If people are going to have a phobia, If they're going to have an uncontrollable, debilitating, disabling, exaggerated, unconquerable fear, let it be the fear of falling into the hands of the living God. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. You've heard about having your worst fears realized?
Well, surprisingly, that won't describe what's going on when God judges the world, because at that time, fear will reach a level that you can't even imagine. The question is, are you in danger of being around at that time, when pure terror blankets the earth, when once hardy people are literally scared to death? Today's lesson will help you find out as John MacArthur continues his look at events that our world will one day face. You might call those days the beginning of the end. That's the title of John's current study here on Grace to You.
If you have your Bible, turn to the last book, the book of Revelation, and follow as John begins the message. Open your Bible now to the sixth chapter of Revelation. Revelation chapter 6. And we'll be looking at verses 12 through 17. Revelation 6, 12 through 17.
And I looked when he broke the sixth seal. And there was a great earthquake. And the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood. And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up.
And every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the commanders, and the rich, and the strong, and every slave and free man, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us. And hide us. from the presence of him who sits on the throne.
and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come. and who is able to stand. Here we have recorded the description of the sixth seal. Out of seven.
The sixth seal opens Another force. The force being exemplified and described in the sixth seal is fear. Fear. Fear is a powerful emotion. powerful enough in this scene.
for people to begin the world's largest prayer meeting. Only they don't pray to God, they pray to the mountains and the rocks. And they pray for the mountains and the rocks. to fall on them. A prayer for suicide?
A prayer for destruction. They're so afraid. They would rather die than face The wrath Of God. The wrath of the Lamb. Fear is a powerful emotion.
Sometimes it is an overpowering feeling that takes control of the mind and. makes one desire what is irrational. It takes control sometimes of the will and makes people behave in ways that are inexplicable. Fear, frankly, can create all kinds of responses, everything from cowardice to heroism, from strength to weakness, aggression to passivity, reason to confusion, clear thinking to total panic. Fear can strengthen the heart.
and make it beat faster. Fear can stop it dead. Fear can lead a person to have a total change in what he thinks and feels and does. Fear is certainly a part of the human factor. It's a part of life.
There are normal fears that all of us have, and God has given us the capacity to fear certain things for the sake of self-preservation and the protection of others. Normal fears that everybody has like The fear of disease, the fear of injury. The fear of the loss of family or the loss of love, the loss of a job, the loss of money, fear of death, and then, as some tests have indicated, the most dominant fear: the fear of public speaking. Such common fears are usually handled somewhat adequately by most people. If a person can't handle normal fear, we say that person has a phobia.
By phobia, we basically mean an abnormal response to a normal fear. or the invention of an abnormal and bizarre fear. A phobia is fear exaggerated. It is fear that disables a person. It is fear that is uncontrollable and unconquerable.
It is fear that totally takes control of a person so that they cannot function normally. Such phobia leads to paranoia, panic attacks, and various kinds of deviant and antisocial behavior. When you look at people and examine what they're afraid of, it is quite amazing. Ann Landers, interestingly enough, through all the years accumulating her mail. has listed what people are afraid of.
She's got a list of the things people fear most. She says, first of all, there are very bizarre fears about which people have written me, such as the fear of falling into the toilet. Uh The fear of certain colors. The fear of being buried alive, or the fear of calling someone by his given name. But the most common fears, according to my mail, she said, are the following.
Animals, bees, being alone, being stared at, blood, blushing, cancer, cats, choking, corpses, crowds, darkness, death, deformity, demons, dirt, dogs, dreams, elevators, enclosed space, flying, germs, height, horses, illness, insanity, insects, lightning, mice, nakedness, noise, pain, poverty, pregnancy, robbers, school, sexual intercourse, sleep, smothering snakes, spiders, strangers, surgical operations, syphilis, thunder, travel, vomiting, work, and worms. Frankly, that list is a list of fairly normal things, just stuff that's part of life. But it is amazing how people have phobias about normal things as well as inventing bizarre things. like fearing certain colours and so forth. People fear all kinds of things.
