Reading of the Scriptures is from Revelation chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. It's on page 16 of your bulletins. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his slaves, things that must occur shortly. And he signified it, sending it by his angel to his slave John, who gave witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. the things that he saw, both things that are and those that must happen after these. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and keep the things that are written in it because the time is near. Father, we thank you for your word. It is our desire to understand it. And as we look at the general outlines of the whole book of Revelation through these Initial principles that you have given in the these first 11 verses I pray that you would open up the minds of our understanding and Help us to see the relevance of these things for for all of our life We bless you and we commit this time to you. We continue to worship you in Jesus name. Amen You may be seated Well in the last sermon we looked at the word gave witness, John who gave witness, and we saw that that word witness is a Greek word used to describe evidence that is being presented in a courtroom. As Kendall Easley's commentary worded it, John uses the language of a legal witness called to appear in a courtroom. So the word martyreo immediately clues us into the fact that this book is going to be a covenant lawsuit. In chapter 4, John is caught up into the heavenly court. He is summoned basically to appear in that court, to be involved in the witnessing. And there are prosecutors, there are executioners, there are judges seated on the throne. And then in chapter 6, John hears the results of Christ's earlier covenant lawsuit in the Gospels and that factors into why judgments were already happening in chapter 6. We'll get to that later. So martyreo is a strong first clue that this is a covenant lawsuit. But then in the rest of verse 2, We are told what was the content of John's testimony. It says, who gave witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ to all things that he saw, both things that are and those that must happen after these. Now I'm going to focus in on the clause, who gave witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. There are basically three interpretations that you'll find if you survey the commentaries. The first interpretation says that this is basically identifying which John wrote the book, and there's some truth to that, but they're saying this is the John who previously had witnessed to the Old Testament and to the testimony of Jesus Christ when he wrote the Gospel of John. The second interpretation is similar to that, but instead of saying this is the John who previously did that witnessing, it is saying that the content of the book of Revelation is a witness to the Old Testament and to the testimony that Jesus gave in the Gospels. And that's the view that I take. The third interpretation is that the whole verse is just different ways of describing the same thing. It's saying that the book of Revelation is the Word of God and the Word of Revelation is the testimony of Jesus Christ. It's not referring back to a previous revelation, it is these things. And really apart from context, any one of those three interpretations is possible. You can see from the outline, I have already rejected interpretation number three. And I'm not going to get into all of the boring exegetical stuff, but let me give you at least two of the more interesting exegetical reasons why I am convinced that it's the whole book of Revelation that is witnessing to the Old Testament and to the Gospels. Well, first of all, the other times that the phrase the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ occur in this book, they are always referring to previous Revelation. always. For example, if you take a look at verse 9, John is being punished in Patmos it says, for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. Ok, Moses Stewart says, now he could not be there because of being, having written and published the Apocalypse, for this was written after he went there. So he points out that the grammar of verse 9 indicates that John was being punished on Patmos because he had previously witnessed to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. Hort spends almost a page arguing along the same lines, giving several parallels in the book of Revelation that I believe mandate my interpretation. So here's the first reason. If the exact same phrase in the immediate context refers to the Old Testament and to the testimony that Jesus gave while he was here on earth, one would think it should have the same meaning in verse two as well. Revelation is John's court witness to earlier revelation. That's the interpretation. Second, the whole concept of covenant lawsuits that we looked at last week necessitates this interpretation. Covenant lawsuits are always appealing to previous revelation that has been ignored or has been violated by the criminal. You don't have ex post facto law in God's courtroom. If a person, if a church, or if a nation is being arraigned before the courtroom of heaven, it's because they have violated laws that God has already put in place. They should have known about them. So it's appealing to previous revelation. And so John is bringing legal witness in court to the way that the entities of this book have violated previous scripture. That's one of the functions of a prophet. So to summarize principle number 13 that's on the front side of your outlines, it says we must read the book of Revelation in light of the Old Testament and the earlier covenant lawsuit of Jesus in the Gospels. If you do not understand The Old Testament or the testimony that Jesus gave against Israel in the Gospels. There's a lot in this book that's going to be confusing that simply will not make sense. Now let's look first of all at how pervasively revelation quotes from or alludes to the Old Testament. Beal and Carson. have done some massive, massive study on this, but they have said it is generally recognized that Revelation contains more Old Testament