Session 11 – Study of Revelation continues, hear about the seals and the trumpets!!!; Mark Lanier, 04/07/2024

Revelation 11
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[00:00:00] Did you know there's a solar eclipse coming?

I saw this headline, "For some Christians, the solar eclipse is signaling the second coming of Christ." Now if that happens, I will not finish this trial They've got a map. See, there was a total solar eclipse in 2017. There is another total eclipse coming in 2024, seven years apart. [00:01:00] Well, actually six and a half, but maybe God's not that punctual.

And it does sort of, if you turn it this way, it's shaped like a cross. Gotta be the second coming. Of course, I got a map of total solar eclipses over the last 25 years. There was another cross-shaped one with seven years difference over here, but Jesus did not come in the South Pacific. We got another one right here.

We got, uh... These things happen all the time You gotta be real careful about what you think. Now, it-- look, you wanna think Jesus is coming with-- and don't get me wrong, He can come. He'll come at any point in time that is the right time. I firmly believe Jesus is coming again. I firmly believe there will be an end of time [00:02:00] as we know it.

There's, there's not-- That, that's not the issue. But sometimes we have a tendency to let what we believe seem to, to... We, we, we-- Look, what we believe isn't always reality. Now, here's a fella, you may not know him. He writes books. He writes a lot of books. He has created one of the great characters of fiction.

And in one of the books, this character of fiction says the following: "That's the problem with denial. Reality doesn't care what you think. It just keeps rolling along." You can think anything you wanna think. It's not gonna change reality. Now, if you're thinking, "What classical work was that?" That was in the book Past Tense, a Jack Reacher novel by [00:03:00] Lee Child.

Jack Reacher says it. Jack Reacher's tough. We can believe it. So my goal is not to have beliefs that are mine, that I treasure. My goal is to try and take my beliefs and align them with reality And that's something that's always hard to do. But it's kind of like Pastor Jarrett said in the sermon this morning.

It starts by looking at what God has to say, and let's let that be our reality. And so as we come to today and what we're looking at in, in, in Revelation, we want to do three things. We wanna emphasize how we continue to read Revelation in its time. We wanna then dig a little bit deeper into Revelation four through seven, which is the opening of the seals, because we scratched the surface, but we can [00:04:00] dig a little bit deeper.

And then we wanna forecast and start getting you warmed up for next Sunday, where we'll be dealing with the trumpets and the seven trumpets of Revelation. When I was 18 years old, it was, I believe, the spring of 1979. I took a class on apocalyptic literature, and our main textbook in that class was Russell's book, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic.

I'm gonna be honest, going into the class, I didn't know that much at all about apocalyptic literature. It's one of the reasons I was taking it. I mean, you-- if you speak Spanish fluently, you don't really need to take Spanish. If you don't speak Spanish, you take [00:05:00] Spanish if you wanna speak it. ¿Comprende usted?

So it was only when I took this class that I started understanding that there was this entire wealth of apocalyptic writing in the Jewish biblical New Testament time period that was available. And you've seen me put some of them up in a wheel here. First Enoch is one that I have used over and over as an example in this class of what apocalyptic literature is.

Now, some people might say, "How do we even know that the biblical readers were aware of the First Enoch? Seems rather obscure." I had someone on, uh, staff, wasn't [00:06:00] Brent, wasn't Jared, ask me, "Exactly how do you pronounce that word?" It's pseudepigrapha. First Enoch is part of what is called and classed by scholars as pseudepigraphal.

Pseudo, fake. Epigraph,

the idea of writing. First Enoch was not really written by Enoch, okay? And so it's pseudepigraphal. But that has described a whole wealth of material like that. And you might wanna say, "Well, how do we know?" And I would suggest to you that you can look, for example, at Jude Jude is one of our New Testament letters.

It's a short, or New Testament book, uh, letter. It's a short little letter, one chapter. Uh, whoops. Go back there. And, uh, Brent's warned me this camera may not work well, and so I'm not supposed to touch it, [00:07:00] but I'm touching it anyway. Look at verse 14. Maybe one more time. Oh of Enoch. Verse 14 says, "It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, 'Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all of their sins of ungodliness that they've committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.'"

