The Flow of the Future - Part A

So we are on a collision course with destiny and you can't afford to be ignorant about the future. Don't want you to be scared about the future, don't want you to be alarmed about it, don't want you to be worried about it, but you do need to be ready for it.

Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip begins a message to encourage you not to worry about the future. Now here's more about this month's resource to help you gain a clear view of the current situation and the future faced by Israel. How have conflicts and wars in the Middle East set the stage for a future apocalypse? That's the question Ron Rhodes takes head-on in his new book.

Listen to this. What do you see coming in the next five or six years that might do injury to the church? And without hesitation, I said I really feel like we're going to see an explosion of subjectivism, experientialism, and mysticism, along with occultism and some paganism. How conflicts and wars in the Middle East have set the stage for the end times. This new book by Ron Rhodes addresses issues such as understanding Islam, rebuilding the temple, and the annihilation campaign from the Antichrist.

Here's Ron Rhodes commenting on Middle East events. Did you know that in Revelation 2 and 3, we read about the church 19 times? And then in the discussion on the tribulation in chapters 4 through 18, you don't see the church a single time.

It is gone. In 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 10, we are told that the church is to be delivered from the wrath to come. That word delivered literally means snatched, snatched away from.

We are to be snatched away from the wrath to come, which is a reference to the tribulation period. With your gift of $50 or more to connect with Skip Heitzig, you'll receive a copy of this new book from Ron Rhodes. Your gift will support the production and expansion of the Connect with Skip broadcast. Call 1-800-922-1888 or go online to connectwithskip.com with your donation, and we'll thank you with a copy of Ron Rhodes' new book, How Conflicts and Wars in the Middle East Have Set the Stage for the End Times.

That's 1-800-922-1888 or connectwithskip.com. Great. Now let's turn to Revelation 1 and see what Skip has for us today. So there were two brothers, and they both loved baseball, and they wondered if when they die and went to heaven if there would be baseball in heaven. So they talked about it, debated about that. And so they made a deal with each other. Whichever brother dies first would figure out a way to come back and appear to the remaining living brother to tell them if there's baseball in heaven or not.

That was the deal. Well, a week later, the older brother died, and the night after the funeral that older brother appeared to his younger brother at the foot of the bed. The younger brother was startled and said, okay, so you got to tell me, is there baseball in heaven? The older brother said, well, I've got good news, and I've got bad news. Good news, there is baseball in heaven.

The bad news is you're pitching Sunday. When I was a little boy, my mother and father taught me to pray before I went to bed. You know that standard old canned prayer, now I lay me down to sleep. Anybody else have that prayer as a little kid?

So a lot of us did. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. You remember the words? If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. And everybody said, amen.

So that's sort of a heavy thing to lay on a five-year-old boy. If I should die before I wake, I mean, I'm a kid just getting started in life, and now I'm concerned about my impending death. But the truth is, unless the Lord comes back anytime soon for us, all of us are going to face death.

The truth is you might be pitching next Sunday in heaven. We have been doing a study on the end times, future things. The theological word is eschatology, the study of end time or end things. And we've been considering that for the last several weeks through the lens of the only reliable source for the future, and that is the Bible. Though there are a lot of forecasters out there and prognosticators and so-called prophets, they are not prophetic.

They are merely pathetic because they do not know what the future holds outside of the Bible. I was reading yesterday two articles that got my attention. One was the Harvard Business Review Journal, and the second was the Atlantic Monthly Magazine. The first Harvard Business Review had an article about how to predict the future. This is for business people looking at trends economically and what metrics to put in there to predict the future.

I'm glad I read that first because the second article in the Atlantic Monthly had a little statement. They said, credentialed authorities are comically bad at predicting the future. They don't have a clue, but the Bible predicts the future with incredible accuracy, as we have seen time and time again even in this series. And now we come to the book of Revelation, a book that has more details about the end times, the end of the world, and the coming of Christ than any single book in Scripture. In the book of Revelation, it amplifies in great detail the coming day of the Lord, called the tribulation period, the final world war in the Middle East, the arrival of a figure we call the Antichrist, the second coming, the length of the kingdom age, and beyond that the eternal state. All of that is covered in the book of Revelation. Truth is, you cannot have a serious study of the end times without a study in the book of Revelation. We've already dipped into this book in our, I think, third teaching in this series when we talked about millennialism.

Remember that study? We looked at Revelation chapter 20. Previously, we've done a 14-week series on the book of Revelation, highlighting it in a series called What's Next.

That was a few years ago. And then many years ago, I actually went verse by verse, chapter by chapter, through the whole book of Revelation on Sunday mornings, 43 weeks' worth of that called History's Last Chapter. I've even written a commentary on the book of Revelation called You Can Understand the Book of Revelation. So I'm optimistic that all of us can understand it.

