Session 10 – John’s vision in chapters 4-7 of Revelation; Mark Lanier, 03/04/2024

Revelation 10
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[00:00:00] If you read the newspaper, which some young people in here may not know what are, um There's one out in California right outside Sacramento called The Fresno Bee. There was a write-up this week in The Fresno Bee that a Christian group is luring students with free pizza at lunch, Clovis parents say.

Clovis being a high school there. Uh, that is Clovis High School. And if you pull the article up, some C- Clovis parents say that a Christian group is trying to indoctrinate their children during lunchtime. They've lured [00:01:00] them to pray and talk about Jesus by being offered free pizza. By the way, I hope you got your donuts this morning

If you keep reading the article, it says, "I feel that they're doing wrong," one parent with a student at Clovis East High School told the Fresno Bee. "They're basically luring in kids who are under 18, that are still trying to find themselves, and are still trying to explore." To which my wife, when reading this, said, "Well, duh."

We're trying to show them who they are. Three parents with children attending Rayburn Intermediate and Clovis East High School said their children were offered free pizza to go to the lecture hall in groups of three to five during their lunch period. Upon arrival, parents said a representative from [00:02:00] Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Coach-

Coach runs FCA out here. After praying and, uh, meets with the students. After praying and hearing about Christianity, the parents said the students got free pizza in yellow boxes.

Now, FCA is famous for doing things like, uh, having events, and here's one event. This picture was in the article to try to let people know they talk about Jesus on the cross. "The FCA," the article continued, "is an international Christian organization focused on empowering coaches and athletes to know and grow in Christ and lead others to do the same, according to its Central California chapter's website.

The organization asks students to c-- uh, conform to, affirm, and embrace [00:03:00] its sexual purity statement," according to federal court files, 'cause someone sued to try and keep FCA out. The appropriate re-- By the way, the Ninth Circuit of California said, "Sorry, they're allowed in," which a lot of people think the Ninth Circuit's kinda like a wingnut circuit that doesn't tend to do that.

But, "The appropriate place for sexually..." This is what the FCA teaches. "The appropriate prace- place for sexual expression is in the context of a marriage relationship, according to the Bible. The biblical description of marriage is one man and one woman in a lifelong commitment. The FCA's desire is to encourage individuals to trust in Jesus and turn away from any impure lifestyle."

So the article says that this, this is why the parents are upset that this is being taught. There it is, Clovis Uni- Unified School District, where their spokesperson, Kelly Avance, said the FCA can meet with students during school hours through its [00:04:00] affiliated student-led club on campus. There are forty-plus student clubs, including the Fishing Club, the Gay Straight Alliance, the SEEK Clubs.

FCA's operating in accordance with the district's students clubs policies. However, that's not kept the parents satisfied. Another parent who has a student at Wa- Rayburn Intermediate said their child learned about the free pizza at the lecture hall through the morning's school-wide announcements. The parent said the child recalled an adult, not a student, leading an opening prayer and talking about acce-- this is at the FCA meeting, talking about accepting God, repenting of their sins, and the relationship between Jesus and athletes.

This parent also said their child wasn't allowed to use their phone during the session. They're using pizza as a way to get the children in.[00:05:00]

Welcome to America We've got here visiting from, from Israel class favorite and friend Hal Voroning. And, uh, Hal has led a number of our people in this class in, in trips, uh, uh, in the Holy Lands, uh, especially in Egypt. And, uh, here he is with his wife Miriam, who's not with him on this trip, but Hal is down here.

And, uh, Hal runs the Jerusalem Center for Bible Translators, and he teaches people, and his group teaches people the languages in a very graphic way that, that ties it to geography so that they can translate the Bible into languages that still do not have one. There are a number of languages among African tribes and other people around the world still don't have a Bible in their language.

And for decades, [00:06:00] plural, Hal and his troupe have been training people up, and it's a marvelous program. And I had-- Becky and I had a chance to visit with Hal and Mike Riddle yesterday morning, and Hal said something along the lines of... He had it a little better than I did, but something along the lines of, "The world doesn't like the idea that God's on the throne and not us."

