The Ol' Time Revelation

This is the urgency of John as well.

And as we learn it, I trust we'll be more urgent about the coming of Christ. He says, Jesus says, I am coming quickly and my reward is with me. And John shouts at the end of the book, Amen, come on. And so we who understand and we who learn and we who sit at the feet of this revelator, John and the one he reveals, Jesus Christ, we will also say what?

Come on. We're waiting. As the book of Revelation opens, we learn that Jesus Christ is coming again. For the Christian, the response to that truth is eager expectation.

We long for the day when we will see Jesus face to face. But the book of Revelation isn't always easy to understand. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey takes you to the opening chapters of this book. This is the first message in a series called Special Delivery. He's going to give you some principles to help you read and understand the book of Revelation.

This message is called The Old Time Religion. Rhonda Byrne is the author of a wildly popular book right now entitled The Secret. Wonder if you if you've seen that, have you seen about it, read about it, heard about it? This was written. And when she says she stumbled on the truth, secret truth at the end of 2004, at that time in her life, everything had fallen apart.

She said physically, emotionally, financially, she was in total despair. That's when Rhonda's daughter gave her a copy written in 1910 by Wallace Wattles entitled The Science of Getting Rich. Rhonda Byrne writes, something inside of me had me turn the pages one by one, and I can still remember my tears hitting the pages as I was reading it. It gave me a glimpse of the secret.

It was like a flame inside my heart. And with every day since, it's just become a raging fire of wanting to share all of this with the world. She claims to have traced the concept of this secret back to 3500 B.C.

to the present day. And she says, since I have discovered the secret, every single moment of my entire life has changed and I am living for the first time. So what's the secret? The secret is the law of attraction. It is the principle that like attracts like. She calls it the most powerful law in the universe that never stops working. She goes on to explain what we do is attract into our lives the things we want.

And that's based on what we're thinking and feeling. This principle explains that we create our own circumstances, which means our thoughts and our words are the most powerful things we have here on Earth. The truth about the secret is that you do not choose to follow God. You choose to recognize that you are God. You are divine. You are sovereign. It doesn't really trouble me that the world panders after that which replaces God and then thrones themselves.

We would expect that. The trouble is that this same false teaching is sweeping into the church now for the last many years. And it is being repackaged all over again in our own generation. Self-deceived corrupt teaching heard most often within the prosperity movement of the church whose false teachers have repackaged the old lie that basically you are sovereign with what you say. You speak your own reality into existence. And what you've got to do is just begin talking the truth into existence whatever that truth may be for you which is typically wealth and health and everything wonderful. These false teachers are leading people into a misguided self-centered belief system that corresponds to the lie of the enemy that people are really if you evaluated gods they're really gods they're really sovereign.

This is the secret you need to learn that you are in effect a god. Let me quote a couple of leading spokesmen. One named Creflo Dollar said this recently. Everything produces after its own kind. By the way you just go on the Internet you read their stuff.

OK. I read it off his own site horses get horses and dogs get dogs and God produced gods. You all didn't hear that. He said horses produce horses and dogs produce dogs and God produced gods. And then God produced more gods with flesh and then gods with flesh produced gods with flesh until the God of gods with flesh showed up one day and dwelt among the other gods with flesh to demonstrate to the other gods how to have authority over the flesh.

This is the history the religious church wants to hide away from you so you don't know who you really are. This is the secret. You are God.

Another false teacher by the name of Kenneth Copeland has taught for years the same concept he said some time ago and I quote him. You can have whatever you say. Just say it. I want gas in my truck after church I want gas in my truck. I'll be asking too much. Now don't anybody take it go fill it up.

I would ruin everything. He says what you are saying is what you're getting. So if you're living in poverty change what you are saying it will change what you have. So discipline your vocabulary and God will be obligated to meet your needs. So now we have become sovereign in what we say and God simply serves us. This convoluted theology is upside down. I was frankly amazed that literally millions within the evangelical church who purchased the prayer of Jabez. You're thinking you've gone to meddling Stephen.

