Take your Bibles, if you would, please, and turn to Revelation chapter 10. Revelation chapter 10. Story about a little book. A little book. I saw, it says in chapter 10, and I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head. And his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he handed his hand a little book, open. And he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth. And he cried with a loud voice as when a lion roareth. And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write, and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not." So we know most of what's going on in the book of Revelation, but God said, don't tell them what those thunders are saying. And the angel, which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and swear by him that liveth forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth and the things that therein are, and the sea and the things that are therein, that there should be time no longer. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall begin to sound the mystery of God, should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go, and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel, which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it. and eat it up, and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.' And I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it up, and it was in my mouth sweet as honey, and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many people and nations and tongues and kings." What a chapter. Let's pray. Lord, this chapter is too big for me. I can't even begin to know where to start. So please give me direction as we take a look at this. And more, more important, let it take a look at us. May we be willing to do that. And we'll give you the praise and honor and the glory, any good that comes from our time together here this evening. And it will be good if we'll let you speak to us, so I pray we will as individuals, in Jesus' name. Amen. We have here an interlude before the final trumpet. And it's basically, I think here, to be a comfort to the people of God. And it is interesting that there is an interlude or a pause between every sixth and seventh judgment. You'll see that as we go through it. You get the judgment, you know, the seven trumpets, just before the seventh one here again, there is a pause. So, the timeline doesn't just travel through here. It says, no, stop, I'm going to give you a little information about what's coming. And we have a really, a very unusual angel and I have probably listened to 20 pastors this week, or preachers, in different sermons contradicting each other as to who this angel is. And good men, good men, no, this angel is so-and-so, and the other one says it's that. Really, that's really not that important. It's interesting. But the thing that is important is, why is this written here for me in this age in which I'm living? He said, I saw another mighty angel. So we've got seven angels, six of them have sounded, the seventh is waiting. Now we have this other mighty angel come down from heaven. And he is clothed with a cloud and a rainbow was upon his head and his face was as it were the sun and his feet as pillars of fire. Now, if I had to, if somebody put a gun at my head and said, who do you think this angel is? I would say it's Jesus. But I can preach a whole sermon on why it might not be. So, again, it's not that important. I think it's the Lord. Why? Because He's clothed with a cloud, and the Bible in the Old Testament talks about Christ in the glory of the Lord as a cloud in the Old Testament. He's coming back again, the Bible says, in the New Testament, in the clouds. The rainbow, it says here that there is a rainbow and it is upon his head. It's not behind him. It's upon his head. It's like a crown. And of course, the first time we see the rainbow is when Noah got off the ark and God made a covenant. And he has made many, many promises. And in chapter 10 and verse 7 says, The mystery of God should be finished as he declared. The sun, his countenance shall shine as a sun. There are several references about Christ in that respect. His feet as fire spreading out judgment, I think. I don't know. It doesn't matter. But one thing's sure, it's a mighty angel and it's a special angel. Verse 2 said he had in his hand a little book open. And he set his right foot upon the sea and his left foot on the earth. Now, in chapter five, you remember, we spent quite a while studying that little book, the scroll that was opened, and it had to do with redemption of the earth and redemption of God's people, particularly Israel. And his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land is symbolic, I think, of him saying, I am in charge. And we're going to find out from this portion of Scripture on through the rest, and so is the world, through the rest of this portion of Scripture, we're going to find out who's really in charge. And that would be the Lord. There's prophecies, and one of the things I really enjoy about studying the book of Revelation is to compare scripture with scripture. And hundreds and hundreds of years before this happened, Jeremiah said, Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall I not? