Good morning, brothers and sisters. It is a delight to be with you in a time of worship. It makes me feel at home when I can go places and they worship the same Lord with the same heart.
I bring you greetings from New York. As most of you probably know, I have been in transit for a while. My wife and I moved into Manhattan last year. People come up to us once in a while and check our reflexes to see if we are okay—if we have lost our minds or, for some reason, gone the wrong way. But we feel we are there on purpose.
One of the great consolations is that we meet with brothers and sisters in Queens—this place that has been announced where all the queens dwell. We have wonderful worship with them and fellowship. Our lives are richer for obeying God. That is all I can say. God’s grace is so wonderful.
So we are there, excited, wondering what God is going to do, along with you, I am sure. Thank you for your prayers. We have been traveling around some, but I feel like I hardly even need to mention it, since we have our major globetrotter here, who has really been traveling around. So I am just a local traveler right now.
One of the things I am so thankful to the Lord for is when He gives us a wake-up call—when a circumstance takes place that makes us realize we are in a different place than we have been before, and we need to be awakened to the will of God and the moving of God.
This happened to me. I was living on Long Island a few years ago when 9/11 came, and New York City has not yet recovered and probably will never be the same. But I think, for myself as well, it was a wake-up call.
I remember it must have been a month or two after 9/11 that I was in Queens visiting, and I heard our precious brother Christian Chen, who really is quite a scholar in the study of the Book of Revelation. He knows an awful lot. He has studied everybody.
He gave a marvelous and prophetic message which was a wake-up call for me. He shared, basically—I do not have time to give you details—that 9/11 was part and parcel of what he believed may have been the fourth seal being broken from heaven by the Lamb of God. Boy, that woke me up, because I was used to the old Left Behind theory that we all go up before any seals get broken.
He said it was a consideration. Now, he did not make anything concrete. With the usual Chinese wisdom, he leaves things a little bit up in the air. But he suggested that we need to be awake to the time we are living in.
One result of that was that, as I began to search my heart, I had to admit that, like most Christians, the Book of Revelation had been a closed book to me in certain ways. A couple of years ago, of course, I discovered the Lamb in the book. All of us have. That is one of the main bases of our worship, really.
It might interest you to know that the Lamb is mentioned twenty-eight times in the Book of Revelation, and only three more times in all the New Testament. Every time we sing of the Lamb, we are singing of His great redemption. But there were many aspects of the book that were lost to me.
I will confess to you that this basically happened while I was going to school. In seminary, I had a teacher who interpreted the Book of Revelation, and we went through it in a very liberal way—basically, symbolically. Everything was symbolic. It was Jesus against the Antichrist. It was Jerusalem against Babylon, and so on and so forth. He spelled out that there is a great cosmic conflict in all our lives, and all of that is very true.
But as far as the details were concerned, somehow this professor—well, I do not want to say liberal, because John Kerry is in the picture now, but he was somewhere over there—inevitably devalued the words of this book. And John said, “Don’t you dare devalue the words of this book.” The warning from the Lord is very specific.
After that experience, and later on after seminary, when I came to the place where I believed the Bible, this instruction on the Book of Revelation kind of went down the drain. I did not quite understand it.
I started reading the various schools of interpretation. Now, you know there are basically four schools. One is this symbolic sort of school that I had already tasted a little bit. But I felt, surely there must be something more to this book. These beasts and everything cannot just be symbolic. There must be some reality behind it that is awful and dreadful, and so on and so forth.
But as I read the different interpretations by scholars, the funny thing is that you gain some head knowledge, but you still feel locked out of the reality of the book.
Besides the symbolic approach, there are three other basic schools of interpretation. One is the preterist view. That is a fancy word, and all it means is that they believe the Book of Revelation was basically fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and eventually the destruction of the Roman Empire. So, as an example, the Antichrist was Nero, and so on and so forth.
I will not go into that, but it has some very interesting interpretations. As a whole, however, it means that this is a book of history; it has already happened. There is no relevance to us today.
Then there is the historicist interpretation, which again is very interesting. They believe that this book has already been fulfilled, in a sense, through the events of the church in the world and through Catholicism in church history. So, of course, the Antichrist is the pope; the beast and the harlot are the Catholic Church. Martin Luther believed this.
This is actually the most popular view, by the way. John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther, and so on basically held this historical view. But again, it pushes everything into the past, and it is only about Western Europe, frankly. Although some of their interpretations are really wonderful, in the end you say, “Well, okay, but what does that have to do with us here in the United States, or in China, or Africa?”
Then, of course, there is the futurist school—the Left Behind series, all of that sort of thing. It is all the futurist school. That interpretation basically says that everything from Revelation 4 to the end of the book is going to happen in the future from now.
