The Key to Prophecy, Part 2

When you want to touch heaven, you don't just need the book, you need the author. Dr. Tony Evans is the point of prophecy and everything else in the Bible is to drive us toward Jesus Christ.

You don't get victory without Him, deliverance without Him, healing without Him, help without Him, because it's all about Him. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. A lot of people think biblical prophecy is a complicated subject, but Dr. Evans says it doesn't have to be if you've got the right key to unlock it.

Let's join him as he explains. To understand this master key, I want to go to the central verse for today, Revelation 19, verse 10, Revelation 19, verse 10. It reads, Then I fell at His feet to worship Him, but He said to me, Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours, and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus, worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So the master key that will unlock the prophetic doors that we will walk through is the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the master key of prophecy. All of history revolves around Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 1, verse 10 says, With a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in heaven, and things on earth. That's God's philosophy of history. When God looks at history and God perceives time and space, He says it is the summing up.

When God does His arithmetic, when He does His mathematic formulas, it is the summing up of all things in Jesus Christ, both in heaven and on earth, both in eternity and in time. So to make sense of the prophetic calendar, which we're going to go over, and how you fit into it, what's happening in the world around us, and what you can look forward to in the uncertainties of tomorrow, is all related to a person, Jesus Christ. Now that we've established He's the centerpiece, He's the key, He's the spirit of prophecy, we want to move now to understanding that Jesus Christ is not only the centerpiece of prophecy, He is the cause of prophecy. In other words, prophecy only exists because of Him.

God decided to create beings that would mirror back to Him His own image. And these beings were called angels, and He organized them according to a chain of command, a hierarchy, and at the top of the chain was chief angel in charge named Lucifer. The word Lucifer means shining one. He was the star angel.

He was angel superstar. Ezekiel 28 talks about this shining star and how elegant he was and how draped in the most magnificent jewels he existed in. It talks about his pipes and his ability to sing, which is why he's so ticked off with worship because it reminds him of his old job. He used to lead all the other angels in the worship of God to reflect back to God His glory. But according to Isaiah chapter 12, he developed a theo-ego, that's a God complex. He said, I want to establish my own kingdom, I want to establish my own followers, I want to establish my own posse, I want to be like the Most High. Now what was it about God that Lucifer wanted so bad?

He knew he couldn't create anything. He knew he, you know, was a creature, he was created because he was leading in the worship of God. But there was something about God that he wanted badly, and he said, I will be like Him.

Actually, everybody in here who's a parent understands what he wants because it's the same thing your teenager wants, independence. And so he developed a coup d'etat, a rebellion against God. In this rebellion, the Scripture says, one-third of all the angels followed him, which will tell you how powerful this being is, that all the other angels who were living under God, looking to God, dependent upon God, could be tricked by this star. So God created a place called hell that would be the judgment for their coup against the living God.

He and his posse was kicked to the third planet from the sun, earth. To make a long story short, we come to the end of the Old Testament. There is a 400-year silent period before the beginning of Matthew, the beginning of the New Testament. How does the New Testament begin? The New Testament begins with the genealogy, the most boring parts of the Bible. So and so begot, so and so begot, so and so begot, so and so.

What's that got to do with the price of tomatoes? It gives a genealogy. If you study the genealogy, you see some weird stuff going on. Because within the genealogy, God has to skip people and bring in outsiders like Ruth and Tamar and he's got Rahab, he's even getting a prostitute in on this act, to make sure that the seed is untampered with. So that by the time you get to Matthew chapter 1 verse 16, it says, Joseph, who was married to Mary, by whom Jesus was born, because it prophesied that the seed had to come through the line of David.

But it couldn't have a father, a human father. So Joseph was legally in the line, but not physically in the line. You got to go to Luke, where it talks about the genealogy of Mary, who was physically in the line. So when Joseph married Mary, Jesus has both lines.

He's got the legal line from Joseph and the physical line for Mary, they hook up. And so he qualifies to be the king. In other words, all through history, God had no man he could depend on because every man failed. So what he did was became a man.

God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. In other words, he was fulfilling his prophetic promise because Jesus Christ is the cause of why prophecy exists in fulfillment of the Word of God. So you and I are living out and are part of the drama of history.

And if you don't understand that, if you just think you were born to live and to go to work and to have a family and then to die, you don't get it. You're part of something much more dynamic and much more critical. You're a part of a scheme that is taking place in the unfolding of his story, called history. So Jesus is the centerpiece of prophecy. He is the cause, prophecy exists all out of the fulfillment of Jesus Christ in history.

