REVELATION SERIES - Week 2 - August 26, 2026

Welcome everybody.

My name's David Burton, and I'm going to be teaching this class along with Ian Bullock.

Ian's at a birthday bash down in Waco tonight, so he's not here tonight.

So he and I'll be trading off and we'll be working together.

So he and I talked about this study a lot, and we what we decided to do is uh we decided to to make you guys go to work, all right?

And let me say this to you uh revelation's not for the lazy, all right?

So if you're lazy, you're not gonna get that much out of it, but if you're willing to go to work, you're gonna get a ton out of it.

I am a product of revelation at this church.

I joined in 1977, and the reason that I'm here is because Dr.

Bennett was teaching revelation.

And my brother was teaching it at our church, and he got involved with Dr.

Bennett, and at that time, I don't know if you all, any of you that's got some age on, you remember there was 18 denominations and 700 people in the pastor's class at that time.

And so one thing I do know, uh, based upon my understanding of background, is people have a lot of interest in revelation, but they have a lot of seems to be either questions or anxiety or whatever it is.

And so the reason that we decided to do it this way, we felt like that there would be a lot of discussion in the class, and we wanted to have a lot of discussion, and that's how we're gonna try to set this up.

But in order to have that discussion, you guys are gonna have to do your homework.

And so let me tell you what we're using.

We are using, and this handout that you have is this is a gonna be a 29-week study on Revelation, and you're gonna get a you do the best you can to make sure you got your emails on there properly because on Friday you will get an email from Ian Bullock, and it's gonna give you a link to this site right here, which is verse by verse study.

This gentleman's name is Stephen Armstrong, and I've used him a lot for a lot of our Sunday school stuff.

He was a pastor in uh San Antonio, Texas, and that's what he's done is build a ministry just teaching verse by verse.

And uh he this is the fifth time that he taught this that we're gonna see the videos on.

He died of COVID shortly thereafter he finished the study.

Young, young man, really, his late 50s.

So um I have been through, and I don't know, you know, show of hands, how many have not been through a formal study of Revelation?

So probably half of you have not been through a formal study of Revelation, and so um, and so um I've probably been through eight or ten different studies of Revelation, and this is the best one that I've been through.

And I think if you will be willing to put in just a little time, these videos that you're gonna get are gonna be about an hour uh a piece.

So you're gonna get a video and you're also gonna get the notes.

So when we come back here on Wednesday night, we're gonna be doing more or less an overview with slides.

We'll be doing an overview of of what what you learned the week before.

So we're gonna go through an overview of the lesson that you saw, and then we're gonna have a lot of Q ⁇ A.

And I think that's gonna help a lot of people for what you've been going through.

So, you know, hey, just since we're we're kind of getting to know each other, like I said, I want this to be it, it's a lot of people for having just open discussion, but we're gonna do our best to you know to make this be as open as we can and give you guys as much room to be able to ask.

So just just you know, by anybody, what is your biggest your biggest either your biggest concern about learning revelation or or going through a study or your biggest uh desire of what you'd like to learn?

Anybody?

What's anybody got anything on their mind or saying this is what's a burning question for me?

Or yeah?

I don't have a burning question, but my experience is a lot of people think revelation is hard and difficult, but it's not.

Like you said, if you follow the stream, it's not really that difficult and that hard.

Well, I'm not gonna look off.

Yeah, here's the one thing.

Look, here's what I'm gonna tell you.

Revelation is designed for those who understand the Bible, the Old Testament.

If you do not understand the Old Testament, and that's why so many people get into Revelation and they don't understand it, because they don't have a good understanding of the Bible.

And what the what Revelation is, it takes all of the pieces of the puzzle that's been given out through the Old Testament and it puts them right together.

And what you're gonna get in a lot of this study from Stephen Armstrong, he's gonna use the Old Testament and bring this all together so that you can understand.

Because a lot of people just start reading Revelation, studying it, and they tried to make heads or tails out of it just by reading Revelation, and that's not how you're gonna understand it.

And so I've got, you know, look, I'm not I'm I'm gonna leave this.

I'm not calling myself an expert on this by no means, but I've spent thousands of hours of of trying to do my best to understand this, and what I have found is over the last five years, my understanding has increased exponentially by understanding the Old Testament and what it has to say.

Because what you'll find is like W.

A.

Chriswell said, the Bible is basically the scarlet red thread of Jesus through the whole Bible.

And that's what it is, and so this is this is the completed work of Christ.

So anyway, you have this.

If you got any questions so far, you understand what we're gonna do.

If you do not get your name on the email, then you're gonna get behind the curve.

Everybody has got to have that thing signed tonight, alright?

Any any questions so far?

Now look, all I'm gonna do tonight is I'm just gonna set things up because you're gonna get the lessons.

So I'm gonna what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna take ten basic questions that pretty much should be answered by the when you start any book of the Bible.

We're just gonna go through this and we're gonna talk a little bit and get some background.

And here's one other thing I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you guys.

It's so easy when we get in these Q ⁇ A's in our class, but what I want you guys to do is stay on Q ⁇ A on the on the study of the week.

Don't get too far ahead of us, because I can tell you that your question's probably gonna get answered.

And if you'll stay with if we don't get too far out of bounds, it's gonna help us a lot.

