The Past, Present, and Future Events in Revelation

How do I know which events in Revelation are past, present, or future? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity. Well, hi there.

Happy Friday. I'm Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. Our phone lines are open. We'll be taking calls for the next 25 minutes or so. So now's the time to jump on your phone. 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Now, you can also watch us live on either Instagram or YouTube and send us a message that way. Send your questions in and feel free to email us at questionsatcorechristianity.com.

First up today, here's a voicemail from one of our listeners named Rebecca. And I was wondering what your thoughts are on children receiving Communion. I was raised Catholic, and so I didn't receive Communion until my first Communion at seven or eight. I recently left the Catholic Church a year ago, and my family and I attend a Presbyterian Church now. We were told that our children were allowed to receive Communion as long as they've been baptized, which they've all been baptized in the Catholic Church.

And so our three-year-olds do receive Communion every Sunday, but it still is something that I'm kind of struggling to understand because they don't really understand the concept yet. So I was just wondering what your thoughts are on that. Thank you.

Hey, Rebecca. Thank you for calling in with that question. Love that you're raising your kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and a really wonderful and practical question, and just important for us to think about.

And so ordinarily, I think the advice that you got was right. In order to take the Lord's Supper, first you need to be baptized. Baptism comes before partaking of Holy Communion. And then, typically, there's a time of instruction or catechesis where we're teaching our kids about the significance of what it is that we're doing, and I think that would be the next step leading into your children making a profession of faith and then partaking of the Lord's Supper.

And it doesn't mean that they have to understand the ins and outs of the mystery altogether. We're talking about something really amazing that the Lord does in the context of our gathering, where he's nourishing us with the body and blood of Jesus by faith through these signs, through this sacrament, with the bread and the wine. And so there's a sense in which, okay, this is above all of our pay grade, and yet there does need to be, I think, a basic understanding of the Gospel and of the significance of what's happening when we're partaking of the Lord's Supper. And that's precisely what the Apostle Paul seems to indicate in places like 1 Corinthians 11, where he said in verse 27, So there's this discernment that needs to be taking place when we're partaking of the Lord's Supper, and I do believe that young children can do that, can participate in that, but there is a period of instruction. And so I would encourage you to continue to talk with the pastor of that church that you're going to, the elders there, and say, okay, I want my children to be taking the Lord's Supper, and I want to talk to them about these things and help them understand what it is that we're doing.

Are there any resources that you have for me, or are there classes that they're going to take? Ordinarily, as I said, you would have your children make a profession of faith and then be partaking of the Lord's Supper, and by the way, another passage to look at here in thinking about this, I think, is what Moses says in Exodus chapter 12, what the Lord is speaking to him with regard to the Passover and the celebration of the Passover for the people of God in the Old Testament. We read in verse 26, when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service?

You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel and Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses, and the people bowed their heads and worshipped. In other words, God is telling his people, look, when you're participating or partaking in these ceremonies, these services that I'm giving to you, your kids are going to start asking questions, and when they do, it's an opportunity for you to talk about how God has redeemed us, how he's delivered us, how we're his people. And so as your children, Rebecca, they're in the service or asking questions, you know, why do I take communion or why am I not taking communion, that's your opportunity, it's our opportunity as parents to be able to open up the Word of God and to talk about what the Lord has done for us. And so that's the process, that's what it's supposed to look like, and may God bless you and be with you as you engage in that with your family, and may God fill you with his Spirit and encourage you and your children.

Thanks for calling. I really appreciate Rebecca's heart there, Adriel. I mean, here she has these young kids, she wants them to understand the significance of the Lord's Supper, of taking communion, and calling us for some guidance.

That really just touches my heart. And I appreciate, you know, not just wanting to go through the motions, you know, let's do this, even though we don't know what's going on, but really wanting to grasp the gospel. I mean, that's what baptism and the Lord's Supper are, they're these visible exhibitions of the gospel of God's grace. We think of the preached word, the preaching of the gospel, but we also have this visible word in these ordinances that Jesus has given to us that so clearly exhibit, convey to us the promises of God for us to lay hold of and sink our teeth into.

Amen. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Our phone lines are open right now.

