"I Am the Living One; I Was Dead, and Now Look…” | Revelation 1:9–20

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible Guys. My

name is Chris Stuffer, John Tzarba.

My name is Jeffrey Michael Forrest. There you go.

But you had a name change I did, yeah when

you were.

Yeah yeah, yeah, and that's been sealed and nobody knows.

The records are sealed.

That's how did you get that record? Yeah?

But you were adopted, which makes it really cool. By

the way, whenever you read verses about how God has

adopted us and we are joint heirrors and we are

his sons.

Yeah, yeah, I was always God's plan to adopt you

into his very own family, think and it brought him

great pleasure.

I always think, Wow, that's amazing. Like you have an

understanding of that like few do. Yeah, which is which

is very cool.

That's true. That's a cool one.

Oh, gay. So hey, today, Jeff we are going to

dive into the Book of Revelation. We have like seven

verses in the Book of Revelation, uh, where Jesus comments

They're the red letter edition, right, red letters, the red

Letters revelation. But before we dive into that, Desiree has

us doing a segment called.

Would you drive rather? Yeah?

Would I like these?

I like these?

Yeah?

And I haven't looked at these? Have you looked at him?

I didn't look at it?

Look at them?

Look at all? Good? So you want to do the

first Would you rather have a talking dog that insults

you or a cat that sings? Opera?

Oh? My goodness, it has to be the talking dog

opera all the time.

Yeah, they'd be rough, right, yep?

I mean opera is like I put it on and

I'm thinking, yep, I'm good for ten years.

Although it's funny because I think cats have the look

on their face like they're insulting you in their head

a jerk, right, dog.

Should have went the other way? Yeah, yeah, because because

because cats would naturally insult you. Right, But what would

you pick? You didn't pick one?

Oh I didn't. I would do the talking dog too, Yeah,

for sure. I think it'd be funny.

Yeah, it'd be funny, and it's yeah, it's over after

the insult.

Hey, my kids insult me all the time.

There, there you go.

It's pretty brutal at my house sarcasm is a thing.

Our whole family thinks it's funny. So you know, we

don't cross the line.

But it means tearing the flesh.

Yeah yeah, yeah, so we we we like to be

We like to poke at each other all the time.

Yeah that's great.

Yeah, so just have our dog do it too.

Like jumps of them just insult. Hey, move to the left. Yeah,

you get a hog up all the room.

Yeah exactly, all right.

Number two, Would you rather eat a weak old hamburger

or drink a glass of sour milk? Are you kidding me? Oh?

This is a tough choice. Wow, this is awful.

I am more likely to eat a week old hamburger

me too, especially it's been in the fridge.

Yeah.

It doesn't say it wasn't in the fridge.

Yeah, it doesn't say left out in the sun.

Yeah, but it does say the milk is already soured.

Oh, let me tell you something. There's there's a few

things worse than sour milk.

If I ever tell you I told you about my.

Wife is gagging listening to that.

I told you when we were in uh right on

the Tibetan border in China. And they like they make

their cheese and their tea with soured milk and it's horrible.

And so then the tea they don't use any water.

They use yak butter, y butter, so and it's it's

a soured butter. There's it's it's just it's essentially a

soured milk that they turned to butter once the milk

turned sour. And it is it's it has the consistency

of like a cream of mushroom. That's what the tea.

It looks oily too, and it feels that way, but

the whole thing has this sour Did you ever it's rough?

So I drank this.

It's one of the hardest thing I've ever heard.

Did you say?

This is it's right on the border of China and Tibet.

It's abet.

No. I have a similar experience with the tea in

India where they make it out of yak butter. Yeah.

And uh and I I am about to tell you something.

This is honest, goodness truth. I drank a little thing

of tea this big they give me, you know, because

it comes like this and it was like oily on

the top and there was a piece of yak hair

in my teeth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. I've had that. I've had

that lots of times.

It's awful, absolutely terrible memory.

So I love I love Chima Salo right, yeah, yeah, yeah,

it's really good. But anyways, go ahead, Oh it's my turn.

Would you rather turn invisible but only when no one

is looking? Or fly but only three inches off the ground?

Three inches?

Yeah, that's rough.

Three inches is rough. I would rather. Okay, So that

means that implies that if you're going to be invisible

and somebody turns around and looks at you, you become visible.

Yes, I would see.

Okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I can't choose

invisibility at all, because it's just a recipe of sort

of getting you in trouble. Right, Like what what the

purpose of invisibility?