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? And they said before that that a lot of the tribulation judgment has to do with Israel, and that's what it's talking about. In Hosea 11.10, it says, They shall walk after the Lord. He shall roar like a lion. He shall roar. The children shall tremble. Then in Joel chapter 3 and 16, it says, The Lord also shall roar out of Zion. Chapter 10, verse number 3. We'll see when we get there that he does that. And utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shall shake. Amos chapter 3 and verse 8 says, The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken. He's coming back as a lion. The Bible is very plain about that. He's not coming back as a lamb like he came the first time. He's coming back as a lion, the lion of the tribe of Judah. Now he comes in verse 3 and it says, He cries with a loud voice as when a lion roars. And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered out. And he said to John, don't tell anybody what those thunders are saying. They'll find out during this tribulation period. Well, we get down through to verse six. And it says that there at the end of verse six, that there should be time no longer. Time no longer. Now, we know there's time after this. If you study the word carefully in the Greek, what it's referring to is delay. He said there will be no more delay. I was watching the hockey game last night. The coach, what he did at one point, Whereas he puts his head up like this, you know what that means? Time out. Time out. And they have a, each team can do that once in a hockey game. That's what this is talking about. When it's talking about time shall be no longer, what it's saying is there's going to be a time out and the time out will be no longer. Noah and his family. floating around on that boat. And then one day they were able to open the door. The timeout is over, Noah. You can get off this box. You can get out there. You look at Abraham and Sarah and God. God promised them that you're going to have a special child. Timeout. Let's wait for about 100 years. And finally, they did have the child. The timeout was over. And we have studied Elijah. And, you know, he goes before Ahab and he says, it's not going to rain. And he's in charge of everything. And he's so excited, I think, at that point that, boy, oh boy, God's using me. We're going to show this guy Ahab was a thing or two. And God says, timeout. I want you to go by the brook sheriff and spend a year or two there. And then I want you to go up to Zarephath, and that widow will look after you." What do you mean? We look after widows. Widows don't look after prophets. No, no, no. Time out. You've got to learn some things. And Paul the Apostle, he got saved in Damascus, and I'm sure he's pretty excited about doing some stuff. And God said, no, time out. I'm going to let you in the wilderness for a while so I can get you to learn what's supposed to happen. And Moses, he leaves Egypt and he's out there in the wilderness. I mean, yesterday he thought he was going to raise up an army and fight and we were going to get rid of all these Egyptians. God said, no, time out. Forty years. And then he said, OK, OK, time's over. It's OK now. And Moses got to go back and do what he was going to do in God's timetable. And so here we are, Christians, today. And the Bible says that there's great days ahead for us. Oh, great days. In fact, they aren't even days. They're not time anymore in that sense. It's eternity. And then the Bible says that your mind cannot fathom the good things that God has in store for us. Oh, let's get on with it. No time out. And here we've been waiting for 2000 years. And now what we're getting here is God is saying, Time out is over. You can get all of it now. The time is over. We're going to get on with the eternity part. And this is the last portion of the book of Revelation. And after this particular part of the book, things open up. And it's going to be exciting. We need to understand, if you're going to get a proper understanding of any book that we study in the Bible is the context. And we have to ask ourselves, who's writing? And who is he writing to? What's he writing about? What about the conditions? And what is happening here when he is saying there will be no more delay? I just gave you several applications of that verse. I did not give you the interpretation. And in most verses of the Bible, There's one interpretation. There might be 20 applications, but there's only one interpretation. And the interpretation of this verse But he says, but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished as he declared to his servants the prophets. He said, now, all of that that we've been looking at, and we could go back, we could spend weeks just looking at prophecies in the Old Testament that says that Israel is going to have her kingdom. And that is the interpretation of this verse. When he is saying delay will be no more, this is, as I said, this portion of scripture is inserted here. It is there to comfort for those who want it. And he said, OK, there's going to be no more delay from this point on. Things happen very fast, very fast. And we get through to some of the things that God's going to do during the tribulation period, particularly for Israel. It's hard, you know, and we're going to look at a bittersweet thing here in a