Outline of Revelation

The book of Revelation is the most discussed book in the Bible. Well, we discuss it, we discuss it, we discuss it. An argued book in the Bible in terms of what it means. It's very interesting. If you go back and read Herman Armstrong's booklet on the book of Revelation, which many people say had such a profound effect on him, it contains a very small amount of actual information. He picked out what was obvious and said this was what's obvious, and he ignored what wasn't obvious.

And what it gave all of us who read that, and I remember reading that many years ago, this big overview of the book of Revelation. And you go through his ministry, and you'll find there's whole sections of the book of Revelation he never bothered to explain. It's probably because he didn't know how to explain.

There's parts of the book of Revelation I don't know how to explain. I hope that doesn't make all of you feel bad somehow. The book of Revelation contains prophecies that we won't know exactly what it means until we see it happening, which is part of the reason for prophecy. It's not that we can always predict it, it's that we will know what's happening when it happens. So what I want to do tonight is just do an overview of the book of Revelation.

Mainly, well, we do know. And there's parts of it that we'll brief through. I mean, obviously, we can't go through all 22 chapters in any great detail. But this is an overview so that when you read the book of Revelation, you can see how the parts fit together. Sort of what we have is this thousand-piece puzzle, and now you'll get sort of a half a picture of what it's supposed to look like.

And there are some sections here people always come up and say, what does this mean? Am I answering easily as well? I don't know. I can give you three or four explanations. I think we've become a tour enough to know. There are certain sections of the Bible we can say, what means this, this, or this? I'm not sure which one. That's okay. God will help us figure that out. But what we do know is actually a lot more than what was taught in the church 40 years ago.

It's actually more than what was taught in the church 40 years ago. We have learned something. We have learned to look at the book of Revelation in its bigger context instead of trying to cram into it the exact headlines on the news at six o'clock today. We've learned you can't always cram this headline into this part of Revelation. You have to look at Revelation in a bigger picture. There was a time in the World Wide Church of God, and I go back to the radio church of God, and my family goes back to the radio church of God.

Now this was all before my time because I was alive at the time, but I have plain truth magazines from the 1940s that says Hitler is the beast. And you can pull a few scriptures from Revelation, and it was hard to argue that in that context of those headlines. And then in about 1943, there's this article that says we made a mistake, Hitler is not the beast.

We just figured this out, he's not. So we learned not to do that, but at the same time we have to look at the book of Revelation, especially in the context of the Holy Days, because these Holy Days are celebrating the events that could happen. And this first slide tells us something. It'll come up, just one second.

What we're doing is, I'm not clicking them up. There's a poor person back there trying to click up and keep up with me. So that's okay, we'll work this out. Revelation 1-3 says, Blessed be who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is near. So we're blessed to read this. Sometimes the book of Revelation seems like a curse.

What does it mean? I always get a kick out of... I get the History Channel on television. They actually produce four different History Channels, and if you have certain table systems, I get all four of them. And they, on a regular basis, will do a show on what is Armageddon, what is the Apocalypse, what does the book of Revelation mean.

And they'll have all these arguments, two or three part series on all these people explaining the book of Revelation. And so much of the time, they're picking out details and trying to explain the details, instead of looking at the book as a whole. Now when we look at the book as a whole, and there's just a... I'm hitting highlights here, because I'm skipping through this book.

But as the next slide shows, there's something at the very beginning of it that's very important. It's all good. I'll feed you. There are seven statements made right at the very beginning about Jesus Christ and His followers. Because this is the revelation of Jesus Christ. It's actually not the revelation of John. John just has to be the recipient of it. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ. And if we look at these verses, it says, Jesus Christ won, who is the faithful witness. Now I can do an entire sermon, and you can do an entire personal Bible study out of these two verses.

Or three verses. You can take these three verses and make an entire Bible study. Do it sometime. Look what it means to say that Jesus Christ is a faithful witness. Look up all the passages that have to do with God or Christ being a faithful witness. You'll be surprised so much as it is. Two, He's the firstborn from the dead. Important foundational doctrine concerning the resurrection. Three, ruler over the kings of the earth. And this is all about Him coming back to take and set up or take back dominion from Satan.

And for Him to take that dominion and rule over humanity. To Him who loves us. That's interesting. He loves us. So there's an important statement. Five, and has freed us from our sins and His blood. Boy, this is a huge doctrinal statement. This is huge in this sentence. Six, and made us to be a kingdom and priest to serve His God and Father to Him in glory and power forever and ever. Amen. So we are to be the kings and priests in that kingdom, serving Him in the kingdom of His Father.

Then seven, look! He is coming in the clouds and every eye will see Him and those who pierced Him. And all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of Him. Reminiscent of the statement made in the Old Testament is Zechariah that says that people will mourn because they realize He's the one who they pierced.

This is Jesus who is the Christ. So those three verses right there, that's the sermon in itself. That's a personal Bible study in itself. Now the next two chapters, the next slide, the next two chapters, what we have, and once again, this is a huge study. I once did six sermons, five sermons on these two chapters. Now I'd like to give again sometime. But what we have is the seven churches of Revelation. Smarta, or Ephesus, Smarta, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Aesaea. These were actually seven churches that existed at the time. Well, that's so tiny.

Can you see that? Okay. That actually existed and this was a letter sent to those churches. The ruins of these cities still exist today. Now there's big cities around them in a couple of cases. But the ruins are still there today. Colossae and Areopolis were just around these seven cities. So they existed. There were seven churches. So we can derive some... There's three different explanations. If you go to commentary, you'll find three different explanations of this. And then I'm going to tell you my opinion. Well, I won't do that. Because it's my opinion. I'll be giving you my opinion sometimes.