I don't know, Yeah, right right.

Because it's stealth, and stealth is either going to be

funny or it's going to be you know, mischievous of

some kind of including like.

Listening, unless you're like in special Forces. Oh yeah, yeah,

then be invisibly pretty good. Except the problem is you're

only invisible when nobody's looking, right, So you're not stealth,

and the only practical one is three inches flying three

inches off the.

Ground, right, and and that might be fun if you're

lazy and you don't feel like walking.

Yeah, it'd be cool, kind of cool, kind of like

instead of a hoverboard, you just kind.

Of go, Yeah, you just sort of lay down.

These electric bikes everybody has.

Could you wait?

Could there riding?

Do you stand up and flying three inches off the ground?

I would imagine, because I doesn't say you can't like Superman? Yeah, yeah,

that'd be really weird. Woa a pup? That's good, all right?

Would you rather be known as the person who makes

finger guns in every photo or the person who whispers

pew pew during serious meetings?

Aren't you already the person who does the finger guns

and everything?

I don't think I've ever done a finger gun and

a photo. Have I I'm not sure I've ever done.

I don't know, but finger guns are funny. I would

say I would say pop pew, pew pu pe.

Yeah, I would do the finger guns, would you? Yeah,

because it's a serious meeting. How do you know? Because

it says serious meetings during it does say serious, I

would go ahead and choose the.

Finger I'm gonna say finger guns too, I'm gonna say

finger guns too. Yeah, serious meetings like can you imagine?

Yeah? So, uh, pastor Crisp, I need to talk to you.

My aunt died that would you rather be chased by

a giant rubber duck or a swarm of inflatable flamingos?

What a senseless question?

Yeah?

First of all, who would choose to be chased? Period? Well,

you have to know by a giant rubber duck? What's

the difference? Are they gonna catch me? What are they

gonna do to me?

It's it's a single duck or a swarm of inflatable flamingos.

Yeah, but it's a giant single duck.

Yeah? How big is giant?

Well, giant I interpret giant is like a giant home.

Smashing buildings, yes, or just a whole swarm of flatable flamingos.

Yeah, I'm going to say. I'm going to say the

giant duck because it feels like it's going to be

slow and it feels like I could outrun it.

Yeah, that's what you'd think. But even like Godzilla, his

steps are just so big, yeah that you know you'd

have to run. His steps are blocks long, and you

know you can't run blocks faster than he can take

one step, you know, because I watched the show.

Now, how do you know how fast I can run?

You can't run as fast as Godzilla can walk. I

can tell you that. So, so these are the deep

kind of conversations we have when when if anybody ever asks,

what's it like when you guys are off the air,

it's pretty much just like, this is rubber ducks and

Godzilla's okay, So which is it? Is it the rubber

duck or is it the inflatable flamingos?

All right, I tell you what. I changed my mind.

I'm going to go with inflatable flamingos because it doesn't

say that I can't have a machete.

It doesn't. It doesn't say that I'm going to take

them all down. Yeah yeah, just quick, and it might be.

Kind of fun, I mean swarming around me.

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Hey, it'll be like Sash Sword.

What's what's the game Candy Crush?

That's the game you thought of, But what's that?

What's the one where you're doing all the.

I was thinking of like Fruit Ninja or Fruit.

Injura, that'd be better. Yeah, Fruit Ninja, that's the game

Candy Crush Fruit Ninja, not Candy Crushes Fruit Ninja. Yeah.

Wow, Yeah, you just get done saying a couple episodes

that you play mobile Call of Duty sometimes.

Yeah, but I don't play any of the things where

you're smashing or cutting stuff.

Okay, But but the thing you came up.

With, I couldn't. I don't know. I knew what I

was thinking. I just couldn't get it out.

You know. Usually it's me who chooses the things that

aren't the manly things, and you make fun of me.

So I don't want to know about I don't want

to let it go. You know about Candy Crush.

I know about Candy Crush. I've never played it.

All Right, we need to get We need get go. Hey,

by the way, speaking of crushing, you know who's crushing it.

Jesus crushed it. Jesus crushed this next segment.

That's awesome. Yeah. So we're gonna read in the Book

of Revelation. Yes, and we're reading Revelation chapter one, and

actually I want to start with verse nine. If you

don't mind, I do not, is it okay? It says

I John am your brother and your partner in suffering

in a God's kingdom and in the patient endurance to

which Jesus calls us. Wow, that's a full sentence from

an old Christian. He's over one hundred years old at this.

