In His Light Ministries Teaching Series
Revelation XV
You may be seated, you may be seated. Good morning, good morning. All right. Who's ready for today? Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Who is ready for today? Let's see. Oh my goodness. I feel like so much is going on. So much is going on. One of the things that I've been praying about is that God would just kind of continue to reveal to me when something is applicable to that we're studying in Revelation that's applicable to today, or just not even out of Revelation, you know, anything that's in the Word that we can apply to today, whenever that happens, I want to know so that I can maybe shed some light on it if possible, you know, and I'm not saying that there's anything as of today that needs light shined on it necessarily. But there is a lot going on in the world. Before I get going to things, first I'm going to pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, we are just so thankful that we get to come together on a day like today that we get to put you first and foremost in our lives on Sundays. And Heavenly Father, I would ask that everyone would make that a priority every single day. Every time that we wake up, that we would set you first in our lives, first in our heart, first in our minds, so that we are thinking about you and your goodness and your Word constantly, that we are continually praying to you at all times, no matter what that looks like. Heavenly Father, I thank you that we get to spend this time together, that we have the opportunity to come together corporately, and not only worship you, pray to you, hear a word about you, and then fellowship with one another. Heavenly Father, we're just so thankful that we have the chance to do that. Heavenly Father, I ask that you would bless this time. Heavenly Father, as we ask you to enter in, it's been prayed several times today, but Holy Spirit, you are invited into this place, into our hearts and minds, you are most welcome here for sure. And we thank you for being here. We thank you for guiding the conversation today, and we thank you for guiding the worship, and that you will be here in our fellowship as well. Lord God, we would just give you all honor, all praise, all glory, because you are deserving of more than what we can even comprehend or fathom. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, next, Berta says hi. She is healing up, and we had, as a church, we had such a good time on Wednesday, you know, seeing the movie, which was very, very intense, very intense. Anything that deals with kids always gets me. You know, I was kind of, we were all talking about, you know, not a dry eye in the place and I'm sitting there going, no, no, I was, my eyes were dry. I lied. I choked back several times. You know, I knew the part was coming, and I was just like, nope, nope, nope, no, no, no, good, good, I'm good, good. But that was just powerful, and Berta wanted to be there, and so she went, and probably a little extra for her. So, I had suggested highly that she skip church today. Thankfully, she's not watching any kind of soccer games or anything like that, like some people around here might do when they skip church, but, anyway, she, I don't know how many years that happened, but boy, it just keeps on rearing. Anytime I just want to, no, it doesn't get any, it doesn't get old. For those of you who don't know, Fernando skipped a, skipped a day of church to watch a soccer game one time. Yeah, he even knows the game, Mexico is playing Germany. Oh my gosh. So Berta misses everybody, and she wishes that she could be here with us. She just, she, this is what she really despises the most, is being out of commission to this point where she can't be here with us, and so your prayers are still coveted. We appreciate that. We appreciate your prayers, and also we do want to be praying, I know we did this morning already, but we do want to be praying for the 21 counties that have been declared disaster areas due to flooding, and I believe that might be on top of other areas that were already declared disaster areas because of tornadoes, and I'm only talking about Iowa at this point. So lots, lots happening in just our state, our state that nothing really happens in. We do get some flooding. We do get some tornadoes, but usually we're the ones, I mean, I was, it was flooding in Davenport one year and I was out there in it. And if the tornado comes, I'm not in the basement, I'm looking for it. As I know, a lot of you are, but I've had to second guess myself and all those things and go, you know, you have kids that are watching you, and usually my boys are out there with me, but yeah, I'm not saying that's the smartest thing in the world to do, and please don't do that, please, when those sirens go off, seek shelter, seek shelter. I want to encourage everyone to be reading Revelation. As we're going through Revelation, I think you can automatically get in front of all of this, you know, reading these chapters, they're not really long. You can definitely get through, you could read a chapter day easy and then do a quick review right before the Sunday message. That way you kind of have an idea of what's going on before service starts. I really want to encourage all of you to do that. At this point, I've read Revelation. I don't know how many times more times than I can count. Okay, not more times than I can count, but I really don't know how many times I've read it. The more you read it, the more you get out of it, the first time you read