The Completion of God’s Wrath: Revelation 15 - Revelation: The Apocalypse

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Great and marvelous for your work.

Here, I want you to notice something.

When we read this song, there's no mention of the exploits of the saints who've been martyred.

There's no mention of the 144,000.

There's no mention of where they preached the gospel or how they preached the gospel or the signs and wonders that came as they preached the gospel.

None of that's mentioned.

I want you to know who's mentioned here.

Great and marvelous are your work.

Lord God Almighty.

Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the Book of Revelation.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Alright, so we are in Revelation chapter 15.

Revelation 15 · chapter mention

If you were with us last week, we were in Revelation chapter 14.

Revelation 14 · chapter mention

This is on the app.

If you've got our app, you can look there.

If you don't have a Bible, there's some, sometimes in the slots in front of you.

It's a little bit inconsistent in this room where the Bibles are because some have slots and some don't.

Or you can just go to Bible Gateway and put in Revelation 15 and you can just pick that up with your phone.

But if you're not, if you're new to the church, let me just say this.

This is what we like.

We like to carry these things.

These things are called Bibles.

And a lot of churches you don't need them anymore, but in our church you do.

And uh, and so we go through the Bible, and after we finish Revelation, I'm gonna go through a series on prayer, and then after prayer, coming into the fall, we're gonna go into the book of Philippians, and I'm really pumped.

So don't you think we might need a little bit of joy after the last part of actually the last part, the last, last part of Revelation is really exciting.

We're kind of in the tough part, the three and a half years.

And so we have a vantage point in chapter 15 of how John in his vision sees what's actually happening in the heavenly realm.

So he's not on earth here.

There's an open door, and he's seeing what's happening in heaven.

Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous.

So he's seeing these signs.

This is like the third sign, and it's great and marvelous.

Let me just stop right there.

Oh man, this is gonna take a long time to get through the shortest chapter in Revelation.

He's gonna do this.

But let me just say this: everything God does is great and marvelous.

Everything God does is great and marvelous.

And everything that Satan does is bad and awful.

And so, who do you want to follow?

I'm from Georgia, I'm not real smart, but at about 18 years old, I figured it out.

I want to go with great and marvelous.

And so he sees this sign, this sign of completion, like he's not seen ever before in the book of Revelation.

Great and marvelous, seven angels.

Seven, the number seven is repeated eight times in this chapter.

This is the chapter of the completion of God in this three and a half year period.

Great and marvelous, seven angels, having the seven plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete.

Now, I want you to feel the heart of Jesus here.

He is brooding over what he has to do.

In our next message in chapter 16, we're going to look at the release of these plagues upon all of humankind, upon the earth.

And he's brooding, his heart is breaking.

He has given the earth time and time again the opportunity to repent and to change.

And God does that in our life.

He comes again and again and again.

He gives us people in our lives and circumstances and situations in our lives where we can turn from our wicked, sinful ways and come to Him.

But He never forces us.

He never forces us to change.

He never forces us to choose.

But he comes and He invites us into a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Him of intimacy, with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

And he's brooding over what he has to do now with the completion of the wrath of God.

But turn in your Bibles to 2 Peter.

Because I believe in 2 Peter, if anyone understood the love of God after making some massive mistakes, it was Peter.

And in 2 Peter chapter 3, he gives us a glimpse into the character of Christ.

2 Peter 3 · chapter mention

2 Peter 3.9.

2 Peter 3.9.

And it's talking about the day of the Lord.

It's speaking of the last days.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promises, as some count slackness.

In other words, we're slack all the time in our promises.

We tell our son or our daughter will be at the ballet, or we tell our son and daughter that we're going to take them out to breakfast, and we forget, don't we?

But God's not like that.

When God makes a promise, he always upholds his promise.

And here's what he says.

But God is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away, and with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat, both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.

Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct in godliness?

It's interesting, isn't it, that when you look at 1 and 2 Timothy, when he's talking about pastors in the church, and he's speaking of elders and deacons and pastors in the church, that the pervading word in Scripture is godliness.

Looking for men and women who are godly, looking for men and women who are godlike.

That's what godliness is.

And so as we look at the hastening of the coming of the Lord, God is not desirous that any should perish.

