Revelations Study Guide starting at page 37
Book of Revelations Study Guide discussion led by Pastor Will Metz
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Episode transcript
Generated transcript for this episode.
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Okay.
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Page 37, I heard somebody say.
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That's right. We didn't get too far last Yeah. We did not.
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Okay. Six.
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Fresh air. So we actually read the chapter six. Right?
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I know we read out of Revelation, but we didn't do anything in the book, I think. What page in the book are we? 37.
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Page 37.
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Yeah. So we'll just read. This session depicts the first of, three sevenfold visions, each of which takes place on earth in time between Jesus' ascension and his second coming.
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This first vision is the breaking of the seven seals of the scroll handed to Christ by the angel.
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Remember, John was complaining no one was worthy to, open the seals, and then all of a sudden, the lamb who was slain is there, and he's worthy.
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So this first vision is the breaking of the seven seals of the scroll heaven... Handed to Christ by the angels.
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With each seal broken, the end draws nearer.
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Though judgment for sin will come for the world as the end approaches, god's people will ultimately be spared and delivered to the promised land of the new creation, like Noah and his family in the ark and the Israelites during the exodus.
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So let's pray.
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Heavenly father, you said through your servant Paul that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that's be... To be revealed to us at Christ's coming.
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Let us likewise see that our present sufferings and the future judgment will be turned to our deliverance that we may keep the faith until we live in the endless coming glory through Jesus Christ, your son, who comes to deliver us.
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Amen. Amen. Amen.
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And so I like in the prayer, let us likewise see the present suffering and the future judgment will be turned to our deliverance that we may keep the faith.
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What does that remind you of?
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What were you talking about last Sunday? Bible study.
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Well, that... But, when does that actually, the body and blood of our lord and savior keep you And preserve you. In the... Preserve you in the one true faith until life everlasting.
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See, we say that every other week.
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Did you know that's what we're saying?
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Is the body and blood of Christ keeps us safe until when?
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He comes again. Yeah.
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Yay. Yay. That's a yay moment.
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So that's that's pretty cool.
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The prophecy of Revelation begins with chapter six.
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This prophecy consists of three visions of events taking place on Earth.
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The three visions are diagrammed below.
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Oh, I love diagrams.
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So,
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the first vision, seven seals.
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And we
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have seals one through five, No battle scene.
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Scene
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six is the sixth seal, which is the end of the world.
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And scene seven is the seventh seal, which introduces the second vision. And so what is the second vision?
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Seven trumpets. Seven trumpets.
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So scene one through five there is trumpets one through five.
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Scene six is the sixth trumpet, which is the great battle.
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And scene seven is the seventh trumpet, which is the end of this world.
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Then your third vision.
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It's not a different end of the world than the diff... And than the end of the world in the seven seals. They're both the same.
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These are things that are happening simultaneously.
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The third vision is the seven censures.
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What's censure?
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It's something you burn incense in.
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Oh, the metal?
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Mhmm.
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Mhmm. Or something you burn things in is a censure.
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Scene one through five, censures one through five. Scene six is the battle of Armageddon, and a whole bunch of books written about that to scare people.
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And, scene seven is the seventh center, which again is the end of this world.
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So you have
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these are not...
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The, three visions are not three separate events.
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They're aspects of the same event, which is the event is, and this makes it really easy, the ascension of Christ into heaven
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and the end of time.
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It's the only event.
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So where are we?
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Right.
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Somewhere in between the ascension of Christ and the end of this world.
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Do we have anything to worry about? No. No. So why do we worry so much? Armageddon. I'll ask that again.
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Yeah. I I don't see why we have to worry so much. I know exactly why we do worry.
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I don't know why we worry
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other than it's kinda fun sometimes to worry. No. It's not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Then then why is it one of our very, very favoritest things to do?
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See, like me, I don't do anything that I don't want to.
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Well, other than pay taxes.
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But even I make a joke out of that.
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You know? I I don't know. I Good for you. Well We don't do it. It's it's like, well, what are you gonna do about paying taxes?
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Yeah. Complain. Neither. Either.
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Yeah. Like I said, worry and complain.
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We're gonna be Israelites about. You only brought us out here in this desert to die of thirst.
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Or we we were eating just fine in Egypt. Why'd you bring us out here to starve to death?
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And what does Moses do? He gets all upset.
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What does God do?
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Yeah.
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Takes care of it. That's kinda like when I didn't have the money to pay my water bill, and God told me, he said, you don't think I could pay your water bill? I parted the Red Sea. Yeah. Look what I did with Moses. He just banged on a rock. You're right.
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And they got free water. My bad.
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See?
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So why do we worry?
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What's the root cause of worry? Natural.
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What? A lack of faith. Lack of faith or trust.
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Or Yeah. Yeah. We forget that causing control.
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Yeah. See, you nailed it.
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It's more a control problem Mhmm. Than it is anything else. Wow. Because we need to be in control.
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See, that's why we were trying to go in my office.
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You can't control other pe... Yes.
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At all. So then what do we do when we're not in control? Give it to God. Well, we give it... Most of the time, we worry. Yeah. Yeah. And fret and everything.
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What's the purpose of the book of Revelation?
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So we don't fret and worry.
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Yep. What does this book get used mostly for? Writing books to make people fret and worry. Isn't that crazy what we do? We will take God's good stuff every time and turn it around to our control.
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That just makes me mad.
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Why did... Why does he think he gets to control things?
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Oh, wait. He's God. See?
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Yeah.
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Or not. Sit down and behave.
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I'm talking to me.
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So in case you didn't take my word for it, the, doctor Brighton tells us each vision covers the same period of time, Jesus' ascension up to Christ's return.
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The sec... This session covers the first of these visions, while sessions five, six, and eight cover the second and third visions.
