05-13-12 Crucial Attitudes

Rev. 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must shortly take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John,

Rev. 1:2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.

Rev. 1:3 Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.

Today we are going to move into

what will be an introductory study of the last book in the Bible,

the Book of Revelation.

By “introductory” I mean that we will not go all the way through the book,

but we’ll go far enough into it

so that it will hopefully disarm some of the confusion

that the book frequently causes when a person tries to read it without any background.

During the past several weeks

we have been laying a foundation for the book

by looking at a number of other prophetic passages

that lead up to the events presented in the book of Revelation.

The Book of Revelation

was given to us by our Lord

to complete the prophetic picture

that He has presented throughout the entire Bible.

It is not so much the last “book”

as it is the last “chapter” of a prophetic revelation that began in the Book of Genesis.

The book contains three major sections:

1. The first chapter provides a crucial introduction to the book.

2. Revelation chapters 2 and 3 provide seven messages given to John by Christ

for seven local church fellowships.

3. Then the remainder of the book,

from chapter 4 through chapter 22

give us a vivid picture

of the last seven years of human history

immediately preceding the return of Christ.

We are going to start this morning

with the introduction contained in Chapter 1,

and with this introduction

we are also going to see our Lord

laying the ground-rules

for everything else we will encounter in the book.

Knowing the future can be a dangerous thing,

especially if we do not understand

why that knowledge is given

or what we are suppose to do with it.

My wife, Sandee, and I met here in Alaska

and began dating in the Spring of 1976.

Nine years earlier,

in the Spring of 1967 I was a sophomore

at Seattle Pacific University,

and Sandee was a high school senior

at King’s Garden High School in Seattle.

That spring I was in a one-act play

produced by the Seattle Pacific drama department,

and opened to the public.

A group of students from Sandee’s high school attended that play,

and Sandee saw me in that performance.

I never met her,

never saw her,

never even knew a group of high school students were in the audience.

I didn’t know she was there that night

until after we were married.

Now, I want you to imagine

what might have happened

if that night,

just before the performance,

the Lord would have supernaturally revealed to me this message:

“Larry, the person I have for you to marry is in the audience tonight.”

That message would have been true.

But, can you imagine

all the wrong assumptions I would have made if I would have known that?

First of all,

I would certainly have assumed

that I was going to marry

a Seattle Pacific student.

Second,

I would have assumed she was attending Seattle Pacific at that time.

Every time I considered dating someone,

the first question I would have asked was, “Did you happen to attend that Friday night performance of the play, ‟It Should Happen To A Dog!”?

If they would have said “No”,

I would have scratched them off the list.

If they would have said, “Yes”,

I would think, “Maybe this is the one!”

And, can you imagine my turmoil

the day I graduated,

knowing I had somehow missed her,

and I was destined to live single

and lonely the rest of my life.

Knowing the future

without knowing it in context

can be a dangerous thing.

We are going to be looking at the future

in our study of the Book of Revelation,

and our protection against confusion

will come from keeping the future in context.

The Book of Revelation

gets us in trouble

for the same reason my knowing

Sandee saw that play

would have gotten me in trouble 45 years ago -

because we have this driving urge

to take bits and pieces of the future

and attempt to cram them into the present.

And, this is jumping ahead,

but I’ll just give you one example of what I mean.

The 13^th chapter of the Book of Revelation

talks about the Anti-Christ,

a world ruler who will come into power

during the final months of human history.

In that 13^th chapter we find this statement:

Rev. 13:16 And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead,

Rev. 13:17 and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Now, in context, what do we know about this event?

1. We know it happens in the 13^th chapter of Revelation.

2. We know it happens after the Anti-Christ has taken power

and has near total world dominance.

3. We know that it happens as a direct result of a specific dictate

of the Anti-Christ himself.

4. And, if we took the time to look at it in the broader context,

we would see that it is clearly understood as being an act of

willing submission to

and acceptance of the authority

and power of the Anti-Christ.

But look what happens

when we yank that piece of the future

out of context

and attempt to cram it into our immediate situation -

it generates tremendous fear

and anxiety among some of God’s people

who believe somehow someone is going to trick them into taking the mark of the beast

by their getting a VISA card

or using their social security number.

And as long as I’ve stumbled into this mark thing,

I might as well take a few more minutes

to put the whole discussion into context.

You see, this “mark of the beast”

is nothing more than one additional little point

where Satan is once again attempting

to imitate God.

What we see in the Book of Revelation

is Satan’s great, final counterfeit of the real thing.

Let me show you what I mean.

There is the true Trinity:

God the Father,

God the Son,

and God the Holy Spirit.

In Revelation we see Satan’s

counterfeit trinity:

Satan the father,

Anti-Christ his possessed offspring,

and his Magician cohort- the imitation Holy Spirit.

Christ is returning to set up His one-world Government

with Himself as the perfect King.

In Revelation Satan sets up his

one-world government

ruled by the Anti-Christ.

At the beginning of these final events,

the first thing God does,

before any final plague or destruction comes upon the earth,

is to send out His angel

to place His seal upon the foreheads

of each of His people.