We know that those seven churches existed. So some look at the Bible and say, Ah, the meaning of Revelation 2 and 3 is seven churches that existed in 95 AD. And then others look at this and say, Well, this is a little more complicated because this actually deals with this prophecy of seven church eras that go down through history because Christ comes at the end. You know, of these seven church eras or groups. So this is actually a prophecy that goes through the entire history of the church.

And there's a third group that says what this represents is seven types of Christians and seven types of congregations through history. Now, you know what my opinion is to those three? Yes. I believe they're all true. Now that's my opinion. They obviously existed at seven churches at that time as a historical fact. You can look and see through the history of Christianity and see the idea of church eras.

Now, you cannot exactly say when one started and one stopped. That is not possible. People tried to do that. You can't. But you can see where the church went through various stages over the last two thousand years.

And Christ comes back to all those churches, which means they all exist at the end. So what we have is, yes, it has applications in all three of those areas. Now that's my opinion. Because you'll get people that will argue one of those three as the only explanation. And I frustrate them because my answer is yes. And when you see that, you almost said this really comes alive. There's a historical meaning to this book that is phenomenal to understand what actually historically happened to those seven churches.

And we have a little bit of information from the Scripture. We actually have some information outside the Scripture that tells us some about the history of what happened in Asia Minor and happened to those seven churches. We have an understanding that this church timeline goes on for two thousand years. We also understand that we today can have the Ephesus attitude, the Thyatira attitude, the Laodicean attitude, the Philadelphia attitude, all in the Church of God at the same time. And it can be individuals have those attitudes, entire congregations can have those acts.

So we learn from this on a lot of different levels. So that's my heresy for tonight. Next slide. What has the church taught over the years? Yes. What's funny is a lot of times people will argue a definition of Revelation 2 and 3 based on when they came into the radio or worldwide church of God because different things were taught over the years. We'll argue our point because that's what was taught when we came in.

Where a year earlier sometimes it was a little different. Or, especially in the sixties, different things would be being taught at the same time. The churches weren't always...they were pretty loosely...sometimes...I mean, you have no internet. The connection between a local pastor and Pasadena sometimes was pretty broad. And sometimes different things were taught. Now, this next quote is from Revelation 5. I have this from the NIV. John P. DeSouza's scroll was seven seals. Now, the seven seals supply now this basis for much of the rest of the book of Revelation. You're worthy to take the scroll and to open it's seals because you were slain. But he said there was no one worthy to do this.

And he was distressed. Here's a book with seven...or a scroll with seven seals. Seals were...you know, they were made of...sort of looking for plastic. Well, they did plastic. Wax. Plastic was close. That was...that was what I was about to say. No, plastic isn't right. Okay, wax. You get seven seals on this scroll and each one has to be ripped open.

And nobody can open it. And then there's one person in heaven that God says can't open this. You're worthy to take the scroll and open it's seals because you were slain. And with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God and they will reign on the earth. So Jesus Christ opens this. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

What's really important in this statement is that this was an understanding. It took the church a long time to figure this out. It took the Apostle Paul. It took his ministry to get the church to understand this. That God had not abandoned Israel but during the church Israel was not the focus of God's work. During the church era it's the church that's the focus of God's work. Israel still has this purpose. And the church are people from every tribe, language and nation.

Because the church is being prepared for that spiritual resurrection to serve God when Christ reigns on this earth. And that's our purpose. So he is only Christ is able to do this. We have the seven seals of Revelation. The next slide here. And this is going to supply the basis for much of what we're going to talk about now. Trying to put this in some kind of order.

The seven seals. Okay. This next painting. I love this painting. It's in the public domain so I can use it. So this next slide is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It's a great painting. It's an old painting. There's no royalties to it, or with it anymore, connected to it anymore, or copyright law. So it could be used. When the first four seals are opened, we have what is called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So remember, the first four seals and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are that same thing.

Let's go to Revelation 6. Revelation 6. And when I saw them, the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures, now these are angelic beings, saying, with a voice like thunder, come and see. And I looked to behold a white horse, he who sat on it had a bow, and a crowd was given to him, and he went out and conquered, conquering and to conquer. And he opened the second seal, and I heard the second living creature say, come and see it.

Another horse, Farry Red, went out, and on it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, that the people should kill one another, and it was given to him a great sword. When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, come and see it. And I looked and behold a black horse. And he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, a quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, that do not harm the oil and the wine.

In other words, you've got some real famine when it comes to substance foods here. Then he opened the fourth seal, and I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, come and see. And looked and behold a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed after him. Now I'm going to stop there. We'll come right back here in a minute.

Because we have these four horses. He opened these seals, and each one now is represented by a horse with a rider, who goes around the world. These are global events. The preterist view of Revelation is that it already took place in 70 AD. That's a school of theology that looks at Revelation. It can't be true, because these are worldwide events.

What happened in 70 AD didn't happen all over the world. It happened in Jerusalem. These are worldwide events. How worldwide are they? Well, let's look at the rest of this verse now. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, that killed the sword with hunger, with death, by the beast of the earth. Someone asked me the other day, is this Ebola outbreak? Is that one of the seals? They said, no. No, it could cause, it could be the beginning of it. So how do you know that? Is the tribulation about the start? No. How do you know that? The tribulation, we'll show in a minute, doesn't start until the first four seals are completed.

You will know the tribulation is going to begin because the fourth of the world will have died or be in the process of dying. You will then look back on this as the tribulation begins, as the good old days.

Right now, people, we're in a panic all the time on how bad the world is. This is the good type. Now, I don't mean to have to be dramatic or to scare anybody. We have to understand, we cannot panic now. These are the good old days. We will look back and say, remember the good old days? 2014?

