Revelation 1: The Unveiling

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, today is an exciting day for me anyway, because this is a long time coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have been so excited to teach the book of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've never done this before, but I've studied a lot over the years, and I cannot wait to dive into it together.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can go and open your Bible's Revelation if you haven't already.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna go through it today.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I'm sure you are aware, there are a lot of different beliefs about the book of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of people want to know what it means,

[SPEAKER_00]: What current events it refers to, and especially who the Antichrist is going to be?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I cannot promise you the answers to all of your questions in this series.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what I can tell you is that I think you are going to gain a fresh appreciation as we walk through this book as I have studying and preparing it for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have gained a fresh understanding of its purpose and its meaning and how relevant and practical it is for our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that through the course of this series you are going to find this

[SPEAKER_00]: not just for understanding future things or past things or behind the scenes things, but for understanding how God wants you to live today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think this book is going to be incredible for us to walk through together as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: The book has three natural sections, and so we're going to cover it in three different series with a couple of breaks along the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to take us through part of next year to get through everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: And our first section is going to be all about the introduction to Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: and the letters to the seven churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today is going to be mostly introduction, just setting up the rest of the book because there's some foundational principles that we need to make sure we all understand together before we go through the rest of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if there are people that you know who are not here today, but will be here for the rest of this series, make sure they watch this message, because they need to get this, this will be foundational for everything else we explore the rest of our time and revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now when the early churches would receive a letter like this, they would listen to it red in their place of meeting, whether they had a dedicated meeting place or a house or a courtyard or something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And their custom was something that they borrowed from the Jewish people in the synagogues.

[SPEAKER_00]: what they did is, anytime they read scripture, they would all stand up to read it and then they would sit down when it's done.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's not prescriptive, that's descriptive.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I want you to get into the mindset of a first century believer who is in church waiting to hear this letter for the very first time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to get just a little taste of what it would have been like for them to be there in that place of meeting hearing their pastor or their elder up their reading this letter from John with such anticipated anticipation wondering what is he going to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to invite you now if you're able to stand with me and we're going to read this passage.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will read it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You will listen and we're just going to make our way through the first 10 or 15 chapters or so and then I'll let you sit down.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, one chapter, one chapter.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to feel like 10, but it's one chapter at promise.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants the events that must soon take place.

[SPEAKER_00]: He sent an angel to present this revelation to his servant John, who faithfully reported everything he saw.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is his report of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: God blesses the one who reads the words of this prophecy to the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he blesses all who listen to it's message and obey what it says.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's you.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the time is near.

[SPEAKER_00]: This letter is from John to the seven churches in the province of Asia.

[SPEAKER_00]: Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come from the sevenfold spirit before his throne.

[SPEAKER_00]: And from Jesus Christ, he is the faithful witness to these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first to rise from the dead and the ruler of all the kings of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: All glory to Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding His blood for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has made us a kingdom of priests for God, His Father, all glory, and power to Him forever and ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look, He comes with the clouds of heaven and everyone will see Him, even those who pierce Him, and all the nations of the world will mourn for Him, yes, Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am the one who is who always was and who is still to come, the Almighty One.

[SPEAKER_00]: I John and your brother and your partner in suffering and in God's kingdom and in the patient endurance to which Jesus calls us, I was exiled to the island of Patmos for preaching the Word of God and for my testimony about Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the Lord's day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was worshipping in the spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet blast.

[SPEAKER_00]: It said, right in a book, everything you see.

[SPEAKER_00]: And send it to the seven churches in the cities of Ephesus, Smarna, Purgumum, Fiatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Leodicea.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I turned to see who was speaking to me, I saw seven gold lamp stands.

[SPEAKER_00]: And standing in the middle of the lamp stands was someone like the son of man.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was wearing a long robe with a gold sash across his chest, his head, and his hair will white like wool, his white, his snow, and his eyes were like flames of fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: His feet were like polished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves.

[SPEAKER_00]: He held seven stars in his right hand,

[SPEAKER_00]: and his face was like the sun in all its brilliance.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I saw him, I fell at his feet.

[SPEAKER_00]: As if I were dead, but he laid his right hand on me and said, don't be afraid.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am the first and the last.

[SPEAKER_00]: 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 right down what you have seen, both the things that are now happening and the things that will happen, 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 and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can go ahead and have a seat.

[SPEAKER_00]: Back in Bible times, after reading something like this, the speaker would also sit down.

[SPEAKER_00]: There'd be a chair that was considered the seat of authority, and he would sit down and speak from that chair.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why in university departments today, we call the head of the department the chair, because the chair was the seat of authority, where he would sit down to communicate.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if I did that, it would be kind of a boring message.

[SPEAKER_00]: I like to get around and move and walk around.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not gonna sit down.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of that is descriptive, not pre-excriptive.