The root of FCA, the root of this class, the root of this book is a statement of reality that says there is a divine God who sits upon a throne, and we do not sit on that throne. Amen. And the divine God has the chance to explain to us His creation, how and how we should live, how and where and what and all the rest.[00:07:00]

He's on the throne. He is God. He is King. As Pastor Jarrett said this morning in his sermon, the whole idea of Him being King of kings makes us kingdom citizens who live under His rule But the world doesn't like that because the world wants to be on their own throne where we make our choices, where we decide what's right and wrong, where we decide what we want to do and what we don't want to do.

And those are in stark contrast. And I tell you that because it's relevant in what we're looking at today in Revelation. Got a simple agenda today. The problem is there's too much in it to get it done in one class. We're just gonna do the best we can. But we've gotta talk about Revelation in context, and I haven't done it in a while, but you're gonna catch just three minutes of it.

Then we're gonna talk about reading Revelation in time, and then we're gonna look at Revelation 4 through [00:08:00] 7 as a corporate whole. So let's start with Revelation in context. Now, Revelation is a type of literature that we've talked about extensively called apocalyptic literature. There's a whole genre, a whole group of literature within ancient Judaism that predated Jesus by hundreds of years and postdates Jesus as well.

There's also Christian apocalyptic literature that's written aside from the Book of Revelation, but Jewish apocalyptic literature is, is Biblical-era literature, and there's a host of it, and I've given you a sample of it before, but there's tons more than this: the Ascension of Isaiah, Baruch, First Enoch, Fourth Ezra, Second Enoch, Second Ezra, a host of materials out of the Dead Sea Scrolls, [00:09:00] the Apocalypse of Abraham, tons more.

But I'll tell you what you can do. You can put those on a wheel, and you can spin them. You just land arbitrarily upon any one of them, First Enoch. And all of them are gonna have certain traits that make us call them apocalyptic literature. And I've put this slide up here before, but those traits include symbolism, and I'm telling you this now because the passage we're looking at in Revelation today, and we're gonna look closer at Daniel today, they have all of these ap- um, uh, of these, um, traits.

Symbolism, a peculiar use of numbers where the numbers mean something beyond simply mathematic quantity, where they have a symbolic meaning as well, uh, an understanding. There are [00:10:00] visions and dreams that are wrapped up in this. There is a coming cataclysm there that, that's part of an age to come. It's not just an age to come, but it's, it's part of a cataclysm when it comes.

And we also read about angels and demons and the work that they're doing So within the realm then of Jewish apocalyptic, you've got all of this. That's the type of literature. But when we're reading Revelation in context, we also need to read it with the time of the literature. What's going on in the church at the time?

And at the time Revelation is written, the church is under intense persecution. I've put here The, the bronze brazier that had been developed as a torture, uh, uh, tool by the Greeks, but that church history teaches was [00:11:00] being used against at least one of the martyrs in the actual churches of the seven that received revelation.

And we talked about it when we hit the letter where that martyr is remembered. But w-- this was a metal bull with a chamber in it, and they would take someone and put them in the chamber and lock the chamber shut. Then they'd start a fire underneath it and roast that poor person alive. They'd put women and children in there.

And they had developed the piping so that when you yell, it sounds like the bull is bellowing as you're screaming, as you're being roasted alive. And they channeled the smoke so that as you're being roasted, the smoke would come out the nose of the [00:12:00] bull. This is a time where the church is being martyred for their faith The, this is tribulation beyond understanding by most people today

So we also wanna make sure when we read it in context that we remember the themes of the book, because when we start focusing in very narrow on this vignette or that vignette or this story or that story or this symbol or that symbol, we don't wanna lose track of overarching themes. The two that I keep coming back to is this book is written to comfort the church in its struggle against the forces of evil.

What the church is suffering at the time this book is produced and, and, and, [00:13:00] and the recipient direct churches that are receiving this, what they're enduring is really, really, really tough. And this book is written to... this vision and, and apocalypse is, is given to them to give them comfort. Beyond that, it's also written with an overarching theme, Jesus wins over the dragon, Satan, and all of his minions.

