7 Churches of Revelation - Laodicea

Over the last...well, there was about a month ago. I received a number of emails from people, not from the local church area, but from other places in the country. And they said, when are you going to finish this series of sermons on Revelation 2 and 3? And it dawned on me. I never finished it. I told everybody there was another sermon coming, and other things came up, and I covered other subjects, and I just never finished it. About two weeks ago, I said, well, I guess I better finish that series. And if you remember, when we went through, just as a recap to what we're going to cover today, we went through those seven churches as literal churches. There were seven literal churches that existed around 95 A.D., and that letter was written to all of them. And each church had developed differently than the other ones. Just because of distance, lack of communication between each other, each congregation developed differently. And so, we have this message that is sent to all seven of them. And yet, it also says in there, all the churches need to read all the messages. There's an important message for everybody in those seven churches, and the messages of those seven churches. So, they were all to read the messages given to each different church. And we went through and showed how that is very important in understanding how a congregation can form. We went through Sardis, and remember I went through how a whole series of things that happen to a congregation that becomes dead.

And what happens to it? It's a predictable set of things that happen, and it just ends up with, as it said, a good reputation, but actually it's dead. It's not doing anything spiritually right with God, and yet it appears to be. They didn't have any false doctrines. We went through Ephesus, and there was a lot of information in the New Testament about Ephesus. The book of Acts contains all kinds of things about the church in Ephesus.

We also have an entire letter written to the Ephesians from Paul, and we went through that, and we could figure out what happened in that church. And of course, what happened was they had stood up against false teachers that had come from within the church. And Paul had warned them about that in Acts. He went back and met with the Ephesian elders and said, you know, some of you are going to teach false things, and they had to stand up against that.

Well, you get the message given to them in Revelation, and you have a church that has no false doctrine, but it no longer has a love towards God or a love towards each other. They lost their first love. But they had all the information. You have Thyatira, which was a church that had just become paganized. And he finally tells them, just hang on to the little bit you still have. And he tells each of them, I am coming to you.

And so we look at those as seven different ways of congregation in form, but they're also for every Christian to read, because Christ is coming to every one of those types of people. So individually, we can have different attitudes in a congregation, different approaches in a congregation. You know, a couple of the churches were condemned for sexual sins. And you can have a congregation which maybe is much more like Philadelphia or something else, or one of the other churches, and yet there are people that are with sexual sins. You see what I mean? It's not like everybody in Philadelphia was exactly the way it says, because he warns them.

All of them but one has a warning. The only one that doesn't have a warning is the church that was persecuted and lived in abject poverty. I mean, that was the worst place to be.

They lived in abject poverty, and they were persecuted. And he says, you're the ones who are rich. Even the Philadelphians, he says, be careful, no man takes your crown. And we went through what that meant, and what was happening. So we see this as a call to all of us to make sure as we look through that we're none of those attitudes. It makes every congregation to say, well, are we that kind of congregation? But there's another way of looking at this, and that's what I didn't cover, and that is the prophetic historical view of this.

The prophetic historical view of Revelation 2 and 3 looks at the history of the church for the last 2,000 years, and says that each of those churches represent a time period in the history of the church. And so if you look at Ephesus, Ephesus was what the earliest church was like. And then you work through those different times, and you look at the history of the church, and you end up with what the church is going to be like when Christ returns.

This was a major teaching in the worldwide church of God. It was a teacher in the radio church of God. Now, it didn't originate in the worldwide church of God. The idea of church eras began to form in the 1800s among certain Protestant groups and certain Sabbath keepers. And so it wasn't an odd teaching. Today, it is not a very common teaching, so you just don't find it very many places, except you still find it in the Seventh-day Adventist Church of God Seventh-day other Sabbath-keeping groups.

You don't find it in a lot of Protestant groups, but you do in a few. It became really popular in the early 1900s, and I have the 1960s edition of a study Bible by C.I. Scofield. Scofield, if you lived in 1910, his first study Bible came out in 1909, and then he did another edition in 1970.

That was the most read study Bible, probably, in the country. It was a Bible with all these notes, and it was well organized, and it had structures. So he came up with the idea that it became popular in the Protestant world. When he looked at these churches, he said, you know what? It's not just to them, it's a prophecy. The whole book is about the prophecy. So he looked at those churches. He looked at his viewpoint of the church.