[SPEAKER_00]: one of the least studied books in the Bible for a lot of people and a lot of churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one interesting thing that I discovered as I looked into the history of this, especially I really like to dig into early church history.

[SPEAKER_00]: I like to go back to the early church fathers and read what they said about things because there's so much closer to the events that happen and what's really fascinating to find out is that Revelation has always been one of the least studied books in the churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even going back to the early churches, the gospels in the epistles got way more attention and were read way more often than revelation and maybe for good reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I do think that there is one significant reason why revelation often takes a back seat to the rest of the New Testament.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is because it is confusing.

[SPEAKER_00]: it is mysterious and a lot of people just don't know what to do with it and they may have encountered other people that are very convinced they know what to do with it and have a very good idea of what everything means and a solid perspective on it that they are willing to share with you and sometimes those people can actually turn other people away because of how convinced they are of their particular point of view.

[SPEAKER_00]: We all have different ways of approaching the book of revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to help you remember some of these categories because they will be important for us to understand as we make our way through the rest of the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people see revelation like a crystal ball.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like a way to predict what's going to happen in the future.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we can just stare at it enough and look at it in the right way and try to figure out the details close enough, then maybe we can figure out, okay, what exactly is going to happen in the future?

[SPEAKER_00]: and we can decode what God has planned.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was a kid, I read all the books.

[SPEAKER_00]: I watched the movies and the videos, and I was really into the end-time's prophecy thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: My church did a thing every year where they tried to have you read through the Bible during a certain month as much as you could.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my favorite part was revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was so fascinating to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by the time I graduated high school, I had read enough of the books and washing off the movies that I thought I had revelation pretty well figured out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I knew what the different nations were going to do and how the European Union was involved and Russia and China and all these different things and had a pretty good idea of where probably the Antichrist would at least come from.

[SPEAKER_00]: And thought I had a lot of those things figured out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one day, it was shortly after we got married actually, I was watching a TV program where the husband and his wife were talking about some of the events of the end times.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I generally agreed with his interpretations.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought he was onto the right kind of ideas.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then his wife said something that really struck me.

[SPEAKER_00]: She said, you know, these things were meant by God to be hidden until the end times.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had to stop and go, maybe I'm in the wrong camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something's not right about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had to rethink some of my positions and go, okay, hold on a second.

[SPEAKER_00]: Really, if there's stuff God meant to be hidden, are we chasing this because we think God's obscured it intentionally, but we're gonna uncover it?

[SPEAKER_00]: What is going on here?

[SPEAKER_00]: And some people look at revelation like a crystal ball, like if we just stare at it long enough, we're gonna be able to figure out when is Jesus coming back, which he said no one could know, or who the Antichrist is, or what the mark of the beast is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes the predictions that people make they have to revise them every few years because it turns out to be wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember a few years ago, there's a series of books that came out made a big deal about certain things involving certain nations and certain celestial activities.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't hear anything about it anymore, because a lot of the stuff that was predicted just didn't come true.

[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like often people that make their living out of the books and the videos and the online things, regarding predictions about the future, they either make them vague enough that you can't prove them wrong or I've seen this too.

[SPEAKER_00]: When it doesn't happen the way they said it would happen,

[SPEAKER_00]: They tweaked their prophecy to say, well, it didn't happen physically like I thought it was going to, it happened spiritually behind the scenes.

[SPEAKER_00]: My prophecy was still true.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to be careful about treating revelation like a crystal ball.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was not meant for that purpose, for us to be able to predict the future.

[SPEAKER_00]: Any more than the prophecies of Daniel were meant to help the Jews predict some of the specific details about the Roman Empire.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's details about empires and future armies and militaries in there, but it wasn't supposed to give them lots of specifics about how it would happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Only looking back, can we see, oh, that's exactly what was meant there and what was referred to there.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's prophecy in Isaiah about Jesus being the nets or the shoot that comes from the tree of David.

[SPEAKER_00]: And later on, we look back at and go, oh, we think that's a reference to Nazareth and Jesus spending time in Nazareth as a boy, because the Bible tells us that that was prophesied.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's no direct prophecy about Nazareth, and so we say, okay, well, probably Nazareth got its name from Netsur, and that prophecy that Isaiah gave about the branch refers to him spending time in Nazareth.

[SPEAKER_00]: What an amazing thing that you could not figure out until after the fact.

