İ1998 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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4/19/98
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Godıs Communication Tool Box
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4/19/98 God's Communication Tool Box
We are going to return to our study
of the book of Revelation this morning.
We left our study at a major turning point in the
book
at the end of Rev. 3.
I have mentioned this before,
but there is a mistaken idea
about the book of Revelation
that it is the central Book of Biblical Prophecy
and that it provides us with
a broad, unified Biblical prophetic
statement.
The truth is
the Book of Revelation
is simply the final few paragraphs
filling in a handful of missing pieces
in a Prophetic message that
begins in the first chapters of Genesis
and runs throughout the entire Bible.
The two final pieces Revelation offers
are found in the two major sections of the
book.
That first major section is the one we have just
completed,
found in Revelation chapters 2 and 3.
It gives us a powerful statement
of Christ's relationship with
and expectations of His Church
during the time when He has chosen
the church
as the means by which He reveals Himself to
the world.
The 2nd major chunk
is found in Rev. 4-22.
It gives us a remarkably detailed account
of the final 7 years of this world
as we currently know it,
and then a glimpse into the future beyond.
Now, I know what we do here on Sunday mornings
is not an academic classroom,
and it certainly does not lend itself
to intricate and detailed Bible study.
We have about 30 minutes of teaching time together
once a week,
and the amount of content I can
communicate in that time
is extremely limited.
At the same time, I do want to do what I can
to provide you with some mental handles
to help you better understand
where we are in the flow of human
history from a Biblical perspective.
And to help with that
and also to prepare us for what happens
at the beginning of Revelation chapt. 4
I want to show you something about
human history
that you may not have noticed before.
Well begin with a quick course in the basics of life.
#1. Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God...
In the beginning that's all there was,
just GOD.
2. God chose to create us,
not because He needed us,
not because He was lonely,
but apparently simply because
He chose to create us.
3. When He created us
He gave us real free will - the freedom to
make choices
that He would then honor
and abide by
even if He did not agree with them.
4. Shortly after our creation
Adam and Eve both chose
to use that free will
to rebel against God
and in so doing
they broke off their union and
communication with Him.
5. The history of the human race
is the history of God's efforts
to reestablish that shattered union
between Himself and His creation.
Now, for a brief period of time
prior to man's rebellion against God,
God and man lived in direct
face-to-face
(or Being-to-being)
communication with one another.
...and Adam and Eve heard the sound of the
Lord God walking in the garden in the cool
of the day...
Following man's rebellion, however,
all such direct communication
ended forever.
In its place God established
a series of other tools
through which He continued His
communication with us,
and ultimately revealed
and carried out His plan of redemption
for His rebellious creation.
And let me just line those tools up for us
in a rough chronological order.
1. Immediately following Adam and Eve's rebellion
God continued to communicate Himself
through Prophets like Enoch,
Job,
and Noah.
2. Then, through Abraham, God selected
a special nation, the Nation of Israel,
to whom He would reveal Himself,
and through whom He would communicate
Himself to world.
From Abraham up to the birth of Christ
Israel was the tool through which
God communicated Himself
to this world.
3. Then, in the fullness of time,
through the Person of Jesus Christ,
a major change took place.
The first 2 verses of the book of Hebrews
says it well:
Heb. 1:1 God, after He spoke long ago to
the fathers in the prophets in many portions
and in many ways,
Heb. 1:2 in these last days has spoken to
us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of
all things, through whom also He made the
world.
For a brief period of time
through the Person of Christ
God in human form
once again communicated face-to
face with His creation.
4. After Christ's departure
and up to seven years just prior to His
return
Christ then established the 4th major
means by which He would communicate Himself to
the world...The CHURCH.
This is the period in which we live right now.
There is a whole section of the Bible
written exclusively to the Church,
describing what it is
and how it operates.
That section begins with the book of Acts
and runs through the 3rd chapter of Rev.
And please understand that the Church
I'm talking about here
is not the same thing
as the organized religious groups
that we call "churches" throughout the world.
Those groups, including Peninsula Bible
Fellowship,
are human organizations.