All right?

So we're just gonna kind of go through ten questions right here, and then I'm gonna kind of lead us in this and we'll talk, and then if we've got time, which I don't know whether we will for Q ⁇ A, we'll see.

So start off very simply.

What's the what's the title of the book?

Pretty much everybody.

Yeah, and what does that mean?

What revelation means is revelation is the apocalypsis.

And what that means is, is that is the unveiling of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show to him his bondservants the things which must soon take place, and he sent and communicated by his angel to his bondservant John.

Now this is very interesting because it's pretty much in the first verse tells you what's going on.

What does it say?

And this is one of the points you made.

It's not the veiling, and that's what a lot of people think when they talk about Revelation.

They say, Well, this is too difficult, I can't understand it.

Well, that's not what the scripture says.

It says it's the unveiling.

Read that verse in in uh in Daniel.

Daniel 12, 4.

But thou, O Gen thou shut up the words and seal the book, even to the time of the end.

Many shall run to and fro, and now it shall be increased.

So Daniel, what I say, Daniel and Revelation are bookends.

Daniel is the is the ABCs of prophecy, and Revelation is the XYZs of prophecy.

They go together.

Interestingly enough, Daniel has been given these different revelations through the whole book, a lot of different ones, and what happens is at the end of this, God says, Hey, I want you to seal up the book.

I want you to seal it up.

Now we get to this point when we see John, and he's telling us to open it up, unveil it.

And so I am going to tell you, I agree, that if you we if you get in and stay with this study, you're gonna find revelation is gonna be a whole lot simpler than what you thought.

And it's gonna make a whole lot of sense.

But if you get on tangents and start running off, you will get all over the board.

So this book, and some of y'all in your in your Bible, it'll say the revelation, I don't know if you've looked at the revelation of John, which is which that's it's not the revelation of John, it's the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And revelation is all about Jesus Christ.

And one of the things that we're gonna do is look, one of the one of the the main things of of teaching is, and and we're gonna try to best or do our best to do this, when plain sense of the text makes common sense, make no other sense.

All right?

And what a lot of people do is they start running off in all kinds of tangents, and we're not gonna do that.

Look, we're gonna use the scripture, and that's all we're gonna use.

We're not gonna get off on a lot of stuff.

You know, Henry Morse was at this church.

You remember he's back here in the 80s, and he he wrote a book on the Genesis record, and he wrote a book on the Revelation record.

And so he says, at the very least, it would be confusing to John's first century readers as well as to later generations for him to write so much about Babylon when he really meant Rome.

Paul was not afraid to speak directly against Rome in his writings, so why should John be?

Or the false church?

All the apostles, including John, wrote plainly and scathingly about false teachers and false doctrines in the church and would not hide their teachings by symbols.

It must be stressed that revelation means unveiling, not veiling.

In the absence of any statement of the text, the contrary, therefore, we must assume that the term Babylon applies to the real city of Babylon.

All right?

And people try to get off on all kinds of stuff, and we're gonna just we're gonna state.

Now, this is very interesting to me.

Martin Luther, who we know is one of the great men of our faith, he said, I'd miss more than one thing in this book, and this makes me hold it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.

I think of it almost as I do of the fourth book of Estris, which was not a not a book of the canon, and can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.

It is just the same as if we did not have it, and there are many far better books for us to keep.

Finally, let everyone think of it, Revelation, as its own spirit gives him to.

My spirit cannot fit itself into this book.

There is one sufficient reason for me not to think highly of it.

Christ is not taught or known in it, but to teach Christ is the thing which an apostle is bound, above all else, to do as he says in Acts 1, you shall be my witnesses.

Therefore, I stick to the books which give me Christ, clearly and purely.

Now, this is interesting when if you read the first verse, it says it's exactly about Jesus.

So I don't know how Martin Luther would came up with them, but one of the things that you have to, what we get into is we have a lot of people that follow people, follow iPods, you know, uh podcast, and they get off following somebody and they get away from what the scripture says.

And it's interestingly enough, Calvin, who my brother, when he died, wielded me all of John Calvin's uh commentaries, every one of them.

And the one book that he would not make a commentary on was Revelation.

So interestingly enough, this book is so filled with Jesus, I don't know where these guys come up with this, but these are guys that are masterpieces of our faith.

And yet, some of this stuff is pretty interesting.

So uh the book is the revelation of Jesus Christ, and it's it is revelation, not revelations.

Daniel was revelations.

This is revelation.

John got this all in one sitting, and I want you to think, and so he gets this all in one setting.

So it's not the revelation of John's, it's the unveiling phase of Christ's redemptive program in a single vision.

He got this all in one shot.

And so, you know, there's been it's amazing in our time frame, everybody tries to figure out how to tear something down, and they try to say, well, John didn't write it because it just doesn't go along with the writings of his other books.

Well, if you are John and you got shook out of your core with an angel that comes to you and says, I want you to write all this down.

And look, if you can imagine this, the way that I try to imagine it in my mind, this was the first IMAX theater that ever happened.

Because John gets a shot here of the IMAX.

It's sight and sound all around him.

And the difference is if you were told all this in one shot and just to told what you saw, you might, some of the things you see for 21st century might be kind of hard to explain.