references than does any other New Testament book. And some of the conservative estimates of how many times John directly interacted with the Old Testament, these are much older, before computers were around, ranged between 403 and 550 times. Now those were so obvious you couldn't miss those references, but most modern scholars say actually it's a lot higher figure. For example Van der Waals commentary has demonstrated about 1,000 Old Testament clear clear allusions and if you add in if you add in parallels that are obvious, he's obviously borrowing language or parallels into the mix, then there's recent computer analysis that shows upwards of 1,500. But 1,000 is a pretty solid figure and that is an astounding number of Old Testament allusions because we've only got 404 verses in the whole book of Revelation that means that way more than two references to the Old Testament per verse on average. You can see this is just an Old Testament saturated book. I was thinking of copying some of the more obvious allusions and references, about 550 of them. And when I printed it off, I said, no, we're not photocopying. How many pages was I wrote down here? 66 pages of small print. And I thought, OK, but they're so helpful in understanding revelation. I thought, well, when we get Kaiser Commentary dot com up and running, I'm going to be putting that up. In fact, Kaiser Commentary dot com is going to give me the ability to throw a whole bunch of interesting stuff your way that we just won't be bringing up in the sermon. But I can at least summarize the information for you right now. If we use the absolutely lowest figure of 403 citations of the Old Testament, we tally them About 13% of the references are from the first five books of the Bible, from the law. 24% are from the writings, and 63% are from the prophets. And virtually all of the newest commentaries acknowledge that Revelation is absolutely saturated with the theology, language, structure, and symbols of the Old Testament. So it's going to be an absolutely hopeless task to understand Revelation if you don't understand the Old Testament that stands behind it. And honestly, a lot of the commentaries from previous generations, some of their wild, wild exegesis, and sometimes even downright corny exegesis comes because they've ignored the Old Testament. Well, the obvious implication of the first half of this 13th principle is that the New Covenant people were still subject to the Old Testament Scriptures, right? Why appeal to the Old Testament hundreds of times if the Old Testament has no relevance to the Christian, as many Christians nowadays erroneously believe? One of the heresies that many modern evangelicals hold to is the heresy of Marcionism. Well, they may not hold to every heretical idea of Marcion, but Marcion was an early church a guy who was declared a heretic because he said that he was only going to follow the New Testament. He was not going to follow the Old Testament. And in the same way, many modern evangelicals call themselves New Testament Christians as if restricting themselves to the New Testament makes them more pure or makes them somehow more apostolic. And I say, no, it does the exact opposite because the apostles were constantly teaching from the Old Testament. You want to be apostolic? You better not neglect the Old Testament. They treated the Old Testament as if it was the church's Bible. In fact, Paul praises the Bereans in Acts chapter 17 verse 11 for checking out everything that he said against the Old Testament. Everything. There was not a single thing that Paul taught that could not be proved from the Old Testament. And some people are really skeptical. Really, baptism? Yeah, baptism came from the Old Testament. Really, this, that, and the other doctrine, everything can be proved from the Old Testament. Acts 26, verse 22, Luke said about Paul that he was, quote, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come. Saying no other things. Everything that Paul taught was rooted in the Old Testament. He was a whole Bible Christian not a New Testament Christian. Think of it this way. The only scriptures that the church had for the first 10 years or so, probably a lot more than the first 10 years, was the Old Testament. Matthew wasn't written until 40 A.D., and many people say it was 49 A.D., but let's take the most conservative date, 40 A.D. That means for the first 10 years of the church's existence, they didn't have a New Testament. They couldn't be New Testament Christians because there wasn't a New Testament in existence. Matthew was written, Mark was shortly written after that. And it's inconceivable that you even could think of back in those days of being New Testament Christians. No. Christians did their devotions from the Old Testament. They preached from the Old Testament. They did their evangelism from the Old Testament. And when the Apostle Paul, when the Apostle John wrote books, they expected the people to understand, be quite familiar with the Old Testament. Galatians was written in 49 AD with 1st and 2nd Thessalonians in 51 or 52 AD. That's more than 20 years after Christ's ascension. 1st Corinthians was 54 AD, 2nd Corinthians 55, Luke was written in 57. Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians in 58. Acts was written in 62 AD or possibly later. Some people say 63. The Gospel of John and 11 other New Testament books were not written until 64 or 65 AD. That's 34 years after the time of Christ's death. Almost an entire generation of people who didn't have a complete New Testament, okay? Let me just list the books that were written in 64 and 65, 1st and 2nd Timothy, Hebrews, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, John, Jude, 1st and 2nd Peter. Okay, so the idea of being a New Testament Christian is ludicrous once you begin to date the books of the New Testament. Their main Bible was the Old Testament. Have I said that enough times? The Old Testament is very, very important. And in this book, John is appealing to the Old Testament as to why it is that God brought a covenant lawsuit against the entities in this book. He assumes that the readers and the hearers are going to be