Dr. Michael Youssef, beginning his new audio series, God's Final Call. They can explain it away all they wanted, about wanting to be relevant to the culture. They can rationalize it all they want, that they don't want to offend people.
They can justify it any way they want, that they need to be accepted in order to be able to witness to people whatever excuses they use. In reality, it all boils down to this. The love for the world has overcome the love for Jesus.
That's the bottom line. You're going to see it again and again and again and again in these seven letters. Can you imagine receiving a personal letter from Jesus?
Words letting you know all that you need to know to live, thrive, and grow in life. Well, that's what's written in the first chapters of Revelation. Letters from Jesus to seven churches of his day and words for you and me in 2025, containing guidance for growing in faithfulness. Thanks for joining Dr. Michael Youssef for Leading the Way. This episode begins a powerful series from Dr. Youssef, God's Final Call. Touching content also explored in his new book of that same title, and you'll hear more about that at the end of today's episode.
Right now, listen with me as Dr. Michael Youssef begins his teaching. Perhaps there is no greater rebuke and greater correction and great exhortation regarding that Christian's identity than we would see particularly in the seven letters that Jesus wrote to his churches. Seven letters in the book of Revelation. These seven churches with all of their problems and with all of their challenges and with all of their successes and all their failures, they represented all sorts of churches, every church everywhere in the world all the time. Five of the seven churches are being rebuked for tolerating sin.
Go figure. If Jesus is writing in the 21st century western church, he would have said this falsehood of the so-called insider movement must go and must be repented of. This falsehood of baptizing immorality into the church must be repented of. This acceptance of universalism must be repented of. Why?
Because tolerance of sin, any sin, any sin in the church of Jesus Christ stems from the fact that the love for Jesus is waning down and the love for the world is increasing. Bottom line. I get to the bottom line very quickly. This is the bottom line. They can explain it away all they wanted about wanting to be relevant to the culture. They can rationalize it all they want that they don't want to offend people. They can justify it any way they want that they need to be accepted in order to be able to witness to people. Whatever excuses they use, in reality, it all boils down to this. The love for the world has overcome the love for Jesus.
That's the bottom line. You're going to see it again and again and again and again in these seven letters. Before I get to the seven churches, we have to begin with the beginning and that's Revelation 1. Revelation 1, 1. Actually, we're only going to look at that verse and verse 5 today.
That's it. Chapter 1. The book opens with saying the revelation of Jesus Christ. The revelation of Jesus Christ. What does revelation mean? It means exposure. It means unveiling. It means the revealing. That's what it means. It means the uncovering. It means showing what is hidden. But because the Greek word for revelation is apocalypsis, came to reveal talk about apocalyptic. And then we use it, and you hear it even in the secular world, we use it as something ominous, something terrible, apocalyptic.
No, no, not at all. In fact, the whole book of Revelation is the unveiling, is the uncovering of the glorified Jesus. You say, well, in the Gospels, we saw Jesus, the God-man walking in the streets of modern Israel, we saw him as the God-man who chose to lay aside the splendor of his majesty. Never, never, never, never lay down his divinity. There are churches in America today that is teaching that when Jesus came to earth, he laid aside his divinity.
That's falsehood. That is a heresy. He never laid aside his divinity, for he coexisted with the Father before all worlds. But he laid aside the splendor of his majesty.
Why? So that we can relate to him, and so he can relate to us. But now that he is resurrected, ascended, and glorified, that glorified Jesus is needed to be revealed to the world, and hence it's the book of Revelation, revealing the glorified Jesus. That's what the book of Revelation is. It is the continuous uncovering of the glorified Jesus and what's going to happen in the future.
The glorified Jesus begin by revealing himself, revealing his glory, revealing also what he thinks of his church. His choice of these seven churches in Asia Minor are the representatives of all churches of all times everywhere in the world. These were seven major cities during that time. These seven cities form an irregular circle.
If a diplomat is traveling from Potomac, where John was, and the first stop is Ephesus, and up to Smyrna, to Pergamum, Thea, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. Why these cities? Well, they were the most populous city at the time. They were the wealthiest cities. They were the most influential cities.
They were the most powerful cities in the whole region. First of all, this was a time in which the Church of Jesus Christ all over the Roman Empire was under persecution. Every corner of the Roman Empire, which is literally the populated world at the time.
