by weareclctinley on Nov 05, 2023
In this sermon, I explored the Book of Revelation, acknowledging that it is a complex and often misunderstood part of the Bible. I began by discussing the seven churches mentioned in the first few chapters of Revelation, noting that these churches represent all churches over the last 2,000 years. I suggested that we could compare these churches to our own, or even to ourselves as individuals, to gain insight into our spiritual journeys. I then delved into the prophetic visions described in Revelation, including the breaking of the seven seals, the blowing of the seven trumpets, and the pouring out of the seven bowls, each of which triggers events on Earth, some of which are catastrophic.
In the second part of the sermon, I emphasized the importance of the Book of Revelation despite its complexity. I argued that it is an inspired book of the Bible, and therefore, we should not dismiss it due to its difficulty. I suggested that there are two main purposes of Revelation: to encourage us to come to Jesus and to invite others to do the same. I based this on Revelation 22, which repeatedly invites people to "come" to Jesus. I concluded the sermon by urging those who are not saved or not walking in fellowship with Jesus to come to Him, especially in light of current world events.
Key Takeaways:
- The seven churches in Revelation represent all churches over the last 2,000 years, and we can compare these churches to our own or to ourselves as individuals to gain insight into our spiritual journeys ([19:44]).
- The prophetic visions in Revelation, including the breaking of the seven seals, the blowing of the seven trumpets, and the pouring out of the seven bowls, trigger events on Earth, some of which are catastrophic ([24:31]).
- Despite its complexity, the Book of Revelation is an inspired part of the Bible and should not be dismissed due to its difficulty ([26:29]).
- The main purposes of Revelation are to encourage us to come to Jesus and to invite others to do the same ([27:51]).
- In light of current world events, it is especially important for those who are not saved or not walking in fellowship with Jesus to come to Him ([29:12]).
Bible Reading:
1) Revelation 22:17 [27:51
2) Revelation 22:20-21 [28:34
Observation Questions:
1) What is the repeated invitation in Revelation 22:17 and who is it directed to?
2) What is the response of the faithful witness in Revelation 22:20-21 and what does it signify?
Interpretation Questions:
1) How does the repeated invitation in Revelation 22:17 reflect God's desire for humanity?
2) What does the response of the faithful witness in Revelation 22:20-21 tell us about the second coming of Jesus?
Application Questions:
1) How can you respond to the invitation in Revelation 22:17 in your daily life?
2) How does the promise of Jesus' return in Revelation 22:20-21 affect your perspective on current world events?
3) Can you think of someone in your life who needs to hear the invitation in Revelation 22:17? How can you share it with them this week?
4) How can you prepare for the second coming of Jesus as mentioned in Revelation 22:20-21?
[Applause]
Well, good morning, CLC! Good morning! It's good to see every one of you here today. I love the worship set today. I leaned over to my wife and I said, "If we had just a few Nigerian ladies down in front, I would dance with them." It just felt like that kind of a service to me.
But it's good to see all of you here today, although it may be a sad day because we have come to the end of our walk through the New Testament. This is the final day, and some of you are probably sad to see it come. How many of you enjoyed it so much that it's kind of sad to see us have to move to something else? Thank you.
It might be sad also once we get into today because you may be disappointed with the close, because I am not a prophecy buff. It's just that is not my forte; it's not something that I particularly enjoy teaching because I don't feel like I have a good handle on it myself.
For the first five weeks, I was wondering why in the world they chose me to teach on the Book of Revelation. This week, it dawned on me. I remembered when I was a part of a denomination, we would gather every year for a conference, but we also had a business session where we would elect different officers of the denomination. None of us—I don't know how it was where you grew up—but none of us, the preachers that I hung around with, wanted those jobs. It was just stuff that had to be done, but nobody was looking forward to it.
After a while, the guys that I hung around with decided to start looking around the room on the day of the elections to see if any of our friends had not come. If they were absent, we voted them into every single office that we could possibly vote them into.