Point, and he's banned to the island of Petmas.

Yes, and he'd already been boiled in oil and survived. Yes,

and survived. So I am John. Let me go back

and read this again now with that in mind. I John,

am your brother and your partner in suffering and in

God's kingdom and in the patient endurance to which Jesus

calls us. That's heavy. I was exiled to the island

of Patmos for preaching the word of God, and from

my testimony about Jesus. It was the Lord's Day and

I was worshiping in the spirit, and suddenly I heard

behind me a loud voice, like a trumpet blast, and

it said, write in a book everything you see and

send it to the seven churches in the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thiatyrus, Sardis, Philadelphia,

and Laodicea. When I turned to see who was speaking

to me, I saw seven golden lamp stands, and standing

in the middle of the lamp stands with someone like

the son of Man. He was wearing a long robe

with a gold sash across his chest. His head and

his hair were white like wool, as white as snow,

and his eyes were like flames of fire. His feet

were like polished bronze or find in a furnace, and

his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves. He held seven

stars in his right hand, and a sharp, two edged

sword came from his mouth, and his face was like

the sun in all its brilliance. When I saw him,

I fell at his feet as if I were dead,

But he laid his right hand on me and said,

don't be afraid. I am the first and the last.

I'm going to keep going. I am the living one.

I died, but look, I'm alive forever and ever, and

I hold the keys of death in the grave. Write

down what you've 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

on my right hand and the seven golden lampstands. The

seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and

the seven lamp stands are the seven churches. That's kind

of cool.

Yeah, and he launches into a bunch of read letters.

The whole chapter two is all Jesus.

Yep, he's just talking. He's talking to all of the churches.

Yeah. And chapter three, by the way, yeah wow, so

so yeah, there's a note in my Bible. It's the

and by the way, this is a different Bible. This

is the Transformation Study Bible by Warren Weersby.

Yeah. I love that one. That's one of my favorites.

Yes, And and it talks about it makes a note

about this, and it says the special messages each to

the seven churches are given in chapters two and three.

Some students see in these seven churches a paranorma of

the church history from Apostolic times ephesis to the Apostate

days of the twentieth century and Laos laodice Laodicea. Yeah.

That see, that's the reason why you read the scriptures,

because I mispronounced.

All of the Apostate Was it from the Apostolic times

in Ephesus to the Apostate history for days of the

twentieth century, which is he's saying it is Laodicea. Yeah, Yeah, okay, yeah, I.

Just think it's interesting how there's so much symbolism and revelation,

and how there's seven lamp stands and it represents seven churches,

and then there's a sword, a sword coming out of

his mouth. Yeah, isn't that crazy?

Yeah, of course, it's all symbolism, right right. The word

of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two.

Or that's what the bookie Hebrews says. Yeah, so it's

just that's the word of God coming out of.

His mouth and his eyes flaming fires. Yeah cool, Yeah,

it's extremely cool.

So the next time you see Jesus, yeah, it's not

a lamb getting whipped at the whipping post and nailed

to a cross.

Certainly not right.

So a lot of people, really they find a lot

of fondness in the crucifix. But the crucifix is history.

It's not the present. It's not now. It's not what

you're going to see in the future. Right, you won't

see Jesus nailed on the cross, having been humiliated and

beaten and tortured. You're gonna see this vision of Jesus

gold sash across his chest. Right, his hair is white

like wool, his eyes are like flames of fire. His

feet are like polished bronze brass and a furnace. His

voice is going to thunder like mighty ocean waves. It's

got the sword of the Word of God coming out

of his mouth. It's pretty cool. It's very powerful.

You know. I've always once I heard this, you know,

I was a young Christian. I heard this. Sometimes you

see a crucifix where Jesus is on the cross, and

then sometimes you see an empty cross, right, or just

a plain cross without Jesus on it. And it wasn't

until somebody had made a comment and said, hey, we

show we showed just a plain cross without Jesus on it,

because Jesus is no longer on the cross.

It's not on the cross right, right, he is.

Buried and rose again for our sins. That has post resurrection,

and now the cross becomes a symbol of how Jesus

paid for our sins, right. And I just always thought

that was neat, because I bet you there's a lot

of Christians out there who probably never quite think about

the difference between a crucifix or a cross that's by itself.

I think it was Carveccio, one of the painters that

were famous for light in their paintings. Back in the day,

when I was in Paris, we had a long layover.