How come? Well, between A.D. 81 and 96, remember those issues, 81 to 96, there was a miserable, evil, wicked emperor in Rome by the name of Domitian. And he began the second wave of persecuting of Christians. Emperor Domitian's persecution was more systematic, was more organized, was more deliberate than the first wave under Nero. Nero was a crazy man, and the persecution was haphazard, of whom he doesn't like, and he's mostly limited to the city of Rome, when he dipped Christians in tar and let them light his garden at night for his party. Nero's persecution, as I said, was haphazard, but the mission's persecution was empire-wide, circled the entire empire.
Nobody was able to escape the persecution. And all of the worshippers of Jesus Christ the Messiah were told that they must worship Lord Caesar. Think about this.
Think about this. You can only imagine the Christian believers, how they felt at the time. How they felt. For those who refused to worship Lord Caesar, oh, they were verbally attacked and assaulted. They were insulted by their neighbors, by their nearest and dearest. Others received personal threats for life. Those who owned businesses were boycotted by the populace, and therefore they lost their livelihood. They lost their jobs, and they were literally bankrupt. And not only the cost of livelihood, some people lost their lives. Can you imagine the panic?
Put yourself in their place. Moms and dads, think about this. Think of the incredible panic and the temptation to compromise. Well, you know, we can do that, worship Caesar one time, but we still worship Jesus.
Just think of the temptation. Imagine the fear over their children and their families, and how easy for children to be brainwashed in order to avoid pressure, in order to avoid persecution, in order to avoid insult, in order to avoid alienation from their friends. But persecution was only from the outside.
It's from without. From within, oh my goodness, from within they were experiencing false teaching and false preaching and false prophets. In addition to that, immoral people sneaked into the church and they began to influence the church members' sexual behavior. All of this, of course, was the devil's way to destroy the church of Jesus Christ in its infancy. He wanted to destroy it in its infancy. Beloved, listen to me, don't ever forget that Satan always, always working overtime to destroy the church of Jesus Christ and the faithful believers, those who have put their faith in him alone. We know that he did not succeed then, and we know that he ultimately will not succeed now. All about what chaos he creates, what horror, what devastation he causes.
Families today don't talk to each other, and all that Satan needed, one or two non-discerning believers in each church, and voila, compromise, devastation. In the book of Revelation, we see him again and again and again. He's behind the visible and the invisible conflicts. He's behind the war between the dragon and the lamb.
He's behind the conflict between the holy city represented in Jerusalem and the great city represented in Babylon. And you see it all over the place, all over the place. And one other thing you need to know, that Satan attacks from multiple directions.
Before you really even take a breath, oh, the next one, and then before, the next one, and the next one. His one goal is to get you so flabbergasted that you can't even respond. You don't think I know this?
It's not a theory for me. I know it experientially. Sometimes he will attack us through physical persecution. Other times he attacks through governments, through laws, and through the courts. Other times he will attack through false teachers and false preachers. Other times he will attack through compromising Christians. Oh, my beloved friends, in every age, but I think particularly now in these last days, he does this.
Because now he's seeing his time of being thrown into the lake of fire is getting closer and closer and closer. He's going madder and madder and madder. He's creating havoc all over the world, all over the world, every culture, every society.
There is confusion, confusion, confusion. That is his greatest weapon. He's becoming more furious in his attack on the church of Jesus Christ and trying to inflict, inflict, inflict. See, Satan's strategy never, never, never changes.
Why in the garden? Did God really say that? Today in the church.
Is the Bible really God's word? Same strategy over and over and over again. Look what he's doing in the world today. In the West, he's conniving to cooling off the love of many. He gets the believers to love the world and materialism more than they love Jesus. He gets them to fall in love with themselves, their own comfort and their own luxury more than their love with Jesus.
In other parts of the world, he uses governments to systematically and relentlessly torture and kill believers. In other times, he assaults the minds of the young people and brings doubt in their minds about mom and dad's faith. In other places, he convicts them that love means the acceptance of all sorts of immoral lifestyle, but that's the only way you can really express love.
Other times, he would shame the believer into making them think of themselves as unloving, as prejudiced, as bigoted, and uncaring. Question, what is Jesus revealing to his church, to his believers through John the Revelator, John the Apostle? The one thing is repeated again and again, is our Lord Jesus wants his bride to be faithful to him alone, no matter what people say, to be faithful to him alone, but he also communicates some very important things. I'm going to look at them right now, three of them as a matter of fact, but the most important lesson that Jesus wants his bride, the believers, the faithful believers, this age, any age, this particularly this age, is to look to him alone, not to psychology, not to sociology, not to anthropology, not to being relevant, not to clever techniques and marketing abilities and business principles and seeking acceptance and favor society, no.