minute, but it's bittersweet for Israel because she's facing the judgments of saying, we will not have this man to rule over us. And they crucified him. But also they are God's special chosen people. And so we have the bitter and we have the sweet. We have the judgment and we have a thousand year kingdom coming down the road. Well, verse 8, and the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go, and take the little book, which is open in the hand of the angel, which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth." Go and take the little book. Now, John is standing there. What would you do? He said, I went unto the angel and said unto him, Give me the book. And the angel basically said, you were not... The angel basically said, I was not told to give you the book, you were told to take the book. That's what he says here. He says, give me the book. Give me the little book. And the angel said, take it. I'm not giving you anything. Take it. I have no doubt in my mind that that little book that God is talking about specifically refers to that scroll of man in Revelation chapter 5. But this is a little book, as far as we're concerned, right here. Then he says, that word of God, take it. Give me the little book. No, God says, you take the book. You take it. You know, a mother bird would go out and get a worm and pull it out of the ground and chew it all up. in her beak and take it back. I don't think I've ever seen a bird full of little babies and all of a sudden their little mouths are wide open and they're all moving. They want that gushy little worm. But, you know, when the bird is mature, mom's not bringing the gushy little worms anymore. But you remember, Paul wrote to those people and he said, I am so discouraged with you people. You should be teaching others and I still got to get you back on the problem stuff for spirituality. And he was upset. So he says to the angel, he says to the angel, give me a little book. And I'm quite sure this angel is Jesus. He was saying, Lord, give me a little book. He said, I'll take it. And eat it up. Eat it up. And it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey." So get the picture, John. It'll be sweet in your mouth. It'll be bitter in your belly. Now what are you going to do, John? Well, John did a good thing. Verse 10, I took the little boat out of the angel's and ate it up. I took the book and I ate it. Yeah, and it was in my mouth, sweet as honey. And as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. We have that phrase in the world, a lot of phrases in the world came out of the Bible, bittersweet. This is where it came from. And as I said, the tribulation judgment would be bitter for the Jews. God's program was coming together for them, and that would be sweet. Let me just flip back into some Old Testament prophecies. Again, it shows you the Bible, what it says it is. Word of God. Jeremiah 15, 16, Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me, the joy and rejoicing of my heart. That's sweet. Go with me, please. I think we should look at this. Ezekiel chapter 2. Ezekiel chapter 2. I'm reading in verse 3. Ezekiel chapter 2. He said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me even unto this very day. talking to his prophet Ezekiel. Verse 4, "...for they are impudent children, and stiff-hearted. I do send thee unto them, and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God. For they, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear, for they are a rebellious house, yet shall they know that there has been a prophet among them. And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them." Be not afraid of their words, though briars and thorns be with thee, and thou dost dwell among scorpions. Be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, for though they be a rebellious house. And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear. for they are most rebellious." Never mind if they listen or not. God said to Ezekiel, just tell them what I told you to tell them. We were talking this morning about Paul saying he was a preacher, a herald, one who heralded, just came into town and said, this is what the king said, take it or leave it, but you're in trouble if you leave it. Well, that's what this prophet is doing. Then look at verse 8. But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee, the prophet. Be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house. Open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee." Eat it up! Well, what did he do? Verse 9, And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me, and, lo, a roll of a book was therein. and he spread it before me, and it was written within and without, and there was written therein lamentations and mournings and woe." And verse 1 of chapter 3 says, and the next chapter says, "...Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest." Eat this roll. "...And go speak unto the house of Israel." So I opened my mouth and he caused me to eat that roll. "...And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee, and then did I eat it, and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness." That's the opposite to what he said back here in verse 10 where he said there's lamentations and mournings and woe. What do we got? We got the bitter, we got the sweet. He said unto me, Son of man, go unto the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them. Speak with my words unto them. Let's go back to Revelation chapter 10, verse 7. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished. Okay, there will be no more delay. as he hath declared to his servants and the prophets. And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open, and in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it and eat it up, and it shall Make thy belly bitter, for it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.' And I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it up. And it was in my mouth sweet as honey. And as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter." There's one thing about this book we call the Bible. It's bitter. It's sweet. It's bitter and it's sweet. It is bitter to the flesh, whether that flesh be saved, the flesh of a saved person or an unsaved person, and you and I are stuck with the flesh. We need to understand that. It's so important to understand that, that we have an old nature, we have a new nature. And the new nature just draws us to feed on the Word of God. And the old nature said, I don't like it. It's bitter. I don't want anything to do with it. And so we go out there and we try to talk to people about the Lord, and you find pretty soon that it's bitter. They don't want to hear anything about it. But understand that that old nature lives in every one of us, and that part of us doesn't want to hear anything about it either. And we're always going to be under this situation. Well, I don't want that part. That part's kind of bitter. You know, let the Holy Spirit take control, because one, either our spirit, we've talked a lot about this lately, the spirit of man or the Holy Spirit, somebody is going to be in control here. My old spirit says it's going to be me. And I've been saved since I was 12 years old. I'm still having this battle. And we will have it till we die. How can I get to victory? Well, get into the Word, and let the Word get into me, and that's where the strength comes. Paul, at the end of his life, Paul the Apostle! In case you were thinking we're pretty good Christians, do you think God would pick any one of us to write two-thirds of the New Testament? And Paul said, oh, the things I want to do, I don't do, and the things I don't want to do, I do. Oh, wretched man that I am. Why? Because he had this old nature. He said, who's going to get me away from this old nature? Nobody until he dies and the rapture takes place or whatever happens first for us. So it's bitter to the flesh, but it's sweet to the spirit. The Bible says that my name is written in heaven. That's sweet. I'm going to be in heaven for eternity. I'm living on earth that's bitter. There's not much here. And the older you get, the less you want anything that is here. Heaven, truth, truth will be sweet. You know what? Sometimes on earth, truth is bitter. Truth is bitter. Well, I don't want that bitter truth. I want the sweet truth. Yeah, don't we all? Jesus said it this way, and we've talked about this a little bit, Matthew chapter 7, in verse 5, Jesus said to his disciples, and only to his disciples, there wasn't an unsafe person there, read Matthew 5, 6, 7, together, because that's the whole story, there's no unsafe people there, Jesus is alone on the mountain with them, he talked about them being the salt of the earth, he talked about, I think 12 times he talked to them about their father which was in heaven, he didn't talk to unsafe people about that. And to those people, he said that you've got to find the narrow gate and the narrow path because few there be that find it. What's he saying? He's saying in this Christian world, few there are that are going to eat this book. Few are going to eat it. Lots of time to do the things of the world, but few are interested in the things of God. Oh, we've got lots of nibblers. But you're going to eat it. You're going to swallow it. John chapter six and verse 60 said many, therefore, of his disciples, when they had heard this, they said, this is a hard saying who can hear it. What did they said? Teach us what we must do to do the works of God. He said, OK, this is what you must do. They said, this is a hard thing. Who can hear it? They're called his disciples. And verse 66 says from that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him. Oh, they were nibblers. Yeah, give us a little sweet stuff. Just get it in the mouth where it's sweet. We're going to swallow this. It's going to get bitter. I don't want that. Let me ask you a question. Are you an eater or are you a nibbler? Revelation chapter 5. He took the book. Revelation chapter 5 verse 8, he took the book. Revelation chapter 10 verse 8, take that little book. He said, give me that little book. He said, take that little book. Take it and eat it. Why don't we eat? I think the main reason that most Christians don't eat the little book is it costs too much. It's too much. It's too bitter. In Israel's days when You know, they were first beginning this local church age and those Jews got saved. Their families would have a funeral for them. They would absolutely disown them. They would have a funeral for them. And then when they showed up at work, what are you doing here? You