And so if we look at this in context and remember the type of literature, the time of the literature, and the themes of Revelation, we'll go a long way toward getting to the next point of today, and that's how we read this book in time I gave you this slide last week. No, two weeks ago. Thank you, Pastor David, for teaching for me last week.

Um, I gave you this slide two weeks ago and said we would revisit it in more [00:14:00] depth. Here was the slide. Some people read Revelation as if it's on a timeline. By the way

I am saved by the blood of Jesus. By resting my faith and trust in Him, He has transformed me. His Spirit dwells within me and is changing me into a better person, and I eagerly await His return and my eternity with Him. Many of you are in the same position I'm in. I read Revelation differently than maybe 90% of you out there, but that's okay with me because you're saved anyway.

This...

If, if, if you're, you're... If I read [00:15:00] this differently than you do, well, let's just see if iron can sharpen iron, okay? But this is-- We're not in a-- This is not-- Noth-nothing I'm talking about right here do you have to see eye to eye with me on to be in the palm of God's holy hand, okay? There are people who read this in a timeline, and they're good, godly, holy, smart, intelligent, wonderful people.

I'm just not one of them I don't read Revelation where you got the time of writing in chapter one, and then you get to the end of chapter 22, and everything fits in chronological order on a timeline I read Revelation in what's called a parallel reading or a vignette reading, I'll call it. I haven't seen anybody else use that term, but I think it's an appropriate term.

The parallel [00:16:00] reading is one that goes back to the earliest church of readings and with some of the earliest church scholars. But vignette reading means there's a vision, and it stretches from early to late. Then there's another vision that stretches from early to late. Then there's another vision that stretches from early to late.

And actually, there are seven of them in Revelation. Revelation could be divided into seven vignettes, and each vignette, I believe, stretches from the time of writing to the end of days. It's a different way to read it. It's reading Revelation the way we read Daniel. Daniel is Old Testament Jewish apocalyptic.[00:17:00]

It's Jewish apocalyptic literature with all of those traits I was talking about found in the Old Testament. It is one of the paradigms of understanding Jewish apocalyptic, and I dare say we let the Bible teach us how to read the Bible. Hal and I were talking yesterday about how important it is. Hal says, "I don't think you can be a New Testament scholar worth your weight in salt unless you're an Old Testament scholar first."

Amen. Hear, hear. That was Hal. He, he believes it, and I agree with him I loved my Bible program at Lipscomb. I was a biblical language major. We had to have six or seven years, uh, uh, uh, worth of, of credits, the, uh, functional equivalent of six or seven years worth of, of, [00:18:00] um, biblical language. But the way we did it, you had to at least have two years of both Greek and Hebrew.

After two years of Hebrew and two years of Greek, you could take the rest of your credits in whichever language you wanted, but you had to have both. And, and, and there's a lot of wisdom in that. So I like to read it the way you read Daniel. So let's turn to Daniel. But before we do, Daniel didn't just happen out of a cosmic chance.

I would suggest a great way to get thinking about this way of understanding visions is to go to Pharaoh's dreams way back in Genesis. Remember, Pharaoh has two dreams. One night he dreams that there are seven fat cows, and then seven lean cows show [00:19:00] up, and the fat cows eat the lean cows. He wakes up. No, the lean cows eat the fat cows.

Thank you, Hank. Hank goes, which means I had it turned around. They only-- It's only the fat cows eat the lean cows in the dyslexic Bible Um, which evidently is the one I'm reading. The lean cows eat the fat cows, and Pharaoh's upset. He goes to sleep the next night, has a second dream. In the second dream, you've got this wonderful wheat, seven kernels.

By the way, seven, such a complete number. Seven kernels. And then this sickly wheat grows up, seven, and the sickly eats the healthy. He doesn't know what to do. He can't find anybody to interpret his dreams. Dreams, plural. Until [00:20:00] Joseph comes, and Joseph says, "The dreams of Pharaoh are one." Yeah, they were two dreams, two different nights, but it's the same thing.

God's revealed to Pharaoh what he's about to do. It's not gonna be, well, you got seven fat cows, and then the seven lean cows are gonna eat the fat cows, and then you're gonna have seven things of wheat, and then the seven things of wheat will eat the seven things... No, those two dreams need to be read in parallel.