He wants it to look to him and him alone. The only way for the believers in Jesus in these last days, the only way for them not just survive, but to thrive is to keep their eyes on the exalted, glorified, soon coming Jesus. Look at verse 5 with me.
He spells it clearly why he wants them to look to him alone, three things as I said. He wants them to look at him as the glorified, and so he introduces not only his past achievements, dying on a cross, shedding his blood to redeem every repentant sinner, and so he doesn't only show this accomplishment, but he also let them know about his triumph, current triumph and future triumph. And so the first thing, it says, look at me because I am the faithful witness.
Can you say that with me? He's the faithful witness. Do you want to be a faithful witness? Do you want to be a faithful witness?
Follow the example of Jesus. He never faltered. He never twitched. He never fudged.
He never evaded. And when all of this took him to the cross, he was still unshaken. The Pharisees tried to shake him up. Pontius Pilate tried to get him to fudge just a little bit. The chief disciple Peter tried to get him to forget about the cross and the suffering of the cross. He called him Satan. But the Bible said Jesus set his face like a flint.
Have you ever seen a flint? He set his face like a flint toward Jerusalem because if he didn't do that, you and I would not be here today. We would not be redeemed today. The second thing, he calls himself the firstborn from the dead. When Jesus walked the earth, he raised a number of people from the dead.
Lazarus being the most known example because he was in the tomb four days, literally he was stinking. And he raised him from the dead. But everyone that Jesus raised from the dead died again. Jesus is the only one who rose from the dead never never never never to die again. He is alive forever and ever and ever. He is the now, the ever living one. Death has no further demands over him.
That's why he's the first fruit. And we too will also be resurrected. Beloved, this should strengthen everyone, should strengthen everyone to stand against temptation, to courageously endure suffering and persecution. And the third one, the third reason why our only hope for thriving and victory is keeping our eyes on the resurrected, ascended, glorified Jesus. Verse 5 again, because he is the ruler of the kings of the earth.
Can you say that with me? He is the ruler of the kings of the earth. The dictators and rulers might want to crush the church. Egomaniacs want to dominate the church.
Government officials may want to persecute the church and weaken the church. But don't ever ever ever ever ever ever forget that Jesus is the king of all kings, that he is the ruler of all rulers, that he is the lord of all lords, that he's the controller of all nations, that he is the preside over the universe, that he's the director of the destiny of people in every nation, that his empire is far greater and far bigger than Rome and China and Russia and America and the west and the east and the world put together. His dominion is greater than all of the world. His power is mightier than all of the fleeting life of these despots, that he and he alone is the holder of the title deeds of the universe, that he and he alone has a name that's above every name.
That's not me talking, he's talking. He's saying look to me because, and he gives us those three reasons in verse 5. Oh for now of course we can't see this with our physical eyes like John the Revelator did. He was privileged to see this with his eyes, physical eyes.
We don't. We see it only with our spiritual eyes, our spiritual eyes. Oh but listen to me, soon and very soon we will see the glorified magnified majestic Lord Jesus Christ with all of his splendid dominion authority power. Come Lord Jesus. Come Lord Jesus.
Say it with me. Are you ready to see the glorified magnified majestic Lord Jesus? If you have any questions or if you would like to talk about your spiritual journey, consider connecting with one of the Leading the Way pastors or counselors. Start at L-T-W dot org slash Jesus.
L-T-W dot org slash Jesus. Oh this episode's content is explored further in Dr. Youssef's new book. Listen now for more information. What would Jesus say to the church today? As darkness rises and faith is tested, his words to the seven churches in Revelation echo through time, calling us back to him. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it because the time is near. In his new book, God's Final Call, Dr. Michael Youssef unveils the urgent message of Revelation, a call to reclaim our first love.
Learn how to stand firm for Christ against opposition, compromise and cultural pressure. With God's Final Call, discover how to confidently walk through the open doors God places before you, making the most of fleeting opportunities to share the Gospel. Pre-order your copy of God's Final Call for your gift of any amount and equip yourself to discern truth from deception in a world flooded with false Gospels and cheap grace. Learn more about Dr. Youssef's latest book when you call us, 866-626-4356.
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