Some of them are made up mostly of people
who are also part of the true universal
church, seeking to function
as closely as possible to the pattern
outlined in the New Testament for such
groups,
while others are actually satanic in their
goals and activities.
Perhaps the easiest way to define
the true universal church
established by Christ is to say that
it is made up of all people on the earth
at any given time
who have entered into a Father-child
relationship with God
through faith in the death of Christ
as payment for their sins.
We are told that the true Church will include people
whom Christ has purchased with His blood from
every tribe and tongue and people and
nation.
Sometime we'll take a break from our other studies
long enough to look at how God expresses
Himself through the Church
and what makes the church unique
in human history.
For now I'll just remind you
of that one statement Paul makes
in Ephesians 3:10 where,
after describing how God formed the
church
from people of every background,
and how He united all of us
into what He calls "one new Man",
he tells us that God did this...
Eph. 3:10 so that the manifold wisdom of
God might now be made known through the
church to the rulers and the authorities in
the heavenly places.
Now, the church will continue to fulfill its role
of revealing God to this world
right up until it is instantly
and supernaturally removed by God
at some point in the future
as the kick-off event
for the final seven years of history
just prior to the return of Christ.
In the book of Revelation
that event takes place
between the end of chapter 3
and the beginning of chapter 4.
The last time the church is ever mentioned in
Scripture
is in Revelation 3:14 where Christ speaks to
the Church at Laodicea.
From that point on,
throughout a remarkably detailed record
of the events of the final seven years,
the church is never mentioned again
because its not there.
We spent several weeks on this
in October and November of last year
and if you'd like to review those notes
you can find them on our Web site
at www.alaska.net/~lrh.
5. And just to complete the picture
and to prepare you for what we'll find
in the remainder of the book of
Revelation,
the last means by which God
communicates Himself to the world
is through what we will call
the Tribulation Communication Tool Kit.
There are a number of powerful communication
tools
contained in this tool kit.
I'll mention several of them.
a. The first is a sort of union between
the 2nd and 4th tools I mentioned earlier-
the nation of Israel and the Church.
Following the removal of the universal church
their will be a massive turning of the nation
of Israel
to Jesus Christ as their Savior and
Messiah.
From the nation will come 144,000 celibate Jewish
evangelists
preaching Christ throughout the world.
It might help if you picture
144,000 Billy Grahams
all preaching at once.
b. Another pair of tools
in the Tribulation Communication Tool Box
will be two supernaturally gifted
prophets
who will powerfully confront the
world with its rebellion against God.
We are told in Rev. 11:5-6,
Rev. 11:5 And if anyone wants to harm
them, fire flows out of their mouth and
devours their enemies; so if anyone wants
to harm them, he must be killed in this
way.
Rev. 11:6 These have the power to shut up
the sky, so that rain will not fall during
the days of their prophesying; and they
have power over the waters to turn them
into blood, and to strike the earth with
every plague, as often as they desire.
As I understand it
they don't get a lot of converts,
but they do get a lot of respect.
c. A third set of tools in the
Tribulation Communication Tool Box
involves apparently visible angels
flying in the sky
calling people to repentance
and warning them of coming judgement.
Their activities are described for us
in Rev. 14.
d. A forth part of this Tribulation Communication
Tool Box
will involve supernatural judgements
brought onto the world.
Violent earthquakes,
famine,
diseases,
changes in the sun, moon, and stars,
wild animals turning on man,
water turning to blood,
plants, animals, fish dyeing in massive
numbers.
Now I know,
when we start talking about communication
tools like this
the question comes up as to how anyone
could go through such things
and not drop to their knees before God.
But, you see,
it is not the validity of the message
or the power of the messenger
that determines our response to God.
It is our heart attitude.
There was a time in human history
not so very long ago
when people watched
as a Man brought sight to the blind,
and restored crippled limbs,
and cured every known disease,
and publicly raised corpses
that had been dead for days.
We are told in Mark 6:56 Wherever He entered
villages, or cities, or countryside, they
were laying the sick in the market places,
and imploring Him that they might just
touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many
as touched it were being cured.
