The Second Coming: Part 1 - Part B

I want to see Satan get what he deserves. I'm tired of what the devil has done to our world. Satan was in heaven, and that wasn't enough for him, so he got booted out of heaven. He came here. He ruined this place, so much so that John, the author of Revelation, writes in 1 John 5, we know that the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked. Satan has caused havoc in creation, but as Pastor Skip shares today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, he will get what's coming to him in the end.

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That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Thank you. Now let's hear what Skip has for us today. We're in Revelation 19 as he gets started. When I read in Revelation that Satan is thrown into the lake of fire that burns forever and ever, I get really happy. I'm glad he's getting what he deserves. No sorrow here when I read that. Ding-dong the witch is dead. The second reason I want Jesus to come is I want Jesus to get what he deserves.

He, after all, is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, as we will read. But when he came the first time, he was despised. He was rejected. There was no room for him in the end. There was no room for him in politics.

There still isn't. No room for him in culture. No room for him in the religion of his time. The only place that there was room for him was on a cross, and they put him there. And as I live in this world and I hear his name taken in vain and slandered and taken through the mud in virtually every television show out there and in stores everywhere in common life, to read in Revelation chapter 5 that the anthem of heaven is worthy is the lamb, I realize that Jesus will get what he deserves.

The third reason I want Jesus to come is I want to see the world as God intended the world to be. This is not how God intended things to be. I hope you look around and notice this is not what God had in mind originally.

And Paul says, all creation groans and labors or travails until now. I know everything God made was good. He said so. He made some and go, that's good. He made some else. That's good.

He made some else. That's very good. But it didn't stay good for long, did it?

It didn't take very long for everything to go south. So there's coming a day when the curse is going to be reversed and the world will be as God originally intended the world to be. So it's anticipated by prophecy.

It's desired personally. Third feature, it's accompanied with glory. This is his glorious return. In verse 11 of chapter 19, now I saw heaven opened and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on him was called faithful and true and in righteousness he judges and makes war.

His eyes were like a flame of fire. On his head were many crowns. He has a name written that no one knew except himself. He was close to heaven and he has a name written that no one knew except himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood and his name is called the word of God. You remember Jesus said his second coming would be with power and great glory.

Here it is displayed. Now something about revelation, we kind of talked through this many times, but let me just bring you up to speed again. This appearance of Jesus, this apocalyptic appearance, is written about in apocalyptic symbolism. That is, there are symbols that point to a reality. See, sometimes people say, well, wow, does that mean that there's going to be horses, real horses in heaven? Maybe.

Maybe. Or they're symbols of something else that will be real. I mean, will there really be crowns dangling from his head? Will there really be a sword coming out of his mouth? It's like, look out for my sword.

I'm turning this way now. Maybe. Or it speaks of his powerful speech. These are apocalyptic symbols. So let's look at a few of them that speak of glory. First of all, he's sitting on a white horse. A horse was an animal of warfare. Kings rode horses in battle. They rode donkeys in times of peace. Jesus came the first time on a donkey. Now he's on a horse. Kings rode white horses.

Makes sense. When Roman generals won battles, if they met all the criteria for the battle, they would come back to Rome for a triumphus, a triumphal procession. So the general would be seated on a white horse and the horse would parade down the Via Sacra, the main drag of Rome. Behind the white horse were prisoners that he had vanquished, usually the king, if he didn't kill him in battle, that he took.

Also the spoils of war. And that parade on the white horse would end at the end of the Via Sacra, which is the temple to Jupiter. The general would get off the white horse and it was said he would enter his glory.

He would go into the temple and be celebrated. So Jesus comes on a white horse. Notice that his eyes are like a flame of fire. What do you think that speaks of? I think it speaks of judgment.

Fire is often associated with judgment in the Scripture. And I think the point of this is that nothing escapes his penetrating gaze. Nothing escapes his penetrating gaze. Hebrews 4 verse 13, there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

Think of the difference. When Jesus came the first time, his eyes were so tender and filled with compassion. He looked at the rich young ruler. It says he looked at him and loved him. He looked at Peter after Peter denied him, and it was a look, I believe, of compassion and tenderness. Those eyes were filled with tears as he stood before the tomb of Lazarus. It says Jesus wept at that funeral.

But this is different. This is judgment time. He is putting an end to that battle of Armageddon.

He is going to judge the Antichrist and the false prophet. His eyes were like a flame of fire. And notice this, on his head were many crowns.

Diya dei Mata is the word. Diadems. Diadems. These are royal crowns. These are sovereign crowns.