Now, if you wanna read about Enoch in the Old Testament, you can read and you can see he was the seventh from Adam, but it doesn't have any of his prophecies. It doesn't have anything of what he said at all. What Jude is quoting is from the book [00:08:00] of 1 Enoch, and he quotes from it because it's a very handy thing to quote from that most people would have read.

If you've heard Pastor Jarrett's sermon this morning, Pastor Jarrett quoted from a number of different scholars. He quoted from Max Lucado. Now, that's not because Max Lucado is scripture. It's because Max Lucado has said something that helped Pastor Jarrett's point, and Max Lucado is someone that many people have read or are familiar with.

And so you can read the book of 1 Enoch

And you can get in chapter one down to verse nine. I'm pushing my luck. And he says, "Behold, he will arrive with 10..." Now, Charles' translation here, he's [00:09:00] translating from a Syriac version, so he's got 10 million instead of 10,000. "... of the holy ones to execute judgment on all. He'll destroy the wicked ones and censure all flesh on account of everything they've done, that which the sinners and the wicked ones committed against him."

And that is what is being quoted by Jude. Jude references beyond that. He references another Jewish writing from that era, The, uh, Assumption of Moses. But this is a wealth of material that was present in the time of the New Testament. And so we do better justice to understanding the New Testament when we understand the literature in which it was written.

How many of you went to the movies in 1978, '77?

Well, may the Force be with you. [00:10:00] You know what I mean by that. That was Star Wars came out, and that phrase is now in our vocabulary. May the Force be with you. Houston, we have a problem. These are phrases that we know because of the culture in which we live. Now, 2,000 years from now, if someone's reading something and they see somebody making a joke about, um, a "May the force be with you," they, they may be wondering, "What on earth are they talking about?"

And they can dream up all sorts of concoctions because they're-- they've gotta be able to plug into our time here. Okay. So I get the book, I take the class, I start reading, and it opens up the window to all of these different traits. These are the ones I've singled out, but there are more of them. But the idea of writing with symbolism, [00:11:00] of peculiar uses of numbers, visions and dreams, the coming cataclysm and age to come, angels and demons and the way they work, all of that is present in these set of apocalyptic writings, including the Book of Revelation.

And I say that to say we should not approach Revelation as if it's simply a book of prophecy. That's a common mistake that we make, is we just think this is a prophetic book, so let's look at it and try to figure out the prophecy and what it's talking about. Instead, we should look at it first as its own creature of apocalyptic writing.

And when we do that, we'll find some themes that are present in the book, and it will help us understand the apocalyptic writing if we understand it in light of those themes. For [00:12:00] example, one of the core facts is this idea that the church should be comforted in its struggle against the forces of evil.

And we've seen that, and we'll see that again, and we need to keep coming back to that as a theme. There's another theme we'll see today. The theme is God sees our tears God sees our tears. And that theme's an important theme. It's part of being comforted in the struggles of life. Another theme that we'll see today is prayer makes a difference.

Uh, Jarrett's sermon today is just a marvelous sermon about worry, and, and he closes the sermon out by talking about the importance of praying and how we should pray to deal with worry issues. [00:13:00] And, and prayer makes a difference. It not only makes a difference to us because it refocuses us on the Lord, but it makes a difference with the Lord.

This is the Lord who said, "You have not because you don't ask." Prayer makes a difference. Another thing we'll see today, death is precious in God's sight. How many of y'all are planning to die?

Um, you may not be planning to die, but odds are you will. I'm just saying statistically. I heard a fellow, a comedian the other day. I don't know if this is appropriate, but I laughed at it, so I, I've looked it up and down. It-- I think it's okay to say this. He said, "I'm a [00:14:00] seventy-two-year-old male, American male, and the life tables tell me the life expectancy for an American male is seventy-four.

But the life expectancy of an American female is eighty-three." He says, "So I'm thinking about transitioning."

Look, we're all gonna die, but death is precious in the sight of God He didn't, didn't make us to die. He made us to live eternally with Him. And we will in Christ. I mean, God so loved the world He gave His Son that whoever believes in Him will not die in an eternal punishment sense but will have an eternal life.

We see that theme. [00:15:00] We see the theme that final victory is assured. And we don't ever wanna get caught up in trying to understand the symbolism and the numbers and the visions and the timeline and lose track of the themes, the reason this is written. This is not written to give us a blueprint to decide if Jesus is coming back at the total eclipse

So then how do we read it? Well, we can read it on a timeline where it's from the time of writing to the end of days, and you just try to figure it out. I don't think that's the right way to read it. I think the right way to read it is to read it as a collection of visions, a collection of vignettes. We can read it and, and it's got a vision, and then it's got another vision that echoes the first one, a different perspective.