So we do have a lot of things that get into where we have symbols and things like that.

But look, we'll we're gonna take care of all it.

It's not gonna be hard.

And interestingly enough, this is this is what I think is really interesting, is again, a lot of our church fanners will tell you, hey, it's no big deal, prophecy.

We don't need to be worried about prophecy, that we need to be in the here and now.

But look what the scripture says in Revelation 19, 10.

Then I fell at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, Do not do that.

I am a fellow servant of yours, and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus, worship God.

For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

And so people want to tell you, now look, your Bible is almost one-third prophetic.

I don't know if you realize that or not.

And so a lot of people say, well, we don't need to worry about getting into what's coming and all that stuff.

We just need to stay right here in the here and now and all that.

I don't understand why God would want us to not study prophecy if one third of it was prophecy.

And we've had about half of the prophecies that have been made have already been fulfilled, and we have about half of them that haven't been.

So uh I think that's important for us to study the full word.

And the one thing that that I want to be as a person here is that we teach the full counsel of God, not teach part of it, and the church has done a poor job.

Why we have so many factions going on about what's coming and what's happening is because we haven't, the church has not taught revelation.

And we got a lot of crazy stuff going on in this town, what pastors believe, and I'll tell you this one of the things that happened, the best thing this church ever did, in my opinion, is when we had a group of 12 men, and and Wayne was on that group, that put together a document that said what we teach.

And let me tell you what that did for us.

When we went out and I was on the pulpit committee, we had two guys that I absolutely loved, and I think a lot of the guys on the committee love.

But what happened is we gave them that document and said, if you you read this document, if you don't agree with this document, we want to know what you don't agree with.

And we had two guys that I really liked that came back and said, I agree with all the document except for this.

And we had to make a decision, public committee.

We're gonna go by what we said, or we're gonna go by with lagging these guys.

And we said, hey, this is what we said we're gonna teach, this is what we believe, and those guys were dismissed because of what we teach.

So that's real important to understand doctrine.

And so we're gonna get into a lot of this good stuff.

Now, look, as I said earlier, Daniel, he had revelations.

But John have a revelation.

And so I've already answered this.

Who wrote the book?

You know, John, interesting, John the apostle was probably a late teenager when he was a disciple.

Now, he is in his 80s right now.

Think about this, and he didn't even start writing any of his works, the the first, second, third, John, and the Gospel of John and Revelation till he was, till he was in like his 60s, I think, Dave.

I think that's about right.

He wrote his first books in in the 50s.

So they'll tell you, interestingly enough, when people tell you, hey, you're too old to be doing anything.

Here's John who does his best writing when he gets to be an older gentleman.

So John, and it says five different times in Revelation that he is the writer.

He's mentioned in Revelation 1.1, verse 4, verse 9, chapter 21, 2, 22, and 8.

So John the apostle, and you know, I want you to think about where John was, because John, he's the last disciple standing.

He's kind of what you'd call at that time, he was a rock star because everybody looked at him.

Here's a man who's been with Jesus, and he has uh been a true follower.

And so, John, the writer, and so here the next question is is where was it written?

And John, Revelation 1 9 says, I, John, your brother and a fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and prayer perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of the God and the testimony of Jesus.

Now, I'm supposed to have two different pieces that show us where Patmos is, but I'm not seeing them come up here.

They're, I think they're, yeah, they've kind of gone off that screen.

I don't know why.

But Patmos is about 60 miles southwest of Ephesus.

And John, and this is something that I want to talk about that's going to be real important tonight because one of the things I want to talk to you about is going to take care of a lot of uh of uh misrepresentation or misunderstanding.

Here's Eusebius, he's an ecclesiastical history man of the day, and he says, and they even indicated the time accurately, relating that in the fifth year of Domitian, Flavia Domitilia, who was the niece of Flavius Clemens, one of the many councils at Rome, had at that time was banished with many others to the island of Pontia as testimony to Christ.

And then after that, Tertullian said, where the apostle John was first plunged unhurt into boiling oil and thence remitted to his island exile.

Now, it in church history John was basically boiled in oil and he didn't die.

And the reason that he was boiled in oil because he was uh he was out preaching that the kingdom of God was coming at hand.

And uh you don't tell the emperor that someone else is coming to set up a kingdom, and he didn't like that.

And so he tried to kill him, tried to boil him in oil, that didn't happen.

So what he did with him, he banished him to Patmos.

Patmos was a penal colony, and I think my understanding was they basically they uh they mined for salt on that island.

Anything else you wanted to add to that?

Copper and copper and salt, and it was a miserable, miserable existence.

Yes.

Well, anyway, he it wasn't here, he's an old man and he's on this island.

And so Domitian was at that time the emperor, and this is going to be real important when we get into this time frame.

So uh the time frame, this is gonna be something that I want to spend a little bit of time in right now.

Is that well, let's first go to this and we'll get to the time frame.

And you'll see this if you have your Bibles, Revelation 1.70, he's saying, Write in the book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, and to Thyatirus, Artist, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

So John is seeing this vision, as I said, he's in this, seeing he's in this IMAX theater, seeing all this, and he's been told, I want you to write down everything that you see, and I want to send it to these seven churches that are in Asia Minor, in Turkey.