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So the opening question, what expectations do you have for life on earth as the day of Christ's return comes near?
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What are our expectations?
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That god would continue to fulfill his will. It's gonna be done, not ours.
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Right.
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What do most people expect for the world?
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What
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do we expect for the world? Yeah. We we all expect everything to get worse, don't we? Yeah. We're in. Yeah. That's our pessimism coming out.
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It's been in God's word. It's all come and happening. It's gonna Well, he doesn't say it's gonna get worse.
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He just tells us what's gonna happen.
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It doesn't say it's gonna... In scripture, like, never before, hail and fire mixed with blood, living creatures die,
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star Has that been happening? Nation's gonna rise up against nation. Has that been happening? Yes. Is that happening right this minute? Yes. Look at... If you were in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, could it have gotten any worse?
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Yes. No. It could not have.
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You're gonna die.
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Yeah. They were gonna kill you, and it was slow and painful and horrible. Okay. I do not know how it could have gotten worse. Okay. No. I mean, you know, during the Spanish acquisition, they used to peel the skin off people to kill them. Yeah. That's Can you think of anything worse than that?
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May... Maybe... I'm sorry. No.
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No. But they did that. You can't think of anything worse.
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Just because you had one of their doctrines wrong.
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Could it have gotten any worse for the person at the moment?
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See, us Americans, we live... You know, the worst thing I have to do is fight traffic going home.
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Know, poor me. Right? No.
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I just sit there and rant and rave about how they're all idiots, and I have a good time.
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Well, ain't that fun? Do you do that for fun? I do that. So so our expectation...
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Let's see what they say. Anybody know what They don't say anything.
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Uh-oh. They say ask everybody. Oh, is that all it... It says what? 159.
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159.
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Is that what page we're on? On the answer key?
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Great. Yeah. The seven seals of the scroll.
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Opening question.
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Yeah. They they just say to ask everybody. Well, we did. You...
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Our expectations are pessimistic.
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Why?
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Well, they ought to be. Because this is a world, the fallen world is a result of Yeah. We have these horsemen riding around, the the white one, the red one, the black one, and the pink one or pale.
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Always imagined it was kind of a flesh colored pink. I don't...
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Some kinda washed out color.
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Yeah.
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Well, is it fun having these horsemen right around?
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No. I I don't think so. So, yeah, we have a really pessimistic view of the world.
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Anybody watch the news?
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Try to Read the news? No.
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Does
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it change anything?
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No. Whether you watch it or not, doesn't change a thing.
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I I can only think that during World War two, people must have thought that was Armageddon.
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Oh, all the time. All the time. And, you know, we went from World War one to World War two to who knows what's next,
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it didn't Well, I think we're in World War three whether we know it or not at the moment. So,
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you know, that's why we're pessimistic because We got Russia
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China. Bombing Ukraine and Germany threatening to do something about it because Russia's pulling tricks over there. We got people, wanting to bomb people in England from Iran.
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We got America blowing up people in Iran.
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We got...
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There's hardly part of the world that's not.
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Look at Africa. That doesn't even make the news anymore. Nigerians,
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it's just horrible. Yeah. Yeah.
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We we don't care about black people, so we don't even talk about the hundreds of thousands of them getting killed. Or Christians. They're the ones getting killed. Yeah. Christian or not. I mean, it's just blood everywhere.
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You know?
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Yeah.
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Hate to be the guy bringing the...
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I live up to my name. Yeah. Pastor Downer. Nightly news. You're bringing us the nightly news.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. And they don't even compare with how downer I can be. You're just telling us the truth.
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Right. See? And so we kinda expect that because these four horsemen are running wild.
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No reining them in. So historical considerations.
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As noted above, the focus of this session is on one set of visions.
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Before that, however, it's important to get a bird's eye view of these visions as a whole.
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Each of these three visions of the earthly events has seven scenes, making a total of 21 scenes in all.
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The literary structure of revelation is controlled by the number seven.
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The prophetic message is to be given to seven churches. The sevenfold pattern is modeled after the seven days of creation.
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It is for that reason that the number seven in biblical literature usually is reserved for who?
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God. For his holy and complete presence and for his holy and perfect creative activity, especially when related to the seventh day. And this makes Jesus's words really, really important one day when he's walking along and it happens to be on a Sabbath day.
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And him and his disciples are really, really hungry.
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And so what do they do?
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They go and they they pick glean stuff out of the fields.
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Number one, they're in there stealing it.
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Other than back in the day, travelers had a right to pick a little bit to eat.
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So that was okay.
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But then the pharisees say, guys, do you have a watch? Does anybody know what time it is?
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And, Jesus says, yes. It's Sabbath day. And they say, your guys are out there picking stuff on the Sabbath day. What day should you have gone out there and gotten your meal? You should have done it Friday, but you're out here doing it today. And what does Jesus say about
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the Sabbath day? Keep it holy.
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No. Jesus doesn't say that. Well, he kinda does.
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But who was the Sabbath day made for?
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God Man.
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Or man? Man. God. The Sabbath day was made for mankind.
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To rest. You mean to rest?
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Well, he doesn't say what to do on the Sabbath day. He just says the Sabbath day was made for mankind.
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And I don't know when I first started Revelation, we talked about the number seven.
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And there's two really important numbers that make up the number seven.
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Three And four. And four.
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Three is whose number?
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Father, son, holy spirit. It's god's number, the trinity.
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And four is how many gospels do we have and how many we can go through and everything having to do with mankind, there's four. North, south, east, west.
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It just comes out. Four is our world.
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And so you add god, and the day made for man is what?
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Seven. Amazing.
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Yeah. He is. See? So I'm even gonna expand a little bit on doctor Brighton here and tell you
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seven isn't just reserved for god.
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It's reserved for God's work with man.
