Interpreting Revelation
- Preterist approach
- Historicist approach
- Idealist approach
- Futurist approach
Introduction:
- The Premise. (Revelation 1:1-2)
- The Promise. (Revelation 1:3)
- The Person. (Revelation 1:4-6)
- The Preview. (Revelation 1:7-8)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:40-00:42
We're going to be starting our new series this week, maybe you've heard.
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Turn in your Bibles with me please to the book of Revelation.
00:47-00:55
While you're turning there, Bible students, I want to give you a little introduction to how we are approaching this book.
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Because there really have been four main approaches to interpreting Revelation.
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How do we go after this book?
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Well, there's four main approaches if you want to jot these down.
01:06-01:14
I'm giving you this for clarity's sake so you understand where I'm coming from as we move forward, okay? The first approach is called the Preterist approach.
01:15-01:34
The Preterist approach. That approach believes that everything described in the book of Revelation happened in the first century. Like, it's all been done. But there's a huge problem with that approach, is because Revelation itself says that it is prophecy, and obviously the second coming of Jesus Christ has not yet happened.
01:34-01:41
So the idea that this is all done and over, I don't see that in the text.
01:41-01:43
I just do not see that at all.
01:43-01:44
It's forthcoming.
01:45-01:48
The second view is the historicist approach.
01:48-01:52
And that view says that Revelation serves as an outline for church history.
01:53-02:01
You just sort of look at the history of the church over the last 2,000 years, and Revelation sort of covers the timeline of church history.
02:01-02:04
And I think that that view has some problems.
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But the third way people approach Revelation is the idealist approach.
02:11-02:15
And they say this, "Revelation is not really history, and it's not really prophecy.
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Revelation is just like this poem, this extended metaphor of the battle of good versus evil." That's really what Revelation is.
02:24-02:41
It's just sort of talking about how God is good, and Satan hates God and his people, when this battle sort of played out. And again, you're going to see as we go through the text, Revelation is not presented that way. The fourth approach is called the futurist approach.
02:41-02:49
The futurist approach. That view believes that chapters 6 through 22 take place in the future.
02:50-02:54
I would suggest to you also probably chapters 4 and 5, we'll talk about that.
02:55-03:27
But this view believes that, approaches Revelation rather, in a way that everything is about real people and real events that are yet to come. And this view takes God at His word, that revelation is prophecy. So if you, however long you've been here and heard sermons at Harvest Bible Chapel, I think you know the approach that we take to God's Word here. And the word that I'm going to use, you're probably going to hear me say it a lot over these next several months, is the word Straightforwardly.
03:28-03:32
That's how I read and understand and approach God's Word.
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Straightforwardly.
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Assuming that God means what He says.
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I don't believe that God gave us a puzzle book.
03:42-03:49
I don't believe God gave us some cryptic writing and said, "See if you can figure it out." I don't believe that.
03:49-03:56
I believe God wants us to know some things, so He wrote it down so we could read it and and know some things.
03:57-04:07
That's why when I read the Bible for myself, or when I teach the Bible, or any of the other guys get up here and preach the Bible, it's always straightforwardly, God means what He says.
04:08-04:13
And with that, this is also important, we allow Scripture to interpret Scripture.
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Especially in Revelation, we're going to be seeing the Old Testament being the key to unlock our understanding of the concepts of Revelation.
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Do you know the book of Revelation does not directly quote the Old Testament?
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But, out of the 404 verses in the book of Revelation, 404 verses, okay?
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278 of those verses refer to truths from the Old Testament.
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So that's how we're going after Revelation.
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We're going to be reading it verse by verse, assuming God meant what He said, seeking to understand it straightforwardly.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, as we approach your Word, we do it with reverence, God, because this is the book that you wrote.
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And I pray, Father, that your Holy Spirit would open our spiritual eyes that we can see very clearly what you wrote.
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There are some people, Father, who are in this room and some people are going to be listening to this who maybe have not ever read Revelation.
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This is going to be a huge blessing for them.
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There are some people, Father, in this room and hearing this who don't know You.