It's just the same thing being told twice to Pharaoh. The same is what happens in Daniel. So you need a little bit of history. Here's the map. Here's Israel or Judah at this point in time. Now, in 605 to 562, reigning in Babylon is Nebuchadnezzar II. He's the one that conquers Jerusalem, and he reigns, uh, there, and here's [00:21:00] his empire Now, after he steps down, there are a couple of wannabe em- uh, uh, kings of Babylon, but the empire doesn't last very long until, uh, uh, it gets taken over by the Medes and the Persians, the Persians being modern Iran, the Medes a little bit further to the east.

But Cyrus takes over at that point in time with the Medes and the Persians, and Cyrus reigns for a while. And then, uh, after Cyrus the Great, you get Darius I, you get Xerxes I, you get these various kings who come in and rule as the Medes and the Persians. And then that empire goes away because Alexander the Great comes on the scene.

He comes down out of Macedon, northern Greece, and he comes down [00:22:00] and conquers more than anybody had before him. Young man, dies at the age of thirty-three. Doesn't really have anybody to take over when he's dead. So when Alexander the Great dies, what happens? His kingdom gets divided into four different kind of sub-kingdoms, and it doesn't happen immediately that way, but that's what it filters out to.

So you wind up with the Ptolemies who are ruling, uh, Egypt. You've got the Seleucids who are ruling over here. You've got two of his generals who are ruling up in these lands and, and that's what happens. So those are the four notable historical kingdoms I want you to be thinking about in-- when you read Daniel.

You've got Babylon, you've got the Medes and the Persians, you've got Alexander, and then Alexander's through, and it divides into four kingdoms, and that's true until the Romans take it over and reconsolidate things. That brings us into the New Testament. [00:23:00] So Daniel 2 has a vision of Nebuchadnezzar. The vision of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter 2 starts out with this fella who's got a head of gold.

And Daniel interprets the vision and says, "That's you, king of Babylon." And then next in the vision, this, this fella's got not just a head of gold, but his chest and arms are silver and his thighs are bronze. And Daniel says, "That's the next kingdom that's gonna come after yours." And then after that, the legs are iron, solid, strong, as strong a metal as they had.

Gold is valuable, but it's not as strong. Silver's valuable, bronze is useful, but they're not as strong. Iron's the strongest substance they have. And that's Alexander and his kingdom that comes. And not just [00:24:00] legs of iron, but there are feet that are iron, but also clay. So they easily break up. And that's the four kingdoms that have broken up out of the iron kingdom.

Now, the interesting part is this vision of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar actually takes it into the God's kingdom that's going to come, which is the Messiah Jesus

More of that when we do more Daniel. Now you get to Daniel 7. There's a vision of Belshazzar who takes over after Nebuchadnezzar. In this vision of Belshazzar, you got four beasts coming out of the water that represent four kingdoms. You got one for the kingdom of Babylon, one for the Medes and Persians, one for Alexander, and one for the four kingdoms that come after.[00:25:00]

And then ultimately it gets destroyed by a stone from the mountain that, that is God's kingdom Then you have another vision. Daniel has a vision in Daniel 8. Now at this point in time, the Babylonian kingdom is gone. He's living under the Medes and the Persians, and so he's got a ram with two horns, the Medes and the Persians.

And then his vision has, uh, a male goat that smashes the ram, and that was Alexander the Great who smashes the Medes and the Persians. And then the male goat, which seems indestructible, isn't indestructible because he dissolves into four horns, four kingdoms. So you get this parallel vision. It's the same thing over and over and over.

And if you doubt this is what any of this stuff is [00:26:00] saying, look at just Daniel 8. This is Daniel being-- having the dream interpreted. "The ram you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Medes and Persians. The goat's the king of Greece. The great horn between his eyes is the first king," Alexander the Great.

"As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but they won't ever have his power." I mean, that's, that's the right way to read Daniel. Daniel are repeated visions that give you insight into that era and what was to come. So I think that same approach is what we ought to be doing with the seven categories of visions that we wind up getting in Revelation.

