Participants:
Series Code: ICJ
Program Code: ICJ190018A
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00:01 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
00:04 The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. 00:07 The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. 00:35 In those three angels' messages of Revelation 14, 00:38 we hear this very fascinating statement 00:41 by that first angel, 00:44 and it says there, "Saying with a loud voice..." 00:47 Let me go back, of course, to verse 6. 00:49 "Then I saw another angle flying 00:51 in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel 00:54 to preach unto those who dwell on the earth." 00:56 Now notice the next verse, this is where I started. 00:59 "Saying with a loud voice, 01:02 'Fear God and give glory to Him, 01:06 for the hour of His judgment has come." 01:09 Fear God. 01:12 Now you'll hear a lot of people tell you 01:15 that fear God means to reverence God, 01:18 and it's not talking about being afraid of God, 01:20 well, certainly, it includes reverence. 01:22 But the word there is to be afraid, afraid. 01:27 Why? 01:28 I struggle in my mind, how do you help people 01:30 understand the fear of God 01:32 when the Bible says as you noticed in my opening 01:35 that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. 01:37 That sounds like something very good to me. 01:40 The fear of God, that is wisdom, says Job. 01:43 In other place, I think in Proverbs, 01:44 it says, "And the fear of God is to hate evil." 01:48 Is it a good thing to hate evil? 01:50 Of course, it is. 01:52 So here in the gospel that goes to the entire world 01:56 before Jesus comes, included in that gospel, 02:00 is this sense of fear God. 02:03 What does this mean? 02:04 Do we go around just being afraid of God all the time? 02:07 Thank the Lord we have the Lord Jesus, 02:09 who covers us. 02:10 But God is of course not only our Creator, 02:13 He's not only our Redeemer in the sense of sending 02:16 His only begotten Son. 02:18 But He's also the judge of the universe. 02:21 In fact, the Apostle Paul says 02:22 in the Book of Hebrews Chapter 10, 02:24 the fearful thing he says, 02:26 "To fall into the hands of the living God." 02:29 Fearful in the sense, 02:30 the hands of living God in judgment. 02:32 But if you're covered with Christ, 02:34 as the Apostle John would say, "Love casts out fear, 02:38 but if you're not covered with Christ." 02:40 So the fear of God is simply this, 02:44 means to take God seriously. 02:49 When you take God seriously, 02:51 you will take advantage of the Savior, 02:53 and you will hate sin, 02:55 and that's the beginning of wisdom. 02:58 What it really means is this that God means what He says. 03:03 Now we're going to talk about the destruction 03:04 of the wicked in the lake of fire 03:06 and all of those kinds of things. 03:07 And we'll talk about that more, 03:09 but I want to back to those seven last plagues. 03:12 Again, we can't get into them in detail, 03:14 but I want to give that quick overview 03:17 just as I did a little bit the last time. 03:20 You have the seven churches, 03:22 the seven trumpets, the seven... 03:23 I mean, the seven seals, and the seven trumpets, 03:25 and the seven trumpets 03:27 cover 2,000 years of Christian history, 03:30 from the time of John to Jesus, coming again. 03:33 And they are the judgments of God, 03:36 and the seven last plagues, 03:38 15:1 says, in the seven last plagues, 03:41 the judgments of God were complete. 03:44 Meaning, they're the finish. 03:47 So these seven terrible trumpets 03:51 if you please are to protect God's people. 03:54 If God had not already put judgments in history, 03:58 then the Christian church 04:00 would have been wiped out long, long ago. 04:03 So God often allows evil to correct evil. 04:08 In other words, 04:09 evil is its own worst enemy many, many times. 04:12 Now that doesn't mean 04:13 that God doesn't step in at times, 04:15 but evil will correct evil often because it's selfish. 04:20 Pagan Rome was destroyed in 66 years by the barbarians, 04:25 and I think that's represented in those first four trumpets 04:30 destroying pagan Rome, and then papal Rome, 04:33 as I mentioned last time, 04:35 was checked by the rise of the Muslims. 