He was Protestant. He said that Ephesus was the first century church. Smyrna, which is the persecuted church, was between 100 and 316 when Constantine came along. They stopped persecuting Christians, common Christians. Pergamos was the period of time during the early Middle Ages when the church began to have paganism creep into it. Thyatira was the period, and what he would describe as the Catholic period, when the church became totally paganized.

Sardis was when the church became dead. The Protestant Reformation was supposed to revive the church, and it didn't, and it became dead. Then he looked at the Philadelphia churches, the revival that had happened in England and the United States, where he considered a revival of Christianity. Then he looked at the general state of the church when Christ returns, and he said, well, that's Laodicea.

He was the first one to really produce that on a mass scale, where it was believed. Now, the Sabbath keepers had picked that up before that. It's interesting that I have a second edition, the home of Duggar Dodds, A History of True Religion, which was a major book in the Church of God's Seventh Day.

I'm not sure it's as prominent now, but it was at one time. In that book, they break down, in a very general way, church eras. Revelation 2 and 3, yes, it's written to those churches, and yes, we're all to look at all those messages, but it also has a prophetic historical setting that we can look at. They break it down very similar. They try to find the history through Sabbath keepers. It's very similar to the ice-go-field. Ephesus is the first century church.

You have this persecuted period, which we find Sabbath keepers being persecuted in 100 to 300. You have the paganization of Catholicism, which the church at that time, when you do find Sabbath keepers during that time period, some of them have some very strange ideas. They picked up some paganism along the way. They looked at the Philadelphia era beginning in 1789. That's because the United States declared religious freedom, and Sabbath keepers had total freedom.

That was the beginning of the Philadelphia era. That's how they looked at things, and they had it laid out then. In the worldwide Church of God, there were attempts to make these numbers very specific, but everybody found out that you couldn't do that. This became the general viewpoint of church eras. If we look at the state of Ephesus, what that church was like in 95 AD, we can see that that is what actually became of the entire first century churches that went into the second century.

They held on to the truth, but they lost their love. Their love of God and their love for each other. That was basically that earliest church. There were first few generations that had known Jesus and had known Paul. Smyrna was about from 130 to 300 because those people were persecuted. It didn't matter what Christian group you came from. You were persecuted during that time period. Anyone who claimed to be a Christian was all equally persecuted. The Romans didn't care what your beliefs were.

Pergamos 300 to 1000 AD. Once again, you have the deterioration of certain biblical teachings as the church moves farther and farther away from an understanding of its first century. That happened in Sabbath Keepers 2. The little bit we know. There's not a lot we know about Sabbath Keepers during that time period because usually the only people that mention them are Catholics who are against them. So we don't know a whole lot about them. We do know that during 1000 to 1400 AD, there are Sabbath Keepers that pop up all over Europe. Once again, what we know about them is that they're persecuted.

We also know that they're all low to the place, doctrinally. They may keep the Sabbath, but they have all kinds of other beliefs that are in that. We have Sardis, which was the 1400s to the early 1900s. Philadelphia, which was the early 1900s to today with a small remnant surviving. Then Laodicea, late 20th century, towards the time of Christ's return. That's how it was looked at then.

Those generalities are better than anybody else. They are generalities because if you try to make that specific, you can't. There's just not enough information. But you can see the trend that was happening in the false Christianity deformed. You can see the Christianity in Sabbath Keepers. There are certain similarities in the patterns that they were going through. They were all influenced by the society around them. Why would you conclude that there's a prophetic message to this? Why isn't it just that these seven churches are general to us today?

Let's look at Revelation 3. Revelation 3, verse 10. This is to the church in Philadelphia. He says, Because you have kept my command to persevere, I will also keep you from the hour of trial, I shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. Here's a promise to that church in Philadelphia. Of course, that church in Philadelphia died out within a few generations. They no longer existed. It was gone. But he says he's going to protect them from the trial that comes upon the entire earth.

When we look at Matthew 24, we're going to go to the Olivet Prophecy here. Matthew 24, verse 21. Chapter 24 and 25 is Christ's great prophecy about His second coming. He's talking about it here, how there's going to be wars and rumors of wars and disease epidemics. All these things are going to get worse and worse and worse. Then there's going to be persecution on the church. Verse 21 says, For then there shall be great tribulation, such as not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.