So today, I mean this week, it dawned on me: I don't know where I was, but I was not in the room where Pastor Brent and Pastor Carlton and all of those guys voted on who was going to teach the Book of Revelation.
So, I'm having a little fun with you right now, but that's not far from the truth. I'll tell you why. I have met a number of men of God that I definitely respect and appreciate, and I've heard them teach from Revelation and realized that they disagreed with each other in ways that you can't gloss over. I mean, there are some things where it's either right or wrong; there's no way you can compromise it.
An easy example of that, for instance, is that some people teach that the church will be caught away to be with the Lord in what they call a pre-trib Rapture before the Great Tribulation happens. God's going to take the church away to Heaven. Then other preachers teach from the Book of Revelation using those same scriptures, in fact, and they teach what is called a mid-trib Rapture. In other words, they believe the church will experience three and a half years of tribulation and then be caught away with the Lord into Heaven.
Then there is that third view that some hold, using the same Book of Revelation, same scriptures, and yet they teach that it is a post-tribulation Rapture, meaning the church will go through all seven years of the Great Tribulation before we are caught away to be with the Lord.
Now, you can't say that they're all right because those are opposing viewpoints from the Book of Revelation. Quite frankly, I don't buy into any of those viewpoints. I'm a pan-tribulationist, which means I think it's all going to pan out in the end.
But seriously, this is what I do know, and this is not for fun. Matthew 24:14 is probably my number one pro-prophecy scripture, where Jesus said, "And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then, everybody say then, then the end will come."
If then the end will come, that must mean that before then, the end did not come yet. The truth is our job is not to decipher the mysteries of 666, but our job is to preach the gospel to the whole world. When we've done our role, when we've done our part and reached the nations, then Jesus comes back. Amen?
But so much of Revelation—we don't even have time to go into so much of it—is about the future. If you've ever studied it, you probably got that much out of it. If you're going to just start trying to predict the future, let's face it, that's just an invitation for mistakes galore.
In my ministry over the last 50 years, I have heard preachers teach the identity of the Antichrist, for instance. For a number of years, when I was a younger minister, I was hearing that Mr. Gorbachev from Russia was going to be the Antichrist. But obviously, that's not the case. Then there were others about that same time that said Gaddafi was going to be the Antichrist, and he's been dead for several years, so I know he's not going to be the one.
Then after him, there was Saddam Hussein that some taught was the Antichrist, and obviously, he's been in the ground for quite some time now. That's not the one. Most of all, there were a number of United States presidents who were predicted and preached to be the Antichrist. Primarily, if it was a Democrat, it was the Republicans who said they were the Antichrist. If it was a Republican in office, they said he was the Antichrist; you know the Democrats said that.
So, all of those cannot be right, that's for sure. I will tell you this: once I knew that this was my assignment, I've spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks, and even after going over the content of the Book of Revelation, it can still be difficult to know what Revelation is all about.
I've got to be honest with you; some visions that John had are explained for us. I know, for instance, that the Lamb is Jesus. I got that one down, okay? And the dragon—I feel pretty strongly about that too. I think the dragon has got to be Satan, the devil. But the others in those visions, the other future tense things that are talked about, most of them, I just—it's just a lot of question marks.
I'm saying it about me, but the truth is I think it's true of just about everybody that's tried to make those predictions and understandings. In fact, if you run into somebody that tells you that they've got the Book of Revelation down pat and know what every bit of it is about, I would probably run the other direction from them, okay?
Another problem that you don't even think about until you experience it is that the Book of Revelation is not given in chronological order. For people like me that want things to be, you know, in order, that makes it difficult.
But Jesus in Revelation was born in chapter 12; he is exalted in chapter 5 before he was even born, and he was walking among the churches in chapter 1 before he had been born or exalted. There's no order; there's no rhyme or reason with it.