This is solid in the Bible. It's the way Pharaoh's dreams were that Mo-- that, uh, [00:16:00] Joseph interpreted. It's the way Daniel is written, where you've got these same visions that are happening that are covering the same relative time period. And so this is vignette reading, like you would read Daniel, another apocalyptic writing.

And so if we look at it that way, and we've got this collection of visions, we're also reading it like you would read 1 Enoch. See, if you wanna take 1 Enoch and read it, you'll start reading these visions and these storylines. And so like in chapter six, you've got the fall of the angels in Enoch, and then comes the flood, and it's built off of the Genesis 6, the sons of daughter-- or the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair and took them as wives.

That, according to 1 Enoch, were fallen angels that were having sex with humanity. Well, womenanity. And so it was-- it, it-- [00:17:00] that was the interpretation, and so he's got this vision, and then comes the flood because everything's a mess. Then you get to another vision in 1 Enoch 12, and it's got, uh, it starts out before the fall of the angels, and then it's got their fall again.

Then you can start reading again. You get to 1 Enoch 15, and it's the fall of the angels yet again. You've just got these vignettes that continue to read and continue to give you focus, but it's-- th-there's-- uh, th-they're, they're running on parallel tracks

And so that's what I think we see in Revelation, and the approach that I use is one that's, uh, uh, been around for at least 1,800 years. But it's-- you've got the first coming, you've got the age of the church, and you've got the second coming. In Revelation one through three with Jesus and the seven churches, you've got that.

You've got Him from the first, you've got the age of the church, and you've got the c- second [00:18:00] coming. You've got Revelation four through seven, heaven scroll and the seals, you've got the same thing. You've got Jesus appearing as lion and lamb, and, and, and, uh, you've got His-- the seals of persecution, and those seals open up into where God wipes away all the tears, and you get to the end of all things.

And within that context then, you come to Revelation eight through eleven, and it does the same thing. It covers the same ground. We'll get to Revelation twelve, it'll cover the same thing. That's what I mean by reading Revelation in time. So if you look at now and narrow your focus down to that section of Revelation that is four through seven, I don't wanna-- What-- I could go verse by verse, and we could spend an entire fifty minutes on each verse.

But instead, what I'm trying to do is go through it, and then the next week go through it again, but with a lighter, not [00:19:00] review per se, but getting deeper into the passage so that you've got more and it's still fresh in your brain, and those of you who aren't here every Sunday don't lose track. But Revelation four through seven, let's look at it just to stay in the flow.

"After this," John says, "I looked and behold, a door standing open in heaven. The first voice which I heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, 'Come up here. I'll show you what must be, what must take place after this.'" And what we're going to get here is heaven's perspective on what's happening in Earth. He goes up to get heaven's perspective on Earth.

And so Revel-- this section of Revelation is giving us a heavenly perspective of what we're experiencing down here. So he says, "At once I'm in the Spirit. Behold, I, I'm standing. There's a throne in heaven. There's one [00:20:00] seated on the throne, and the one seated on the throne has the appearance of jasper and carnelian.

Around the throne's a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. Around that you've got twenty-four thrones and the elders on them clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their head." Before we can understand heaven's view of Earth, we need to understand that all of space and all of time has, and all that there is, has God in the center of it And that makes all the difference in the world about whether we worry or not From the throne come flashes of lightning and rumbles, peals of thunder.

Before the throne are burning seven torches of fire, the seven spirits of God, the fullness of God's Spirit, seven being a full and complete number. Now, Scripture helps us understand [00:21:00] Scripture. Revelation was not written, uh, just to be on its own with people who have no knowledge of the Bible. Look at this: From the throne came flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder.

This reminds me of Psalm 99: The Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble; he sits enthroned upon the cherubim, let the earth quake. God is on His throne

That makes all the difference in the world

John continues, he says, "I saw in the right hand of him who's seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back." It is opisthou, [00:22:00] opisthou, excuse me, opisthou. We get the word- It's an opistograph. It's a scroll written on both sides. That was unusual at the time. It tells you it's, it's full. Got lots.

