Well, you can turn over to Revelation. We're not going to get that far in the text today. We are going to begin our study though. This is the revelation of God the Father given to Jesus Christ through an angel to John the Apostle to give to his servants, his slaves. It's a message about those things that would be coming in the future. It's commonly referred to as the Apocalypse. That comes from the middle English word that traces through the angle of French to a Greek word, apocalupsis, which means to uncover, and hence to reveal, and hence we get our English word revelation. This book uncovers, reveals what is going to happen in the future. Throughout this sermon, and probably throughout the series, I'll probably be interchanging references to the book of Revelation as the apocalypse, just back and forth between them. Actually, older English translations usually have this titled as the apocalypse. The sermon series is not going to be brief. See, there's a lot of commentaries that are fairly brief. For example, this one by Glasson is 125 pages. That's pretty short, right? Wiersbe was asked to produce a Bible study for Sunday school. So this is 13 lessons covering all of Revelation for a Sunday school quarter. Well, that's a little bit thin to go through a book that is fairly complex, so it has to be more than that. That's just, these give an overview. Actually, I will recommend, if you want a very good overview in a very quick pace, MacArthur, back in, I think it was 1969, gave a sermon called A Jet Tour Through Revelation. He preached through the whole book in one night. I think he did it just to prove that he could do it because he's known for, I remember he started Romans, sat there toward the front and he said, turn to Romans as he normally would do and he said, first chapter, First verse, first word. And the whole thing was on Paul. So I think he proved something. You can go through it quickly, and in that case he did. It is a good one. I think you can probably find it in the Grace to You site. Now this sermon also is not gonna be an academic treatise. These two books are the Exegetical Digest, of it, produced by Dr. Thomas, one of my professors. Total here, there's 718 pages. And the attempt here was to deal with all the various views on everything that comes up. Now that looks like quite a bit. This is only the start. This only covers chapters one through seven. Fifteen chapters to go. Yeah, that's not our purpose though. An academic treatise is not what we're going to be doing. We will cover some of this stuff, but the academics are for the pastor to dig into to make sure he has a confidence that he is actually true to what the text says. That is not what he's supposed to do. Sermons are not to be academic lectures. Frankly, those are boring. and they're a lot of times a bit nonsensical, because you're dealing with nuances that don't really need to be covered. The purpose of a sermon of a pastor is to make sure he understands a text so he can explain the text to the congregation and encourage you to live by it. There's gotta be application of the truths here. That's gonna be my goal. I also don't think we need to do an academic study of it, because a lot of the ink that is spilt in putting forth various views can be quickly ignored by simply pointing out the fallacies that underline these views. And so you don't have to get into every argument and sub-point of an argument. You simply have to point out, here's the reason there's a problem here, and then you can ignore the rest of it because it's not worth paying attention to. Okay? What I am gonna strive to do in this series is give you a clear understanding without bogging down into the speculations that would happen if we were trying to deal with everybody's view on everything. When I was growing up, the churches I was in, we usually had two special weeks of meetings. One was, a revival. I grew up in Baptist churches. Revival is when the preacher comes in and preaches the congregation to encourage you to actually live for Christ. So that was revival. Let's get you moving along with Christ. The other was a prophecy conference week. And I attended a lot of those growing up. And I have to admit, I ended up developing kind of a negative view because there was so much speculation that was part of them. It was always interesting, but it was like, well, here's what the news accounts say, and here's how it fits in. Hal Lindsey's book, The Great Late Planet Earth, would be an example of that. He makes a lot of valid, interesting points, but that was written in 1970, in the 55 years or 54 years since it was written. You know what? It reads very differently. For example, Gog is still Gog, but the Soviet Union does not exist. The European common market, now referred to usually as the European Union, is much more than 10 countries. It was even 10 back then. I want to make sure that any comments that I make of a speculative nature are going to be clearly stated as such. and hopefully just more pointing out possibilities of how something currently could be moving toward an understanding of how it could be fulfilled in the future. I don't like the speculation. But what I am going to be doing this series is trying to give a understanding of the text without bogging down into speculations then. Currently I have this outlined for about 39 sermons. Might be a little longer, a little shorter as I get into the text. With considering special topics, guest speakers, it will probably take us all year to get through it. Okay, we're probably gonna be finishing up maybe in December. Hopefully, right? Otherwise, we're going to be into 2026 still covering it. But there is a lot here we want to give a solid understanding but not get