it would be like to stand, what I described, with hundreds of millions of angels around you, and you are standing around the throne, probably somewhere between the twenty-four elders and the first band of angels, and you’re standing there looking up at the throne, and seeing in front of the throne, a Lamb that looks massacred, and you’re telling Him thank you for what He did for you.

So, I’ll read the first verse and then you get to read the big words in red. Revelation 5:9, “They sang a new song saying, You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals for You were slain. You redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” Together, [The class joins Dr. Barnett in reading] “I will worship the LORD.” Oh, that sounded so, that was good.

Okay, here’s my next one. Romans 3, being justified, remember, justified, lifted up, clothed with Christ’s righteousness, freely by His grace, through the redemption. He bought me out of the slave market. That’s in Christ Jesus. Here we go. The class joins Dr. Barnett in reading] “Jesus destroys the record.” Boy, I hope you remember that this week. Do you know what Satan’s favorite tactic is? Saying, did you do that again? You sinned that same sin. I thought you told me you were going to quit last week. You still are angry at that person? You’re bitter? Satan, that’s his job. He is called the accuser of the saints. His full-time job is accusing you, saying that was one too many times. You’re in trouble now. Jesus will not forgive you for that one. That’s Satan’s job. You know what we do? We say, Jesus destroyed the record of my sins. He paid the price. He’s the Lamb that’s massacred. The record is gone.

Okay, I get to read 1 Corinthians. “But of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” And you say, [ The class joins Dr. Barnett in reading] “Jesus is all I need.” Ho! Now you know the whole course, that’s what Revelation is about.

“For you were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” [The class joins Dr. Barnett in reading].

In Him we have redemption, remember what that is? Bought out of that slave market, through His blood, the forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of His grace. [The class joins Dr. Barnett in reading]. Do you guys really believe that? There’s a great hymn written in the Civil War period, one hundred sixty years ago that says this:

When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see Him there… Who do we see? The massacred Lamb …who made an end of all my sins. That’s how He forgave him.

Okay, we only have two more. Here we go, Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” [The class joins Dr. Barnett in reading]. So, that means what family you’re in and what you look like and all of your unchangeable features and everything else, God picked for something that you get to do for Him that nobody else on Earth can do. Very exciting.

Here’s the last one. “Being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work and you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” [ The class joins Dr. Barnett in reading].

And you may be seated. And I hope you think of that all your life, that forever in Heaven, you’re going to look back on this time when you saw what you’re going to be doing. And you know what you’re going to think about? I’m doing it now. I’m looking at that massacred slain Lamb. Okay, here we go.

Look at verse 11. This is when God finally answers all the generations of prayers. We’re just one generation. How long is a generation? I don’t know. In the Bible times, some generations were a hundred years long. Some were forty years long. Longer than that, sixty. Isaac was older. And, it doesn’t actually say a number of a generation, but where you have generations in America, sometimes you see grandmothers that are forty and they have children that are twenty that already have a child. You have three generations in forty years. So, it’s very interesting to think how close together they could be. All the generations since the beginning have talked about injustices and look what happens. Then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, hundreds of millions. And the living creatures, the ones flying around. And the elders, the twenty-four encircling the throne. And the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands. How big an area is that? When they fall down on their faces, and the angels fall down too.

Do you know how much room you’d need? Usually when I’m up in New York, they have these four by eight panels. This is a four by eight panel. That’s four feet, and it goes back eight feet. These are four by eights here. You don’t want to bump the people around you, so you need a little room. And if you’re worshiping and then falling on your face, falling? It doesn’t say, it’s a very, I need a little area. A four by eight is 32 square feet. Think about what hundreds of millions of four by eight sheets of plywood if you laid them all out. Any of you who have seen a map, Michigan looks like a hand. Just the angels that are ministering and the angels that are standing in the state of Michigan would fill the entire center of the lower peninsula. We’re talking about from Grand Rapids all the way over to Sarnia, down to Lansing and up to, beyond Clare up toward the middle of state if you were a Michigander. The whole center. It’d be very similar to here from coast to coast from Tampa over to Cape Canaveral and covering, all of Disney World. It’s a huge area. And that whole group at the same time, the hundreds of millions of them, are saying the same thing with a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor”.

This is the longest one, by the way. It has seven parts to the praise, power, and riches, and wisdom, strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. “And every creature which is in Heaven, and on the Earth, and under the Earth, and such as in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying, blessing, and honor, and glory.” Every creature is captivated by what Christ has accomplished. And the four living creatures say, Amen. And the twenty-four elders fell down and worshipped Him who lives forever and ever.

