Revelation: The End -- and a New Beginning

Everyone knows that the tiny nation of Israel, with a population of less than four million people, nevertheless receives enormous attention in the world's media, far beyond what its size would warrant. The only explanation for that extraordinary fact is that it indicates the central place that Israel has in the program of God. God will not let the world forget Israel! In the Old Testament, of course, Israel is always center stage. Everything centers around this nation. God has recorded the history of the world only as it relates to Israel, the nation that came from the loins of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Even when you come to the Gospels in the New Testament, Israel is still the focus of attention. Jesus insisted that "salvation is of the Jews," (John 4:22 KJV). He corrected people when they misunderstood that principle. He sent his twelve disciples out and told them, "Go not to the Gentiles, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," (Matthew 10:6, 15:24 KJV). Even in the epistles of the New Testament, primarily written to the church, nevertheless the Apostle Paul in his great masterpiece, the letter to the Romans, devotes three chapters to Israel. He points out in Chapter 9 how God has dealt with them in the past, in Chapter 10 he states the present condition of Israel, existing in unbelief among the nations of the world, and in Chapter 11 he clearly foretells the time when God will restore Israel again to prominence among the nations of earth. God has a great future yet for the Israelis.

In our studies in the book of Revelation we have been following the unrolling of the seven-sealed scroll which the Lamb of God won the right to open by his death upon the cross. The title of that scroll is "The Mystery of God," and when we come to Chapter 10 we will read that that mystery -- exactly how God is going to bring about universal peace and joy to a sinful, angry, and murderous world -- is completed. God is doing that very thing with individuals even today. Many of you here have experienced the peace and joy which God gave you in the midst of the struggles and trials of your life. He does that by grace, by the offer of total forgiveness of sin. But to a world that rejects grace, God can only bring peace through judgment. That is what we are seeing in this book. Six of the seven seals have already been opened when we come to Chapter 8, and we have watched the waves of successive judgments roll across the earth. We learn from the prophet Daniel that these cover a seven-year period in the last days of this age. Under the seals, it is covered from one point of view, i.e., what happens when man is allowed to have his own way. All God does is to take away the restraints and let human evil find wider expression. It is limited slightly (to a fourth of the earth), but it finds far greater expression then it does today. That brings us then to the seventh seal which is now opened to us, in Chapter 8:

Chapter 9 of Revelation presents the judgments of the fifth and sixth of the seven trumpets which were introduced in Chapter 8. These two trumpets are also identified as the first and second of three great "woes" that will come upon the earth. I want to stress that the judgments of this book are real. They are terrible, horrible disasters, and there is both a literal and a figurative dimension to them.

In Chapter 10 of Revelation we come face to face with several mysteries that have confused many from time to time. I suppose there are millions of people on earth this morning that struggle with the mystery of a silent heaven. Why doesn't God explain what is going on? It must seem to many that he is unconcerned, and, perhaps, even unable to do anything, about human affairs. Evil seems to run rampant everywhere. Miscarriages of justice, cruelty, viciousness, and increasing crime are on every side. You only have to listen to the news broadcasts to know how rotten things are in many places of the world today. People are asking, "Why do we live in a world like this?" "Why doesn't God do something about it?" "What is wrong with a God who cannot run the world any better than this?" Those are the questions we face in this chapter.

Recently I enjoyed seeing the stage production of Les Miserables in San Francisco. I had read Victor Hugo's novel in a somewhat torturous experience of French when I was in college, but I did not remember anything but the main plot. The most memorable thing I learned was that the French do not care what you do as long as you pronounce it properly! But when I saw the play it all came to life. The characters took on real flesh and blood. We were transported back to the stirring days following the French Revolution as the vivid staging of the play recaptured many colorful scenes from that novel. You may experience something of the same as we come to Revelation 11. Amidst the terrible judgments that are being poured out, the seals that are being opened, the trumpets that are blasting, we now turn to a more intimate scene. We zoom in, as it were, on certain personalities and characters on the stage of the last days which appear in flesh and blood. We learn more about how the program of God is going to be advanced and through whom it will be carried out.

If any of you are immigrants to this country and you entered through the port of New York, you will remember that the first sight you had of this land was of a great statue of a woman holding a torch in her upheld arm. That was not an advertisement for underarm deodorant! It was the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the freedom that America enjoys. Chapter 12 of the book of Revelation also opens with the symbol of a woman. In fact there are three symbols here: The woman, her son, and a great red dragon. It is our business this morning to try to interpret these and to understand what John was shown in this vision.

The thirteenth chapter of Revelation brings before us the most famous number in the world -- 666. If you get that number on your license plate or on your credit card it sends shivers of fear down your spine! I learned this morning that a couple from this congregation had that as their house number. They were so disturbed they asked the city to change the number, which they did. Six hundred sixty six has become a sinister number in the eyes of many. Several movies have been based upon the powerful mystery connected with it. In this passage we will learn the secret of that strange number and of the beasts that are identified with it.

John Wesley once said, "Give me a hundred men who love nothing but God and hate nothing but sin, and I will shake the whole world for Christ." I think Wesley probably underestimated, because in the 14th chapter of the book of Revelation, to which we come this morning, we read that Jesus chose not just 12, not even 100, but 144,000 men, and with that number he would to shake the world in the closing days of this age. In Chapter 7 we saw these 144,000 were chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, 12,000 from each tribe. In Chapter 14 they reappear, and we will see their ministry described:

The book of Revelation surveys God's solution to the crisis of history; how he will bring about the long promised world of peace and blessing. After centuries of patient waiting and putting up with might-is-right arrogance, hate, greed and the bloodshed that has characterized our earth so long, God says there comes a time when he will call a halt to the whole rotten business! Eugene Peterson, with his gift of eloquence, has put it this way:

One of the frequent questions asked about the end times is: "Will the church go through the great tribulation?" I am not going to deal at length with that question now, but we have seen in many passages of Scripture, and especially in the seven letters to the churches of Revelation, several reasons to say, "No, the true church of Jesus Christ will not go through the great tribulation." Those who truly know the Lord and who are alive when this period comes, will be caught up to be with him before the tribulation begins.