These are the good old days.

These events are so horrific that one fourth of the world dies.

Now, 80 million people died in World War II.

There was, what, 11 million World War I plus another 18 million for disease afterwards.

That wasn't a fourth of the world. It wasn't even close. The bubonic plague that wiped out a fourth to a third of Europe, it didn't wipe out the rest of the world. It wasn't even close. Except for the flood caused by Almighty God, there has been nothing that we know of that destroyed a fourth of humanity. It is unprecedented.

So, the first four seals create that level of catastrophe. Now, what's very interesting, and let's go to Matthew. Let's go to the next slide here. Because when we go to Matthew 24, the Olivette prophecy, we find that the Olivette prophecy begins to give us, there's details in there that really you don't understand until we get the book of Revelation.

It's like the book of Daniel. You don't really get everything in Daniel until you get the Olivette prophecy. You don't really get everything in the Olivette prophecy until you get Revelation. Each thing is built, you know, the deliver in details. When you look at the first part of the Olivette prophecy, there will be wars and rumors of wars and pestilences, and it goes on and on, all these terrible things, and then what does it say? Let's go back to... I'll just read to Matthew 24 what he says after all these pestilences and bad times.

He's like, oh wow, nothing can be worse than that. And Jesus says, remember Matthew 24 is in the context of what are the signs of your coming. And he says, how there's wars and rumors of wars. And verse 6, the nation will rise up against nations, and there will be famines and pestilences of earthquakes. Whoa! And then, verse 8 says, this is just the beginning. This is just the beginning.

And what he describes here is exactly what we read in the first four seals. So when we put these together, what we understand is, the earth gets... the entire population of the world moves into chaos. And let me tell you something about Satan. He's brilliant, but you know where he does his best work? In chaos. He creates chaos, and he does his best work in chaos.

What's going to happen isn't... you know, we're waiting for the evil beast to show up and take over. The evil beast, you know, this beast power takes over because the world descends into chaos. Absolute chaos. It all breaks down. Why do people follow the beast? It is the only hope left in their minds. There is no hope left. I've had people ask me, is President Obama going to round us all up and put us in concentration camps?

No. How do you know that? First four seals haven't happened. Haven't happened. So you have to... if you have a biblical viewpoint of prophecy, you're waiting for certain things to happen that you know are going to happen. Now, so we have these... the first four seals and Matthew 24 are related scriptures. So you can read them and study them together. Now this white horse... let's look at this next slide because there's two white horses in Revelation. And it's very important that you know the difference because many commentators, if you get a book on the commentator...

or commentary of the book of Revelation, will tell you that this seal represents Christ. This seal represents Christianity. Now understand what it says. This white horse and rider will conquer. So if you believe that represents Christianity, you're going to try to create a giant Christian army. You say, well that could never happen. If the Muslim push hard enough, in the United States and Europe is faced with collapse, a Christian army could be formed. Now I'm not saying that's going to happen.

I'm saying these are all... there's scenarios of how this could happen, or dozens. But you have to understand what's going to happen. This white horse does not represent Jesus Christ. It represents a false version of Jesus Christ. Because there's another white horse that appears at the end of the book that is Jesus Christ with a white horse. So there has to be this false version of it. It's going to seem to make sense.

It's going to seem to make sense. There needs to be a holy army. That you can say, okay, a holy army of... maybe that's a horde of pagans. But the white horse represents Jesus Christ. It's going to appear to be Christian. Now that's a little speculation. I understand that. But that is how we've looked at that forever.

I mean, for the last hundred years in our culture. As we looked at this white horse here as a representation of a false kind of Christianity that's going to form. Christianity today is morphing into something terribly different than what it used to be. And it was flawed, as you all know, before. We used to think Christmas in Easter was the worst thing. It's going to get a whole lot worse than that. It's going to morph into something totally different. So we have to understand these two horses. Now we have the fifth seal. The fifth seal. Let's go to Revelation 6.

We'll come back, by the way, to Matthew 24 here in a minute. So you can put a marker there. Go back to Revelation 6. So we have the first four seals. The world is going into chaos. Governments are collapsing. Economies are collapsing. Earthquakes are happening. Diseases like Ebola are wiping out entire populations.

People are fighting for food. Food delivery systems are building to grow food. Certain parts of the world is ceased from happening. Let's study what happened in Somalia. Let's study the history of Somalia in the last 30 years and you'll see what chaos does. Because that's absolute chaos. It produces evil. So the world is now going into this collapse. And you have... Now let's look at verse 9. When he opened the fifth seal, okay, so we move... A fourth of the world is dead or dying and in this chaos...

When there's chaos... Let me tell you something about human beings. When there's chaos, here's what leaders do who want power. They're corrupt leaders. They've got to find somebody to blame. What did Hitler do? How do you take an intelligent people like the Germans and turn them into what they were? So they had concentration camps. Their civilization was collapsing because of the Great Depression. The democracy they've been set up in Germany wasn't working.

You know the first people he rounded up and put in the concentration camps? Homosexuals and Gypsies. The German people didn't like them. They were ruining their culture. And then he had to find a scapegoat. There was the Jews. They're the reason for your problem. Well, there's going to be a reason for the problem. He opened the fifth seal and I saw under the altar the souls of those who have been slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they held.

And they crowd with a loud voice saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Now, once again, this is not literal. How long will we still be dead? So if they're dead, they can't be asking how long will we still be dead. What is the saying is God's remembering these people and he's not going to resurrect them yet.

Then a white robe was given to each of them and it was said to them that they should rest a little longer. You stay dead a little longer. So this is like a play. In fact, parts of Revelation is like watching a play. You can't rest. You can't stay dead if you're resurrected or alive.