No I don't think he is a false teacher by the way. But whether he intended it or not people were swept up in that natural instinct to find some secret. To find some special set of words that if I say them there will be some kind of guarantee to work. The subtle implication that praying that prayer speaking the same words would bring me what Jabez got. Ladies and gentlemen there is no incantation. There is no special prayer.

There is no guarantee. There is no secret knowledge that will heal all your diseases and bring global peace and put money in your bank account and in a car in your garage or at least one that starts. What's tragic to me is that the church sometimes unwittingly often softens the soil of the heart for the seed of deception to be received and more easily believed. One false doctrine that is being promoted in the more liberal side of the Protestant church and even the Catholic church is called a course in miracles and if you could see the lineup of people to say this is the greatest thing and shock you scanning more and more following a course in miracles is a book written by Helen Schuchman a professor at Columbia University who claimed that an inner voice began to tell her that she was going to receive a course in miracles and to write it down. The voice claimed to be Jesus and so she spent seven years writing down what this voice told her. Basically the key concept of this teaching is that everybody is divine. Again the same thing. This is the secret.

You are God. And of course along the way she got rid of the devil and she got rid of original sin and she got rid of consequences and all those other uncomfortable things. Schuchman's book went relatively unnoticed for several years until a woman named Marianne Williamson wrote her book called a return to love reflection on the principles of a course in miracles.

When Marianne Williamson appeared on Oprah Winfrey Winfrey praised her book and told her viewers that she had already purchased a thousand copies to give it to all her staff and friends and the book literally took off remained at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for months. This new gospel now went mainstream and this new Jesus who was being quoted is now best selling. Let me give you some of the quotes from that course supposedly from Jesus my quote a slain Christ has no meaning.

The journey to the cross is a useless journey. The name of Jesus Christ is a symbol used for the many names of all the gods to which you pray. The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. Now according to what I read just this past week Oprah is now offering on her XM satellite radio program the New Age teaching that this course in miracles one lesson a day throughout the year will be taught by Miriam Miriam Williamson and completely cover the three hundred sixty five lessons from this workbook. For those who happen to tune in lesson number twenty nine will have you affirming and I quote God is in everything I see lesson sixty one will have you repeat I am the light of the world and lesson seventy will take you even further by having you affirm quote my salvation comes from me. Warren Smith who's written an interesting expose titled inventing reinventing Jesus Christ mentioned how so many authors and religious leaders and public figures are embracing the course in miracles.

One author that runs in this camp has already been featured twice on the hour of power with Robert Schuler who gushes that this work is fabulous. What I found interesting is that along with this new era that they are propounding and promoting that will bring supposed world peace because it's going to unify everybody is that basically the God of the Bible is done away with and that Jesus who is being quoted is not the Jesus of scripture. And that's exactly the devil's point. His greatest desire is to rob God of worship to cease worship of the true and living Lord. And if he can do it in any way in fact he most often will not do it by telling you there is no such thing as Jesus. He will simply redefine Jesus. He will reinvent God. Neil Walsh another proponent of this course in miracles wrote in his own book published recently entitled The New Revelations get that the new revelations. And he says these words and I quote him The era of the single savior is over. This is not new revelation.

This is an old lie. Ladies and gentlemen you are not God. I hate to pop your bubble. It's unpopular but you're not him. Amen.

Neither am I. Double amen to that. What a time for us as sinners to reestablish our faith in the single savior. And what a great time to take our Bibles and go back to the old revelation the old revelation. So would you take your Bibles and turn to the book of Revelation Chapter 1. We're going to cover the first word.

No I'm teasing. We're going to do more than that. I have come to the conclusion after studying so much of and reading so much of this book that the highest point of this revelation is the single savior Jesus Christ. The greatest subject of this book is Christ the greatest treasure is the supremacy of Christ. It is built upon the profoundest thesis the sovereignty of Jesus Christ above everything. This is a revelation of Jesus Christ and that's how the book opens.