And unless those days were shortened, no flesh should be saved, but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened. So there is coming a time on the whole world, which the entire Book of Revelation is about. So there's going to come this time when society falls apart, these power comes on the scene, and there's this huge war that's going to destroy humanity. The world fragments into different... There's three great superpowers at the end. You have a sermon on that sometime.

There's three great superpowers at the end that are about to destroy the earth. And Christ comes back. So we take that promise, we say, Okay, this has to be some prophetic message, and the people that have this certain attitude are going to be saved from this calamity, this great tribulation.

So when we look at that, the conclusion we come to is that, Okay, we can see all these attitudes exist in one congregation. There are certain congregations that that's their predominant attitude. That's their predominant way of looking at the Bible, and they have problems, they have... There's certain heresies that some of these churches have. And that if we see it as church eras or church periods, then what we look at and say, Okay, the predominant attitude at the end will be laid to see it.

That's the predominant attitude. It doesn't mean everybody has that attitude, because Christ comes to all of them. But that would be the predominant attitude. So if we look at that explanation, and I think that's the reason if you remember at the very beginning of this series, which you probably don't remember, because it was over a year ago that I started the series and ran through those seven churches and seven sermons. But I had said there are three different explanations of Revelation. I personally believe all three are true.

One is, obviously, there were seven churches. Two, Christ is coming to those churches, so we need all Christians to read all of it, because it's a message to all of us. Read the message to the churches, it says, over and over again. To everybody who's reading that book. So every attitude there, every viewpoint, is important to look at. And three, there is a general history of the church laid out in those churches.

Which means that there is a prophetic historical message here, and that the predominant attitude at the end would be laid to see it. The predominant attitude at the end would be laid to see it. That's the only attitude. I mean, there's a Philadelphia attitude, a Philadelphia approach, a Sardis approach. I mean, there's all these different approaches, but this is the predominant one. So let's go back and review what the problem with Laodicea was.

Because I thought, that's been so long ago, you know, that I gave the sermon, that we need to go back through that. And then I want to go back to the Olivet Prophecy, and look at something Jesus said that's very important. Laodicea was a very wealthy place, known for its sheep production. It was known for the fact that it had a large medical community that produced an iSav that was actually imported throughout the Roman Empire, or exported throughout the Roman Empire.

So it's wealthy, it's a banking center, and it's famous for its wool production, and it's famous for its iSav. So let's go to Revelation 3 and look at the message. There's a lot of explanations of what people are trying to figure out. What exactly would be...

How would you tell if someone was a Laodicean? Sometimes I've seen this, well, they just don't care. They're sort of sleepwalking through their Christianity. Actually, that's Sardis. So what is it? What is it about a Laodicean that Christ gives them a very stern warning? And it's a predominant attitude at the end. Verse 14, And to the angel the church of the Laodiceans write, These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works, that you're neither cold nor hot. I could wish that you were cold or hot. Now, I've heard over the years a lot of explanations for that.

Cold meaning being totally unconverted. Hot meaning being on fire for obeying God. So God's saying, I wish your church was unconverted. I mean, there's a problem there. But if we look at Laodicea itself, it makes sense. Laodicea had no major water source. It literally had to bring its water in from other places, in aqueducts. Laodicea grew up, for one of the reasons why it became a major city, was because of the Romans building aqueducts. So you have water that's coming from Ariopolis, and you have water that's coming from Colossae, where there's natural water. So one aqueduct is bringing in water that's basically from warm hot springs.

You can imagine coming across a semi-arid area on stone aqueducts for miles, this water that comes from a hot spring. The other water was coming from mountains, and it was very cold. And of course, the water would come in, and there would be, in the center of town, there would be a big pool.

The water would come in there, and people would come get their water. Now, if you were rich and you had pipes, you actually had running water, and probably died from lead poisoning, because all their pipes were made out of lead. But if you're a common person, you live longer, because you came to the town square and got your water. The water that ended up there, they were famous for being the most horrible tasting water you can imagine. It wasn't refreshing. It wasn't that a helpful refreshing water, like the cold water.

Or it wasn't the hot water that you'd go sit in that was healing. It was neither refreshing nor healing. It was something that was horrible. It was just tepid, lukewarm water. Must have tasted terrible. So then, it goes on. He says, so then, because you're neither lukewarm and neither cold nor hot. So, you're neither cold nor hot. And there's the problem. What is the hotness they're missing?

