Participants: Pastor Shawn Boonstra
Series Code: RSP
Program Code: RSP000003A
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01:21 Announcer: Revelation. The time of the end.
01:24 Mysterious signs. 01:25 Strange happenings. 01:27 Confusing numbers. 01:29 Are we facing a new world order and the mark of the beast? 01:34 Are we living on a planet in upheaval? 01:36 Are we on the verge of Armageddon? 01:45 Revelation, what do all the signs in this mysterious book mean? 01:52 Discover real answers. 01:54 Revelation Speaks Peace, with Shawn Boonstra. 02:00 + 02:02 >>Shwan Boonstra: Good evening. Welcome back to "Revelation Speaks Peace." This is our third 02:06 night, and I have to change glasses now because it's time for the question box. Alright, 02:13 "Why would God speak to Nebuchadnezzar if he was a pagan king and not a believer in God?" 02:19 Oh, that's a good question. The answer, I would put probably this way: Why would - I've 02:26 always wanted to take my glasses off when I was speaking, because doesn't that make you look like 02:31 you're really smart? And you know, wave them at people? One thing I know - I know this for a 02:36 fact - there are politicians in our midst that have glasses that have no prescription lenses on 02:41 them, and they have them just so they can take them off and wave them at a TV camera. I know it 02:46 for a fact. I've met the guys who do it. I won't tell you which ones they are. Yeah. "Why 02:56 would God -" oh, I can't read it now. "Why would God speak to Nebuchadnezzar if he was a pagan 03:02 king?" Well, here's the answer. Why would He speak to any of us? Why? I don't deserve a message 03:09 from God; I know who I am. You know what it is? It's proof that God cares about everybody and 03:15 He's at work in every life on this planet. He touches base with everybody. The story of the 03:20 Bible is not only about Israel; it does focus in on Israel, but if you read the book of Isaiah 03:26 right around Isaiah chapter 49, God said, "I'm setting you where I'm setting you to be a light to 03:31 the Gentiles so they all come into My family." The whole point was to save the whole world. And 03:38 if you read the book of Daniel carefully, by the time Nebuchadnezzar exits the picture 03:43 at the end of Daniel chapter 4, he is a believer in the God of heaven, and God used him 03:48 powerfully. The message to me is - I mean, Nebuchadnezzar did some horrible things to some 03:52 horrible people. He even shoved some people into a fiery furnace and that kind of stuff. If God 03:58 can take Nebuchadnezzar into His kingdom, there's hope for you and me too. I don't deserve it 04:04 any more than he did. God is not out to destroy the human race; He is out to win it, to save it. 04:13 Alright, Number two. "Why does the statue focus on the western world?" Well, it doesn't really; 04:21 it kind of bridges the area between the east and the west. Most of it takes place in the 04:26 Mediterranean basin, if you remember. But anyway, "Why does the statue focus on the western 04:32 world? Doesn't God care about the Americas or the far east?" Well, absolutely, God cares 04:37 about the Americas and the far east, but there is a reason that the dream gets as specific as it 04:43 does. It focuses on the Mediterranean basin, and eventually, it focuses in on 04:47 western Europe. There is a very good reason for it. And I think as we move along, you're going 04:53 to see what that reason is. Something else eventually happens in the west that is very 04:59 important to pay attention to. But I would urge you to hang in there. Just because a prophecy 05:05 focuses in eventually on the western Roman empire, doesn't mean God doesn't care about the 05:10 rest. The fact that most of the Bible happens in Israel doesn't mean that God doesn't care about 05:16 the rest of the world; it just means that's where the story happened. And so we want to make 05:21 sure we don't try and read too much into that. Alright, next question. "If Bible prophecy has 05:28 locked in the future, what is the point of trying to live and make decisions? Isn't the future 05:34 predetermined?" Wow. What time is it? Okay, yes and no. Look, I'll summarize it this way: 05:43 there's a vast difference between knowing the future and predetermining the future. 05:50 There's a vast difference. Isaiah 46. This is verse 9: "Remember the former things of 06:00 old, for I am God, and there is no other. I am God and there is none like Me, declaring the end 06:09 from the beginning." So God declares the end from the beginning. He declares the 06:14 future. He knows what's there. He reveals it ahead of time. So He does see what's going to take 06:20 place and He reveals it. God reveals a lot. He reveals everything we need. There's a 06:24 verse in Amos 3:7 where God says: "Surely, I will do nothing except I reveal my secrets to my 06:31 servants, the prophets." So God reveals the future. Now, there are some things that He 06:35 predetermines. The verse continues - this is Isaiah 46:10, saying: "My counsel shall 06:40 stand, and I will do all My pleasure." So there are things God is going to do, whether we 06:46 want him to or not. There are some things in prophecy that are absolutely going to happen. For 06:52 example, Jesus will come again. Nothing we do or say is going to stop Jesus from coming again. 06:59 He's going to come again. He's going to set up His kingdom. That is written in stone, and it 07:04 was a stone in Daniel chapter 2. You're not going to change that. The other thing God's going to 07:09 do - one of my favourite things - God's going to deal with pain and suffering and death and 07:14 misery and sin for all time and abolish it. That, He's going to do. He's not going to let that 07:20 go on forever. Revelation chapter 7, verse, oh, 17. "The lamb who was in the midst of the 07:28 throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters, and God will wipe away 07:33 every tear from their eyes." That is written in stone. But within those parameters, I mean, 07:40 we know - the point of the prophecy is that the kingdom of Christ is going to replace 07:45 earthly kingdoms. But within that parameter, you still can make choices. I mean, the whole 07:50 Bible is the long history of people being asked to make choices. We know the direction 07:56 that things are headed, and within that parameter, you have to decide whether you're in or 07:59 out of that direction. And so not everything is predetermined; some things, God foresees, and 08:05 some things, God predetermines. But that's a topic theologians have debated for 2000 years and 08:10 I just handled it in three minutes. They should have had me on board in the city of 08:14 Alexandria in 300 A.D. I could have solved it in three minutes. But tonight, our topic is, "The 08:21 battle of Armageddon," and I don't need to elaborate on that too much, because I will in just 08:24 a few minutes. We're going to look at some key principles, have a little bit of classroom 08:30 mode, and we're going to take the principles we learn and we're going to apply them to a 08:34 Biblical prophecy so that you can see how they work when we apply them properly. Let's bow 08:40 our heads for prayer. Father in heaven, this evening it's with a sense of excitement that we open 08:46 the pages of the Bible, because, well, it changes