Say the first five words with me the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now is this phrase to be interpreted as a subjective or objective generative it matters subjective meaning this is revelation that comes from Jesus Christ. He is the one revealing this or is it objective. He is the one being revealed and I are in sect everything I had in sight and R.L. Thomas makes the interesting comment that both are true and they will be proven to be true for Jesus Christ is both the source of revelation. He is the subject of revelation revealed. Now as this old revelation opens it answers without pulling any punches about seven or eight questions we'll cover six or seven of them today. First of all what is true revelation. Well the answer is found in the meaning of of the word revelation is the transliteration of the Greek word apocalypse which gives us our what word apocalypse. This is the apocalypse. It literally means this is the unveiling.

This is the opening. This is which is now revealed which was once covered. The mystery of the past is now revealed here in isn't it ironic. It struck me as ironic that the book of the Bible that actually means revealed and open is considered by most Christians to be the most mysterious and closed books of all. But you notice the book is not called the mystery of Jesus Christ or the puzzle of Jesus Christ.

If you're clever enough you can figure it out. It is the unveiling of Jesus Christ. It is the open book from and about Jesus Christ. It is this revelation by him most importantly of him that we will discover in this book. We will discover that he is the one who is and was and ever shall be. This is the old revelation which reveals the living Lord in this book. He is Jesus Christ chapter 1 verse 1. He is the ruler of the kings of the earth. Verse 5.

He is the first and the last. There's an entire religious system called Jehovah's Witnesses that if they only understood among other texts that the first and the last is Isaiah's title for Jehovah. Jehovah is Jesus Christ. This is the old revelation the truth from God. It is this the carpenter of Nazareth is the king of the world. That crucified Jew is the God man and the ruler of the universe is the audience for this revelation. John tells us God gave it to him to show to his bondservant to further exalt and glorify his son the father granted to a special group of people the privilege of understanding this book. And John describes those people here with this word translated bondservant which in the Greek language literally means slave.

And I agree with those authors who say the word shouldn't be weakened or watered down to suit our sensitivities or our tastes. It means slave owned by another. It was common in John's day for a person to sell himself into slavery and so serve in the temple to a pagan idol.

God this is a reference to that. In Old Testament days it also comes out of the text of the Old Testament culture during the celebration of Jubilee when all the indentured servants of Israel were liberated and their debts were cleared away. If a slave so loved his master that he wanted to serve him for the rest of his life he'd be taken to the doorway of the temple or the tabernacle and have his ear pierced and ringed signifying that he was serving his master out of love and loyalty. This is in the mind of Paul when he referred to himself as the slave of Jesus Christ.

This is who we are. But those who refuse to acknowledge the mastery of Christ cannot accept the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to them.

They cannot discern them because they are of the Spirit of God spiritually discerned for screening is to 14. So the unbelieving skeptic is going to consider revelation a compilation of nonsense. They'd rather read something from the tabloid that to them makes more sense than the revelation of Christ. But for the believer who is willingly enslaved out of love and loyalty to Christ will understand and believe prophetic truths about the future of the world. That doesn't mean that all the questions are going to be answered but it means that we will take this book and trust our hearts to Christ who was revealed. How is the revelation communicated.

Look at the last part of verse 1. He said and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant John. Now isn't that dangerous by an angel in that risky. Haven't we been warned about the gospel delivered by angels. I mean spirit beings angelic beings delivered the supposed truth to both Islam and Mormonism. This course and miracles came out of a spirit guide who said he was Jesus. But there are angels everywhere in this revelation. They are referred to 71 times. Someone made the comment that one out of every four references to angels in the Bible is in the book of Revelation.