And his heart breaks in Revelation 15 for what he is about to do.

And I saw something like a sea of glass mingle with fire.

And those who have the victory over the beast and over his image and over his mark, which we covered last week, that this mark, this perfect, complete number for humankind is 6, 6, 6.

And we talked about this mark that will somehow be on those that follow the beast, but what we realize also is there's going to be a mark for those who follow Christ.

Look back at chapter 14.

We covered this last week, but just look at it real quick.

About the 144,000, verse 1, then I looked and behold a lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with them 144,000 having his father's name written on their foreheads.

So there's all this controversy about what does 666 mean?

What is all this idea of the mark of the beast?

And we missed the whole point that it doesn't really matter because you're not gonna get the mark of the beast.

Because you're gonna have the mark of the father.

And you will make that, and I actually believe we're gonna be raptured out of here, we won't come to that point, but if I'm wrong, you'll have the mark of the Father.

And guess what?

You have the mark of the Father now.

It's not on your forehead, it's on your heart.

And it's the seal of the Holy Spirit.

That seal of the Holy Spirit that when at the day of redemption, when you gave your heart to Christ to follow him, you were sealed by the Holy Spirit.

And you cannot lose your salvation.

Your salvation is sealed.

You say, well, what about those that, you know, they used to follow Christ and now they're doing these other things and da-da-da-da.

I leave that up to Jesus.

I'm not the judge of that.

Were they saved?

I don't know.

We don't know.

I do know this that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

And I think what that means, men and women, is that we're saved and there's an assurance that comes with our salvation, but there's also a work of holiness and godliness, and that's what Peter's talking about.

Should we not be preparing ourselves for the coming of the Lord, because it will be like a thief in the night.

And I really think it will be.

Not the elements of what we're reading here, but if you've been with us the whole time, back before, there's going to be a move of the devil and a move of the spirit simultaneous, and we're gonna we're gonna come to these days, and you're gonna wake up one morning, and you're gonna look at your app and you're gonna see the news, and it's probably gonna dawn on all of us on the same day or within the same week.

Everything's changed.

And maybe you felt that a little bit in the last few years.

Everything is changing as we hasten toward.

And it's almost like a thief in the night, but men and women, it won't be for you.

It won't be for us.

You'll remember back in 2017 we had the briefing.

In 2016 and 2017, Steve took us through a briefing.

Oh, yeah, well, I think I think we're in chapter 12 right now.

And you're gonna look at the game plan of the Lord because he's given it to us.

And so these that have the mark, they will conquer the beast.

In other words, they're not gonna bow down to the beast.

They're also not gonna bow down to this image that's gonna be erected in the temple in Jerusalem.

Something Jay was just talking about uh and referencing in the interview.

And we will conquer, we won't have the mark.

We'll have the mark of the Holy Spirit, we won't have the mark of the beast.

So three victorious statements here that are mentioned for those who are Jesus' followers.

And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.

So there's these two songs that they're gonna put together just like Marcus did today.

I said, Marcus, we gotta do how great thou art.

And then he did something to it that was remarkable.

I thought that was awesome.

And Heather, can you ever sing?

Honey, you're welcome on this stage anytime.

Your husband can rap and you can sing.

That's not bad.

But they sing this song of Moses and the servant of God and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are your works.

I want you to note something.

When we read this song, there's no mention of the exploits of the saints who've been martyred.

There's no mention of the 144,000.

There's no mention of where they preached the gospel or how they preached the gospel or the signs and wonders that they came as they preached the gospel.

None of that's mentioned.

I want you to know who's mentioned here.

Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty.

Just and true are your ways, O King of the Saints.

Anybody remember the Kevin Proshong, King of Saints?

That's what I was afraid of.

Okay.

Boy, that dates me, I guess.

Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name?

For you alone are holy.

For all nations shall come and worship before you, you, you, you, capital Y, you.

For your judgments have been manifested.

I mean, this is not testimony time.

This is not the saints uh reveling in what they did.

This is 2020 vision and focus on what God did.

He gets all the glory, he receives all the honor, he receives all the praise, he receives all the worship.

Have you taken time recently to just talk to the Lord about all that he's done in your life?

His works and his ways.

You're here.

You're here this morning.