our hearts. We sense that You're real. I know 08:54 that Peter wrote that we are born again by the Word of God. I'm praying that by reading the 09:03 Scriptures, we would be changed. I'm asking that You would bless me with a clear mind, a clear 09:10 voice, that You would forgive my sins so that I would be fit to represent the thoughts that You 09:17 put in this Book. And I want to thank You for blessing. It's our covenant with You that when You 09:23 speak to our hearts, we'll follow. And we pray it in Jesus' name, amen. Armageddon. It's a 09:32 word that you hear about a lot, it seems, in all the wrong places. You hear about it in the 09:38 movies, you hear about it in the news, and the word kind of scares a lot of people, but 09:42 nobody's really sure what the word means or what it is. When you go across America and talk 09:48 to people about Armageddon, I discover that everybody thinks it's something else. There are a 09:54 lot of opinions. If you go to a bookstore and buy one hundred books on this subject - and I've 09:59 bought at least that many on this subject. If you buy a hundred books, you end up with a 10:03 hundred different opinions. And what frustrates a lot of people is that none of the opinions 10:08 seem to agree. I've even travelled all over the globe - I've talked to people all over 10:14 the place - and it's the same outside of America: different people are saying different 10:17 things. Talk to people about Armageddon, and some people say Armageddon is going to be this 10:22 great military conflict that's going to take place when Russia teams up with the Arab states 10:29 and they invade Israel and that sparks World War III. That's a very popular theory right now, 10:37 especially with Putin going into Crimea and looking like he might be gearing up for a military 10:43 conflict, and ISIS now in Syria, and other troubles brewing in the Middle East. People are 10:48 looking at those ideas again with brand-new eyes. Those ideas were also very popular during 10:53 the First Gulf War when Saddam Hussein said he was going to drop Scud missiles on the nation 11:00 of Israel. And there were rumours circulating that he was going to try and rebuild the 11:06 ancient city of Babylon. So that idea is very popular, but I've got to tell you, it is not the 11:12 only idea on the block. There are other people who say Armageddon is going to be 11:16 nuclear disaster. Now, this was really popular at some points during the Cold War. Now, the 11:22 younger folks here don't remember the Cold War, but some of us in school were taught to 11:26 crawl under our desks every so often in case a nuclear missile was ever dropped on our city. 11:32 Now, I grew up in a remote little village in northern Canada - there was no way the 11:36 Russians were going to target my village - but we still had to crawl underneath our desks and 11:41 practice for the big nuclear fallout. And those ideas that it might be a nuclear disaster got 11:46 new legs again recently when rogue states - Iran and North Korea - started to develop a 11:52 nuclear program and we found out about it. Some people were worried about it again when 11:56 Pakistan and India started to fight over the border. And we realized, wow, both of those 12:01 countries are nuclear powers. And other people have been talking lately about groups like 12:06 Al-Qaeda or ISIS or Al-Shabaab or any of these groups that are active right now may be going 12:12 into New York City with a dirty bomb, just nuclear material and a regular bomb, and blowing it 12:17 up in one of America's big cities. And that, they say, might just start the big 12:21 meltdown in the Middle East. Nuclear catastrophe, some people say. Some people say it might 12:27 not even be war; it might be something like what happened at Fukushima or Chernobyl. But 12:32 again, nuclear disaster is not the only idea on the block. Other people talk about 12:36 overpopulation and how that might lead to a depletion of resources and a situation where 12:42 the world is running out of stuff: oil and food and water. And everybody starts fighting. 12:49 And to bolster this idea, they point to the fact that it took thousands of years to reach one 12:55 billion people on this planet; it only took a hundred years to get to the next billion. 12:59 Thirty-five years to get to three billion; fifteen years to get to four billion; five more 13:03 years to get to five billion; today we're at seven point something, and we're on our way 13:09 very quickly, they say, maybe by the middle of the century, to eighteen billion people. And 13:14 they say that might lead to global shortages of resources and a famine and a worldwide 13:19 conflict. Another idea on the block. Not the only one, though. Some people say it's going to be 13:25 a super disease, a disease that we can't control, a brand-new pandemic that starts worldwide 13:31 pandemonium. Now, I was in the hospital a number of years ago. I was telling somebody that this 13:35 evening. They want to know why I don't wear shoes. It's because I wrecked my back when I was 19 13:40 and it just feels so good not to wear shoes. It's so nice. And so I don't wear them. But I had to 13:44 have a back surgery because I had an accident in eastern Europe, oh, 2007, and they flew 13:51 me home and I had to have back surgery, and I was recovering. I woke up from the operation and 13:56 I'm laying in bed, and somebody said, "Here's something to read while you're recuperating." "We 14:00 just brought you a magazine." It was Reader's Digest. And the cover story was, "Why you might 14:06 die in the hospital." Thank you very much. Alright? I read it. It's that you might get one of 14:13 these super bugs. Right after having surgery, I'm reading this, and you know, you're a 14:17 little dopey when you're coming to, and I'm thinking, "This is awful." And suddenly, my 14:20 roommate, this guy by the name of Eric, he rings his bell and he says to the nurse, "You've 14:25 got to come right away. My neck is swelling and it's sore and something is really, really 14:30 wrong." And as he was saying that, I thought, "You know, my neck is kind of sore and 14:34 swelling too. I bet you this is the super bug. I'm going to die." And they brought him an 14:38 icepack and I complained too and they brought me an icepack. And then at 3:00 in the morning, 14:43 suddenly I hear him moaning and groaning and he's trying to reach his call bell, and he 14:47 can't reach it. So I ring my call bell. "You've got to come. Something's wrong with Eric." 14:51 And they came. Something was wrong with Eric. And they rushed him out of the room and took him 14:56 down to the ICU. And then he never came back. An hour later, they came and got his stuff and 15:03 they moved it out of the room and they turned the lights out and left, and left me all alone. 15:07 And I was laying there thinking, "Who's going to ring my bell when I need help? I'm all by 15:12 myself here now. Super bug." Some people say that's what - we saw it last night. Hospital 15:19 deaths have gone up sevenfold in the last fifteen years from these super bugs. It's going to 15:24 be a pandemic. They make movies about it. The Stand, 28 Days, I Am Legend. All the zombie 15:28 movies. If you think about it, that's really what they're addressing, is our fear that 15:32 some horrible disease is going to spread across the planet, and we can't handle it. We're afraid 15:38 our technology is going to fail us. And some people say that will be the start of Armageddon. 