If you have a question about the Bible, the Christian life, doctrine, theology, maybe something in your church life that you're confused about or concerned about, or maybe you're a person who has doubts about the Christian faith. We're open to your calls as well. And our phone lines will be open for the next 20 minutes or so. Here's the number. It's 833-THECORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Asher calling in from Arkansas. Asher, what's your question for Adriel? So I'm ministering to a person about the gospel, and they're wondering why God couldn't have used evolution to create the world contrary to the normal seven-day creation account. Well, I think, Asher, when you're answering those kinds of questions, we could always just say God is free to do whatever he wants.

I mean, God could have used something like the evolutionary process to bring us to where we are today. And of course, there are people that take that view. I disagree with that view.

I don't think that those who hold that view, that that means that they're not saved or that they can't really be Christians or believe in the gospel if they embrace that view. But I don't think that that's the biblical view, and so that's not the view that I hold to in particular. I think the question that you have to ask is, well, what does the scripture say about the origins of man? And certainly, when we read the early chapters of Genesis, one thing we have to affirm is creation ex nihilo, that is, that God made all things out of nothing, that it wasn't through some pre-existent matter that the Lord shaped everything or that matter is itself eternal, but that God is the only one who is eternal, and he made everything from nothing. And then when you have the creation of man, we read in Genesis 2, verse 7, The Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature. And so you have Adam there created this historical person, and as God shapes him, as God forms him, he breathed into him the breath of life. Now, there are people that look at this text and say, well, maybe Adam there is just kind of a figure, a symbol for our other ancestors through the evolutionary process, but the issue there is Adam actually plays a really important role in the story of the Bible and the history of redemption. He's the representative head of humanity, and Jesus Christ came as the second Adam to perfectly fulfill the law of God and to succeed where Adam failed, basically, in obeying the Lord. And so Adam is a key figure in the history of the Bible and in the history of our own redemption, and so we can't reject a historical Adam and we can't reject creation ex nihilo, and this seems to be what the Bible clearly lays out for us in the early chapters of Genesis. So it's not a question of could God have done it another way? Sure, he could have.

Did he, though, is the ultimate question, and in order to come to a conclusion on that question, we have to search the scriptures. God bless you as you minister to this individual, and I pray that they continue to grow and that God fills you with all wisdom in having these discussions. Thank you. You know, Asher, I was thinking about Greg Kochel's books, which really would give you some great discussion material for your friend who's not a believer on the creation and God and who Jesus Christ is.

So you might want to check that out. We've talked about Greg's books before, including the story of reality. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adrian Sanchez. I'd love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life. 833-THECORE is the number.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Now, we're live on Instagram today and on YouTube, and we have a question from one of our Instagram viewers. Aaron's asking this, and this kind of ties into that earlier question. At what age do you think a child can make a genuine confession of faith? Okay, I love this question.

Here's a couple of things. I don't think it's helpful for a church to say you have to be this old before we'll accept your profession of faith, in part because the Holy Spirit is free to work however he wants and whoever he wants. I mean, consider the fact that when Elizabeth and Mary greet each other or when Mary greets Elizabeth and you have John the Baptist in Elizabeth's womb and the Lord, the eternal son of the Father in the womb of the Virgin Mary, what happens? You know, John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth's womb almost as if to recognize, right, like he realizes he's in the presence of the Lord.

David says, you cause me to trust in you while at my mother's breasts. Time and time again, you see in Scripture, and the Gospels in particular, children recognizing and affirming who Jesus is even before the religious teachers and lawyers. I think of that scene in Matthew chapter 21 where Jesus cleanses the temple. This is verse 14.

I love this story. It says, The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes, have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise.

And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. God works in and through children, and he can work in the lives, the hearts of our children. We often think, Oh, well, you can't really understand this, but the Gospel is for children. And so to this Instagram question, just again, especially in light of the question we had earlier with regard to taking the Lord's Supper and children. I just I just want to say it for parents work with your kids to talk to them about Jesus. And it could be that even from a very young age, they're making a profession of faith.

They're able to recognize. Yeah, Jesus is God. He's Lord.

