810. How Will It All End?

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services.

Today that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel Platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're concluding a study series entitled Return of the King, which has been a study of the Second Coming of Christ. The message today will be preached by seminary professor Dr. Dan Olinger from Revelation 22, and the title of his message is, How Will It All End? Good morning. How are you?

You want to talk about something good today? Would that be good? Revelation 22, please. The last chapter of the book.

Revelation 22. Throughout this semester, as you know, for our doctrinal series, we've been looking at the return of the king, the fact that Jesus is coming again, and all of the circumstances that are attendant on that. There's a lot of events that are associated with that coming.

Let me just review for us what we've heard this semester. Dr. Horn started us off by talking about why the second coming matters, and it certainly does, and we'll have more to say about that this morning. Dr. Newton meditated with us on the return of Christ.

What is the king's return like, and how should we respond to it? Dr. Crockett talked about signs of the times and 88 reasons why Jesus might not come back in 2019. Dr. Reimers talked about the future of Israel in the plan of God.

Dr. Ormiston, with whom for some reason students often confuse me, and for the life of me I can't figure out why. He discussed the judgments in the book of Revelation and emphasized the fact that you and I, if we are born again, will not experience those judgments. Dr. Bennett gave us the big picture from Psalm 2, the vindication of the sun against the plots of the rulers of this world.

Dr. Stikes talked about the Millennial Kingdom from Revelation chapter 20, and Dr. Horn talked about various views of that Millennial Kingdom that are common in conservative Bible-believing Christianity. It is my distinct privilege to come toward the end of the series and to think with you about how this all ends, and how we should respond to that, how we should live in light of the return of the King. So I ask the question to start with, how will it all end?

How will it all end? I think it's very interesting that the Bible talks a lot about the Kingdom, about the Millennium, the thousand years, Christ ruling on earth, the throne of his father David in Jerusalem, rod of righteousness, and all of the things that will accompany that Kingdom. The natural peace, the lion will lie down with the lamb, the child will play in the den of the serpent. All kinds of social peace will beat our swords into plowshares, and there is a sculpture commemorating that verse in front of the United Nations, of all places.

I have a hunch that if they knew where the statue came from, they'd want to take it down. We're told the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord when Jesus reigns, as the waters cover the sea. There will be righteousness on the earth, let justice roll down like waters, the prophet says, and righteousness like a mighty stream. We know a lot of things about the Millennium, about the Kingdom. But the Bible says almost nothing about what comes after that, about the eternal state. What will heaven be like?

Now I know that Randy Alcorn wrote a whole book about that. But the fact is that the scripture gives us very little to actually work with. And most of that information is confined to the last couple of chapters of the book. You are at Revelation 22.

If you cast your gaze back on chapter 21, you see some reference to how this period is going to begin. Verse 1, John sees a new heaven and a new earth. Verse 3, the tabernacle of God is with men.

What does that mean? Okay, God's moving in with us. He's taking up dwelling among us, as he did in a sense visually in the tabernacle when the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud was suspended over the Holy of Holies there, as he did visually in Solomon's temple when the glory, the Shekinah glory came and filled the Holy of Holies at Solomon's dedication of that building. God will take up residence with us. He will live among us. He did that of course briefly in the person of the Son who walked among us, more correctly walked among our ancestors long ago.

But now that will become the norm. God will live here among us. He will be our neighbor. He will be our king. He will be in our presence. We're told in verse 4, there will be no death or sorrow or pain. Well that'll be different.

We are remembering today the family of Dr. Hay who has been promoted to glory. And the fact that that is a promotion does not lessen the damage that his departure does to those he loves. It doesn't lessen the sorrow. Yes, we sorrow not as others who have no hope, but we do sorrow. There won't be any more pain.

And that'll be a good thing. When I was much younger, I had some wisdom teeth removed, and that explains a lot I suppose. And in the course of that surgery, a nerve, this is very common, a nerve in my face was damaged and for some time after that until the nerve recovered, I was numb on one side of my face, which makes kissing a bit of a challenge, I'll say. But that's over now, lest you worry about me. Well sometimes the absence of pain is a bad thing.