it, you're just like everybody else and you're going, oh, what in the world am I reading? What is this? But then when you read it again, things start to make more sense. And when you ask God for that godly wisdom, think more things start to make sense. And when you start to compare it to the rest of the Bible, more and more of it starts to make sense. If you come into a study like this, all of a sudden your eyes can be open, that veil can be lifted, and we can start seeing the word for what it is. I do want to suggest, I'm not sure who would be in charge of this probably, Berta, but I do think we need to get some new t-shirts made up. Some new in is like ministry t-shirts made up. Diane's wearing hers. I'm wearing mine today, you know. But I think we need some new ones. We get done with revelation. And I think it should say in his light ministries, we survive the revelation. Because what other churches can say that? There's some out there that can say it, but how many can sit there and say they've gone through revelation and survived and still kept this, you know, kept the church together. I don't know about you, but I'm getting a ton out of it. Probably what I'm talking to is just like, you know, this is awesome. This has been great. No, I don't understand it all, but man, this has been wonderful to, you know, hear and put things together and it's because you're starting to hear things more and more and you're starting to relate things to the world that's around us. And what's going on in the world and it's like, man, could this be? Could we be seeing the start of something happening? So I do want to encourage us, read revelations, you know, get in there, re-read it, re-read it again, you know, because after we do a message, if you go back and re-read that chapter, all of a sudden you'd be like, oh, I didn't catch that the first time. You know, it's just different things that can stand out to you. Today I'm going to do something quite ambitious. I'm going to cover two chapters. Whoa, the first whoa hasn't passed yet. That's part of today's chapter, but I heard a lot of whoa's out there. Whoa. What's that? I'm not going to try and make it the longest sermon. No, no, I am definitely not. I am keeping my clock. Thank you, Jolene. Yes. I'm definitely not going to try and make this the longest sermon. There's not a whole lot of symbolism being used here-ish. It's still going to sound strange to our ears, but a lot of it is just, we just got to read it. We've just got to try and picture what John is trying to describe to us and see where our minds go with that. It was funny listening to Diana. She was going to give my message today already. No, I'm kidding. She did not. She only does that to Luke. She doesn't do that to me, but she started talking about helicopters in Revelation 9, one of the chapters that we're going through, and it was interesting when you said that, I was like, "That's right. That is exactly how I viewed this chapter before, was seeing something like a helicopter." My mind has shifted from that, so I'm not going to be teaching as if helicopters today. But that was exactly where my mind had gone, one of the first times that I had read through Revelation was getting to this chapter going, "Is this helicopters? Is that what this is?" Because it certainly could describe that, which we'll see here in a moment. What I'm going to do is I'm going to read the first chapter, Revelation 9, and then give a little feedback on it, cover a couple of the verses again, and then I'm going to read through chapter 10. Chapter 10 is an interesting chapter, chapter 9 is an interesting chapter, and you thought chapter 8 was bad. Wait till chapter 9. Wait till we get going on this one, and you're going to be like, "Whoa, it's coming though. Let me just get going." You guys ready? Buckled up, all right? I'm feeling really weird about today. I'm feeling really weird about today, and I don't know why. It's just a different mode going on today. Revelation 9. I'll be reading out of the ESV versioning, yeah, whatever it's called, ESV. All right, verse 1, "And the fifth angel blew his trumpet." Remember, we're in the trumpets, so we've already gone through the first four trumpets, and we've got three more to go, "And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone, and in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle, on their heads were what look like crowns of gold, their faces were like human faces, their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lion's teeth. They had breast plates like breast plates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. They have as a king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollion. The first woe has passed, behold two woes are still to come, woe. Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the Great River Euphrates, so the four angels who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year were released to kill a third of mankind." The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number, and this is how I saw the horses in my vision, and those who rode them, they wore breast plates, the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lion's heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they would, wound. Verse 20, "The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands, nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts." Now, this is horrifying to say the least, sad, you know, just thinking about what is happening here, and I think John is just really trying to give us a visual of what's to come, and this is why I really didn't want to spend a whole lot of time. I really think we should go back and reread it ourselves and just take it in, just take it in and re-realize again why we need to be sharing the gospel. People are going to experience this, what I just read, what we've been reading about this whole time, and it doesn't sound fun at all, unless you're one of the 144,000. But I'm not Jewish, so I don't have that going for me, can't have that seal, but I will be in heaven already. Praise the Lord. Let's just go through some of this, all right? Isaac, if you just want to kind of start over again on the scriptures, I'm just going to kind of go through fairly quickly here. It says, "And the fifth angel blew his trumpet," verse 1, "and I saw a star fallen." This is past tense. He's not watching the star fall. This isn't happening as he's watching. He's watching that a star had already fallen. This is a fallen star, and in this case, the star is an angel. And as a fallen star happened a while ago, we don't know when, but it had happened a while ago, could be the devil when the devil fell, or one of his demons when they fell. We don't know. It doesn't say. And that's one of the interesting things about this entire chapter is it doesn't say, but it says a lot. But we can read into it, or we can just let it be. Sometimes an angel is just an angel, sometimes a star is just a star, but I think we pointed out that one of the verses we were reading, I think it was last week, last week, the star fell from heaven and was like a mountain. That was more like a asteroid or something like that. This is a star that had already fallen, and a star is oftentimes referring to angels in the Bible. So he's saying, "I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth." And he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. So number one, he's given it, it's kind of interesting to me. The shaft of the bottomless pit, this is the abyss. When you study that out, this is the abyss. Do y'all remember in Luke 8, Legion, the man or the men who were filled with many, many, many demons, and they called themselves Legion, and as Jesus approached them, he said, "Don't cast us into the abyss." That's this place. They did not want to be cast into the bottomless pit, the abyss. The is a definite article. This is an A abyss or some abyss. This is the abyss. It's not hell, although it certainly seems like hell with all the smoke of like a furnace, but, interesting enough, Satan will be thrown into the abyss for a thousand years. We haven't gotten to that part yet, it's coming later, but it's the same place. So how the devil himself got the key, I'm not sure, not sure that it is the devil, because he himself will be thrown into the abyss himself for a thousand years. Getting the destroyer, well, let me back up. We have locusts, locusts that are coming out of the abyss, the place that Legion didn't want Jesus to send them, which means that demons are sent to the abyss. And when the key is given and the angel who had fallen was given the key to open the abyss, it blew up and out came smoke and all kinds of stuff, but all of these locusts type thing came up as well. Now are they demon-possessed locusts? That's a possibility. Are they just locusts themselves? That's definitely a possibility. It could be any of those things, but the locusts that are described here are not your normal everyday locusts. They have some sort of scorpion-ish type parts to them. They have a lion-type part to them, a hare like a woman. I mean, this is an interesting locust, and not allowed to consume anything green, not allowed to consume anything of the earth, only allowed to sting people who did not have the mark. So everybody else is open game for five months. Not fun. Not fun at all. But we're given power like the power of scorpions of the earth, told not to harm the grass of the earth, I'm in verse four, sorry, and only you can harm anybody, but do not the ones with the seal on their foreheads. And they were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them. It's interesting to me that we give demons a whole lot of credit in our lives. We sit there and say, "Everything's a demon." You're not acting right. You got a demon in you. You know, something's happening. Your demon possessed. We give a lot of credit to demons, and I'm not saying that it's unfounded, but I think we give more credit to demons than they deserve. Because if you look at what's happening here, God is still in control. If the demons were allowed to do whatever the demons wanted to do, they would be killing all of those people. They would consume everything. They would kill everybody. They wouldn't hold off on the sealed or unsealed. They would just do it because that's what demons do. Why? Because the enemy has come to steal, kill, and destroy. Interesting that we're destroyed from that verse, John 10, 10. It's the same word. It comes from the same word, the destroyer, which is Abaddon in Hebrew and in Greek is Apollion, comes from the same word. I just find these things interesting, but they don't have the power to do whatever they want. In fact, I almost wonder if this fallen angel was forced to go there and open it up. I almost wonder if these demons probably wanting to get free out of the abyss, got out of the abyss and wanted to do something, but guess what? They are controlled still. They might have rebelled against God, but they are still controlled by God. And I think we need to understand that. I