And so he's writing this letter to them, and so he is getting, he is seeing this, and here it is right here.

You can see where Patmos is, down in this corner down here.

Here's here's Ephesus up here.

And so John, and I've been I've been to Ephesus.

John was a pastor at Ephesus for a long time before Paul ever got there.

And um I've been there to Ephesus, and uh matter of fact, if if you're g going into Ephesus before you before you get there, uh there's a there's a house back up on a plateau, and that was where Mary lived, John's mother and and Paul, and I mean uh uh Jesus' mother, and and John was taking care of her up there.

So I thought that was pretty.

Pretty interesting.

But anyway, uh that's Turkey, right?

Today that's in Turkey today.

Yeah.

And so those seven churches were hurting.

They were having a lot of problems.

And John is right putting this letter together to build them up.

And he's also taking inventory.

And I'll give you guys a handout that I've done on the seven uh seven different themes of Revelation.

And so he tells in Revelation 1 1 9 that he's on this island of Patmos.

Now this is this is a part I said I want to spend a little bit of time right here when it was written, because this is going to take care of a lot of the issues that we're having today in our churches.

So Domitian was the emperor at this time, and I gave you a couple of couple of points there about how it kind of coincided with him going to a penal colony and how he was he was put away.

This is really important right here because what happened is we have a lot of things that get diluted down as time goes on.

If you take the first 400 years of history, there really wasn't any question when this book was written.

But once you get past 400 AD, the fifth century, everything changed.

A lot of the church historians then started changing the date of when this was written.

So this is very important.

So uh and but this this historian, Irenaeus, an important historian to know, he is the second in line to John.

John had a disciple, his name was Polycarp.

He was one that wrote down many manuscripts that we have today, even in England, in the in the in the museums there that I've seen.

But his disciple was Irenaeus.

So just two people down, and he says, but it but if it had been necessary to announce his name plainly at the present time, it would have been spoken by him who saw the apocalypse, which is Revelation, for it was not seen long ago, but almost in our own time at the end of the reign of Domitian.

There's a lot of teaching today that is taking their teaching based upon Revelation written in the 60s, all right, during the time of Nebro.

And so we have good evidence that it was written in 95 A.D.

And so, and the there's a two other reasons why I'll tell you that I believe that that's true.

Now, uh the Ephesians, the book of Ephesians was written in uh like 60, 62 A.D.

Alright?

But if you read Ephesians and you understand how that book is written, it is sounds the church sounds totally different in Revelation 2 when it talks about Ephesus than it does in the book of Ephesians.

Now that's one reason why I would tell you that that that Revelation was not written in the 60s.

See what is talked about now from a lot of different people, and you're seeing a uh all millennialism, which means no millennium, and which means everything's already happened, and that's a that's a teaching called preterism.

We'll get into that when we get to the time.

Preterism teaches that everything that happened in Revelation happened before 70 by 70 AD.

And what preterism means is that when Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, everything in Revelation had already happened.

That's what preterism is.

And what happens in our church today, a lot of people follow certain, what I would call giants.

Arcis Pro is one of the giants.

I mean, he has some of the best teaching of holiness that I've ever heard, but he was a preterist, and he has a ton of people that follow him.

And what happens is if we don't go by the study of the Bible and understand it all the way through, and you start following a person, you start getting into problems.

So that's one of the things we want to make sure we stay into scripture and not follow what some theologians said.

And I mean, I could never debate R.

C.

Sprohl at all, but I can tell you from studying what I see about history, he's off on this one.

All right.

And so you have, believe it or not, in a lot of the churches today, in a lot, a lot more churches than you'd realize, are going along with this teaching of preterism.

And so basically, Revelation's already happened, so why do we need to even study it?

And that's what you get into.

So this date that I'm telling you of 95 AD is very important because that debunks everything that's been said that Revelation was written before 70 AD.

It's very important for you to know that.

And the other thing is the Church of Laodicea, which we're going to talk about, had an earthquake in the 60s that actually destroyed it.

And so when you get to Revelation 3, when we're talking about the churches, it talks about how rich it was.

Well, it wouldn't have been rich if it was destroyed by earthquake in the 60s already, just by 70 AD.

So again, that tells me that the time frame makes a lot more sense than uh than the 70 AD that a lot of people are trying to tell you today.

Now the next question is is how is the book organized?

Now look, Revelation is a really, as far as the outline is about as easy as any book that you're going to get into.

Revelation 119.

Somebody look up that one, we'll we'll we'll read it.

But it's going to tell you the outline.

The outline is in Revelation 119.

Who wants to read that?

Alright.

119.

Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are and the things which shall be hereafter.

Alright, so it the the outline for Revelation is very simple.

He told John, I want you to write down the things which you've seen, and then I want you to write down the things that are, and then I want you to write down the things after this.

So Revelation 1, when we get into, you're going to actually go through a third of Revelation next week, because we'll go through Revelation 1.

You'll go through the things that you've seen.

And then Revelation 2 and 3 will be the things that are.

And then after that, we'll get into the things that are to come afterwards.

So right here it is again.

And the thing, just kind of going back over this a little bit, write down the things which you have seen, and that's John writing down the things that he has seen about Christ.