What is the coldness they're missing? I will vomit you out of my mouth. I'll spit you out. Now, that's a very frightening statement, because like some of the other statements, some of the Laodiceans are in danger of actually being removed from the body of Christ. That's a very serious thing. I'll spit it out.

And probably in Laodicea, people understood that. People came up and took a drink of water out of the main fountain and spit it out. He says, because you say I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, but do not know that you're wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. I want to stop there, because it's interesting. He doesn't say you have the doctrine of the Nicolaeiatens.

He doesn't say you have the other problems that the other churches had. He doesn't say you're paganized like Thyatira. He doesn't say you're filled with sexual immorality like some of the other churches. The problem with Laodicea was, and this makes this so hard, I mean, I've thought about this a lot and thought, wow, I have to be careful with that. I have to think about this, because the problem is, it's how they see themselves.

You see yourself as this. You see yourself as rich, wealthy, and in need of nothing. And you don't know that you're wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. Now, if this is literal, it's easy to tell any Laodicea, and it shows up at church, because they're living in poverty, they're blind, and they're naked. I think we would recognize them. It's obviously a spiritual state. In this spiritual state, the Laodicean issue is how they see themselves. They see themselves as spiritually rich. They see themselves as spiritually okay.

We got it all together. And they have no idea that before God, that's not who they are. So what are their issues? What are their heresies? We're going to have to look at them. I mean, what would be that problem? How could you have that problem? What would it be?

He says, I counsel you to buy for me gold refined in fire, that you may be rich, and white garments, in other words, white garments are the righteous actions of the saints, as we know in Revelation, that you may be rich, and white garments, that you may be clothed, and the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eyesab that you may see. Now, once again, that's also very interesting, because he now uses the very things Laodicea is famous for. You need eyesab. They exported eyesab. You need to become wealthy. Well, they were rich, and physical wealth was probably a real issue in the church, and probably most people were physically wealthy. And they have to get new clothes. What were they famous for? Clothes. Woah, that's right.

So, it goes right after their society. Let's look at the physical state of your society, and you think spiritually, you don't realize that your issues are... you don't have fine linen on. You need to see things differently. And you need to change the way you're looking at yourself. How you're looking at yourself. Verse 18, or verse 19, As many as I love I rebuke and chasten, therefore be zealous and repent. In other words, they have to become zealous. Now we say, okay, the problem with them is they have no zealousness. Actually, they do in certain things. Now, I have to explain that. They have a certain zealousness in certain things. But they're not zealous in the right things. It's the Sardis people that have no zealousy in anything. So they're zealous in certain things, but he says, you're not zealous in the right way. So you're going to have to zealous and repent. But repent of what? Once again, it's how I look at myself. But what does that mean? Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him and will dine with him and he with me. What's interesting here is Jesus Christ says, I'm standing outside your church and you won't let me in. So it has something to do with Jesus Christ. He's standing outside knocking and they won't let him in. It's his church, and of course there's people laying to see it that don't have this attitude. Not every single person in 95 AD living and laying to see it had this attitude, but it was the predominant attitude. So if there are church eras, this is the predominant attitude of the church before Christ's second coming.

He says, to him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. So there's a great promise to the lay of the sins who are going to overcome. So many of them, or some of them, who knows how many, are going to overcome. And they will be with Christ when he returns. They will be resurrected and be part of the resurrection. So there's a great reward. There's a great forgiveness offered to these people.

But there's a stern warning, just like the other ones.

I mean, some of them, the Sardis, the Thyatira, the warnings to those churches, it's just frightening. Well, this one sort of is, too. You're in danger of not being part of my people anymore.

But he says, those who overcome this, you're going to be, you know, I will get you there. And then he says, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Once again, it's back to everybody better study this, everybody better read this, everybody better think about all these different approaches.

How do we know anything more about the Laodiceans?

It was easy when we were going through Ephesians, because we just went to Acts and we went to the book of Ephesians. And we found all kinds of issues with them that had to do with loving each other and loving God.

Which was their great weakness. But it says that you stood up against the false teachings. They were people who stood up against the false teachings, but they lost something else.

Where do we go to find out what the problem is in the Laodiceans? I mean, Laodice is mentioned a few places in the Bible, but one of them is very, very important. Let's go to Colossians 2.

Colossians 2.

Colossians 3.

And we're going to read this whole...there's 10 verses here I want to read, because we've read this before, but there's something we miss that's very important concerning Laodicea of that time. So it's going to be very important concerning the church at the end time.