Here's the big takeaway. There's a flow to the future. There is a flow of redemptive history. God is not haphazard. He follows a timeline.

Remember, a few weeks ago, we looked at Daniel's 70 weeks and how God is on schedule with those 77 periods of years called Daniel's 70 years. So we are on a collision course with destiny, and you can't afford to be ignorant about the future. I don't want you to be scared about the future. I don't want you to be alarmed about it. I don't want you to be worried about it.

But you do need to be ready for it. Sorrow looks back. Worry looks all around.

Hope looks up. And this series is designed to get you to look up and see the blessed hope that is ours. So in looking now, this week and the next few weeks in the book of Revelation, I want to consider four features of this book that make it unique. First feature, this book is a prophecy. The book of Revelation is a predictive prophecy.

Look at verse one. Revelation 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 the book of Revelation. And keep those things which are written in it for the time is near. Notice in verse three, this book is called a prophecy. Five times, five times, this book is called a prophecy. It claims to be prophetic. So it's not allegory. It's not poetry.

It's not fantasy. It is prophecy. It predicts the future. Some people I have noted are afraid of prophecy. They don't like to think about it.

I don't want to think about that. You know, especially the book of Revelation. If you read it, there's like bad stuff that happens. So they just want to tune it out completely or claim that nobody can really understand it because there's so many different interpretations and it's so uncertain or well, you know, there's a whole group of people out there, you know, that weird group.

They like to sensationalize everything and they're a bunch of alarmists. Granted, all of that is true. But as I've also already noted, got to come to grips with this fact, 26% of your Bible is prophecy. So if you don't want to deal with prophecy, you have to cut out 26% of it. Now what responsible college would tell you we're going to teach you law but there's 26% of the law we're not going to teach you. We're going to teach you about the human body so you can become a doctor except for one fourth of collected medical knowledge. We're just not going to share that with you. You wouldn't be a good doctor.

You wouldn't be a good lawyer. And so pulpits should not say we're going to teach you everything in the Bible except 26% of it. And so we think it's important to understand it and that's why we study it. You don't need to be afraid of prophecy because simply you know the God of prophecy. He has your best interests at heart. It makes him unique that he can tell the future but God when it comes to prophecy we're dealing with a segment of one of his principal attributes. God is omniscient. You've heard that word right?

You know what that word means? Omniscient means he knows what? He knows everything. Well if he knows everything then he knows everything about the future and if he knows everything about the future then it is not a big deal if he predicts the future with incredible incredible accuracy.

And he does and he shows off that attribute. This is Isaiah 41 verses 21 through 23. 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. Don't you love that? God's saying come on let's have a little contest of the gods here.

Whose God is better than who? And I can predict the future. Can you?

And of course they can't. Now in all fairness, you need to know this, Martin Luther did not like the book of Revelation. In fact Martin Luther placed the book of Revelation in a category he called anti-legomena. Books of disputed authenticity.

Anti-legomena. In that category he placed the book of Revelation, the book of Hebrews, the book of James, the book of Jude. And not only did Martin Luther not like the book of Revelation, John Calvin did not like the book of Revelation either. And though John Calvin wrote commentaries on every book in the New Testament, there's one book in the New Testament he did not write a commentary on.

Guess which one that was? The book of Revelation. But you got to understand something about Luther and Calvin.

God blessed them both. They're awesome men of history in the church. But they had a third book of Revelation. They didn't believe in the literal future kingdom of Christ. So with that view in mind they would be slightly bent to not give a whole lot of credence to uncovering the truths that are in the book of Revelation. Also in the day and age in which they lived and wrote, the events written about in the book of Revelation seemed hardly possible. Today they seem highly possible. But the book of Revelation seemed hardly possible.

Today they seem highly probable. Different time frame. So this book is a prophecy.

That is the first feature. It is a prophetic book. But it's a special kind of prophecy. It's a prophecy that is given in sign language, symbolic language.

Go back to verse one. The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave Him to show His servants things which must shortly take place. Now watch this word. And He sent and signified it. See the word signified? That means to show by signs. To give signs.

And that's what this book is filled with. Pictures. Symbols. Signs.

He sent and signified them. And so you read about lampstands and trumpets and bowls and beasts and a woman clothed with the sun moon and stars and a dragon and the cup of wrath etc etc. And so the question is why? Why is this book laid out with all this symbolic language? Why doesn't John just open up the book and go, hi it's John here. Let me tell you about the end of days.

There's coming a rapture then a tribulation then an antichrist is going to show up. Why don't you just speak it like a systematic theology? Let me give you a few reasons why these symbols are used. Number one, symbolism transcends time and culture.

Symbols are not weakened by time. Straightforward language is weakened by time. You know the language is fluid so words that we used to deem to mean a certain thing don't mean anything.

Here's an example. When you used to say, man that's really bad. People knew that meant that's not good. As bad as the opposite are good. Today you go that's bad means that's actually good.