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And I pray that You would use this as a way that You bring them to repentance, that You grant repentance through Your Holy Spirit working with this Word.
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Father, just as Sam demonstrated earlier, Father, we want to see Your hand at work transforming lives.
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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
05:43-05:46
So, have you seen any good movies lately?
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Who has seen a good movie recently?
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Nobody. Awesome.
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Peter, you saw a good movie recently. Thank you.
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What did you see that was good?
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Love Finds You and Sugar Creek.
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I got to admit, I've not heard of that one.
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Well, Peter, thank you.
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Apparently, you're the only person that knows how to find decent movies because nobody else has seen a good movie.
06:07-06:09
All right. Who has ever seen a good movie?
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Okay, some of you are really harsh critics because some of you did not put your hand up.
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I've never seen a good movie.
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Calm down there, Cisco and Ebert.
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All right, how many... let's try this then, since that works so awesomely.
06:23-06:32
How many of you have seen a movie trailer, and after seeing the movie trailer you thought to yourself, "I want to see that movie"? How many of you have done that?
06:32-06:35
Okay, thank you. Should have started with that, Justin.
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I should have started with that.
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Movie trailers, let's talk about movie trailers for a second.
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I had to look this up, I didn't know this.
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Do you know why it's called a trailer?
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They used to show them at the end of movies.
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But there was a problem with that, because after the movie was over, people left.
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I'm not sticking around to watch a commercial.
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So they're like, "Well, we'll put the trailer at the beginning, so if you show up early for the movie, you've got to watch our commercial." But we've all, at times, have seen a trailer, a movie preview, and thought to yourself, "Man, I've got to see that. I've got to see that." That happened to me this past week. A trailer came out for a TV show that I love.
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The next season's coming out and the trailer came out.
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I watched it like three or four times in a row.
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I was like, "This is gonna be so cool!" Okay, well, a good trailer gives you some things.
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First of all, a good trailer gives you the premise of the movie, right?
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You want to know like, what's this movie about?
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Is it action?
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Is it comedy?
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Is it drama?
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Is it a scary movie?
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It gives you the premise.
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But a good movie trailer also promises to deliver something, doesn't it?
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It promises to deliver something.
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They say things like, "This is the feel-good movie of the year." Or, "This movie will have you on the edge of your seat." Or, "You will never look at possums the same way again." Or whatever, but they make some sort of a promise that they want you to go see the movie so they can deliver it.
08:08-08:16
So they give you a premise, they give you a promise, they give you the person, the movie, about, right? Who's the star? Who's the main character? Who is the protagonist?
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Who's the person the movie's about? And then the trailer obviously has to give you a preview of the action, or the drama, or a preview of the comedy.
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Just to give you a little taste so that you want to go see the whole thing.
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Well, this introduction to Revelation, this passage that we're looking at today verses 1 through 8, this passage is a movie trailer for the rest of Revelation.
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Okay? Everything we're looking at today is really the trailer for everything that follows, because we're going to see in these first day verses, we're going to see the premise, we're going to see the promise, we're going to see the person, and we're going to see the preview of everything that's coming over these next several months as we go through the book of Revelation. This introduction today, These verses today, reading through these and looking really closely at what is ahead in the rest of the book, these should make you want to say, "I want to absorb every single word that the Lord is going to give me from Revelation this year." So those are the elements of a good movie trailer.
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Those are certainly the elements of this teaser here.
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So write some things down here.
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Number one on your outline, let's look at the premise of what Revelation is all about.
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This is the premise.
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Let's look at the first couple of verses.
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We're going to break some things down here because there is a lot happening right out of the gate.
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All right?
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Look at the first two verses.
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"The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants the things that must soon take place.
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He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God into the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
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So right now we have the premise of Revelation.
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What is Revelation about?
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Well the word Revelation, the Greek word, apokalupsis, means uncovering or unveiling.
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And it's used a lot in the New Testament.