bogged down in everything that people can get to as they want to deal with everybody's speculations. I don't want to do that. I also don't want to give speculations that might undercut the validity of the exposition we're going to do as history unfolds as the Lord tarries. I don't want to end up with what Lindsay ends up happening as years later it doesn't fit. and that's the problem with some of the speculations going on. I also need to let you know that my own negative reaction to a lot of these prophecy concerts made me very hesitant to preach the revelation. I never really intended to do so. That was until about four years ago. five years ago, I guess now, getting toward it. We finished the Life of Christ series in 2019. And then, as you unfortunately will remember, 2020, the world descended into chaos. And we saw persecution rising even within the United States that had not been there before. And I realized I really do need to address the subject of preparing Christians for persecution. And so we have spent a lot of time doing that. I recognize a lot of people feel like Donald Trump's win of the presidency gives Christians in the United States some breathing room. And probably nationally, it does. But that is not going to affect the persecution of Christians around the world. And it's not going to affect blue states. like us here in New York or California, they are still going to be pushing stuff that is so contrary to our values as Christians and trying to make sure we get moved into a second class citizenship status or even let's get you out of state. How many of our own folks have moved out of state in the last few years? And a lot of it is because they just don't want to raise their kids here. That's just reality. It's not just the taxes, it's a culture. The Millers are back. Thank you. Hey, good to have you back. This is one of the couples that moved out of state for that reason. We love you. Greetings from Tennessee. Jake still has duties with the Air National Guard up here, so once in a while we get to see him. How are your chickens? They're doing well, good. All right, he's a whole different realm of life down there. But we recognize that. If you're not aware of it, in California, if you want to be in the foster care system now, you must affirm positively whatever gender idea the kids you're going to foster come up with, even if it's not an issue at this point. Neutrality is not allowed. That eliminates a conscientious Christian. You can't do that. Here in New York, the Amendment 1 that passed is now in effect. That means our Statement of Faith and our bylaws are in direct contradiction to the New York State Constitution. That amendment was so poorly worded as a non-discrimination amendment and contradictory within itself, we can expect lawsuits for years to come as the courts try and set precedence of what in the world does it mean because we're going to have lots of activists trying to bring lawsuits against moral people who recognize biological reality and are not going to yield to immoral fantasy and sexual fiction. So persecution of Christians will continue unless the Lord brings revival. That's simply reality of it. And our depraved society will continue to degrade even if it is at a slower pace. We can be grateful maybe politically, but that is not where salvation comes. Salvation only comes from Christ. And real changes in society only come when a society starts turning to Christ and start living for Him. I also realized in the last few years that it'd probably be good to leave behind some kind of understandable teaching to those that are going to enter into the tribulation period. They're gonna need something to help them understand what God has already said in advance of what they are going to go through, and they're going to need help in how do you stand firm and not yield to the deceptions the Antichrist is going to bring and follow him and instead actually follow God in the midst of severe persecution. So I want to leave a record And so for those reasons, I thought it good to be dealing with these subjects. In the last few years, I've taught through quite a few books and prophetic passages that give the necessary background to understand Revelation. We have covered 1 Thessalonians, Habakkuk, 2 Thessalonians. There's a whole series on trusting God. We went through Daniel, Zechariah, and then there was an eschatology series that took up a big hunk of last year. Now, if you weren't here for those sermons, I will encourage you, go to the website. You can, on the left side, you can go by top of your book and review some of those things if you've not studied these things before. You cannot understand Revelation properly unless you understand the prophecies that precede it, because it's simply expressing or explaining some of that. That would be especially true of Daniel, Zechariah, and the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and 25. jamming interpretations of Revelation into previously decided theological systems only causes a distortion of what's in the text. to use a physical illustration, you cannot take a one-inch diameter rod and stick it into a two-centimeter square box. Okay? I even use different ways of measuring things because that's how different things can be if you're not careful using English system or a metric system. And that's the way people will approach this. It's completely different. You can't do it. You've got to understand what's behind it to understand what has been revealed to John. So the system of hermeneutics is going to be important. A wrong approach in interpreting the scriptures is going to give you a wrong interpretation. It really is as simple as that. I also want to let you know that despite my