[SPEAKER_00]: and a lot of biblical prophecy is that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not given to us as a crystal ball.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's more given to us so that we can see that God has a plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, everyone was stumped by the prophecies about the Messiah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody had it completely figured out how exactly that would turn out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that he would come as a baby and that he would basically be a poor man who would give his life and that his salvation was more spiritual than military.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have that figured out because they couldn't with the information they were given.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it was enough that when we look back at it, we can say, wow, that's amazing what God did and pray is God for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are certain truths about the future that we can count on and know and rely on and have hope in because of the book of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not meant primarily to be a crystal ball for predicting the future.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another way that people will sometimes view Revelation as a newspaper companion.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we can read with Revelation one hand and the newspaper and the other.

[SPEAKER_00]: Looking for connections to current events to see, okay, what's going on with this ruler or this conflict or this geopolitical situation, how does that tie back to biblical prophecy?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now to be clear, there may be connections direct or indirect between current events and biblical prophecy.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is true.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the problem with the newspaper companion approach is that that's not the main purpose of revelation either.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it often becomes a huge distraction.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are people throughout the generations who have made careers out of claiming links between prophecy and the USA and Russia and the European Union and the conflict in Iran.

[SPEAKER_00]: China Donald Trump, Barack Obama, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ronald Reagan, World War II, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Nero, Napoleon, throughout history, every generation has had this fascination with looking at the prophecies and revelation and looking at what's going on in current events and saying, oh, that must be what this is talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it may be, but it may not be.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we need to be careful to think of these things as theories about how God's prophecy may be working out, not settled facts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And too often, the people that the cynic and me says make a lot of money off of these things for their books and their videos present it as facts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I've had people come to me and say, this is what's happening right now around the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how it connects to the Bible and you've got to tell the church about this and I go, but do you know for certain that's exactly what God's talking about here?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because he doesn't mention any of that specifically.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a big leap to get there.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just have to be careful and understand that the main purpose of Revelation is not as a newspaper companion.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it will be far better than reading with Revelation one hand in the newspaper and the other.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's reading with Revelation one hand and the Old Testament in the other.

[SPEAKER_00]: See, Revelation is more densely packed with connections to the Old Testament than any other book in the New Testament.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are over 500 illusions to the Old Testament in Revelation in just over 400 verses.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it is loaded with connections to the Old.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the author is begging us to look backward as much as he's showing us what is forward.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so as we go through this series, we're going to look a lot at the Old Testament and the connections to Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it was not primarily given to us as a newspaper companion.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people when they see the book of Revelation, they think of it like a blueprint.

[SPEAKER_00]: Blueprints are one-to-one drawings meant to be interpreted with a rigid literalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: If this says 100 feet, it means 100 feet.

[SPEAKER_00]: If this refers to that room as a bedroom, and this room as a bathroom, then that's exactly what it means.

[SPEAKER_00]: But apocalyptic literature, like Revelation doesn't always work that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not always a literal detailed specific schematic like a blueprint would be.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you are in Revelation right now, if you can look at the end of chapter one, go ahead, look at the last verse, last couple of verses of Revelation one, and tell me, are the stars really stars?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are the stars really stars?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, what are the stars?

[SPEAKER_00]: They are the...

[SPEAKER_00]: Angels, there we go, just took enough time for you to catch up, see where it is, skim it, find the stars, they're angels.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are the lamp stands really lamp stands?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, what are the lamp stands?

[SPEAKER_00]: They're the churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so right off the back, John is communicating to us, hey, there is symbolism here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this angel is telling him, these are visual representations of other things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's no different than all of the other dreams and visions and things that God has done in the past when Joseph had his dreams about stars and about grain, it wasn't about stars and grain.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Pharaoh had his dreams about grain and cows, it represented much bigger concepts and things that were going to happen and this is the way apocalyptic literature works.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Daniel had his visions of the statue of the different materials that we covered a while ago in our series on Daniel, it didn't literally represent those materials.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were all symbolic representations of other things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we have to interpret revelation in that same way.

[SPEAKER_00]: and swords coming out of mouths.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, dragons and beasts and stars that are really angels and lamp stands that are really churches and other fantastic imagery and this is all normal for ancient apocalyptic literature.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to approach it with an understanding that there's a lot of symbolism involved here.

[SPEAKER_00]: including the numbers.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is so key.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is key throughout the entire Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of people don't understand this.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Hebrew language had less than 10,000 unique words.

[SPEAKER_00]: Less than 10,000 unique words.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if you take away the proper names, you're left with less than 7,000 unique words.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you just look at the Hebrew words in the Bible, the unique Hebrew words in the Bible without the proper names,

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, to put that into perspective, the Oxford English dictionary has 170,000 words.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have a large vocabulary at your disposal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Should you choose to learn it?

[SPEAKER_00]: But the Hebrew people did not.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so all of this old testament prophecy and the way that it then continues on into the new testament and the way they viewed this was often using words that mean more than they seem and numbers that mean more than they seem.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had to get creative with numbers, and so they didn't have a huge vocabulary, but numbers often represented something significant to them that conveyed more meaning than the number itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And numbers could be used symbolically.