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But what Revelation literally means, what that word literally means, is something that was previously hidden or not seen and now it is uncovered. Like God says, "Nobody's seen this before, but now I'm going to pull the curtain back and let you see what's back here." That's what Revelation means. Right? That's why I struggle, church, I'm going to be honest with you, I don't want this to sound critical, but I struggle when I've heard other churches and pastors say, "We'll never cover Revelation. It's too controversial." I've heard pastors say, "I'll never touch Revelation. You're never going to hear me preach your Revelation." God gave us Revelation not to conceal things. He gave us Revelation to reveal some things. God wants us to know what He wrote down in Revelation. So why in In the world would we ignore that, right?
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So it's the revelation, it's the uncovering.
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What are we uncovering?
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What are we unveiling?
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Well, look at your text.
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We're going to see what the text says.
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It's the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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You see, in the Gospels, we saw the humiliated Christ.
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In the Gospels, in our church, we spent, what was it, two years going through the Gospel of Mark.
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What we saw was Jesus' majesty was veiled, but he would occasionally give glimpses of his glory, right?
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What's the most notable glimpse, obviously, is the transfiguration.
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In the transfiguration, Jesus gave three of his disciples just a peek of his glory.
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And every time Jesus performed a miracle, he was giving just a little glimpse that he's It's not just some Jewish teacher that he is glorious and awesome God.
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This is the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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God is unveiling who Jesus Christ really is.
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I want you to think about something.
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This has been going through my mind a lot this week.
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You realize the last time the world saw Jesus, where was he?
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The last time the world saw Jesus, where was he?
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He was on the cross, right?
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Yeah, Jesus appeared to hundreds of people, but he only appeared to his disciples, and to people who believed in him and followed him.
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He only appeared to believers.
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But to the world, the last time they saw Jesus Christ, he was beaten and bloody, hanging on the cross.
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In Revelation, the premise is this, the world's about to see Jesus for who he really is.
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Notice it says, "He made it known by sending his angel." This is the only book in the New Testament that's communicated by an angel.
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Angels are actually mentioned 71 times in the book of Revelation.
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So mark that.
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And who is it given to? Well it says, "To his servant John, the disciple whom Jesus loved." A couple of weeks ago we looked at John chapter 21.
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And Jesus said of John, in verse 22, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?" We saw that the rumor was circulating that, oh, Jesus said John was never gonna die.
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And John's like, no, he didn't say that.
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He said, if it's my will that he remain until I come.
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John did not live forever, but he did outlive the rest of the disciples.
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History tells us they were all killed for their faith.
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John outlived them all in order to record revelation.
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He wrote this about 95 AD.
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But even though John wasn't killed at this point for his faith, He was still suffering for his faith because when he wrote Revelation, he was exiled on the island of Patmos.
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It was basically a prison island.
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The Romans put him there for preaching the gospel.
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We're going to talk about that next week.
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It's right in the text.
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But it was during this exile that John received these series of visions that we are going to study in Revelation.
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And I gotta tell you, Revelation to me is just completely mind-blowing.
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And I've thought so much over the years, like what it must have been like for John.
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How did he receive this information?
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Was it like, did, I've thought before, did Jesus like sit John down and have like this movie theater screen where John like watched all of these events on a screen?
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That's not really the case, because you're going to see in Revelation that John is very interactive with the things that are happening.
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What was it like?
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Somehow, John was taken, he was translated through time and space to witness all of these events, the way the world is going to end.
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He witnessed these things in a way that I can't fully wrap my head around, but John gets to see what happens in heaven and what happens on the earth, and he's told what it and what how did this happen? Well believe it or not the answer is right here in verse 1. It says the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show circle the word show that word show literally means miracle or sign so when you ask yourself how was John able to see all of these things in heaven and interact with angels and look it's it says right in the first verse that this This was a miracle.
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He miraculously was able to be a part of seeing how the end of the world comes about.
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We're going to see throughout Revelation many times John's just like, "I'm just recording what I see." There are some things that John witnesses that are just so incredible that by his own admission, he's like, "I'm just doing my best to try to describe these things as I'm watching them. So here's the premise. John saw how Jesus Christ is going to return in glory and close history. Secondly, let's look at the promise.
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Let's look at the promise verse 3. Revelation has a very special promise attached to it. Look at verse 3.