And most of those who watched
turned away from Him in unbelief.
They said He was empowered by satan.
Or they chose to believe it was just a trick.
When man does not want to submit to God
he will always find some other way
to explain what's going on.
I find it fascinating that we currently
have so many movies coming out
about alian invasions.
If man takes those angels circling the glob
or those two witnesses with fire coming out
of their mouth,
and, rather than calling them messengers
from God,
declares them to be alien invaders
from another world (which they actually
are),
our world can unite to war against
them and convince themselves
they are fighting for the good of mankind.
Now, I've gone over these 5 unique phases of
God's communication to us
in order to help us get back into
the prophecy mode,
and also to help prepare us
for what will now happen
as we move into Revelation chapt. 4.
As you know,
most of the rest of this book
is John's record of a vision
he was permitted to see by God.
I've already mentioned
that the time period covered
by the bulk of the vision
was about 7 years.
That does not mean, however,
that it took 7 years
for John to receive the vision.
John really did see glimpses of future history.
But apparently this vision was given to him
a little bit like we would see a stage play
except that he was not watching actors
on a stage,
he was seeing the actual events.
He was watching a combination of an edited version
of future history,
interwoven with several visions
of both past and future events.
He then recorded it for us
just the way it was given to him.
He didn't try to explain it
or interpret it,
he just recorded it.
Now, just as we would go to a theater
to see a play,
so John was invited to God's theater.
But God's theater
was actually the throne room
of God Himself.
So here's what's going to happen:
in Revelation chapter 4
John describes the theater
in which he sees
this presentation of future events.
Then, in Revelation 5
the drama actually begins.
I want us to finish this morning
by reading John's description
of that theater.
What we're going to read here
will sound strange to us.
There is a majesty
and a pageantry to it that we are not
accustomed to.
We are accustomed to living
in a world that denies
even the existence of God.
To suddenly be plunged into
the very presence of God
and to see everything
and everyone in that presence
behaving in perfect harmony
with the true nature
and character of God
seems really weird to us.
But, as I read this
please keep in mind that WE are the weird
ones
who live our lives day after day
blinded to the incredible majesty
and glory of the Creator God.
And the time will come
when the human race will no longer
be permitted to hide
and all the world will be flooded
with the reality of what we see pictured
here in these 11 verses.
And just one other comment -
there is nothing "symbolic" in what John
has written here.
He is simply describing
creatures and settings
exactly as he saw them.
Rev. 4:1 After these things I looked, and
behold, a door standing open in heaven,
and the first voice which I had heard, like
the sound of a trumpet speaking with me,
said, "Come up here, and I will show you
what must take place after these things."
Rev. 4:2 Immediately I was in the Spirit;
and behold, a throne was standing in
heaven, and One sitting on the throne.
Rev. 4:3 And He who was sitting was like
a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance;
and there was a rainbow around the
throne, like an emerald in appearance.
Rev. 4:4 Around the throne were twenty
four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw
twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white
garments, and golden crowns on their
heads.
Rev. 4:5 Out from the throne come flashes
of lightning and sounds and peals of
thunder. And there were seven lamps of
fire burning before the throne, which are
the seven Spirits of God;
Rev. 4:6 and before the throne there was
something like a sea of glass, like crystal;
and in the center and around the throne,
four living creatures full of eyes in front
and behind.
Rev. 4:7 The first creature was like a lion,
and the second creature like a calf, and the
third creature had a face like that of a man,
and the fourth creature was like a flying
eagle.
Rev. 4:8 And the four living creatures,
each one of them having six wings, are full
of eyes around and within; and day and
night they do not cease to say, " Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty,
who was and who is and who is to come."
Rev. 4:9 And when the living creatures
give glory and honor and thanks to Him
who sits on the throne, to Him who lives
forever and ever,
Rev. 4:10 the twenty-four elders will fall
down before Him who sits on the throne,
and will worship Him who lives forever
and ever, and will cast their crowns before
the throne, saying,
Rev. 4:11 "Worthy are You, our Lord and
our God, to receive glory and honor and
power; for You created all things, and
because of Your will they existed, and were
created."