Now let me give you a comparison. In chapter 12, the dragon in the vision of John, Satan, wore seven crowns. In chapter 13, the Antichrist is pictured as having seven heads and ten horns with ten crowns. Here is Jesus with many crowns. It's like he's wearing them all now. He's conquered.

He's now in charge of everything. This might help to understand, in ancient times when a king or general took over, when the king vanquished another kingdom, when he won, he would take the king of the vanquished ruler and wear it on his own head. There's even a story of Ptolemy who was ruling in Egypt and fought a battle in Antioch up in Asia Minor. When he won the battle, he was wearing his own crown, the crown of Egypt. On top of that, he put the crown of Antioch. He wore two crowns to say, I'm king in both realms. So here's Jesus with many crowns.

Now I just said, I want Jesus to come back because I want Jesus to get what Jesus deserves. This is what he deserves. He deserves to wear many crowns, every crown, all crowns. As Ian McPherson put it, where Christ once bore the world's frown, he'll one day wear the world's crown. He wore a crown of thorns at his first coming. He will wear the crowns of glory and majesty and sovereignty at his second coming. Another footnote, in the fourth chapter of Revelation, there are how many elders around the throne of God?

Shout it out if you know it. Twenty-four elders, and they're wearing crowns on their heads. Do you remember what they did with their crowns? They cast them, they tossed them before the throne of God, as if to say, it's not me. Like in the song, it's all about Jesus.

Jesus is the center of it all. It's not about me. It's not about my life, my world, my rights, my sovereignty. I'm going to stand up for my rights. No, I'm going to cast everything before him.

And that's my question to you. Have you cast the crown of your life at the feet of Jesus? That's what he deserves.

He deserves a full-hearted, full-throated commitment of your life to him. On his head were many crowns, so it is accompanied with glory. Fourth and finally, fourth feature, his second coming will be accomplished with authority. Authority. Notice the titles here that is given to the rider on the white horse.

They are all titles of authority. Look at verse 11. I saw heaven open and behold a white horse and he who sat on him was called, here's his name, faithful and true.

Here's one reason I think it's put this way. We have just read about anti-Christ. Anti-Christ was unfaithful and false. He was anti-Christ. He was unfaithful and false. As opposed to anti-Christ, who is unfaithful and false, Jesus Christ is faithful and true.

I mean, think about it. It would seem that the world will grow tired of anti-Christ hubris. He will promise peace, bring it temporarily, but then quickly bring devastation, destruction, war, so that the kings of the earth are going to say, wait a minute, and even fight against him.

Anti-Christ is going to make a pact with the Jewish nation for seven years and then break it right in the middle called the abomination of desolation. He's going back in his word. He's unfaithful.

He's false. Jesus is faithful and true. You know, some of you need to be reminded this morning that God is faithful. Your God is faithful and true, and He will never desert you. Jesus said, lo, I am with you even to the end of the age. He said, well, He said that to His disciples, the 12.

I'm not one of them. You're one of His disciples, and if you doubt that it's a promise for you, it is reiterated in Hebrews 13, and the writer there says, for as He Himself said I will never leave you nor forsake you. And in Greek, it's very emphatic. It literally reads, I will never, no, never, no, never leave you or forsake you. So if you're thinking, maybe God has left. Never. I feel so ever. Yeah, but never forsake you.

It's an emphatic. He's faithful and true. Look at His next name, verse 12. His eyes were like a flame of fire.

On His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. What is that?

What name would that be? No one knows. I don't know. It says no one knows except He Himself.

Now that drives some of us nuts, because why even mention it, right? And if somebody goes, I have a secret. What is it?

I can't tell. Why did you even tell me you had a secret? But here's what I love about this, and this is what excites me. It's exciting to realize that even in heaven, we're going to be learning new things about the Lord. If you think, well, earth is where we learn stuff, and then we go to heaven, and we just know everything.

I got news for you. You're going to be learning more things about God in heaven, because God is unfathomable. It says in Ephesians chapter 2, Paul writes that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of His grace.

In other words, it is going to take God all of eternity to display and demonstrate and reveal the depth of His love and grace to you. There's something else that I think will help you understand this name that no one knew. In ancient times, when you would name a person, you had authority over that person. So parents, you know what that's like. You have kids, and you tell your kids, because I said so, right?

You're in my house. I gave you your name, because I said so. In ancient times, it was much more dramatic. There was no debate of in school, who has the right parents or the school.