reluctance toward detailed studies of end-time prophecies, eschatology, I have been forced into it over and over again over the decades. So it's something I've had to study over and over again in great detail. So I am very confident of my position and the view that I'm going to express and the interpretation I will give of the book of Revelation in this series. Due to the inherent theological conflicts that arise because of different systems of biblical interpretation, there is a limit on how closely I can work those who interpret scriptures in some method other than looking at the historical grammatical aspects of it. What does the language mean? What did it mean in the historical context? Throughout the series, I will be pointing out some of the major interpretive differences caused by other systems, and why interpreting the text according to a historical and grammatical system is superior. Now even so, saying that, I'm a true fundamentalist, and I believe we are to treat Christians who hold to fundamental doctrines as brothers and sisters in Christ, even if we disagree on some of the application. And when it comes to eschatology, that means something simple. Do they believe in the physical return of the Lord Jesus Christ? That's the fundamentalist position. If they do not believe that, they actually have a different Jesus. Jesus has promised he is returning physically for his church, and he will be setting up his rule here. All sorts of promises on that. Some of the scriptures stating it, John 14.3, Matthew 16.27, 24.30, 25.31, 26.64, Acts 1.11, 1 Corinthians 11.26, Philippians 3.20, 1 Thessalonians 1.10, Revelation 1.7, it's clear. A physical return of Christ. If they do not believe that, then we have to be true to the other statements of scripture, not to regard their claims. Even if they're saying they are fellow Christians, we cannot work with them and accept the heresy that's part of that. We are warned about this in 2 John 10, Galatians 1, 8, and 9, Titus 3, 10, Romans 16, 17, and 1 Timothy 6, 3 through 5. We have to be careful about doctrine. And if someone is coming to teach a doctrine contrary to what Jesus said, we cannot accept them. It's that simple. We can disagree on a lot of things. For example, the conclusions that other people will have about the timing and the order in eschatological events. I'm pretty simple. I know that they will be very happy when they find out that they were wrong and their historical grammatical interpretation was correct. That's never failed me yet. No matter who I'm talking to, I can always say, I know you want me to be right. You don't really want to go through the tribulation, do you? Well, of course not. You don't really want all these other things to happen. And you really would like Christ reigning on David's throne, wouldn't you? And they always have to say, well, yes. So I know they would want it my way. So I have an advantage. When they would try and convince me of theirs, I'm like, why would I want that? But right there is an underlying issue. Is it what I want? Or is it what the text says? We're gonna be dealing with that issue quite a bit today. A final reason for me to preach through the apocalypse is Revelation 1.3. If your Bible's already open there, it says this, blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things which are written in it for the time is near. Now seeing that chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation contain warnings to the seven churches in the province of Asia, and the rest of the book details what's going to take place in the future, then I have to take this warning to heed, and the blessing that comes from it, the same way I do 2 Peter 3.14. If you don't recall that or not familiar with it, Peter, he actually has my favorite statement dealing with eschatology. He talks about the day of the Lord is coming, it's going to come unexpectedly like a thief, and he jumps from the beginning all the way to the consummation of the ages with the destruction of the current heavens and the earth by fire, the very elements melting, and the creation of new heavens and new earth. I love that. We'll skip all the stuff in the middle that people debate about. And then he says this, and this is the point of all prophetic scriptures dealing with the end times. He says, Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, what things? Remember, he just jumped from the beginning of the day of the Lord all the way to the consummation of the ages. It's all going to burn Be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless, and blameless." What is your life being lived for? If I recognize where it's going to end, that's where I should be looking, isn't it? That's what he says. So the study of eschatology, the doctrine of last things, should result in this. One, the sinner repents because he sees what's coming and it's bad for him. And two, the Christian becomes even more committed toward holiness because he wants to be found spotless and blameless when his Lord comes. I want to be fully prepared. I want to be very glad that I can see him coming and I'm ready for it rather than, oops, I should have cleaned something. It's sort of like when your parents come home when you're a teenager, and they're coming home, you don't know when, and they arrive. Are you happy about it? Or it's like, oh man, I was supposed to clean the kitchen, and I didn't do it. Mom's gonna be so upset with me. Which do you want it to be? Eschatology does that for us. I wanna be right with God. And I'm motivated by it. And so our study of Revelation, is going to be a quest for these promised blessings to those who read it or hear it and heed it. There is a blessing in that, a blessing of salvation as