[SPEAKER_00]: Seven doesn't always mean seven.

[SPEAKER_00]: A thousand doesn't always mean a thousand.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ten doesn't always mean ten.

[SPEAKER_00]: They communicate other things, other concepts.

[SPEAKER_00]: That two, a native Hebrew speaker back then, would have been somewhat obvious.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you're speaking symbolically when you use this term.

[SPEAKER_00]: We like our blueprints.

[SPEAKER_00]: We like to know specifically what is going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: So as we go through Revelation, you're gonna see numbers like 1,000 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're gonna have to wrestle with, does that mean 1,000 years?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or is that symbolic?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a representation of something?

[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna see numbers like 144,000.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we are gonna have to grapple with whether or not that is a symbolic representation to communicate a concept or whether that's actually a head count.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to have to explore those things together.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we have to recognize that Revelation is not meant to be a rigid, literal blueprint.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of symbolism there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus talked about this actually in Mark chapter 8.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: that disciples argued with each other as they often did.

[SPEAKER_00]: And all the good stories start off with them, arguing with each other, just like our family.

[SPEAKER_00]: All the good stories start off with my children, arguing with each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the disciples are arguing with each other because they didn't bring enough food.

[SPEAKER_00]: They only have a tiny bit of food.

[SPEAKER_00]: They start to argue and listen to how this story unfolds.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the disciples had forgotten to bring any food.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had only one loaf of bread with them in the boat.

[SPEAKER_00]: As they were crossing the lake, Jesus warned them, watch out, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.

[SPEAKER_00]: At this, they began to argue with each other because they hadn't brought any bread.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now think about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: All Jesus did was say, watch out for the east of the Pharisees.

[SPEAKER_00]: And do you see the connections that were happening in the disciples' mind?

[SPEAKER_00]: East, bread, hunger, why is there no food?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the path that their minds went on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is trying to make a point about the east and the sin of the Pharisees and how it spreads and it grows and you've got to be careful about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the disciples, all they could think about was, he mentioned food.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm hungry.

[SPEAKER_00]: Judas, where's the bread?

[SPEAKER_00]: They're always letting us down.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have enough food.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they started to argue about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus knew what they were saying verse 17.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he said, why are you arguing about having no bread?

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you know we're understand even yet?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are your hearts too hard to take it in?

[SPEAKER_00]: You have eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can't you see?

[SPEAKER_00]: You have ears, can't you hear?

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you remember anything at all?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then he shares with them some specific stats that are really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus had a good mind for numbers as you would expect.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's gonna make them recall some numbers here.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, hey, when I fed the 5,000 with the five loaves of bread, 5,000, five loaves of bread, how many baskets of leftovers did you pick up afterward?

[SPEAKER_00]: And they remembered, they said 12th.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I said the 4,000 with seven loaves, how many large baskets of leftovers did you pick up?

[SPEAKER_00]: Seven, they said.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you understand yet, Jesus told them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you understand what he's getting at?

[SPEAKER_00]: Over in Matthew, same story is recorded in Matthew 16, but Matthew adds this line of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, why can't you understand that I'm not talking about bread?

[SPEAKER_00]: So often, Jesus is talking about one thing, but he's meaning something else.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's trying to communicate something through symbolism.

[SPEAKER_00]: These numbers that he's asking them to recall would house significance if they were paying attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: The numbers mean things.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the Hebrew culture, one represented uniqueness.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's one got.

[SPEAKER_00]: three represented divine presence because they noticed that God often showed up with some connection to three.

[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that interesting?

[SPEAKER_00]: Four represented the earth, the four corners of the earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Five represents the five books of the Torah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Six represented humanity and imperfection.

[SPEAKER_00]: Seven represented completeness and wholeness and sometimes perfection.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think 12 represented?

[SPEAKER_00]: What are the 12 tribes of Israel?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so all these numbers have significance to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Jesus is calling to mine this story and he asked them to recite the numbers back to and their significance to this because 5,000, 5 loaves would make you think of the Torah.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a Jewish connection, a Jewish context here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the feeding of the 5,000 happened on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee.

[SPEAKER_00]: 4,000 would bring to mind the four corners of the earth and the rest of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: four as a number just brings to their mind this idea of it's beyond Israel's borders in the feeding of the 4,000 happen on the Gentile side of the Galilee on the Jewish side.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were how many baskets left over?

[SPEAKER_00]: 12 baskets left over on the Jewish side.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does that signify?

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus can provide for all of Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: All 12 tribes, the completeness of Israel, is provided for in Jesus on the Gentile side, 4,000, 4, 4 corners of the earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many baskets were left over?

[SPEAKER_00]: Seven, what is seven signify?