think that is for us to understand that God still is in control. He is still in control. And wouldn't you know that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit? Not the same thing, this is not the same thing, it's not saying that Christians who have the Holy Spirit in them can't be oppressed by demonic activity. It's not what I'm saying. I fully believe that Christians who have the Holy Spirit can be oppressed. They can be attacked. Bad things can happen to them because of what the demons are trying to do to them. But God is still in control. I love those two words, but God, but God is still in control. And thank God, that's the other two words I like. I'm thinking that this destroyer is not the devil. And I don't know that for sure. He certainly has attributes that are, you know, this Abaddon in the Hebrew and Apollion in the Greek certainly seems like that could be the devil, says that he is the king of over these, he's the king of the angel of the bottomless pit. The king over them is the angel of the bottomless pit, which I think John would have just said is Satan. So I'm thinking, there's another angel that's out there. Whether he's good or bad, I don't know. If you think about it, if we were in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve before sin came into the world, what would be our thing? Just to do whatever God tells us to do. If we didn't know right from wrong, if Eve and Adam had not eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would just do what God told them to do, which is what God wanted for us. He didn't really want us to care about the difference between good and evil. Interesting enough. Ours is just to do. So a lot of times we sit there and we see these angels, now, granted, the one that had the key was a fallen angel. We know that, but this angel that is king over the bottomless pit, we don't know if is good or bad. He's just there to do. Just thoughts. I don't know, things that make you go home, I do that a lot. I sit there and go, I wonder about that, I wonder about this. It's interesting, these scorpions, these locusts things, they're only allowed to torment for five months. Why five months? Because that's how long locusts lifespan is. Just an interesting coincidence that a locusts lifespan is five months. But they're going around, they're stinging everybody who doesn't have the seal on them, the 144,000, and the people who are getting stung, they are in torment, torment that is just like a sting of a scorpion, which in my understanding is that it hurts. A sting hurts bad, but they cannot die. They are, these people are longing to die. They think that death will be better for them, but death has fled from them. They obviously do not understand what hell actually is. The torment that we go through here on earth is nothing compared to what hell is for people who enter into it. Hell was made for Satan and his demons, which means it is way worse for us, which is why we don't want to go there, but it leads me to believe so many people are not being told about the horrors of hell. If they would rather go to hell than to be tormented here on earth and accept Jesus. But it says in the end that they do not, they refuse to repent. That's horrible, horrifying. The first whoa has passed, behold, we have two more woes to go and whoa is exactly what you think it is. Exclamatory word is whoa, whoa. All right, got to move. The sixth angel blew his trumpet and I heard a voice from, sorry, verse 13, and I heard the voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet released the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. So the four angels who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year were released to kill a third of mankind. Again, we go back and we think we see this as angels who must be fallen angels because they're bound at the Euphrates rivers. I don't know why they're bound. It doesn't mean that they are fallen angels. It could just mean that they're there until God is ready to use them. You know, when the Hebrews were wanting to come into the Promised Land, an angel was sent 40 years before they ended up entering into the Promised Land to guide them into the Promised Land. And when they didn't go, guess what happened to the angel? He just stayed there. It doesn't say that anything happened to the angel. But then when this is the same angel that Joshua encountered and he said, are you for us or are you for them? And he said, I'm on God's side. I'm not on either one of y'all's side. Y'all's. Obviously a southern angel. But angels who are of God, they just do what God tells them to do. You know, why they were bound by the Euphrates River, I don't know. Release the four angels who were bound at the Great River Euphrates. So the four angels who had been, listen to this, if you read this out, says who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year were released to kill a third of mankind. That is not their timeline of preparation, it's how long they were allowed and released to kill a third of the population, 13 months, a year, read it backwards, a year, a month, that's 13 months, a day and an hour. So 13 months a day in one hour is how long they were allowed to kill a third of mankind. And then it goes on to say, it talks about the troops. A lot of people want to sit there and try to put something human on this and act like this is something that deals with the Battle of Armageddon or something like that. This does not have anything to do with Armageddon. This says the number of mounted troops