That leads to a third thing. Jesus Christ is the content of prophecy. Luke chapter 24, verse 27, the disciples are on the Emmaus road and they're discouraged because Jesus has died and they can't find him and they'd heard that there was a resurrection, but they haven't seen him and Jesus shows up, but they don't recognize him. He says in verse 27, then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he, Jesus, explained to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures.

Jesus explained the things concerning himself beginning with Moses and the prophets in all the Scriptures. Now you have to understand, at this point, there is no New Testament. The New Testament hasn't been written yet. All they have is the Old Testament. Jesus shows up and they are all depressed, and Jesus opens up his Bible, starting with Moses and the prophets, basically means the Old Testament, and he started talking about himself from the Old Testament, because there is no New Testament yet. Let me explain something. I know you heard about Daniel and the Lion's Den and the three Hebrew boys, and you went to Sunday school, we went to Sunday school, we learned all the stories.

Uh-uh. Jesus said, no, the whole Old Testament is about me. Everything you read in the Old Testament in some form or some fashion is pointed to me, which means if you miss me, you miss the Old Testament. Makes me think of the book of Matthew, where in Matthew the transfiguration took place. In Matthew 17, Jesus invites his homeboys, Peter, James, and John, his posse, the ones he was most intimate with, he invites them to join him on the mountain.

They go up on the mountain, so they're going up on the mountain. And while Jesus is standing on the mountain, Moses and Elijah show up. They're from the Old Testament. Moses died, and his body was hidden.

Nobody could ever find Moses' body, the Bible says. The Bible says God hid his body. Elijah was raptured.

Remember, he was taken up in a charity fire? He was raptured. But they both show up at the mountain.

So whether you're dead or whether you're raptured, you're still very much alive, which is why you don't have to fear death because you're alive. So they both show up. Remember, Jesus said, he told them from Moses and the prophets, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. The prophets were responsible for the—that was the summary statement of the Old Testament, Elijah being the lead prophet. So guess what showed up at the mountain? Old Testament.

But guess who is also at the mountain? New Testament. Peter, James, and John. The apostles wrote the New Testament. So Jesus has got all that New Testament standing right there with him, and he's in the center of both of them. So Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Then my boy Peter, who loved to keep his foot in his mouth, peppermint socks, wearing Peter. Peter comes up with this bright idea, let's build some tabernacles, let's build some churches, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus. That's when Jesus disrobed. He unbuttoned his humanity and revealed his deity. The Bible says he began to show like a bright light as the glory of God shone with him so much and so that the disciples had to bow down and cover their face.

It was so bright and overwhelming. And when they did that, it says, heaven opened up and a voice came out of heaven, this is my beloved son, hear ye him, you don't need three tabernacles, you just need him. He is the center of the old and the new and both center on him because he is the content of prophecy. Dr. Evans will come back with more of our message in a moment, including a look at why, for some people, the Bible is nothing more than a dead book. It's coming up after these reflections from Tony on 40 years of God's faithfulness. Little did I know that he would take humble beginnings and turn it into an international ministry. Now, on over 1,400 stations daily in 130 countries around the world, reaching hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people with the truth of God, and now using social media in all manner of praise, and to impact individuals and families and churches and even communities who would take us on all levels of society from the homeless person to the White House and bringing God's truth, I praise God for 40 years of His favor on us. You know, Tony has said that the more people who meet Jesus, the more lives will be transformed.

It's a simple equation, and it's the driving purpose behind this ministry. None of what we do here would be possible without the faithful contributions of people like you. And that's why I want to let you know about a special package we put together as our way of saying thank you when you make a donation to keep this ministry going. It starts with our current two-volume, 12-message audio collection, Prophecy and Our World, and includes a copy of Tony's popular book, Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare. Together, this powerful package will help you better understand what God has designed for this world and give you the tools to help overcome personal struggles as you walk through His unfolding plan. This information is so important, we'd like you to have a copy of Prophecy and Our World and Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare as our gift when you make a donation to help support the work of the alternative.

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Right now, Tony's back with part two of today's lesson. If you miss Jesus, the Bible is a dead book because it is only made alive when Jesus Christ is the centerpiece of it. When you are in trouble with the law, you don't just need a law book, you need a lawyer. When you're sick, you don't just need a medical book, you need a doctor.

When a criminal is after you, you don't just need a penal code, you need a policeman. In other words, you need the living representative of what the book is all about. When you want to touch heaven, you don't just need the book, you need the author.

And when the book doesn't lead you to the author, you have information with no transformation. The Word of God, perfect as it is, is to drive you to the Son of God, because the Son of God connects you with the Father. And finally, Jesus is the culmination of prophecy.

It's where all of prophecy is headed. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 24 to 28, you got this bounce ball going back between the Father and the Son, says the Son, the Father glorifies the Son. The Son goes out and builds the kingdom, then the Son turns around and turns the kingdom over to the Father, then the Father turns around and praises the Son.