[SPEAKER_00]: Compliteness, wholeness, Jesus is communicating something with these numbers.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying, I can provide for all of Israel, and I can provide for the whole world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody else.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of these numbers, they mean something and so he's asking them to respond with this because he wants them to understand, hey, there is significance to what I'm doing here, if you will just pay attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not talking about bread.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we read through Revelation, we have to understand that concept.

[SPEAKER_00]: that sometimes the objects and the creatures represent other things and perhaps even the numbers represent other things.

[SPEAKER_00]: At least we have to be open that possibility that there is symbolism here that is beyond what we would naturally understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, this is why the buckets of belief are so important.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just finished the undivided series.

[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about the dogma and the doctrine and the conviction and the preference.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of our interpretive theories about what happened in Revelation need to go in the conviction or the preference buckets.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not the basis for our faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even though there was incredible truth contained in Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not meant to be a crystal ball or a newspaper companion or a blueprint for all of the specific details because most of prophecy is less about us being able to know the exact details of the plan or predict them with precision and it's more about us being able to trust in God and one day look back and realize wow God you fulfilled that in a way I never could have imagined.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've got my theories about how I think this is all going to play out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also am fairly certain that I'm wrong about some of those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't know yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: But one day, we are going to be in heaven, and we are going to get to look back at these prophecies, and we're going to be praising God and saying, wow, I never could have imagined that's how you are going to fulfill that one.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we got to be careful not to think that we've just got it figured out like a blueprint.

[SPEAKER_00]: In order to take Revelation seriously, we cannot always take it literally.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, because of these three ways of looking at Revelation,

[SPEAKER_00]: And because of people who sometimes get a little caught up in one of these modes of studying revelation, there's not a group of people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another group of people that says, wow, I don't know if I want anything to do with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if we were being honest, I'm not going to have you raise your hands, but if we were being honest, I said, how many of you haven't read revelation in the last five years?

[SPEAKER_00]: How about there'd be some hands going up?

[SPEAKER_00]: 10 years, 15 years, maybe even some hands there.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a book we spend a ton of time on, and the fourth way that some of us treat revelation is as a museum relic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put it on the shelf, stick it on her glass, let it collect some dust.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not even going to touch it because it's too confusing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's too mysterious, and I don't know if I can get on board with some of those things that other people are really, really all into when it comes to end times prophecy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes the people that focus too much over here end up driving people over here where we just don't do much with it because we don't know what to do with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not how we should approach Revelation either.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is another way that we need to talk about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: If it's not a crystal ball, if it's not a newspaper companion, if it's not a blueprint, if it's not a museum relic, then how should we think about Revelation?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna suggest to you that we need to think of Revelation like a compass.

[SPEAKER_00]: Revelation is a discipleship compass.

[SPEAKER_00]: is meant to guide us closer in our walk with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's supposed to point us to Jesus and give us some guidelines and some guardrails for how we live life in this world when Jesus is not physically with us, but he is spiritually with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we want to learn to grow closer and walk closer to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Revelation is all about helping you get close to Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even in difficult times, even in uncertain times, even with crazy things going on around the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's designed to bring you back to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the whole point of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the way we're gonna study the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Gerald Johnson wrote a great book about Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said the revelation of Jesus Christ is about Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: This book is about him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Any interpretation of the book that does not lead us to his feet is simply off the mark and I think he's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And our series on Revelation is not gonna be a dry academic study.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be an exhaustive look at all the predictions in the possible theories and connections, though we will cover some of those.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this series is mainly gonna be an intensely practical look at walking with Jesus and growing closer to Him, because this book is meant as a guide to help us grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ,

[SPEAKER_00]: in him, no matter what happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: And along the way, I want to encourage you, if you're not usually a note taker, you might want to become one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's going to be a lot of stuff that you're going to hear along the way that maybe you've never heard before.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some concepts, some ways of thinking that are some fresh perspective, you're going to want to write those things down and keep track.

[SPEAKER_00]: You may want to go out and buy a notebook just for this series, but I'm just going to tell you right now, encourage you to take notes during this series, because I think you're going to want to.

[SPEAKER_00]: For today, I want to introduce you to this letter, give you some background and some context, help you to know how to think about it to set up the rest of our time in this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get started with some context.

[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, the letter identifies its author.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is John.

[SPEAKER_00]: but there has been some debate over which John it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is this John the apostle who wrote the gospel in the epistles?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or is this a different John, perhaps some kind of a missionary that travels around and he's writing this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people have thought that.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I studied this and looked back at the sources that in the early church days write about revelation, I am pretty convinced that this is the Apostle John.

[SPEAKER_00]: The reason for that is most of the church fathers say it was the Apostle John.