thoroughly familiar with it. Now if you keep the big themes of the Old Testament in mind, a lot of this book does fall into place. You should not interpret. the subject of the new heavens and the new earth in the last chapter of Revelation without appealing to what Isaiah has to say about the new heavens and the new earth. John expects you understand the theology behind his description and there's a lot of controversy that falls into place when you do that. Beal says quote the book of Daniel chapter 7 in particular provides a mother load of material for John and then he shows how all of the prophets and other books of the Old Testament are so masterfully interwoven into this these 22 chapters of Revelation. He says quote John leaves almost no Old Testament stone unturned in the course of Revelation and even the structure of this book ties in with the Old Testament. If you look on your outlines there, you'll see I give a, from Beal's commentary, and there are several other commentaries that reference this, but a chapter-by-chapter comparison of Ezekiel with Revelation. Now, they're dealing with different time periods, but Ezekiel's language, his structure, his themes help us to understand the book of Revelation. John also patterns certain chapters after Daniel. The imagery of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in Revelation chapter six is borrowed from Zachariah. And when we get to the chapters, we'll see that the images of judgment scenes, the tribulation, idolatrous teaching, divine protection, the spiritual mark on the head. battles, apostasy, and filling with the Spirit. There's so many different themes that you're probably going to misinterpret if you're not familiar with how those things are being dealt with in the Old Testament. Now, even more controversial than what I've covered so far, that we're whole Bible Christians, not just New Testament Christians, is that the book of Revelation indicates that we are subject to the laws of the Old Testament. John was a theonomist long before any modern theonomist, okay? He doesn't just appeal to the writings and the prophets. He doesn't just appeal to the symbolism of the Old Testament. He also appeals to the laws of God as if they are still binding. After all, we saw in the last sermon that the concepts of covenant lawsuit, a court, and law are bound together. You cannot separate those things. You do not have a court case to even hear if it's not based upon the law of God. The only thing that's admissible before the courtroom of heaven are God's laws. All the entities in this book are judged by God's Old Testament law. And I've written down here, and I'm not going to give them to you, 14 verses that John appeals to from God's law when he brings his covenant lawsuit against the churches in Revelation 2 through 3. I've written down a bunch of verses that indicate God's appeal to his law when he brings covenant lawsuits against Israel and against Rome. Well, that implies if he's holding them accountable and he's judging them for having violated those laws, that God's law continues to apply to the church in Israel and to the nations as well. Well, this means that Revelation stands against all antinomianism and turns us back to the law of God. So John is going to be bringing witness to the entire Old Testament as a court evidence against rebels. So that's the first half of this principle. Second half he doesn't just bear witness to the Old Testament this verse says that he bore witness to the testimony of Jesus. Now in the last sermon I pointed out that the word testimony used of Jesus is really the same root word for witness. Witness is martyreo, testimony is martyria, okay? It really means the same thing. So Jesus too was bringing a covenant lawsuit, and I quote it extensively from the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, where they demonstrate that the gospel of John itself stood as a covenant witness against Israel. Now, just knowing that was an interpretive key that helped me to solve the dilemma of Revelation chapter six. I've mulled over that for years. And when I began looking at how Christ had already set judgments in place through his covenant lawsuit, it's like, oh, perfect. It all fits into place. And there is a number of modern preterists who are beginning to see the light on that as well. Anyway, verse 19 indicates that John is commissioned to write about things that have already flowed from the courtroom, things that are happening, and things that will take place. And chapter 6 is going to outline some things that have already happened because of Christ's former lawsuit. Now there are other parallels, and as we go through each chapter, connecting Christ's earlier words with each passage, you'll notice that the two are almost like commentaries on each other. But certainly the Gospels give us interpretive clues that hugely help us to understand Revelation. John, in a sense, is not giving us something new. He's pointing back to the Old. He's pointing back to the Old Testament, that's what the Word of God is referencing, and the Gospels, at least what Jesus, his speeches that were bringing covenant lawsuits, that's the testimony of Jesus. So, the woes of Revelation 8 through 12. They're going to parallel the woes in Matthew 11 and especially in Matthew 23. The birth pangs leading up to 66 AD in Revelation 6, that's the chapter dealing with the six of the seven seals, perfectly parallel the birth pangs leading up to the great wrath in Matthew chapter 24. Now there's a whole commentary that's just devoted to the parallels between the gospel of John and the book of Revelation. And there really are some cool things that I was very tempted to bring up that I won't bring up today. But that just spring to light when you see those parallels side by side. I'm just going to give you two examples of how this helps. First is the timing of chapter six. And if you just go ahead and turn to Revelation chapter 6. This chapter deals with the six seals of God's initial judgments upon Rome and Israel and Beal and other commentaries have demonstrated the whole chapter is patterned after the first part of the Olivet Discourse, which