Session 2 – A Study in Revelation; Apocalyptic Writing: Mark Lanier, 01/21/24

Revelation Lesson 2
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[00:00:00] I'm so glad you're here. We've got a full house this morning, and, um, uh, we have started the study of the Book of Revelation. I-- my attitude on these types of things is to always try to make sure we start with a good foundation so that we're building on something that's secure, that we can have some confidence in as we put together the building.

And so in that regard, we did the introductory class two weeks ago. Uh, last week we took off to have Fred Gray, and that was a blessing. But now we're back at it. So here's the situation that I've got. I've got some material that you need to have fresh in your head [00:01:00] from two weeks ago. Statistically, probably about half of you were here two weeks ago.

Statistically, you'll probably remember ten percent of what I said And some of this is not familiar to everyone, so I'm gonna do a little review, but I'm not gonna do much because Dale Hearn gets on me if I do too much review. Speaking of which, Dale told me after the last class that when he was at seminary at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and he was taking a class in such things, uh, that the professor used what I thought was a really good illustration.

I don't remember the name of the professor or I'd give him credit. Drumright. Who? Drumright. Mimi Drumright's dad. Uh, uh, Professor Drumright talked about how, uh, if, if somebody said, uh, uh, you know, they're going to, to New York City, but they just told you, "Hey, I'm going to the Big Apple," you [00:02:00] would understand what they meant.

But if 2,000 years from now they dug up the quote and said, "Hey, on such and such date, Mark Lanier went to the Big Apple," you're not sure if people 2,000 years from now would get it because they might not know what the Big Apple stood for. And I thought that was a really good illustration because so much of what we read in Revelation, deep in your heart and fresh in your mind you say, "You know, this doesn't make the best of sense."

And that's fair, but it doesn't mean we don't study it and it sure doesn't mean we should be scared about it. And I tell you that because I have a friend who when he first started reading the Bible, started with the Gospel of John, and he read the Gospel of John over and over and over because he, he was trying to learn what it meant to, to be, as [00:03:00] Jared said this morning, in the Kingdom of God.

And so he reads the Gospel of John, and finally he decides to read the Gospel of Matthew. And he called me up and he said, "I just read the Gospel of Matthew." And I said, "Yeah?" He says, "I'm, I'm, I'm going to hell." And I said, "Oh, you are?" And he said, "Yeah. Before I wasn't allowed to kill, which I can generally refrain from, but now I'm not allowed to hate, and I hate with a lot of people And he said, "I'm not even gonna talk to you about the lust part."

And he said, "What advice do you have?" And I said, "Well, I don't have time to talk right now." My fault. I said, "Just go back and read some more John." So he calls me a couple days later and he says, "Well, I last talked to you and I told you I was going to hell." And I said, "Yeah." He said, "So I've memorized the Gospel of John.

I'm tired of reading it, so I decided to read that Revelation of John." I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, I was afraid I was going to hell Wednesday." [00:04:00] He said, "Today, I'm afraid to go outside." We don't need to be scared. We got this. And so I talked last week about the idea that we're familiar with. We know there are genres of literature.

We know that we can read Westerns from Larry McMurtry, or in our own class, we have Dean Mills, who writes just absolute great thrillers. Her, uh, recent one that, that I've read is Trace of Doubt, but she's got like eighty or ninety books. I mean, she's a writing machine. You know, there are different genres of literature.

Uh, Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, and they're all basically the same thing. Uh, somebody's in trouble, Jack Reacher comes to save the day. He's a weird duck, and he can beat people up. The end. And, and you can go and you can read The Chronicles [00:05:00] of Narnia, and those are wonderful allegories about the Christian walk, but they're set within a fantasy world and a fantasy land.

You can read Harry Potter, and you're gonna be reading fantasy books about the wizards and their spells. Or for that matter, you can go to the, to the grand poobah of all fantasy works, Tolkien's series, The Lord of the Rings series. And, and y- you can read those, and you'll get Gandalf the wizard, and he'll...