[SPEAKER_00]: Only two really have a different theory that eventually kind of grew and took hold in later years, but two of the early church fathers thought maybe it wasn't the Apostle John.

[SPEAKER_00]: But their arguments in my opinion were kind of weak.

[SPEAKER_00]: For instance, the main one is,

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the language that's used in the gospel of John, some of those words don't show up in Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's quite a few words in John's gospel that are not in Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are synonyms for them, but it's not the same words and so maybe it's not the same John.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the thing is, a lot of people back then when they were writing works like this used professional writers to help them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul did it, we know Paul did it.

[SPEAKER_00]: John may have done it as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so just because there's a little different vocabulary, doesn't necessarily mean it's not the same John.

[SPEAKER_00]: But more than that, there's this guy from early church history called Iron AS.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've heard of Iron AS?

[SPEAKER_00]: Irenaeus, get this.

[SPEAKER_00]: He drew up in Smyrna.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the seven churches that revelations written to.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Irenaeus was a disciple of a man named Polycarp, who is a disciple of the Apostle John.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he's only one person removed from the Apostle John.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Iron A is was absolutely convinced that the Apostle John wrote this letter and delivered it to his church in Smurna about a hundred years prior to Iron A's writing his works.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so based on that testimony, I am fairly convinced this is the actual Apostle John the beloved disciple.

[SPEAKER_00]: The date for this is somewhere in the range of 54 to 96 AD.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are two main theories about the timeline of the writing of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: most of church history has viewed this as being a later date in the 90s.

[SPEAKER_00]: But some people have thought that maybe this was actually written earlier.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the earlier camp in the 50s, their position has more to do with needing it to be written before some of the events that happen around the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they need an earlier date for this because they

[SPEAKER_00]: the those events as being fulfilled in the book of revelation at those prophecies happening in 70 AD and around that time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Iron A. S. who I mentioned earlier did not believe in the earlier date and he probably knows better than anybody.

[SPEAKER_00]: He specifically stated it was the later date.

[SPEAKER_00]: The later campus where most people are at today most scholars somewhere in the 90s AD.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are fewer manuscripts for the book of Revelation than for the gospels and the other epistles in the New Testament.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, there are still around 330 ancient Greek manuscripts for this letter.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we have a tremendous amount of confidence in our reproduction of the book of Revelation today.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have so much source material to give you some context here.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are only about 250 surviving manuscripts for the entire collection of Plato's works.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ancient manuscripts and Plato's works, 250, just the book of Revelation 300 and 30.

[SPEAKER_00]: Herodidus, the famous historian, about 10 ancient copies of his historical works.

[SPEAKER_00]: So over 300 for Revelation is pretty good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is one of the most well-preserved ancient documents, only beaten out by the Gospels, the other epistles, and Homer's Idiot.

[SPEAKER_00]: The title of this work is actually Apocalypse's Ionu, which means the revelation of John Apocalypse or Apocalypse's translates to revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the interesting thing is a lot of people today think of Apocalypse as a very negative scary word, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: When you think of Apocalypse, when are all the end of the world and disaster and horrible things?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's Apocalypse, but that's not what the word actually means.

[SPEAKER_00]: Apocalypse means unveiling.

[SPEAKER_00]: Apocalypse means something is being revealed, hence revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like when there's a play being set up on stage and there's a curtain in front of that curtain comes away and now all of a sudden you can see everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the apocalypse.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the unveiling of what was back there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like the people in these early churches when they received this and they saw oh the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, that's how it starts off.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't think, oh the apocalypse, oh no.

[SPEAKER_00]: Faith, ooh, revealing something about Jesus, good.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to know more about what Jesus is up to.

[SPEAKER_00]: He hasn't been around for a while.

[SPEAKER_00]: He hasn't walked among us physically.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is the revelation of what Jesus is up to right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's how they would have perceived this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an unveiling of what's happening behind the scenes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is, this unveiling is not a complete and total unveiling.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like the curtain was pulled all the way across.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it was just kind of opened up a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like this blueprint that I mentioned earlier.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this blueprint, if you look at it rolled up like this, who do I test?

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I don't know who I test.

[SPEAKER_00]: You guys were doing pretty good with the props earlier, guessing that, can you tell what that's a blueprint of?

[SPEAKER_00]: What is that a blueprint of?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's a good guess.

[SPEAKER_00]: I heard ship and plane.

[SPEAKER_00]: You put those together and you get space ship.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only legitimate blue-looking blueprint I could get was of the USS Enterprise.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's Star Trek.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people have actually guessed it, just by looking at the little bit, the nerds.

[SPEAKER_00]: But.