They fear normal things abnormally, and they fear abnormal things. But rarely. Are they afraid of what they really ought to be afraid of? In Hebrews chapter 10, let me read you a verse. You don't need to look it up.
Hebrews 10:31. It is a terrifying thing. to fall into the hands of the living God. The prior verse says God said, Vengeance is mine. I will repay.
The Lord will judge his people.
Now that is something people ought to be afraid of. Cats and dogs and mice and lightning and noise and pain and pregnancy. Those are minimal. Those are the normal issues of life. If people are going to have a phobia.
If they're going to have an uncontrollable, debilitating, disabling, exaggerated, unconquerable fear, let it be the fear of falling into the hands of the living God. In Luke. Chapter 12. There is a familiar statement. That follows the same thought.
Luke 12:5. I will warn you. whom to fear. Jesus is talking. I want to tell you who to fear.
In the verse before, he said, Don't be afraid of those who kill the body. Don't be afraid of anything that could harm you physically. Let me tell you who to fear. Fear the one who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Who's that? It's God. Fear God. With all of the phobias And all of the fears that people have. Here's one they rarely have, but should have.
And in fact, I sometimes wonder if the church isn't busy today trying to make sure they don't have it. Trying to make them feel that God is a benign grandfather. Who is this all-time ultimate cosmic good guy? Jesus knew his father well. He said, fear him.
Because after he's killed, He has the authority. to cast you into hell. Yes, I tell you. Fear him. Let me tell you something.
We just read, you can go back to Revelation 6. We just read. About a day. when everybody will have that fear. They'll have it.
to the phobia category. It'll be the ultimate paranoia. It'll be the universal panic attack. There is coming a day when the world will all have the same debilitating, uncontrollable, disabling, unconquerable phobia. A fear so overpowering that they will be scared to death.
What do you mean by that? Jesus said of that coming day. In Luke 21:26, you want to write that down. Luke 21:26, Jesus said. Men will faint from fear.
Men will faint from fear. The word faint Appa. Pasuko. Apa Tzuko in Greek. appears only in that verse.
You know what it means? To die. To literally breathe out. Their last. When that day comes, There will be such fear that people will be scared to death.
Some will die on the spot. They will die from sheer terror because they will realize they have fallen into the hands of the living God. It is his day of wrath, and that is so terrifying, it'll stop their hearts. And those who survived the initial fear. Will cry for the rocks to crush them to death before they have to face God.
As if that could be a means of escape. What is it? that could cause this level of panic. It is the sixth seal. being opened.
And the dominant force you see here is fear.
Now I want to speak to you about the reason for fear. Why are they so afraid? And the answer comes in verses twelve to fourteen. Then we'll talk about the range of fear, and then we'll talk about the response of fear. But first of all, the reason for fear.
Let's see the reason for their fear. Verse 12. John remembers in a vision God is revealing these things to him. And he sees visions that Dramatize. The future scenes.
I looked when he broke the sixth seal. And there was a great earthquake. And the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood. And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island removed out of their places.
It's an absolutely unbelievable scenario. Let's start at the beginning. I looked when he broke the sixth seal. The lamb who has the seven-sealed scroll, you remember? The scroll first appeared back in chapters four and five when we were in heaven with John.
The scroll showed up in the father's hand. At the end of chapter 5, he hands it to his son in chapter 6, saying to him, The world and the universe is yours. Unroll this scroll. It gives you the title deed to it and describes the action that must take place as you take it back. As each of the seals have been broken, we have seen what is to come.
First, there is a false peace orchestrated by false prophets and false Christs led by the Antichrist, leading the world to an imaginary utopia, which is immediately shattered by the second seal, which is war, worldwide war, war all over the globe. Followed by famine, the very obvious result of war, the scarcity of food, followed by death through pestilence and disaster, so that one-fourth of the population of the whole world perish in a very brief time. And then we saw the fifth, the breaking out of persecution, and then we saw the martyrs praying for God's vengeance. All of those first five, mark this. Had an element of human agency.
There were human agents in orchestrating the peace. There are human agents involved in the war. The famine. The death that comes through pestilence, There are human beings involved even in the vengeance as There are believers praying for this to come. They, of course, are.