There are two other characteristics of Revelation that set it apart from all the rest of the New Testament but also make the interpretation and understanding difficult. First of all, it's the only book of its genre. Most all of the New Testament is history or letter. Even as we've gone through this, you recall that Pastor Carlton taught us from the gospels, the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are history books.
Pastor Brent taught us from the book of Acts; that's another history book about the history of the early church. Then we started talking about the Epistles; we talked about the Pauline Epistles, and then we talked about the general Epistles.
So here we are today, and Revelation is sent as a letter like the Epistles, with a traditional greeting, and there are direct messages to the recipients—the seven churches that we'll talk about today.
Then the close of Revelation, the send-off, we have all of those as direct messages. But the bulk of the Epistle of the Book of Revelation is a record of John's vivid—and I'd probably put that in all caps if you're taking notes—his vivid symbolic visions.
I mean, John talked to us about golden bowls that he saw, and he talked about a white horse, and he talked about a black horse, and then he talked about a red horse, and then he even talked about a green horse. He talked about the beast, and he talked about the elders, and he talked about the living beings, and he talked about trumpets.
I mean, there is no book of the New Testament that feels like the Book of Revelation. It just doesn't fit in our thinking.
Then the second thing that is so different is that Jesus directly addresses the readers in the Book of Revelation. The gospels record what Jesus taught. When we went through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we were looking at red letters—what Jesus taught his people.
The Epistles that we've been on the last few weeks draw applications from his teachings, but it's only in the Book of Revelation that Jesus himself speaks directly to the churches.
So all of this is different—not bad—but it does make it difficult to interpret sometimes. I started studying, you know, how is John qualified to write the Book of Revelation?
The last chapter of the Gospel of John, which was written by the same man who wrote Revelation, Jesus speaks to Peter there in those last few verses and basically told him how he would die. He said, "You know, right now you can do what you want, but there's coming a day when someone's going to dress you, and they're going to lead you out and take you to be killed."
After Jesus had spoken those words to Peter, good old Peter—you know, open mouth, insert foot—he looked over and he saw the Apostle John and he said, "Well, what about him, Lord? If I'm going to have to die for you, what about him?"
Jesus said, "Peter, what difference does it make? That's right, you follow me, and it doesn't matter what happens to John."
So the rumor spread among the community of believers that John would never die, but that's not what Jesus said at all. He only said, "If I want him to live until I return, what is that to you?"
So John did not live until the second coming. Can we all agree on that? I mean, he didn't live until the second coming, but as the youngest of the 12 disciples, he did become the last to die.
In spite of the fact that Rome made several attempts to kill him—one of them that I read about as I was trying to make some sense out of all of this is that they put him in a cauldron of oil and boiled him in oil. Instead of killing him, he popped his head up above the top of the cauldron and continued to preach.
One of the versions of that that I read—because this is not obviously in scripture; this is historical stuff—one of the articles that I read said that that happened; he was boiled in oil in the Coliseum of Rome, and that everybody present when he did not die, but he lived, and he continued to preach to them. Everyone in the Coliseum converted to Christianity. That's what their story goes.
At any rate, pretty amazing stuff. But they didn't want John to continue to spread the gospel, so they shipped him off to an island in the Aegean Sea—not Hawaii. You wouldn't ever be mixed up with being in Hawaii because it was a barren, rocky place called Patmos.
On Patmos Island, it had been chosen by Rome as a place to banish criminals, and so they felt like, "We put him there; at least we've contained the damage that he can do. There's nobody else on that island except prisoners, and so we ought to be able to get by."
But no, because there on Patmos Island, John received even more that he wanted to share with the church.
Let's start there. Revelation 1, starting at verse 10, it says, "It was the Lord's day, and I was worshiping in the Spirit. Suddenly, I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet blast. It said, 'Write in a book everything you see and send it to the seven churches in the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia—not the one in Pennsylvania—and Laodicea.'"