was twice 10,000 times 10,000, that's 200 million. Coincidentally, apparently China has about that many soldiers in their regiment at this time. Just because they have 200 million soldiers does not mean that this is talking about soldiers. This is talking about plagues, three kinds of plagues coming from fire, smoke and sulfur out of the mouths of these horses that had lions heads. Does that make sense? I know we're sitting here going, we're trying to put human terms to this because man, it just sounds weird. There's got to be something human, right? That's not human. What they're mounted on is really not a horse. From their tails is where all this comes from. Their mouths and their tails from the fire, the smoke and the sulfur. These are some other kind of maybe demonic activities or demonic things, but they're plagues. These are plagues that are going to therefore kill another third of the Earth's population. Does that make sense? Not what we want to hear, right? Again, us who love people don't want to hear that this stuff is going to happen, which is actually why I wanted us to go into chapter 10. Let me get there. Okay. I told you, Revelation 9, if that doesn't make your heart sad to understand that people are going to go through that. This is the sad part for me, is they're going to seek death and not find it. But I don't want them to find it because I want them to reach salvation. But then it goes on to say in verse 20 that they will refuse to repent. This is God prophesying the end in advance so that we realize what's going to happen, that their hearts would be hardened so much that they would still refuse to repent of their sins, their sorceries, their murders, their wickedness. Let's go to chapter 10. We still have one trumpet left, by the way, we've only gotten through six. Revelation 10, verse 1. When I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head and his face was like the sun and his legs like pillars of fire, he had a little scroll open in his hand and he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land and called out with a loud voice like a lion roaring. And he called out the seven thunders sounded and when the seven thunders sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down. And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it and the sea and what is in it. That there would be no more delay, but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God would be fulfilled just as he announced to his servants the prophets. Verse eight, then the voice that I heard, that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, take and eat it, it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth, it will be sweet as honey. And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it in my stomach was made bitter. And I was told, you must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings. So just like when the sixth seal was broken on the seventh sealed scroll, there was a little break from the devastation. Remember that? Remember we had just a little bit of a break so that the 144,000 could be sealed up. It seemed like it was at least to us as we're reading about it. It seemed like there was a little bit of a break, a little bit of a pause for people to kind of regroup, right? The last trumpet hasn't been blown yet. This angel coming down from heaven certainly has attributes of Jesus that we have read already before. Face was like the sun, he's got the rainbow that's going across his head, his legs are like pillars. But that doesn't mean that he is Jesus. Also Jesus does not come back to the earth until the end of the tribulation. So it really can't be Jesus. But he certainly seems like he's Jesus. But then why wouldn't John just say, I saw Jesus? He said he saw an angel. Now Jesus portrays himself as an angel often in the Old Testament. But I don't think that's who this is right here. Standing with his feet on the land and in the sea shows that he has authority over the earth or has been granted authority over the earth. Which is often what an angel will be. He'll be an ambassador for God. He'll be a spokesperson for God. He'll be the voice piece for God. He'll have some authority that has been granted to him by God. The land deed scroll that has already been opened would represent this. That was the seven sealed scroll that was handed to Jesus to open up all the seals because he was the only one worthy. If it was indeed a land scroll deed, then that has been opened up and the earth belongs to Jesus now. It has been taken back. So he can grant authority to this angel to step into the sea and into the land and look pretty darn awesome in this picture that John is painting for us. But there's talking about this little scroll open in this massive angel's hand. And then it says that in verse three and called out with a loud voice like a lion roaring. Again giving attributes that Jesus has but he's not the only one who roars like a lion. When he called out the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded I was about to write but I heard a voice from heaven saying seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down. John buddy you went to all that trouble to write down that this is what happened but because you heard a voice saying don't let anybody know that you decided to go ahead and tease us a little bit letting us know hey the thunder said something I was about to write it down but God or somebody from heaven said no don't write that down keep it sealed up. Why did you put the rest in there John? Why