So he's saying stay dead. Rest a little longer until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who should be killed as they were was completed. And so in the fifth seal, we have a persecution on any true people of God. A persecution on any true people of God. And it will probably be done somewhat in the name of Christianity. Because we already have a false white horse ruling. What's interesting is we go back to Matthew 24 and it says, Remember, the first eight verses are about, okay, here's what's going to happen. But this is the beginning of sorrows.

Oh, we can connect this right to the first four seals, the four horses of the apocalypse. Notice what he says, verse 8, And then they will deliver you, while the subject changes dramatically from the world to you. The you here, he's talking to the disciples.

He's talking to the church. He says, Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And the rest of this, the next few verses talk about the church. Then he goes back to talking about the world. And then, the whole last part of the chapter of 24, and all of chapter 25 of Matthew, is about the church. It's not about the world at all. The all-in-the-prophecy of Matthew 24-25, it's only very small part in there, it's about the world.

The great majority of that, of the teaching of Jesus on the Mount of Olives, is about the church. So we need to read that. You know, we usually read the first eight verses, and then we go to the part about the tribulation, and say, Oh, there's the meat of Matthew 24, with all of the prophecy, for this thing many times, that, whoa, most of this is about the church.

And some of it's not very good. That one's not very good. So we have the fifth seal. So let's show the next slide here. We got the four horsemen. So far we got this. First four seals. We know that. That's what Revelation says. There's no secret knowledge happening here tonight. We're just going through what it says.

Then you got the fifth seal. Revelation 6 talks about persecution. Matthew 24 talks about persecution. And then there's a statement made in Matthew 24 that we think ties this together. And this has been our interpretation of this. And I'm trying to explain what is the difference between obvious and interpretation. And every once in a while I'll tell you my opinion, but not too much. So let's look at what has been our interpretation of why we say it. Let's go back to Matthew 24 and let's look at verse 15. It talks about the abomination of desolation.

And it talks about how people have to flee. Now remember, they're being persecuted. The people of God are being persecuted. Verse 21. For then there would be great tribulation, such as not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no door 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. Now we look at this and what we say, okay, if we take this literally, the Bible talks about tribulation of the world. This is when the tribulation begins. This is when the tribulation begins. Now what's interesting, all of Revelation is not in chronological order. But if we take what we've covered so far, which is the simplest explanation, always look for the simplest explanation first. Because God's not trying to hide anything from it. It's just complicated for us. There's four seals, Christ over each one of those seals, and events.

And it takes time. It doesn't happen like an hour. But these events keep building and building and building. That's why I say maybe the first four seals have started. I don't know. How many years does it take to kill to eventually afford that the people are dying? Actually, with some things like Ebola, it doesn't take a lot. The wars that would cost for that, the famine it would cause, is enormous. But these events begin to build and begin to build.

The fourth of the world dies. And there's persecution of the church. But during this time of the collapse of society, the persecution of the church, Revelation tells us another series of things happen. Let's go to the next slide. And here's, when you look at this, you can see something. What we have in Revelation 13 is the rise of the beast power. Where do they get the power to persecute the church?

And we do know there are this first horse that is riding, which is a false religion that's having impact on the world, but it looks like Christ. We have in Matthew 24 the abomination of desolation. Now, we could go through, it would take us a couple hours, but we could go through the various times where the abomination of desolation has been fulfilled. It's actually been fulfilled twice already, and there's a third time it's going to happen. And each of those other fulfillments tell us an awful lot about the future fulfillment of it.

But what Luke tells us that John didn't record, Luke says that this involves an invasion of Jerusalem. That's very important. They'll write that down. That the abomination of desolation involves an invasion of armies of Jerusalem. And Revelation 12, part of the church is taken into its place in the wilderness. Yes. The United Church of God still believes that part of the church goes into a place in the wilderness. Outside of that, I don't want else to tell you. I have no idea where it is, because it wasn't Petra.

It could be there just as well as anybody's house. I don't know. I have no idea how we get there. And I have no idea how we're told to get there. I do know this from Matthew 24. If some man comes and tells you he's in secret over here, or Christ is out in the desert, don't go.

So someone comes and tells you, we have to flee because Christ is here. Don't go there, because He told us not to do that. So however we're going to go, it's going to be supernatural. He's going to tell us something. God's going to reveal it to us. God's going to do it. So the church has to go to its place in the wilderness, and then we have Revelation 11, the two witnesses, come on the scene. You think, oh, what's the... How does this all work together? This all happens in a very short period of time.

Well, those four seals, first four seals, reach their combination. Where a fourth of the world is either dead or dying. It all collapses. And in a very short period of time, we're talking about 30 to 45 days, what we have is the beast of Revelation. The beast power comes together.

Remember, those kings give their power to the beast, but for a short time. In other words, this is a short-term agreement. The beast power isn't arranged because, oh, well, we're going to take over the world. They're taking over the world because we've agreed to work together because civilization is collapsing. Civilization is collapsing. So they give the ten kings, give their power to the beast. It's just a for sure period of time. This is a long-term deal. This is chaos. The only reason I say that is, I've worked out all kinds of ways that this could happen. And I can almost guarantee you, if any way I've worked out is not the way it'll happen.

You get sent out and work out all kinds of ways, this is going to happen. Well, this nation or this nation is going to get together, they're going to do this and that, and probably, it may, probably not. Because it's all going to be happening in chaos.

All this happens in a very, very quick period of time. Let's go to the next slide. Now, here's an overview once again. So we're going to a lot of information, I know. But it's an overview. That's what overviews do. They give you tools to do your personal study. Your tools to do your personal study. Revelation 13 is the rise of the beast power. And there's two beasts involved, because one is a secular power and one is a religious power. In Daniel 2, Daniel 2 is one of our important templates. If I do not have Daniel 2, I do not know what Revelation 13 means. That's what's important.