As we go through this, I will return to other Jewish apocalyptic literature because the other Jewish apocalyptic literature's doing it that way too. They'll have [00:27:00] multiple visions in First Enoch that will cover multiple time spans, and then they'll come back and recover those. It's a very typical way of thi-- doing things, very different than what we do typically today.

Now, Revelation. In Revelation, you've got what I'm calling three terminal time periods You've got the first coming of Jesus, you've got the age of the church, and you've got a promised second coming. And I think within those time periods, the end of days, I think within those time periods, you will see Revelation one through three gives you Jesus and the seven churches.

We covered this exhaustively, but Jesus is among his lampstands. He is referenced as one who lived and died. [00:28:00] So in the vision in Revelation chapter one, John begins by seeing Jesus am-- the lampstands being the church. Jesus is in the middle of the lampstands. They surround him. He is one who has lived and died.

It's a reference to the first coming of Jesus, and the transition into the age of the church goes with those seven letters, and they are seven because seven is a complete number. And so they're written to seven individual churches. It doesn't deny that. But it's-- seven are chosen because it's written for the church of the age and all ages.

It's written for you and me. It's written for you if you lived five hundred years ago. If the Lord tarries and we're around in five hundred years, it's written for them in five hundred years. These letters to the churches have a message that's important to all of us. But in those [00:29:00] letters, it talks about an age to come, and if you are faithful, you endure to the age to come, and you get the blessings in the age to come.

You've got that whole series, and then you hit chapter four, and in chapter four through seven, you start all over again. You start back with the first coming of Jesus. You go through the age of the church, and you go into the second coming of Jesus. And this is what we started two weeks ago, but I wanna be able to get into it and show you these same scriptures we looked at, but with greater focus on the time idea, and we'll go into some we didn't have time to go into.

In the beginning of this, Jesus appears as a lion and a lamb, and this is very important. Revelation four. Then as we keep moving into Revelation six, there are a [00:30:00] scroll with seven seals, and those seals are persecution of the church being talked about. It's all the church age. And then you've got at the end of that the opportunity to see God wiping away all tears because of the hundred and forty-four thousand, all of the people who are saved, and it talks about the second coming of Jesus N- that's what you get.

You get the whole s- shebang

Jesus appears as lion and lamb. Let's look at it just briefly. Um, oh, I don't have time to do this today, but you'll see the same thing in Revelation chapters 8 through 11 with that next vignette. You'll see the sa- same thing in chapter 12 and what... I mean, chapter 12 so clearly is talking about the virgin birth and the coming of Jesus.

It, it's the same thing. In each of these seven vignettes, you've got the same-- you've got that same time period being covered each time. [00:31:00] I didn't dream this up. Lots of people who've got commentaries on your shelves perhaps, um, see Revelation this way, not just in antiquity. This isn't just a way to read Revelation in 200 and 300 AD.

Um, R.C.H. Lenski, good old conservative Lutheran, um, scholar. Some of the best commentaries I've got, Lenski wrote. Absolutely amazing scholar. Um, Michael Farebee Sadler, M.F. Sadler, um, I, I couldn't find a picture of him anywhere. He, he may have died before anybody took pictures, but that's a picture of, of his book on Revelation.

It's an excellent book. It does the same thing. He's from the 1800s as well, uh, died in the 1800s. B.B. Warfield. B.B. Warfield, uh, I think may be the best American, uh, scholar that we've had in Christianity in the last 250 years. Uh, B.B. Warfield, um, was back when Princeton was a conservative divinity school. He was the head of it.

[00:32:00] Um, his work on the authority of Scripture, his work on, on Scripture itself, absolutely amazing. B.B. Warfield. Uh, William Hendricksen, uh, uh, More Than Conquerors, I think is the name of his seminal work on Revelation, and, uh, uh, it's absolutely outstanding, uh, in a number of places. I don't agree with all of it, but it, it, it gives you a good idea of how this stuff works as well.

