What's Next?

Let me just say, don't be afraid of prophecy. And that's because one fourth of your Bible is prophecy. To be precise, 26.8% of the entire scripture is prophetic. So if you don't want to read prophecy, there's a lot of the Bible that'll be unread. It's all over scripture. I want you to think of prophecy as being an aspect of one of God's great attributes. God is omniscient.

He knows everything. A lot of people worry about the future, but you can be confident knowing God holds it in His hands. Today we continue our countdown of Skip's top 40 messages on the Connect with Skip Heitzig YouTube channel. In the number 19 spot is the message, What's Next? In it, Skip helps you understand the times we're living in and God's plans for the future. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will nourish your soul with God's amazing truths. There's a top 10 list for just about everything from the top 10 movies on Netflix to the top 10 most popular dog breeds. But what about a top 10 list that can actually impact your faith?

Skip Heitzig's top 10 messages will really make a mark. Here's a sample from what most people don't know about heaven. Somebody once said there are going to be at least three surprises in heaven. First of all, who's there that you thought would never make it?

Second, who's not there that you were sure would make it? And then number three, the fact that you yourself are there by God's grace. Here Skip teach on heaven, hell, and the end times, and topics like the Holy Spirit and true happiness. And when you give $35 or more today, we'll also send you Reload Love, Lenya Heitzig's book about the founding of a ministry that's been helping children victimized by terror for nearly two decades.

Visit connectwithskip.com to give today and get Skip's top 10 messages on CD plus your copy of Reload Love by Lenya Heitzig or call 800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Revelation chapter one as Skip Heitzig starts today's study. Somebody once said we should all be concerned about the future because we're going to have to spend the rest of our lives there.

That's good advice. People have always been fascinated with the future. What does the future hold? In ancient times people looked at signs in the sky as omens. It's one of the reasons people look at horoscopes today is to find out what the future holds.

One of the reasons you're interested in a study in the book of Revelation is because you are wondering what is next. And throughout the years there have been songs written about the future, hundreds of them. Some of the more famous ones are Someday by Mariah Carey, The Age of Aquarius going way back now, 1969, The Fifth Dimension. The song Next Year by Foo Fighters, Kids of the Future by the Jonas Brothers, Palo Alto by Radiohead, Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles, a song for the future generation, the B-52s, Welcome to the Future, Brad Paisley, and my personal favorite of all time future songs is a song called In the Year 2525. I'm going way back.

That was by Zagger and Evans. Last week, because it was the end of the year, I was interested in what newspapers and magazines and online sources say about what's going to come in the next year. There's always at the end of every year, beginning of a new year, what certain people believe, pundits believe, prognosticators think about what we can expect in the coming year. And people make predictions all the way from who's going to win the election to who's going to win a Grammy, from what's going to happen with the stock market to what you can expect in your market with vegetable prices.

And some of these are made on trends. Some of these predictions are just simply good guesses. But a couple of predictions got my attention of what they say you can expect to happen in the next year. Among other things, they say you can expect airlines to get more crowded and seats to be narrower.

How that is even possible, I don't know. But that is what some are predicting. They're also predicting that virtual reality will go mainstream more and more so. They are also predicting there will be higher salaries for American workers. Before you think that's great news, you should also know they're predicting rent to be higher and cost of living to be higher.

So it'll balance itself out. I agree with Abraham Lincoln. He said the best thing about the future, it only comes one day at a time. But what's next? What is next for our world?

What is next for our nation? And do current events, things that we are watching take place around the world? Do they play into an end time scenario?

We're going to consider some of those questions in this upcoming series. But I need to sound a note of caution. I feel I always do whenever we take on a study of the book of Revelation or any prophetic study. And the caution is that some have used the Bible to make outlandish predictions. You know, you can make the Bible say just about anything you want to if you read it wrongly, if you look at it out of context.

You can superimpose things into it. And some people have used the Bible to predict the craziest things. One interesting example of that was from 1870 when a man, a minister was visiting a friend of his, a college president. And he said, you know, I believe the Bible predicts that nothing new can ever be invented after this point. This is 1870. Think how outlandish that seems today.

You who are reading your Bibles on your iPhones. Nothing new could ever be invented. The college president looked at him and said, I wholeheartedly disagree with that statement. Why I believe within 50 years, man will soar through the sky like birds. They'll be able to fly. The minister turned on his heel toward his friend and he said, be careful lest you be guilty of blasphemy for flight is reserved only for the angels. He said. What is intriguing about that example is that the minister's name was Milton Wright, W R I G H T. Yeah, he had two sons, Wilbur and Orville Wright, who within 30 years would be flying an airplane outside of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. So every time you get on an airlines, whether it's overcrowded with skinnier seats or not, you are testifying that Milton Wright was wrong. But his friend, the educator, now he was right. He made a prediction that within 50 years, man would fly and he was right.

It seemed outlandish at the time, but he was right. And some of the statements you're going to read in Revelation, some of the predictions must have seemed outlandish to John, to people 2,000 years ago, to people 1,000 years ago, but not so weird and wacky these days as we see events unfolding. Now the book of Revelation was written by John.