The great thing about this view is that you can take everything literally. The beast is really the beast. You do not have to interpret it down necessarily. You can believe the Bible as it is written. That is a very profitable stance to take. You should use your sense and say that God literally means these things.
Of course, that is true as well, but that puts everything in the future once again. All right, what are the first three chapters for us? There are some who go so far as to say that the Book of Revelation was written for the people who are left behind. It is basically for those who do not go up in the rapture. Then they say, “Hey, how come we did not go up? Oh, there is this book. What is it called? Revelation.” So they can know about the beast, the Antichrist, and the things that are to come.
I find that to be an amazing thing: that the Lord could produce this last book in the Bible just for the sake of those who get left behind.
No, no, no. This book is a book of consummation. It is a book of God’s glory revealed in Christ, His kingdom coming, the great cosmic conflict coming to an end, and the throne of God being established forever and ever.
But it is in the future, of course—most of these things, I believe. If you ask me what my view is, I would have to say that I am a present-tense futurist.
What does that mean? Well, this is something the Lord is showing me, and I want to share it with you this morning. Basically, it means this: it is true that the consummation of these great things is going to happen in the future, but this whole book has present relevance for us now.
This is something we should be digging into. I am so thankful that, since 9/11, I have started to dig. Oh, what a blessing. This book is such a blessing.
Seven times in this book it says, “Blessed is the person” of such and such. Two times specifically: blessed is the person who reads this book. But it has always been sort of locked out. So the Lord has been trying to help me get into the living reality of this book.
I want to share a couple of simple things, because we have young people here this morning, and I know you all want to be students of the Word. The fact of the matter is that, probably even in this group statistically, Revelation is the most unread book in the New Testament.
Some folks read it one time, got scared, and never went back. Some people read it one time, got confused, and never went back. The enemy wants to keep us out of this book, especially in the last days, because its message is so present-tense relevant for us today.
So let us read. I want us to read all of Revelation 10, and then a few verses in Revelation 11. We will have a prayer, and I want to share some simple things for us today.
Revelation 10
I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, clothed with a cloud;
and the rainbow was upon his head,
and his face was like the sun,
and his feet like pillars of fire.And he had in his hand a little book which was open.
He placed his right foot on the sea,
his left foot on the land;
and he cried out with a loud voice, as when a lion roars.And when he had cried out, the seven peals of thunder uttered their voices.
When the seven peals of thunder had spoken, I was about to write;
but I heard a voice from heaven saying,
“Seal up the things which the seven peals of thunder have spoken, and do not write them.”
Then the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his right hand to heaven,
and swore by Him who lives forever and ever,
who created heaven and the things in it,
and the earth and the things in it,
and the sea and the things in it,
that there will be delay no longer.But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound,
then the mystery of God is finished,
as He preached to His servants the prophets.
Then the voice which I heard from heaven I heard again speaking with me and saying,
“Go, take the book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the land.”So I went to the angel, telling him to give me the little book.
And he said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.”I took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it.
In my mouth it was sweet as honey;
and when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.And they said to me, “You must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.”
Now, we do not have time to read all of Revelation 11, but chapters 10 and 11 surely go together as a unit. We want to go to the end of Revelation 11, verse 15, because there is a definite connection here.
Revelation 11:15-19
And the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ;
and He will reign forever and ever.”And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying,
“We give thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty,
Who are and Who were,
because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign.And the nations were enraged,
and Your wrath came,
and the time came for the dead to be judged,
and the time to reward Your bondservants, the prophets and the saints,
and those who fear Your name, the small and the great,
and to destroy those who destroy the earth.”And the temple of God which is in heaven was opened;
and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple.
And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder,
and an earthquake and a great hailstorm.
Now, Father, we come to You. We thank You that You gave this revelation to John and to Your bondservants, to tell us the things which must surely come to pass.
Lord, we pray that You will give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus, even as we are together in this time. Lord, be with us. Teach us by Your Spirit, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now, I want to touch on this vision, but before I do, I want us to look again at this simple passage at the end of Revelation 10, because this is actually the burden I want to share this morning.
Revelation 10:9-11
I went to the angel, telling him to give me the little book;
and he said to me, “Take it and eat it.
It will make your stomach bitter,
but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.”And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it.
In my mouth it was sweet as honey;
and when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.And they said to me, “You must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.”
Notice that very last verse: “You must prophesy again.” To give you the context, John the apostle has seen some things already up until Revelation 10. He has seen things in the light of two great revelations.
First, Jesus is the High Priest and Head of His church, examining the church. John saw this glorious revelation of Jesus over His church, and thus he understood the condition of the church. For us, we cannot properly discern and understand the true condition of the church unless we see Him who is the High Priest over the church and hear His evaluation of it.