So if we read Revelation in time with these vignette readings instead of just one long timeline, all of a sudden we start understanding it, I think, a lot simpler, but I think very clearly as well. So let's look at Revelation 4 through 7 with this in mind. In Revelation 4 through 7: "After this I looked, and behold, there was a door standing open in heaven!"

And the first voice which I'd heard speaking to me like a [00:33:00] trumpet, that's in the first vignette, Revelation 1, said, "Come up here, I'm gonna show you what must take place after this." So come on up. This is a second vision. This is telling you this is a second vignette. At once I'm in the Spirit, behold, there's a throne in heaven with one seated on the throne.

I'm gonna read through this rapidly, but I want your mind to picture it. Try to go artist on me all of a sudden. Let this visually paint a, a, a picture in your brain 'cause that's what John wanted. At once I'm in the Spirit, there's a throne in heaven, there's someone who's seated on the throne, and he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian.

It's God the Father. You do not describe God the Father in human terms. He's spirit, He's not human. But He has the appea-- He said to Moses, "You couldn't look upon me. No man can and [00:34:00] live." So He's got the appearance of, of... And he starts describing brilliance thing. Jasper and carnelian. Around the throne's a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.

The-- And around the throne are 24 thrones. 12, perfect number, times 12. 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles, likely. 24 thrones. Seated on the thrones are 24 elders clothed in white garments with their golden crowns on their head, and from the throne comes flashes of lightning. Whoops, don't go yet. Flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder.

Before the throne there burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God. The fullness of God's Spirit is there present. And before the throne there was, as it were, a sea of glass like crystal. Around the throne on each side of the throne are four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind.

Where's Jesus? He ain't there yet[00:35:00]

The first living creature like a lion, the second living creature an ox, the third face of a man, the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. This is painting a picture. I used this slide two weeks ago. It's just too important for us to miss. At a time where many people thought the Earth was the center of the universe, they were geocentric.

No, John says, this is not a geocentric world. Or a time where they thought our solar system was the center of the universe. No, this is not a heliocentric universe either When we can go look in the d- science journals and see this representation of space and time and from the Big Bang to current as we try to gaze back into the past with our new satellites looking back billions of years.

This is from the [00:36:00] Smithsonian on the universe. No, that's not it either. Revelation says the entire universe in all space, in all time, all that there is, all there ever will be, has God in the center. God sits in His throne in the center of everything, and that image can't be lost. The four living creatures, each of them with six wings, they're full of eyes within and without.

All day and night, they never cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come." These living creatures are described in Ezekiel ten:twenty. It should be taking our mind back. Again, we can read the unders-- New Testament and understand it if we read and understand the Old Testament.

And so you've got this vision of it. And whenever these living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who's seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, what happens? Twenty-four elders. We don't know who those are. Scholars get [00:37:00] torn. I, I don't, I, I, I don't know who they are, but it's two loads of complete people.

The twenty-four elders fall down before Him who's seated on the throne, and they worship Him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before Him saying, "Worthy are you." Oh, that's just to remind you, twelve's a complete number. "Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory, honor, and power.

Worthy are You to receive glory, honor, and power because You created all things. By Your will they existed and were created." Three is a holy number. It stands for spiritual holiness and completeness. And so you have three adorations of God here in this doxology. Not only that, but each one of them breaks apart into three.

"Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and [00:38:00] honor and power because You created all things. They existed and they were created." It's just over and over and over, three, three, three, three, three. And so we've seen this is comforting the church in its struggle against the forces of evil because we know wherever in history the church is faithful to its calling, even if it's giving pizza away in Sacramento bears testimony concerning the truth, tribulation is bound to follow.

Apart even from this fact, the church is in the world. Accordingly, it suffers with the world. You, you know, we, we read the story of what happened in Sacramento, but what about the people who were there? "Hey, am I in trouble? Am I about to get sued?" You know how bad lawyers are I mean, can we trust the court system?

We've been told it's really bad in California. It's pretty anti-Christian. [00:39:00] Am I gonna lose my job? Uh, can they sue me for money? All of this because I'm just trying to talk about Jesus, trying to do what He wants? I'm telling you, wherever in history the church is faithful to its calling and bears testimony concerning the truth, tribulation is bound to follow, maybe in one shape, form, or fashion from another.