I see Revelation 13 described as Communism, described as United States of America.

There's all kinds of explanations. There's a major denomination in the United States that thinks Revelation 13 is the United States of America.

So, they all... How do you come up with an explanation? My answer is, I don't know. Except I have to have templates, in which I build my prophecy beliefs out of. And mine starts with Daniel 2. There's four great empires, and the last empire is destroyed by Jesus Christ. So therefore, I believe the beast of Revelation 13 has to be the fourth empire, since it's a round and is destroyed by Jesus Christ. Does that make sense? If there's four great empires, and the last one is destroyed by Jesus Christ, now we have this last empire that's destroyed by Jesus Christ. It must be the same thing. If they're the same thing, Daniel 2 tells us what this empire is.

It's a resurrected Roman Empire. It's the two legs with the ten toes. If that's not true, I have no explanation for you.

Because Revelation 13 then comes out of a vacuum. You understand what I'm saying? It comes out of a vacuum. I have no explanation. Now we can say it's the United States, or we can say it's communism, or we can say it's Russia.

What do you think it is? So we take Daniel 2 as our template, and I want to also explain how we come to these conclusions. I think sometimes we're in a church, especially those who have grown up in the church, we have little bits and pieces of this information. We have no idea how we came to those conclusions. Well, yeah, Revelation 16, that's some kind of Roman Empire. How do you know that? I don't know.

How do you know? The only way you come to that is you have to go back to Daniel 2 to come to that. So we put those two things together. Just like the first four seals and the first part of the Olivet prophecy fit together, and they tell us something. And those pieces fit. There are two beasts in Revelation 13. We represent the political power and the other religious power. The mark is a beast, a 666, and this is real important.

These two powers rule on the earth for 42 months. How long is 42 months? Good, you can tell me. Good. Now we're not becoming Pentecostal. It's okay if you tell me it is. Okay, these two powers rule on the earth for 42 months, 3 1⁄2 years. 42 months, 3 1⁄2 years. These are important time periods. So all this is happening very, very quickly. This time period, these 42 months, is known as the tribulation of Matthew 24.

That fifth seal is open, and now we have the persecution of the church. And then all these things are happening. There's these people that are to blame for all this mess. There is chaos. There is a group of kings saying, let's get together. And there's this charismatic leader and this religious leader. And I say, we can fix this. And I give their power to them. And they begin to do certain things. Next slide. The tribulation. Abomination of desolation.

Luke's account shows that it's an inclusive invasion of Jerusalem. Luke says that Jerusalem will be trampled until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. All good. So we know how long Jerusalem will be occupied. Revelation 11, 1-2 says the times of the Gentiles will be 42 months. This is all the same time period. That means these events that it's describing are the beginning of the 42 months. So we're back to, okay, these things are all happening. And all this is happening. The Beast Tower is coming together. A force of the world has died. It just gets worse.

They're trying to bring order out of chaos. That's why it says, if it were possible, the very elect would be deceived. You think, well, how could I be deceived? Because you will be living in chaos, and they will appear to give an answer. And part of the church in this persecution, because it all starts before the church goes to the place of safety. Part of the church is taken and protected, and part of the church is left behind. Now, you say, well, why would you be left behind? There's two reasons you could be left behind.

One is you're very weak, and you need to be further trained by God. Or two, you're very strong, and you need to stand up for God. Now, neither of those are very comfortable to me.

I mean, okay, what I need to be, I don't want to be real strong. I don't want to be real weak, so I'll be lukewarm. And I'll be, oh, wait a minute, the message you laid to see is that that will spin you out of my mouth. Oh, well. It's easy to say all. The people that get left behind, they're the ones that need some extra work.

I don't know. I looked at the New Testament, and all the strong people were killed. So I'm telling you, being strong or being weak, I really think people will be left behind because they have to be terrified, and people will be left behind because they're strong, and God wants them to do a work, and they're going to be persecuted and probably killed during the tribulation. And part of the church will go.

I just keep asking, let me be part of the ghost. Okay, whatever that means, whatever that takes, let me go. I don't want to be left in this mess. I guarantee you, a place in the wilderness is not, you know, that doesn't say a resort. Next slide. That's why we look at Revelation 12, and yes, the United Church of God still believes that that woman is the church. Others believe that it's not the church.

Catholic Church says it's Mary. It represents Mary. Many people today, most Protestants believe that it represents Jewish Christians, which is to me a bizarre viewpoint because it means there's two kinds of Christians. The Gentile Christians who get raptured, and the Jewish Christians who have to go into the wilderness, which means they must be really second-class Christians. Can you imagine that? Wait a minute. I'm a Jewish Christian, so I don't get raptured to heaven? I've got to go off in the desert someplace? But that's one of the major explanations. What we know is that this is end time church, and in Revelation 12 it says they are protected for times, a time, times, and half a time.

That is considered to be an idiom for that time period that it generally means a year, two years, and half a year. Which is 42 months. So part of the church is protected during this time of the tribulation of 42 months. So there are two women, though, in Revelation. Let's look at this next slide. We've got to know these two women. So the next slide will show us the two women. I wanted to use things that had no copyright problems. I love these old engravings. Here's a dragon and a woman flying away on eagle's wings. So there's the women. This is the church, the true church. I couldn't find a good one here.

My wife's usually when I do find them, they're so hideous. I just took our booklets. All we have over here is this beast with a woman on it. This is very important. The woman represents in the Bible the church, or the people of God. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel, when they obeyed God, he referred to them as a chaste, beautiful bride.