One time, it was like ten hours or something. So

we left the airport and we went to the louver.

Oh yeah, and I wanted to go see the Mona Lisa.

And there's like a gajillion people in the Mona Lisa's

like the size of a postage stamp. It turns out

it's not that it's like this big bit. I mean,

there's like a million people trying to see it. But

wandering through the louver, I came up on this painting

I was listening to a walking tour took me there.

It was one of the painters of light and it

had this picture of the cross and Jesus on the cross,

and there was people around it, and for whatever reason,

I just stood there and got like these big tears

of one. It was a beautiful painting. And I'm not

normally super emotional about that stuff, but that painting, for

whatever reason, in that moment, just got me. It was

strikingly beautiful. It surprised me. I didn't realize I was

walking up to it and I just stood there are

big tears in my eyes for a long time, almost embarrassed,

you know, the tears of my eyes. So there's beauty

in seeing Jesus on the cross and realizing what he

did for me. Now, so I understand that painting he

had a couple of stripes and a couple drops of

blood down his face. That's not exactly how it was.

The Bible says you couldn't tell he was a man,

he had been so horrifically beaten. But in that moment,

it was the idea that Jesus was there for me

was beautiful. So I'm not against a crucifix with Jesus,

oh certainly, not not against it artistically if it's reminding

what Jesus did for you, just understand that wasn't the end, right, right,

So he's not there now, and this is who he

is now, ye, right? Is this He's going to come back.

And when you read the description of Jesus returning to

defeat you know, all the armies of the Earth and

all that kind of stuff, he's this warrior that's coming back.

It's just incredible, uh description. But I love this, uh,

this this picture of him as well.

So yeah, and and so Jesus is described as the

one who is going to defeat evil, and in Revelation

he casts uh, you know, casts the evil one into

the lake of fire. And there is there is there

is no question who's in charge, right, there's no question

who gets the victory. And uh, all the way through

the scriptures, when Jesus was on the earth, it said

that the demons trembled when they came across across Christ right, right,

and and they said, they said, please, please, please, don't

don't harm us, don't let us, let us go into

the pigs, you know. And and and in the Book

of James it says, uh, surrender, submit yourselves therefore to God.

Was this the devil? And he will flee from you? Right? Uh?

You know. The Bible also talks about uh demon possession,

which we don't often talk about, do we. We don't

talk about demon possession very often. But if but if somebody,

uh you were to come across has some sort of

a demonic possession, uh, they're cast out just by the

name of Jesus Christ. So somebody came up to me

not too long ago. Actually it was that heritage on

the hill.

Right.

So when we baptized what was that five weeks ago,

before weeks ago, something like that, and uh. And they

come up to me and they had said, Hey, we're

worried about evil presences in this house that we are

in and uh and I said, well, did you did

you pray through the house? Did you walk into each room?

And did you speak the name of Jesus Christ? And

they said no. And I said, do that, you know,

have somebody, have somebody do that, Just just proclaim the

name of Jesus Christ in every single room. And I

haven't heard back from them, but that that'll do the trick.

Yeah, if their followers of Christ, they can do it.

You don't have to have a priest. Come and do it.

That's right, that's right, Come and do it. It's anybody, because

you have the Holy Spirit in you.

That's right.

And greater is he that is in you than he

that is in the world, is what the Bible says.

Yeah.

Right, So we believe in the priesthood of the believer,

which if Peter tells us that we are a royal

nation of priests, every one of us that has the

Holy Spirit in us, right, that trusts Christ. So you

can do it. It's nice to do it together. We're

two or three. I gathered my name there I am

in the midst Jesus says, right, so it's good to

do it together. But you don't have to have some

religious leader come and do it. It's a yeah. So

there's that. At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow.

There's a really great note in the Life Application Study

Bible that says this. The son of Man occurs men

many times. The title son of Man occurs many times

in the New Testament and is used by Jesus to

refer to himself. John recognized Jesus because he had lived

and traveled with him for three years and had seen

him both as the Galilean preacher and as the glorified

son of God at the transfiguration. Right. Remember that here

Jesus appears as the mighty son of Man. His white

hair indicates his wisdom and divine nature, and that's also

mentioned in Daniel chapter seven. His bright eyes symbolize judgment

of all evil. The gold sash across his chest reveals

him as the high priest who goes into God's presence

to obtain forgiveness of sin for those who believe in him.

The Book of Revelation will challenge how you picture Jesus Christ.