You know, you'll get orcs and, and, and all of the things that go with it. It's a genre of literature. You don't generally cross genres. I've read a lot of Larry McMurtry. Maybe you saw Lonesome Dove, or you read it. There's not one scene where any wizard appears with a magic wand to, to take care of the problem.[00:06:00]

It's a different genre of literature. Well, the Bible at its core isn't as much a book as it is a library of books. It's a collection of books that are written and, and, and put into one folder, written by tons of different authors over a thousand-year history of, of writing. And if you go back to the day of Jesus, they didn't-- you couldn't go to the store and buy a Bible because it was a collection of scrolls.

And so you've got holy scrolls, and those scrolls cover all sorts of genres of literature ancient genres of literature existed. And the scri-- And, and don't you expect the wonderfully creative God to be able to write and, and inspire and [00:07:00] produce a scripture that's more than a how-to manual? I mean, when you look at the world and all that's in it, and you read that passage out of Romans 1 where Paul says that God's invisible attributes, his eternal power, his divine nature, they are clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So we see a God of order. We see a God of complexity. We see a God of, of, um, uh, reliability You, God, we see a God of creativity. He didn't make us all look alike. Praise God

But within the realm of that, the scriptures that he produced are not just a how-to manual of how to live life and put stuff together. [00:08:00] It's much more delectable than that And I used a, a reconstruction of the ancient library at Alexandria as the backdrop for last week or two weeks ago. But, you know, you can look and you can find in the Bible, as well as on the shelves of your ancient local library, scrolls of history, scrolls of epics, scrolls of poetry, scrolls of how-to books, scrolls of teachings, t- scrolls of law, scrolls of wisdom, scrolls of songs, and scrolls of apocalyptic.

Now, you may rightly say, "What on earth is apocalyptic?" We'll talk about it because that's what Revelation is. In fact, the first word in the Greek text of Revelation is apokalypsis, from which we [00:09:00] get the word apocalyptic. And so we can call this class number two a study in Revelation. This is apocalyptic writings.

Now, you may be saying, "When are we gonna get to the text of Revelation?" Next week But we've got to make sure that we're all on fours here. So here are the three chores today. I want to talk about features that make a writing apocalyptic. Then I want to talk about the approaches to understanding apocalyptic writing, and then we'll have points for home.

So the meat of this is the apocalyptic features, and what I'd like to do in this regard is give you a set of three different examples for these various features that make a writing apocalyptic. So here are your three categories I'll try and look at. I want to look at the [00:10:00] classic Old Testament apocalyptic writing, which is the Old Testament Book of Daniel And it starts, the apocalyptic section really starts with Daniel chapter 7 Interesting side note In the time of Jesus, the Jewish rabbis and sages divided the Old Testament scripture into three different categories.

So the Old Testament scrolls were in three groups. One group of scrolls were called the Torah, and the Torah means law or instruction or a few other things like that. But that's basically Genesis through, uh, Deuteronomy. [00:11:00] Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Yeah. Genesis through Deuteronomy.

That's one entire section of scrolls, one group of scrolls. There was a second group of scrolls that were called the Nevi'im

And these are, which is the word for prophets And these included books like Joshua, Judges, Ruth It included books that we look at as historical, but they were the product of prophetic writings. Prophets are not simply people who look into the future. They're also people who understand the past times. So you've got prophets, but it does include those books we would call...

It includes things like Isaiah, the minor prophets, [00:12:00] Jeremiah, all the rest. Daniel is not classified in that group by the sages in the day of Jesus. Daniel is in the third group of writings, and that is called the, just the Ketuvim. But those are-- That's the word for other writings. And it includes the Psalms, the Proverbs.

It includes Daniel, the apocalyptic book. Because while Daniel has prophecy in it, at its root, they recognized at the time of Jesus it was a different genre of writing than, uh, your typical prophet. Though even Zechariah's got some apocalyptic elements, and you'll find them in Isaiah in some places. But we'll look at [00:13:00] examples in Daniel today to understand apocalyptic writing.