The maximum length of a scroll back then was 25 feet. After that, it was unwieldy, so they had about 25 feet's the most. By the way, Gospel of Luke, 25 feet. Took up a whole scroll. That's why Acts has to be a second scroll. Takes up a whole scroll, too. This scroll's written why? Because what this scroll is, it's God's plan in history, and God's plan in history is full.

You don't have to worry, "Hey, am I part of God's plan in history? Does God's plan in history include me?" Absolutely. It's written on the front and the back. It's full. It's brimming. And so he's got this scroll, and he says, "I see a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud [00:23:00] voice, 'Who's worthy to open the scroll?

Who's worthy to break its seals?'" They can't find anyone in heaven, on earth, or under the earth able to open the scroll or look into it. God's plan in history cannot unfold. And so John begins to weep loudly. There's nobody to open the scroll, nobody to unfold God's historical plan. And it's at this point that Jesus appears as the lion and the lamb, and we see this idea of his coming.

Because one of the elders says to him, "Weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered." He's able to unfold God's plan. You want God's plan in your life? Praise Jesus. He is the reason God's plan for your life can unfold And [00:24:00] so you've got this lion who's gonna open it.

And John looks for the lion, and behold, he sees a lamb standing as though it's been slain. I've yet to see a lamb standing as it, you know. But what we're saying is it's clearly a lamb that's been slain, but one that for some reason is still standing There is in Christian art history this idea of the Agnus Dei, Latin for, uh, the Lamb of God.

And the Lamb of God typically will have an extended foot to indicate that Jesus was voluntarily going to the slaughter, will carry a victorious banner. Here you see an alive lamb even though it's been p- uh, killed. This, by the way, is from the Order of St. John, and I'm not a specialist on the Knights of Malta.

Um, but don't-- I don't think it's [00:25:00] St. John the Revelator. I think it's St. John, uh, the Baptist, uh, that they're named after. But anyway, it's a great picture. You've got then this lamb who's been slain, who's standing there. This is the first coming of Christ. This is the start of ... This is Christ has come into the world, and he's standing as though he's been slain, but he's got seven horns.

That's all-powerful. Seven, a complete number. Horns indicate power or reign or a kingdom over and over, biblically and extra-biblically. Seven eyes, that's knowledge, all knowledge. Seven spirits, he's present everywhere. And that's what we have, and Jesus appears as a lion and a lamb, and then he's able to unfold God's purposes and God's plans.

And this, again, is gonna comfort the church in its [00:26:00] struggle against the forces of evil. This is God's plan being unfolded. Take comfort in that. During your trials and tribulations, see the throne of God. And so Jesus comes, and he opens the seven seals, and he watches, and the Lamb opens the first of the seven seals And he hears the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, "Come."

And he looks and there's a white horse, and its rider has a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer. And that is Jesus. Jesus, the horse represents strength, terror, warfare, conquest. Jesus, uh, rides a donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday because he's not a, a conquering king in a military sense.

This time he's coming to show he is a [00:27:00] conquering king. And you can see I've put up there a bunch of passages that, that give you this indication for what the horse is symbolic of. But then look what happens. The white horse, its rider with a bow, and that references us back to Psalm 45:3-7. It's a marvelous passage out of the Psalms.

Psalm 45 We read

Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one In your splendor and majesty. In your majesty, ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness. Let your hand teach you awesome deeds. He's got a bow. Your arrows are sharp. In the heart of the [00:28:00] king's enemies, the people fall under you.

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of righteousness. You've loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you. He's messiahed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. That looks familiar. It's because it's referenced as being a reference to Jesus in Hebrews 1:8.

See, his cause is going forward. God's kingdom is here We don't need to have fear. We can go into all the world and preach the gospel because we have a conquering Lord. Now, there's a problem, though. Where Jesus goes, who's not far behind? You got it. When he opens the second seal, he hears the second living creature say, "Come."