is recorded in Matthew 24, Mark Chapter 13, and Luke Chapter 21. And again, once you see those close parallels, automatically you're forced to rule out a futurist interpretation of Revelation Chapter 6. It's impossible because the parts that Revelation 6 are parallel to are the parts that lead up to 66 AD. Okay? It also corrects many older preterists who made two wrong assumptions. Now I'm a preterist, but this is something that I'm one of those guys, if I'm working on a puzzle and a piece does not fit, I'm not going to take a hammer and force it in place. And for years and years I could see that the general parameters of preterism was true, But there were some things that just did not fit. And so, and interestingly I've run across other Preterists who have seen the same thing and have a beautifully fitting puzzle right now. But anyway, these Preterists made wrong assumptions. The first wrong assumption that they made is that there is no historical sequence in Revelation chapter 6. Instead, they say, OK, what's going on is just just imagine a camera snapshot and another camera snapshot, and it's all of the same period. And the second wrong assumption they made is that all of Revelation chapter six is dealing with a three and a half year period, the first half of the war against Jerusalem. And I'm going to be I mean, right in the context, we're going to see some clues that that can't be. For example, take a look at verse 10. It says, and they cried out 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, the clear implication is that God has not yet started to avenge these martyrs, right? Verse 11 confirms that. So this can't be the seven-year war since the seven-year war is God's avenging of these saints. Look at verse 11. Then a white robe was given to each of them, and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer. Well that's the language of historical sequence, right? That they should rest a little while longer until That's historical sequence two, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who would be killed as they were, was completed. Well, that's a strong indication that this chapter has to occur before the war against Jerusalem, before 66 AD. Why? Because God's not answered their prayer yet to judge Israel. And that's confirmed by the historical sequence mentioned in the 7th seal in chapter 8. There's a whole bunch of clues that I'll skip over because it bogged the sermon down too much. But chapter eight begins God's trumpet judgments. That's the last seal. And out of that seal flow these trumpet judgments. So you would expect the seventh seal to come after the sixth seal, right? You're expecting a sequence here. Well, yes, you find that the seventh seal and those judgments begin judgment against Israel. So again, that implies that everything before this has to be before the war in in 66 AD. So those are sequential clues that we have in the text but even if you had not noticed those time indicators In the context, which many people do overlook, Matthew 24 and its parallels would have shown that each of these things took place before Rome encamped around Jerusalem. You compare Luke with Matthew and Mark, it's before Rome encamped around Jerusalem. He calls these six things the beginnings of sorrows, Matthew 24, verse eight. Now here we're getting into the nitty gritty. You're gonna wonder, where am I going with all of this? Believers would escape from the tribulation. Excuse me. Believers would not escape from the tribulation. They would escape from God's wrath against Israel. Early church historians tell us that the remnant of believing Jews left Israel in 66 AD. So rather than a pre-trib rapture, It's a pre-wrath escape. Not quite a rapture, but it's a pre-wrath escape. So they do escape God's wrath and they fled to the city of Pella. Now what has made some people blind to these interpretive clues is that they seem to be inconsistent with some other assumptions that they have in their heads. Many preterists as well as dispensationalists have assumed that the Great Tribulation and the Great Wrath are one and the same thing. Well, if you treat them as one and the same thing, there's going to be a lot of things in the Olivet Discourse and in Revelation that are going to be extremely confusing. It's going to be a very muddied waters that you're working through. And it's going to be very tough to map things out chronologically. And it's the chronology that a lot of Preterists and others mess up on. But the fact of the matter is that the Great Tribulation and the Great Wrath are utterly different things. You just look them up in your concordance and you will see. They point to different people. More recently, scholars from camps as diverse as Preterism on the one hand and Dispensationalism on the other hand recognize the Great Tribulation only happens to true believers, to true Christians, and the Great Wrath is only against apostate Jews, unbelieving Jews. So many modern Dispensationalists no longer speak of a pre-tribulation rapture, pre-trib rapture. Instead they acknowledge that Christians will go through the tribulation just like Revelation 7 verse 14 clearly says that they will. So instead they speak of a post trib and pre wrath rapture. If you've seen some of the books out there you might have wondered what's with the pre wrath. Well that's the reason they've begun to realize no Christians do go through tribulation it's not pre trib. It's a pre-wrath rapture that they speak of. So post-trib, but pre-wrath. Now they have the timing wrong. They've got that off in the future. But I think that they are wrestling with the same facts that we are wrestling, and they're wrestling with those facts correctly on some levels. And the same confusing facts that have led to a three-raid division amongst dispensationalists, pre-trib, mid-trib, and post-trib camps, has led to similar confusion among preterists on how things get sequenced before 70 A.D. And if you don't get those things figured out ahead of time and you dive straight into the book, you're going to get yourself into trouble. And it's comparing the two side by side that really helps. Let me quickly remind