Then there's a whole nother corpus of ancient writings that we call the pseudepigrapha Pseudo means fake. Epigrapha is referencing the writers. These are books that have been assigned writers that weren't really the writers. They're, they're, um, they're not bib-- they're not, um, part of the biblical canon.

They're not... Don't confuse it with the Apocrypha. But we have a host. Here's just one volume. We have a host of ancient writings that the Jews and Christians had around them at the ancient time. You know, we talk about [00:14:00] holy scripture, but these aren't the only Jewish writings that were there. It's not, oh, they wrote something in, in Hebrew.

Well, throw it in, make it part of the Bible. No, they were very judicious. These books that make the Bible are ones that were deemed to be inspired by God and His Spirit. But there's a host of other writings, including a boatload that are apocalyptic. So we can read things that predate Jesus and postdate Jesus.

We can read apocalyptic writings that were written about the same time as the Revelation of John And we get a really good idea of what apocalyptic literature is, and it gives us insight that helps us better understand Revelation. So the third category, of course, we've got to consider [00:15:00] Revelation, and I'll give some examples of that as we go along.

So let's talk then about apocalyptic features. What are the features within apocalyptic literature? Feature number one, big feature, and these are features. Now, scholars will give more than I've pulled out for today, and not all of these features are present in all of the apocalyptic writings. It's not a checklist where you've got to tick the box.

But this in general is what you're gonna see. Big feature number one, symbolism. They use symbolism in apocalyptic writing a lot. What do we mean by symbolism? Well, that's where one thing is meant to represent something else. We do that today The color red symbolizes love. [00:16:00] On Valentine's Day, I plan on sending my wife, close your ears, Becky, red roses.

Black symbolizes death. I'm not gonna send her black roses

I, I'm gonna send her red roses. That's what-- Red symbolizes love. A heart itself symbolizes love. I wanna give my heart to Becky. I do not mean I'm gonna reach in the ribcage and take this little beater out and hand it to her. That'd be the last thing I ever did

We use a heart to symbolize love. In Korea, they'll hold two fingers up like this to make a little heart to say, "I love you." Thank you[00:17:00]

The Bible uses symbolism. Don't let that scare you. Don't say, "Well, if they're using symbolism, how do we know if the resurrection was real?" Because you can read it. He says, "Touch me." It's written very clearly to be real. But I'll tell you where symbolism is present, and that's Psalm 1:39. "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb."

Now, come on, that is not saying that God has knitting needles in the uterus. And not one of us believes He does. We read that and have no trouble seeing, well, that's symbolic for saying God has taken great care in seeing that we exist. And Janet would want me to talk about DNA right now and all of the care that's [00:18:00] involved in combining DNA strands from egg and s-- and sperm and, and you've got that combination, and it n-knitted together is a wonderful way to say it, but it is nothing more than a symbol of God's intricate care in making us who we are.

So symbolism is something that's very present in apocalyptic writing, and they're especially fond of using animals. Animals are very big time in this symbolism. So now let me give you some examples. This is the format we're gonna use. I'm glad Dr. Hank is here because he tells me, "Mark, if you've got too much material for class, don't just blow through it.

Go through it, and you've always got next week, God willing." So I'm gonna keep that in mind, Hank. You're my conscience over there. Let's start with Daniel. Daniel chapter 8 uses a goat as a symbol, [00:19:00] and it's a, it's a, a, um, fascinating passage, um, to read. It's an entire vision, and the benefit of Daniel is you have an angel explaining what the vision means and explaining the symbol, so we're not at a loss.

But look at Daniel chapter 8 with me.

This is Daniel's vision of the ram and the goat. Happens in the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar. A vision appeared to me. By the way, that's very apocalyptic as well. Another element is a-- it comes in visions and dreams. A vision appeared to me, Daniel. Here's what I saw in the vision. I was at the Ulai Canal.