sinners repent, a blessing to the Christian as I become more and more like my Savior. That's going to be the goal. Well, let's consider some basic things here. We're gonna start with authorship, date, purpose, and outline. Now, it'd be simple to just jump through the authorship quickly, but I wanna do something in addition to just pointing out who the author is. I wanna lay a foundation of why so many books of Bible are attacked concerning authorship. There's an underlying reason, and I wanna explain that as we simply look to the authorship of Revelation as an example. Now, the authorship is actually stated in verses one and two, a bit complicated, but actually it's following a similar pattern to all the scriptures. The Bible is the work of God, not of men. It is God speaking through men, to men. It is not the religious musings of men. Now, those who do not like the message of particularly the book of the Bible are always going to try to challenge the authorship to either remove or at least diminish the authority of that book. They want to make it the writings of mere men. And it's no different when it comes to the apocalypse. We're going to have a little fun with history. If you like history, this will be very interesting. If you don't, well, you should like history, and it will still be interesting, okay? Dionysius, third century Bishop of Alexandria, he died about 247. He was a very godly Christian and actually he is a man to be commended in so many areas. He actually had a strong insistence on correct doctrine. However, he did have his own theological preferences. He was a disciple of Origen. And from origin, he picked up a bent toward allegorical and typological interpretation. And Dionysius did not like the teaching of a 1,000-year kingdom of Christ on earth, which is included in Revelation 20. Now, that doctrine is now known as millennialism. Millennial comes from a Latin term meaning 1,000. Back at that time, it was known as Kiliism from the Greek term for 1,000. So if you say millennial or Kiliism or Kiliastic, it's all referring to the same thing, 1,000 years. 1,000. Now for that reason, he didn't like it. He actively campaigned against revelation. Ned Bernard Stonehouse in his book, The Apocalypse in the Ancient Church, wrote this, quote, there can be no doubt that Dionysius, Dionysus, quote, was first of all interested in destroying the influence of this work, unquote, in reference to the apocalypse. This is after he's studied all this stuff. He said that's what he wanted to do, and he was gonna do it by two ways. The first was by fighting against a literal, achilleastic interpretation, and pushing for an allegorical interpretation. The second was question the authorship of the book in such a way that it challenges the authority of the book while not utterly rejecting its inclusion in the canon. He recognized if it went that way, the church was gonna be against him. Now Dionysius suggests that because he had heard, remember he is in Alexandria, that's in Egypt, he had heard that in Ephesus, where John was, there were two graves that were supposedly where John was supposed to be buried. He had heard this, he hadn't been there, he hadn't visited or anything, he had just heard it. He therefore concluded that the John that wrote Revelation was different from the John the Apostle. The basis, I heard there were two different graves in Ephesus in which John might be buried. That's quite a jump, isn't it? His conclusion, despite this evidence of hearsay and that the logic of his argument has nothing to do with the authorship of the apocalypse, he then went on to argue that the internal evidence of the book was against it being the apostle John because the gospel account, the epistles, differ from revelation. differed in how he identified himself, in the general construction, in the vocabulary used, and the grammatical style. Now I'm going to be answering each of those as we go on, but first I want to continue a little bit the historical narrative here. I have here say, I'm going to say it was a different John. And then the internal evidence, as I look at it, revelation is too different from the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John. Therefore, it couldn't be the apostle. That's his thesis. Dionysius, his writings greatly influenced Eusebius. He lived from about 260 to 340 AD. He's early fourth century church historian, and he is bishop of Caesarea. And he ends up making the same arguments against apostolic authorship of the apocalypse, and he labeled this other John as John the Elder in order to make the distinction. There's nothing that says there was John the Elder, but it makes a distinction, so he started referring to him as that. He was aggressive in his view. He was also against Achilleistic interpretation, a literal interpretation, even to the point that he was calling Papias. Now, Papias lived about 60 to 130 AD. He actually had heard John the Apostle preach, and he had been greatly influenced by John's apostle Polycarp. So he ends up calling Papias a man of very little intelligence because of his writings concerning a future millennial kingdom of Christ. If it was not for Athanasius, now he's a little later, 295 to 373 AD, he was Bishop of Alexandria. He argued for the historical position of the church regarding the Apocalypse as written by John the Apostle, and that kept the early church from succumbing to the criticisms of Dionysius and Eusebius, otherwise Revelation might not be in the canon. So it was a serious discussion. The early church generally held to a literal interpretation of the Bible, including Revelation, which means it also included what's called the Kiliastic, or we would now say the Millennial view, that was true