Then we come to what is perhaps the central burden of the Book of Revelation in terms of the revelation of Jesus. We find it in Revelation 5, when He comes out from the throne as the Lamb in the midst of the throne.
He is mentioned twenty-eight times as the Lamb, and fourteen times He is connected with the throne—as the Lamb in the midst of the throne, or as the throne and the Lamb. You see the Lamb there in heaven with those same loving, sacrificial wounds, yet with authority and power—such amazing authority and power that, to the unbeliever, it is seen as wrath.
Revelation 6 speaks about the wrath of the Lamb. But what is the wrath of the Lamb? For us, wrath is when we lose our temper in some amazing way. God does not lose His temper.
The wrath of the Lamb is when His love has been extended and rejected. Wrath is the refusal of His love. It is the vacuum of having refused His love. So we see those dwelling on the earth in Revelation 6 asking the rocks to fall on them, because they have now seen the power of the wrath of the Lamb. They have rejected Him, and the only result must be judgment.
So there is this second great revelation of the Lamb of God. In that revelation, the Lamb Himself begins breaking the seven seals that begin the winding down of history as we know it and the start of the new history in the new heavens and the new earth.
The seals come off one by one, and things begin to happen. But it is all in the light of the Lamb, because He is the One pulling off the seals. Then, when it comes to the seventh seal, we suddenly see trumpets begin to blow. It is all because of the Lamb and because of what He has done that these trumpets begin to blow, and everything becomes more severe.
Yet, despite the severity of those judgments—even in the trumpets, like the fifth and sixth trumpet, which bring locusts out of the ground and horses out of the Euphrates, killing a third of mankind—there is tremendous torment going on. Still, it is all under the control of the Lamb, who keeps looking on earth for those who would repent.
The Lamb is merciful, always wanting man to repent, not wanting any to perish. No matter how serious a problem, judgment, or tribulation might come to a man, because He is the Lamb, it is always that we might be saved, that we might confess.
As the trumpets begin to blow, we find these intransigent men who will not repent even though their lives are being shaken apart. Such is the stubbornness of man’s sin.
But then we come to Revelation 10. In order to go forward and look at the seven bowls of wrath and these final conflicts, there is a need—even in John’s life—to eat this little book.
He would not be able to prophesy again, to continue this ministry of the Word of God, unless he himself ate this book, digested it, wrestled with it, and thus prophesied according to the will of God regarding the wrath and the things of the end.
These things were so terrible that I think they were hidden until this time. Now it is time to eat this Word, and this he did. As he ate it, he sensed the tremendous praise of the righteous God, the grace of God, and all the sweetness of His Word. But as it settled in his stomach, he became so aware of the bitterness of the end of sinful man and the tremendous judgments that were about to take place.
He grew up, realizing that our God, the Almighty God, is a God of grace and judgment. So he proclaimed this gospel in the prophecies that we find after Revelation 10.
That is the context. But now I would like to apply that verse in a more general way to all of us, because this, to me, is perhaps a key to making the Book of Revelation real to us.
What is that key? Chew the Word. Eat this book.
In the eating of this book, the Lord is able to take the knowledge that we have from the head to the heart. This is our great problem.
I suppose everybody here could tell me the interpretation of Revelation that has been passed down to you. You have heard somebody else speak on it and say, “Yes, yes, that is my view.” Okay, well, that is good. You have it in your head, and there is light in that view.
Indeed, this book is a revelation of Jesus, and anybody who shares some light in this matter is showing us a wonderful thing. Maybe you are a futurist. Maybe you are a historicist. In our little Bible study on Monday night, we have some staunch historicists who are always carrying the torch from Martin Luther.
Even in this chapter, the historicists think this is Martin Luther taking the book and preaching the gospel of justification by faith. Oh, yes, that is a wonderful interpretation.
So whether you are a historicist or a futurist because you have heard from somebody else, fine. But now, chew it for yourself. Study this until the convictions become yours.
Ah, you see, this is what we really need—not merely the light of knowledge or doctrine, but the fire in our hearts that this revelation brings. Surely this is not merely a book of knowledge. Surely this is a book of life.
The Lord is depositing things slowly from my brain into my heart, letting these things slowly make this transaction. There is life. There is fire. There are things that I have seen before, but I saw them as one on the outside looking in. Now I am looking again and seeing things on the inside.
Dear brothers and sisters, we must get this thing beyond our head, because in the last days it is those things that are in our hearts that will enable us to overcome. It is not head knowledge that will do it.
So the Lord is saying—and I want to exhort everybody this morning—eat this book. Do not be afraid of this book. If you are a young person and your Bible has not even been cracked there, and the gold is completely solid in Revelation, open up that book and begin to chew it.
What a wonderful book. There are all kinds of layers in it. You see Jesus and His precious blood and the salvation of the world. Then you go a little further and see the kingdom hidden in this wonderful book. Go a little further and you can understand what the overcomer is. It is hidden in there.