Men and women, even though glorified at that point.
Now when you come to the sixth seal, God acts without men. You've come to a level of intervention by God that is wholly and solely his own. And the paralyzing, terrifying act is inconceivable and devastating. Obviously, by this time, as we have learned in chapter 6, the world has been filled with ongoing violence. The world has been filled with disaster after disaster, with death everywhere since the false peace was shattered.
This thing is moving rapidly. Faster and faster, more intense with greater and greater Holocausts as the birth pains increase. Toward the big event. All through this time, believers have been proclaiming the Word of God. They have been telling the world what you're seeing and what you're experiencing is written in the scripture.
It's all in the scripture. They've also been preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because it was for The testimony of Christ and the word of God, verse 9, says that they were killed in the first place.
So, as all of these events are unfolding, those who believe are explaining to the world: this is in the scripture, this is in the scripture. We can show it to you. See what's happening, see what's going on, and here is the saving gospel of Jesus Christ that can deliver you. But what does the world do? It does everything it can to massacre the Christians and massacre the preachers and all who follow Christ.
And the world follows Antichrist. They are deceived by Satan. They follow the deception. They disbelieve the Bible. They disbelieve the gospel.
They believe the Antichrist. Even though they've heard the testimony of the witnessing martyrs that they have killed, they will not believe. And they will believe Antichrist. Look at chapter 13 for a moment so that you can see how this happens. In verse 5 of 13, it says that the Antichrist speaks arrogant words and blasphemies.
And he operates for 42 months. That's the last three and a half years of this time period. He opened his mouth in blasphemies against God to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle. He blasphemes even those who dwell in heaven. He makes war with the saints.
He overcomes them. He has authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation. Verse 8: All who dwell on the earth will worship him. Everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. The whole world follows the sky.
They all go after him. He has a partner, another beast in verse 11, comes along. In verse 13, he performs great signs. Fire comes down from heaven. And verse 14, he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life.
Here comes one known as the false prophet, and he does these wondrous things and calls the whole world to worship the Antichrist, and they buy the deception. In spite of what is going on all around them, the terrors, the judgments, in spite of all of this, they believe the Antichrist, they believe the false prophet, and they just carry on business as usual. In fact, there are prophets running all over the place, even at the time all of this starts to happen, at the time of the war and the famine and the pestilence and death, at the time that all of that persecution and slaughter is going on of believers and of Jews, and they're crying out the gospel, in the midst of all of this stuff. These people will be just going along life as usual. Say, how do you know that?
Because Jesus said it in Matthew chapter 24. Listen to what he said. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. They will be eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Until the day Noah entered the ark, and they didn't understand until the flood came and took them all away.
So it'll be at the coming of the Son of Man. Just like in Noah's day, no matter what he said and he preached righteousness for 120 years, no matter how many warnings he gave them, no matter what he told them, they just went on eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage like life as usual, and they didn't know until it hit. And they were drowned. And that's how it's going to be at the coming of the Son of Man. In spite of all of this, the world is going to be deceived, they're not going to believe what Christians are saying.
The deception will carry right to the end. Kind of exacerbating that deception is going to be a plethora of false prophets, false Christs, Jesus says, will be all over the place. One will be saying, I'm over here, and another will be saying, I'm over here, and another will be saying, I'm over here, I'm the true Christ, I'm the true Christ. They'll be all over giving answers and telling what's happening, and explaining it, and giving their opinions, and their message is going to be pretty much the same. Verse 3 of 1 Thessalonians 5, while they are saying, peace and safety.
They're going to say, listen, folks, we're going to work this out. Peace is coming. The utopia is around the corner. Don't worry about this. We're going to take care of it.
And you know what they're going to be saying? As soon as we have massacred all these Christians, we'll get our utopia. Right? We just gotta get rid of them. And then peace and safety.
And while they're saying it, 1 Thessalonians 5, 3 says, destruction will come on them suddenly like birth pains on a woman with child, and they shall not escape. The final birth pains will come excruciating. And sudden And when it hits Back to Revelation 6. When it hits. For the first time The world knows the Christians were Right.