Sometimes you need pain. Well this won't be like that. The pain will be gone and that will be a good thing. And all of those things will be true because, as John tells us in verse 8 of chapter 21, there will be no sin. There will be no curse. The consequences, the effects of our sin, and our devotion to our sin will be removed from creation. And as I commented to someone the other day, not only will our sins be gone, nuked, but the smoking crater it left behind won't be there either.

The consequences will be gone. There will be great prosperity, he tells us at the end of the chapter, about verse 24. There will be commerce. There will be prosperity.

There will be light. And then John brings us to our passage for the day. Let me read the first few verses of chapter 22. And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

In the midst of the street of it and on either side of the river was there the tree of life which have 12 manner of fruits and yielded her fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. And they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there, and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign forever and ever.

And he said unto me, these sayings are faithful and true. So what do we have? What do we have at the end of it all?

I think we could distill this description down into a couple of simple ideas. First of all, we will have perfect fellowship with God. God will be glorious. He will be on a throne.

The Lamb will be at his side. And we're told in the previous chapter that there's no sun or moon in this new heaven or new earth because we don't need one anymore. The Father and the Lamb will be the light of the place, the light of the city, the New Jerusalem, apparently the light of the whole planet because there's no sun. The light has to come from somewhere. That's a lot of light. That's a lot of glory for us to bask in.

That is a lot of warmth and comfort and joy. I've noticed since I turned about 40, the world is getting darker by the day. The lights in all the buildings around here are getting dimmer. I need more light all the time, holding my glasses.

We're never going to face that problem. There will be plenty of light. How bright is that light? When Jesus was transfigured during his earthly ministry before Peter and James and John, the evangelist writes that his clothes were brighter than any laundry could brighten him. An unimagined, brilliant white. We have yet to create a perfect white on this earth, color experts will tell you. And just when you think that something is white, you hold another sheet of paper up next to it and you go, oh, it's yellow, this is white. And then there are other pieces of paper that are brighter yet, but we still haven't got there. Brighter than any laundry could whiten them. We're told that Paul was blinded by that light on the Damascus road, had to be led into town, and sat and thought and prayed for three days, reorienting his life after the experience of that brilliant light, realizing that everything he had believed was fundamentally wrong.

Bright enough to blind us. We're told in Revelation chapter 1 that John, who was, can I say this reverently, Jesus' best friend. Definitely one of the three best friends that he had, closer than his own family. John the one who was with him at some of the most intimate moments of his life, the transfiguration for example. The one who at the Last Supper was sitting right next to him. So close that when Jesus said, you know, one of you is going to betray me, Peter, always the inquisitive one, motions to John and says, ask him, ask him who it is. And John just leans over and says, so who is it? And Jesus says, I'm about to give him a piece of bread. That's how close John was.

One of the Gospel writers says he was leaning on him at the meal. And John, Jesus' best earthly friend, sees him in Revelation chapter 1 and falls at his feet, overwhelmed with what he's seeing. How bright will that light be?

How bright will it be? We will have perfect fellowship with our God. All of the barriers that separate us now are sin. You know, prayer is really hard for me. I don't know about you. Some people seems like they just can pray.

I don't understand that. Prayer is work for me. And there are days when it's time to pray and, you know, the time of day when I study my Bible and pray, actually, I'm on Bible faculty. I get to study the Bible all day long and get paid for it.

That's awesome. Anyway, when it's time to pray, there are days that because of my sin, I just don't want to. I don't really want to see you right now. I don't want to talk to you right now. That's all going to be gone.

We're never going to feel that way again. Other barriers. The distance. Now yes, God is everywhere and Christ is with us. Christ in us, the hope of glory, Paul says. The Spirit is with us and in us.

He indwells us. But they're invisible. And I don't know about you, but part of what makes prayer hard for me is it's really hard for me to talk to somebody that doesn't appear to be there physically, isn't visible. Well that barrier is going to be gone.

How bright is that light? All the barriers that come between us and God will be removed and we are going to enjoy the open and intimate and personal presence of the entire Godhead. That's how it'll all end. Perfect fellowship with God. And because of that, I would suggest that there's another characteristic of our life in the eternal state and that is perfect service.