Right now, in our Monday-night Bible study, we are at the place about the man child going up. Most of these young people have never heard about the overcomer, so of course they see that as Christ, the man child. Indeed, He is. But tomorrow I am going to try to help them see that there is somebody else in there.
This book is so full of life, so full of truth. It makes no difference how old you are as a Christian. If you get in there and chew—and I would broaden it to say, chew the whole Word of God—things will begin to penetrate into your heart. Wonderful things will fuel your own life, by the grace of God, to overcome.
That is the issue in this book: faith to overcome. The Lord is providing the fuel of that faith, even a living vision of Jesus, calling us on in the last days to be faithful.
In the last days, we have to swim upstream. When I see many young people here, and I know of your faith since you were young, and now I see you are married and great with child and all kinds of things, I am very encouraged to see young people growing up. But I also realize, because I am reading and getting the bitter parts out of this book, that the generation coming up has got to hold the Lord Jesus in your heart, or you will not overcome.
Things become dangerous unless you are sealed with the seal of God. We need to know these things in our hearts. This book may be snatched away out of our hands soon enough. Is it in our hearts? Oh, let us get it there while we can.
There is such wonder in this book, something for everybody in this book. Chew it. Make it yours. Then go back to it in a couple of years, and you will see there is a whole other layer there that you have never seen before. This book is a magnificent book, a book of life.
Just as an example, there is something so easy, so obvious, that it knocks you on the head like this. Somehow, reading it this time, I see more clearly than ever before what this book is telling us.
I will give you the bottom line, if you do not want to check the details out: “I am coming quickly.” That is it.
Now, to get that from your head to your heart—to get Maranatha from your head to your heart—ah, do you want to get it there? Maybe you have not seen that exactly before. Let us take a moment to look at it.
It is at the very beginning and the very end because it is the sandwich of the book. The book is a sandwich. You have the meat in the middle, but you have these two wonderful hunks of bread on the outside. What does each hunk say? “I am coming quickly.”
Look at Revelation 1:1:
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bondservants the things which must soon take place.
Here is a clue. Revelation 1:3:
Blessed is he who reads, and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things which are written in it, for the time is near.
And Revelation 1:7:
Behold, He is coming with the clouds.
Then we go to Revelation 2. I will just read little snippets. At the end of Revelation 2:5:
I am coming to you.
Revelation 2:16:
Therefore repent, or else I am coming to you quickly.
Revelation 2:25:
Nevertheless what you have, hold until I come.
Revelation 3:3:
I will come like a thief.
And Revelation 3:11:
I am coming quickly.
Is there some hidden meaning to those things? Maybe we miss it because that is the first piece of bread at the top of the sandwich.
Then we go over to Revelation 22 and find that this message has not been lost. What is the bottom line, even for the new Christian who reads this and can understand only some very simple things, while the deeper things slide right over the top? Well, that is wonderful, because God has something to show you.
Revelation 22:7—notice, of course, this makes it official; it is red letter in my Bible. This means Jesus is saying it Himself:
Behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.
Revelation 22:12:
Behold, I am coming quickly.
And in Revelation 22:20, the last red letter in the Bible:
Yes, I am coming quickly.
There is a message there. There is a message there.
Let me explain. I will tell you my crazy theory. Please, I have to picture things for them to be real to me. So here is my crazy theory: do not yourself subscribe to the asteroid theory of the coming of Christ, but that is my theory.
We all know that He is going to come back as He left. He is on the throne. He is going to come to the clouds, and then from the clouds He is going to come to the earth. We know He is coming back. That is the chronological truth of this matter.
But when I am reading this Book of Revelation, suddenly I am aware of the dynamic coming of the Lord. It is like Matthew 24:32: “Behold, I am near, even at the door.”
When you read Revelation, something closes in on me like this: it is like Jesus is this huge ball of fire, this holy asteroid heading for the earth. As He comes closer and closer, He is coming closer every day. He is nearer now than He was yesterday. He is on His way.
Do not think of Him up in heaven statically sitting there, then coming down to the clouds and statically sitting there, then coming to the earth. It is very dynamic. He is on His way.
How do I know He is on His way? Because, chronologically, as you read this book, there are a couple of things you notice.
First, what is the sign of His coming? Increased angelic activity. More than seventy times there is angelic activity. When Jesus came the first time, suddenly, in the midst of deadness, came angelic activity. So He is coming again.
Second, how do we know His coming is getting closer and closer? Because there is an increase of evil activity. It says in Revelation 12 that Satan is full of wrath because he knows his time is short. As the asteroid gets closer, evil is getting nuked. It cannot take the heat and light of Jesus, and it is starting to scramble and squirm, trying to do its utmost because it is in its final gasps.