And out came another horse, bright red, the color of [00:29:00] blood. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another. He's given a great sword. And this is, this is what happens. This is Matthew 10:34. Matthew 10:34 says

Matthew. Matthew Okay, I'm having to lick my hands. That's never good. Matthew 10... Actually, it wasn't bad

Had a little Pace Picante sauce. Um

Matthew 10:34, Jesus says, "Don't think I've come to bring peace to the earth. I haven't come to bring peace, but a sword." I mean, look, this [00:30:00] is what's gonna happen when Jesus comes. Following Jesus is gonna be Satan doing his work. I love what William Hendrickson said about this. He said, "Whenever in history the church is faithful to its calling and bears testimony concerning the truth, tribulation," thlipsis in the Greek, "tribulation is bound to follow.

Apart even from this fact, the church is in the world." So we're gonna suffer with the rest of the world. We not only get Christian suffering, we got all the worldly suffering, too Wherever Jesus wins, persecution's gonna follow So take comfort in your persecution Then he opens the third seal. He hears the third living creature say, "Come."

And now a black horse and its rider has a pair of scales in his hands. If you [00:31:00] look at Ezekiel 4:10 and you, you'll, you'll see language that echoes this. And scales were used in commerce. You wanna buy a loaf of bread? One, "Hey, I'll give you, you know, a shekel for a loaf." The bread could be weighed out.

Bigger loaf, smaller loaf, different amount of money. You want some spices? They get weighed out. You buy by the weight. The scales are a measure of commerce. And sure enough, he's got scales in his hands, and what's he say? Seems to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius."

A denarius is how much you'd make in a day Three quarts of barley for a denarius. Don't harm the oil and wine. This is [00:32:00] setting up the idea that there are gonna be people who are rich, and there are gonna be people who are poor. And heaven sees that difference and knows that. And the problem with the, the immediate audience of Revelation is so many of them were tradespeople.

They worked in metal. They worked with wood. They worked with stone. They worked, uh, uh, with, uh, leather. They worked making tents. And tradespeople had to be a member of a guild typically. Think ancient unions. And so you gotta be a member of a guild. Well, that's fine, just pay your union dues. Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.

All of the guilds had their god who blessed them. And so if you're a member of the guild, you gotta pay money to the god. Now, you're a Christian. [00:33:00] You're gonna go pay money to the pagan god who's gonna oversee your trade guild? No. So what happens? You get shut out. This was a very real problem. We can read about it in the pages of church history

He opens the fourth seal. He hears the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come." He looks, and it's a pale horse. Its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him, and they were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword, and famine, and pestilence, and by wild beasts of the earth.

If you look at passages like Ezekiel 14:21, this is a very typical way of, of describing all of the things that can happen terrible on earth. You can die by the sword. You can die by famine. You can die by pestilence or disease. You can die by wild beast. [00:34:00] It's falling apart But he's only got authority over a fourth of the earth here.

Now, that doesn't mean that you divide the earth geographically into four equal parts and you take one-fourth and give it to him. Don't think math. This is not a geometry test. This is peculiar use of numbers. A fourth, four is the number that represents the earth. So he gets one out of the four. In other words, he's not got the whole thing.

He's not given-- It's not just all pal-mal given to, to, to the pale horse, to death Now these four seals have heaven's view of what's going on to Earth. And so four being a good earthly number, you've got four seals, [00:35:00] and we'll see with the first four trumpets that they will mimic these four seals, but with a different emphasis 'cause we're just going through the same thing again from a different angle.

But these four seals are the four that look at Earth now shifted up to heaven with the next seal. So he opens the fifth seal, and he sees under the altar up in heaven the souls of those who'd been slain for the Word of God and for the witness they had borne. By the way, sphragida here is the word for seal.

Just sort of keep that in your brains, sphragida. Um, just it'll be useful. So he opens the fifth seal, and he sees the souls of those who have been slain, the martyrs for their faith, and the martyrs are crying out with a loud [00:36:00] voice, "O Sovereign Lord, holy and true." I love the three descriptions of God, sovereign, holy, and true.

A very divine way of, of giving God praise. "How long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" They were each given then a white robe and told to rest a little longer. Each given a white robe

God is still meeting their needs told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete

who were to be killed as they themselves had been, all of the martyrs. [00:37:00] This is the age of the church. It is an age of persecution. It is an age of tribulation. It is an age of difficulty

And I read this and I think, "You know, my life's not that difficult." Praise God. And we should praise God. We should be so grateful. But we don't just fall on our face in gratitude. Anybody who's been blessed by God has been blessed to be a blessing to others So we need to be on our face in gratitude, but with our eyes looking for where God wants us to be used.