It has come to take an opposite meaning and so language is fluid. Symbolism is not weakened by time. Number two, symbols arouse strong emotions. They create strong mental images.

Pros cannot do that. So here's an example. I suppose John could have said in the future a dictator will come and rule the world but he didn't. He said instead and I saw a beast rising out of the sea.

Boy that is strong motif. He could have also said there's coming a day when evil will be rampant against believers believers but he didn't say that. He said I saw a woman drunk with the blood of the saints. Powerful, emotive language. And there's a third reason symbols are used. When you have a book of revelation like this filled with signs and symbols it could serve as sort of a spiritual code for spiritual or persecuted believers. You see in the Roman Empire there was lots and lots of persecution.

People were losing their lives. The Romans were looking for subversive texts, documents so they could arrest Christians. You know is there something in that document that would promote the overthrow of the Roman government and they get a book like the book of revelation and they look at it and go I don't get it.

You know nothing to see here. They wouldn't understand it whereas the early believers would understand it. So it's filled with imagery, filled with signs, filled with symbols and those symbols weren't as mystical to first century readers as they are to you and I 2,000 years later in the west.

We read this and go huh huh I don't get it. There's a symbol but to a first century reader these symbols were more easily understood especially if they were Jewish readers because the book of revelation is filled with references to old testament truths. So there are 404 verses in the book of revelation. Out of the 404 verses in the book of revelation there are 360 of them that are quotes or references or allusions to old testament scripture. So if you know the old testament you have a leg up on understanding the book of revelation.

This is why we promote coming to Wednesday night bible study. So this book is a prophecy. That's number one. First feature.

Second feature. This book contains a promise and here's the promise verse three blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things that are written in it for the time is near. Did you know the book of revelation is the only book in the bible that has a built-in blessing attached to it? I mean you're blessed if you read any book of the bible but specifically specifically if you read and hear and keep the book of revelation you are promised to be blessed. Anybody here want a blessing? I do. Now when it says blessed is he and that's a very bible sounding word blessed is he here's another way to translate that oh how happy oh how happy is the one who reads and hears and keeps this book I know some of you are looking at me like huh happy book of revelation happy how can you get happy reading the book of revelation when you read about wars and devastations and earthquakes and sadness well keep reading get past that read all the way to the end it reveals god's plan for your future and the more you read the book of revelation all the way to the end the happier you'll get because when you get to the end you realize we win we win because he wins and when he wins jesus wins the devil is jesus wins the devil is the biggest loser in the book he's bound for a thousand years and though he is released temporarily he is then re-incarcerated and tormented for ever so you will rob yourself of a certain amount of joy and blessing if you keep yourself away from the book of revelation because it has this promise i'm going to throw this up on the screen this is from louis talbot he was the he was the second president of biola university and the president of talbot theological seminary louis talbot wrote the devil has turned thousands of people away from this portion of god's word he the devil 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 so we don't want to keep away from it we want to get right to it so this is a book of prophecy this book has a promise third feature of the book of revelation this book presents a person it shows a person who is that person look at verse one the revelation of what does it say jesus christ this is the revelation of jesus christ this is not the revelation of the future though it does tell the future this is not primarily a revelation of the coming judgments though that is told in this book also this is first and foremost primarily the revelation of jesus christ he is the main character of the book of revelation it's about him so he's the main character the main event of the book of revelation is found in verse seven it says behold he he being jesus the main character behold he is coming with clouds and every eye will see him even they who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him so the book is about him he is the main character of the book you see that all the way through chapter one there's a vision of the glorified christ john sees jesus very different than he remembered him in the past then if you look at chapter two and three just if you don't mind glance over chapter two and three and if you happen to have a red letter edition of the bible you tell me what color is chapter two and three it's red meaning jesus spoke these words so we have the very words of jesus christ in this book we have a vision of jesus christ in chapter one so it is the revelation of jesus christ by the way do you know what the word revelation means it's the greek word apocalypsis it means an unveiling or a disclosure a display if you will a showing of jesus christ apocalypsis that Skip heitiger with a message from the series the end is near find the full message as well as books booklets and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com we share these messages to help you connect to god through his word and grow in your relationship with him through intentional study of scripture and when you give to support this ministry you keep these teachings you love available to you and to so many others around the world so they too can grow and connect with god just call 800-922-1888 to give a gift today that's 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate that's connectwithskip.com slash donate thank you we hope you'll join us again tomorrow for the conclusion of skip's message the flow of the future you've redeemed us to god by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation only one group can say that that's the church angels don't sing i've been redeemed by the blood of the lamb the nation of israel unless they're saved like any believing gentile would be saved could sing that only the church can sing this song of the crossing connect with Skip Heitzigen is a presentation of connection communications connecting you to god's never changing truth in ever-changing times