of Justin Martyr, Arianus, the early church fathers. So when someone says that the Millennial view didn't show up until the 17th century or 18th century, it's not true. It was the view of the early church. But what happened? T.F. Glasson and Glasson, the book I held up here earlier, he does not hold to the authorship of Revelation being John the Apostle. his commentary, Revelation of John, he points out it was Augustine. Augustine lived 354 to 430. He was a bishop of Hippo. Hippo is in northern Africa. He is the one that brought the allegorical view of revelation, allegorical interpretation to dominance within the church. He affected the church very much. But you have to remember, by that time, by the time he's writing, the Church was no longer being persecuted by the Roman Empire. The Edict of Toleration in 311 and the Edict of Milan in 313 had stopped the persecution. Even though there was a later effort toward it, by the time of Theodosius I in the late 4th century, he reigned 379-395, Christianity had become the official religion of the empire. So instead of being persecuted, it dominated. In fact, Christianity was now persecuting all the other religions. So an allegorical interpretation seemed to fit better the political reality of this ascendant church where Satan is bound and Christ is ruling spiritually or mystically. Lassen exposes the reason for the dominance of the allegorical interpretation stating this, quote, this explanation by Augustine while not an accurate interpretation of Revelation 20, brought John's conception of the reign of Christ into line with the rest of the New Testament." In other words, the interpretation is not according to what this text of Scripture states, but it is what is desired to be believed. Allegorical interpretation of revelation is still the method used in Roman Catholicism, in the Eastern Orthodox churches, and most mainline denominations of Protestant churches, though they will vary a lot in the specifics, as would be expected, of allegory. You can make it anything you want, allegory or other forms of mystical interpretation. You're free to do what you want, because who can challenge you? Now others have been proposed as the author apocalypse. This includes John the prophet, R.H. Charles, critical and exegetical commentary of the revelation of Saint John. So it's a more sophisticated version of Dionysius' arguments. And he gives an unknown John this title, simply distinguish him from the apostle named John, but he gives no more evidence of this John the prophet than Dionysius did for John the elder. It doesn't exist. John Mark has been suggested. Dionysus is mentioned since, but again, no historical or linguistic connection to John Mark. Then John as an intentional pseudonym is popular among liberal commentators, and that would be expected. As unbelievers, they are long on criticism and short on evidence. And if the writer is using a pseudonym, well, he's not identifiable. That makes it easy, doesn't it? It can be anything you want. Well, who wrote the apocalypse? What does the text say? Look at verse one and two. Now reading from the Legacy Standard Bibles, because it's a little more literal here, the text says this, the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show to his slaves the things which must soon happen. He indicated this by sending it through his angel to his slave John who bore witness to the word of God and the witness of Jesus Christ even to all that he saw. So now we know who the author is, right? So contrary to the views and arguments against the person identified as his slave, John, being the apostle John, the author of the book actually isn't human, is he? The actual author is God the Father who gave this revelation about the things that were soon to take place to Jesus Christ, God the Son, who then had it taken by an angel, angel means messenger, to John, his slave, the slave of Christ, who then wrote down what he heard, what he saw, and the testimony given to him by the Father, through the Son, through the Angel to him." John is actually simply the man who records what he witnessed. That actually is parallel to John's own statements about himself when it comes to the Gospels and the Epistles. Although we'd have to say in the Gospel and Epistles, it's the Holy Spirit working through him to write down exactly what God wanted concerning things of the past and present instead of receiving and recording direct prophetic revelation about what the future is going to be. That's going to be the difference. But in all of his writings, John sees himself as, I'm a witness. The Gospel of John begins with a declaration about the identity of Jesus and that He has come to bring grace and truth and explain the Father to the people. John 20, 20-31 is John's declaration that there was much more he could have written, but he wrote what he did so that, quote, you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and that in believing you may have life in His name. That's the purpose of the Gospel of John. He concludes his Gospel account with a declaration in John 21-24 which says this, I'm a witness to these things. That's what's important. 1 John begins with a declaration that He and those that had been with Him were first-hand witnesses to the life of Jesus and His message to the world. 