15:42 But that is not the only idea on the block. Some people say it's going to be an asteroid that 15:46 hits the earth and we're going to have nuclear winter. Going to change the climate instantly and 15:51 there'll be a breakdown in human civilization. Hollywood even made a movie called Armageddon 15:56 based on that preface - premise. And some people have said, "Oh, no, no, that's just fiction." 16:02 And then NASA says, "Well, have you seen the big asteroid that's headed our way? It's going to 16:08 scoot right past the earth in the year 2036," and they've named it Apophis after the Greek 16:13 god of the - or the Egyptian god of the dead, rather. And so some people are saying, "I wonder if 16:19 that'll be it. It'll change the planet instantly." Some people say it might not be an asteroid; 16:23 it might just be global climate change. The icecaps are melting, the coastal cities are going to 16:28 flood, and the polar bears are going to die, and we'll have worldwide pandemonium. 16:33 Everybody's got a different idea. Some people thought something big was going to 16:37 happen in the year 2012: Nostradamus, Mayan calendar. Of course, nothing happened. Some 16:41 people thought it was going to be Y2K. Remember that? The power grid was going to fail and all 16:45 our computers were going to die and the medical equipment would fail and we'd go right back to 16:50 the dark ages and martial law, and that didn't happen. Global pandemonium. 16:56 Some people say Armageddon's going to start when aliens come. And they point to the battle of 17:01 Los Angeles. These weird lights over the city in 1940. The military came out and shot at 17:05 the lights. Some people say that must have been aliens. In all truth, it was probably the 17:09 Japanese. It was World War II and they were taking a look over the coast. But that didn't stop 17:14 the conspiracy theories. "Ooh, the aliens are going to come and start a worldwide war. We're 17:18 going to have to fight them off and that'll be Armageddon." I actually visited with a guy one 17:21 time. He said, "You know, I believe, Shawn, that all the -" otherwise perfectly normal 17:25 conversation. He leans forward, he says, "They're everywhere." I said, "What? Your neighbours?" 17:32 He said, "No, the reptilians. They're everywhere. All the politicians are aliens in 17:37 disguise." That one was actually not that hard to believe. I thought, "Well, that makes a lot 17:41 of sense." Everybody's got a million different opinions. The question is, is there a right 17:48 one? Any way to know? Does it matter? Is it relevant? Should you even care? Well, here's the 17:56 question: Would God put it in the Bible and feature it if it didn't matter? Probably not. But 18:02 some people say, "Well, we shouldn't dwell on that stuff. It's so doom and gloom and 18:05 negative." I was at a dinner party once and a woman leaned over and said, "Shawn, all that 18:09 book of Revelation stuff, that prophecy stuff, it's all doom and gloom. If you read that, 18:14 you're going to get depressed, and eventually, you're going to go off your rocker. Cheese is 18:18 going to slip right off the cracker." Is that true? I mean, that might be true of me, but is 18:25 that true? You read the book of Revelation, it's just doom and gloom? Well, God doesn't 18:29 sugar-coat the future; He just paints it like it is. He shows us the situation we created, but 18:35 He always holds out hope. It's not all doom and gloom, not if you read the whole thing. Do you 18:40 know why we have given up on understanding Bible prophecy? Do you know why? It's because we 18:45 have forgotten how to study Bible prophecy. Here's what surprises a lot of people. For 18:50 hundreds - no, for thousands of years now, there has actually been widespread agreement on 18:57 what Bible prophecy says. For nearly 2000 years. 1800 years, Christians of all stripes 19:03 virtually had unanimity, had agreement on what Bible prophecy means. It surprises people when 19:09 they find out. It's only in the last 180 years or so that we started having all these 19:14 divergent theories, and now we have a lot of confusion. It's only now that people say, "Well, 19:20 maybe this stuff isn't all that important. Maybe Bible prophecy doesn't matter." The problem 19:24 with saying prophecy doesn't matter is that most of the Bible is prophecy. Most of it. One out 19:33 of eight verses in the New Testament refers to the second coming of Christ. One out of 19:36 eight. Dwight L. Moody, the great preacher from Chicago, once sat down, he counted every 19:42 verse in the Bible that mentioned the second coming of Christ, and he came to a total 19:45 of 2,500 passages. It's not a small deal. Biblically speaking, prophecy is very, very 19:53 important. It is not a small subject. "Oh, but Shawn, people who read that stuff go a little 19:57 bit strange." Yes, sometimes they do. It's true. Some people are downright scary. But the 20:06 question is, did prophecy do that to them, or were they a little bit wackadoodle before 20:11 they read the prophecy? Were they crazy before they read it? Billy Graham. I don't know if 20:18 you've ever read his autobiography, Just As I Am. It is a phenomenal book. In there, 20:23 he tells this story about his mother starting to read the book of Revelation. And the pastor 20:28 hears about it and he rushes right over to the house. "Is it true, Mrs. Graham, that you are 20:32 reading the book of Revelation?" "Yes, it is." "Why would you read that?" "Because it gives me 20:38 such hope. It describes the second coming of Christ." And the pastor said - read the book. 20:44 It's a phenomenal story. The pastor said, "Mrs. Graham, if you read that book, you're going 20:47 to go crazy." Now, why would he say that? Probably because of experience. Probably because 20:54 there seemed to be a lot of unstable people who read a little bit of Bible prophecy and 20:58 then go out and do some very, very weird things. People like David Koresh teaching people 21:04 from the book of Revelation. Then he announces that he's a messiah and a lot of people get 21:07 hurt. But the question again is, is the problem the book of Revelation, or is the problem 21:11 David Koresh? Charlie Manson, same thing. We talked about him last night. He wanted to start 21:17 the battle of Armageddon in 1969. He was absolutely nuts. A lot of people got hurt. But was 21:25 the problem the Word of God, or was the problem Charlie Manson? Is it possible that even if the 21:30 Bible did not exist, that the world would still have people like Charlie Manson? Sure it 21:35 would. The cult that put sarin gas in Tokyo subway didn't use the Bible to justify what they 21:41 did. Look, famous atheists like Richard Dawkins are always blaming religion and the Bible 21:46 for all the violence in the world. But I'm telling you tonight, the problem is not God 21:50 and the problem is not the Word of God; the problem is human beings. That's what the problem 21:55 is. The worst violence in this world has been perpetrated by people who do not read the Word 22:01 of God. Think about this carefully. Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, they didn't justify it 22:06 based on the Word of God, and they killed tens of millions in the last century. The problem is 22:11 not God or His Word; the problem is us. That's the problem. Does God want you to understand the 22:19 book of Revelation? Oh, yes, He does, and I can prove it based on something He says right in 22:29 the opening passage. Revelation 1 verse 3. The Bible says: "Blessed -" makarios, Greek, 22:37 happy. "Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy," and do what? 22:46 "Keep those things which are written therein." There's a blessing in there. A threefold 22:51 blessing. God says, "If you read this book, you're blessed; if you hear this book, you're 22:56 blessed; and if you keep this book, I'll bless you for it." Read. Actually, in the original 23:00 language, implies, read it out loud and share it with people. "Hear" doesn't mean just let it 23:06 bounce off of your eardrums and fall back out on the ground; it's more like when your mother 23:11 said, "You clean up your room, do you hear?" Right? It means, do you understand? Blessed are 23:17 those who read it and those who understand it and those who keep it and live by it. Now, let me 23:22 ask you a question. Does that sound like God did not intend us to understand this, yes or no? 23:27 Yes or no? No. Some of you are not too sure. Let's ask again. I can ask all night. I've got 'til 23:34 tomorrow. Does it sound like God does not intend you to understand this, yes or no? No. 23:40 He intends for you to understand it. But still, I hear people saying, "But the book of 23:44 Revelation, Shawn, is a sealed book." But Revelation says that's not true. You get down to 23:49 the end of the book, chapter 22 as John is finishing up, the angel says to him: "Do not seal 23:55 the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand." Look, the very name of 24:00 the book is "Revelation." It's "apokalupsis" in the Greek. Do you know what the word means? 24:05 It's an unveiling, a throwing-open of the curtains, showing everything in the 24:08 background. It means "the revealing." The name of the book is not "the hiding." It's not 24:13 "the concealing." It's not "the mysterium." It is "the revealing." God wants you to 24:18 understand what John put in the book. You can understand prophecy. In fact, Jesus once 24:23 said so. Point blank. He's speaking about the book of Daniel, Matthew chapter 24:15: 24:30 "Therefore, when you see the 'abomination of desolation,'" - we'll talk about that more on a 24:34 coming night - "Therefore, when you see the 'abomination of desolation,' spoken of by [who?] 24:38 Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, [here come the words of Jesus] whoever reads, 24:45 let him [be confused?] understand." Jesus expected you to understand this stuff. So 24:55 here's the question: If God wants you to understand it, then why do so many people have 25:00 trouble with it? I remember the first time I sat down and opened the book of Revelation as a kid 25:05 and I started to thumb through it, I thought, "I don't understand this at all. It's 25:08 weird." Candlesticks, churches, beasts crawling out of the ocean, a woman riding a beast. 25:14 What in the world does it all mean? It was really tough. I didn't get it. Why is it so 25:19 hard? It's because our generation has forgotten the basics. To be really blunt about 25:26 it, in some ways, it's because we've become a consumer-based church. We're more concerned 25:31 about entertaining ourselves than we are about reading what's actually in the Word of God, 25:36 studying it seriously. And that ought to concern us as we get closer and closer to the second 25:40 coming of Christ, because deception, as we have seen, is going to be a huge problem. And 25:46 if you are not grounded in what the Word of God says, you are going to fall for it. Over the 25:52 last decades, basically, we've lost sight of the basic principles. We just don't have 25:57 the approach that we used to. People used to understand this stuff and they all used to agree 26:02 virtually on it all. So what are the principles that help you get it right? It's not rocket 26:07 science, it's just that we haven't been applying it. Let me give you a few of them right 26:11 here. Principle number one: make an effort to remember the historical context. When was 26:16 this written? So John wrote it on Patmos in the first century. We saw a good example of this 26:21 the other day. As we looked at Matthew 24, we found out, ooh, it helps to know about Titus 26:25 coming and sacking the city of Jerusalem and destroying the temple. Remember the historical 26:30 context. Secondly, always read every verse in its immediate context. Read the verses before 26:36 it and read the verses after it. Don't lift it out of the Bible and make it stand alone or 26:41 you're going to do violence to the text and you're going to lose sight of what it means. 26:47 There's a famous example preachers love, right? There's a text in the Bible that says, 26:50 "Judas hung himself." That is absolutely in the Bible. There's another verse that says, "Go and 26:55 do thou likewise." That is also absolutely in the Bible. But if you lift those out of their 27:00 contexts and string them together, you get some really bad theology. Read what comes 27:05 before it and after it. We saw this the other night, right? People say, "Oh, well, those 27:10 aren't signs of the times," but they don't keep reading into verse 8 where Jesus says they're 27:13 like contractions and birth pains. Then you have to read - here's the one that people say, 27:19 "Well, I've got to read the whole thing?" Yeah. You gotta read the whole book. Read every 27:22 passage in the context of the entire Bible. Everybody who wrote a book of the Bible was 27:27 familiar with all the books that had already been written, and they referred to them all the 27:30 time. There are the three principles. If you stick with those simple principles, Bible 27:35 prophecy starts to make perfect sense. I mean, really, what it boils down to, is you have to 27:40 read the whole thing. Let me show you why you have to read the whole thing. Here is a love 27:44 letter that I wrote to my wife. This is my very best effort to woo her and win her affection. 27:52 "Dear Jean, I wanted to see you today. I am so irritated because my car broke down at 1:00 and 27:58 now I will not see you." That is my best work. That is as romantic as I have ever been. It 28:05 is a miracle that I am married 22 years now. That's a love letter to my wife. And I give it 28:11 to a kid at the office, saying, "Run this over to my house and give this to my wife." "Tell her 28:15 so she knows my car is broken down." But he trips and slips in the mud and it gets wet and some 28:20 of the ink runs off the page. So when my wife gets it, it says this: "Dear Jean, I wanted to 28:25 see you today. I am so irritated. at. you." You only take part of it, lift stuff out, 28:33 and you make a monstrosity out of it. That's why guys like Richard Dawkins grow to hate 28:41 God. They don't read the whole thing. Do you know what they do? They read a few parts of the 28:45 Bible that deal with real life in the real world - war and violence and bloodshed and some 28:51 of the horrible things that have happened - and they rip it out of the context of the whole 28:55 story, and in doing that, they miss the whole point. We made a problem, God's going to fix it. 29:01 They never get to that part because they only read half. Let me give you an example of a 29:05 real-life example of this happening historically. In 1910, a preacher by the name of George 29:11 Hensley reads a text in the book of Mark. It says: "They shall take up serpents." "It says, 29:21 'Oh, they shall;' that's a command. We have to do it." "They shall take up serpents; 29:23 and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." He thought, "That's a good 29:29 idea." So he got to his next meeting and he went backstage and he got a box full of 29:36 poisonous snakes. Now, I don't have a whole box full; I only have one. And he got out in 29:49 front of the audience, said, "The Bible says, 'You shall pick up deadly snakes.'" And he 29:56 dumped one right in the front row. I wouldn't do that. I almost got a rubber one, though. 