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"Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near." That The word for near literally means imminent.
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Jesus could come back any moment.
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Do you realize Jesus could come back during this sermon or later this afternoon or in 20 years?
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I have no idea, but it's imminent.
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It says the time is near.
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Understand the word for time there, there's different words for time in the Greek and the word for time here isn't like the time on your watch or the dates on a calendar.
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The word time here literally is seasons.
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In other words, when John says the time is near, he's saying the next thing on God's schedule is the return of Jesus Christ.
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But here, a blessing is promised to people who will do three things.
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Did you see it?
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Three things.
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First of all, who reads aloud the words of this prophecy.
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We're not skipping a verse here, people.
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We're not going to be like, "Ah, that's controversial and some people might leave the church." Well, if that's your business.
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we're going to go through every verse.
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Why? Because there's a blessing reading this aloud.
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So not only blessed are those who read it, but blessed are those who hear.
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That means come ready to study this with me.
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And then finally, to those who keep.
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That's the only way you're going to know the power of God's Word, by the way.
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Not just Revelation, but all of God's Word.
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You've got to read it, you've got to hear it, and you've got to keep it.
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And this is a promise not from me, this is a promise from God.
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That if you want to see real supernatural life change, this year as we go through Revelation, okay, here's what you got to do. You got to read it, you got to hear it, and you need to get plugged into a small group where you can talk to people about how to apply the Word of God. You learn in deeper ways how to keep the Word of God. That's the promise attached to Revelation. Thirdly, the person. So we get the premise, we get the promise, let's talk about the person. Look down at verse 4. "John to the seven churches that are in Asia. John is not the person, by the way. He is supporting caste at best here. John to the seven churches that are in Asia, "Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before his throne." Stop right there for a second. What are the seven churches? Well, these are actually real churches. Today it's called Turkey. In John's day it was known as Asia Minor, but It's that geographical region.
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So this message was given to John to communicate to seven churches.
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And it's obvious for us that this is for all churches of all time, right?
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Kind of like the Bible has Thessalonians and Galatians and Ephesians.
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Those were written to specific churches, but they were written to us too, right?
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That's how Revelation is.
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It was written to a bunch of churches, but also to us.
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We're going to talk about those churches a lot in the coming weeks because they're mentioned in Revelation 2 and 3.
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The seven spirits.
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What are the seven spirits? Who are the seven spirits?
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Well, the seven spirits refers to the Holy Spirit.
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But what's with the seven?
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Well, seven is a number of fullness or completion.
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And Revelation is full of sevens.
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But just jot this down. You can look this up later.
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Isaiah 11.2 talks about the Holy Spirit sevenfold in character and imputation of his attributes.
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One Holy Spirit, yes, there's one God, but he's revealed himself through these seven characteristics.
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Isaiah 11.2, we'll talk about that down the road perhaps.
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But John mentions, okay, we saw he mentions God the Father here, who is and who wasn't was to come.
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He mentions the Holy Spirit here, the seven spirits.
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So who do you think he's gonna mention next?
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Any guesses?
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He mentions the Father, he mentions the Holy Spirit, who do you think's next?
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Go ahead, shout it out if you think you know.
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Jesus, very good.
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Have you read this?
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Yes.
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Look at verse five.
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Here's the person, here's the star right here.
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And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings on earth, to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
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So here's the star, Jesus Christ. And John tells us, gives us some titles for Jesus, some descriptive titles, and he also tells us some things that Jesus accomplished in relating to us. The titles, I'm going to go through these quickly. He says Jesus is the faithful witness. That word for witness in the Greek is where we get the word martyr.
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What is a martyr? It's somebody faithful to death. I will die for Jesus Christ. I will not stop short of that. That's a martyr. See Jesus Christ, His faithfulness took Him all the way to death. But He wasn't just a martyr. Because look at the next phrase, the firstborn of the dead. He's the firstborn of the dead, speaking to his resurrection. He's the greatest person to have ever resurrected because his resurrection guarantees and promises our resurrection. And I love this. It says, "And the ruler of the kings on earth." Who's in charge? Shout it out if you know. Who's in charge?