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That expands that a little bit. And, actually, then when we read what, doctor Brighton has to say here, biblical literature usually is reserved for God, for his holy and complete presence with man, for his holy and perfect creative activity, with man, especially when related to the seventh day which was made for man.
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Kinda cool how we can just add that to that and actually get, I think, a bigger picture of what seven is.
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Because see, in these seven seals, who's it affecting?
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Us. Us.
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See, who's doing it? God.
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Same way with the seven trumps, same way with the seven centuries.
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And so if we have that in our mind that it's how God is dealing with his world, us especially, it, I think, gives it a little more force.
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Instead of it just God doing this to us, it's God doing it for us.
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Now we can look a little differently at the four horsemen.
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And when we know that it's God doing something for us, should it be scary? No. No.
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It's not scary anymore.
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Now I can go to sleep tonight Amen.
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Even though those crazy horsemen are out there.
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So if the contents of the 21 scenes were given in a single visual presentation, this sevenfold literary structure would be lost.
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It was important for John and his audience to receive and understand the message of revelation by way of this sevenfold pattern so that they would realize that the message is from God's own holy and perfect presence and that it is his holy and complete revelation.
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Because how many visions are there?
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Three.
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So, ultimately, where are they coming from?
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God.
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For whose benefit?
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Ours. Ours.
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Not to write books for the Christian bookstore to scare people into liking Jesus.
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I don't know why that became so fashionable.
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Let's write a book that just scares the bejeebers out of everybody so they'll turn to Jesus.
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If you die tonight, would you go to heaven? Let's scare them first.
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Why?
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That doesn't sound like how God works. Mm-mm.
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No. So let's keep that in mind.
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It's important for us to keep in mind the reason God used revisions to present the same New Testament era from three vantage points.
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The events displayed in the three visions are not given for the purpose of predicting particular events in human history.
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Rather, they are presented so as to portray conditions, circumstances, situations, environments, and contexts in which people find themselves during the time period covered.
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So how many of you think the world is worse today than it was back in the days with the Corinthians?
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Yeah. We all all have this... Oh, we're going through such a hard time.
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No. Not really. The Corinthians were horrible people.
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The same stuff was done back then that's being done today. Yay.
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See? That's what the book of Ecclesiastes tells us. There's there's nothing new under the sun, and he's talking about stuff that we can come up with. Yeah.
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Con...
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That the the end result of the prophetic message then is not to give a predictable view of history, but rather to give a predictable view of the human condition and suffering and defeat because of human evil and rebellion against God and a predictable knowledge of God's terrible judgment.
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The purpose is to move all people to turn around and, faith...
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To faith before the end, which in turn serves the ultimate purpose of displaying Christ's majestic sovereignty for the salvation and hope of those who have ears to hear and eyes to see and turn and believe.
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Right?
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Does anybody have any questions on that so far? Is that how you've viewed these visions in the past?
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As just continually happening all the time.
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I'm just trying to
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Good. Yeah. Because that is absolutely correct.
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From the day Christ ascended into heaven, which we saw in the chapters before this, right, is when we get the peek into heaven with John.
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And, till the day he returns.
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Yeah.
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It will be scary everywhere.
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Yay.
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Except for who?
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Us.
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While it may be true that it would have been too much for John to assimilate the entire message into one visual presentation, it's also true and more to the point that in this scheme, John and his hearers have three opportunities to understand and apply the same exact message one portion at a time.
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And also, the structure tells us where it came from.
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God.
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See?
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Which is the most important thing like they set up here.
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The purpose of each vision is to work repentance and to give encouragement of faith and hope. The hearer is meant to receive each vision in such a way as he fearfully heeds his sevenfold message.
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He is moved to repentance and faithful hope in the reigning Christ.
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Indeed, the ultimate purpose of the revelation is to inspire the church to pray with John in response to the Lord's promise in chapter twenty two twenty.
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Yes. I am coming quickly, says Jesus at the end of this book.
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Amen.
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Come now, Lord Jesus.
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And, I don't know about you, but I pray that every day when I'm about to eat a meal. The standard Lutheran prayer.
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Come, Lord Jesus.
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We'd be good to just stop right there.
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Right?
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Because that really is our prayer. So
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reading, Revelation six one through eight.
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I watched as the lamb opened the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, come.
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I looked, and there before me was a white horse. Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown.
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And he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.
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When the lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, come. Then another horse came, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. He works hard.
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To him was given a large sword.
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When the lamb opened the third seal, I heard the living creature...
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The third living creature say, come. And I looked, and there before me was a black horse. Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures say, a quart of wheat for a day's wages and three quarts of barley for a day's wage, and do not damage the oil and the wine.
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And when the lamb opened the four seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, come.
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I looked, and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named death and hell, was followed close behind him.
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They were given powers over the fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, plague, or whatever means they wanted, and by wild beasts of the earth.
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Okay.
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So how many horsemen do we have here?
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So
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where do the four come from? What number is four?
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Mankind.
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This is man doing those worst to man. What? I thought six was man's number. No. That's Satan's number. Oh. Actually, I thought six six. Okay. Yeah.
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Six. Okay.
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Yeah.
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What
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is the third word for the quarter week for a day's wages? We'll get to that. Okay.
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That's why we're using the workbook.
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Okay.
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He's holding a scale. Yeah. What runs...
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Just as a little teaser, what runs the world?
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When we go to vote on November 4 or second, whatever the vote is this year. Third.
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Is it the third? No. I knew it had to be some in there somewhere.
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A month. What's gonna be the biggest driving factor for who people vote for? Economy.
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It's the economy, stupid. Yeah. See?
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Yeah. Remember that election? Mhmm. Yeah.
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Money runs the world. That's what that means. Okay.
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See?
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Well, it does.