30:09 I thought, "I'll just throw it out over the whole..." He said, "Now pick it up." He started a 30:17 whole movement, snake-handling movement. And people picked up the snakes, and you know what 30:22 happened? They got bit. And he said, "Well, the reason you got bit is you didn't have enough 30:27 faith." That's not the reason they got bit. The reason they got bit is because they didn't 30:30 read the whole book. They should have read the stories of Jesus. The devil tried to tempt Jesus. 30:35 "Throw yourself off the temple, because if you do, the Bible says -" notice the devil knows 30:40 how to quote the Bible too. "The Bible says if you throw yourself off the temple, the angels will 30:46 take care of you." Jesus makes an important point, because of course, He authored the book and 30:51 He knows the whole book. Jesus said, "It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your 30:56 God.'" He knew the difference between faith and presumption. The only safe place for you and 31:02 I to stand is to read the whole book and stand on a "thus says the Lord." The only safe place 31:08 is in "it is written." Let me show you one more principle found in the book of Isaiah. In 31:15 Isaiah 28, God is speaking to Israel when they're not doing very well. They're in a 31:19 rebellious phase. And he's talking about how He's going to communicate with Israel, and 31:23 here's what He says to them: "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, 31:29 line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little." Now, there's a principle in that 31:35 verse. It's this: God doesn't give you everything all at once. He sometimes gives it to you in 31:42 small pieces so that you can digest it easily. And you have to go and get all the pieces, 31:46 here a little, there a little, line upon line. So it's important, if you want to know 31:50 what the Bible says on any given topic - you know, what does it say about the Antichrist? You 31:55 don't read three verses and come to a conclusion; you read the whole book, gather all the data 32:00 on the subject, and then stand back and look at the big picture. And the big picture is 32:04 always clear. This is the way we used to study. Read the whole book. It's like doing jigsaw 32:10 puzzles. I don't know what a big jigsaw puzzle is because I don't do jigsaw puzzles, but I imagine 32:16 20,000 pieces would be a big jigsaw puzzle, right? Is that a pretty big one? Yeah, that's 32:21 pretty big. Alright, 100,000 pieces. Is that big too? That's big. So I'm going to do it. You 32:27 need tweezers for 100,000 pieces, I heard. You do. And I'm looking at it and I say, "Oh, 32:33 this is a bicycle. This is a picture of bicycles. Oh, wait a minute, here's a guy with a 32:37 briefcase. It's bicycles and briefcases. Oh, there's a dog and a sidewalk." 100,000 pieces 32:44 later, it's Manhattan, it's downtown, it's a big city. You have to finish the puzzle. You 32:49 have to look at the whole thing. There is no other way. Now let me give you some specific keys 32:55 for the book of Revelation and then we're going to apply them to Revelation chapter 16. Here 33:00 are the keys. Here's the stuff that everybody used to know: Two-thirds of the language in 33:05 the book of Revelation is borrowed from the rest of the bible. Two-thirds of it. Some of 33:09 it comes from Exodus. You read about the song of Moses and the lamb in the book of Revelation. 33:13 Some of it comes from Jeremiah, the collapse of Babylon. Some of it comes from Ezekiel. 33:17 Two-thirds of the language is borrowed from somewhere else. If you're reading something in the 33:21 book of Revelation and you don't understand what it means, go find it in the rest of the 33:25 Bible. Go back to the Old Testament and look it up, and usually, it explains it point 33:30 blank, just spells it out. And that is especially true of the book of Daniel. They're 33:36 companion books. You don't understand something in the book of Revelation, go back and read 33:40 the book of Daniel, and it'll usually spell it out. Same is true with Daniel. "I don't 33:44 understand something in Daniel." Look for it in Revelation. It usually spells it out. You have 33:49 to read - here's the whole principle. I hope you're getting the sense of it. It's not compl- 33:54 you have to read the whole thing and let the Bible explain itself, because God is very good 33:57 at explaining Himself. He really is. It's that simple. Now we're going to take those principles 34:03 and we're going to put them into practice and look at the battle of Armageddon. Are you ready for 34:09 it, yes or no? Alright, buckle your seatbelt. Get it ready 'cause we're going to move 34:13 pretty quick. Here we go, Revelation chapter 16, starting in verse 12. Pay attention to 34:18 details now. Every detail is important. "Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the 34:23 great river [what?] Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from 34:31 the [where?] from the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs 34:39 coming out of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the 34:44 false prophet." I want you to remember those three characters: the dragon, the beast, and the 34:49 false prophet, because they're going to show up again as we study Bible prophecy. You're 34:54 going to see them again. And so you want to tuck that information behind one ear. The 34:59 next verse: "They are the spirits of demons performing signs [remember what Jesus said: 35:04 in the last days, global deception, false christs and prophets performing signs] 35:09 performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and [how much of the world?] the 35:16 whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." "Behold, I am 35:23 coming as a thief." 35:26 Those of you who have studied prophecy before, who comes as a thief? Jesus does. He said that 35:30 Himself in Matthew 24. You read about it in Peter's writing and in Paul's writing. Jesus comes 35:34 as a thief. "Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see 35:42 his shame." "And they gathered them together to the place called [in what language?] 