A third reason we know that He is coming closer and closer—closer today than He was yesterday—is that the things on this earth which can be shaken are being shaken. The closer He gets, the more there will be a shaking, as it were, an earthquake on the whole earth, including the financial system and all such things. This is a sign that He is coming closer and closer.
Then the fourth one—and forgive me, I know this sounds a little weird, perhaps. This asteroid, this Jesus, this holy Lord who is coming to the earth, has tremendous magnetic force because of His mass.
It is true that He may only physically be five foot five and one hundred forty-five pounds, but in glory weight, He has tons upon tons. As His mass comes closer to the earth, it seems in the Book of Revelation that the closer He comes, those who are ready, those who are the lightest, go up in a rapture.
He comes a little closer and others who have gotten perhaps a little heavier, they go. When you look in the book, you see the man child going up, the two witnesses going up, and in the earlier chapters it is obvious that somebody has gone up already. What are these? There could be several goings-up.
It seems that as He comes closer, those who are lightweights go first. By lightweights, I mean they are not entangled by the things of the world, and they are ready. When the Lord gets, you know, one hundred miles away, His magnetic attraction is enough to go, “Whoosh,” and there they go.
But I am afraid not all of us are ready yet. Some of us still—our god is our belly, and we are a little heavy. We may go four inches off the ground and come back down. Do not fear. That may mean we will go through more tribulation. It could be.
But He will come closer until His magnetism pulls us up. Then there is the final magnetism that can only come by His harvesting; He has to actually cut us off in order to get us up.
I do not know. I do not want to say you should subscribe to a multiple-raptures theory or anything like that. But here is the principle of the rapture. We know what it is: the principle of Enoch.
And Enoch walked with God; and God took him.
So, brothers and sisters, however you think about the rapture, I say Jesus is coming closer today than He was yesterday. You walk with God, and you will be ready for the first liftoff—whatever that is.
Whatever circumstance we are in, if we are in the fourth seal now, fine. If no seals have taken place yet, fine. But are you ready?
“I am coming quickly.” Do we take it seriously?
What is the bottom line of Matthew 24? Is it the sort-out where Israel is getting creamed, where Gentiles are getting creamed, who is going to be left, and who is going up? No. The bottom line of Matthew 24 is this: watch and pray. You do not know the hour.
So I say again: do you watch and pray? You do not know when He might come. It is like the thief comes into your house. Watch and pray. You do not know. Watch and pray. There is a message there.
If there is any prophecy that I would speak out of the Book of Revelation, here it is:
Behold, I am coming quickly.
It is quicker than we think. So we need to be ready. Take that from your head. Let us ask the Lord to put that in our heart. That is where it will really fire our souls.
I love that song of Margaret Barber’s, “Keep the Incense Burning.” Is the incense burning in our hearts?
Here is another version of my craziness: there is also the magnetic power of the saints praying for the Lord’s return. When the saints are together asking the Lord to come back, there is a hastening of His coming to the earth. It has to do with the magnetism of the saints here upon earth who really have that as a heart’s desire—not an occasional song every three weeks.
It has got to get from here down to here.
So what do we do? In Revelation 10, let us chew the Word of God that we might speak in a living way. As I read these verses, when the Lord shed a little light on them, I felt myself very humbled by the fact that I go in where angels fear to tread.
I have taught many times from the Book of Revelation without chewing it. I just take bits, you know. I take one from column E, one from column Chen, and one from column Govett, and I share something. The Lord said, “No, no, no, no, no. You chew yourself. You come up with your own convictions.”
I admit that my convictions, including the asteroid theory, are only working definitions. When you have a different view, I have no problem with that, because I cannot tell you that I am one hundred percent sure of my view.
But here is the important thing: at least can we see this? This book is not about the second coming. It is about the Christ of the second coming.
If we all see that Christ of the second coming, then we can stand together even if our theories are different. Some of you want us all to go out before any problems, like Tim LaHaye and the Left Behind folks. Some of you believe we will go into some trouble before somebody goes out. Fine. But if we hold on to the Christ of the second coming, we will have no problem with the different versions.
It is a terrible thing when the church divides over versions. They divide over the second coming. You do not divide over the Christ of the second coming.
That is what we need to see in this precious book. Eat the book. Chew it. Then we have something to say that has come out of the process of digestion. We have tasted its sweetness, and we have tasted its bitterness.
We saints need to grow up. We have saints who are so prejudiced toward grace that they never mention judgment. But I tell you, brothers and sisters, as God is opening my eyes a little bit about this, in the last day the full gospel will include not only the preaching of the great forgiveness and grace that is in Jesus, but the preaching of the coming judgment.