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Why do you pay taxes?
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So they don't run out of money. So
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as Christ the lamb opens the first four seals, we see four horsemen ride forth. Throughout the Middle Ages and earlier, the four horsemen were used in pictorial art and in literature to symbolize the ravages of war and pestilence, famine, death.
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The symbolism of the horseman indicates that the tribulations are the sort that humans frequently experience in a fallen world.
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They are common and natural, not of the supernatural.
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What does that mean?
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That they are of... They're natural and not supernatural.
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They
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come from us. Yeah. They come from us, not from God.
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It's men behaving like men or men and women behaving like men and women to separate that out. So the first of the four living creatures speaks, a rider on a white horse comes forward carrying a battle bow and wearing a crown.
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The rider of the white horse symbolizes and represents every form of tyranny which is won and acquired by power and force, usually warfare and its forms of it, and which then, by a dictatorial rule, exploits, enslaves, dominates, and terrorizes tyranny that will dominate and be the rule, not the exception exception throughout the time period from the ascension, not, of Christ up to the end of history.
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It gives a terrifying depiction of how human beings treat each other, people's inhumanity to other people through fear and exploitation.
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How's that?
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So the white horse is what?
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Tyranny.
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Trying to rule over the other person.
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This goes down as small as two kids playing in a room together to world powers.
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Tyranny rules this earth.
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I used to watch my, two boys play chess.
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And, the older one, if he was losing to the old... Younger one, would do what?
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Clear the board.
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And he was bigger than him, and so who won?
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Somehow my oldest son Tristan always won the chess game even if it meant bruises.
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Tyranny rules the world. We try to make other people do things that we can't make them do.
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We strive for that all the time. That's our natural inclination.
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So is so... Is it any wonder the white horse is first?
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No.
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Because it's everywhere.
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Tyranny rules everywhere.
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Even in the church, especially in the church. In fact, the church is a magnet for tyrants
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because you have people there trying to be meek and mild, and so they're easy to take over.
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Yeah. Tyrants are... The church is like a magnet for tyrants.
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You ever wonder why there's so much problem with the pastor's inappropriate behavior with women and children?
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It's because it attracts tyrants.
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It's horrible.
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The white horse lives and rides hard.
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And so I think somebody said they had in their, bible that Christ was the white horse.
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And I forget who said that, and I'm not asking you to raise your hand.
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That is absolutely wrong.
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Christ is the anti tyrant.
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Yeah.
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Kind of funny.
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And why the white horse?
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Because tyranny is inviting.
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Yeah. Was always thinking of white as pure. Yeah. Yeah.
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Don't we? That would be very Yeah.
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It's not.
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Who's Lucifer?
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Light. The angel of light.
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And he's really good at it.
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Okay. So enough of the white horseman.
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The following three horsemen come in succession, riding alongside the conqueror of the white horse.
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Tyranny leads to bloodshed, which in turn leads to scarcity of goods and famine, and finally, in death and the grave.
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So we see the three other horsemen ride right behind tyranny.
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So, see, that... That's like...
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We have outfits like UNICEF and all kinds of, you know, food for the poor. Our our church in Perry used to support them.
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And we have all these things going out there for people starving to death.
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What's the main reason there's famine in the world?
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Because there's greed.
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Greed. Yes.
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Some of it is weather conditions.
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Some of it is this. But you know there's really more than enough food in the world to feed every single person. Yep.
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And in fact, boatloads of food gets sent over to people. Mhmm.
Speaker 1
Why are they still starving to death?
Speaker 1
Because it's not getting to the people. They don't get the food Right. Because of tyranny.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
There's always somebody controlling who gets what.
Speaker 1
Like paying taxes.
Speaker 1
See.
Speaker 1
For the potato famine.
Speaker 1
What? The potato famine. Well, the potato famine wasn't exactly political.
Speaker 1
Some of it was.
Speaker 1
They... It was people taking advantage of a bad situation, then it turned into...
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
I won't blame the whole potato fan. But... Yeah. And similarly similar happened in
Speaker 3
Czechoslovakia.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 1
So it's...
Speaker 3
We do it... Even today, what is the first foundation?
Speaker 3
Samaritan. Samaritan purse.
Speaker 3
When they gather all those lovely boxes, this was a couple of years ago, and they went on an airstrip somewhere in The Middle East. They were allowed to take anything off that plane without paying the thugs to make a dollar before. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. And so if you don't think the horsemen are alive and well, yeah, the horsemen are doing great.
Speaker 1
You know?
Speaker 1
So, clearly, the rider of the red horse symbolizes warfare.
Speaker 1
But in addition, he represents any sort of unlawful killing and murder.
Speaker 1
Abortion would fall into that. Right? Mhmm. Euthanasia falls into the red horse category.
Speaker 1
LWML, you guys are gonna go visit a clinic next week. See, and I was working on that.
Speaker 1
From the victory of the Lord Christ up to his second coming, peace and tranquility will be the exception.
Speaker 1
The general rule will be wars and rumors of wars, violence, murders, insurrections, and the like.
Speaker 1
I thought the United Nations was supposed to cure that.
Speaker 2
What?
Speaker 2
I said that's a joke. Yes. It is.
Speaker 1
In fact, it's right in the middle of it.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
The third rider on the black horse carries a balance scale.
Speaker 1
The price for wheat and barley is high, indicating scarcity, which is often experienced in the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1
Whatever the details may be, the overall picture presented in, chapter six five through six is a condition of both scarcity and plenty.
Speaker 1
That is an economic imbalance in the supply of food and the daily necessities of life.
Speaker 1
And like I said, economics runs everything.
Speaker 1
And despite human attempts to adjust this imbalance economically, the end result from place to place will be hunger and, even at times, starvation.
Speaker 1
In such situations, famine begins to stalk large portions of the human population.