did you sit there and let us and tease us a little bit like that? Come on John what's up with that? Anybody else in there going I want to know what the seven thunders said. It'd be nice. You know when God speaks he often speaks as thunder. I think it's Psalms 21 or 29 I can't remember 29 I think it is where it's revealed over and over again that God is speaking and is speaking as thunder. When Moses goes up onto the mountain to get the Ten Commandments he here well actually the 70 elders went with him and what did they hear? Thunder. God was speaking as thunder and here we have the seven thunders which means that it's complete whatever he said was complete. John come on man I mean you've had something tangled in front of you and you're just yeah let me get that let me get that and it just keeps on getting put back put back can't get it you can't get it can't get it thanks a lot John thanks a lot but he could not write down what the seven thunders had said John wasn't allowed to let us in on this secret sometimes we just have to be okay with not having all the answers not everything is for us to know but we want to know come on John but we don't need to know ever gone through something ever gone through something and sat there and went God why am I going through this what's this for how's this going to benefit anybody we've gone through some stuff and we're sitting there going God who's this going to benefit because not benefiting us right now so what is this all about and sometimes the answer is silence and if we have faith like we're supposed to we need to be okay with that silence we need to be okay with not having all the answers some people call that blind faith yeah it's faith without knowing faith without seeing faith without actually tasting it and as we were talking about in prayer this morning Jesus said blessed are those who have faith who have not seen when he was speaking to Downing Thomas he said to Thomas you believe because you've seen blessed are those who believe who have not seen that'd be me I'm gonna have faith without knowing so maybe John was just sitting there trying to remind us or maybe God through John was just sitting there going you know what let me throw this out go ahead and write that little tidbit that you did there John but don't tell him the answer now there's this thing of this little scroll this is not the same scroll as the seven sealed scroll that Jesus was opening it's not even the same word it's a little scroll and actually this word can only be found in chapter 10 a little scroll I'm looking for something we've got a massive angel here he's got one foot on land one foot in the sea and he's got this any bit he's scrolling his hand he's holding it up what's this little scroll that he has I got ideas I got thoughts you know Jeremiah the prophet he made a statement that he would eat God's word I ate eight past tense I have eaten your word John is digesting a word that is given to him to prophesy about you know what does the scroll have on it words it has sentences on it it has things for the reader to read so if John is consuming it just like Jeremiah the prophet was consuming God's word then he is consuming God's word which is a prophetic voice a prophetic word because right afterwards he was told you must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings and just like all of God's prophetic words they are bitter sweet reading the Bible is kind of bitter sweet it's got a sweet ending salvation is sweet the love of God is sweet but there's a lot of bitter in here too and we have gotten most of this by the prophets or some sort of prophetic word just like John is taking this little scroll that's been handed to him and he was told to eat it and was even told ahead of time it's going to taste sweet in your mouth and it's going to be bitter in your stomach and that's exactly what happened he ate a bit now whether that was literal or not he ate it and it was sweet in his mouth but it was bitter in his stomach when he was digesting it could it be that this prophetic word that he's giving is bittersweet sweet to say at first but bitter once you dig into it a little bit bitter to see what's happening to all of these people it's kind of like what revelation is all about it's a bittersweet word but i'm reminded like Luke was bringing up again today this might be one of the reasons why at the very beginning of the of the book of revelation it says those who listen to it who read it and who obey it will be blessed because we're consuming a bitter word a bittersweet word and John's given a bittersweet word that's why we got to keep going it's got why we got to study it why we've got to understand it as much as we can knowing that we're not going to know it all i don't know about you anybody who's been coming to bible study and we've sat there and said i don't know that we have the clue and i've i've found in talking with people they're like well i'm glad you don't have a clue either it's okay but i think this word in revelation was given to all of us it's sweet to read about but once you digest it it turns bitter once you start thinking about what's going to happen it leaves you feeling a little bit better you know what that's okay god is god knows our emotions he gave them to us and he knows that this kind of thing when we read it could cause us to act upon his word amen am i hitting home and does that make a lot of sense i knew this was going to be a weird message today i didn't know how else to give it Diane but to read it point out a