And then, look at the very next event. How did we get chapter divisions in our Bibles? Do you guys ever think about that? Did you know they didn’t come with the Bible? The chapter divisions, neither did the verses. It was like paper towel and every word was written right next to each other. Two events took place. In the 12th century, Bishop Langton, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury in England, who wrote out the words of the Magna Carta, you ever heard of that, the great charter, the basis of Western civilization, that’s part of English history. The same guy was the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of England, and he took it upon himself, while he was riding his horse, he was a visiting pastor all over the British Isles, and while he was visiting his parishioners, he took the manuscripts of the Bible and personally drew a line in them and divided the Bible into 1,189 chapters. Guess what? You ever read a chapter where it keeps going? In the next one, you wonder, that should be up there. Many chapters are like that in the Bible where it’s like they’re cut in half. Do you know what happened? He was on his horse, and the horse stumbled, and he went like that, and he went, I can’t undo it. And there are a lot of those, but they’re not inspired. Every time I hear people that say, did you notice prophetically all the 3:16’s in the Bible? John 3:16, but Malachi 3:16, and they talk about as if God did that. He did, because He ordains all things, but the chapter divisions were done by Langton.

And do you know how the verses came in? A printer, his name was Robert Estienne. He was from Switzerland and the whole Geneva thing with Calvin. And he was a printer in France, and he was working, Robert Estienne was working on printing the Bible. And he says, in order to make all these copies I’ve got to number little sections. And he did the same thing. And he just drew a line, and a lot of verses are cut from the one, they’re not really separate thoughts, but that’s how we got it all.

But look, without the artificial chapter cut, what exactly flows from every creature in Heaven and Earth worshiping the Lamb of God. What’s the very next thing right here? Revelation portrays one long, unbroken event. Now I saw, when the Lamb opened one of the seals. Now we’ve got this paper towel roll in Jesus’ hands. And now we’re seeing what it is. It’s actually launching all of the horrors of the Tribulation. And it’s a part of the worship service.

Do you know what a lot of people do? They feel embarrassed that God’s going to kill everybody in the Tribulation. A lot of people say, is that really nice? He starves them all, burns them up with the sun, sends these horrible diseases that kills them. Is that really nice? It’s a reflection of His attribute of wrath. One of the eternal qualities of God is He is wrathful and loving, merciful and jealous. You understand what I mean? He’s all these things at once. What happens? See, it’s continuing. It’s like a movie. I saw, and when He opened one of the seals, I heard one of the living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, come and see. And so, John’s getting into it. He says, I looked and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on it had a bow and a crown was given to Him. And He went out conquering and to conquer. And now, verse 3, when He opened the second seal, the second creature said, Come and see. So, do you understand the book of Revelation is letting us get a little glimpse of what God sees?

Now we’ve been told in the book of Isaiah that God sees the end from the beginning at the same time. Now you guys, some of you think for a minute. God at the same time can see the ending of everything on Earth and the universe burning and everything and He sees Him making it all and everything that happened in between is like flat. It’s like a constant movie playing there, and God is watching all of it at once.

Now, let’s apply that. Guess what? John is not seeing what is going to happen in Revelation. He actually is seeing it happen. You say, it hasn’t happened yet. From your perspective, it hasn’t happened yet. But if you get up here, in Heaven, and look over the edge of Heaven, you will see God creating the universe in six days and resting the seventh, and you’ll see Adam and Eve, and then you’ll see the serpent coming in and messing them up, and then you’ll see, oh, there’s the flood, oh, look, God sees all of it happening at the same time.

Do you understand that? That’s why we’re not God. I can’t even comprehend that. John is allowed to look into scenes as they’re happening that from his perspective have already happened or have not yet happened. That’s what the perspective of Revelation. That’s why it’s so hard. Did you know Revelation keeps flipping between those two things? Sometimes you’re up there with God looking at stuff that is going to happen, but it’s happening right now. And other times you’re down on Earth and seeing the hailstones crushing people.

But then the third seal, look at verse 5, when He opened the third seal, a living creature said, come and see. And I looked, and behold, a black horse. And He who sat on it had a pair of scales in His hand. And I heard a voice saying, A quart of wheat for a denarius. You know what that means? A denarius was a whole day’s work. Do you know how much a quart of wheat is? By the time you thresh it? It’s not very much. And so, what it means is you spend a whole day, and you barely get enough grain to survive. It’s amazing, this speaking of the starvation. And don’t harm the oil and the wine, wait a minute, what’s that? Side by side in the Tribulation, the rich people are still going to be rich and still have all their oil and wine, and the poor people are going to be barely making it, starving.