It must be. In the last days, when many people begin to face the wages of their sin and judgment comes into their lives and families, that is when our gospel of grace becomes sweeter and sweeter.
When I go to Russia and visit, the one thing that gives them a head start, if I could put it this way, is that they already feel judged. Their nation is wicked. Their politicians are corrupt. Most of the men are completely taken over with alcoholism, and so on. They know there is judgment upon them. But when they hear of the forgiveness in Christ, they come in droves.
You see what I am saying? Our gospel includes the fact that surely we pay wages for our sins and surely there is judgment waiting for us. But right now, there is the gospel of grace and forgiveness.
Let us be those who chew this Word in such a way that we can preach the full gospel and not be afraid of the fact that many people will learn through the judgment in their own life how to come and find salvation by the grace of the Lord Jesus. These are deeper lessons for Christians who can eat of the sweet and chew on the bitter.
The reality of the end times is before us, and we must grow up in this way. So I counsel you to eat.
I want to show you one more thing. When we take the book—and mind you, John had to ask for it—do you ask the Lord, “Lord, give me the book. Oh God, give me that book”? Then you say, “Yes, I will eat it.”
Not only do we take the book to digest it, to get it from our head to our hearts so that the light might become life and fire in us, but the wonderful thing in the Book of Revelation is this: it is our main source of worship.
There are seven glorious hymns of worship in this book. I wish I had time to show you them, but at least I can show you the one at the end of Revelation 11 that we read, where they cried out with loud voices:
The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ;
and He will reign forever and ever.
And the twenty-four elders said:
We give You thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty,
Who are and Who were,
because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign.
Now, I have heard in the past who this strong angel was. Studying Revelation, I have about ten commentaries. It is amazing who they think the strong angel is. I do not want to go into all that now, but the primary view is that he is not Jesus, because Jesus only showed up as an angel before His incarnation, but since His incarnation that cannot be.
That is the conventional Left Behind, pre-tribulation rapture theory: that this is just an angel. But when you look at the internal evidence, I see Jesus.
People have trouble with that. “How could Jesus be an angel? I thought He was God and man.” Well, He is. But in this particular vision, it is because of His size. John looks up to this One who is straddling the sea and the land, this huge, powerful Being. Who is that?
As the angel begins to speak, and as you look at how the angel is described, it is the same One who is in Revelation 1. The strong angel is Jesus—but Jesus coming for a new dimension, a new prophecy, a new truth being released, as it were.
We went through the six seals, then the six trumpets, and we are standing here in this land where something new is about to happen. As a matter of fact, in Revelation 12 there is a war in heaven. Something between the sixth trumpet and Revelation 12 caused that war in heaven. What could it be?
We find out from the worship of heaven exactly what has happened. This strong angel—now, I will not make the case any further; you will have to take my word for it or go search for yourself—Jesus, as this strong angel, has come down and basically done this: He has put His feet on the earth and said, “I am taking the kingdom now.”
It is a prophetic statement, because He is still wrapped in a cloud. He is not coming in His final appearing, which we find in Revelation 19, when He actually comes and is seen and comes to earth.
But prophetically, He makes His claim. Right in the middle of this book, He steps down and says, “Okay, that is it. The mystery is over. My kingdom has been hidden; it is going to be revealed.” He steps down, and war breaks out. Worship breaks out in heaven, and war breaks out in the lower parts where Satan and his angels dwell.
What an amazing thing for Jesus to stake His own territory, put His own foot down, and say, “This is it: the kingdom.” Heaven immediately catches on to what is going on.
This is the wonderful thing about worship in the Book of Revelation. We have seven hymns of worship, and they are all from the heavenly perspective. All the worship responses in Revelation are based on some initiative that the Lamb of God has taken, or an initiative anticipated by heaven’s knowledge.
So here, Jesus has prophetically put His feet down and said, “I am taking this earth now. I have had it with all this stuff going on. I am taking this earth now in My name and the name of My Father.” All heaven breaks out, “Hallelujah! The King has come down and begun to reign.”
Of course, He has not taken it fully yet, but in heaven it is a done deal. When Jesus steps down and takes it, it is done. War breaks out—a war that has already been won.
How is it won? Strange. There is war in heaven, it says. There is Michael, and there is Satan, and they are fighting with their angels. It is a dead heat: Michael and his angels, Satan and his angels, war in heaven. Then something tips the balance, Satan loses, and what is that?
They overcame by the blood of the Lamb,
and by the word of their testimony;
and they loved not their lives unto death.
Interpreted, that means the faithfulness of the faithful saints who took the blood of Jesus and stated in prayer and faith that Satan had already been defeated.
That is what turned the battle. For my own part, I am sure that Michael and Satan would have fought and fought and fought in a dead heat except for the fact that these precious overcomers, faithful to the Lord, stood up and said, “No, you cannot have this earth. It belongs to the King of kings and Lord of lords.”