1 John 1, 1-4 says this, What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and touched with our hands concerning the word of life. And the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you may also have fellowship with us. Indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And these things we are writing, that our joy may be made complete." And he concludes with a testimony that it is because God has given understanding that you can know Him. So ultimately it always goes back to God, right? God reveals Himself. The accusation of Dionysius that the vocabulary between Revelation, the Gospels, and the Epistles is too different actually turns out to be false. Now we'll give him this benefit. He didn't even have a concordance. We have computers. So it's not hard to check it out. He lists 19 terms or expressions that he said don't occur with enough frequency or don't occur at all. It turns out 12 do occur in Revelation and with some frequency. Three of the remaining seven terms do not occur in the Gospel count. One does not occur in 1 John. So trying to single Revelation out when it's not in the others is a little silly. The cognate of one of the remaining three words is used, which leaves only two terms unused in Revelation that are used in the other items. That is not a basis to say the language, the vocabulary is too different. So the accusation is both false, and it really is a non-argument. It might be expected that an author would use the same or similar vocabulary when he is writing on the same subject. That is not expected when writing on a different subject, and the Akapelips is a different subject and type of literature than the Gospels or Epistles. For example, If I am writing a letter to Diane because I miss her and we're separated, I'm off on a trip someplace, I would expect my language to be very different, even if it's a very long letter, and sometimes I get a little wordy, than it would be if I'm writing a defense of a doctrine to someone who's challenging something online. Would they not be different? Would the tone be different? Would my demeanor be different? One is, this is the love of my life. The other is, you're being a fool, and I'm going to point out why you're a fool, and I'm upset about it. Will that change your language? Your style? Well, it's no different here. Another charge is the very poor grammar used in Revelation compared to the Gospel Epistles. Actually, 1 John has some really poor grammar in it, too. Some Greek scholars even say that John's first run-on sentence is almost unintelligible. Again, it's expected grammatical style would remain consistent by the same author writing on the same subject in the same manner and the same resources, but it's going to be very different if it's a different subject. If it's a different scenario, if there's different resources. Second John and third John are personal letters. You write personal letters very differently than you do what first John is, which is a doctrinal letter giving warning and strengthening the church against a rising Gnostic heresy. It's didactic in many senses. It's a passionate letter of don't fall for this. Here's what's true, that's not. The Gospel of John is different than that. It's a selective historical narrative designed to both augment the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and he's writing some 35, 40 years later, and to convince readers that Jesus is the Son of God, and that in believing him, you'll have eternal life. Different purposes. different types of writing. When he's writing his letters and the gospel, he is in Ephesus. He has resources around him. He may have even had a scribe to help him with some of this stuff. Revelation is written while John is in exile, and he has no resources with him. It also states in chapter 1, verse 10, he is in the spirit. and he is putting down what he is told, and he's trying to describe things both disturbing, and if you've read through Revelation, there are a lot of things in it that are very disturbing. He's trying to describe things that he has no idea what this is. I've had no experience with it, and usually we go to those creatures that are coming out of the bottlenose pit like, what is that? I don't know. I've never seen one of those before. Have you? How do you describe it? Remember in junior high, I read a book, sort of like the Left Behind series written some years ago now, but this was much before that, and it was describing kind of a scenario of what it'd be like if you had to go through the tribulation. I remember in junior high, I was like sweating. I actually woke up wet. I was sweating, continually praying, Lord, if I somehow miss this, save me now. Okay, it's disturbing. What emotions are you gonna have as you're writing? John, obviously, a lot of emotion here, a lot of writing and confusion. His grammar isn't so good. I don't think any of you have ever had grammatical problems in your speech when you get real emotional, right? None of you. Apostolic authorship is important for any New Testament writing. It's of special importance for Revelation since the message is so disturbing. And there were those who wanted to eliminate or at least reduce its authority from early on because of that. The wrangling brought about by Dionysius, the internal evidence, vocabulary, grammatical style, and such, has become normative for liberal theologians as they apply their literary theories to prove they're fools. I don't know how else to say it, they prove they're fools. Why do I say that? If you take their literary theories and you analyze them carefully, they don't hold water. Such, there's literary theories that have been used now for quite a few decades to try to show that Mark is the priority gospel and that Luke and Matthew somehow wrote based on Mark and an unknown document called Q from the German Quell, an unknown document. We have no document. We don't know what it is. It's imaginary. If you take that same theory You can apply it to Luke or to Matthew and prove they were priorities and Mark wrote based on them. How is that supposed to be helpful? It isn't. It is doing something trying to attack the