Speaker 1
The Horseman on the Black Horse then suggests that, throughout the entire period from the Lord's ascension until the end, there will always be present at various times and places hunger and famine.
Speaker 1
What did Jesus have to say about that?
Speaker 1
Who's always gonna be with you? He is.
Speaker 3
What? God.
Speaker 1
The hungry.
Speaker 1
See, the whore. Jesus. Will always be with you. I think Jesus was just a little bit not being nice there. He should have voted for somebody that was gonna take care of poverty.
Speaker 1
Kinda to let you know what their promises are going.
Speaker 1
See, remember, this is... I love this.
Speaker 1
Judas is Carriet, and he was in charge of the black horse in the group of 12.
Speaker 1
He had the money bag, and he
Speaker 1
he was worried that they were gonna use money for something other than giving it to the poor. You remember that?
Speaker 1
Yeah. Birthday on the scene. That's right when Jesus says, the poor you'll always have with you. And so the... He's sitting there worrying about what we should worry... We think as Christians we should worry about. Right?
Speaker 1
How'd that end up?
Speaker 1
Not good. Not good.
Speaker 1
Except we can get all wrapped up in taking care of the poor.
Speaker 1
I I look at the book of acts, you know, and when they first start living in church together, there's a group, and, they they put all of it into a pot and share equally.
Speaker 1
Right?
Speaker 1
And we read that in church every three years or so.
Speaker 1
And ain't that cool?
Speaker 1
Wouldn't it be cool if we could all just put all our money together and and live out of one pot equally.
Speaker 1
Today, I did for the little kids in chapel the story of the mites in honor of LWML Sunday. And, well, wait till I'm finished before you say thank you.
Speaker 3
Pastor
Speaker 1
Well, pastor Downer has to exercise once in a while. But think about it.
Speaker 1
All the rich guys are throwing their money in there, making big clinking noises and stuff.
Speaker 1
And, then this lady comes up, and, she puts two mites in there.
Speaker 1
What does that have to do with the LWML?
Speaker 3
Nothing other than God appreciated that... What little she had. He didn't appreciate it. I
Speaker 1
don't know that. See, that's where we get turned around.
Speaker 1
What did she actually put in the box? Everything she had.
Speaker 1
She put in everything she had to live on. Yep. Or in other words, after she let go of those 2 coins, she was going to go out and what?
Speaker 1
Die. Die. She gave everything. She gave everything.
Speaker 1
Mhmm.
Speaker 1
She put her trust in you. Might boxes aren't everything you got, people. Right? Do you see the irony?
Speaker 1
Now I won't ever say that in church because I like the mic thing, and it really does great things, and it's wonderful. But do you see the irony?
Speaker 1
A bunch of rich ladies taking out their pocket change and throwing.
Speaker 1
It's like, oh my gosh. You're living just the opposite.
Speaker 1
Hate to bring that up, but sorry. That's the truth. Faster downer strikes again. Yeah.
Speaker 3
University in in Saint Louis made a video of how the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate got started from leaving Germany, going into New Orleans, coming up the river. But they were doing a communal style of living.
Speaker 3
Right. So the guy Very much. Yeah. Until they realized that the leader was not
Speaker 1
Yeah. Moral. Stevens
Speaker 3
or Stevenson or whatever his name was. Yeah. Yeah. And that's when everybody said maybe we should do our own farming and our own.
Speaker 1
Well, that's when Missouri Synod Lutherans really asked the question, can we even be church in America?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Some hard, hard questions were asked, and then some great writing came out of, c w Walter that's just fantastic because of it.
Speaker 1
God knew what he was doing.
Speaker 1
He answered that question. So certainly, also in the twentieth century, the human race has witnessed the horrors depicted by the four horsemen.
Speaker 1
That's where I was. Right?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And, in deadly scene after deadly scene, millions upon millions of parachute wars and famine and bloodshed and disease.
Speaker 1
How long is this to go on?
Speaker 1
Well, until the end of time.
Speaker 1
History continues to unfold.
Speaker 1
In particular, in all sufferings of God's own people here on earth, of which John is reminded when the fifth seal is opened.
Speaker 1
So, we have the, the four the four seals answered in case you ever wondered what the different horsemen were.
Speaker 1
And, there's really no reason to spend any more time on the four horsemen because they're all around us in one form or another, from the little microcosm to macro look at the world that's going on.
Speaker 1
And why so much death and famine and bloodshed?
Speaker 2
Because we don't listen.
Speaker 2
God said if only my people would listen.
Speaker 1
Well, that's part of it. But why does the world use war and bloodshed?
Speaker 2
Power control.
Speaker 1
Yeah. It's very powerful.
Speaker 1
It's Because what happens when you're dead, it's over.
Speaker 1
See, it's a very powerful tool.
Speaker 1
Mhmm.
Speaker 1
In fact, the the question about capital punishment comes up. Why do we have capital punishment?
Speaker 1
Well, because it's a great deterrent, sort of.
Speaker 1
Right? So we think if you're gonna die, you're not gonna gonna kill somebody. Right?
Speaker 1
Mhmm.
Speaker 1
How does that work out? It's not good. Not so good. Right.
Speaker 1
But it's the only tool we as people have.
Speaker 1
See?
Speaker 1
So we can debate capital punishment till the cows come home and never come up with an answer to it.
Speaker 1
So who do we turn it over? The government.
Speaker 1
Oh. See? The church stays out of it.
Speaker 1
Did you know that?
Speaker 1
Yeah. We stay out of the capital punishment argument.
Speaker 2
Why?
Speaker 1
Well, it's not for us to decide.
Speaker 1
It's for a government to decide.
Speaker 1
Remember Paul says that?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
We defer to the government. So how do you see this text reflected in life of the church in these end times?