you of what I'm doing with these interpretive principles, because we're taking a long time with these. John gives us interpretive principles in the first 11 verses of how he's going to be treating this book and I could have just given you a general overview of the book and then we could dive in and I was afraid if I did that there would still be a lot of confusion on what some of the details are talking about. So what I've done is I've chosen to dig into various parts of the book using the interpretive principles And we're going to do that right now with the comparison. I can't give you all of the comparisons between the Gospels and Revelation, but I want to give you two just to give you a tiny insight onto how this works. And because dates can get very, very confusing sometimes, I've had people ask me for making some charts. My wife in particular, she said, Phil, this is just over my head. Some of this stuff, I can't fit it into where the date sequence is. So if you take a look at your charts there, you'll see a chart that just gives one tiny little sample of how the Olivet Discourse and Revelation are synchronized. And hopefully as we go through these over the next couple of years, it's going to be crystal clear what things are going forward sequence and when John doubles back again and starts again. But understanding the difference between tribulation and wrath is absolutely critical to having a proper chronology. And I'll confess, maybe even in this series, I may have unwittingly done it. I occasionally still wrongly use the word tribulation to describe the seven-year war against Jerusalem. Just slap me upside of the face if I do that again. It's not the Great Tribulation. If you look in your chart labeled on the back side there, Tribulation versus Wrath, and I'll keep perfecting these charts over time. If I'd had more time last night when I threw these together, I would have put some scriptures under each of those points. But first of all, look at the second chart in the middle of that sheet. It's labeled the Great Tribulation versus the Great Wrath. And you'll notice that the war was seven years long. This seven years was Daniel's 70th week. A week is seven days but there are weeks of years as well and Sabbath years. So it was seven years long and it begins in 66 A.D. and it ends in 73 A.D. You can see that there. That week is divided up into exactly equal three and a half year periods. On August 3, 70 AD, exactly three and a half years after the war started, the temple was burned. And I should have put something into this chart, but if your eyes scan up to the top chart, the very right hand side of that chart, you'll see another date after 73 that's significant. That's 74 AD. Daniel said that it would be good to wait beyond the 1,290 days. He said to wait for 1,335 days. Well, that's the exact number of days to when the last fortress of Masada fell on March 30 of 74 AD. And the mass killing of Jews had finished long before that. It finished in 73 AD. This was just a mop-up operation, but both the Olivet Discourse and the book of Revelation speak of enormous numbers of Jews dying in the war, as well as enormous numbers of Christians dying prior to the war, prior to the war. And let me first of all deal with the death of apostate Jews. There were literally millions of Jews who were killed during both halves of the seven-year period. If you look at the census figures of the Roman Empire before and after the war, you will see something very, very interesting. Several modern scholars have shown that before the war, Jews made up, get this, 10% of the Western side of the Empire's population and 20% of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire. That's an absolutely astounding figure for one people group to make up that big a percentage of the Roman Empire. And there's debate on the exact numbers but when you meld the Eastern statistics and the Western statistics together they seem to average out to more than 15 percent of the entire Roman population was made up of Jews you can see that those Jews would have had an enormous influence on almost all the countries that they were in that'll be very significant when we get to some of the later chapters but when the seven year war is ended the Jewish portion of the Empire was negligible. Now you can interpret that different ways you might not have admitted to being a Jew you know with all of the persecutions that went on so maybe the statistics after the war were skewed but any way that you slice the pie it appears to have been the most massive Holocaust of Jews that this world has ever known. When you look at the multiplied millions of Jews that were in the empire before and the negligible amount afterwards, I used to say we've had more persecution today than ever before. We'll look at the persecution of the Christians. That's really not so. And compared to whatever number you want to put into the Holocaust under the Nazis, it pales into significance to what happened in the first century. This was some unbelievable, unbelievable stuff. And so it very appropriately is called the great wrath of God. In 1 Thessalonians 2.16, Paul blasts the Jews for, quote, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. Now, nowhere do Christians face that wrath. All Jewish Christians in Israel managed to escape in 66 AD before the war started, and they were preserved throughout the whole period of that war. It was a pre-wrath escape. But contrast that seven-year period with the bottom right-hand side of the second chart, okay? That's titled the Great Tribulation. Just as God had ordained a seven-year period of wrath, Satan imitates God, probably tries to foil God's plans by engineering his own seven-year period during which he no doubt hoped that he would exterminate Christianity. And he started three and a half years before God did. He tries to jump the gun, perhaps to foil God's plans, ruin God's plans, One of the very, very early church fathers commentaries on Revelation written by Andrew of St. Victor points to a peace covenant documented in the Roman records, a peace covenant between Rome and Israel designed to exterminate the Christians. Now