Paul writes, At the end of this letter, he says, make sure the Laodiceans get this letter. So if we want to understand the first century problems in Laodicea, we have to go to Colossians. Because this letter was written to them. So whatever problems Colossae had, Laodicea had the same issues.

Now he also wrote a letter to Laodiceans, but God did not choose to save that one for whatever reason. But we do have this one.

So we have a letter written to Colossae and Laodicea.

One of the problems that they had, if letter to the Colossians applies to them, which it does, they fully did not understand the centrality of Jesus Christ and what God is doing. They didn't understand it. He has to explain to them, God created all things through Jesus Christ. He has to explain to them, Christ is the head of the church.

Now you start to see some of the problems that would be in Laodicea.

This sort of self-sufficiency, spiritual self-sufficiency, is not because they don't see Christ as the head of the church. They don't understand Jesus Christ as the head of the church.

But they're sufficient, and they have, in Revelation, it doesn't see any heresies.

But we'll see that they did have a few, and they're very interesting ones. They're not ones that the other churches had.

Verse 4, This I say, lest anyone should deceive you with pervasive words, For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, Rejoicing to see your good order, and steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As you therefore have received Jesus Christ the Lord, so walk in him, Rooted and build up in him, and established in the faith, As you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. So he said, you know, as they had been taught was what we know as the Scripture. The Scripture is the basis of it. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, According to the tradition of men, According to the basic principles of the world, And not according to Christ. For him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, And you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power. If you read all of Colossians 1 and 2, He just keeps pounding away. You don't understand Jesus Christ and what God is doing through him. And that he brings us to the Father, and he works in us, And he is the head of the Church. And they didn't see that.

They didn't understand that.

So, okay, now we can see part of the problem is a lack of understanding in Jesus Christ, Of the centrality of what God is doing through him.

But we have something else in this letter that we read, And you've heard read and expounded upon in sermons, You've read about it in U.C.G. literature, Worldwide Church of God literature, And that is in Colossians 2, Where he's talking about judging how you keep the Sabbath in the Holy Days. And we usually go through this explaining how he's not saying, Don't keep the Sabbath in the Holy Days. But that's not exactly what he means. You have to go through some of the Greek words. And this is the predominant scripture used to say that you don't have to keep the Sabbath anymore.

I'm not going to go through that explanation. You've heard that explanation. I want to look at this in terms of what is the underlying cause of what's happening here. So we can better understand the Laodiceans that he's writing this to. Which, Colossae, had the same problem. So let's go to verse 16.

He says, So let no one judge you in food or drink, Or regarding a festival or a new moons or Sabbaths, Which are a shadow of things that come, but the substances of Christ. And once again, you go through that and you tear that apart. You look at that in the total context, instead of just pulling it out of nowhere. And basically, in fact, in our men's group that we're... As you know, we have this men's group that is 20 men that are creating a manual and a group. So we can include other men in later. But we're actually experimenting. We're actually creating what we're doing, Which is a very fascinating thing we're doing.

And one of the things that we do have is occasionally we have a defending your faith. And a couple of men had to get up and go through this. Chris, the hard part about it is Mr. Frankie, myself, Mr. Luck, Mr. Horvath, Mr. Smith. We're Protestants. We argue it from their viewpoint. And they have to keep explaining it, even though there's people out there asking questions.

Well, that's not right. So I'm not going to go through that, but obviously what it means is they were judging people on these issues. Which are a shadow. It didn't say which were a shadow, which are a shadow. This is even the tense of the words here. These things are shadows of Christ. So they were judging each other on issues of eating and drinking and the way they kept the Sabbath.

And holy days. Why? This is what's important. He says, let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, and shooting to those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom all the body nourishing it together by joints and ligaments grows, with the increase that is from God. That's a 40-minute sermon right there. We have a viewpoint that's based on false humility and worship of angels.

Worship of angels was a secret knowledge issue. In other words, we have knowledge that you don't have. And that knowledge makes us special. So there's this false humility, and there is this secret knowledge, secret interpretations. But really, he says, you're puffed up in the flesh. Now we're starting to understand neither hot nor cold. Neither hot nor cold, because it's not driven by God's Spirit. Not holding fast to the head. Jesus Christ is the head of the church. There's a major problem. In which the church comes together. Verse 20, Therefore if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, now realize he can't be talking about the Sabbath, which is one of the Ten Commandments, because it's not one of the basic principles of the world.