To whom much is given, much is expected And then this vision transcends to eternity, but it does it

with something very interesting here. He opens the sixth [00:38:00] seal, and look, behold, there's a great earthquake, and the sun becomes black as sackcloth, and the moon becomes like blood. Now, there are blood moons, as modern astronomy calls them, and every time there's gonna be a blood moon, certain people, I'm sure in good conscience and all, I don't wanna make light of them, th-this is, this is it.

Jesus is coming back. 'Cause it says in Revelation 6:12, "The full moon became like blood." So be on your lookout. Um, you know, we can, we can make a mistake if we start reading this as if every little thing is a prophecy to be interpreted in that big time period. This is talking about the end of days, don't get me wrong, but it's talking about it in another sense.

The stars of the sky fell to the earth. The fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. You don't need to [00:39:00] find some big interpretation of this in your life. All you need do is read Matthew 24:29. That's gonna give you exactly what's going on here. This is Jesus talking about the end of days Immediately after the tribulation of those days.

Now some of y'all are like pre-trib, post-trib, trib, trib, trib, trib, trib. Tribulation is the Greek word thlipseis, and it's used for lots of stuff. Okay? There, there-- The-- You can decide if you want this to be the, the end tribulation if you're-- that Jesus is talking about. But I'll tell you this, we're in a period of tribulation, and the church has always been in a period of tribulation.

And immediately after that's over, at the end of days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Right? That's, that's what's happening [00:40:00] here. It's just that picture image that says there's gonna be at the end of time a time where this world comes to an end.

This is one of the themes of apocalyptic literature. There's a coming cataclysm at the end of the age. The sky vanished like a scroll that's being rolled up. Every mountain and island was removed from its place. Second Peter

3:10 through 12

Second Peter 3:10 through 12

Oops, that's 1 Peter 3:10-12, which is why it doesn't make sense when I'm reading it for what I was looking for. Let's try 2 Peter [00:41:00] 3:10-12. Ah, here it is. "The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will pass away with a roar. The heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved. The earth and the works in it will be exposed.

Since all these things are to be dissolved, what sort of people ought to you be? You ought to be living carefully, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God, when the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt. By His promise, we're waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells."

This is an understanding of the end times. That's what we've got here. The sky vanished. This is very biblical. Then kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone, slave and free, they hide in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. Now, if you're reading this like chronology, you're thinking, "Well, wait a minute.

I thought the [00:42:00] whole everything just fell apart, and how are they hiding in mountains if it's just all been dissolved and all of a sudden..." Don't read it like that. Th- this is apocalyptic literature. This is saying at the end times, there are gonna be a lot of people who were hiding from the truth of Jesus.

They're calling, "Fall on us. Hide us from the face of Him who's seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb." There's gonna come a time... Matthew 24 continues with this, by the way. We looked at Matthew 24:29. If, if I had stayed on the page and gone further, we would have seen Jesus saying, you know, we, we started right here.

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be dark and the moon won't give light. The stars will fall from heaven. Powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. And the [00:43:00] Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and He'll send out His angels with a loud trumpet.

He'll gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the others." That's what's being talked about here. That is the day that's coming. And who's gonna be able to stop the wrath of Jesus? So you suffer today, and you wanna know how long, how long until you get re- Look, God wants to gather all of His elect people, and then it's over.

Now, the writer pauses here with a very important observation and a very important explanation, and we gotta get this. "After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree." He sees, "I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun," and he's got [00:44:00] a seal.

He's got a frig-- uh, yeah, it's phrygia. He's got a phrygia. He's got a seal of the living God. This isn't one of the seals on the scrolls. And he calls with a loud voice to the four angels who'd been given power to harm the earth and the sea. So he's got this seal. Now, what is a seal? A seal protects against tampering.

They put a seal on the tomb of Jesus, Matthew 27, so that nobody would, would tamper with the stone. A seal marks ownership. Find it in the Song of Solomon, but I mean, the, the king's seal, it's his ownership. And a seal certifies that it's genuine So God wants to put His seal on His people. He will protect His people against tampering.

He will mark His ownership of His people. He will certify them as [00:45:00] genuinely His. That's the seal. Don't harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we've sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads. The forehead is where the high priest would have the name of God written on, but only the high priest.