35:47 Hebrew, Armageddon." There it is. What in the world does it mean? Well, let's take a look at 35:55 the data we already know. Speaks about a global spiritual deception. Talks about kings 36:00 coming from the east. It talks about the Euphrates river drying up. It has a reference to the 36:06 second coming. "I come as a thief." And it has this one word in Hebrew. I mean, the book's 36:11 written in Greek, and John suddenly switches for one word to Hebrew, and mentions a place 36:15 called Armageddon. That one word is a huge, huge clue. What is that word? It's actually a 36:25 compound word in Hebrew: har megiddon. It literally means "the mountain of Megiddo." That 36:32 is a very important clue. Now, a lot of people talk about Megiddo the valley, but the word means 36:36 "the mountain of Megiddo." Let me show you something really important. Megiddo is this 36:42 valley in the north of Israel, about twenty miles or so long. Twenty square miles, I guess. 36:49 It's framed by three prominent mountains. You've got Carmel up in the north, Mount Carmel in 36:55 the north, where Elijah had his showdown with the prophets of Baal. Then you have Mount Tabor 37:04 sort of down to the southeast a little bit, and a lot of scholars believe that's where 37:07 the transfiguration on the mount took place: Jesus is revealed in all of His glory. Then you've 37:12 got Mount Gilboa down to the south, and that's the place where there's a little spot 37:17 called Endor, and that's where Saul went to visit a spirit medium once and got into a lot 37:23 of trouble because he did something God told him not to do. Those are the three 37:27 mountains in a very, very - they frame a very special valley, the valley of Megiddo. And why is 37:34 Megiddo special or prominent? It's because it's the crossroads of the ancient world. From 37:39 there, you could take a road up north into Europe, a road east out to Persia. You could take a 37:44 road south into Africa. So a lot of traffic came through there. And because a lot of traffic 37:49 came through there, there were a lot of conflicts. A lot of people met up in the valley of 37:53 Megiddo. And historically speaking, it has been the site of a lot of conflict, both 38:01 physical and spiritual conflicts. It was there that Deborah and Barak defeat the 38:04 armies of Sisera. It was in this valley that Joshua defeats the kings of Canaan. It was at this 38:09 valley that Saul visits the witch of Endor. That's not a physical battle; that's a 38:13 spiritual struggle that takes place. And it's also here that Elijah confronts the priests of 38:18 Baal, at Mount Carmel. It's been the site of a lot of conflict, both military conflict and 38:24 spiritual conflict. It's been a very prominent valley over the years. So the question, of 38:30 course, is, why does God refer to that valley Megiddo in this prophecy? Well, when you take 38:35 all of the evidence and compile it, it becomes really obvious. What John is doing is pointing 38:41 to Old Testament stories to make his point. He's going back - remember, two-thirds of the 38:49 language comes from the rest of the Bible. And in John's day, the rest of the Bible was mostly 38:53 the Old Testament. And which stories is John referring to? Well, let's go back in time 39:00 tonight, 2,500 years, and visit ancient Babylon one more time. And this time, we're going back 39:05 just far enough that now Nebuchadnezzar is dead. He is gone. But his grandson 39:11 Belshazzar is sitting on the throne of Babylon. And Belshazzar did not build the 39:17 empire; he inherited it. And sometimes when that happens, you become a goof-off. And 39:22 Belshazzar was a goof-off. The Bible says Nebuchadnezzar died a believer. But his grandson, oh, 39:29 that's another story. Here's the story from Daniel chapter 5: "Belshazzar the king made a 39:36 great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar commanded 39:41 to bring the golden and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of 39:46 the temple, which was in Jerusalem; that the king, his princes, his wives, and his 39:51 concubines that might drink therein." Belshazzar is throwing a big ol' party. Now, lots of 39:56 kings in the ancient world threw big parties to impress their friends; but there's something 40:00 very strange about this party, because while they're inside the city having the big party, 40:05 there's an army on the outside waiting to attack, an army from the east. Which army do you 40:13 think that might be? It's the Persians. It's actually the Medes and the Persians; it was a 40:19 coalition government. Darius in the book of Daniel was a Mede; Cyrus is a Persian. It's the 40:24 chest and arms of silver. It's about time to fulfil the prophecy. The head of gold is 40:30 going to give way to the next kingdom. They're going to conquer the city. The Persians 40:35 are about to take it. But Belshazzar doesn't believe it. "Oh, you can't conquer Babylon. 40:38 That's impossible. Our walls are so high, no army can scale them. Our walls are so thick, you can 40:44 drive two chariots side by side along the top of the city wall." "It's too thick. You can't come 40:50 through it. We have enough food for twenty years inside the city. We can wait you out. And 40:57 we have all the water we need forever because the Euphrates river comes under the city wall 41:03 right into the city. We have all the water we need." And then, and then to make his point, to 41:10 make his people feel good, he throws this party. He said, "Let's celebrate. We got nothing 41:14 to worry about." And he goes and he gets the spoils of previous conquests to make everybody - 41:19 "Nobody can conquer us. Look at all the stuff we have. Our gods are bigger than anybody else's 41:25 gods. We even have the holy vessels from the temple in Jerusalem. Nothing to worry 41:31 about." And then the room suddenly falls quiet because up against the wall, a severed, 41:42 bloodless hand suddenly appears and begins writing on the wall. "Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin." 41:51 Party's over. What does it mean? Belshazzar calls for the Chaldeans. He didn't learn 42:00 anything from granddad. They can't read it. They say, "You know what, Belshazzar, though, 42:06 your granddad had this guy by the name of Daniel. He used to be able to handle this kind of 42:10 stuff." "Go find him." Daniel comes in. And now he's not 17 anymore; he's an old man. 42:16 "Daniel, I understand you used to interpret dreams for my granddad. Do you know what this 42:24 means?" "Yeah." "Read it for me." And he starts to interpret what it says. Daniel 5:26: 42:35 "Numbered, numbered, you are weighed in the balances and found wanting. Your kingdom is 42:42 divided and given to the Medes and the Persians." "The statue was right; your granddad knew 42:48 it. The time has come. It's tonight, Belshazzar, because nothing lasts forever. All comes 42:57 to an end. Party's finished." It's true for all of us. Eventually the last bar closes 43:05 for the last time. The last investment scheme is done. Last lie has been told. Last 43:13 political campaign has been fought. The last dishonest deal has been made. And it's over. 43:22 Because eventually, everything gets weighed in the balances, and God doesn't judge with our 43:27 perspective; He judges from the perspective of unbridled truth, and we don't fool Him. Daniel's 43:33 name means "my God is my Judge." The Bible says God's eyes run to and fro on the earth. He doesn't 43:41 miss anything. And He's looking for people whose hearts are aligned with Him. And when He 43:45 comes to you, let me