The Lord always seems to wait for believers to see into the heavenly places that the finished work is really applicable down here on earth. Then, indeed, the tide turns, and Satan loses the battle.
Oh, praise God. Isn’t it amazing? Christians have a part in the victories.
I do not know if you have ever really thought about that, but this is why even that vision in Revelation 12 is so relevant to us. It is us who are praying those prayers. It is us standing under the blood of the Lamb, and Satan cannot touch us. Oh, how he wants to touch us, but we are under the blood.
This is why we need to be faithful in the last day. The final battle of things in heaven, in some sense—very strange to say—will be determined by the faithfulness of the saints on earth who make the claim.
What do they base the claim on? Do they just name it and claim it in some hollow-faith way? No. It is because they see that the Lord’s foot is on the land.
As a matter of fact, could I put it this way? We are His feet standing on the earth. We are the ones who say, “No, Jesus has begun to reign right here. He started in my heart. He has gathered some others together. We are the foot, and we stand for the victory of Jesus even in this place.”
To see the mighty angel is one thing, but to see our part in His standing is another. To see His glorious finished work put His foot down on this earth that Satan is manipulating, maneuvering, perverting, and corrupting—to see Him put His foot down and say, “Enough. The mystery is over. That is it. My mysterious kingdom now is going to be brought to light”—and we are the ones who say, “Amen.”
Up in heaven they say, “Oh, this is great. What a great day.” He has not even touched down yet. In Revelation 19 that comes. But already there are things stirring; things are going on down here that show that Jesus has already put His foot down.
This is so personal and real to me. I live in Manhattan. It is hard to say this, but I suppose Manhattan could be the most impossible place for Jesus ever to put His foot down. There are principalities, powers, and rulers of darkness who are so powerful over that city, as over other major cities of the world.
It is impossible for man ever to say, “I want to be the foot of Jesus.” But there are brothers and sisters gathering in New York, and every time they stand in the unity of Jesus, every time they pray in the Spirit in His name, there is some sense in which Jesus says, “Yes, that is it. New York City.”
The same is true for Richmond. No, I am not into dominion theology. I am not talking about claiming the city and storming it, taking it over, and setting up a Christian government.
But I am talking about overcomers who see what is really going on in these last days: there is conflict. There is conflict, in one sense, even before Jesus comes and resolves everything and brings His kingdom in for us all to enjoy in that final moment.
Even now, He has staked a claim for those who have eyes to see and hearts to understand. He has always had this earth. It has been usurped. It has been stolen. There are evil men who also steal the earth.
But we can, as it were, say, “Lord, please put Your foot down here. We believe You have already done it by Your finished work. Lord, You are the strong angel.”
We who can really see this vision of the strong angel—I suppose it is only those who are down on the ground looking up—those are the ones who see the strong angel.
There is an interesting paradox in the Book of Revelation. This book is a revelation of Jesus Christ given to us, yet the only people who can see it are those who already serve Him. It is given to His bondservants.
Now, that does not mean traveling ministers. It does not mean you have to be an elder in the church. Bondservants are people who have a heart for the Lord and love the Lord more than anything else. Those are bondservants.
It is funny because those who serve Him see Him, and when they see Him, they serve Him better. Having served Him better, they see Him more. This is the progression in the Book of Revelation.
There are seven wonderful, tremendous revelations of the Lord Jesus. But first, you have to do what it says in Revelation 1:3. Let us read that verse. This will be our final admonition.
Revelation 1:3
Blessed is he who reads,
and those who hear the words of the prophecy,
and keep—or heed—the things which are written in it;
for the time is near.
Could I make it simple and say that there is a threefold blessing involved in studying this Word?
Surely He does not mean understand it only outwardly or doctrinally. No, He means understand it in your heart. It is living to you, these things.
So blessed is the one who reads, blessed is the one who understands, and blessed is the one who keeps it.
There are people who can take the Book of Revelation and turn it upside down and inside out, show you a chart of what Revelation is about, show you all the doubles, the angels, the churches, and everything. They can make a whole chart. But if you ask them, “Okay, what do you have to keep?” they say, “Well, I do not know. What do we keep?”
But I think with every revelation of Jesus, there is a responsibility. There is a keeping necessary.
The church in Philadelphia may have been the smallest church of the seven; we do not know. But one thing was their saving feature: they kept. They were keepers. They kept His Word, kept their faith, and maintained the love of the brethren.
So simple, but they were keepers. They did not merely hear something and then forget about it. They kept the things that Jesus had shown them. We likewise need to be keepers of what we see.
Every time we see Jesus—even the Lamb of God in Revelation 5—we are to keep what we have seen. I sometimes kid Jerry because every time I come here, he is always talking about the Lamb of God. He is Lamb-conscious, Lamb-centered. His Bible opens automatically to Revelation 5.