couple things the thing that gets me is the people who would rather die than be tormented and it had me really thinking the culture of today does not want churches to teach about hell it's just saying you know teach about the love stuff got guys all about love you got to be just teaching about love that's the good stuff you just teach about that yeah but hell's in there hell's in the bible the consequences of not loving god is hell and it's horrible and it's listed in the bible and we have to preach that oh well all you're doing is preaching you know fire and brimstone you're just like a southern Baptist preacher blah blah blah you're doing this that and the other thing you know what though if you know now you know if you didn't know now you know hell's not the place to be heaven's where you want to go salvation's where you what you want through Jesus is the only way to get to heaven to get salvation i feel sorry for the people who don't figure that out but if we're not doing our job and saying skip but the culture saying i'm not going to allow the culture to dictate what we preach in the pulpit here right if we need to preach about hell as awful as that is at least somebody might get saved because of it i'd rather somebody get saved by preaching about hell than somebody knock in and save when you're preaching about the goodness of god and which happens you can preach all day long everybody assumes that god is good which he is but they assume that they assume in their own way god is good they have their own idea of what good is god has a completely different idea of what love is love is not always the great feeling that we have love is sometimes going through tough stuff anybody gone through tough stuff lately yep i know all y'all story i know you all have had tough stuff happen but here you are and god does love you and you can't wait for you to get called home eventually i'm praying the rapture you know just a quick side note before i finish since i've gotten saved which was many many years ago many moons you know two thousand or uh excuse me that's two thousand eighteen nineteen ninety eight okay it's been a while phrase gas yeah ever since then i've been hearing about the end of time that jesus is coming soon but you know what it really feels like he's coming soon as many years as it's been it still feels like man this is it's gotta happen pretty quick now and if i continue to preach till the day that i pass that he's coming soon oh well he's still coming soon and we have to be ready because you know what being ready means that no matter what if we're raptured we're called home if we pass we're still called home we still have to be ready for that day let us be ready and expecting praise god my voice just cracked that's wonderful i don't know how many of you are going to make it the bible study this wednesday i don't even know what bible studies going to look like on wednesday all i know is it's been good that's just a quick plug okay i have no i have no travis again have no great way of ending that it was you know i feel like you know when luke does a message he's given you know here's what i'm about to talk about here's i'm talking about it and then here's what i talked about that's the way you're supposed to do messages apparently i don't think i've given one message with that formula in it but i can understand why it's beneficial you know to do that but now i come to an ending like this and i'm saying they're going how do i end it exactly marin antha come lord jesus quickly come lord jesus quickly exactly let's just pray and end that way we'll pray with an amen how about that or end with an amen lord god heavenly father we thank you we praise you lord we thank you for the bittersweet word that you have in revelation heavenly father i pray that you i i thank you that you have opened up our eyes of understanding to what is going to happen that you've spoken the future in into uh into the word so that we would know in advance what will happen so that we can pray for people so that we can spread the gospel to people so that we can tell people who are headed to hell that that's not the way they want to go we can tell them the awful things about hell we can tell them the fantastic things about heaven we can tell them about god's church and how you're moving in god's church right now and how you're building people up and you're increasing people's faith and you're taking away people's diseases you're healing people's wounds you're causing great things to happen and we just want to say thank you lord for doing so thank you for the signs and miracles even though we don't need them to believe in you i thank you that you have decided to do them anyway just to show off a little bit and i thank you lord god for that heavenly father you are an awesome god and a loving god and we thank you for all the love that you have for us we thank you for the blessing that is coming upon each one of us as we are reading and listening to and following the words that are in revelation thank you lord god for all that you are doing with each one of us help us to get through every situation help us to focus on you through every situation help us to praise you and have and count it all joy as we go through various trials and tribulations thank you god that you are a god who is about redemption who is there to redeem us even those people who are having the trouble of repenting you're there you're waiting for them to repent so that you can call them home with you in jesus mighty and matchless name amen