Then look at verse 7, when He opened the fourth seal, I heard a creature saying, come and see. A picture’s worth a thousand words, right? You’ve heard that? There they are. Look at Revelation 6, 7 and 8. And what we see in chapter 6 is the first, the four horsemen, the white one conquering, the red one, which is wars and murders, the black one, which is famine, and that green one. Green? It’s the Greek word chloros. You ever heard of chlorine? Your new pool. Is it over there? The new pool has this horrible, unless it’s a salt water, I don’t know anything about your pool, but if it’s a normal pool, it has chlorine killing all the nasty bugs that get in it. What is chlorine? It’s a deadly gas that you can make powder form and liquid form, like Clorox. It’s a color, actually. Chloros is the color, and it’s the color of gangrene. You know what gangrene is? When human flesh dies, it gets necrotic. As it breaks down, it turns a greenish, horrible, sickly, makes you sick color and smell. That’s what color this horse is. And God unleashes that. And look what this horse does. He brings, we’ll see, I’ll read it to you in a minute, a fourth of all people die. Unbelievable. And then the martyrs, and then the cosmic changes, then we go into chapter 7 and 8. I don’t want to get into that now.

Back up. Why does God do this? Lost humanity believes in evolution and denies Biblical creationism, so God shows them His power. Earth dwellers worship Mother Earth, so God allows the Earth to convulse with natural disasters. All these things are things that are present on Earth. We’ve always had famines. We’ve always had plagues. We’ve always had wars, and God just lets them go and doesn’t stop them. It’s like the control rods in a nuclear reactor, the graphite goes in and absorbs all those neutrons, and it slows it down. When the church comes out, it’s like pulling the control rods out. When the Holy Spirit, indwelling us, we’re all little temples of God.

Did you know you bring something to everywhere you go, the presence of God? When that gets pulled out, the world falls apart.

What do we see? This coming, global, super death event. Verse 8, the pale horse, his name who sat on him was Death. So, it’s a horse with death riding through the, now you say, is it real? John saw it. Is it representative? Yes. But from God’s perspective, God’s angels actually physically ride throughout the Earth, but you just don’t see them. Because they’re invisible spirits, unless He allows them to be seen and visible.

We see that in Zechariah. Remember, every part of the Bible is connected to the book of Revelation, eight hundred times. And we see these same horses, variations of them, riding around in Zechariah, doing things, that the people don’t even know what they’re doing. But this one, Hades follows him. Hades? That’s a Greek god of the grave. What? See, it’s so interesting, all these words, and connecting them with what the Bible teaches, which we’ll do especially next week. But power was given to them over a fourth of the Earth to kill, with sword, with hunger, with death, and I love what’s in yellow, by the beast of the Earth. What on Earth is that? Is that rhinos? Lions? What animals could kill a fourth of all human beings? We all know, right? What happened in 2020? A beast was unleashed. A virus. COVID.

Think through history. Do you remember Antonie van Leeuwenhoek? You guys learned about him in school. He was a lensmaker. He made glasses for people, and he took two of his lenses he was polishing in Holland, and he put him like this. And he went [gasp], when he moved the focal length between them all of a sudden, the words and that Bible got this big, and he went [ah!] He started carrying his two little lenses around looking at everything. He had invented the first microscope, only it was handheld, and he would just go like this. He went outside for his break. His wife lost him. He started looking at nature, the ants. Then he went to the water of the pond. The little, you know how England, or Holland has all those canals and everything. There’s just water everywhere. And he went [gasp], and he wrote in his journal, behold what beasties, that’s what he called infusoria, the little, tiny creatures that live in pond water, they’re like little monsters. There are a half a billion of them in every drop of water. They’re that small. He saw them. Those are probably the beasts that get everybody. Right now, in our labs, in America and all over the world, they’re developing pathogens that make atomic bombs look pale. They can be spread invisibly, COVID, that’s a good demonstration of how you can spread things. COVID killed 1.1 million people. This is going to kill at least 2.2 billion people. So, everything that happened in COVID, think COVID, think twenty-two hundred times worse. Twenty-two hundred times worse. Okay.

The next thing, verse 8, final justice, verse 9. When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and the testimony they held. This is when God starts answering the prayers. When the martyrs start piling up, these are people dying on Earth because they are hearing the Gospel. We’ll cover that next week.