ask you this: What's He going to find? You can't fool Him. You might be 43:53 able to fool your neighbours; you might be able to fool the people at church, the people at 43:57 work. You might even fool your family. You might be able to persuade other people that you 44:03 are something you are not. But you are not fooling God. Eventually you have to own what 44:11 you did with your life. That night, Babylon fell. Let me tell you how it happened. On his way 44:19 to the city of Babylon, Cyrus learned something valuable. He was crossing the Gyndes River on 44:24 his favourite horse, and the current was so swift that it washed the horse out from 44:29 underneath him, and the horse drowned. His favourite horse. And he got mad. And he got down 44:33 and he said, "I am going to fix this river so that never happens again." He stops the whole army. 44:38 He has his soldiers - you can read about this in the writings of Herodotus - he has his 44:44 soldiers dig 180 channels on either side of the Gyndes River until the water table goes so 44:49 low it's only ankle-deep. And he goes, "There, now my grandmother can cross the Gyndes River." 44:56 Gets to Babylon. He says, "Those walls are pretty high. Can't go over them, can't go through 45:00 them. What am I going to do? Those people are secure." Then he notices something 45:03 interesting. "Wait a minute. That river goes right under the wall." Goes back upstream, goes 45:09 for a walk, and he notices an ancient channel that used to exist. Queen Semiramis, who used 45:13 to live in Babylon way back when, wanted a boat and wanted a place to sail and there's not a 45:20 lot of lakes around there in the plains of Shinar. So she built one, diverted the Euphrates 45:23 river into a basin, and sailed until they were done with it, and they closed it back up. But 45:28 Cyrus found it. And so he opened it up again and he drained the Euphrates into there, and the 45:31 Euphrates water table went lower and lower and lower until there was a highway right into the 45:38 city. There's only one more challenge when you get inside: it's the walls along the river 45:42 and they've got iron gates that are locked. But the problem that night is, everybody's drunk and 45:48 they forgot to lock the gates. They're hanging wide open. He takes it in a night. What's 45:55 fascinating is Isaiah predicted it more than 100 years before he was born. "Who says to the deep, 46:00 'Be dry,' and I will dry up your rivers, who says of Cyrus." He names him before he's born. "He 46:05 is my shepherd. He shall perform all my pleasures, saying to Jerusalem, 'You shall be built,' 46:09 and to the temple, 'Your foundation shall be laid.'" The Persians eventually let the 46:13 Israelites go home and rebuild the city and the temple. "Thus says the Lord to His anointed, 46:19 to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him and loose the armour 46:23 of kings, to open before him the double doors, so the gates will not be shut." More than 100 46:31 years before he's born. How do you do that unless you know the end from the beginning? Now, 46:36 let's look at that story in Daniel chapter 5. What just happened? Somebody dried up the 46:42 Euphrates river so that kings from the east, the Medes and the Persians, could march on the 46:46 city of Babylon. Cyrus is called God's anointed. The word is "meshiach," messiah, not 46:50 because he is messiah, but because he is a figure, a prefigure of Jesus the Messiah. 46:55 He points forward to something Jesus would do. Cyrus is God's anointed, and after Cyrus does 47:00 that, God's people are permitted to return to the promised land. Now, that should be ringing a 47:05 bell. Let's go back to the prophecy of Armageddon. "Then the sixth angel poured out his 47:10 bowl on the great river Euphrates." There it is. "And its water was dried up, so that 47:17 the way of the kings from the [where?] east might be prepared." That's the story John 47:25 is rehearsing. The Bible is a story of two cities. All the way from Genesis, two cities: 47:31 Jerusalem and Babylon. Salem and Babel. Jerusalem and Babylon. Literal cities in the Old 47:38 Testament. Then Babylon is destroyed and Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 50, thereabout, that it 47:47 would never, ever again be inhabited. It would never be rebuilt. I wish Saddam Hussein - 47:51 I wonder - he was rebuilding it. I knew he couldn't complete it because the Bible said it 47:55 couldn't be rebuilt. But it disappears. So John uses Babylon. It can't be the literal 48:00 city of Babylon; he's using it as a symbol of a last-day issue. Babylon in Bible prophecy is a 48:07 symbol of confusion. It's actually what the word means, Babylon. What do you call a 48:12 little tiny person under two years who can't speak the language yet? A baby. It's the 48:17 same root word as "Babel" and "Babylon." When somebody's drunk and can't put together a 48:22 sentence, we say they're sitting on the sidewalk babbling. Same root word. It means confusion. 48:28 The inhabitants in the book of Revelation, it says the inhabitants of Babylon are 48:33 drunk, just like they were in the literal Old Testament city. They're confused. And there's a 48:39 last-day spiritual deception. This prophecy is about our world in its last confused, deceived 48:44 state. It's about spiritual Babylon. Let me show you a verse we didn't read earlier so that I 48:51 can demonstrate why it's important to keep reading all the way through to the end. Just 48:53 three verses later, John wraps it up this way: "Now the great city was divided into three 49:00 parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to 49:07 give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath." The prophecy's not about a 49:12 little valley. It's not. It's about a last-day spiritual confusion. This is about 49:20 last-day Babylon. This is the story of God defeating last-day spiritual Babylon so that 49:25 Messiah can come and take His people to the heavenly promised land. John is using the fall of 49:32 Babylon to talk about the fall of our whole human system of government when Jesus comes. I 49:38 mean, who is the ultimate king who comes from the east? Jesus said: "For as lightning comes 49:44 from the [where?] from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of 49:51 Man be." The prophecy said right in there, "I come as a thief." This is about the second coming 49:56 of Christ. Jesus is the King Who comes from the east. The reason the Bible called Cyrus God's 50:02 anointed messiah is because he was a symbol pointing forward to Jesus Who would come again and 50:08 put an ultimate end to all the confusion that we have created. Messiah is the One Who comes 50:14 from the east. You know what this means? This isn't about tanks and guns. There will be a 50:23 war in the Middle East? Well, that's not hard to believe. Probably. But it's not about a 50:29 piece of real estate. It's not about twenty square miles. It says the whole world is 50:33 involved, and the whole world doesn't fit in that valley. It's not about the valley; it's the 50:37 mountain of Megiddo. This is not about Russia. This is about your heart. It's about you. It's 50:47 more personal than that. It's too easy to say, "Oh, it's something that happens over 50:50 there." This happens in your heart. And why the mountain of Megiddo? Remember, there are 50:56 three mountains there. There's mount Tabor. Jesus transfigured in His glory. And with Him is 51:01 someone who was caught straight up to heaven without dying and somebody who had to die first 51:06 before he went to heaven. It's this picture of the second coming of Christ. Just before 51:10 that happened, Jesus said, "There are some here who will not taste death 'til they see me 51:14 in my kingdom," and then He shows them the transfiguration. Then there's Mount Gilboa where 51:17 Saul consults the spiritual medium against God's counsel. Last-day spiritual deception. 