When they didn't obey God, he said, you're acting, I love you, and you're treating me just like you're a prostitute. So this represents the true people of God, the church era. Okay, remember, God at this point is not saving Israel. He's saving the church, which includes the Israelites, but includes all kinds of people.

So this is the church taking it to its wilderness, place of the wilderness. This is the prostitute. Just knowing the Old Testament use of those two terms, which is used over and over again, we understand what this means. This means that the beast is written by a false religion, beast and false prophet. There are two individuals involved. They represent these two parties. The two beasts of Revelation 13. So this is how we put this together. These two women. Just like you better know which white horse you're following, you better know which woman you're following. Now in Revelation 20, we have the two witnesses sent by God. And they are told, in Revelation 11, look for the next slide, Revelation 11, they are told to tell the people to repent and stand against the beast's power for 1,260 days. Add up 1,260 days, 30 day months. Guess what you get to? 42 months. 3 and a half years. So a fourth of the world is dead or dying. The beast's power is coming on the scene. God's people are being persecuted. Jerusalem is surrounded by armies. Part of the church is supernaturally taken into place in the wilderness. And these two guys come along. They don't make, by the way, I think they're the reason the church gets persecuted. The church isn't important enough in the world to be persecuted. It's because of these guys. We support them and we get persecuted. These guys send out fire from heaven. Nobody can touch them. But the rest of us, those are our guys. Good, we can get you. They are persecuted for 42 months, 3 and a half years. At the end of that 42 months, they're killed. And their bodies lie in the streets of Jerusalem. And the whole world will see their bodies. Do you realize that that simple proclamation, the whole world will see their bodies rejoice was impossible until the last decade? Until the Internet was spread all over the world. That was impossible. It is now possible for that to be fulfilled. Because the whole world sees them and rejoices. So that's an amazing thing, because I believe that's literally what's going to happen. And they're resurrected after 3 and a half days. The next slide enters a whole new discussion about Revelation 7, which just adds all this information. In the midst of this story flow, the one thing I want to bring out here is that Revelation 7 says 144,000 Israelites are sealed with God's Spirit.

What you believe about that, once again, will depend on when you came into the radio or worldwide church of God. Because we've taught 3 different things about that over the years. Here's what we believe, and this makes the most sense. This is what United teaches. That 144,000 are literal Israelites that are converted, sealed, people are sealed by the Spirit of God.

They are sealed during the Tribulation. These are a literal 144,000 Israelites that respond to the message of the two witnesses, and they repent and receive God's Spirit during the Tribulation. And then you have a great multitude who come out that are following God. I don't know what that means.

The church may be, during the Tribulation, at its greatest peak, there may be millions of conversions.

That's never happened. That's never happened. There may be millions of conversions. And you know what it may cost to be converted during the Tribulation? It may cost you your life.

Because remember, they will be living in the beast world. Part of the church has taken to its place of safety. Part of the church is left behind to be persecuted and possibly be the ones working with these people. The price will be heavy.

And the work of the two witnesses will be great.

The seeds we plant today, if we're as close as my personal opinion, as close as my personal opinion thinks we are, there may be people that we're planting seeds in today that will be converted then, that God's doing a work beyond anything we can think of. He's working way ahead of us. And there's people that He's planting seeds in today, He's going to convert then. It also means those two, four guys are around here someplace. You know, who those two guys are, I don't know. I think they'll just come out of nowhere. I hope they don't know who they are. Then wake you up in the middle of the night, wouldn't it?

What's wrong, honey? Just go back to sleep. You don't want to know. I'm not allowed to tell you, so it doesn't matter. Just go back and sleep.

You know, just certain people you don't want to be. And whoever those two guys are, I feel sorry for them. Okay, next slide.

So then we have the persecution of the church, which is the beginning of this time period, known as the Tribulation. It lasted 42 months.

Then you have the sixth seal, which is in Revelation 6 and Matthew 24. They both talk about the same thing, which are signs in heaven.

And this is a very short thing. What it does is there are signs in heaven so dramatic the world stops to see what's coming on. They probably think it's the end of the world. And then you have the seventh seal.

The seventh seal is the Day of the Lord.

Now the Day of the Lord, we started to celebrate the Day of the Lord, and we celebrated it on the Feast of Trumpets. The Day of the Lord means the judgment of God. There's actually been different days of the Lord in history. Israel faced this Day of the Lord. Judah faced this Day of the Lord when they were destroyed. Asia Babylon faced this Day of the Lord.

There's a future Day of the Lord that has to do with the eighth day of this feast, the Great Way through Judgment. It's called the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord means God's judging.

And there's this great Day of the Lord that has to do with the seventh seal. And we see in Revelation 8 that as soon as the seventh seal is opened, there's now seven trumpets. It's easy to get all these things mixed up, but if you just look at them in the chronological order, we're now in chronological order.

Four seals. Remember, this is chronological. There's other bits and pieces that come in and out of Revelation that seem to be out of chronology. They probably are. That's just information that's being revealed. You stick with the seals, you get the chronology. Don't worry about the things you can't fit in. They probably aren't supposed to fit in. That's why her regardless song never fits them in.

What you see is, is that okay? The world gets to the place, four seals are open, chaos, death, destruction, earthquakes, wars, famines, disease, epidemics, fours of the world is dead or dying, crisis situation, beast power comes on the scene, Jerusalem is surrounded by armies, two witnesses come on the scene, the church is persecuted, part of it flees, and we have 42 months of the really bad time, so everybody thinks. So this makes the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse look bad. But this isn't worse yet. Because when the seventh seal is broken, God says, I'm coming. Children, you've been messing up the playroom long enough.