And we're going to get the best description of Jesus in the Bible in Revelation 1, as well as you get it also in Daniel 7.

And then the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things, which is the Greek word metatau.

And the reason I give you that word, you're going to see where that comes up two or three times.

So seeing chapter 1, things are, chapters 2 and 3, and then after these things, chapters 4 through 20, 22.

And you see that I told you, one is the things we've seen, two and three the things that are.

And you see this again, Revelation 4.1.

Why we know that this is after these things?

That's what it says in Revelation 4.1.

After these things, Meta Tau Tao, I looked, and behold the door standing open heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things, which it says it again, Metao Tao.

So, how was the book delivered?

Alright, Revelation 1.1 and 11, and then 2.1.

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his bondservants the things which must soon take place, and he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant John.

In verse 11, it says, Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, Smyrna, to Pergamon, Thyartira, to Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, to the angel of the church of Ephesus.

So John is taking, he's writing down what he's seen, and he's to write all this down, and then he's to put it in a book and send it to these churches.

So he wants these churches to be encouraged, and he wants these churches to understand about the coming kingdom that's at hand.

So this is interesting, almost kind of would explain this like you some of you people have some age like me in here.

You know, y'all ever play the phone game?

You know how it goes from one, you you know, it goes one person gets in, and then it goes to the next person, it goes, and then at the end you go, what what would that it doesn't normally come out the same?

Well, I can tell you this comes out, they're playing the phone game.

It goes down seven, seven layers, but it comes out exactly what God had intended it to.

So the communications was from the Father to Christ the Son to an angel to John to a book to a reader or a preacher, we'll get into that, to a listener or the seven churches.

So, now next is what is the book about?

And right here, Christ's ultimate victory over evil provides comfort to Christians of all ages as well as a stimulus for holy living, because when God fulfills his covenants with Israel, grasp that.

When God fulfills his covenants with Israel, he will gain victory over evil as well as punish it.

And so I want to get into that a little bit more here in a minute as well.

So look, this is this is something that if you don't understand this, because what is going on in our society today is one of the biggest heresies that I've ever seen.

And it's called replacement theology.

And you're seeing the devil have a heyday of what's going on right now.

Because if you take, and I and I I may jump ahead of myself right here, but I want to I want you to grasp this.

If you do, if you are not going to believe that God's going to finish the work that he started with Israel, then how can you actually believe that God's going to keep you saved?

Huh?

I want you to think about that.

If I can't, if I can't plan on Jesus to take care of what he's promised me and not take care of the promises that he did with Israel, I'm standing on pretty shaky ground.

Okay?

And we're going to get into this.

When we get done with this, I think you'll have a good understanding of this, and there won't be a lot of question.

But look, it's this is very important.

So look, if you will read, and this is another little side homework assignment, go home and read Genesis 15.

Alright?

You go home and read Genesis 15 about God putting uh Abraham to sleep just like he did, just like he did Adam, and he makes a covenant with him that's one-sided.

And why I say that is he puts John into it, I mean he puts Abraham in a deep sleep.

Abraham has nothing to do with it, and he tells him these promises of what he's gonna do.

And so you have all these replacement theology people that want to go through the covenants that God made is if you do this, I'll do this.

If you do this, I'll do this.

And they want to take Deuteronomy and just take it all out and say, hey, they didn't follow God, he's just replaced them.

They crucified Christ, they didn't accept him then.

He's replaced them.

Well, look, you're not reading the you're not reading the whole scripture.

You want you, if you're gonna, you gotta read the whole scripture to understand this, is God is gonna finish his work.

And look, there's two reasons why I say that we're in the last of the last days.

Two reasons in my mind, what I've come to.

Number one is somebody's trying to call me right now on my iPad.

And I can tell you, it's somebody that wants to loan me$385,000 right now.

Because I get five calls a day.

It's either that or they're gonna help me with my tax burning.

So uh took me off track.

What was I saying?

Abrahamic covenant, I was talking about the Abrahamic covenant, uh, but I had a I had a thought past that.

I don't know where it was, but anyway.

You said two things that you could think of.

Okay, two things why I believe that we're at the end of the end days.

Number one is is anti-Semitism is as high as it's ever been and getting worse.

And let me tell you something, it's just like Germany.

If they're it's just like those church leaders that said that they ain't coming after me, well, it was too late when they started coming after them because the two people that, if you are keeping up with current events, the world is coming after the Jews and they're coming after Christians.

And look, anti-Semitism will tell you, you know, one of the things that just kind of blows my mind, all these replacement theology people, they they don't even consider what's going on in Israel, the country that's the size of a postage stamp, the size of New Jersey, controls the news every day.

That ought to tell you something.

You know, and and I do a lot I do a lot of study about Israel, but there's almost as many people, there's there's more people finally Jews in Israel than there are in the United States, which is a milestone.

And so we're now seeing that the people are coming back.

And when I went in 08, we were seeing people that you talk to them, they felt like they were being called to come back.

And what's gonna happen is in order, and God is calling them back.

What we're seeing right now, first we're seeing the physical calling of Israel back, and we're getting ready to see the spiritual, which we'll that comes in in Revelation.

So right now, God is physically calling them back to the land.

And what's gonna get them there?