It does not matter if it is a conference planning meeting, the opening of the conference, or a Sunday morning: he has the Lamb out in front of us. He has seen something.
We could all say, “Oh, we have all seen the Lamb,” but to see it in your heart is something altogether different.
Do you want to see the Lamb in Revelation 5 in a fresh and living way? Do you want to see every one of the other twenty-seven references to the Lamb throughout Revelation and say, “Ah, there He is”?
Then here is what is necessary to see the Lamb in the midst of the throne: you need to be somebody who has truly tried and cried because you are not worthy. That is who sees the Lamb.
Sometimes we Christians are all saved, and we say, “Oh, well, we are not worthy. We are not worthy.” But we are not those who have tried and realized we are not worthy.
John had a track record of—we do not really know how many years, but we would say sixty years—serving the Lord. Sixty years, by the grace of God, this man carried the testimony of Jesus. Yet in heaven, when it came time and the great angel said, “Who is worthy?” John just cried. He knew he was not worthy.
To somebody like that, to see the Lamb in the midst of the throne is why they broke out in a hallelujah chorus when the Lamb came out. We can say as doctrine, “I am unworthy,” but when you know you are unworthy by experience, the Lamb is yours. He alone is worthy.
I remember reading Revelation 5 and how freshly it came to me: why is the most powerful thing in heaven worthiness? Worthiness. That is it.
It is not a matter of gifts that a person has, or how many deeds a person has done. The currency of heaven is worthiness. That is why the Lamb is worthy, and all the angels, the twenty-four elders, and everybody fell down and said:
Worthy, worthy is the Lamb.
He alone is worthy. That is the most powerful currency of heaven: worthiness.
Brothers and sisters, is that our currency here? Worthiness.
It is more than ministry. It is more than works. It is more than business or anything else. From heaven’s point of view, that which is most precious is that which is worthy.
It is as we are found in Christ Jesus and living by His life that we do anything of any worth at all.
Brothers and sisters, I apologize for rambling a bit this morning and jumping around. But the Lord is trying to put this precious book in my heart, stir a fire to be faithful and watch, to be filled with the grace of God and overcome the evil one.
This is a calling that God extends to every brother and sister in the church: a calling to be victorious, a calling to overcome.
Do not allow the downhill current to get you flowing in that massive downstream trend. No, you swim upstream. By the grace of God, be faithful. Let your life be full of worthy character because it is full of the life of the Lamb.
If I could share that much and have it come into your hearts, then I feel like I have more than shared something of value. We know so much in the head. But if we could chew it so that it becomes something real in our hearts, it could fire our souls in an obedience that could overcome.
Let us pray that prayer before we end today. Let us join our hearts together.
O precious Lamb of God, for those who have tried to be faithful and serve and lead and teach and help and shepherd and raise their children, and all kinds of things—Lord, we have tried. By Your grace, we have tried, and we have felt Your help as we try.
Yet, when we come to the ultimate issues, God, we are unworthy. We so much live out of our heads and not our hearts, and out of tradition and not life. But it will not do in the last days.
When all things are broken down, I pray, Lord, if it comes to it and this book is snatched from my hands, that this Book of Revelation will be in my heart, that I might not sin against You.
Oh Lord, deepen us. Just those twelve inches from the head to the heart—deepen us, Lord. Let this book cause a fire in our souls and enable us, by Your grace, to be worthy of the Worthy One.
Help us in these days not to look at all the foundations being shaken upon this earth, but to see our Lord astride over us, having staked the claim. If there is any controversy upon this earth, it is because He has staked the claim.
O Lord, we want to stand with You and say, “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” Lord, we can sense the spirit of Your impatience as You say, “The mystery is finished.”
Oh Lord, please come and establish Your righteous kingdom here on earth. Lord, we believe You are closer today than You were yesterday. There is a dynamic coming as You come closer and closer and closer. Things are being shaken which can be shaken, and things are being founded that can be founded in Christ.
Strengthen us and prepare our hearts in these days. I pray especially for the young people. As they are living in these times, open their eyes to the sweet and the bitter, that they could read and eat this book and make it theirs.
We thank You, Lord. You call us by Your grace to rise up, to be faithful to the One who is faithful.
Lord, we thank You that we can, in anticipation of what You are about to do as You actually, literally set Your feet upon this earth, already be worshipers who have seen it from the heavenly view. The work is done, it is finished, and the Lamb is victorious.
Then we can take that claim and be the worshipers of God who can bring in this kingdom, even in our worship. O Lord, may our hearts be so joined magnetically together as to be a force field for Your attraction.
O Lord, come. Jesus, come. We pray in Your dear, precious name. Amen.