It's a command of Almighty God. You've relegated the Ten Commandments to principles of the world. If you're really going to follow through, you can pull that one verse out and build this argument. If you put it in the context, what? The Ten Commandments are the basic principles of the world? So that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about false humility. He's talking about this worship of angels. It shows us one of the heresies they have. It's an over-fascination with angels. We know angels exist. We know angels interact with us. Remember, they were a product of their culture. What's interesting is, in the 70s and 80s and 90s, I don't see it so much anymore, but there were television shows and movies about angels all over the place.

I mean, touched by an angel. Never saw it, but I remember reading about it. Angels in the outfield. And you go back into the 30s and 40s, movies about angels that would come and interact with people. It was just part of the culture, fascination with angels. Now the fascination was Satan and demons. It switched over to the dark side of the angels. And now there's an absolute fascination with Satan and the demons. And there's lots of movies about demons and demon possession, because people are fascinated with it. Well, they had a fascination with these kinds of things, influenced by their pagan society around them.

He says, let's go back to verse 20. Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why as though living in the world do you subject yourselves to regulations? Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle. Now, they'll try to take this and say, oh, what this means is the Old Testament laws about eating pork or something.

This has nothing to do with it, because it's the basic elements of the world. This is what is commonly called asceticism, that you obtain a higher form of righteousness, a higher form of relationship with God, based upon the physical things you do. It's where the whole monastery idea came from. If you slept on a bed with no pillow and no mattress, and you ate nothing but bread and vegetables, and drank nothing but water, and you were celibate, and you spent six hours a day in prayer, you had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to do prayer, then wake up at seven o'clock in the morning to do prayer, and you sang songs all day long, and all you did was manual labor, read the Scripture, and pray, that you would obtain a higher level of pure spirituality, asceticism.

So there's this belief that physical things, there's physical things, and these physical things, which you can see and other people can see, is what determines your level. Now there are physical things we do. He's talking about other beyond, but simply what God says. Watch which concerning these things which perage with the using, according to the commandments and doctrines of men, once again, we're not into what the Bible clearly says, we're into the commandments and doctrines of men.

In other words, the people in Colossae and Laodicea were simply making up more and more regulations that proved they were righteous, and because of that they were neither hot nor cold, the marriage is self-sufficient. When you get into the late... It's like all these churches we went through, you realize the depth of what we know about them, and the depth of the problems they have, are the very things that we wrestle with all the time. We wrestle with all those attitudes of those seven churches.

He says, these things indeed have an appearance of wisdom and self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but there are no values against the indulgence of the flesh. He says, they don't change the man. In fact, the rest of this letter is about Paul saying, we have to become new people internally, in a way we think, in a way we feel. Now that produces, yes, outward things, yes.

It produces physical things. But it's not that the physical things now that we make up prove who we are. Verse 16 of chapter 4, he says, Now, when this epistle is read among you, see that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans. So this letter is for the Laodiceans. So, if we look forward and say, okay, before Christ comes back, the general state of Christians will be Laodicean.

This is going to be the general state of the church. Not everybody, but the general state. False humility, worship of angels, very, very concentrated on physical things, physical proof, that says, yes, this makes me. This makes me righteous. I said that I wanted to go back to the Sermon on the Mount. Because in the Sermon on the Mount, we generally talk about the first half of it, which is talking about Christ's return and the state of the world, and the wars and the epidemics and all the other things that are going to happen, and what he calls the Great Tribulation, and all these things, and Christ's returning.

But half of that message isn't to the world at all. In fact, over half of it isn't to the world at all. It's to the church at the end time. I gave a sermon on that five years ago when I first came here, and realized I haven't covered some of that material since. But it's interesting that he gives the church at the end time some very, very specific messages, which apply to the church at any time, but especially at the end time.

So let's go to Matthew 25. The Sermon on the Mount is Matthew 24 and 25.

He actually gives a parable in chapter 24 that's to the church, the parable of the fig tree. He even talks about how there will come a time when there's persecution on the church, and people in the church itself will betray one another.

That's a scary thing, but that's going to happen.

And then in chapter 25, verse 1, Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins. Remember, this is an answer to what will be the signs of your coming.

Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins, who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise, and five of them were foolish.

Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. Now, a couple things here. People try to make...it's interesting. You know, you get...I have all kinds of Bible commentaries and things I've collected over the years. And, well, the bride isn't mentioned here, so these are bridesmaids, so who are they?