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Jesus is in charge. Spoiler alert. The world is about to acknowledge that. The world is about to acknowledge what God has already declared, and that is this.
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Jesus Christ is the ruler of everything. Okay? So whether it's President Trump, or Kim Jong-un, or Vladimir Putin, or that actress that became a princess this past year. What's her name? You know who I'm talking about. What's her name? Yeah, thank you. Megan Markle. Oh yeah, that one. Yes, that one. Guess what? Jesus rules over all of them. That's who he is. And if you think that's awesome, John mentions three things about Jesus relating to us. First of all, get this. He says to him, "Who loves us?" I don't know why Jesus would give us a thought.
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Right now, at your place, wherever you hang your hat, your home, your apartment, wherever, there's probably an ant crawling around somewhere on your property, and you wouldn't give that thing a second thought.
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Compared to Jesus Christ, we are so much less than that.
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But here's the awesome thing, He loves us.
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I don't know why Jesus would give us a thought or even tolerate us, but He loves us.
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That says nothing about who we are, but it says a lot about who Jesus is.
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Notice the second thing that Jesus has done for us.
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It says, "He has freed us from our sins by his blood." Because he loves us, he solved our biggest problem, which is sin, with the greatest cost, which is his blood, which gives us the greatest result, which is we are free.
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We are free people because of Jesus Christ.
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in the last phrase, three things about Jesus relating to us.
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He made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.
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Man, every year in July, I spend a week working on the preaching calendar for the whole year.
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It's kind of an intense week for me because basically during that week, I am pre-preparing 40 some sermons.
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So it's round the clock work, study, and for the brain cells I have that still work, and it's very taxing.
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And it requires every bit of attention and focus that I can muster.
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You know, we're about to go into Revelation this year, and I'm going through and studying the whole book and pre-preparing and where are we going and holidays and all of the...
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So it's just an intense thing to put this calendar together.
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And I'm trying so hard to focus, but the one night I was like in the zone trying to get this thing hammered out.
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And I heard a knock on the door of my office.
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And I went over and opened it up and nobody was there.
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But I heard little footprints running around the corner.
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Little footsteps rather.
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No, I didn't hear footprints, that would be weird.
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I heard footsteps running around the corner.
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And I'm like, okay, whatever.
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I went and closed the door, went and sat back down.
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And you know, I'm working this thing and I hear knocking again.
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And I get up and I go over to the door and I open the door and I hear the footsteps again.
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but this time I hear a little giggling around the corner.
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Like, this happened like five times.
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I'm like, all right, game on.
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So my officers, you know, the door has a window and there's blinds, so you can kind of like peek out and see, so I just knelt down and I waited, like a jaguar.
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And I saw the little feet come to the door and I jumped up and opened the door.
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And it was three of the little kids from the jujitsu class, just like little kids, opened the door, they froze.
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And I just stared at them for what I hoped for them felt like an eternity.
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We just locked eyes, we just stared.
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And I said, "If I give you some candy, will you stop doing that?" And they said, "Yeah!" "Awesome! Come on in." So they took some candy and they stopped doing that.
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Now they come back once a night just for the candy.
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But here's my point in that story.
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Imagine if Jesus did for us just that.
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That Jesus was like, "Look, you people are annoying "and you're rebellious and you're sinful.
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"Okay, you know what?
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"I'm going to cancel hell for you, that's it.
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"You don't have to go to, you believe in me, "you don't have to go to hell, that's it.
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"Now you leave me alone." If Jesus just did that for us, wouldn't we be eternally grateful that he canceled our wrath?
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We would be rejoicing if that was all that he did.
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But look at what he did on top of that.
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He made us a kingdom.
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He made us priests to his God and father.
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He didn't so much more than shoo us away.
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It would be like if I took those kids into, and I said, "Hey, you know what?
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"Can I adopt you guys?" And I brought them home.
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And again, like, and then the police are like, "Why'd you do that?" But it's an illustration.
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It'd be like if I said, You know, I want to care for you and take care of you, and I want to give you everything that I have.