authorship. If you presuppose that God has not and does not communicate to man in any clear and therefore authoritative manner, The challenge to either the claimed or traditionally accepted authorship is simply an early step to reject the message of the text of Scripture. And that's why it's done. We already saw that with Dionysus. He did not like the Kiliastic view. Neither did Eusebius and neither did Augustine. So we're going to do something to remove the authority of it or at least allow a reinterpretation of it so it's not so disturbing to us. As stated in verses 1 and 2, the book is the revelation from God the Father that he gave to God the Son, Jesus Christ, about what is coming in the future. It actually says to show his slaves about the things that are going to happen within a short time. Jesus fulfilled this by sending an angel that communicated to John, who is Jesus' slave. John, in turn, he testified to what he was told, the witness of Jesus, and then all that he saw. Verse three states, the promptings were written down so that those would read or hear them, and he them would be blessed. If you change the message, can you have the best blessing? You can't. You've changed it, it's something else. Though not all scriptures have as many steps in getting to man, all scripture is God-breathed. First Timothy 3.16, right? Most reversions say inspired. It literally means God-breathed. Sometimes that is directly from Him, to use the old King James phrasing, thus saith the Lord, occurs 419 times in the Old Testament. That's direct from God, right? This is what God says. Bang, there it is. Quote. Hebrews 1.1 tells us that God spoke long ago to the fathers and many prophets in many parts and many ways. So that includes dreams, it includes visions, it includes messages from angels, it includes direct statements. 2 Peter 1.21 states that no prophecy was ever made as an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. So the Holy Spirit moved upon men to write down exactly what God wanted even while using their own personality so they express themselves accordingly. Hebrews 1, 2 states, in these last days he has spoken to us in his Son. The Gospels record the direct teachings of Jesus. The Epistles expand on those teachings of Jesus. The Apocalypse is God's revelation to Jesus using an angel transmitted message to John. Though as we go through the book of Revelation, we'll find sometimes instead of going through an angel, Jesus tells him directly. Ultimately then, the author is who? God the Father. John is simply the one who writes it down. That fact means that claiming this book is written by someone other than the Apostle John is a fool's errand because the authority of its message comes from God, not John. Attacking John is trying to remove that authority. Now the external evidence for John the Apostle being the one who wrote down the Revelation is overwhelming. The early testimony of the church, Dr. Robert Thomas and his commentary on this, said this, quote, earlier, clearer, more definite, and more positive for revelation than for the traditional authorship of any other New Testament book. Testimony of the earliest fathers is unanimous in favor of apostolic authorship. The internal evidence actually, when analyzed, is also overwhelming. When it comes to vocabulary, there are a host of words that only show up in John's writing or They show up very frequently in John's writing and very rarely in anybody else's. For example, referring to Jesus as the Word. That only is in John. Only in his writings. Dr. Thomas' commentary, Revelation 1-7, Exegetical Commentary. He also points to similarities in syntax, pages 13-15, style, pages 15-16, and concepts, pages 16-17, that all bolster the traditional view, John of Revelation is the Apostle. And none of that ignores the difference between the Apocalypse, the Gospel, and the Epistles. But it certainly offsets the claims. Differences in writing of an author are to be expected when the differences in purpose and state of mind of the author, as in the apocalypse, is compared to his other writings, as I've already mentioned. That's the authorship. And I spent the time, you can see, all scripture comes from God. And that's how we have to view it. We're reading what God has revealed to us. And when it comes revelation, it's the same thing. This is simply God's revelation given to show us what is coming in the future. Will we understand it all? No. And I'm not gonna get into speculation about what things are. I'm gonna say, that's what it says. Do I know what it is? No, and neither do you, because you've never seen one. Whatever this thing is coming out of the bottomless pit. Never seen it. And I hope I don't. Except maybe from heaven looking down. That would be a safe place. But this is what he said, and there's a reason for it, which we'll get to in a minute when we discuss purpose. The place of writing is declared directly in Revelation 1.9. I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance, which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and witness of Jesus. He was exiled there. Now, Patmos, as the map there shows you, is a small island. It's about 13 square miles. It's in the Icarian Sea. That's part of the Aegean Sea. It's off the coast of Turkey. It's 22 miles south-southwest of Samos, which is a larger island, which it does show up on that map. Traditional dating is AD 95 or 96 based on the statements of early church fathers. Irenaeus, 175-195, he states that John the Apostle lived in Ephesus after returning from Patmos until the reign of Trajan, which began in 98 AD. Clement of Alexandria, he lived AD 155-220, he refers to John returning from the Isle of Patmos and Eusebius dates that as immediately