What forms your impression of him? Right now? Famous paintings, movies,

Sunday school art. Do you ever picture Jesus with a

gold sash and snow white wooly hair? Do his eyes

flash fire and his feet glow like bronze? When you

imagine Jesus speaking to you? Does his voice thunder like

mighty ocean waves? Reevaluate the way you think of Jesus

as you read instead Revelation and allows powerful presence to

transform your life. Man, if you have him behind you

a lot of times, you know, our paintings of Jesus

are quite honestly, most of the paintings of Jesus. Right,

he looks like he's about to cry. He's got these long,

delicate fingers, pale white skin because he's never been out

in the sun.

Yeah, vidosa soon hair.

Yeah, yeah, flowing hair, beautiful hair, right, just very very

feminine and weak. Yeah, it's no wonder we we we

we are so full of fear all the time because

that's who we have standing behind us right right.

And you know what's so funny about that is when

some people hear that there it's guaranteed, right now, it's

guarante offended. Somebody's offended, guaranteed. And but but you have

to realize something in God's eyes. Uh, it's just a

painting made by somebody in the seventies.

Yeah, or or even before that. It's usually modeled off

off of paintings of Jesus, right, yeah, and some of

these yeah, yeah, or the the during the Enlightenment, in

the Renaissance, there's all these kind of sissy pintings of Jesus.

Yeah, we're not we're not. We're not commenting on Jesus himself, right,

We're commenting on somebody's interpretation of what they think perhaps

Jesus might have looked like. And so, yeah, you're right,

it's usually very feminine.

Right, and it certainly wasn't who Jesus was a carpenter

who only worked with his hands. If they planed aboard,

they had to plane it by hand. If they saw

it aboard, they had to saw it by hand. If

they put a hole in it, they had to drill

it by hand. They when they polished it, they had

to polish it by hand. Everything. Jesus probably have pop

eye arms, right, and then they would work outside. They

didn't build buildings big enough to be It wasn't like

he was working in a big shop indoors. He's working

outside the story. He was probably was deeply tanned. He's

probably very muscular. We know he had a beard and

all these things, and he probably wasn't you know, it

didn't look like a European with long hair. Right, So

we tend to draw Jesus the way we are living,

in the way we think in our culture, right, that's

what happens, and so that's what they did. But when

God describes Jesus man alive, there's a big differen between

this Jesus, this sword coming out of his mouth and

fire out of his eyes kind of guy. You know,

when I was in high school, my best friend Steve.

All I know is we don't know how much he

could lift because he didn't lift like that. He just

worked hard. But he laid down one time on a

machine and lifted bench pass three hundred and fifty punds

until his brother told him to stop, just kept going.

Six foot three, six foot four something like that. Just

this monster, strong guy. I saw him and his brother

pull a viight engine out of the front of their

dad's truck Ford pickup truck. Just the two of them,

they just lifted it out, right, that's how strong they were,

unbelievably strong men. So, boy, I had the sassiest mouth

in the world when Steve was with me, right, because

nobody's gonna miss it. His muscles had muscles, you know

what I mean. So you have so much more confidence

when you've got a powerful man behind you, a strong

enforcer behind you, you have so much more confidence. Times

Christians walk in a weak kind of way, a lot

of fear in their life because they've got the painting

Jesus and not the fiery eyed sword coming out of

his mouth Jesus behind him. That's what they're thinking, right,

I think you need to change your image of who

Jesus is. You have way more confidence. Greater is he

that is in you than he that is in the world.

And the first thing that he says when he speaks

in Revelation one here is don't.

Be afraid, exactly right, don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid of me, and don't be afraid of

anything else because you have me. And then he says,

I am the first in the last, you know. In

another translation, says Alpha and Omega.

It says it in verse eight, verse eight, I am

the alphaise.

So the first and the last. So you know, he

always was and always will be. So Jesus says himself,

or or the Bible says that he has no beginning

and no end. So in all of eternity past and

all of eternity future, God is, And the Bible actually says,

in the beginning, there was God, right, that's right, and

so it's just it's it's just an amazing no matter

how far you go back in time, you can go

all the way back and put a stake in in

the timeline and and and there always was God before before,

no matter how far you go back.

So and then I love the fact that he holds

the keys to sin and death, and we've been convicted

and then he's the one that sets us free. It's

pretty cool.

That's very cool. All right, welly, that's our time, and

so hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the Bible. Guys.

H