But we know that we can have comfort against the forces of evil because during the trials and tribulations, we know God is in the middle of His throne And so we're able to read this. I saw in the right hand of him who's seated on the throne, he's got a scroll. It's written within and it's written on the back, and it's sealed with seven seals.

Seven, complete number. It's totally shut. Ain't nobody opening that. It's fully shut It's a epistiograph. It's written on both sides, written within and on the back. This scroll [00:40:00] is God's plan in history. God has a plan for history, and it's full and complete. But Daniel, at the end of Daniel, one of those vignettes that goes all the way in, Daniel's told, "Seal this up.

Put this in a sealed s- scroll. Nobody's gonna be able to open it." This is God's plan. It's God's plan for history. He's got the scroll. John knows that scroll was sealed. Well, let's open up God's plan. I see a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, "Who's worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?"

Well, we'd say Jesus. But what does it said here? By the way, that's the Daniel passage, if you're taking notes on the scroll being, uh, sealed by God. No one in heaven, no one on earth, no one under the earth is able to open the scroll or [00:41:00] look into it

Have a good day

And John begins to weep loudly because they can't find anybody who's worthy to see to God's historical plan being fulfilled

But here Jesus appears as the lion and the lamb See, he'd been prophesied to come as the Lion of Judah. That prophecy goes all the way back to Genesis. One of the elders said, "Hey, quit crying. The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered." See, we're back. Jesus came. He's died. He's conquered, so He can open the scroll and its seven [00:42:00] seals.

We've got a lion who is worthy

to see God's plan get executed And so between the throne, now all of a sudden, what does Scripture tell us happened to Jesus after his resurrection? He ascended unto heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Almighty. John's audience knew that. John's readers knew that. We should r- know that.

Between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, all of a sudden, I see a lamb standing. I thought it was a lion. Well, the lion's a lamb. A lamb standing as though it'd been slain. Now, by the way, I don't know if you've ever killed a lamb. We've got some lambs. I'm not allowed to kill them, but I suspect if I did, they would not be standing up saying, "Look at me, [00:43:00] you killed me."

So this lamb that was slain is somehow resurrected 'cause he's standing up. Makes it a point of saying the lamb's standing even though it's been slain. He's got seven horns. Whoops, hold on. Let's go back. He's got seven horns, seven eyes, the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. How terrible would it be if God's will weren't able to be carried out?

How, how would your life be? How would you feel, Rodney, if you knew the will of God for you could not be carried out? How would you feel, Mel, if you knew the will of God, Diane, if you knew God's will in your life just can't happen? How, if God's will for your Jerusalem Bible translators can't be carried out, how tragic would it be?

But he's being told because this [00:44:00] lamb, he's worthy. And look at him. He's got... Uh, that's lamb sacrifice. He's got seven heptas, seven horns. That means he's got all the power. Seven complete. He's completely powerful. Horns stood for kingdoms and power and dominion. He's got all dominion. He's omnipotent in theological terms.

He's got seven eyes. He's got all the knowledge. He's omniscient in theological terms. He's got omnipresence in theological terms. He's all of these different things. Let me get that out of the way. I'm going way too slow. So he takes the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders. Falls down. Each one's got a harp, a golden bowl full of incense.

Those are the prayers of the saints. We're transitioning into the church [00:45:00] age with him. And I'm gonna have to skip some of this stuff because I kinda covered it last week, and I wanna get to the new material. So you'll excuse me. Um, you know, it's useful to get to the new material in the last five minutes of class.

That's a joke. A lot of this has been new, additional information, just plugging into context. Jesus appears as a lion and a lamb, and now we get to the age of the Church with the seals of persecution. So he's got this scroll with seven seals, and he's worthy to open it. "And so I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I hear from the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, 'Come.'"

And I looked, and behold, a white horse, a hippos leukos, and its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer. This first seal [00:46:00] is Jesus. And a horse is not the humble colt and foal that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the first time. We're now in the age of the church, and he rides with strength and terror, warfare, conquest.