What's gonna get Jews to want to come back to Israel?

When they feel safer in Israel than they feel in other places, they're gonna start, and they're that's what's happening.

And so, yes.

I say, man, damn he's running taking them out of New York right now.

Well, it it's it it's it we're gonna see more of this, and you're gonna see more and more people return to the land, and that is, again, prophetic in what the scripture says.

So that would tell me something's going on that we are getting near the end of the end.

And the other thing that I'll tell you why I believe we're at the end of the end is AI.

You put those two things together, and that tells me that everything is being set up for what revelation is is is all this is coming together.

So we look, I I gave you a little handout about why we study prophecy, and I don't have time to get into that today.

You can take that and look at that.

It's just something I put together.

But look, we need to be studying prophecy.

I don't know about you guys, but when I study it, I get more comfort when I understand.

You know, the thing that where we get we get all anxious when we don't know what's going on and we don't understand things.

Revelation is there to give us comfort.

A lot of people say, man, I have a bunch of people telling me, man, that's scary.

Well, if you'd study it, it wouldn't be scary, especially if you're a Christian.

Hey, get that to give us Titus 2.13.

213?

Yeah, 2.13.

Thank you for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.

We are supposed to be looking for the great coming and appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That should give us unbelievable hope.

So this uh evidence of Abrahamic covenant, I told you if you go back and read Genesis 15, you'll see how one-sided that is.

And the lack of stated conditions for Israel's obedience, it's also stated there, the covenant's eternality, that there was no time decay on that covenant.

God said, This is the covenant I'm making, and that's what is going to happen.

And so there's no time step on it.

And I want to I tell you what, someone get a who there got their Bible up here and has got a good voice, I want you, let's see if I've got it.

I may oh I've got it up here.

I'll I'll I want you to to hear this.

So, and you know, if you're also, we've been through a study of Genesis and look what's gone on.

What the land that God promised Abraham, and you know, the Israelites only took over about a tenth of that land.

What he's promised, this not happened at all.

So I got to think, if it hasn't happened yet, then it's gonna happen in the future.

And so we're looking for God to fulfill the land that He's told them that He's gonna give them.

Uh I don't I don't have time to go through that.

So I want to read this to you because this is just a ver this is a verses, and and the pastor, we talked about this when we were uh earlier on a study on Israel, but I want you to just to list this, this is really, I think, uh hits at home for me.

Thus saith the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and he a fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that it way that its waves roar.

The Lord of hosts is his name.

If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before me forever.

Thus says the Lord, if the heavens above me can be measured and the foundation of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off the offspring of Israel for all that they have done, declares the Lord.

In context, basically says, hey, if the stars fall out of the sky, the sun and the moon are gone, then I'm done with Israel.

So that's what I say.

If you want to be done with Israel, that's what's going to have to happen.

And so I think that's pretty straightforward in my mind.

Now, this is one of the themes that I have, one of the main themes of Revelation.

Now, I told you that the tonight what I would tell you, the theme of tonight is it's all about Jesus.

Revelation's all about Jesus.

And I I'll give you the handout because I like to do it with Dr.

Bennett.

So I have the themes for Revelation, and they all start with a letter C, because you know, Dr.

Bennett used to give us stuff, and they'd all start with certain letters.

And the first one is coronation of the king.

But that's one of the themes of Revelation is the coronation of Jesus becoming the rightful king he's supposed to be.

But look, if you just think about this, if you read the book of Revelation, you're going to find how Israel is all through Revelation.

Revelation 7 talks about the 144,000 Jews.

Revelation 11, we have the two Jewish witnesses.

Revelation 12, we have Israel that flees.

Revelation 29, the Jerusalem in the kingdom.

Revelation 21, 12, 13, the gates of the eternal city.

If you're going to tell me that Israel's not in the middle of this and has an incredible place, you're missing Revelation totally.

And that's why so many people, we have a lot of people in this church that believe in replacement theology.

Alright?

It's just, it's just it's just came in through time.

It's so much has been left out of our seminaries, and it's just been sad.

And that's why we've got a mess that we've got.

And we have all these things happen around us, and nobody seems to have their true spiritual antennas up to understand what's going on.

And if you don't have that right, you're not going to get revelation.

Period.

You've got to be a student of the Old Testament and understand how Israel is a prime part of revelation.

So, why was the book written?

Here's the purpose: to comfort the oppressed churches of Asia Minor and stimulate them to practical holiness through a future reminder of God's conquest and punishment of evil.

So God, I like, you know, I like that bumper sticker that said Jesus is coming again, and this time he's mad.

Well, he came as a lamb, but this time he's coming as a line.

And and uh so what makes the book different?

It's unique characteristics.

It's a blessing to hearers and heeders, and that's one of the things.

You know, one of the things that's really cool about Revelation, if you read one three, it said there's a blessing for just reading it and heeding it.

It doesn't, it doesn't say you gotta you gotta understand it all.

It says you gotta read it and heed it.

And so one of the things that I hope you would expect out of this is you're gonna get an incredible blessing out of it.

Because you're gonna be being able to read it and listen to to the to the uh to the lessons and be able to get all the handouts.

Look, we're and that's what I wanted to be able to do because so many people have so many questions.