I raised my eyes and I saw, and there's a ram standing on the bank of the canal. Now, the [00:20:00] ram had two horns, and both horns were high. One was higher than the other. The higher one came up last. And I saw the ram charging westward, and northward, and southward. No beast could stand before him. There wasn't one who could rescue from his power.

He did whatever he wanted to. Became gadol, he became great As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, and it's like he was flying That's the way we'd say it. They just said his feet weren't touching the ground. It was swift. The goat [00:21:00] had a conspicuous horn between his eyes.

Couldn't miss it. He came to the ram with the two horns that I'd seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. I saw him come close to the ram. He was enraged against him. He struck the ram and broke his two horns. The ram had no power to stand before him. He cast the ram down to the ground and he trampled on him, and there wasn't anyone who could rescue the ram from his power.

Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it, there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. Now the vision goes on, but I'm gonna curtail it there, and I'm gonna tell you that a horn was very typically a symbol for a king.[00:22:00]

And you might be able to figure out what the angel interprets this for, but, but w- we understand this. History is clear on this one The Medes and the Persians are the two horns of the ram. You've got the Medes and the Persians, which are the kingdoms, and those kingdoms existed until this goat with one king, one horn, comes galloping in from the west, and he flew all over and destroyed the Medes and the Persians.

Do you care to guess the name of that goat? Alexander the Great. And Alexander the Great sweeps over and takes over everything until he dies unexpectedly at a young age. His horn of that goat is broken, [00:23:00] and four horns come up in its place. When Alexander the Great died in his late 20s, his kingdom was divided into four, and there were four rulers over the kingdom of Alexander the Great.

You had the Ptolemies in Egypt. Um, you had, uh, uh, the Seleucids over here, the Seleucid Empire. Up here, you've got, uh, two of his generals. You've got Cassander and Lysimachus, and they kind of fight back and forth over all of that land. But those are the four kingdoms. But it's written up in symbolic language.

Now, that's Daniel. Let me give you an example from non-biblical apocalyptic. I'd love to talk to you about Fourth Ezra, specifically the fifth vision of Fourth Ezra[00:24:00]

Fourth Ezra, the fifth vision. It's called by scholars today the eagle vision, and not like Hotel California

On the second night, I had a dream. And behold, there came up from the sea an eagle that had twelve feathered wings and three heads. And I looked, and behold, he spread his wings over all the earth Spoiler alert, the eagle was the symbol of the Roman Empire

He spread his wings over all the earth, and all the winds of heaven blew upon him, and the clouds gathered around him. And this is the Roman Empire. And, and the Roman Empire is there until a lion comes up. [00:25:00] This is later on in the chapter. A, a lion comes up. "I heard a voice, 'Look before you. Consider what you see.'

I looked and behold, a creature like a lion was aroused out of the forest, roaring. And I heard how he uttered a man's voice to the eagle and said, 'Listen and I'll speak to you. The Most High says to you, Are you not the o- are you not the one that remains of the four beasts which I had made to reign in my world so that the end of my times might come through them?

You, the fourth that has come, have conquered all the beasts that have gone before. You have sway over the world with much terror. You're all over the earth with a grievous oppression, for so long have you dwelt on the earth with deceit. Your insolence has come up before the Most High and your pride the Mighty One.

[00:26:00] Surely you'll disappear, you eagle, with your terrifying wings and your most evil little wings and your malicious heads and your most evil talons and your whole worthless body, so the whole earth, freed from your violence, may be refreshed and relieved.' And while the lion is saying these words, behold, the head disappears and the wings.

And the lion..." You get an interpretation of this as well, by the way. Let me go back and give you the interpretation the interpretation. So he says to me, "The eagle that you saw coming up from the sea is the fourth kingdom, which appeared in a vision to your brother Daniel," saying that the fourth creature in one of Daniel's visions was the Roman Empire.