They just keep ping-ponging back to one another, and you and I are caught up in the middle of that. We're caught up in a Trinitarian event, and He says, I want you as my redeemed people to understand that all of history culminates around me, around Jesus Christ. And that is why God measures His relationship with you by your relationship to Him. You don't get saved without Him, and you don't get to live life as it was planned without Him. You don't get victory without Him, deliverance without Him, healing without Him, help without Him, because it's all about Him. This Jesus who never wrote a song, yet there are more songs sung about Him than any other human who's ever lived.

This Jesus who never went more than 300 miles from the place where He was born, and yet there's no place on planet earth you can go that don't know about Him and where people are worshipping Him, because God meant all of history to revolve around Jesus Christ. And the Bible declares that God has determined that the fullness of deity would dwell in Him. God is not impressed that you believe in God.

What impresses Him is what you did with His Son, Jesus Christ. So you can talk about God all day long, and nobody knows who you're referring to. But depending on where you are, God can mean anything, any different thing, He can be the God you made up. So the way God the Father knows that you are talking about the God that He is, is by your identification with Jesus Christ.

You're never going to get in trouble for believing in God. You might have a headache believing in Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ has identified which God you are referring to. That's why Philippians 2 11 says, it is at the name of Jesus that every knee will bow. It is at the name of Jesus that every tongue shall confess, that Jesus is Lord to the glory of the Father. So the Father only gets excited when He hears a big deal being made of Jesus Christ. So if you are ashamed of Jesus, the Bible says the Father will not hear you.

If you're trying to play it safe, if you're trying to be popular, because you don't want to offend anybody, Paul put it this way. He says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto deliverance to all who believe in Jesus. It is your confession of Jesus, for if you believe in your heart, if you confess with your mouth that God has raised Jesus from the dead, that's where deliverance comes. That's why when you pray, you pray, and I ask this in the name of Jesus, because if God doesn't see that Jesus is front and center, God is saying, you're not taking me seriously.

This is all about my son. We're living in a political day when everybody is talking about the candidate they're interested in, the candidate they're voting for. They're going to put bumper stickers on the cars. They're going to put placards in the yard.

They're going to put posters on billboards. They're going to talk about it around the water fountain. They're going to talk about the debates.

They're going to talk about who won and who lost, and they're going to talk about who they're for and who they're against, and they're going to do it unapologetically, because that's their candidate. But none of those candidates is perfect. None of those candidates has redeemed you. None of those candidates can forgive you.

None of those candidates can empower you. Not the one who was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death, bodily rose from the dead, is physically coming back again. You mean to tell me you can't say I'm voting for him? Dr. Evans will come back in a moment with a final story about the importance of standing up for Jesus, so stay with us. In the meantime, if you'd like to get the full-length version of today's message to review on your own or share with your family, friends, or small group, it's available as a part of Tony's two-volume series, Prophecy and Our World.

And don't forget, for a limited time, we'll send you all 12 messages in this collection as our way of saying thanks when you make a contribution to help keep this program coming your way. Get the details before time runs out when you visit tonyevans.org. And as an added bonus, we'll also include a copy of Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare, a proven resource that's already being used by over 100,000 readers.

And this special keepsake edition includes a luxury cover that looks and feels like leather. Don't wait. Contact us right away to make all the arrangements at tonyevans.org. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or if you prefer, team members are also standing by to help with your resource requests when you call any time 1-800-800-3222.

That's 1-800-800-3222. When Israel rejected Jesus, did God unchoose His chosen people? We'll find out tomorrow as Dr. Evans talks about the relationship between Israel and the church.

Right now, though, he's back with the final story to wrap up today's message. For those who haven't heard the story, the time I was invited downtown to pray for the city council. And they wrote me a letter and they said, now, the heavens, just do us a favor. Don't mention Jesus, because that's going to offend folk. Just mention God.

In other words, they wanted a generic religion. So I went down there. And I said, now, Heavenly Father, the city council has asked me to pray for their meeting today.

I can only assume that they want me to make contact with you. So since you've told me the only way I can make contact with you is through the person of Jesus Christ, then I come to you in His name. First of all, I thank you for creating the city council, because if you didn't create them, they couldn't be here.

And according to Colossians 1, everything that was made was made by Jesus Christ. So I've got to thank Jesus that they're here. Guide them in their decisions today, and if any of them here don't know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, I pray that they accept Jesus Christ today. If you don't want to hear about Jesus, don't invite me. Because I am not going to be ashamed of somebody who's given me all that He has given me, who's provided me all that He's provided me, who's forgiven me all that He's forgiven me. If you don't want Jesus, leave me at home. Because He's the master key to God's prophetic program. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.