Speaker 1
Well, we're tempted to look at Revelation as a kind of fortune telling book. Ain't that how a lot of people look at the the Revelation like, oh, it's gonna give us the inside scoop, And we'll know when Jesus is coming back then.
Speaker 1
See?
Speaker 1
No.
Speaker 1
Where we can connect specific events in the prophecy with specific geopolitical events in history.
Speaker 1
Entire book and movie franchises have made fortunes on this misinterpretation of the text, and false teachers gather many followers through their misinterpretations.
Speaker 1
This section, however, tells of the general state of the world in these end times.
Speaker 1
And we're all...
Speaker 1
All experience the pain of tyranny both on institution and interpersonal levels and feel the pain that sin brings upon us.
Speaker 1
Encourage learners to identify things they suffer in life as a consequence of sin.
Speaker 1
Also, point them to see how god's people have endured these things as they wait for the return of Christ.
Speaker 1
Well, I think we've kinda already done a little bit of that as we were reading through. Anybody else wanna add to that?
Speaker 1
How do we...
Speaker 1
How how does this impact us, affect our life?
Speaker 1
The horsemen.
Speaker 2
By knowing you're not in control.
Speaker 1
Yeah. We can set back and...
Speaker 1
Is the positive side of it. The negative side of it is, yeah, it hurts us. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Tyranny and war,
Speaker 1
hurts us.
Speaker 1
Right? Economic manipulation hurts us. Mhmm. And the end guy, the death guy, that really hurts us.
Speaker 1
We don't like people to die. Mhmm.
Speaker 1
Right? No.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And see for...
Speaker 1
If we had less of a individualistic concept of our self, we would even have a stronger view of this, how war and famine and things affect.
Speaker 1
Because like I've pointed out many times, the Hebrew concept of personhood or soul or self is everything that makes you you.
Speaker 1
Or in other words, the whole world is interconnected more than we think.
Speaker 1
And so if someone's dying over in Jordan, who's it affecting?
Speaker 2
Me. It should affect us. It does affect us.
Speaker 1
Whether you admit it, know it, or otherwise, it does.
Speaker 1
It's kind of fun. I don't know if you've ever read about redwood trees and the...
Speaker 1
Their root networks and how the trees, they equate it to talking to each other, but they actually do send chemical information to each other. Grapevines do the same thing.
Speaker 2
In
Speaker 1
years when we only get a little bit of rain out in the vineyard, the the roots don't communicate, and you're gonna have less fruit.
Speaker 1
In real wet winters when the roots are healthy and they're yakking back and forth, hey, Martha. What you doing? Oh, yeah, Myrtle. We did this. And it it really... They do chemically communicate.
Speaker 1
And so if we just get a year where the roots haven't had that chance and we're just drip irrigating on a specific spot and the roots aren't sending chemicals, it really does affect them.
Speaker 1
Drought years, even though we're irrigating, are affected.
Speaker 1
Redwood trees, huge networks of communication.
Speaker 1
And, in fact... And how scientists came up to this and figured it out is every once in a while, there's an albino redwood tree.
Speaker 1
And that kinda serves as a communication center, and they figured this out. Oh. Yeah. Weird.
Speaker 2
Does it look different?
Speaker 2
What? Does it look different? Yeah. It's white. It's almost white. Yeah. Okay. Wow.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
It doesn't have the the coloring.
Speaker 1
Yeah. New one. Yeah. And they don't grow big either.
Speaker 2
How about in the vineyard too? Is there or a big No.
Speaker 1
Just a silly guy on a gator telling him what to do.
Speaker 1
He's the tyrant.
Speaker 1
So fun stuff.
Speaker 1
Fun stuff. No.
Speaker 1
We're all living through this, the whole world is.
Speaker 1
Gives us a different view of what's going on.
Speaker 1
Why why do we want to cut off our own hand?
Speaker 1
I don't know.
Speaker 1
See?
Speaker 1
Well, Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker 1
Where did he come up with that?
Speaker 2
Thinking on others.
Speaker 2
But
Speaker 1
it really was his theology Right. Of this interconnectedness because he's not telling us to love ourselves Because we already do. Because we already do. What he's telling you, you are connected to your neighbor.
Speaker 3
And he did that to the lawyer. He asked the question, question, who who is is my my neighbor? Neighbor? Right. Exactly.
Speaker 1
I was gonna bring that up. Go for Thank you. Thank you, Sandy. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Exactly.
Speaker 1
See who who is your neighbor.
Speaker 2
All of us. Everyone is
Speaker 1
your neighbor.
Speaker 1
That's in our catechism even. See?
Speaker 1
There. You just got your catechism lesson for the day.
Speaker 2
Today. Yeah. You told me. Right. You said you're gonna sign it.
Speaker 1
Yes.
Speaker 1
So... Okay. Revelation six nine through 17.
Speaker 1
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain.
Speaker 1
Now when these first four seals are opened, who speaks?
Speaker 1
One of the four creatures each time, right, announces the seal.
Speaker 1
This is gonna be a little different.
Speaker 1
When he opened, meaning the lamb who was slain, I saw under the old altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.
Speaker 1
They called out in a loud voice, how long sore... Sovereign lord, holy and true, until until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood.
Speaker 1
Where am I supposed to read to? 17.
Speaker 1
Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been, as they had been... Was completed.
Speaker 1
I watched as he opened the sixth seal.
Speaker 1
There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair. The whole moon turned to blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth.
Speaker 1
As late figs dropped from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind, the sky receded like a scroll rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from the place.
Speaker 1
Then the king of the earth, the princes and generals...
Speaker 1
Or the kings of the earth and the princes and generals, the rich and the mighty, every slave, every free man hid in caves among the rocks of the mountains.