"But now I've explained it to you. And as for the lion, as for the lion you saw rousing up out of the forest and roaring and speaking to the eagle and reproving him for his [00:27:00] unrighteousness and for all of the words you've heard, this is the Messiah, whom the Most High has kept until the end of days, who will arise from the posterity of David and will come and speak to them and denounce them for their ungodliness and for their wickedness, cast them up for their contemptuous dealings."

If you got to hear Pastor Jared's sermon this morning on kingdom, or if you'll get to hear it after this, he'll talk about how the people were thinking that a Messiah was going to come who was going to defeat the Roman Empire, and they wanted to know if that was gonna be Jesus. And Pilate had heard of it.

Pilate wanted to know, "Hey, are you, are you setting yourself up as the king?" Jesus says, "My kingdom's not of this world."

This is not holy scripture that we're reading, but it is a contemporary writing. And the contemporary writing [00:28:00] was one where the people were expecting a Messiah would come who would destroy the Roman Empire And so this atmosphere that Jesus was in is one that, that becomes e-extremely important as Pastor Jarrett points out.

Let me give you a passage out of Revelation to give you some of the flavor as well. Revelation chapter five, I don't need to turn to it because you all know it. Well, it's helpful anyway to turn it. Maybe you don't know it. You never know what you don't know. So Revelation chapter five contains a classic, well-known symbol

"Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. [00:29:00] And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 'Who's worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?'" Big question. "No one in heaven or on earth was able to open the scroll or look into it.

I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll. And one of the elders said to me, 'Weep no more. The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so he can open the scroll and its seals.' And between the thrones and the four living creatures I saw a Lamb standing, as though it'd been slain, with seven horns, seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into the earth."

The elders fall down before the Lamb, singing a song, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals." Do you know how much joy we're gonna have and experience when we get to work through that [00:30:00] passage in light of what the people were thinking in that day and what was going on? There's no doubt this is the Messiah, the lion.

There's no doubt that Jesus is the lamb that was slain, and those symbols are all a part of what we have in apocalyptic literature. So what else? There's a peculiar use of numbers in apocalyptic writing. We live in a number age. My wife and I both mem-- just yesterday, we're able-- We're talking on the phone.

We were reciting each other's... Okay, we have really incredibly wonderful phone conversations. We were reciting the fact that both of us can tell the other one our Texas Bar Card number even though we haven't really looked at [00:31:00] it in thirty to forty years. Um, we are in a number generation. We're in a number age.

Numbers mean something

And numbers are symbolic. Remember this?

A lonely number Two can be as bad as- That's enough. By the way, they toured without their lead singer, and the nickname for them was not Three Dog Night, it was One Dog Light. Um

So numbers. Look at Daniel for a moment. In Daniel 7:9 through 10, you have a wonderful illustration of how numbers have a [00:32:00] symbolism beyond simply, um, uh- the physical accounting of the number. And so, um, you can see Numbers, uh, uh, Daniel 7:9 through 10, here's where the Ancient of Days reigns. "As I looked, thrones were placed and the Ancient of Days took his seat.

His clothing was white as snow, the hair of his head like pure wool. His throne was fiery flames, its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came out before him. A thousand thousands, uh, served him. Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him." Well, which is it? Is it a thousand thousands or is it ten thousand times ten thousand?

Or is there a difference between standing before him and serving him? You know, uh, is, is-- D- can we do the math? A thousand thousands, is that a million? Ten thousand ten [00:33:00] thousands, is that a billion? I don't know. Do the math. But that's, that's not math. A thousand and ten thousand stood for a whole lot of people, everybody.

We still use numbers that way

I was speaking in Miami yesterday morning. There were millions of people listening Not. Non-biblical apocalyptic. Again, you get the same type stuff with numbers. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, where we found a lot of apocalyptic writing, the, the most prominent translator, in terms of volume at least, of the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls was a, a gentleman named Florentino Garcia Martinez And he writes, "The systems [00:34:00] used to divide history into periods, bringing in this way some order into the chaos, are based on the numbers four, seven, 10, 49, 70, and even 490."