Say how do you know that? Because in verse 16, They say, Hide us from the presence of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come. What does that tell you? It tells you the whole world has been told that the wrath of God and the wrath of the Lamb is coming. They've heard it.
They've heard it. And they've heard the gospel because it will be preached to the ends of the earth, Jesus said in the Olivet Discourse. And that everlasting angel will make sure everybody hears. as he flies through the sky. But not until the sixth seal.
After they tried to silence all the Christians. by massacring them. Will they suddenly wake up? to the fact that what those Christians were saying was true. And what hits is unavoidably attributable only to God.
And a more frightening scene in realization couldn't even be imagined. By the way, as a footnote. This sequence in Revelation 6 also fits exactly with the sequence in Matthew 24. Because It follows the same chronology. You come through Matthew 24, you come to verse 29.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days, all the things they've been suffering, I don't take it there that tribulation is some technical term, even after all that they've been suffering. The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky. It's the same event. And the phenomena described in Revelation 6 about the sky is similar to the phenomena Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24. It's the same sequence.
You'll notice just prior to that, in verse 24 of Matthew 24, the false Christ and the false prophets come along again, and they say, here I am, here I am, here I am. And of course, they're promising the utopia if we can just continue to get rid of the believers and along with them the Jews. Luke 21 follows the same pattern the same sequence. That's Verse 25 that says there will be signs in sun. and moon and stars, and upon the earth dismay among nations perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves.
And then it says men will die from fear. And the expectation of the things which are coming on the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then they will see the Son of Man coming. Same pattern. Joel the prophet saw it. Take the time.
To go back and study Joel chapter 2, looking clear from the Old Testament, Joel saw it. In Joel 2, he described this day as a day of darkness, verse 2, a day of gloom, a day of clouds, thick darkness. Down in verse 10. A time when the earth quakes and the heavens tremble and the sun and the moon grow dark and the stars lose their brightness. Verse 30.
Wonders in the sky, wonders on the earth, blood, fire, columns of smoke, the sun turned to darkness, the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. Same event, and Joel saw it. Isaiah saw it. He writes about it in chapter 29. In just a brief statement in verse 6, the Lord of hosts will come and you will be punished with thunder and earthquake and loud noise, whirlwind, tempests, and the flame of a consuming fire.
That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, giving you a sense of the unimaginable horror the earth is heading towards. It's a time of judgment that signals the beginning of the end. That's the title of John's series here on Grace to You: The Beginning of the End.
Well friend, maybe for a long time you've doubted that you could understand the book of Revelation on your own through your own reading and your own study. There is so much imagery in that book, right? There's no way you could ever decipher it. Maybe that's what you've thought. But understanding Revelation is possible.
What's more, it's important for you to understand this book. It promises blessing to those who heed what it says.
So, to help you get all you can from Scripture's finale, John MacArthur has written a booklet called A Jet Tour Through Revelation. Based on one of the longest sermons that John ever preached, this booklet gives a summary of the entire book of Revelation, yet with plenty of detail, so that you can understand where history is headed. We'll send you a free copy of A Jet Tour Through Revelation. All you need to do is let us know that you want one. Request your booklet when you contact us today.
Call us here at 855GRACE or you can request your booklet from our website gty.org. Again, we'll send you John's booklet, A Jet Tour Through Revelation, free of charge. Just let us know where to mail it and call us at 855GRACE or request your booklet online at gty.org. Thanks, too, for letting us know how John's teaching is helping you grow in Christ-likeness. Perhaps you've been encouraged by the daily devotionals at gty.org, or maybe the recent radio series called A Plea for Discernment helped you better draw the line between right and wrong.
However God has used grace to you in your life, let us know when you email us at letters at gty.org or write to us at grace to you box 4000 Panorama City, California 91412.
Now for John MacArthur and our staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for spending this half hour with us and be back tomorrow when John looks at a coming disaster that will make any and all previous calamities pale in comparison. How can you be sure to avoid this cataclysm? Find out tomorrow. It's another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on grace to you.