04:39 And then, of course, as Protestantism came 04:42 and the Reformation came, 04:44 the power of the Muslims went down. 04:47 But now as the United States, this great Protestant nation 04:50 is now turning back to the papal Dark Ages 04:54 embracing the principles of the papacy, 04:58 we've now find once again the Muslims on the rise, 05:02 and I shared some of that last time with us. 05:06 But the seven last plagues as I mentioned 05:08 are part of the seventh trumpet. 05:11 So there are seven trumpets and the seven plagues 05:14 I believe are tied to the last trumpet, 05:17 the seven trumpets. 05:19 And I think that we are living 05:20 in that seventh trumpet right now. 05:23 So we're going to take a look at this seventh trumpet 05:25 in Revelation 11:17-19. 05:29 And we're reading here, "We give You thanks, 05:32 O Lord God Almighty, 05:35 the One who is and who was and who is to come, 05:40 because You have taken Your great power and reigned." 05:43 In other words, the Dark Ages are over. 05:47 Jesus is in the last part of the heavenly sanctuary 05:50 in the holy of holies. 05:52 And the issues on the planet earth 05:54 are wrapping up, 05:56 we're headed to our one Final Crisis, 06:00 stupendous crisis. 06:02 And that's brought on by the mark of the beast, 06:05 the rise of Babylon, 06:06 which we'll get into another program. 06:09 Then he goes on to say, "Because you have taken 06:12 your great power and reigned..." 06:13 In other words, 06:15 God is taking control in His final times. 06:16 "The nations were angry." 06:19 What a description of our day. 06:21 "And Your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, 06:25 that they should be judged." 06:27 When Jesus is in that most holy place, 06:29 that's the time of judgment. 06:32 Jesus is sorting out the sheep from the goats, 06:35 the wheat from the tares. 06:37 There's lots of people 06:39 that claim to be Christian but the question is, 06:42 are we really a Christian? 06:45 Do we really trust Jesus with all our heart? 06:48 Do we really love the Lord with all our heart? 06:51 Are we willing and obedient by faith to do 06:54 what He asks us to do? 06:56 Do we keep His Ten Commandments, 06:58 not on our power but because we love Him? 07:01 And the Holy Spirit is in us enabling us 07:04 to carry of His commandments of God, 07:07 and based on the faith of Jesus. 07:11 So there is a judgment going on, 07:13 "That you should reward Your servants 07:16 the prophets and the saints." 07:19 So Jesus brings us reward with Him 07:22 because there's a judgment going on now, 07:24 an investigative judgment into the churches, 07:27 all the churches, they have my church, 07:31 your church, whoever church you have, 07:33 there's a judgment going on in heaven 07:35 on those churches and on the Christians 07:38 who sit in the pews of those churches, 07:40 and on the ministers, 07:41 and priests who lead those churches. 07:44 "And those who fear Your name, small and great, 07:48 and should destroy those who destroy the earth. 07:51 And then the temple of God was opened, 07:54 and the ark of His covenant was seen in the temple." 07:57 That's where the Ten Commandments are housed. 07:59 "And there were lightnings, noises, thunders, earthquake, 08:01 and a great hail." 08:03 So there is a reaction on earth to the picture 08:06 that we see in heaven. 08:08 That's very interesting that it says 08:09 that the nations are angry. 08:12 What a description of our world today, 08:14 seems like everybody is angry nowadays. 08:17 Politicians are angry, both sides of the aisle, 08:21 nations are angry. 08:23 The weak are saying, "I'm strong." 08:25 Nations are angry. 08:27 They're filled with selfishness. 08:29 Many of them grinding down the poor, 08:32 sacrificing babies on the altars of the lust 08:39 of this world. 08:40 I've been shocked to how far people will go with this. 08:43 I mean, abortion is bad enough 08:45 the way it was and now people are embracing. 08:48 Can you imagine? 08:49 Embracing? 08:50 Killing babies up to the time that they're getting ready 08:53 to be born just because somebody doesn't want them? 08:55 What kind of madness is that? 08:57 It reminds me of the ancient Phoenicians. 09:01 They sacrificed... 09:03 They had these priest and priestess, 09:05 and they were into immorality, and the practice of immorality 09:09 in their worship, and the babies 09:11 were then sacrificed to their heathen gods. 09:16 People are doing the same thing today. 