But look what it says. So, comforting. They cry with a loud voice saying how long Lord, until you judge? See they’re under the throne of God. When are you going to avenge our blood? They’re killing us on Earth. A white robe was given to each of them, verse 11, and it was said to them, rest a little longer. Now listen to this. This is shocking. Until both the number of your fellow servants and their brethren, who are going to be killed, as you have been, are completed. Look what I wrote. Only God knows our length of days. God knows when we’re going to die, how we’re going to die, and whether we’re going to die as a martyr, which is the word for witness for Him. And it’s so clearly here. He tells the martyrs; it’s not time for me to stop this yet. More of you are going to die. Why is that? We’re going to see next week that Satan has it, that he’s killing people as quickly as they get saved because he doesn’t want the Gospel to spread. So, the 144,000 evangelists are working. They’re like 144,000 little Apostle Paul’s. The two witnesses are working, and God finally deploys the greatest Gospel tool of His arsenal, an angel. That’s in chapter 14, verse 6. An angel starts flying to every square inch of Earth, telling people fear God and keep His commandments or you will go to hell forever. God pulls out all the stops. And right behind the angel and the two witnesses and 144,000, Satan, through the Antichrist and his system, are killing them as fast as they get saved. And they’re coming up and praying around the throne as martyrs.

Then, God answers. You can run but not hide from God. This is the biggest quake of Earth’s history because it strikes the whole world at once. We have earthquakes. They had one about, what, three weeks ago in New Jersey? Shook up a little bit, forty million people, there was a little shake, tiny shake. All the memes came on to, the social media. This one is big. He opened the sixth seal and behold there was a mega seismos, that’s the word, great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, the moon became like blood, probably the smoke and dust and everything associated with it. Or God just turns it red and black.

But it doesn’t stop there. The stars of Heaven fell. I was just reading, Elon Musk, Elon Musk. He’s launched six thousand Starlink satellites. Do you know how many he’s launching? Forty-two thousand. They’re only three hundred miles up from the surface. At night, do any of you guys look and see these things? They’re everywhere. Now think about it. If you were John, standing watching the Tribulation unfold and you saw a little tiny dot that’s going through the sky, what would you call it? They called everything up there the same thing. They called them stars. They were glowing things in the sky. Just now, between now and 2030, he’s putting forty-two thousand more things in the sky that look like stars. What’s fascinating is, that’s just part of all the junk that’s out there. We’ve been putting stuff up there since 1957. There are actually hundreds of thousands of objects floating around the Earth. You should see, it looks like a cloud. They chart all of them. Some of them, and meteors, and asteroids, who knows what all’s coming.

Look at this, verse 13. What John looked at, and the only word he could think of is a star. Every time he sees something come from Heaven; he calls it a star. He calls angels stars. He calls, meteorites stars. Who knows what these are? God does. They drop to the Earth like a fig tree drops its late figs when it’s shaken by mighty wind.

The sky receded like a scroll is rolled up, and God does not exaggerate. Every mountain and island moved from its place and look what happens.

The Lamb becomes the Lion. The little meek Lamb, Jesus is, in all the stories, He’s meek and mild and wouldn’t hurt anybody. The kings of the Earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave, every free man, hid themselves. They start crawling in the culverts and the sewer pipes, and the drains, storm drains, in caves and rocks and mountains and said, fall on us, hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of His wrath has come and who’s able to stand?

Next week, Lord willing, if we come back on Tuesday, we’re going to start right there and the signs of Christ’s return and all that. But I just want to give you a little thing for the weekend. Everybody from now on, think of this fact that two people die every second, seven thousand die every hour. This is without the plagues. A hundred sixty-three thousand people are going to die today. Sixty million people will die this year. Life is brief for everybody. Look, death is inevitable, and Christ is the only answer. And that’s the only reason we’ve been left here. To glorify God.

How do we glorify Him? Listen to one thing Jesus said, and I have two minutes to tell you this. Jesus picked, in John 7, the most climactic moment in Jerusalem’s history. Once a year, they celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles. Once a year, hundreds of thousands of people filled the forty acres of the plaza of the temple. The high priest crawled up on a platform. He had a runner bring him a jug of water. And everyone got, deathly silent, while the high priest poured water from a high platform in the center of the temple courtyard, with hundreds of thousands of people holding their breath. Because everybody wanted their children to hear the sound reenacting the water from the rock. That’s what they were doing. You know how Moses struck the rock, spoke to the rock, and the water came out.

So, everyone was like this, listening, and the priest is going like this, and when it was really quiet, he went, and they were all waiting for the water to fall forty feet and go [smack!] on the pavement. At that exact moment, on the last day, the great day of the feast where everybody’s there and they’re all holding their breath, and mothers are saying [shh!] to their kids, Jesus stands. And before the water hits the ground, He, the word is krazó. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink! You’re not supposed to talk in this moment. And He says, if you believe in Me, out of you are going to flow rivers of water. That was the most heard sermon of Christ’s life. More people heard Him talking in that moment than in others. Do you know what He said? What we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to have living water flowing out of our life. So, that lost people look at us and say, where did you come from? How come you’re peaceful and happy and joyful? And you understand what I mean? That’s why He left us here to be rivers of living water flowing for Him.

See you Tuesday, Lord willing.