Okay, those seven churches are the foundation that John starts with. That's who he's writing to. He wants this letter to be delivered to each one of those seven churches, which are all in Turkey, by the way, if I didn't say that already.
He turned around then to see the seven golden candlesticks, and among them, the risen Lord Jesus himself. John said, "When I turned to see who was speaking to me, I saw seven gold lampstands, and standing in the middle of the lampstands was someone like the Son of Man. He was wearing a long robe with a gold sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like flames of fire."
You getting the picture? I mean, this is a pretty awesome vision that he's having of Jesus. He said, "His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves. He held seven stars in his right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword came out of his mouth, and his face was like the sun in all its brilliance."
John said, "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead." I understand that, although I think I would have fallen backwards instead of forwards. But he said, "He laid his right hand on me and said, 'Don't be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I died, but look, I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and the grave.'"
Then he instructed John, verse 19: "Write down what you have seen, both the things that are now happening"—so keep this in mind—"he was writing some things that were happening 2,000 years ago when John was alive on Patmos—and the things that will happen."
He's writing about some things that are still continuing to happen from that 2,000-year period of history. He said, "This is the meaning of the mystery of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches."
There seems to be unanimous understanding among Bible scholars, I guess you would say, as to what those seven angels are. I know this is going to be hard for you to imagine, but the seven angels are the seven pastors of those churches. I know I don't look like an angel; neither does Brent, you know? But if y'all want to call us Angel Jerry or Angel Brent, go right ahead, I guess.
Not only were there the seven angels or the seven pastors of the churches, but the seven lampstands, he said, are the seven churches. So that much is fairly understandable.
To be honest with you, for the first few weeks after I knew this was my assignment, I thought, "I'm just going to teach the first two or three chapters of Revelation about those seven churches," because I think you can understand that relatively easily.
Jesus gave John a message for seven churches in Turkey, and those seven churches represent all churches. I think there's an agreement on this among Bible scholars from the last 2,000 years.
So here's what I'm getting at: you could actually, if we wanted to take the time—and maybe Pastor Brent will do that sometime—we can study those seven churches and compare them to our church, and we could determine which one of the seven is like CLC, or maybe which more than one—maybe two or three churches that would resemble CLC.
Not only can you do that for our church as a whole, but you could do that for yourself as an individual. If you want to spend that time researching those seven churches, you could actually determine, "You know, I think I'm like the church at Philadelphia," which was the best of all of them.
But whatever church you came up with, that's a possibility. But I'm only going to mention two of them today, and the only reason I'm even mentioning two of the seven is because I really sense that these two are represented by someone in the room.
One of them, he said, John said, is about to undergo suffering—the church at Smyrna. I feel like I'm talking to someone either online or in the room that maybe you are in a season of suffering right now.
This is what the angels—the message to them was: "Don't be afraid of what you are about to suffer. The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you." That's the first thing you need to understand: if you are going through some suffering, it's only a test. It's only a test, okay?
Then secondly, he says, "You will suffer for ten days." You might want to put "Hallelujah" in your notes beside that, because what that tells me—two things: first of all, Jesus is the one who determines how long you're going to suffer. The devil doesn't have control over that; Jesus has control over how long you are going to be in this season.
What's even better than that is the fact that he knows it's going to be ten days tells me there is a limit to the suffering. You're not always going to—it's not always going to be this way. That's how the devil talks to you—that you're always going to suffer. But Jesus is saying, "No, it's for a specific period of time, and that's all. You're just in a season, and it's going to end. You're not going to die; you're going to make it."
So somebody needs to hear that today and say, "I can make it through anything as long as I know how long it's going to last. I can make it through."
Okay, he said, "If you remain faithful even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life." There's a reward for that church and for those individuals.
Another one of the churches is faithful Philadelphia. I said it's the best of all the churches, but notice what was spoken—what John received for Philadelphia. He said, "I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close." Well, that's a good word.