They're everywhere. So the next question is very important. How is this revelation authenticated. How is it verified. How do we know it's true. First two tells us by the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ even to all that John saw. You notice another the three fold authenticating testimony of this gospel by the word of God. In other words the revelation is consistent with the rest of scripture. So you compare scripture with scripture you allow scripture to define and expound on scripture. Furthermore the second validation is from the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Now let me say this. The apostle Paul did not warn people of hearing truth from angels. In fact he didn't say that an angel couldn't deliver the gospel. What he did say and what he did warn us of in Galatians chapter 1 verse 8 is this that if an angel delivered to you another gospel truth unlike that which you have heard be warned of them.

Let that angel and those messengers be a curse. So what did the angel say about Christ. What do all the religions today say about Christ. What is the course in miracles say about Christ.

You are God. You are the spirit of Jesus. Jesus isn't a literal being.

In fact you are he. That is not what we read in the testimony of God in written scripture the testimony of Jesus Christ in the revelation. And thirdly this third verification the eyewitness testimony of John. If this revelation think of it this way we're brought into court and tried as to whether or not it were true. The defense attorney which would be the spirit of God I assume in this analogy would present the written testimony of God the father. He would present the testimony of God the son New Testament words and works of Christ. And then he would bring to the witness stand this eyewitness named John. And you will hear John say throughout this revelation this is what I saw. I have in my study at home a dozen Bibles I also have on one of my bookshelves my study at home something is very special to me it is a notebook paper and it's bound by glass and it is handwritten Chinese characters written across it in neat lines. It is it was given to me by missionaries from China the sheet of paper is a page out of someone's handwritten Bible or at least that text probably writing so fast who wouldn't have it for very long. And that convicts me as I sit swimming in Bibles and commentaries the apostle John knew that his revelation was critical and he added the incentive of God's blessing upon all those who would do what we did today. Who read the scriptures.

I love to hear this assembly read together. One more question and we'll quit beyond a personal blessing. Why does this revelation matter. Well it was in the last part of verse three that I'll just camp out for a few moments.

He adds this point because the time. Is near. If it was near two thousand years ago it's really near now John is saying the epic. Is at hand the era the next era in God's redemptive plan is at hand. The urgency of revelation points to the return of Christ. And we will see this savior who appears to John as the sovereign who returns with his triumphant church at the end of the book to set up the kingdom and enter ultimately the eternal state everything points to his literal return ladies and gentlemen the era of the single savior is not over according to this revelation it is in a way about to begin with greater majesty and might than you and I can even imagine the single savior says several times this is the urgency of John as well as we learn it I trust will be more urgent about the coming of Christ he says Jesus says I am coming quickly chapter three verse eleven and behold I am coming quickly blessed is he who he's the words of this prophecy chapter twenty two verse seven behold I am coming quickly and my reward is with me chapter twenty two verse twelve yes I am coming quickly chapter twenty two verse twenty and John shouts at the end of the book amen come come on and so we who understand and we who learn and we who sit at the feet of this revelator John and the one he reveals Jesus Christ we will also say what come on come on we're waiting and we're watching ladies and gentlemen don't ever forget there were over a hundred prophecies about Christ's first coming when he was born the God man listen everybody missed it except for a few men from Persia everybody missed it there are over two hundred prophecies related to his second coming and I want to say you don't want to miss it by unbelief to be the one in the robe washed white to be the one reigning with Christ you do not want to miss him because of unbelief how do you find them there is this old revelation which reveals him this is the guidebook and mystery revealed give me this old revelation that exalts and magnifies a single savior and you are not it and neither am I it is Jesus Christ our Lord you are not your own savior and there's nothing you can do to save yourself the entire hope of eternity rests in Jesus Christ the book of Revelation is about him and you'll be learning more about that in the days ahead I hope you'll join us each weekday as this series continues this is wisdom for the heart featuring the Bible teaching of Stephen Davey I invite you to sign up for a free membership in what we call friends of wisdom once you do you're going to receive free resources from Stephen that will help you walk wisely through life friends of wisdom receive a weekly email from Stephen each Tuesday it might be an article he's written or the answer to a Bible question he received sign up today at wisdom online.org forward slash friends and then be sure and join us next time on wisdom for the heart.