He came to save me from my sins. Those kinds of truth, those kinds of realities. I mean, the spirit, the spirit, I think, can reveal that and has revealed that even to very young children. And so this is where I think we're trying to, as parents, not force something or push something. We don't want them just to regurgitate what we're saying.

They just don't understand it at all. But you need to be open to the fact that the Lord is working in the lives of your children. And as you're teaching them the word and they're and they're saying, wow, I believe there's that childlike faith. I think we want to nourish that and cultivate that instead of saying, oh, no, that can't be real. So often we see in scripture that it is real and we praise God for that.

And so I'm not giving you you know, and I'm not saying, well, probably by the age of four or five or seven or whatever. I'm just not going to do that because I think we have to be sensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit here as we're talking about the Lord Jesus with our children. God bless.

Good counsel. Thanks for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life.

We'll take calls for the next 10 minutes or so at 833-THE-CORE. Also want to mention an excellent resource we have for you. And really, this is just in time for Valentine's Day. It's on the very important topic of marital intimacy. Yeah, the resource is called Seven Truths About Marital Sex. And it's a resource that that jumps into a topic that a lot of times we just don't address as a church. I mean, sometimes we talk about intimacy or sex outside of marriage and we talk about that as a sin. It can come to be viewed in a very taboo way, I think, in Christian circles. And so we want to be careful that we don't view it in that sort of taboo way. This is a bad thing. This is an evil thing or a dirty thing. No, that's not true at all. Scripture speaks about this.

And so we should be talking about it in the context of marriage, intimacy in the context of marriage, in a way that honors the Lord. And that's what this resource seeks to do. And you can get it for free. Download it for free over at corechristianity.com forward slash offers. Visit our website today. Check that out and some of the other great resources, including many free resources. Our core guides, our core questions, and of course, our great core Bible studies on books from both the Old and the New Testament. You can find all of those at corechristianity.com. Well, we do receive voicemails here at the core.

You can call us 24 hours a day and leave your question on our voicemail system. Here's one that came in from one of our listeners named Lisa. Hello, Pastor Adriel. Thank you so much for your radio program.

I listen to it regularly. My question is in regards to Revelations 12, 7. Is this passage describing a future event? If yes, and Satan has not been thrown out of heaven yet, does that mean he currently resides in heaven? It really bothers me the thought that Satan is currently in heaven. If that's where Satan's at, then I don't know if that's where I want to be.

I do want to be reconciled to my father and be wherever he is at. But it just seems like that interpretation that Satan is still currently in heaven sets up the Bible to contradict itself. So I was just curious of your thoughts.

Thanks. Yeah. Lisa, this is an excellent question. Revelation chapter 12. And I do not believe that this is referring to money in particular there, right? Like war rising in heaven. Revelation chapter 12, verse seven. Michael and the dragon, the dragon and his angels fought back and he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. Essentially what's happening there is we're given a glimpse at what was happening in heaven through the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. And just to summarize it, what took place was Satan, the evil one, was excommunicated.

Our accuser was excommunicated from the courts of heaven through the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. Just earlier there in Revelation chapter 12, it speaks of this woman, this woman who's being persecuted by a dragon. The woman gives birth, verse five, to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with the rod of iron.

Well, who's that? We're talking about Jesus here. It's echoing the words of the psalmist in places like Psalm 2 and Psalm 110. She gives birth to this male child who's to rule all the nations with the rod of iron. Her child was caught up to God and his throne, referring to the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, actually described earlier in Revelation chapter five.

And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1260 days. Now, there's a lot of symbolic stuff happening here. I mean, we're talking about apocalyptic visionary prophecy. But just to summarize, this is referring to the birth of our Lord Jesus, his redemptive work and ascension into heaven. And when that happened, Satan was cast out and he's persecuting the woman, we might say the church, the people of God, for this period of time, this present evil age.

And that's what's being referred to there. By the way, this is one of the reasons why when people try to read the book of Revelation as this sort of timeline, right, where it's sort of like one thing that happens after another, and there's this sort of sequential order. That's not how it's meant to be read, because sometimes, you know, John gets a vision of something that happened in the past, at least prior to when he had the vision. And certainly there in Revelation chapter 12, as he's seeing this visionary prophecy of the redemptive work of Jesus, well, that had already happened. And so we can't read the book of Revelation as just a sort of simple, sequential timeline. John is getting these visions of things that are happening throughout history, sometimes things that happened before him, sometimes things that are going to happen far into the future. And so it's important for us, as we're approaching the book of Revelation, to recognize that that's sort of how visionary prophecy works and to think about the context and what's being said in order to determine, you know, where does this fit in the redemptive timeline.