How in the world did that happen?

Do you remember where you were 10 years ago?

Do you remember where you were 20 years ago?

Look what God's done.

You've got life.

Most of you are smiling.

Now you really are.

We better smile because he's noticing us.

But you're happy most of the time.

Because of Jesus.

Because of his work in your life.

And it's put you together with a new family.

You have a family.

You guys realize if you're a Jesus follower today, you can go anywhere on the globe and there's family.

You can get off in Morocco, you can get off in Kenya.

You can get out of your plane in Beijing.

And with a few calls and a few contacts, we could help you if you don't have any.

You'd have a place to stay.

And you know what?

When you start talking to that person, you'd be on the same wavelength as a disciple of Christ.

There'd be some language bearers, there'd be some different kinds of food that they're eating, which would be way better than ours most of the time.

I mean it's really good stuff.

And they'd love you and they just roll out the red carpet for you because you're a Jesus follower.

No other reason.

Big family.

Because of the works of God.

The mighty.

You realize what God's doing around the world today?

I mean, He this is the song for today.

He is bringing the nations together under the banner of Jesus Christ.

With Stu Orr, friend of mine, member of our church here, we've been talking about the training center, gave me this book by Timothy Keller called Making Sense of God.

By the way, Stu, just couldn't put this book down unless I just devoured it.

Anyway, I want to read.

How many of you would say that from the from the information that you've read or heard, you kind of have this indication that Christianity is kind of on the downhill side in our country?

Anyone think and that and its secularization is sort of taking over in the school system and stuff?

Not true.

Actually, the opposite is true.

Christianity is on the move, even in the intellectual arenas around our nation.

God is moving, and he gives some incredible stats in here.

Sociologists Peter Berger and Grace Davy report that, quote, most sociologists of religion now agree that the secularization thesis that religion declines as a society becomes more modern has been empirically shown to be false.

Countries such as China are becoming more religious and Christian even as they modernize.

And then he gives two reasons why.

He says this.

Why?

There's two basic reasons.

One has to do with the trends of retention and conversion.

So listen up.

Many point to the rising percentage of younger adults who classify themselves under religious categories as none, meaning they have no religion.

In the United States as evidence for the inevitable shrinkage of religion.

However, Kaufman shows that almost all of the new religiously unaffiliated come not from conservative religious groups, but from liberal ones.

Secularization, he writes, quote, mainly erodes the taken for granted, moderate faiths that trade on being mainstream and established.

Therefore, the very liberal, moderate forms of religion that most secular people think are the most likely to survive actually will not.

Conservative religious bodies, by contrast, have a very high retention rate for their children and they convert more than they lose.

I like the second one too.

The second main reason that the world will become more religious, and when he says more religious, he's writing kind of farce skeptics to read this book, and that's a term they would use.

We wouldn't use religious as much.

He'd probably use more spiritual or Christian.

Is that religious people have significantly more children?

Whereas the more irreligious and secular of the population have less.

Often happens with smaller families.

This is true across the world and holds within every national group, within every educational level, and within every economic class.

Good job, guys.

Good job.

In the United States and Europe, liberal religious bodies will continue to lose members who are swelling the numbers of the secular and unaffiliated while traditional, orthodox, evangelical faith will grow.

Like you read on, there's so much here, but let me read you this last part.

This is the non-Western world.

In the non-Western world, the growth of Christianity is stunning.

Last Sunday, there were more Christians attending church in China than there were in all of Christian Europe.

By 2020, Christianity will have grown from 11.4 million Christians in East Asia, that's China, Korea, and Japan.

In 1970, where it was 1.2% of the population, to listen to this.

So from 11.4 million to 171 million and 10.5% of the population.

In 1910, only 12 million people or 9% of Africa's population were Christian, but they will number 630 million or 49.3% of the populace by 2020.

Unbelievable.

God's on the move, folks.

God is bringing the nations together to worship him in these last days.

And it's very, very exciting.

Verse 5.

After these things I looked, and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened.

So it appears with Solomon, and it appears with, well, I should say it appears with Moses and it appears with Solomon a little bit, and also David, that God opened up in a visional form for them the temple in heaven.