Speaker 1
They called to the mountains and the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb.
Speaker 1
For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?
Speaker 1
So no angel is announcing these seals.
Speaker 1
These seals are opened by the lamb.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Who...
Speaker 1
For the great day of wrath has come and who can stand. We use that all the time in I... Or I use that all the time in confession.
Speaker 1
The... I think it's Psalm 30 that I I use that says, basically exactly that.
Speaker 1
Oh, I'm not seeing it. Anyway, it says, who can stand in the day of the Lord?
Speaker 1
Yeah. It's in Psalm 79.
Speaker 1
Is it Psalm 79? Yes. Oh, does it say that?
Speaker 1
Okay. We use that.
Speaker 1
It says it a number of places, but, yeah, who can stand on the day of the Lord?
Speaker 1
Well, we just read this week in, Philippians what's gonna happen on the day of the Lord.
Speaker 1
Every knee shall bow.
Speaker 1
So who's gonna stand?
Speaker 1
Nobody.
Speaker 1
In fact, don't even try.
Speaker 1
See, if you... Don't try to stand up. Right. You'll be better off.
Speaker 1
Because if you try to stand up, you'll have to bow anyway.
Speaker 3
So After the other verses are occurring and have been occurring. But then when this talks about the stars in the sky and the blood... And the moon turning blood red and the stars dropping to Earth, is that what's going to happen on the last day? Pretty much. So this is not a now thing. This is... That's gonna be the end. That's just telling you what's happening.
Speaker 3
Then. Then. Then we know they. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1
the four horsemen run wild from the day Jesus ascends till he returns.
Speaker 1
All of this, the seal where they're under the the altar, all of that then comes the end, then comes the judgment.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Like our little diagram
Speaker 1
shows us.
Speaker 1
The... Then the seventh seal introduces.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
So with the fifth seal, John hears the pleas from the martyrs for God to avenge their deaths.
Speaker 1
And
Speaker 1
anybody...
Speaker 1
The martyr is a Greek word. And anybody know what it translates directly to?
Speaker 1
Witness.
Speaker 1
Witness. We we have the idea a martyr is someone who dies for Jesus.
Speaker 1
That's because a lot of people who stood up for Jesus died.
Speaker 1
But, actually, martyr... We're all martyrs in this room, or we should be witnesses.
Speaker 1
See?
Speaker 1
And for god to avenge their deaths.
Speaker 1
Is anybody here gonna need god to avenge their death?
Speaker 1
I hope so. What
Speaker 2
does that really mean? It
Speaker 1
means you're gonna die. Well, yeah.
Speaker 1
Why?
Speaker 1
Simple work. Because of sin, the devil, and ourselves.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
So who avenges our death?
Speaker 1
Christ.
Speaker 1
Okay.
Speaker 1
So we can move on.
Speaker 1
With the fifth seal, John hears the please.
Speaker 1
The echoes, the cries of the psalmist in Psalm seventy nine and ninety four. God gives them a white robe reminding them of their baptism and bids them to be patient and he'll... Until he avenges all believers in the final judgment.
Speaker 1
The earthly powers that be in the human race go their own way, pursuing their ambitions and goals and sufferings in the process as illustrated by the horseman.
Speaker 1
The church also suffers persecution and shame and death that, like that on a cross, and we'll see that in, chapters eleven and thirteen.
Speaker 1
For all Christians are martyrs in the sense that they all give witness by their faith, their mouths, their lives to the victorious lamb who died and rose again.
Speaker 1
It is the church's glory to complete her mission in martyrdom and thus glorify the cross and resurrection of Christ and his exaltation at the right hand of the heavenly father.
Speaker 1
And so what is our greatest act of witness?
Speaker 2
Jesus.
Speaker 1
Well, Jesus is Jesus.
Speaker 1
He's not our active witness.
Speaker 1
What do we do that is the greatest witness to the world?
Speaker 1
This is really hard because we've been infected with different ideas.
Speaker 1
It's something simple that we do every other week.
Speaker 2
Take communion. Take communion.
Speaker 1
Or believe it whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim what?
Speaker 1
The Christ death until he comes again. Do you know that is your witness
Speaker 1
to the world?
Speaker 1
It all begins right there.
Speaker 1
It flows this way, not shove them in the back door this way.
Speaker 1
Our American idea of witnessing is completely backwards.
Speaker 1
And so we do all kinds of silly things like play down the communion.
Speaker 1
Like, well, that body and blood thing could offend people.
Speaker 1
Take the crosses out of the church. Oh, those are horribly offensive.
Speaker 1
First of all, take Jesus off the cross. Nobody wants to come and see a bloody guy.
Speaker 1
See, we do everything.
Speaker 1
Let's get a rock band.
Speaker 1
People like entertainment.
Speaker 1
I say let's get dancing girls and beer.
Speaker 1
Then we'll pack this place.
Speaker 1
Sex sells. We we have we have a cure for your hangover right here at Peace Lutheran Church. See, that's how I ought to start church.
Speaker 1
Feeling kinda hungover this morning? Come on down to Peace Lutheran.
Speaker 1
We got a cure for you.
Speaker 1
See?
Speaker 1
That's not how it works. That's
Speaker 2
not... We've turned it completely around. Did you know that? Yeah. I see it on Sundays in the NFL football stadiums.
Speaker 1
Yeah. I know.
Speaker 1
John three sixteen right here.
Speaker 1
That's witness.
Speaker 1
And bam.
Speaker 1
Throw the ball down.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
That's witness.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
That's not Jesus.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
He he did... He is not a tyrant.
Speaker 1
See?
Speaker 1
He's not out there beaming his head against other people. That's right. But not a sin to watch football. No. Who said it was? It's not. But it's not church. Right?
Speaker 2
I
Speaker 2
could go to church and then go to church football.