Jesus is a warring victory for us right in the here and now in the age of the church, and a church in persecution needed to hear that. Jesus is a conquering king. This, by the way, is straight out of the Psalms. It's Psalm forty-five. You can read it. Interesting side note, in the Septuagint of Psalm forty-five, they add the bow.

But in our English versions of the Masoretic Text, this is just for those who care about such things, it's just got the arrows. But if you-- Arrows are useless without a bow. This is Jesus. Hebrews says that Psalm forty-five is talking about Jesus. Jesus is the first rider. We have a conquering Lord. [00:47:00] No fear His cause is going forward.

No fear. His kingdom is here. No fear. He says, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel." No fear, because God is in the center of His throne. Now, having said that, on his heels is a second seal, a second creature. And look at the second one. His rider was permitted to take peace from the earth. Well, where's Jesus?

Jesus is the first one. But in the age of the church... I don't know about... Do you have perfect peace in your life? No

And, and this world doesn't have perfect peace. And if you go back and you look what Jesus says in Matthew 10:34, he says, "I didn't come just for peace in this world in this age." He says, "I came with a sword, and families will turn against families even." [00:48:00] It's not a good thing. Where Jesus comes and takes the center of the throne in your life and my life, tribulation is on its heels every time.

That is a fact. Persecution. Wherever Jesus wins, persecution follows. Then you've got a third seal, a third living creature. He's on a black horse. His riders have a pair of scales in their hands If you look at Ezekiel 4, it talks about pricing bread and things of this nature as a, a way of, of showing difficult times.

And this is one where, um, the voice in the midst of the four living creatures says, "A quart of wheat for a denarius." A de- denarius was one day of labor. "Three quarts of barley for a denarius." Hey, don't harm the oil and the wine. Those only rich people could afford anyway. But what this tells [00:49:00] you is in the suffering of the church, it will include suffering sometimes where you who follow Jesus will sometimes sacrifice worldly gain It, it was very apparent in their day because they had trade guilds in the days of this letter or this vision, and if you were a stonesmith, you were part of the trade guild of stones-or, or smiths, or metalsmith, you were part of the trade guild, or leatherworkers, part of the trade guild.

And if you were gonna attend the guild meeting and get the guild business, you had to pay your union dues. Do you know what your union dues were? Sacrificing to the god of the union And so all of a sudden you've got Christians saying, "I can't sacrifice to that God." Well, you don't pay your union dues? Get out of here.

The gods are gonna visit our union trade with harshness because you won't do [00:50:00] it. You get cut out of jobs. You lose your income. That's the world that's receiving this letter. They know that it's gonna cost them in the pocketbook

He opens the fourth seal and it's death. I'm out of time, so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna come back and we're gonna pick right up with the seals, and not a lot of, of, uh, rehashing. But what you're gonna see is these end-- And I don't wanna end without this. At the end of this entire passage of the age of the church where all the suffering can happen, and will happen in various doses all over, you have the heavenly scene, and at the end of this vision, you have this statement that is just amazing.

It's a statement that says in Revelation seven seventeen, "The Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd. He'll guide them to [00:51:00] springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." It takes us from the incarnation through the end of time in this vision, and so we get that through this, and then we start the next vision.

We'll pick back up here, but here in one minute are your points for home. Don't be afraid. Jesus is a conquering king

Satan gets foiled by his own weapons. If we see what it is, horses two through four, weapons of Satan, are ones that work to point everybody to Jesus. I'll explain that more next week, God willing. But end of the story, no more tears because we know who wins. This is a wonderful book that will bless all of us, and I'm really excited you're on this journey with me.

Let me bless you, and then we'll come back next week. Lord, uh, I get [00:52:00] started talking about you. I get started talking about this book, and I lose track of time, and I confess that I need to be more disciplined, but Father, it's hard because I am so thrilled that you sit in the middle of the throne. And Lord, I pray for our mercy upon us for our tendency instead to be gazing at our own navels and not understanding who you are and your worth and your plans for this world, for this age, and for us and our loved ones.

We bow in humble submission to you on this Palm Sunday and pray, come Lord Jesus. Through whom we pray, amen