Then he said, "This is the part I want you to notice: you have little strength." I'm talking to someone in the room or online today, I believe, that has little strength. You've probably beaten yourself over the head in the past and felt like, "I don't have great strength. I'm not this; I'm not that. I'm just this little whatever."
No, no, no, no, no! If you have little strength, it goes on to say, "Yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me." A little strength is all Jesus needs. That's all he's looking for.
So if you were faithful with the little that you have, there's a reward coming to you. I'm talking to somebody that can say, "I've got the little that I need in order to overcome."
Now, the other five churches were faltering in their loyalty. We're not going to spend any time with them at all, but the Lord warns the churches that he is a righteous judge, and he knows their deeds. So he calls those faltering churches—in each case, he calls on them to repent, and he makes an encouraging promise to each one of them as well.
After two chapters—chapters 2 and 3—of the seven churches that he's talked about, then John is whisked away into heaven to witness what must take place after these things. Revelation 4, verse 1 says, "So I think that's where the Rapture of the church takes place."
I just don't know if it's pre-, mid-, post-, or pan, but I do believe it is the rapture that takes place.
So begins a long series of prophetic visions for the churches, which include—we'll just go through this relatively quickly—those visions include a lamb. Everybody knows that the lamb is Jesus; he's also the lion, whoever said that. But that's because he's Jesus.
A lamb breaks seven seals that are holding an old book shut. Each time a seal is broken, it triggers an event on Earth, some of which are catastrophic. That's Revelation 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Then there are seven angels that blow seven trumpets, and each trumpet blast brings a plague on the earth in Revelation 8, 9, 10, and 11.
Then the next vision was a great dragon, which is Satan, yes, and two beasts, which the scholars usually say is the Antichrist and the false prophet. The only problem is, unless we're a false prophet, we don't know which the Antichrist is going to be.
They make war against a certain woman, and I'm of the opinion—and most scholars are—that that woman is Israel, and the saints are God's people. That's Revelation 12, 13, and 14.
Then there are seven angels that pour out seven bowls, and each bowl brings another plague on the earth in Revelation chapter 15 and 16.
Then the vision that John receives is a lamb that overcomes the wicked city of Babylon, a dragon, and the beast, and then brings about a final Judgment Day in Revelation chapters 17, 18, 19, and 20.
Finally, we get to the end with a vision of a new heaven and a new earth that appear where God and the lamb dwell with people in harmony forever—Revelation chapters 21 and 22.
So we just went through the whole Book of Revelation, and most of us don't know any more now than we did before we came in the room today. You know, I don't feel bad. First of all, I always want to be honest with you: if I don't know, if I don't understand, I don't understand, okay?
I think most people, if they'll be honest, have difficulty understanding the Book of Revelation. So with all of those difficulties, keep in mind, more importantly than any of your difficulty interpreting, is this is an inspired of God book of the Bible, okay?
The Holy Spirit spoke to John to record these things, reveal these things, so there must be something that we're supposed to do with it. I don't think we can just toss it aside.
What my question is—when, in fact, in sermon planning, that was one of the questions one of the pastors said: "What are we supposed to do with this?" I feel like I understand two things, at least. I'm not going to venture beyond those two, but I think there are two things that we're supposed to do with Revelation.
The first one is that Revelation is given to us to come to Jesus and invite others to come to him too. I think you have Revelation in your Bible because God wants every one of us to turn to Jesus, and he wants us to help other people come to Jesus.
Here's what I base it on: Revelation chapter 22, "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' Let anyone who hears this say, 'Come.' Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life."
He who is a faithful witness to all these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's holy people.
Over and over and over, I think I counted four times, John says, "Come, come." The Spirit's saying, "Come." The bride's saying, "Come." Let the one that's thirsty say, "Come." We're all saying, "Come, come."