[SPEAKER_00]: You look at that little sliver of it, and you try to figure out, okay, what's all going on, but you can't see all the detail.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the same way with the unveiling that happens in Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: The curtain gets opened up a little bit for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And from that, we are free to make all sorts of guesses about what's behind that curtain, but we can't know for certain if we're right about those guesses.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have to be honest and humble about our theories and our predictions and those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it might be fun to play a little game with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I put together some images that I want you to look at.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to pull back the curtain a little bit and I want you to guess what's in this scene, what's the action that's happening, what's the location that's involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: So go ahead and show the first one.

[SPEAKER_00]: See if you can guess just from a little bit that's shown here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what's happening here?

[SPEAKER_00]: What is that?

[SPEAKER_00]: You can shout it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just going to show you in a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, it's a zebra.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody guessed it right as it was opening up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not sure if that's coincidence or not.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the zebra was eating.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was what was taking place.

[SPEAKER_00]: NFL.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the next one.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening there?

[SPEAKER_00]: What's he doing?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell what he's doing?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, he's writing with chalk.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's my son.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's writing with chalk.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you can't tell that from just that sliver.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do another one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you can kind of tell what's here.

[SPEAKER_00]: But where is this?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell where this is from that sliver?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is Mackin' Island, somebody nailed it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: One more.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on here?

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people guessed a bus, you're right.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bus moving really fast with some motion blur in a city.

[SPEAKER_00]: The point is, if you pull back the curtain a little ways, you can make some educated guesses about things that are pretty good and you may be right, you may not be right.

[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes when the curtain opens up the rest of the way, you realize, oh, that is not exactly what I thought it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or I was generally correct with some of the details were off.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to encourage us to have that frame of mind when we're studying Revelation together.

[SPEAKER_00]: To recognize that there's truth here, and it's important, and it's valuable, but the main purpose is a discipleship compass, a guide to point us back to Jesus, and all of those theories and predictions that often dominate our conversations, and often drive some people away from the book of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are things behind the curtain that we can think about, speculate about, wonder about, and that's all good and well,

[SPEAKER_00]: and recognize that we may not be able to see everything that is behind the curtain.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the unveiling of John's letter largely shows believers back then and today, the things are not always as they see.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see the world a certain way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And John pulls back the curtain a little bit to show us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, God is doing this through him to show us.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a whole spiritual progression taking place.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you're a part of it, you're a small part of it, but you're a part of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there is this big thing happening that God is doing at work in the world right now and you need to understand there is a cosmic strategy going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just what you see every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that should change the way you live.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as we go through the letters to the churches, you're going to see them getting caught up in the day-to-day and the here and now and their calendar and their checkbook and all of those things and revelation compels us to go step back, look at the big picture, see what God is doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe that should change some of the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: We think about things and some of the things that we do, and it should especially drive us to obedience.

[SPEAKER_00]: As verse three says, God blesses the one who reads the words of this prophecy to the church and he blesses all who listen to its message and obey what it says for the time is near.

[SPEAKER_00]: The purpose of Revelation is not so you can predict the future so that you can obey the instructions that are contained in this discipleship guide for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's give some more context to this.

[SPEAKER_00]: The original audience is the seven churches of Asia

[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 4 says, this letter is from John to the seven churches in the province of Asia.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's important to understand that Asia is not referring to the big content that we think of today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Originally, Asia was this region that is now part of modern day Turkey.

[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, they started referring to the whole big content to the East as Asia.

[SPEAKER_00]: But back in John's day, Asia just meant this little region.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there are seven churches that existed in these key cities in Asia.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were other churches as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this letter was written to these seven churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that its seven churches that are chosen is significant because the number seven has meaning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember what seven means?

[SPEAKER_00]: What is seven?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's completeness, it's wholeness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the idea here is that yes, these are written to specific actual literal churches at the time who receive these letters.

[SPEAKER_00]: Iron A is confirms that with Smyrna.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they are also representative of the church as a whole.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can see yourself in these churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could look at it as different types of churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe our churches more like Ephesus or our churches more like Smyrna.

[SPEAKER_00]: More likely, especially in a church our size, we would say there are pockets of our church groups in our church that represent different churches better or worse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there are things we can learn from them because they're representative of the churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: The message takes a five-step path.

[SPEAKER_00]: We go from God to Jesus to the angel to John to the churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you can see this in verse one.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, this is a revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show His servants the events that must soon take place.

[SPEAKER_00]: He sent an angel to present this revelation to His servant John who, of course, then gave it to the churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: that Jesus Christ He died, that He rose again, that He's the ruler of everything in the world, and that He cares about you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at how John says this in verse 4.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, Grace and peace to you, from the one who is who always was and who is still to come from the sevenfold spirit before His throne.