Speaker 1
I... I've done it myself once or twice. See?
Speaker 1
I'm not a big football fan. That's just because I grew up in Arizona.
Speaker 1
I think baseball ruled there, not football.
Speaker 1
So, yeah, it is the church's glory to complete her mission in martyrdom, or you could just say in witnessing and thus glorify the cross and resurrection of Christ and his exaltation at the right hand of the heavenly father.
Speaker 1
When the sixth seal is open, John witnesses the end of all things.
Speaker 1
So there's your answer.
Speaker 1
John sees the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, and stars shaken and disturbed.
Speaker 1
When this cosmic earthquake like shaking hits the earth as the mountains and islands begin to move and disappear, the peoples of the earth will be struck with a terror and a hopelessness that staggers the imagination and surpass es any horror yet experienced by humanity.
Speaker 1
And this is the moment we get scared of the book of Revelation.
Speaker 1
How long does this end last?
Speaker 1
Right? It doesn't go on for a long time.
Speaker 1
All people of earth, king and subject, free and slave, rich and poor, all who did not heed the call to repentance and the invitation of the gospel of the victorious lamb will attempt to flee in terror.
Speaker 1
But there's no place to hide from the presence of the almighty god.
Speaker 1
Or like Reagan said, you can run, but you can't hide.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 1
So from whom are they seeking to hide themselves?
Speaker 1
From the lamb who died at the hands of sinful men.
Speaker 1
Or in other words, what is the very first thing Adam does after they eat the fruit?
Speaker 1
He hides. Yeah. I heard you in the garden, and so I hid.
Speaker 1
See, up until that moment, did Adam even...
Speaker 1
Did it ever even cross his mind that he could hide from God?
Speaker 1
No. No. He saw God's absolute perfection everywhere.
Speaker 1
This is what to be made in the image of God was. Right. There was no question. God was right there with you all the time. Mhmm.
Speaker 1
Now we have no clue God's with us all the time.
Speaker 1
Really and truly.
Speaker 1
But he is. He is. Fun.
Speaker 1
If that doesn't scare you, Joyce, nothing will.
Speaker 2
No.
Speaker 2
He is. He's always with me. Yes. He is. Out. I say, sit right here to help him.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
I don't want god to help me. I just want him to do it.
Speaker 1
So it is from the face of the one sitting on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb that they're hiding that they would attempt to flee While mercy and forgiveness might be expected from the lamb, here, there is only the cup of wrath.
Speaker 1
Wrath, anger, and judgment.
Speaker 1
The fact that God has given the execution of his judgment to Jesus Christ is usually expressed with the reference to Christ as the son of man and not as the lamb.
Speaker 1
However, it is because Jesus was the lamb of God that he not only earned the right to save God's people from judgment against their sin, he also earned the right to judge those who do not repent of their sins. So the six seals reveal events on the earth up to the return of Christ.
Speaker 1
All this cosmic shaking happens because the great day, the Yom Yahweh, as we learn to say it in Hebrew, the day of the Lord, the day of God's wrath, and that of the lamb has come. And this is... I like to...
Speaker 1
I love that phrase, Yom Yahweh, the the day of the lord, the great day of the lord.
Speaker 1
And, that's my my favorite illustration of law and gospel because is the great day of God's wrath law, or is it gospel?
Speaker 1
Yes is the answer.
Speaker 1
For us, covered in Christ, it's pure gospel because that is the day all evil is destroyed.
Speaker 1
I can't think of a better thing.
Speaker 1
Mhmm. For the unrepentant, it's pure and eternal law.
Speaker 1
That is our witness.
Speaker 1
The Yom Yahweh.
Speaker 1
So
Speaker 1
the opening of the sixth seal introduces to John and the reader the first view in revelation of the end of this world. And thus, it concludes the first vision of events taking place on earth. The whole vision is nothing but woe and lament even for God's own people.
Speaker 1
This is like when I do my, seder on, Palm Sunday. I like to really, really emphasize this, and and maybe you caught it, maybe you didn't.
Speaker 1
But there's 10 plagues.
Speaker 1
The first nine plagues happen where?
Speaker 1
Only in Egypt.
Speaker 1
Not in the land of Goshen where the Israelites live.
Speaker 1
They're exempt. They don't see the blood or the frogs or the lice or the hail or anything else. They're exempt.
Speaker 1
When the tenth plague comes,
Speaker 1
it happens in Israel too.
Speaker 1
The avenging angel
Speaker 1
goes over the land of Goshen also.
Speaker 1
They're only not struck down because of what?
Speaker 1
The blood of the lamb.
Speaker 1
That's a really, really important little fact in the bible that's easy to overlook, that the other nine plagues, they're just getting pharaoh's attention.
Speaker 1
The last plague is a demonstration of god's judgment,
Speaker 1
And that judgment is against who?
Speaker 1
The firstborn sons. On
Speaker 1
Good Friday,
Speaker 1
God does it all because the judgment is against who?
Speaker 1
Jesus.
Speaker 1
The firstborn son.
Speaker 1
Wow.
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Did you ever correlate that?
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Wow.
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And it's that blood, the blood of this lamb
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on the Yom Yahweh, the day of God's wrath, the Passover
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that we're untouched, that makes the Yom Yahweh gospel.
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For everyone else, it's law.
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That needs to tell you how urgent it is that we share this. There's a real urgency in the world especially to share this.
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So let's...
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Since it's time, wow. What a great place to end. Let's pray.
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Heavenly father, you are gracious to us. You sent your son. You took care of it all.
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Let us proclaim it from the hilltops from everywhere we can that you are coming. Your day will happen. It's salvation for us.
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The rest of the world can run and hide. It's salvation for us.
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Bless us in your son, and in his name we pray. Amen. Amen.