The whole point of the parable...parables always break down at some point. I mean, they're general. But the point is, Christ is coming back for the bride. But the bride isn't one person, so we have a bunch of virgins here. The virgins...the word virgin always applies spiritually to the true people of God.

You know, the great...the great false religion of the end time is called a prostitute.

So we see that in the Old Testament. We see it in the New Testament. In other words, these are spiritually pure people waiting to marry their husband, who is Jesus Christ. So these are all Christians. That's the point of this. They all have oil. Oil is a symbol of God's Spirit in the Scripture. So they have lamps that are burning. You see the light? Right? Where the lights... When God's Spirit comes into us, we're not allowed to go hide.

We can't go hide. We have to live life in the world as lights. It does us no good to hide and come here and share our lights with each other. We have to walk through life with our lights.

But they all come...they're all preparing for His return. So this is the church at the end time. And this is the all-sleep.

I want you to understand something here. It doesn't say part of them sleep. It says all of them sleep. Something happens as we get closer and closer to the end, where the church is just overwhelmed and sleeps.

Everybody sleeps.

And then we find out Christ is coming back. And everybody wakes up. And when they do, some...I see this trying to make exact... Half the people...I don't think you can take all parables and make them exact. Some of the people aren't prepared for Christ's return. They are prepared. But everybody's asleep. Everybody wakes up. And at midnight a cry was heard, behold the bridegroom is coming. Go out to meet Him. Then all the virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. Okay. The lamps are down...they haven't been trimming their lamps. In other words, the problem here is part of it is a lack of preparation for the return of Jesus Christ.

Part of it is going to be the world is going to get so oppressive. It's going to be very difficult to stay focused. And very difficult not to participate. It's just going to be hard. But part of it is, I'm okay. I'm rich and increasing with goods and need to do nothing. And let me show you why. Let me show you how. Because I do all these things.

Remember the Pharisees said, hey, I fast twice a week. There's no command to fast twice a week. But you know, that is very interesting. In the second century, Christians were commanded by many of the leaders of the church. They were actually leaders of the proto-Catholic church, unless they were in the true church. They were commanding their people to fast twice a week.

But you couldn't do it on, I forget which two days, because those were the two days that the Jews fasted on. Two days a week. So they were actually commanding people to fast twice a week. Because then we'll all have these... Now, we are to fast. In fact, you can't have a proper relationship with God without fasting once in a while. But there's no command to fast twice a week.

But the whole idea was, if I fast twice a week, I'm really rich and increasing with goods and need nothing. I get this down. And I can tell everybody I fast twice a week. And we don't do it on the day that the Jews do. And that makes me really special. You know, if someone was really fasting for the right reasons, no one would know they were fasting. Unless they went to somebody and said, I know you've been sick, I've been fasting for you. You know what I mean? I've been imploring God for you. But you would need to tell people that you're fasting twice a week.

In fact, that you need to tell them is the problem, isn't it? I am rich and increased with goods and need nothing. Because look at what I'm doing. I can prove it by this. I can prove it by this. So they all trim their lambs. They all begin to realize, we're not totally prepared for this. And they fully said to the wise, give us some of your oil for our lambs are burning out. In other words, we're in trouble here. We're not prepared.

We're totally unprepared spiritually for what's happening. Give us some of your oil for our lambs are going out. But the wise answered and said, no, lest there should not be enough for us and you. Go gather to those who sell and buy for yourselves. Now, what's that? You can't buy the Holy Spirit. The point is, they're saying, you know, once again, it's a parable. No, get right with God. I can't give you spirit. I've laid hands on hundreds of people, and I've never given anyone God's spirit, but I've seen people get it. I've seen their lives change. And a whole lifetime, and even some of them die, and you see God in their lives.

But I never gave anybody the spirit. God does. We can pray for one another. We can help one another. We can encourage one another. We can correct each other. But you can't give anybody God's spirit. And they realize, we're not responding to God's spirit. What do we do? The other ones say, you've got to do the process. You really need to pray. You really need to fast. You really need to get back in your Bible. You need to go to God.

Because I can't do that for you. And so while they went to by, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding, and the door was shut. And afterward the other virgins came also saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Surely I say to you, I do not know you. Watch therefore you do not know neither the day nor the hour which the Son of Man is coming.