And I originally just thought we'd just look at the videos and have 10 or 15 minutes for questions, and I think you would have gotten it would have been good.

But I think this is gonna be a lot better, but you've got to go to work a little bit.

So you'll get this, you'll get a you'll get a uh email with the link to watch the one hour video, and if you don't have much time, just put it up at 1.25 on there and go a little bit faster.

It's still okay, you can do that.

I do that.

But if you'll listen to the video, and look, I'm gonna tell you, Stephen is such a systematic teacher, you'll find he's very easy to listen to.

So uh, so not only is there a blessing for reading it, but there's also a curse.

For adding to and taking away from it.

And that's why we better, and that's why look, when I stand up here, I mean I'm kind of shaking in my boots.

You got that right, because we don't want to take anything away from this, or we don't want to add anything to it.

There's curses for it.

So I think that's really important.

So one of the things you're going to see, and we're going to talk about, is uh, I don't know if you all have ever done a study on Gematry with study of numbers.

You're going to see these numbers come up over and over, which are going to have some meaning for those, and we'll get into those things.

But we see this beautiful description of the Lamb of Jesus, but we also now see the line of Judah.

We're going to see the lion.

And it's it's and we're going to we're going to see a lot of symbols, visions, and imagery, but I'm going to tell you, if you'll just we'll just stay with the text and let it speak, because half the time, if you just go a few verses ahead, you'll find out it it'll tell you exactly what it is.

And what you don't know is we'll be able a lot of times, most of the time, we can go right back to the Old Testament and we'll find out what those mean.

So, and what as I was saying earlier, one of the things that I've really come to understand a lot more is, you know, this book is an unveiling, but I think God wants to explain it to the people that really are interested in his word.

That's why the Old Testament is such a big deal.

And there's all of these crumbs, these little pieces, little pieces of puzzle through the Old Testament.

And what happens in Revelation, they're kind of chronologically brought together and organized.

You know, it's kind of like a puzzle.

My wife loves puzzles, and I hate puzzles.

She loves puzzles.

And I mean, she gets those 5,000-piece puzzles.

And I look at those things, and I mean it drives me nuts.

But me and she'll work and work and work for one little piece.

And you know, for long she's got that thing put together.

I'm going, I don't know how you did that.

That's impressive.

But that's kind of how it is when we're the study of Revelation, is we have got to spend time in the Old Testament taking those pieces and bringing all those pieces together.

And if you're a studier of the word, you're going to find that those pieces come beautifully together in Revelation.

That's what you're going to find.

And one of the things, too, there is not one direct uh reference to a scripture in Revelation, but there's almost 300, what I would say, uh, of descriptions of the Old Testament when you're in Revelation.

You'll find all of these, he calls them here, these uh uh allusions or you know, but the material comes all together from the from Revelation, from the Old Testament.

So um now Revelation is gonna be a study of seven years.

We call that the tribulation time frame.

And then we're gonna get the study of what I love to get into is the end of it.

I love to I love to imagine.

I don't know how much time you guys spend.

I don't think we spend enough time just imagining what heaven's gonna be like about this inheritance that we have that Paul talks about.

We have, and I want to get to preaching, but guys, we are we have an inheritance.

We are fellow heirs with Jesus Christ.

Can you grasp that?

I can't, but I want to.

We're fellow heirs of the creator of the universe, and we're gonna get to see this in Revelation, uh, just some little snippets of what God has for us.

And I want us to try to grasp all those we can because what we have coming is just, you know, I tell our class all the time we're gonna get these Lamborghini bodies, is what I tell them.

To kind of get them kind of hyped up a little bit.

But we are going to have these incredible, and we get to see some of that.

You know, another thing, and just going backwards, it's interesting to me that here we have this new Jerusalem that's gonna have 12 different columns on it, that each one of those has the names of the 12 tribes of Israel, and you're gonna tell me that Israel has nothing to do in the end?

Come on.

Just read the text, guys.

Huh?

So we're gonna this is this is really gonna be a fun study.

I love Revelation.

I love the study, I love to talk about it.

I don't know it yet, but I'm learning it, and I'm gonna continue to to stay in it.

But one of the things that I too I think I've come to understand is as we get closer to the end, you know, the word's got everything in it.

It's all there, but sometimes it takes time for us to get illumination to really understand it, right?

And so I think what's happened as we're getting closer to the end, God's given us a lot more illumination of what's happening.

And if you'll keep your spiritual antennas up, not listen to all the junk news, but listen to what's going on.

You know, look, I love to study about Israel.

You know one reason why?

Because the capital of this world, my capital as a Christian is Jerusalem.

So I want to know what's going on over there.

Because that is going to be the capital, our capital.

As a Christian, that's my spot.

I can't wait.

You know, here we have in Revelation 11, 15.

Then the seventh angel sounded, and there was a loud voice in heaven saying, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.

We pray the Lord's Prayer, Thy kingdom come.

That's what Revelation is about, his coming kingdom.

That's what we pray to come, and that's what we're learning about his kingdom that is to come.

And we get to see that through studying of what's going to bring that all in.

That's what we get to study.

So, just going through these ten things, answering the ten questions.

What's the title?

The Revelation of Jesus Christ.

Who wrote it?

John.

Where was it written from?