[SPEAKER_00]: And from Jesus Christ, He is the faithful witness to these things, the first to rise from the dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the ruler of all the kings of the world,

[SPEAKER_00]: This incredible, wonderful ruler of everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's done all this great stuff, and he loves you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He loves us, and he has freed us from our sins by shedding his blood for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was not a message of doom and gloom.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was not meant to be a really confusing message that we mostly ignore.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a message of fear.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is supposed to be a message of grace and a peace that's supposed to remind us that we have a Savior that loves us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even though all these crazy things are happening and going to happen in the world,

[SPEAKER_00]: We can have stability, we can have confidence, we can have hope, we can have faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've trusted in Jesus as your savior, you can have incredible hope and faith in confidence, because of what is shared in this book of revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then John says something amazing about you.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've trusted in Jesus, he says you are priests in God's kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse six, he says he has made us a kingdom of priests.

[SPEAKER_00]: for God His Father, all glory and power to Him forever and ever I'm in.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean that we're a kingdom of priests?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first of all, it means we're in God's kingdom and that alone is pretty cool, but this is another level.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not only are you in God's kingdom, but you're not just in it, you are a priest in God's kingdom, if you've trusted in Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why is that significant for two reasons?

[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that you are priests means there is no other intermediary on earth between you and God.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to go to a priest.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to go offer sacrifices.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to go to a priest for confession.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can confess directly to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, that's what he wants from you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wants the direct connection between you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to go through any other saints.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have a direct connection.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are a priest.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have a direct connection to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And any church organization that keeps trying to put layers in between you and God is missing this significance of you being a priest.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've trusted in Jesus, you have a direct connection to God, the Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is really, really cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why Jesus tore the veil when he died on the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: He broke down that separation between God and man.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is our only intermediary and he is God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have a direct connection to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: But also being a priest means you are His representative.

[SPEAKER_00]: on this earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are His ambassador, so it is your great privilege and your responsibility to live as His priest in this world, to represent Him in this world tomorrow, whatever you're going to do, whatever is on your calendar.

[SPEAKER_00]: You go and do that as a priest of God, but you weren't thinking about that 10 seconds ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever you're doing tomorrow, when you go to the dentist, you

[SPEAKER_00]: When you go to school, when you go to work, you are embarking on that journey as a priest of the heavenly Father and of Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's really cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's also an incredible responsibility that we have.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are priests in God's kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is an amazing thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are ambassadors for God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And right here at the beginning of this letter is to set everything up for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: John just says, let me just establish some ground rules here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what Jesus says.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what He's done for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what He's done to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's your responsibility in this kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now He's going to get into all of the other things that He wants to tell them about how they are supposed to live, to walk closely with Jesus in difficult times.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is a message that we are here for, a message that we need.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a message.

[SPEAKER_00]: that I believe God is going to use to do incredible things in our church.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we are entering a season where God is going to take this book that we're going to study, and he's going to use this to transform our lives in some new ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope that he's going to use it, and I hope that he'll work through you to representatives of him in this world and bring more people into the family of faith, and more people to come to know Jesus, more people into the priesthood, into the kingdom, because of what God is going to do through this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's only one book in the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: This says, whoever reads it is blessed and whoever listens no base is going to be blessed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the book of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'd think would cover it every year.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we are going to read through and study this together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe God is going to bless through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we listen, as we obey, what it says.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to understand that it's not our crystal ball for predicting the future.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a newspaper companion as fast as it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not a blueprint that gives us every detail, but it absolutely cannot be that relic we put on the shelves.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what does that mean for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: My challenge for you is as we study this book, lean into it, take it seriously.

[SPEAKER_00]: Use it as your compass.

[SPEAKER_00]: Get yourself a notebook or something to take notes as we go along.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ask God to speak to you personally as we go through this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Read the passages before you come here on Sundays that you're already studied up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Go do a little research on your own and get ready for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then come ready to hear what God is gonna do as the church gathers corporately together to study it together and be ready for what God's gonna do here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think He's gonna do some amazing awesome things.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we will listen to Revelation and do what it says.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's all pray now and just ask God to do exactly what we're talking about, Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: What an honor it is to get to read your word, to get to talk about these things that you have intentionally shared with us, that you have preserved through the centuries so that we would be able to read them and listen and what guidance they give us for our life today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, I pray that you would prepare our hearts as a church for this study.

[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that we would be just open and ready to hear what you want to communicate to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I've been going through it this week, I'm amazed at how much practical application there is here that I haven't always seen before, haven't always heard of before, and yet it's right there waiting for us to listen and obey what it says and God, I just pray that you would give us a new incredible season of following you as a church, that we would grow closer to you through this study, that we would learn more about you, that we would have an appreciation for you and what you did for us through Jesus, that we would want to tell everybody about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: that we would represent you well in this world because we are your priest and your kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: We praise and worship you now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus name we pray, amen.