We're all priests now. We will be sealed. It- it will be God who says, "This is mine. Make no mistake about it." And God will protect His people. And so we see this language repeatedly used in scripture. I heard the number of the sealed. There were 144,000 Well, the Jehovah's Witnesses take that as 144,000. I would suggest that's not fair or not what it's talking about.

Okay, I'm pressing my luck If three is the divine number and four is [00:46:00] the earthly number, you can take all things that are divine and all things that are earthly and get a complete number, seven, right? You can take all things that are divine and multiply it by all things that are earthly, and what do you get?

12. 12 is also a complete number. How many apostles? 12. Uh-huh. And when Judas goes and does the bad thing, they-- He gone, they get another one because they want that 12. How many tribes of Israel? 12. How many months in the year? 12. It's a complete number. Now, if you take a complete number and you multiply it by a complete number, you got something really complete.

One forty-four Now, if you wanna make something more, [00:47:00] what do you do? Add zeros to it. Add zeros to it. Good call. You got a dollar, you want 10,

add a zero. You want 100, add another zero. Want 1,000, one more zero

144,000. Everybody fully complete. 144,000. God's gonna have everybody from every age of all time under his care, his protection, his sovereignty marked out as his And they break it down, 12,000, 12,000, 12,000, 12,000, and going through the 12 tribes to show you that they want you to take 12,000 and multiply it by 12 "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude," in fact, it's not one that anybody can number.

It's not [00:48:00] 144,000. "From every nation, from all tribes and peoples, from all languages, standing before the throne, before the Lamb, clothed in white robe, with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.'" This is the end of time.

All the angels standing around the throne, all the elders, the four living creatures, they all fall on their face before God. Proskuneo. They kiss the ground and they worship God, saying, "Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might." What's a complete number? Seven.

Blessing, glory, three, four, five, six, seven. A sevenfold blessing on God[00:49:00]

One of the elders says to him, "Hey, who are these clothed in white robes and where'd they come from?" John says, "Uh, I don't know. I figure you do." Sir, you know, and he said, "These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation." Now, if you wanna read that as the trib, pre-trib, post-trib, all the rest, you can, but I'm telling you, tribulation, this just- this- the great tribulation is also one that it- we all experience tribulation They've washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

If you read Acts 14:22, you'll see that word tribulation being used in this sense. Acts 14:22

They send-- Paul's just been stoned at Lystra, and, uh, they, [00:50:00] they go on, they preach the gospel to that city. They made many disciples, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, saying that through great tribulation, through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God.

Tribulation as a concept biblically is something that happens. So they're before the throne of God. They serve Him day and night, and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with their presence. They'll hunger no more. They'll thirst no more. The sun won't strike them. There won't be any scorching heat.

The lamb will be in the midst as their shepherd. He'll guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And that is the end Now we're gonna get another set of trumpets next week, and the set of trumpets are gonna start right back at the beginning. And so we'll start right back with Jesus appearing and the first coming, and we'll go through the age of the church to the second coming.

And here are your points for home. Number [00:51:00] one, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Jesus is a conquering Jesus. He'll conquer whatever is in your way. You say, "Well, wait a minute, but sometimes that doesn't work." Oh, there's real death. There are real tears, but God sees them, and the promise is that He'll wipe away every tear.

You will have tears. This is a war. This is a struggle, but the conquering one has conquered for eternity, and prayer makes a difference. We didn't get to it, but in Revelation 8 it will say, "The prayers of the saints rose before God," and we'll see the difference those prayers have made. So I give you encouragement from the Book of Revelation.

I don't give you confidence that Jesus returns with the comet or with the eclipse, but I do give [00:52:00] you confidence He will return, and when He returns, it ain't gonna be something where anybody has any doubt about it

Let me p- pray please. Lord, in the name of Jesus, we lay before you all of our fear, all of our worry, all of our concern, all of our whining, all of our grumbling, all of our mumbling All of our we look here and we look there, all of our efforts to drown our sorrows, to buy our way out of them Father, we set aside everything at the foot of the cross, the conquering Lamb, and we pray That you will grow us in faith, in assurance, blessed assurance that Jesus is ours.

That we get that foretaste of glory divine as heirs of salvation, have [00:53:00] been purchased by the blood of the Lamb, and born in His Spirit, surrounded and washed by His love. May that be our story, Father, through Jesus our Lord, amen