We will get into these details later, and I'll get into a lot more details with you, but here's your spoiler alert so that you've just got it. In ancient times, three was a spiritual number. Whoops Three was a spiritual number Four was an earthly number. Four winds, four corners. Why we have four directions.

Four is an earthly number. If you combine the earthly and the spiritual, what do you have? You have everything.

which is seven. When Jesus is asked by Peter, "Should I [00:35:00] forgive my brother seven times?" He wasn't saying, "Time eight, I get to gutting." He's saying, "Should I forgive him completely?" And Jesus' reply is, "70 times seven." Jesus doesn't mean you get 490 goes, 491 you're dead. But anything with a 10 or a hundred or a thousand or 10,000, the zeros just make it stronger or bigger or more in a sense.

So Jesus is saying not just completely, but completely times completely times completely times completely times completely. You walk in forgiveness

You see this in Revelation

The number seven in Revelation is used repeatedly, a [00:36:00] completeness number. So you have the letters to the seven churches. You've got Jesus with the seven horns, the seven eyes. He's got seven candlesticks. He's refer- the seven stars. You're gonna have seven visions in a sense. Seven is an important number to understanding Revelation.

It's part of this peculiar use of numbers. Now, all of these also have a coming cataclysm. Not all, most of these speak of a coming ca- You know, this is the end of the world

Remember the REM song? Some of you are like, "Who?" Trust me, they were, like, good in their days. Um, the end of the world is in these things all over the place and, and you'll find it in, [00:37:00] in, in these writings. It's something that's very important. It speaks of the last days over and over, including the last days being the days of the Messiah.

This is exactly what point Jarrett was making this morning. Pastor Jarrett preached this as part of his kingdom sermon this morning, that we're in the last days. And, and we are. That was the concept that they had. And so... Whoops, uh, that didn't work quite the way I wanted it to. Um, so if we go to Daniel...

There, we'll get Daniel on there. If we go to Daniel 7:13-14, we'll see a good illustration of this

I saw in the night visions And behold, with the [00:38:00] clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion, glory, a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. And his dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

And this is referenced in Jared's sermon this morning. But the idea that there's coming a time where there is a kingdom that's going to rule over all is written up. But it doesn't just come from biblical text. That was understood by the people. That was understood. If you look at some passages out of, out of, uh, this non-biblical literature that was present at the time.

2 Baruch. I'm trying to give you some different pass-- different books so that it's not all the same one, so you [00:39:00] get more exposure. Look at, look at this, uh, vision, 2 Baruch 53, "I saw a vision, and behold, a cloud was coming up from the Great Sea, and I was looking at it."

It was entirely filled with black water, with lots of colors in the water. And something like great lightning appeared at its top. I saw the cloud was passing quickly. And it just starts going on and on and on about all of this and, and what happens, how the lightning, which I'd seen at the top, seized it, pressed it down to the earth.

Lightning shone so much more, it lit the whole earth, healed the regions where the last waters had descended and where it brought about destruction. But all of this happens 12 times. There are 12 woes of tribulation that are given in this, and when this is interpreted, it's interpreted with the Messiah being the lightning that comes down.

I [00:40:00] finished the words of the prayer. I sat down there under a tree to rest in the shadows. I was surprised and astonished. I pondered in my thoughts about the multitude of the goodness with which sinners on earth have rejected and the great punishment they've despised. While I was pondering these things, behold, an angel came and told me what it meant.

And he goes on to say, "Why are you bothered by this? Don't you know the world's gonna come to an end, and the Messiah's gonna take care of business?" If you look at 4 Ezra

Sixteen

Fourth Ezra 16, starting like at verse 18, it starts talking about the woes, the beginning of sorrows, the tribulation, when there will be much lamentation, the beginning of famine, when many will perish, the beginning of wars, when powers will be terrified, beginning of calamities, when all will [00:41:00] tremble. What do they do when they come?