following the death of Emperor Domitian. That occurred in 96 AD. That is what dates the prophecy. He's on Patmos, he's there in 95-96 AD. Now all that fits well with the traditional dating of John moving to the province of Asia. That's that western section of modern Turkey from the province of Asia. He apparently had moved there either 65 or early 66 as a Jewish revolt began in Judea. He became established in Ephesus. It's from there he wrote his gospel, 85-90. It's from there he wrote his epistles, 80-90, 94-95. The suggested earlier dates are trying to cram the apocalypse into a presupposed theological system that rejects traditional witnesses to date in favor of specious interpretation of the book. You find a lot of that. I will cram it in there because it's got to fit my theological system. Now the purpose of the apocalypse is stated again in chapter 1, verses 1 through 3, as we've already pointed out. A revelation from God the Father to Jesus Christ to show God's slaves what's going to take place. Jesus communicates it through an angel to John who writes down all the prophetic things he heard and saw, and that is to be a blessing to those who would read or hear the prophecy and heed it. The purpose of the book is a prophetic warning about the future wrath and judgment of God. And those who heed the warning are going to be blessed because it's a motivation to pursue holiness in its true evil, to stay away from it. The purpose is emphasized at the conclusion of the book, Revelation 22, verses 14 and 15. Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have the authority to the tree of life and may enter the gates to the city. Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral persons, the murderers, the adulterers, and everyone who loves and practices lying. The horrific things written in the book should be motivations to heed the warnings, but tragically, many will find it motivation to try to change the message. Change the authority of it, attack the author, it's not really from God, or change interpretation so it will be more tolerable. The often made claim the apocalypse does not fit with the rest of the New Testament, as I pointed out in my earlier quote from Glasson, only shows that people want a God that will fit their own desires instead of the God that's revealed himself in the scriptures. They will ignore the plain meaning of a text and reinterpret to fit a caricature of what they want God to be instead of what He actually is. People like Jesus the suffering servant who would not quarrel or cry out or break off a battered wreath or put out a smoldering wick as stated in Matthew 12, 18-20. They do not like Jesus, the victorious king, that it will return suddenly and unexpectedly, bringing judgment on those who are unprepared, those who are unfaithful, and the accursed goats, as we saw in our study of Matthew 25. I pointed out when preaching through Matthew 24, revelation is simply the detail of what he outlines in the Olivet Discourse. Revelation fits perfectly with the warnings that God has given, both through the Old Testament Hebrew prophets, from what Jesus said, and what the apostles have said. Jesus, the gentle Lamb of God, so described by John the Baptist, John 129, doesn't stay that way. He returns as the Lion of Judah, Revelation 5.5. Denial or allegorical interpretation of Revelation to soften its message is not going to change that fact. The result is that those who do do that are not going to heed the message. And so they will miss the opportunity to experience its blessings or worse, They may place themselves in grave danger of receiving the curses of it, as stated in Revelation 22, 18 and 19. Now next week, I'm going to continue with some introductory material concerning prophecy, theological systems, hermeneutical principles, and structure of revelation, and then we're gonna get into the text. So we'll get into the text next week. There's a few things I need to deal with as we get into the prologue in chapter one. This is a brief outline, I did include it, for you, there's a lot of ways to outline this, but here's simply brief, just so you know where we go. Prologue, Reverend, chapter one, letters to seven churches, chapters two and three, there's a scene in heaven, verses four and five, that's actually where the song we sang earlier came from. There's the tribulation itself, chapters six through 18, there's the seven seal judgments, the seven trumpet judgments, the seven bowl judgments, and they just get worse and worse. And then it ends, next slide. The second coming in Revelation 19, the millennium and judgment, that's the great white throne judgment in Revelation 20. The eternal state is described in Revelation 21 and up through verse 5 and 22, and there's an epilogue at the end of chapter 22. It is going to be, I think, a very good study. I think if you will read what it says and take heart as it says, there is a blessing in it. but the blessing is heeding the message. There is no blessing if you ignore it or try to change it into something else. So I'm looking forward to doing this. It's gonna be an exciting journey in 2025 if the Lord carries long enough for us to get through it. But as I say so often, I'm okay if he comes back before I have lunch. I hope you are too. Father, thank you for your blessings to us and I thank you for this book, though disturbing, yet that disturbing part of it is really quite a motivation for us to make sure we're right with you. Father, and it's what a warning to those who are not, that they might get right with you. And I pray that that will be what will be the end result of our study of it. Sinners come into repentance and Christians motivated to live in holiness. In Jesus name, amen.