That the temple that's going to be rebuilt on that area, that temple mount area, not exactly, but but adjacent to what is now the Dome of the Rock, has a heavenly vision.

It has a heavenly architect that those who built the temples of the past could see.

They saw that.

And so there's evidently a temple in heaven that's look that John sees opened up before him a copy of what we have on earth.

And out of the temple came the seven angels, having the seven plagues clothed in pure bright linen, and having their chests girded with golden bands.

And so these priests come out dressed as in their priestly garments.

Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever.

So there's these seven angels, they come out, and they're given these plagues.

Each one's different.

You can look at chapter 16, there's loathsome sores, there's the sea turning to blood, and we'll cover that later.

But they're given these bowls full of the wrath of God.

And the temple is filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power.

And no one was able to enter the temple until the seven plagues and the seven angels were completed.

So, church, God is brooding over his creation, and he's and with a broken heart.

He begins to release these plagues upon the earth in these last days.

His heart is broken.

It appears that this smoke coming forth over the temple, not dissimilar than what happened with Solomon at the dedication, that they could not enter until all things were complete.

And so there's this temple in heaven where the glory and the majesty of God, of the saints, and the seraphim and the cherubim are there before the Lord, and they're watching this thing happen.

And John is looking at this coming of these angels that are about to be released upon the earth with the wrath of God.

And it's the completion of the wrath of God.

I know that's hard.

It's kind of hard to reconcile.

You know, this almost angry God that we see in the Old Testament and this loving God of the New Testament.

What's going on here?

How do we reconcile these two aspects of God?

I don't know exactly, except that God is holy.

And we sometimes, sometimes we have a tendency to let the love of God overwhelm us to the point of not being able to understand and grasp the holiness of God.

And if you guys have been dads or moms, you maybe you get a little glimpse of it because there's times with those little guys where you just have to, you have to say, look, we can't do that anymore.

At least I hope you have as a parent.

If you haven't, then it's coming.

But, you know, sometimes we, I've always said this with our kids, and you guys have heard me say this maybe from time to time in relation to parenting, but for those kids that are running rebellious and are taking advantage of your love, then you have to come with the law.

Okay?

Those who are overwhelmed by the law, and they're kind of almost broken by the law, they need love and grace.

And so each child is different, and this is now, if you've been following us now, these 39 messages we've been through, God has, if you recall, again and again shown his love, shown his mercy, shown his grace.

In each of your lives, imagine if we could take just 20 minutes for you to just write down in a journal how many times the Lord has come to you with his love and his grace and his mercy.

You'd see just how much you've been blessed by that, but the whole globe has been affected by that.

And now the wrath is about to be released.

And we as parents have known that.

It's the wrath of God.

Don't go in there.

Do not go in there, Larry.

It's not good.

That mom's in the kitchen and she's really upset at you.

Do not go in there.

You're dead meat.

Well, this is the true wrath of God for the completion of the holiness of God upon the earth.

So it seems to us that this is our time.

This is our time on the earth to make an impact, to touch the nations of the world.

And so Daniel and Chandler are going to Rwanda.

They're headed to Rwanda.

And God's going to use them mightily in Africa, in Rwanda.

We just had Marcus and Rachel come back from Turkey, where they're with 120 missionaries in the 1040 window in this Muslim-saturated part of the world.

And we're also sending out a team and we're going to pray for them today with Victor and Elaine and all things possible.

So, Victor and Eileen and your team, anybody from the team that's here, could you guys come up?

Are you guys in here?

Victor and Eileen.

Are you in here?

Okay, there's Victor.

Come on in, Victor and Eileen.

Anyone else on the team?

Would you guys Amy?

That'd be great.

Just share how we can pray for you guys.

And you've got a mic right there, bro.

Thanks, Pastor.

And you can just come up here, bro.

If you want to come up, then see you better.

Let's go.

Hey, Pop.

Let's go.

This is Scout.

She's a service dog.

She's a multi-purpose Belgian my.

So she's a$35,000 dog that was donated to the ministry.

Uh, and she was at President Trump's estate a few months ago doing stuff.

So she, anyway, she's a new addition to our team because kids can play with her and pet her and tug on her ears over in the camps in Iraq, all the kids, but then she can sense bad intent.

So we have our recon team going out next week, and then we have our main body going.