And so what we see in Revelation chapter 12, especially the verses that you mentioned, that refers to things that already took place. Thank you so much for reaching out to us, Rebecca. Glad that you're a frequent listener to the broadcast. I hope we can continue to encourage you in your faith. Thanks, Rebecca.

We appreciate you so much. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life. In fact, I want to mention, and when this program ends here in a few minutes, we're going to be recording a second episode of Core Christianity. You won't hear this one on the radio right now, but if you still have a question and you weren't able to get through in the last 20 minutes or so, you can still call us with your questions about the Bible, the Christian life, doctrine, theology, you name it. We're open to your call. You can call us for the next half hour or so at 833-THE-CORE. Let's go to Melanie calling in from Indiana. Melanie, what's your question for Adriel? Hi, I listen to your program daily and I've been aiming to call and I haven't. Mine is about my prayer life.

I'm a little bit concerned about it. I still pray when I've been blessed and I thank the Lord and I'm a believer, but in the last couple of years, I've been wondering about the sovereignty of God and praying his will because I lost my daughter two years ago to a motorcycle accident. Four months later, my dad died of colon cancer and two months ago, my mom passed from kidney disease and I've prayed for all of them.

So I'm a little bit concerned on how to pray the will of God and his sovereignty and how to get out of the headspace that I'm in. Okay, Melanie, well, there's one passage of scripture that comes to mind that I want to share with you and before I do, I just want to take a moment and pray for you and ask for the Lord's work in your life and that he might strengthen you in your prayer life, but also comfort you with all of this loss that you've experienced in recent days. Father, we lift Melanie up to you. God, thank you that you are the God of all comfort. You comfort us in our affliction and I pray that you would comfort Melanie in her affliction. I pray, Lord God, that she would, as she wrestles with questions about your sovereignty and your plan for her life, would you help her, Lord, to have a sense of your presence, a sense even in the midst of the great difficulty she's experienced of your goodness still. And Father, we ask again for your comfort. We thank you for the promise of the Gospel, for the fact that Jesus, your Son, has conquered death to give us hope so that when we mourn, we don't mourn as those who are hopeless. And I pray for her that as she continues to mourn, Lord, that you would be her comfort in this time. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. I mean, especially when we experience great difficulty as you've experienced in your life and great loss, we can begin to wonder, okay, God, what are you doing and are you good? And it's so important for us to understand, I mean, especially when it comes to prayer, the heart of the Father toward us.

It's one of the ways I think the evil one tries to deceive us, is to get us to believe that God doesn't care about us and that He's not good. And Jesus confronts that. The passage I wanted to bring up to you is Matthew chapter 7, verse 7, where Jesus says, Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him?

Now, there you can wonder, well, I've asked for certain things. I asked for healing for a family member and it didn't happen. And so if we read Jesus's words here in a way that we think, okay, well, I'm supposed to just get whatever I ask for so long as I ask in faith, and that didn't happen, so it seems like there's a contradiction, we're misunderstanding the words. Here, Jesus is promising to give us that which we need for our ultimate good, namely the Holy Spirit.

And that's very clear in the parallel account of this text. Jesus says, how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? And we don't understand why sometimes those ultimate gifts that God gives to us, you know, why he gives us those gifts, but he doesn't give us other things, other temporal things that we wanted, that we asked him for.

And in some instances, you know, those temporal things contradict with this greater ultimate good that he has in store for us. And we don't fully understand how all of that works, but that's where trust comes in, where we need to say, Lord, you are good. You intend my eternal salvation. You've made these promises to me, the promise of your grace and the promise of your Holy Spirit. And you've commanded me, you've called me to ask and to trust and to believe, and so I'm going to do that. I don't understand how or why these other things have happened or how that fits in your good purpose and plan, but I believe you're able to make all things work together for my good. As we explore the truth of God's word together.