You'll see his name appear in the first few verses. John was one of the apostles of Jesus, close followers, and even closer than the 12, there was an inner circle of Peter, James and John. John's dad was Zebedee, a fisherman in Galilee. His brother James, he and James and Peter, as I mentioned, were very, very close to Jesus. It was John who leaned his head on Jesus' chest at the Last Supper. John was first at the tomb and first to believe that Jesus had raised from the dead.

John is now in his 90s, some believe around 95 or 96, and he is right in this book after seeing a vision while he is in isolation on the island of Patmos, a little six by 10 mile island about 35 miles off the coast of Turkey. What I want to show you from some of the verses in the first chapter to begin this series are four notable features, four characteristics about this book of Revelation. Let's read some of these verses together. Revelation chapter 1 verse 1, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants, things which must shortly take place. And he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ to all things that he saw. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is near.

John to the seven churches, which are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is, who was, and who is to come from the seven spirits who are before his throne. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first born from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth, to him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests to his God and father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him, even so.

Amen. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty. The first feature I want you to see about the book of Revelation is that this book predicts the future. Notice what it is called in verse three.

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this what? Prophecy. It's called a prophecy. It is called that five times in this book. It is not an allegory. It is not a fantasy. It is not poetry.

It is not legendary prose. It is predictive prophecy. This book predicts the future. In fact, the book of Revelation contained more details about the end times and the coming of Christ than any other portion of the Bible.

And it will amplify it in the greatest detail. There are 22 chapters. It will amplify things like the seven-year tribulation period, the final world war in the Middle East, the arrival of a mysterious figure typically called the Antichrist, though he's known by 50 titles in the Scripture. It will detail the second coming of Christ, the Millennial Kingdom, and finally the eternal state. Now, some people I have noticed are afraid of prophecy. As soon as you say, we're going through Revelation, they go, oh no. You know, Revelation, you know, who can understand it? It's an enigma. It's at least a distraction. I don't like to think about those things.

I can't understand those things. And I find it interesting that of all the people that didn't like the book of Revelation, Martin Luther was way up on top. He didn't like this book. In fact, he doubted it was even Scripture for a long time. In fact, Martin Luther classified the book of Revelation in a list that he called anti-legomena, which was disputed books, disputed books, books of disputed origin.

So he had trouble with it. Also, John Calvin, though he wrote commentaries on virtually every book of the New Testament, did not write a commentary on the book of Revelation. And one of the reasons that both of those gentlemen did not really give a high view of Revelation is because the book of Revelation teaches a literal thousand year reign of Christ on the earth. And they were, by their predisposition, all millennialists.

I'll discuss that later in detail. That is, they didn't believe in the literalness of Christ's reign upon the earth. And by the way, when Luther and Calvin were alive, the events that this book describes seemed so impossible, outlandish, hardly possible. In our day and age, they seem highly probable.

A lot has happened since then. Let me just say, don't be afraid of prophecy. And that's because one fourth of your Bible is prophecy. To be precise, 26.8% of the entire Scripture is prophetic. So if you don't want to read prophecy, there's a lot of the Bible that'll be unread.

It's all over Scripture. I want you to think of prophecy as being an aspect of one of God's great attributes. God is omniscient.

He knows everything. And because he is omniscient, one of the aspects of his omniscience is that he knows the future in advance and can write about it, can predict it through his prophets in graphic detail. In fact, do you know that this is sort of like God's calling card? In the Old Testament, when he compares himself to the false gods of the peoples around, in Isaiah 41, the Lord says, can your idols make such claims as these?

Let them come and show what they can do, says the Lord, the King of Israel. Let them try to tell us what the future holds. If you are gods, tell us what will occur in the days ahead. If you're really truly deity, you can predict the future like I can, God is saying.

And of course they couldn't. So every tomorrow has two handles, the handle of faith and the handle of anxiety. Too many of you are grabbing onto the handle of anxiety. Prophecy will move you to grab the handle of faith as you realize I serve a God and hopefully I trust a God who knows the end from the beginning and calls things before they happen as though they're past. There's a special aspect, however, to this prophecy. And that is it's given in signs, in pictures, in symbols. Notice something in verse one.

It says the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants things which must shortly take place. And he sent and notice the next word. He signified it. That is he gave it in signs. That's what signified means. He gave it in signs, signs, symbols, pictures.

Some of those symbols are lampstands, trumpets, bowls, beasts. And something else if you have ever read this book of Revelation, it is very heavy on the number what? Which number? Seven. 54 times there's seven somethings. There's seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, seven stars, seven thunders that give an utterance. So why is this prophecy given in signified language, in signs and symbols? Well, I don't have time to explain this week. That will be saved for next week.

I'll explain why next time. But let me move you to a phrase in verse one. It says, which God gave him to show his servants, now look at this, things which must shortly take place.

Now this has thrown some because they go well, it's been 2000 years since that was written. It must shortly take place. Well, you need to understand what this means. It means it will take place within a short amount of time. The word shortly is the word tachai in Greek, entakai, which we get the word tachometer from.