why would Rome even bother to make a covenant with Israel? Well I've already mentioned that they were A huge and a rather wealthy segment of the empire's population, if you average the 10% of the West, 20% from the East, shows that Jews made up 15% of the population of the Roman Empire. But secondly, research also shows that Jews were hugely influential in Nero's court. Any number of scholars are now talking about that. Actually, they started talking about it way back. Those of you who have read an Edward Gibbons book decline and fall of the Roman Empire. We'll probably see some of those references. He states that the Jewish leaders of Israel, quote, possessed very powerful advocates in the palace. Let me just give you some samples. Nero was married to Poppaea, very beautiful, very influential Jewess and She had so enamored Nero with Judaism that he once said that if he lost favor in Rome, he would rule over the kingdom from Jerusalem. Pretty interesting statement. People don't often realize the degree to which Jewish leadership controlled many of the kings of the earth back then. In any case, Nero was surrounded by Jewish friends. In Ken Gentry's book, Navigating the Book of Revelation, he pulls together the research by numerous scholars and he shows clearly that as one scholar worded it, quote, the neurotic persecution was engineered by the Jews. Does that surprise you? said the Neronic persecution was engineered by the Jews. Now there is a massive amount of information to document that and after 62 AD they began to stoke the flames of persecution. When fire broke out in Rome in 64 AD which was probably ignited by at Nero's own command there was huge backlash and Nero actually feared for his life And Poppea and other Jewish friends counseled him to pin the blame on the Christians, and they helped him to come up with all kinds of scurrilous propaganda. So there is a reason why the Gospels and why Revelation put so much stress on God's wrath against Israel. They were the mortal enemies of Christianity at that time. They were the architects of the earlier Great Tribulation, which sought to exterminate Christianity and it almost succeeded. The Sadducees and the Herodians had been in bed with Rome long before that but this was way worse. Israel was given full permission to kill Christians starting in 62 AD and it got more heated in 64 and by 66 it looked like all Christians would be wiped off the face of the map. The Roman historians of that time, they were quite familiar with purges of millions of people. They weren't so troubled by that, but they were astonished. They were astonished at Nero's purging of Christians. It was so massive that it took these historians, who were pretty hardened to death, it took their breath away and they felt that this was just pure savagery. So look again at Revelation chapter 6. I'm going to give you a few dates. The first seal, first horseman, is in verses 1 through 2, and it represents Caesar Augustus. He was the first emperor to be given a crown. He was associated with a bow. He was known for hugely expanding the empire. It's a perfect description of Caesar Augustus. So I have the dates 27 BC to 14 AD written in my margin. That was the latter part of his reign that really was the most troubling. This chapter is giving the judgments that God brings from the time of Christ's birth on and up. It's not going back earlier than that. Second horseman is Tiberius. He's the next emperor. He was Rome's greatest general. And under his reign, there were all kinds of civil wars. He reigned from 14 to 37 AD. Now, can civil war be used by God for judgment? Well, anybody who's read much American history knows exactly that's the case. The war between the states probably had more loss of life, was more costly than just about all of the other wars put together. And I believe it was a judgment that God brought on both the North and the South. So God definitely does use civil wars, which is what that section is talking about. The third seal, the third horseman is Caligula. and the description perfectly matches him. He was from 38 to 39 AD, and while pretending to be a champion of economic justice, he actually pillaged the empire for his own gratification. The fourth horseman is Claudius, under whose reign massive numbers of people died of famine and of other causes. He reigned from 41 to 54 AD but it's under the 5th and the 6th seals that we see the Great Tribulation happening. Great Tribulation does not start till seals 5 and 6. Now you might wonder why it's not another horseman and the commentaries that agree with me on this say well it's because Nero wasn't a general. He was a lazy bum that stayed in Rome and just lived luxuriously. All of the other emperors before him had been famous generals. They were fighting men. They rode on war horses. Nero did not. Now the fifth seal, if you're just wanting to date these, the fifth seal goes from 62 to 65 AD. And the sixth seal deals with signs in the heavens and terror among both the Romans and the Jews as the sky is peeled back and everyone sees the great warfare between Satan and Michael happening in the heavens. And the Roman and the Jewish historians, you know, record things like hearing voice, incredibly loud voice, they said as of a multitude coming from the temple saying we are leaving here and they say that they saw the glory cloud leaving and going up to the Mount of Olives and there's a whole bunch of other freaky things that happened. Well those cosmic signs Listed in verses 12 through 17 if you want a date here actually happened on Artemisius 21 Artemisius 21 of 66 AD before the war started This is early in 66 the war starts later in 66 immediately chapter 7 what what does God immediately do is He immediately tells angels to seal all true believers in Israel in chapter 7 for their protection. And the angels seal exactly 12,000 believers from each of 12 tribes of Israel. And there are actually more than 12 tribes. There was 13 ones left out. Either they were all killed, all the true believers were killed in that tribe, or there weren't any elect in that time period, but there's 12,000 from each of 12 tribes. So verses 1 