Famine, plague, tribulation, anguish are sent as scourges for the correction of men. Yet for all this, they don't turn from their iniquities. They're not always mindful of the scourges. And so it keeps going, and it talks about how ultimately the Messiah will come and make things right. And then you get to the Book of Revelation, and we know Revelation talks about times of tribulation and times of difficulty, but the coming calamity in Revelation 18:21 and following is, is pretty blunt.

Revelation chapter 18 A mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone saying, "So will Babylon the great city," spoiler alert. Babylon, uh, was often talked about in literature as, as Rome. "Babylon the great [00:42:00] city will be thrown down with violence and will be no more." There we go. "And the sound of harpists and musicians and flute players will be heard in you no more.

And a craftsman

Of any craft will be found no more. The light of a lamp will shine in you no more. The voice of a bridegroom and bride will be heard no more. The merchant-- I mean, all of the nations that have been deceived by your sorcery. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who've been slain.

Then there's rejoicing in heaven because the Messiah makes it right So we've got in Revelation the coming cataclysm, as we do in so many of these. Angels and demons are spoken of extensively in apocalyptic literature. Now, this is not the kind like the sweet little Disney angel on your, and, and devil on your shoulder, "Do it, don't do it.

Do it, don't do it." You know, this is [00:43:00] not Flip Wilson, "The devil made me do it." This is of a much different ilk than that. This is all-out war. So you can read in Daniel, for example, about this in Daniel 10:13, where you're gonna read about the, the angels that are warring on behalf of, of people

And you've got an angel talking to Daniel, and the angel says to Daniel, um, "The pr-- I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes," an angel, archangel, "came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia."

So you've got this fight going on between the angels. There's non-biblical apocalyptic. They get into a lot more detail about [00:44:00] fights. They're pretty gruesome. But in 1 Enoch, uh, I don't have time to get to it, but 1 Enoch 10:12, you'll read about the archangel Michael warring against the fallen angels and locking them up.

In fact, it's good also because of what it says about time, uh, numbers. So we will just throw it in there. Hank?

Look at verse 12. All right, this is Michael, and to Michael God says, "Make known to Semyazza," that's, uh, one of the fallen angels, "and others who are with him, who fornicated with women." This is a reference to the angels having come down and, and, and interbreeding with, uh, women, which is, uh, what they believed Genesis 6 was talking about.

Um, "They will die together with them in their defilement. When all of them have battled with each other, when they've seen the destruction of their beloved ones. In those [00:45:00] days he'll lead them into the bottom of the fire and in torment in the prison where they'll be locked up forever." They're gonna get locked up forever, which he understands to be 490 years, 'cause he's not using numbers in the same way we use them.

You've got, uh, the same battles happening in Revelation. In Revelation 12:7, you have a-- I mean, you got war and, and, uh, this is, uh, this is apocalyptic writing at its best

War arose in heaven. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated. There wasn't any place for him in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down. That ancient serpent who's called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

And I [00:46:00] heard a loud voice in heaven saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of Christ have come. The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before God, and they've conquered him by the blood of the Lamb." Um, you've got, uh, uh, there in Revelation 7 and in others, lots of sim-- of, of discussion about angels and demons.

You'll also have discussions about an age to come. I referred to some of this, so I'll do it briefly, but in Daniel it talks about the days of the Messiah or the days that will come, one like the Son of Man. You've got it in non-biblical apocalyptic. They knew what Daniel said. They knew what the prophets had said in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Uh, Florentino Garcia Martinez says, "The last days comprise the beginning of the Messianic Age." This is exactly what Jarrett says in his sermon. Jarrett has really done a great job in this kingdom series [00:47:00] of capturing the understanding and mentality of the world at the time of Jesus, which helps us better understand not just Revelation, but the ministry and teaching of Jesus and the response he was getting from the people around who read this kind of stuff and talked about it all day long.