Listen to this:

Rev. 7:1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree.

Rev. 7:2 And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea,

Rev. 7:3 saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads."

Before anything else happens

God takes His people,

and as we saw last week

all of whom at this point are within the nation of Israel,

and He seals them for Himself.

He is saying to the world,

and to His own angels of destruction,

and to all the forces of evil,

“These people are mine!

They cannot be touched,

they cannot be hurt

apart from My permission.”

That’s in chapter 7,

at the beginning of the final seven years.

Then, in chapter 13 Satan looks at God’s people

and sees them all marked and sealed for God

and by God,

and so he imitates it.

He says, “OK, I’ll seal my people, too.”

But, of course,

He has to coerce his people

into taking his mark,

so he establishes a system in which

no one can buy or sell

without his mark.

But, once again,

it is only an imitation

of what God has already done with His people.

Now, certainly it is fascinating

to see a world computer and economic system developing

that makes it easy for us to see

how the Anti-Christ

will be able to accomplish this.

But in context

there is absolutely no basis

for fear or anxiety.

Long before Satan ever gets around

to stamping his mark on his people,

Jesus Christ has already

marked and sealed the people of God

and through that mark

declared to all of Creation

that these people are His

and no one

and nothing can touch them

without going through Him first.

We hear a great deal

in our church world today

about the mark of the beast,

especially from those

who are trying to sell their books,

and tapes and seminars.

Some of what is said

is calculated to generate

a subtle kind of fear and anxiety

among the people of God,

suggesting that the mark of the beast

is very much like

the big bad wolf

in Little Red Riding Hood,

crouching under the covers,

ready to spring up and capture you

when you least suspect it.

I want you to listen carefully

to what I’m going to say right now.

It is crucial

to everything we do in this series.

If Biblical prophecy generates fear and anxiety in the child of God,

then you have misunderstood it.

Did you notice

the first thing Paul said

immediately following that passage

we looked at last week in I Thess. 4,

where he describes the Departure?

Immediately after his prophetic description

of the way in which

Christ will return

and suddenly, instantly

pull every Christian off of this earth,

the very next thing he says is this:

1 Thess. 4:18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

That is the effect

that the correct understanding of prophecy

will have on the Christian -

it will serve as a tremendous source of comfort.

And as long as I’m wandering all over the place,

let me take you to the last two verses

of the Book of Revelation

and show you John’s response

to the vivid, detailed vision of the death and destruction

that will surround the return of Christ.

In the last two verses of the Bible he says,

Rev. 22:20 He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming quickly." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Rev. 22:21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.

For the child of God

the return of Christ

is our ultimate victory.

As I understand the prophetic message of Scripture

we who belong to the Lord now

will not go through those last seven years.

But even if I’ve got it all mixed up

and we do go through the Tribulation

we will go through it

held tightly in the hand of our God,

and surrounded by His love.

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance

to read your children

C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia,

but if you have

you know that in that imaginary world of Narnia

Jesus Christ is Aslan, the Lion.

But He is not just any lion,

He is a lion like none other -

a massive, majestic lion

who clearly has all power,

and all authority over creation.

There is a scene toward the end of that book

in which the wicked witch

has been tormenting the good creatures who are loyal to Aslan,

turning many of them into stone statues

by touching them with her wand.

For a time

the forces of good

seem totally outmatched

by the wicked witch

and the evil forces she has rallied around her.

And then the rightful King, Aslan, returns

and prepares His people for the final battle,

and the great victory.

And there is one scene I recall

in which Aslan is going through the courtyard outside the palace of the wicked witch,

and He is breathing on all of these stone statues

that were once His faithful followers.

As soon as His breath hits them

the stone begins to melt

and they come back to life.

One of those creatures He melts

is another lion,

not a lion like Aslan,

but just a normal little lion.

There is a tremendous amount of chaos

in the courtyard for a few minutes

as all these creatures come back to life,

and then Aslan begins to organize His army for battle,

and as he is placing everyone in their proper place

He says to this other lion, “We lions will be at the head of the charge.”

The effect that comment has

on that little lion has never ceased to thrill me.

The little guy starts running throughout the courtyard,

saying to everyone he meets,

‟Did you hear that? Did you? He says WE lions. WE lions.

Me and Aslan - we lions will be up front.

He said WE lions. That’s what I like about Him...no stand-offishness...”

It wasn’t until Aslan had loaded him up

with three or four of the smaller creatures on his back

that he finally begins to settle down.

Folks,

that’s Biblical Prophecy.

That is the Book of Revelation.

It is God Himself,

the Lord Jesus Christ,

saying to us, ‟WE sons of God

will lead the charge.”

He’s not saying we are in any way equal.

But He is saying

we are on the same side,

with the same Father God,

and the same glorious future together,

and our side wins.

If there was ever a time

to pass out T shirts

to the people of God

it’s now.

And on the back

in huge block letters they should say:

‟NO FEAR”,

I’m with the Big Guy up front,

the One whose eyes are a flame of fire,

and whose feet are like molten bronze,

whose voice is like the thunder,

the One who glows like the sun shining in its strength.”