And He's angry. Now what's interesting, people think, well, the God of the Old Testament was so angry, we're sure glad He sent Jesus. You know who's coming to do this? It's not the Father. It's Jesus. It's Jesus Christ who's coming to do it. Our brothers saying, children, it's enough. And it's one of the great ironies of all time. The Prince of Peace came the first time, and the Jewish people who were supposed to pronounce Him and support Him helped, you know, betray Him in killing.

And at the end time, people who take the word Christian on themselves, the majority of Christianity at that time, especially, and because of that the second time, they will try to kill Him. In both cases, the people that were supposed to pronounce His coming had failed in their missions. The great majority of what is called Christianity at that time, which is that white horse that we're watching today form.

It's been forming for 2,000 years. It's going to form in a way that seems to be surprising to you. When you have a Methodist church with a lesbian woman as the minister, any of you that were Methodist 30 years ago would have known that that could not have happened. It's changing. It's changing. And as it does, what you're going to have is Christianity fighting against the Prince of Peace. The first time the Prince of Peace came, they killed Him, and the second time He comes, the whole world tries to kill Him.

How ironic. Now we have the seven trumpets of Revelation. Next slide. We have the first four trumpets here. God gets involved. I can't tell you at this point which issues that God is causing or God is allowing. The reason I say that, I believe God has protected us. He's kept humanity from destroying ourselves. He's kept us from total destruction. What is going to be happening at this time, towards the end of the tribulation, will be so dramatic with wars and epidemics and the things going on, earthquakes, volcanoes going off, that the earth itself will be dying.

Part of what we're seeing here, I don't know how much of a God's causing or God's just saying, okay, I'm not protecting you anymore, but it's happening and He's taking responsibility for it. Either way, God's saying, folks, this is to get your attention. First trumpet is hail and fire, and a third of all the trees and grass is destroyed.

That's a third in the world. A third of all the trees and grass in the world. That means each part of the world will become desolate. Second trumpet, one third of the sea becomes blood. One third of the sea creatures die, and one third of the ships destroyed. What happens in the oceans are so traumatic. I don't know what causes that. There's been interesting studies down what would happen if a sizable meteorite hit the ocean. It could kill huge amounts of fish and change the consistency of the...

But that is not going to be that simple. This is going to be horrid. Third trumpet, a third part of fresh water turns bitter. The fourth trumpet, the atmosphere deteriorates so much that one third of the light is filtered out. Any of you that have a background in farming know that if you filtered out one third of the light, farming becomes real difficult.

Certain kind of crops won't even survive. Temperature change is dramatic. They talk about climate change. We're looking at climate change here, at a catastrophic level. And then these are the good old days. Each stage we go through makes what happened before the good old days, because the last three trumpets are known as the three woes. Like, whoa, this is even worse. Next slide, fifth trumpet. First woe, beast power brings about world war. He just let this go. Satan has two goals for human beings.

He wants to either degenerate us into animals, because he sees us as just... We're chemical. We're animals. How could God, let's hairless apes, be more important than him? That's how he sees us. Or he has to destroy us. He either has to degenerate us into animals, which he's doing a good job at that, or he's got to destroy us. So now, the beast power, which is under Satan's control, begins a world war. The whole world's a war now. Sixth trumpet. Second woe, Asia becomes involved in the war, and the two witnesses killed.

Now remember, they're only dead for three and a half days. We're getting real close here now to Christ's return. Seventh trumpet. Oh no. The seventh trumpet has seven parts to it. Now, we know that Christ returned at the sound of the seventh trumpet, right? That means the seventh trumpet. There's a whole bunch of events that happen in a very short period of time. By the way, it's interesting. There is an Old Testament verse that talks about the day of the Lord being a year. It's possible it takes a year for these trumpets.

But the seventh one happens real fast. Now there's seven vials, okay? So it's pouring out, like pouring out cups of stuff over the world. Let's look at the next slide. Let's get this one. This is a bunch of stuff that's taken 15 minutes to explain now. Let's go. Okay. Seven seals or bowls. Sores on people. Just massive amount of sores. God can be doing that. It could be the result of radiation poisoning, which causes sores. It could be the result of disease epidemics.

It doesn't matter. At this point, God says, does this get your attention? Well, most people walking around with sores? Mass death of sea creatures. Well, a third of them already died. In other words, the environment is now reaching the point it can't sustain life. Human beings are on the brink of extinction. This isn't going to be, well, wow, this is going to be really bad, you know. Well, what would happen if the Democrats got in power again?

Understand. This is the worst apocalyptic movie you can imagine. The entire world is on the very edge of extinction. What does it say in Matthew 24? If he doesn't come back at that time, no flesh shall survive. This is literally what's happening to all flesh. Fresh water turns to blood, and it implies that everything is...

In other words, all fresh water in the world is gone. How long can you live without water? Not very long. A few days. A real healthy person can last maybe a week. Sun scorches the earth. Darkness. You say, how can the sun be scorching the earth in darkness at the same time? You could block out the sun rays as far as light goes, but ultraviolet light and so forth comes through and just burns things up.

This is really bad news. Why come to the Feast of Taberna? This is what it's about? No, this is about what happens after this. Finally, with the good days arrive. The Euphrates River dries up. The reason why is there's this huge Asiatic army coming towards Jerusalem. The Beast power is already there.

We also know from the minor prophets the Arab armies are there. Basically, everybody's come to fight. They've decided all the ants are going to come to the top of the anthill. They're going to decide who gets the anthill. And they're about to destroy humanity. They're going to destroy humanity. We're going to do it to ourselves. Satan's saying, yes, they could make an animal, so I'm going to kill every one of them. And they're that close to doing it. And then there's a great earthquake and hail. Revelation 16 and 17 says, here's the problem though.