09:17 They may not say, "Well, it's molad." 09:19 But it's the gods of their lust... 09:24 And perversion. 09:27 So we have a world that's been filled, 09:29 it's filled with murder today. 09:31 We've seen the Nazis and what they did. 09:33 Seventy million people 09:35 lost their lives in World War II. 09:36 And then you have, Miao Hai in China, 09:40 he killed 70, plus or minus, 09:43 millions of his own people starving 09:45 and kill over 20 million of his own people. 09:48 Then we have, of course, ISIS today, 09:50 and we can see the horrors of that. 09:52 And you have, of course, these religious extremists. 09:55 You hear foul mouth everywhere, 09:57 you can hardly even go anywhere 09:59 without somebody taking the Lord's name in vain, 10:02 or depreciating human intimacy 10:05 and people are just foul-mouthed. 10:10 And then you have 10:11 all the massacres that are going on. 10:13 I tell you, people, they're possessed with demons, 10:16 and then the human trafficking 10:18 where they take these young girls from poor villages 10:21 and trick them into sexual slavery. 10:25 It's horrible. 10:27 Constant wars and rumors of wars. 10:30 Evil is not going to escape. 10:32 All of these things, the inquisition, 10:35 and all these perpetrators of these kinds of things, 10:38 judgment is coming, 10:41 and God is also on the other hand 10:44 going to reward His saints, and those who fear God, 10:49 who take Him seriously. 10:53 "So the temple of God is opened in heaven, 10:55 the ark of the covenant is open." 10:57 In Revelation 15:5, it says, 10:59 "After these things I looked..." 11:02 So it tied together the seventh plagues, 11:04 as the temple of God is open 11:06 and the seven last plagues opens with this. 11:10 "And after these things, I looked, and behold, 11:12 the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony," 11:15 that's the same thing as the Ark of the Covenant, 11:18 "is opened in heaven." 11:20 So the Ten Commandments, once again, 11:21 is a standard of right and wrong. 11:23 The seven last plagues are poured out 11:26 because people are in rebellion against God's Ten Commandments. 11:31 They're rebellion and these... 11:34 And they've made life miserable for the God's faithful people. 11:37 And so these seven last plagues are God's judgments. 11:42 "So out of that temple came seven angels 11:47 having seven plagues, clothed in bright linen, 11:51 and having their chests girded with golden bands. 11:54 Then one of the four living creatures 11:56 gave the seven angels seven golden bowls." 12:00 Now earlier in Chapter 5, 12:03 you'll find these living creatures 12:05 with golden bowls. 12:07 But those bowls were filled with incense, 12:10 which the Bible says, is the prayer of the saints. 12:14 But now... 12:16 But now these bowls are filled with the judgments of God 12:20 because God's people have prayed, they plead. 12:24 And now people have made up their mind, 12:26 just like old ancient Pharaoh, so utterly stubborn. 12:30 People have become stubborn against God. 12:32 They've made up their mind, not because God doesn't have 12:35 great forgiveness in His heart 12:37 but because people really don't want to forgive. 12:40 They want their own way, they want God, 12:42 Ten Commandments done their way. 12:46 And they are not going to obey God. 12:48 And so now, probation is closed 12:51 and these seven terrible plagues 12:53 are going to be poured out. 12:55 Plagues of God's judgment. 12:57 Bowls that once were filled with incense and prayers 13:00 of the saints, now filled with the judgments of God. 13:03 Listen, we shouldn't play around 13:06 with human probation, 13:07 all of us only have so much time in this world, 13:10 and this time that you have to live, 13:11 I don't care if you're young, or you're old, 13:14 or you're in between, you should be using 13:17 this time to get ready for Jesus to come. 13:21 Let me tell you, 13:23 you don't want to squander that away. 13:26 So the Bible says that, 13:31 "The temple of God was filled with His power." 13:35 And then these angels get ready to pour out 13:38 these terrible plagues on people who are blaming God, 13:43 blaming God for everything for their troubles. 13:47 But these seven last plagues 13:49 are going to deliver God's people. |
Revised 2019-08-27