I mean, the d- this stuff was popular enough that they buried it in this Dead Sea Scroll caves 'cause they didn't wanna lose it. I mean, this wasn't like Dune Buggy Baby or something like that. This was real literature. This was like Scarlet Letter, which I frankly didn't enjoy. Um, Fourth Ezra has got some great passages about this, uh, especially 7:26, but we'll set that aside for now.

Revelation, you've got it again in there, Revelation 21:22. Jarrett referred to it this morning. The, the new Jerusalem descending. There is an [00:48:00] age to come So if those are the apocalyptic features, and that's the meat of the class today, what are the different ways we can approach understanding this? This is where I'll pick up next week, but I'll give you an idea that a lot of people approach Revelation differently, and we'll discuss different ways to do it.

I got an email, uh, ba, ba, ba, ba. I got an email this week from someone in South Africa who asked me do I believe that the current Israeli war is mentioned in biblical prophecy. Um, and I emailed back, said no. Um, you know, we've had a boatload of wars that are serious wars. It may be mentioned in a general sense that there are always wars and rumors of wars, but this particular war is not one that is, is the sole fulfillment of a particular prophecy in, in Revelation or something like that, in my opinion.

I could be wrong. I'm not, I'm not [00:49:00] Google. Um. But we do have to be a little careful because, like, 666, I just took a smattering of different people who'd interpreted 666, the mark of the beast historically. Did you know, depending upon when you live, 666 could've been Nero? 666 could've been Pope Leo X.

Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King Jr., though maybe somebody said he was, too. I don't know. But Martin Luther the reformer. Henry Kissinger. He was the beast. The Ku Klux Klan

Yeah, they had, they had, they had similar treatment as Carolyn. Yeah. Not, not VB's, you know, they were definitely influenced by it. Hitler

So we're gonna talk about this and we're gonna talk about the caution, but I cannot [00:50:00] stop without giving you the points for home because this is the most important part of this lesson None of th... Look, I find all of this fascinating academically and intellectually. I love it, 'cause I'm a Bible nerd But you can have all the knowledge in the world, and it doesn't help you if you're not walking with the Lord You know, when Herod the Great needed to know where the Messiah was gonna be born so he could go kill babies, he called the wise men in, said, "Where's the Messiah gonna be born?"

They knew Bethlehem Ephrathah, and then they go home. Well, they shoulda gone to see the Messiah. You can have all the knowledge in the world, if you don't know Jesus, it doesn't matter. Revelation begins, "The apocalyptic of-- Apocalypsis of [00:51:00] Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants things that must soon take place."

This is the revelation of Jesus Christ. And as in all of life, Christ is the center core. He's the centering core for the book. He's the centering core for the age. He is the centering core for the age to come. He's the centering core of who wins the battle. He's the centering core of our life, or at least He should be Point for home two, "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy."

Did you hear that? "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. The time's at hand. The time is near." [00:52:00] This book is worth understanding. It's worth digging into. It's worth the intellectual challenge of grappling with it because understanding this book comes with a blessing.

That is the only passage I can find in my Bible that says, "If you read this scroll, this book right here, you'll get a special blessing." Point for home three, Revelation five and six, "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom." And this just fits Jarrett's sermon like a hand in a glove.

He's freed us from our sins by his blood. He's made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father. We rightly praise Jesus as we read and understand this book because we are in his kingdom. Spoiler [00:53:00] alert, his kingdom wins in the end. Amen. And so that's where we'll end. Let me bless you in the name of Jesus, and I look forward to next week.

Father, in the name of Jesus, I ask your blessings not just on, on these, these teachings, not just on trying to understand your Word better, but I ask your blessings on the lives of everyone listening, that you will touch them, that you will give them hope in despair, that you will give them mercy in judgment, that you will give them deliverance in bondage, that you will give them faith in fear, that you will give them direction in purposelessness.

Father, be the core of who we are every day as we live in your kingdom, and pray your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. [00:54:00] Amen.