don't you don't work here anymore. You're Christian. And then they would get baptized and they would publicly profess Christ as their Savior. And it was very likely that they'd be in the lions, you know, the Colosseum being eaten up with lions very shortly thereafter. And we think it's better today. If you are going to eat the book, it's going to cost your friends. It might cost your family. But it is going to cost you. Well, we eat. We eat physically. Why do you eat? Because you'll die if you don't. Some people live to eat. Some people eat to live. I eat to live. I would never eat if I could get by without eating because it just takes time and I don't have time to eat. So when I got to it, I'll get sick. If you don't eat, you're going to get sick. So we eat to keep healthy. And God said to Elijah, when he was doing such a great job for God, and he was up there after going through all those tests, and he went out to the brook, and he stayed there and let some dirty black bird come and feed him every day. And then he went to Seraphath and let a widow feed him. It was better than a black bird, but it's kind of an insult. And then that angel, he got better. He had a bird and a widow and an angel would feed him. And then he finally got on that mountain. It was his day. By the way, no brook, no Zareth, no mountain. And he went through God's training program and there he is up there in the mountain. And had he, all those false prophets are put to death, a fire comes flying down from heaven. What a day! And Jezebel says, you'll be as dead as those prophets by this time tomorrow. And what did this great giant do? He ran for his life and was hiding in a cave, and God said to him, Elijah, 1 Kings 19, 7, arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee. Well, I've got an idea. If a man like Elijah needed to eat, I better get eating too. And so, verse 11, he says, To me thou must prophesy. Again, before many people and nations and tongues and kings. Back in Ezekiel, he said the same thing. He said unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak my words unto them. It's interesting, Proverbs 27, 7 says, The full soul loatheth the honeycomb, But to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet. An interesting verse. The full soul loatheth the honeycomb. We are so filled up with the things of this world. What's the soul? The mind, the will, the emotions. So filled up with the things of this world that it loathes the honeycomb. But to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet. Even the bitter stuff is good. for the hungry Christian. Psalm 119 and 103 says, How sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Psalm 141, 103 says, They shall hear my words for they are sweet. Proverbs 27, 7, To the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. Sweet. So are you nibbling or eating it up? See, that's the thing. We better arise and eat. In this day in which we're living, the journey is too great. We better arise and eat. But that's only half of it, all right? Look at verse number 11. Why? Because thou must prophesy again. Let's eat And then give it out. That's what it's all about. We eat and we give it out. I'm afraid too much here. We've been eating too much. We're getting like fat little Christians. Let's get out and get some exercise here on the streets with those tracks that are coming tomorrow. Two thousand of them are coming. And we'll be here on Saturday at 11 o'clock. We'll go out there, take it out. Yeah. That was prophesied. We need to quit nibbling, start eating. Rise and eat. The journey is two, three, four, three. Most of us eat three times a day. And if I'm working here in the study and my phone will ring every day, ten to twelve. I've got your sandwich ready. Yeah, my stomach doesn't work too. I go home and get something to eat. If I don't, again, I don't enjoy eating. I just have to eat or I'll get sick. And if I don't eat spiritually, I'll get sick. Well, what time do I have that sandwich? Twelve o'clock. Every day. What time do you eat this little book? Oh, we're there. That isn't going to cut it. What we need to do is get a time and a place where we arise. There's a key. Arise. Aha. Isn't it interesting? Isn't it interesting that we have no problem whatsoever getting to work on time? getting into God's book on time. How about getting to church on time? How about doing the things that are eternal on time? Well, that's pretty important. So you're going to have to have a time. You're going to have to have a place and arise. So turn that clock back an hour, get up in the morning, arise and eat, because that journey out there we're talking this morning about influence. There's thousands of influences out there. Thousands of them. There's too much influence out there. There's too much influence out there. You rise and eat. Because the journey is too great. That's right, Father. We get spiritually sick. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. Nobody. And so, Lord, we've got lots to eat here. There's not a shortage of food. Give me the little book. No, you said we should take the little book. So help us, Lord, to just get serious about it. Get serious about it. And help us to get serious about taking the gospel out also after we eat and testify for you again. In Jesus' name. Amen.