51:24 We'll come back to that theme on a coming night. But the big one, Carmel, the mountain of 51:28 decision. It's the mountain of Megiddo, Mount Carmel. John is reminding us of the story of 51:35 Elijah. In Elijah's day, all of Israel was worshipping a god by the name of Baal because Ahab, 51:40 God's king, had married a pagan queen by the name of Jezebel, against God's counsel. 51:45 Forbidden. She leads the whole nation of Israel astray and they're doing horrible things. 51:50 And God calls Elijah to set things right because God always raises up a prophet or some 51:56 prophetic movement to warn the world, always, always, always. And exercising the height of 52:02 courage, Elijah takes his own life in his hands and he goes down to have a showdown on Mount 52:06 Carmel. You might know the story. First Kings chapter 18. He says, "Let's have a contest. 52:11 Let's each build an altar, and you pray to Baal and see if he lights the sacrifice himself, 52:15 and I'll pray to the God of Israel and see if He lights the sacrifice." And the priests of 52:19 Baal jump around cutting themselves, screaming and yelling all day long, nothing 52:22 happens. Elijah builds an altar out of twelve stones, one for each of the twelve tribes of 52:27 Israel, and has them douse it with water three times, makes it soaking wet. Offers a simple 52:32 prayer. Poof, fire comes down from heaven, takes the sacrifice and the altar. And then he asks 52:40 a question. "Elijah came to all the people, 'How long will you falter between two opinions? If 52:44 the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow Him.'" There's the real issue. This is what 52:53 John's first-century audience thought of immediately when they read this prophecy. This. 52:58 Armageddon is a battle for your heart. It's the last plea. It's a decision that affects the 53:07 whole world, and tonight, it affects you. It's a message from God's heart to you. He's 53:17 worried sick you're going to go along with the world when it collapses. How long do you 53:20 falter between two opinions? You know, for the life of me, I can't think of a single reason 53:25 somebody wouldn't want Jesus. Why wouldn't you want Him? He heals the sick. He identifies 53:33 with the poor, the outcast, the prostitute, the leper. The Bible says He went around doing good, 53:39 and then He gives His life so that one day we can beat death itself. This is a prophecy about 53:46 the last decisions being made on this planet, including yours. It's about where you're going to 53:55 place your allegiance. It's a spiritual conflict being waged for your heart. You know how it 54:04 ends? Bible describes it. "I come as a thief." How does the ultimate conflict end? "I saw 54:10 heaven open and behold a white horse. And He Who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in 54:15 righteousness He judges and makes war." "His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head 54:19 were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except himself. He was clothed with a 54:24 robe dipped in blood [His own blood], and His name is called the Word of God." It's Jesus. 54:32 "And the armies in heaven," this is not in Russia, this is not in Syria, this - "the armies in 54:37 heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on horses. Now out of His mouth 54:42 goes a sharp sword." What is that? Hebrews 4 verse 16: "The Word of God is a sharp, 54:46 two-edged sword." Ephesians chapter 6 says that the sword of the spirit is the Word of God. 54:51 That's what comes out of His mouth. The Word of God is coming out of His mouth when He 54:55 returns. Do you know what it tells me? It tells me that on that day, it will not matter 54:59 what I said and it will not matter what you said and it will not matter what the preachers 55:04 said and it won't matter what your friends and family said; the only thing that matters on 55:08 that day at that moment is what did God say? That's it. "He Himself will rule them with a 55:15 rod of iron. he Himself treads the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." Wait 55:20 a minute. God's angry? Yeah. About what? Sin. He's your Father. And He saw what this did 55:35 to you. He saw it all. "Someone hurts My kids, makes Me mad." Caused you so much pain. And 55:47 that pain ends when Jesus comes. What reason could you possibly have to say no to Jesus? How 56:04 long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him. 56:13 God gathers the whole world at the Mountain of Megiddo. One last decision. Babylon collapses 56:25 and Jesus comes. Where's your heart? What reason could you possibly have to say no to a 56:36 Saviour like that? Let's pray. Father in heaven, in the quiet of this moment, I know that Your 56:49 eyes are still running to and fro on the earth, looking for that heart. Tonight, there are 57:00 people in this auditorium who heard You speak to their hearts. We want to be ready for Jesus to 57:07 come when we see the cross of Christ and everything You have done, to bring us into Your 57:13 kingdom. Lord, we're tired of this world and we want to be there. Tonight I'm going to ask 57:21 that, in this auditorium - nobody's looking around - but if tonight, you'd just like to say, 57:29 "Lord, I want to choose You. I want to be on that side," with your head bowed and your eyes 57:37 closed, I'm going to ask that you just slip your hand up and let the angels of heaven see 57:41 that that's where you stand. Lord, look at the hands that are going up here. These are the 57:46 people saying, "I want to be with Jesus when He comes." Our prayer is, come quickly, for we 57:56 pray it in Jesus' name, amen. 58:02 Today you have watched just one in a series of "Revelation Speaks Peace" presentations. 58:07 The entire series is available on DVD. Find out how you can order a copy at www.vop.com/rsp 58:15 Or Call.. 877-955-2525 Or if you wish you may request the series by writing to Voice of Prophecy 58:24 PO Box 999 Loveland, CO 80539 Order the entire Revelation Speaks Peace series from the 58:33 Voice of Prophecy. 24 powerful episodes on DVD. Pastor Shawn Boonstra will clearly unlock 58:40 prophecies in Daniel and Revelation -- using the Bible as the key. Experience hope for 58:47 your future. You can also find answers to life's toughest questions, by ordering Voice of 58:53 Prophecy's free Discover Bible Guides. We'll take you step by step to what you care about 58:58 most. Study online, or have us send them strait to your mail box. To order your DVD set or 59:04 Discover Bible Guides go to www.vop.com/rsp, again that's www.vop.com/rsp or call 59:15 877-955-2525. You may also send us a request by mail to: Voice of Prophecy PO Box 999 Loveland, 59:25 CO 80539 |
Revised 2016-07-12