I'm saying today that if you are not saved, if you're not walking in fellowship with the Lord Jesus, I've got a word from God for you today: you need to come to Jesus. Don't say, "Well, nobody can understand." No, you can understand. Come! You can understand. He's saying, "Come." He's inviting you.
With what's happening in Israel right now, what you've been watching on your television for the last two weeks, I don't think this is any time to play games with God. I don't think this is any time to be putting things off.
I think right now, if you don't know the Lord in the fullness of his Spirit, if you don't know Jesus like that, here's the word from God for you: come! Come! Come! Don't wait! Now is the day of salvation. That's what the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians.
He didn't say, "This hour is the time." He didn't say, "Today is the day of salvation." He said, "Now!" Don't put it off, even for the rest of the day. It's now!
So I'm going to obey that. Before I do anything else, I'm going to make an altar call right here, right now for anybody that needs to hear, "Now, come."
So let's all close our eyes. I'm giving you this opportunity. I don't want anybody to feel embarrassed or ashamed, but if you're here and you'd be honest while no one's looking around, if you'd just be honest with yourself and say, "You know what? I don't know that I am ready for Jesus to come. I don't know that I am walking closely with him. I'm not in fellowship with him the way I want to be. I've neglected some things; I've missed out."
If that's you and you're here and you're ready today to come and invite Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, I want you just to raise your hand. No one's looking around except me because I want to see who I'm praying for.
I see hands here—1, 2, 3, 4—four in that section. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 in the back there. 10, 11 over here in this right area. 12, my goodness! 13, 14. Yeah, yeah, yeah!
This is more important than having a perfect understanding of Revelation. This is more important.
So those of you that raised your hand, or even if you didn't raise your hand, I want us to pray a prayer right now to invite Jesus in to be the Lord of our lives.
So I want you to say this—say something like—you can use your own words, but something like this: "Say, 'Lord Jesus, thank you for getting my attention today. Thank you for making me aware that I need to come now. Thank you that I don't need to wait any longer. I need to surrender now.
So I'm asking you to come into my heart, wash me clean from every sin, fill me with your Holy Spirit. I want to serve you for the rest of my life. In Jesus' name, thank you for hearing my prayer, Lord. Thank you for forgiving my sins. In Jesus' name.'"
You know what? I say I don't want to embarrass anybody, and we're reluctant to have everybody close their eyes and bow their heads and all that sort of thing, but I think after you've asked Jesus to come into your life, I think that's something we ought to celebrate.
So if you prayed that prayer, would you stand? Hold off on the applause. Hold off. If you prayed that prayer, I want you to stand up. I want you to be willing to say, "I'm standing up for Jesus now. He came into my life because of the prayer that I prayed."
Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Yes!
1. "If you are going through some suffering, it's only a test. Jesus is the one who determines how long you're going to suffer. The devil doesn't have control over that. Jesus has control over how long you are going to be in this season and what's even better than that is the fact that he knows it's going to be 10 days tells me there is a limit to the suffering. You're not always going to suffer, it's not always going to be this way."
19:46
2. "I know all the things you do and I have opened a door for you that no one can close. You have little strength. I'm talking to someone in the room or online today I believe that has little strength and you've probably beaten yourself over the head in the past and felt like I don't have great strength, I'm not this, I'm not that."
19:46
3. "Now is the day of salvation. Don't put it off even for the rest of the day. It's now. I'm going to make an altar call right here right now for anybody that needs to hear now, come."
29:15
4. "Lord Jesus, thank you for getting my attention today. Thank you for making me aware that I need to come now. Thank you that I don't need to wait any longer. I need to surrender now and so I'm asking you to come into my heart, wash me clean from every sin, fill me with your Holy Spirit. I want to serve you for the rest of my life in Jesus name."
29:15
5. "I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I died but look, I am alive forever and ever and I hold the keys of death and the grave. Write down what you have seen both the things that are now happening and the things that will happen."
16:29
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