Perfect service. There's a statement back in Revelation chapter 15 verse 4 that says all nations will come and worship before you. Service can mean worship. Your reasonable service, Paul says in Romans 12, 1, 2.

Perfect worship. Today we gather to worship in our churches and we're distracted. Again, we're distracted in our hearts. We're distracted by our sin. We're distracted by the perfectly legitimate responsibilities that we have that we can't help thinking about. AACS is coming in next week.

There are several of us here who are responsible for various areas of the competition. That's had my attention for the last few days. You get distracted by those things and they're not bad. They're just distracting. And so you're singing and you realize you're not even thinking about what you're singing.

You're thinking about the other stuff. We're distracted in our worship. We're divided in our worship. We're divided by language. We're divided by culture. We're divided by politics.

Shouldn't be, but we are. All of those will be gone. All of them will be out of the way. There's a little line in the passage I read today in verse three that you might have missed.

To me, it just jumps off the page. Verse three, and his servants shall serve him. Our eternity is going to be characterized by perfect service, which includes worship, yes, but it includes work, service, things to do.

I'm glad for harpists, and I'm glad they'll be there on clouds playing harps, but I'm not a harpist. That's going to have other things for me to do, and he's going to have prepared me and equipped me perfectly and pulled down all of the flaws and eradicated all of the difficulties, and I'm going to be able to serve him perfectly. He's going to give me stuff to do, and you too, and it's going to be things that we could possibly have done here, but he's going to give us those things, and we're going to excel in those things. We're going to be awesome.

We're going to be A students. Everything's going to succeed. His servants shall serve him. So what do we do in the meantime? Very quickly, let me give you three thoughts from the scripture.

What do we do in the meantime? Number one, anticipate. Anticipate with confidence. Paul says to Titus, looking for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our savior, Jesus Christ. Hope in the Bible.

You've heard this often from your Bible teachers and probably from other teachers as well. Hope is not wistfulness. Hope is not I hope so in the biblical language.

Hope is confident expectation. It's how you felt the Monday before spring break. This is going to happen, baby, and I just can't wait. It's how those of you seniors whose grades aren't close, it's how you're thinking about commencement. I'm going to graduate, and this is going to happen, and I can't wait, and I realize some of you are not all that sure, and we'll pray for you. Don't quit. Finish well.

You can do this. It's how those of you who are engaged are anticipating your wedding and your marriage. This is going to happen. It's all set. We got the church. We got the preacher. We got the reception venue. We got the caterer.

Got the musicians. Can't wait. Anticipate with confidence. Anna prayed this morning, your promises are yes and amen.

Yes they are. This is going to happen. A second way to prepare, I would suggest, is to endure with patience. James says, be patient, therefore, brethren, under the coming of the Lord.

Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Endure. Being patient isn't just an attitude.

It's an action. You endure. You bear up under the pressure. You pick up the load, and you keep going.

Years ago, I did a lengthy bicycle trip that involved coming through the Berkshires in Massachusetts and then the Smokies in North Carolina. And you know, when you're peddling uphill, you just got to keep peddling. If you stop, you'll never get started again. You just got to keep putting one foot down after the other.

Keep it up. Endure with patience. The coming of the Lord draws nigh. So dig in.

Leave it all on the field. Bear up under the pressures. In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul describes the things he suffered for Jesus. And then he says, our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

Here endure with patience. And finally, occupy with diligence. Jesus told a parable about a master who went away and left his servants with things to invest. And he said on his departure, occupy till I come.

Be about the master's business. Orient your life toward his calling, whether his calling for you is in the arts or the sciences or the humanities or whatever. Orient your life toward his calling because the king is coming. Let's pray. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

Amen. My listening friend, can I ask you a question? Have you received the crucified, resurrected Jesus as your own personal savior? No doubt God is speaking to your heart.

There's a knock on the door of your heart and he's asking to come in. Would you personally, individually, right now, call upon the name of the Lord? Ask Jesus to be your savior. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Let me urge you to do that right now. May God bless you. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Dan Olinger, seminary professor at Bob Jones University. This concludes our study series of the Second Coming of Christ and we trust that this has been a blessing in your life. Be sure to listen again next week for more chapel sermons at Bob Jones University on The Daily Platform.