through 8 of chapter 7 show the pre-Trib exodus of Jewish believers just before the trumpets usher in their judgments in chapter 8. So all of that's in 66 AD as well. Then chapter 8 begins the outpouring of God's wrath upon Israel using Rome as his tool of vengeance since they were the ones who had instigated the persecution of Christians using Rome. Well that backfired and Rome devoured Israel and most of chapters 8 through 19 talk about that. By the way Revelation 13 and 17 uses some of the most remarkable imagery of what a dangerous game that Israel was playing. Israel was riding the beast Rome. She's the harlot riding the beast Roman especially the Jewish leadership who had always been in bed with Rome. But they're riding the beast Rome to persecute Christians. And you know what happens when you're riding a wild beast. Sometimes you get eaten by the beast and that's exactly what happens in that imagery there. But take a look back at chapter 7 and verse 9. This starts a description of a different group of believers. These are martyrs from around the world. And too many times, preterists merge the two, especially replacement theology people. They say, God has no more place for Israel. So they merge the two, and they say, oh, these 12,000 from each tribe, that's just a symbol of Gentile and Jews altogether. And I said, no, no. They're two separate groups. And God does have a place for Israel in the future. But these are not spared. Take a look at 7 verse 9. After these things I looked and behold a great multitude, which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands. This is a worldwide tribulation with a massive number of martyrs from around the world. John says so many, no human could possibly number the number of Christians that had already been slain by that time. Multiplied millions died under Nero. Now with some of the research I've already mentioned that I've done, I take back all references to the fact that we are living in an age when the church is more persecuted than any time before. They were more persecuted back then because of the incredible success of the gospel. Paul said that the gospel had been preached in the whole world prior to this time. There was unbelievable spread of the gospel. And anytime that there is huge success of the gospel, Satan gives greater persecution. So that's why we're being persecuted now is because there is an exponential growth of the gospel. Anyway, the angel tells John who they were in verse 14. And I said to him, Sir, you know. So he said to me, these are the ones who come out of the great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. So if these are the ones who died under the Great Tribulation or what some call the Neronic Tribulation, then the second half of this chapter cannot be dated any later than 68 AD when Nero dies and the persecution ends. There is no more persecution after 68 AD. So we're just looking, this is the kind of work that I do in a lot of other patches. I won't bore you with all of it, but I'm trying to give you a little bit of feel that when you compare the Gospels with Revelation, you're going to begin to see these peacemakers just when you're doing a puzzle. You know, you get key pieces put into place and then you begin to see, okay, now I see that there's another connection here, another connection there. That's what you do when you study a book like Revelation. Now, verses 1 through 8 are 66 AD. Verse 9 says, after these things, and I date that as 68 AD. But in chapter eight, he goes back to describing the seals, which brings him back to where chapter six ended in 66 AD. Now, it actually wouldn't hurt if you just insisted that chapter eight has to be historical sequence there as well, and you date it 68, because that's when most of the horrific things in the war happened. But in any case, I've got my reasons, and I won't share them right now, why I think it's 66 again. Now here is the important point to keep in mind. Every time that the Gospels and Revelation use the word tribulation to describe this period, it's describing the persecution of true believers. It's quite different from the great wrath. The appearing of Christ in the sky begins the Great Wrath or the seven-year war against Jerusalem, but it ends the Great Tribulation, or at least the Great Tribulation as it was being experienced in the land of Israel. So Christ's manifestation in the sky, seen by Jews and Romans alike, cuts short what Satan had planned to do. And it's a good thing that the Great Tribulation was cut short or there would be no Christians who would have survived. Jesus said in Matthew 24, 22, And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved, but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened." What does he mean by being shortened? Well Nero planned seven years of killing, but when he turned on Israel and he fought against them in 66 AD, which is smack dab in the middle of his seven year covenant, When he did that, that cut off the persecution for that whole region of the world. Rome was just totally focused on Israel. They left the Christians alone. And then when Nero died in 68 AD, it cut off persecution of Christians around the empire. So it did cut his plans short. Now I want you to turn to Matthew 24. We're almost done. And I'm going to do the same thing here. I'm going to help you to quickly mark off the differences between Great Tribulation and Great Wrath. Verses four through eight deal with history leading up to 62 A.D. And he calls those things the beginning of sorrows. Verse nine says, then they will deliver you up to tribulation. And that word tribulation occurs here, verse 21 and verse 29. And that tribulation's only dealing with the neurotic persecution of believers. So verses nine through 14 are the great tribulation. Then verses 15 through 20 are the believer's attempt to flee the imminent wrath of God upon Jerusalem. That wrath of God against Jerusalem is the great wrath. And then verses 20 through 21 say, and pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath for then there will be great tribulation such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time no nor ever shall