That is frightening. Jesus Christ saying, I don't know you. Part of the problem is they don't know Him. They don't know who He really is. At least, you know, we tie this in to the message to lay the sins. They don't know who He really is. But they feel good about themselves. So they're neither refreshingly cold nor are they hot and healing. They're okay. They're not dead like this artist.

They do have special knowledge. When you take this message to the end-time church, and then you take the message to lay it to see you, which we know was to those people then, but also in the context of the historical prophetic viewpoint, it's the main attitude of the end-time. This describes that. This lays right on top of it, of what the church is going to be like. He's going to go to sleep. He's going to go to sleep.

Didn't say it dies out. And so this is a grave warning to us. Let's review then what the lay history in church is like. It's neither hot nor cold. Not meaning, you know, hot for doing the work of God, or cold and unconverted. No, they're doing most of what appears to be just right with God, but they don't see themselves correctly. So they're neither hot in their healing towards other people and healing of what God wants them to do, and they're not refreshing to themselves or others. I mean, they're not receiving something from God. They believe in their own spiritual self-sufficiency because they need nothing. They have a form of godliness, but they live by a weak understanding of God's work through Jesus Christ, as Savior and Master and Head of the Church.

They are strict in physical matters, but they don't understand their own inner spiritual state before God. They seem very spiritual as they judge others on issues that are not biblically commanded, which was the issue that we see in Colossae. And they see themselves as possessors of special secret knowledge. Let's conclude by going to Romans 13. I can finally email those few people and say, I gave the final sermon, it'll be posted soon. Romans... But I was surprised. I gave this last week in Nashville.

And there were people that in the church, 30 years, and said they did not know of an explanation of Revelation 2 and 3, that involved a prophetic message of errors. They didn't even know it, which I was a little surprised at. They know it hasn't been ignored. Romans 13, verse 11. I can't tell you when Christ is going to return. I don't know. You know, we live in a panic because the world is so bad. Oh, it's going to get all the worse. I'm not saying that to be negative. I'm just saying, don't panic now. This is the worst time to be panicked because it's not that bad yet. Get up every day and thank God for today. You know, I do that now every day. I thank God for today because today is a good day. It's the day God has given to us. It's the day God has given to us. So thank Him for this day. When you thank Him for this day and you see what He does every day, we're not filled with all this anxiety. He says, and do this knowing the time now, knowing the time, that now it is high time to wake out of sleep. This call is going to go out from now till the time when Jesus comes back. The church is going to have to wake up. The slow, hard process of waking up. When I woke up in the middle of the surgery, which I was supposed to, and they're doing the eye, they're going to knock you out for five minutes. Then you're supposed to wake up because they have to tell you to move your eyeball around so they can get rid of that cataract. I woke up because I asked the anesthesiologist, how long does it take this stuff to work? She says right away, and I said, oh, yeah, it is. Next thing I knew, I woke up. The first thing I said was, man, does that stuff work. I remember the doctor saying, you have to be quiet. We're operating on you. Oh, okay. I told that to him later, and the anesthesiologist said, you know, it's funny. That stuff we give you does give you a little bit of the power of suggestion. When he told you to be quiet, your brain said, oh, well, I reason through it. I have to be quiet. He is in my eye, right? But it was a powerful suggestion. I thought, you know, you give this to somebody who is not aware of what's happening, you could get them to do all kinds of things. I mean, I wasn't aware it was happening, so it wasn't a big deal. But later when they said, oh, yeah, it's amazing sometimes, some people are so just subject to that drug. Anyways, I don't know how I got into that. Except I woke up, okay? But most of the time, coming out of sleep isn't that easy, is it? You don't just wake up, because they make you wake up there. You ever not get enough sleep and you can't get awake? Okay. That's going to be a lot of our spiritual experience. Half awake, half asleep, struggling. Struggling to be awake. In a time that it's just going to be natural for us to go to sleep.

He says that now it is high time to awaken out of sleep. For now, our salvation is nearer than when we first believed, and that you know is true. You don't know if Christ is coming back five years from now, but you know it was a whole lot closer than 20 years ago. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness. Let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. Think of all those things. That's a long list there. Partying, drunkenness, sexual sins, lust, fighting among ourselves, envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, there we get to the answer to the way it is again. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.

Okay, we'll have a song, and we'll take about a 10-minute break, and then we'll have about a half-hour Bible study, and then we'll go eat something.