Tachometer measures velocity. So the idea of this is simply once it starts, it's going to take place within a very brief period of time. It's like history drops into high gear as these things happen. Picture dominoes that are set up and once you, once you trip one of them, they will all fall in rapid succession. And so we'll read about the emergence of the antichrist followed immediately by the tribulation, the abomination of desolation, the great tribulation, Armageddon, the return of Christ, et cetera.

They're just going to like tripping dominoes fall very rapidly. And this is what I believe Jesus meant when he said, unless those days be shortened, no flesh would survive, but for the elect's sake, they will be shortened. So this book predicts the future. Second feature of this book, this book promises a blessing. Did you notice verse three? It said, blessed is he who avoids this book. Oh, it doesn't say that.

Excuse me. I misread it. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it for the time is near. This is the only book of the Bible that has such a direct and unique promise of blessing to those who read it, hear it, and do it. You find this promise at the beginning and you find it again at the very end in revelation 22 verse seven, bless it. It means get happy. That's what the word blessed means.

Get happy or Oh, how happy. If you avoid this book, you are robbing yourself of a blessing. You are robbing yourself of a certain amount of joy that God wants you to have.

And some of you are going, wait a minute. I read enough of revelation to know there's not a lot of joy in it. There's a lot of catastrophe.

There's a lot of destruction in it. My answer, keep reading. You haven't read far enough. Where do you get to revelation 19 and revelation 20 and revelation 21 and revelation 22 and here's what you find. We win. And we win because Jesus wins. And because Jesus wins, Satan loses and that's enough to get happy about.

That'll make you happy. The more you read it, you'll discover God's plan for your future and you'll discover not only to Satan lose, he's the biggest loser in the book. He will be incarcerated for a thousand years. We will be told bound for a thousand years after which it says he will be tormented for ever day and night.

Just the thought of that makes me happy. Lewis Talbot, a commentator on this book said the devil has turned thousands of people away from this portion of God's word. He, Satan does not want anyone to read a book that tells of his being cast out of heaven, nor is he anxious for us to read of the ultimate triumph of his number one enemy, Jesus Christ.

The more you study the book of revelation, the more you understand why Satan fights so hard to keep God's people away from it. Listen, it's a revelation. Look at the second word, the revelation. It's not some cryptic, mysterious, veiled book. It's a revelation. It's a revelation and you can understand it. The devil doesn't want you to understand it. God certainly does want you to understand this book. I wrote a book called You Can Understand the Book of Revelation and the other night, just for kicks, I got an Amazon to read what reviewers were saying about the book.

One reviewer was kind and said, it's true. After reading this book, you can understand the book of revelation. That's the intention of the book of revelation, that you can understand it, but the joy is promised to those who read it, those who hear it, and it says right there, you can look at it, those who keep it.

Ah, that's the caveat, isn't it? A lot of people read, but a lot of people don't heed what they read. Oh yeah, they can quote it.

They just don't do it. According to Guinness Book of World Records, the Bible is the biggest, best-selling book of all times. We might want to clap at that, but be careful because it is the most famous book of all time and best-selling book of all time. I just don't know if it's the most obeyed book of all time.

I kind of doubt that. The real joy, the real joy that you will experience is when you decide to keep it. How do you keep the book of revelation? By living in the light of eternity, that's how.

By having less and less touch and a control by the things of this world. So this book predicts the future. This book promises blessing. And here's the third feature of this book. This book portrays a person. Of all the things that the book of Revelation does, it highlights a particular individual, and it's not the antichrist.

You know who it is? Jesus Christ. Look at verse one, the revelation of Jesus Christ. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ. In Greek, apokalypsis, Iesu Christu, a revelation or the revelation about Jesus Christ. Now that word apokalypsis sounds an awful lot like apocalypse. We get our word apocalypse from the Greek word apokalypsis. But it's unfortunate that when you think of apocalypse, you think of apocalypse now.

You think of all of those crazy apocalyptic movies that talk about destruction and war. The meaning in English is not the meaning in Greek. I looked it up in the dictionary. The dictionary describes apocalypse as the complete final destruction of the world.

That is not the meaning of the original word. The meaning of apokalypsis is the unveiling. That's what revealing means. It's not concealing something. It's disclosing it. It's revealing it. It's not covering. It's uncovering it. It means to uncover or to unveil. That's Skip Heisig's number 19 message on our Top 40 Messages countdown.

It's from the series What's Next. Find the full message and more of Skip's teachings organized into playlists that take you through the entire sermon series at youtube.com slash Calvary ABQ. Now, here's Skip to tell you about how you can keep encouraging messages like this one coming your way as you help connect others to the good news of Jesus. As the end times gets closer, we as believers in Jesus need to be watching and waiting for his return and telling others about him with every opportunity we get. When you give today, you make it possible through your generous gift to reach even more people around the world with the life-giving gospel of Christ. Here's how. Tune in again tomorrow as Skip Heisig shares a Top 40 Message from the book of John and reveals the important truths that the Apostle John communicated about your Lord and Savior Jesus. Connect with Skip Heisig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.