be. So it's still great tribulation time when they're fleeing the great wrath So it's the beginning part of 66 A.D. but verses 15 through 20 describes the war that they must flee from. It's describing the great wrath. And then verses 21 through 26 goes back to discussing the tribulation because the war that they're fleeing has not yet begun. I've got 66 A.D. next to verse 27. It says, for as lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. And that's exactly how the eyewitnesses in the first century described it. Christ and His armies did not come to the earth like He will come at the second coming, but He and His armies were seen in the sky. They were fighting in the sky. They're described as being like lightning flashes, even though they recognize fiery chariots and battalions of angels. They talk about those things. Anyway, this manifestation of verse 27 that both Romans and Jews spoke about would usher in the eagle standards of Roman army, verse 28, So verses 9-14 deal with the Great Tribulation. Verses 15-20 deal with the escape from the great wrath against Israel. Verses 21-26 are still in the period of the Great Tribulation and verses 32-34 say that all of that was going to happen within 40 years of Jesus talking to His disciples. Within one generation. So you see on your chart, there's an arrow at the bottom of the chart that shows the 40 years between 30 AD and 70 AD. That's exactly one generation. And we'll need to get into these verses in the future in more detail. But I want to show how verses 29 through 31 reinforce what we've seen in Revelation. That Christ's manifestation in the sky. Not the second coming. Not the end of the planet. You know, end of the planet is what verse 35. Heaven and earth will pass away. Now that day nobody knows when it's going to happen. So verses 35 through the end of this chapter and through the end of all chapter 25 is dealing with the second coming. There's not a lick of first century in any of that. But that's different. This is a manifestation in the sky and it happens after the tribulation, not before it. Just as Revelation six and seven have interpretive clues, take a look at verse nine. Notice the word immediately. immediately after the tribulation of those days and in Israel that would be 66 AD which seems to be the focus but if he's dealing with the end of great tribulation throughout the empire then you'd put 68 AD there but I take it as 66 AD and by the way 68 AD had similar remarkable visions in the sky and on the earth and signs and things so really there is debate amongst preterists is this 66 is this 68? But it says the sun will be dark and the moon will not give its light the stars will fall from heaven the powers of the heavens will be shaken then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven and Then all the tribes of the land will mourn and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory and he will send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet and they will gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. There was a Roman historian that spoke of seeing people rising out of the ground in that year. And I should say that partial preterists interpret this two different ways. Some people take that gathering that the angels do from one end of heaven to the other as just the beginnings of the Great Commission to the ends of the earth. That's a possible way of taking it. I take it very literally that angels gathered every elect person who had ever died prior to that point of time and resurrected them. And it's the second part of that first resurrection. The first harvest, the barley harvest, was divided into two parts. There's the first fruits in 30 AD. There's the main harvest in 66 AD. and during the Jewish war. And then the second resurrection or the wheat harvest will be at the end of history. And I'll give you in the future some quotes from Jewish and Roman historians that describe everything that's going on here. I don't have time to get into it right now, but I just wanted to give you a tiny insight into how critical it is to interpret revelation in light of the Old Testament. as well as in light of Christ's words in the gospel. And I just liken it to a massive jigsaw puzzle that needs to be fit together. And you're gonna have a hard time fitting that jigsaw puzzle together if four fifths of the pieces are missing. In other words, if you're leaving the Old Testament, you're leaving the gospels out, you don't have very many pieces to work with and it's gonna be really hard. So what I'm doing in these introductory sermons is I'm making a border for the puzzle to fit into and we're starting to put together some of the big main themes and then after that the little pieces will fit into these parts a whole lot easier. Okay and then we'll be flying. Let me just conclude by reminding you that we need to be whole Bible Christians and secondly that Revelation assumes that we are becoming familiarized with the whole Bible. If Interpretive Principle number five is true, that God intends this book to be accessible to every believer, and if verse three really is expecting every believer who hears the words of this book to understand it, then that implies that we need to read the whole Bible, not just the New Testament. That's true, you can depend upon teachers from the pulpit up here to a certain degree to open up the Bible for you, but there is no substitute for reading the Bible listening to the Bible on tape, memorizing it, just immersing yourself in the text of the scripture and may God give you great insights as you do so. And may you hugely grow as you do so. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you that it gives to us all the principles that we need to understand it, that scripture interprets scripture. And I pray you would help us to become more and more skilled with seeing how scripture interprets scripture. May this book come alive to us in the future. And as we are struggling with putting the Outline of the outsides of the puzzle together. May this puzzle come together in a remarkable way in these next couple of years. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.