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That's what Jesus Christ has done for us.
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He made us a kingdom so we might reign with Him.
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He made us priests unto God.
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I don't know what else to say about that.
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Revelation is going to introduce us to a lot of people, to some angelic beings, to some demons, to some nations, to some leaders, to some evangelists, and to some rebels.
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But the star of revelation unquestionably is Jesus Christ.
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This whole thing circles around Him.
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And finally, here's the preview.
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This is where John really gives the "hey, spoiler alert." The verses 7 and 8 are the preview.
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He says, "Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him.
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Even so, amen.
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I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." This is the preview.
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It says in verse 7, "He's coming on the clouds." That is a direct fulfillment to Daniel 7.13.
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Jesus talked about that Matthew 24 30 and really verse 8 is like the signature right?
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That's God's signature. I'm the Alpha and the Omega. God's like that's just a fancy way of saying I'm the beginning in the end I'm the first letter. I'm the last letter. I'm the A to Z. I want you to look at verse 7 Because he mentions two people groups. This is very significant. First of all, he says He says every I will see him, but then he breaks it down even those who pierced him even those who pierced him He's talking about the Jews and this is a direct reference to Zechariah 12 10 Zechariah 12 10 says the day is going to come When Israel will look upon?
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God whom they pierced and by the way, that was written before Jesus was on the earth doing his ministry That was written for Jesus was on the cross, but all of Israel is is going to realize it was our ancestors who put Jesus on the cross ultimately, and that's going to stir a massive revival in Israel.
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Then he references the tribes of the earth. Did you see that?
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He says, "And all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him." And that word for wail is wailing out of terror.
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That's a horrified scream.
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In other words, Revelation we will see is going to give us the culmination of salvation and condemnation.
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In other words, you're either going to experience Jesus Christ as your Savior, which means you are rescued and freed, you're adopted as a child of God, you have the promise of heaven, You have the glorious eternity of joy in the presence of God to look forward to.
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Or, you're not going to experience Jesus as a Savior.
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The alternative is experiencing Jesus as a judge.
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Standing condemned, cast out of His presence, facing the forever torment of hell, where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die.
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Because you refused to come to Jesus Christ to receive His gift of salvation.
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You refused. You thought it wasn't necessary.
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You thought you were good enough. You thought God had no place in your life.
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Revelation has a word for you.
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That's why to me, or really to everybody who's ever read it, at the same time, Revelation is the most comforting and the most terrifying book.
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at the same time.
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If you know Jesus Christ, you're going to read Revelation and see this preview of eternal heaven and His presence, and you're going to feel unsurpassed joy.
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But if you don't know Christ, and you have no intention, then these words of Revelation should terrify you.
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So, that's the preview.
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And I was thinking about this this week, you know, what if Revelation was a movie?
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What if I was going to be one of those voice actors to do the trailer for the movie?
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You know what I'm talking about?
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So we're going to give this a try. You ready?
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Okay, I'm going to try it anyways, even if you're not ready.
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Alright?
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In a world ravaged by sin and groaning in misery, one man will step forward to right every wrong, to save every child and to punish every enemy.
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Things will not remain as they are.
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Every story has an end, and this is the end of God's story.
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This man who is God is about to destroy everything, so he can restore everything.
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This is Jesus Christ, and this is his Revelation.
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Father in heaven, what a taste you've given us!
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In these few short verses, we're already driven to, I guess like the song we sang, "standing in awe of you." Father, we want to be people in this church who read aloud the words of this book, who hear them, and who keep what is written in them.
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Only by your grace, we can be saved.
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grace and your power, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Revelation 1:1-8
Why do you think many people avoid Revelation (reading it, studying it)? How does Rev 1:3 speak to that?
The Bible is clear we are saved by grace, not works (e.g., Ephesians 2:8-10). So what place does “keep(ing) what is written” have in the life of a Christ follower
Why do you think John starts this writing as he has? Why do you think he gave a recap of the ministry of Jesus (Rev 1:5-6)?
BREAKOUT
Pray for the Holy Spirit to be our teacher through Revelation this year!