Just to give you a short synopsis, our team house and then our resident compound is about one hour from most of where the fighting is.

We it is our intention to try to reach and help in the camps, multiple camps where kids and families have flat ISIS.

We're trying to reach 25,000 kids over the summer.

And what we do is we give them lion and lamb life packs that have, you know, first aid kit, comic book, cartoon they can color, talked about trauma, and then we also give them a lion or lamb, which is the stuffed animal, uh, that actually has very a very specific composition of music in their culture.

But we hired a PhD to work with us for a year.

It the music lowers the level of trauma, uh, anxiety, and panic in the kids' hearts, and then it has prayers in there for them too.

So there's a counter messaging against what would potentially lead them to be the next wave of extremists.

Does that make sense?

So, in doing so, we've developed lots and lots of friends in every region.

Uh I told you the last time I was there, we an advanced team that was at the front.

ISIS was dropping mortars on us with the drones.

And well, they're just nasty people, quite honestly.

They drink in the hater aid.

So we're so grateful that God has increased the capacity and the bandwidth of our ministry and that people responding to support us in what we do.

And everybody knows Amy Latham, she's now vice president of the ministry, so let's welcome her in a big way.

And and Jeff Crothers and his wife, they they recently moved from California to here to work with us, and and Jeff actually was uh and is still our number one, I had a martial arts background, but he's a like a 15-time national and world champion.

Uh I started training when he was seven years old, now he's old, which makes me really old.

But uh, we're so grateful that God is bringing people in.

The most important thing is prayer.

I mean, we say it, but one of our guys got killed or died last week over there.

Bad deal.

All the way around.

Um and we understand the risk involved and all that.

We we get that.

Um and we take every precaution we do.

And we bring in very select, solid people for security.

So we're not like just missionaries going over there saying, Bless the Lord on my soul.

You know, we're carrying AKs and body armor.

Bless the Lord on my soul.

Better still, we ain't bad people.

We call that manifestations of evil.

And when they're burning children alive, there's a reason to make them stop.

So we appreciate your prayers.

It'll be a long summer for us.

We're going in the uh uh people somebody just asked me, weren't y'all supposed to move there?

We're like, yeah.

But two things funding, and second, there's a huge shift in Americans.

We don't get in the media, but Mosul is the last major stronghold of ISIS in Iraq.

It's gonna be cleared out.

I mean it's fighting every day.

When it does, then really bad things are gonna happen.

Because the sectarianism, the tribes, the Iraqis, the Kurds, the Yazidis, all on a piece of the property of the cities.

And there's gonna be a lot of fighting, and truly that's probably gonna be one of the most dangerous times and what we need prayer for.

So we'll continue to go in and out, in and out, bring teams.

We have a again, we have a team house there, and uh, God's providing.

We just got another armored vehicle because we needed it.

Yeah, I appreciate y'all donating for that.

Because that first one's been hit 14 times.

Woo-hoo! But you know how many lives it saved.

So when we ask, hey, we need money for armored vehicles, we kind of need money for armored vehicles.

So uh our children are going on this one, our youngest, to our cabooses, and they've been studying Arabic and Kurdish, and we're excited.

And uh we just say thank you for praying and understand that we're um very uh diligent and professional in all that we do, and uh and we also got word that if anything weird starts to happen, we've got a quick response team, a QRF, anybody former military, including rotary room, to come and uh escort us with great excitement anywhere we need.

So we're advancing the gospel in what we call ISIS territory, and we really appreciate you guys' prayers.

Amen.

Awesome.

So y'all going down there, bro.

And um, could I have shepherds, stewards, would you guys come up, pastors, would you guys come up and your wives, and let's lay hands on these guys?

Would the worship team come up?

That'd be awesome.

And we are so excited.

You know, here's the deal, guys.

We are gonna see, we are gonna see people die for their faith all over the world.

And they're gonna be giving their lives for the gospel, and this is what they're gonna sing.

This is what they're gonna sing, and we just had that young man die that uh was a friend of Victor's.

Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are your ways, O King of the saints.

Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name, for you alone are holy, for all nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested.

So, Father, in the name of Jesus, we pray that over Victor and Eileen, the whole team, in the name of Jesus.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.

Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.