The whole of this, the entire Beast power starts to collapse. The entire Beast power now is collapsing. The world is coming apart in every way imaginable. Nobody's loyal to the Beast anymore except the army. The economic system that it created only lasted 42 months. It doesn't last very long. Nothing works. The humanity is on the edge of absolute complete destruction. And then we have Revelation 19. Next slide. Revelation 19 and 20. Revelation 19 and 20 is the return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the saints.

The seventh trumpet includes all those bad things that are happening very quickly. But at the still at the sound of the seventh trumpet, this is what happens. The return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the saints.

The return of Jesus Christ and the destruction of the Beast power. The binding of Satan and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. And you look, you can tie in Matthew 24, but you can also tie in what Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians. Zechariah 14, which has already been read at the Feast of Tabernacles. At that moment, when there seems to be no hope, when nothing works, in humanity, it's finally being crushed by Satan.

All the armies of the world combine together to fight a new threat, an invasion from outer space. That's how they'll perceive what's happening, an invasion from outer space. We just killed the two witnesses three and a half days ago. We were really celebrating. Boy, that's a bad three and a half days. Between the time of the killing of the two witnesses, the return of Jesus Christ, the earth moves to the edge of extinction.

And here Jesus Christ returns. We're not here to celebrate all this. We're here to celebrate because we want to be part of what happens afterwards. I can't stop the tribulation from coming. You can't either. I believe it's in our lifetime. It's not my lifetime. It's not long. It's not long. I always tell my kids, if I die, all my life I've been saying, Christ is coming, Christ is coming. My last breath will be to tell my kids, He's coming. It didn't matter if he came when I was alive. That was never an issue. Christ never said, I'm going to be alive when He's alive.

I'm going to come back when He's alive. But I'm going to tell Him He's coming. And I'm going to tell my grandkids, it doesn't matter if I die, He's coming. You better be ready. But this world is starting to unravel. We think it's a crisis because it's starting to unravel. It's just starting to unravel. It's just starting. This is beyond what the world ends up as, beyond anything you can make up. Christ comes back. And then we have Revelation 20. Revelation 20 tells us, well, is there one before this?

Go back one. Did I miss it? Is there one before this? I missed the slide. Okay, I'll tell you what's in the slide. Revelation 20 is the Millennium, and the Great White Zone Judgment. Revelation 20 talks about Christ's rating on the earth for a thousand years. We try not to build any doctrine on one verse. We try very hard not to do that. But there is one verse that we have an entire doctrine built around. You know what it is? It's called the Millennium. There's only one verse that says He reigns for a thousand years. Well, we take it literal, so we build an entire doctrine around that one verse.

Usually, if we have a doctrine, we have a huge amount of passages put together to support that doctrine. But that's the only way we have on that one. So He reigns for a thousand years, and there's the Great White Zone Judgment. We'll talk about that on the last great day. And then Revelation 21 and 22. Revelation 21 and 22. New Jerusalem comes. God's throne comes to earth.

Oh, let's look at the next slide. I see my slides are out of order. The Millennium. Oh, see, I gave you the Millennium slide. Then we have the Great White Zone Judgment, and had new Jerusalem. God's throne comes to earth. And when God's throne comes to earth, there's no longer a Satan. He and the demons are put into outer darkness. Human beings don't exist anymore.

There's only human beings who rejected God, and they destroyed the lake of fire. That's what happens at the end of the Great White Zone Judgment. That's why the Great White Zone Judgment is also called the Day of the Lord by Peter.

Because there's only the lake of fire. The others, the only thing that's left is this huge family that God created through all this mess.

Through all this mess, Satan's gone, and now there's this family, which I believe will be the majority of humanity throughout time. It's not everybody.

And they will be spirit beings, and He will bring His throne to this earth. And you read Revelation 21 and 22, God's throne comes here. This is the center of the universe.

Now, there's a whole universe out there.

There's a whole universe out there. That's a big playground. We couldn't even make it in this little sandbox. We've got to be trained to get out into the playground. The real world out there is called the universe. This little sandbox that we've been fighting over for the last thousands of years. Okay, the sandbox now, we figured out how to live in the sandbox. Good. Now the journey can begin. The great adventure can finally begin because you've learned how to live in the sandbox. That's how great this is. It's so hard to remember that. It's so hard to remember that. This is the sandbox.

Where are you? There's a little kid playing in the sandbox.

This is what it's all about.

And it's amazing how he doesn't tell us much about it.

Well, he probably tells us more when we realize we just don't get it.

He probably tells us more when we realize. I think there's an awful lot of answers in the Bible we just don't get.

We just don't get it. Because we're little kids. You ever have a little kid say, Why? Because of this. Why? Let me explain it to you. Why? Because then you do what you said you would never do when your parents did to you. Because I told you so. Right?

I think God, after about the 15th, why His answer is, Look, because I told you so. Like Mr. Hopper said today in the sermon, right? The second of the split sermons. Okay, because I told you so. And it's just going to have to do until you grow up.

That's what... If you have to trust me, I told you so, and when you grow up.

So, there is an overview of the book of Revelation. We will now hand out the test.

You'll receive your grades back tomorrow on the slide or in church. I hope this helps you be able to get an overview. Did answer all the details. I can't even answer all the details. I always get a little nervous about somebody who says they can't.

I'm sure there's somebody out there that knows... I know there's people out there who know a whole lot more than I do. But if we look at the overview, we understand where we fit. We understand what's ahead. And we can keep focused not on all the bad things, but that God says, I will take care of you.

I will take care of you in this chaos. That's the promise. Hold on to that promise in the chaos. And what it's all over with, we'll be with Christ.