Pat Most.

To whom was it written?

The seven churches.

When was it written?

AD 95.

How is it organized?

Three-part outline.

Which we said, the things which we've seen, the things that are, and the things that are are coming after that.

Why was it written?

For encouragement and holiness.

And what's it about?

Jesus' final victory.

The coronation of the King in his rightful place.

And what makes the book different is the Old Testament relationship between the Old Testament and Revelation.

Alright?

So uh anybody got any questions for just the basics that we talked about?

I don't want us to get off way ahead of ourselves.

Yeah.

He talked about replacement theology, but you can you tell us a little bit about what replaces Israel in their in their context?

Well, in replacement theology, what we we are in a time frame.

We're we're basically in two time frames of history.

We're in the church age, the change, the time of grace.

Now I am a dispensationalist, and I'm an unapologetic dispensationalist.

We are in a time frame that's a parentheses between the 483 years of judgment and this time, the seven years that's coming.

The seven years that's not been fulfilled yet.

Now, what replacement theology believes is that the church has replaced Israel because they were the ones that denied him.

Now, let me someone look up uh Matthew uh 23, 37.

Let's read that real quick.

That in and look, there's there's there's some scriptures that'll try to take you off on that if you you listen to that stuff.

But there is so much.

If you read, if you'll read uh Romans 9 through 11, and and we'll get another verse here since we got a couple minutes, someone else get get uh Romans 11, 25, and 26.

I have Matthew 22, 37.

23.

23, 23, 37.

All right.

This is Jesus speaking.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee.

How often have I gathered my children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not.

So Jesus is saying, read the next verse after that.

Behold, your house is left until you're desolate.

Okay.

Okay.

Back 37.

What he's what he says is, is look, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

How I wanted, he is looking down, he knows he's going to die for us on the cross.

He's speaking right here before he goes.

He's saying, Look, Jerusalem, I wanted to protect you.

He's talking to the Jewish people, and he said, You wouldn't listen, you wouldn't have it.

But he said, You are not going to see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

That would tell you that the Jews are going to be there again because they're going to say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

They're going to be saying that.

They're going to say that the every now let's let's get 25 and I'll make a comment.

Who's got the Romans 11, 25, and 26?

Okay, go ahead.

I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited.

Israel has experienced a pardoning in part until the full number of the Gentiles have come in.

And so all Israel will be saved as it is written.

The deliverer will come from Zion.

He will turn godlessness away from Jacob.

Now that is only going to happen in Revelation.

Two-thirds of the Jews are going to be killed.

One third is going to be left, and that last third are all going to be saved.

Every one of them.

Just as that scripture says.

Now you're going to tell me again, replacement theology.

The church has in no means replaced what God has for the Jewish people.

He's not left them out.

And that's what the church is trying to say.

And not only that, and look, here's the sad thing.

I can take the liberals, you know, being against Israel, what's going on, but what's going on?

We have the conservative people.

We have the churches.

There is a lot of churches that are standing with Gaza and thinking that Israel's the one causing the problems.

Now, if you listen to a bunch of podcasts and listen, and I'll just say it like it is, well, better be careful what I'm saying on this thing right here.

Because I'm being recorded.

I better be careful.

But there's a lot of popular people on the conservative side that people listen to that are teaching heresy to people.

Flat out.

I'm just telling you.

So look, we got to be careful who we're listening to and what's going on.

We've got to stay in the word.

We don't stay in the word.

Look, you'll you'll be what I've told and what I've preached on, we're living in two times, two, two days.

We're in days of deception.

These are days of deception, but they're also days of hope.

And we have to understand who the deceiver is, because I'm telling you, Satan is working very powerfully in the church today to deceive people about what is going on.

And that's one of the reasons we want to teach Revelation so that we can teach the truth and teach what the Scripture has to say and try to help people get their spiritual antennas up and listen to what God's got to say.

Can I assure you it's going to happen exactly like He said it was going to?

And exactly the time that He said it was going to happen.

And look, I want to be prepared for that time.

I don't want to be, you know, say, man, I wished I'd have studied this more.

I wish I'd have thought about this.

You know, I want to be on what Christ is doing.

And look, I can tell you one thing.

We got a working God.

He is working.

And He is, and He's still working.

You, you know, people in the United States say, oh, you know, not much going on.

I can tell you, in this world, God is working.

We're having a harvest all over the world.

And look, I I still think that there's so much.

And we need to be out.

You know, Revelation was written for the Christian.

But yet, if we can get people and basically scare the hell out of them because of this of this book, then that's that's great.

But this this this book is primarily written for the church to be a comfort for us and to understand that Jesus is going to finish his work and do exactly what he said he was going to do.

Okay, our time's up.

Thank you guys.

I'm looking forward to this.

Yeah.

Look, before you leave, make sure, make sure that you have signed this sheet and put your phone number because if we can't read your email, then we're going to call you because we can't read it.

And we want to send this out to you on Friday.

And uh so you need to get you need to get the email, and I'm going to ask you if you want to really get the most out of this study, you will watch the video and you'll get you'll look at the notes.

Because then we can get in here and talk and have a lot more time for QA without getting off on what we've already been studying, okay?

Does that make sense?

Everybody good?

All right.