There was none of that debate going on. It was called patria potestas. That was the Roman law that said, Dad has ultimate authority and can even kill his son or daughter if he feels like it. That was law.

That was law. So to name someone meant you had authority over that person. The fact that it says a name was written that no one knew could mean no one has the right to name him, thus no one can usurp authority over him. That's just another way of saying he is penultimate. He is the ultimate, ultimate sovereign. He has a name that no one knew.

No one can usurp his authority. The third name is one you're familiar with. Verse 13, he was clothed with a robe dipped in blood.

We'll get that next time. And his name is called the Word of God. We're familiar with that because the author of this book wrote John's gospel, and you know how it begins. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh. We know Jesus is called the Word.

If you're a casual Western reader and you read John 1, it's a little bit disorienting because it sounds so impersonal to call some person the Word. But what you need to understand is in that culture, it meant he was God. In that culture, the Greeks—this is how the Greeks thought 2,000 years ago. They looked at their world. They noticed the world was ordered. They noticed the world was predictable. There are patterns—sunrise, sunset, seasons, etc.

Stars you can navigate with. Why, they asked, why is the world so ordered? And the philosophers came up with this because there's a logos, a word, an ordering principle, a supreme transcendent ordering principle they called the logos.

John said, let me introduce that one to you. It's Jesus. Also, the Jewish people had a very similar term in Hebrew, well, in Aramaic. It was memra. Memra meant the Word. And the Jews used that term as a substitute for the name of God. The name of God was so sacred, they didn't want to pronounce it. So, New Testament Jews would often say the memra, the Word. And the Word, the memra, meant the self-disclosure of God or the self-expression of God. So, when John said, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and He became flesh, John is unmistakably saying, Jesus Christ is God in a human body. He is the Word of God.

He's given a fourth name. This is where we will end, and that's the name in verse 16. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Not just King, not just Lord, King of Kings, Lord of Lords.

In other words, there's no doubt who this is. This is Jesus, and when He comes back, He has absolute authority. As King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

I want you to remember that. He's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. No matter who's in the White House, Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. No matter who's in the Round House, Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. No matter who's in the Kremlin, or Buckingham Palace, or anywhere else, Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The real question, is He your Lord? Is He your King? Have you experienced personally His faithfulness?

Well, there's a pretty easy way to figure that out. Do you long for His appearing? See, if He's your Lord, if He's your King, then you're going, oh, even so, come Lord Jesus. If not, you might be thinking, yeah, I know He said He'd come, I hope it's not like today.

Why would you say that? Well, there's some things in my life, you know. Some people are happy with their earthly home. I don't know who would be after reading this book, but they are.

Here's what it's like. There was a couple on their honeymoon. They got to their honeymoon suite late at night.

It was dark. They'd been driving all day, and they got the keys to their room. They were hoping to see a room all set up, all decked out with flowers and chocolates.

You know, that's the way the groom had planned it. They unlock the door. They go in. It's a tiny little room with a fold-out couch, and the mattress is lumpy. I mean, there's not even a bathroom. The bathroom's in the lobby. It's a little tiny room.

Well, you know, it's late. They go to sleep. They get up in the morning.

Their neck's all crooked. He goes down to the front desk, and he's miffed. The guy says, what's up, man? We've set this up, and there was a tiny little room. The man at the hotel desk said, did you open the door in the room? The door? You mean the closet door?

No, I didn't open it. It looked like a closet. Did you open the door? He took them back upstairs and opened the door. They had been in the vestibule of the honeymoon suite. Thinking that door was a closet. They opened the door, and it was a spacious bedroom with flowers and chocolates and everything they could imagine.

They spent their honeymoon night in that little dinky room. You know, a lot of people think this is all there is, this little room. This is it. But they're longing for something more. They're saying, man, all there is is this earth.

This is it. This is what you get, your existence. You make your own heaven.

You make your own hell. Some people live under that paradigm. They're longing in their hearts, in their minds. They're hoping. I wonder if there's something more.

There is. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series, The End is Near. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will help you gain a better understanding of end times prophecy. 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 months? 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. Come back tomorrow as Skip begins his message, The Second Coming Part 2, to show you that the Bible is all about Jesus and His coming to earth in two very different ways. I've told you before, the Bible, if you boil it all down, is essentially this. The Bible is all about one person and two events.

The one person, Jesus Christ. The two events, first coming, second coming. First coming, to redeem the world from sin. Second coming, to rule and reign with those who have been redeemed from sin. That is the bottom line of the message of the Bible. One person, two events. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, a connection. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.