Hi, this is Hackberry House and welcome to the Word of God. Father, we thank you for the important things that you've been bringing up into our attention in these studies. I pray that they will continue today. Your anointing will stay firm within us and let us know what is the truth about our church. In Jesus' name, Amen. Hackberry House can be accessed by typing into your computer myheartcry.net When you go there, go to the library page, and when you've gone to the library page, scroll down to the lessons, the Bible lessons, and we're on Lesson 51, Church History, Part 2. Now, we're on the back sheet there, and we'll hit the questions in just a little while. Let's get right to the history right now. As you well know, I think most of you, we're going through the Bible in chronological order. Been in the New Testament for quite some time now. We're actually at the very end of the New Testament and we're in between Revelation 3 and 4 where I believe there's a gap of all of the years of church history. And so I'm filling in a little bit of church history right now through Henry Halley in Halley's Bible Handbook, 24th edition. We just talked about the St. Bartholomew's Massacre. The following, that was the Huguenot Wars, where the Huguenots united and armed for resistance. Until finally in 1598, they were granted freedom of conscience and worship. Pope Clement VIII called this Toleration Edict of Nantes a cursed thing. And after years of underground work by the Jesuits, the edict was revoked. 500,000 Huguenots had to flee to Protestant countries so they would not be massacred again. The French Revolution, a hundred years later, was one of the most frightful convulsions in history. The people in a frenzy against the tyrannies of the ruling class, among whom were the clergy, owners of one-third of all of the land in France, wealthy, lazy, immoral, and heartless in their treatment of the poor. They rose up in a rain of terror and blood, abolished the government, closed the churches, confiscated their property, suppressed Christianity and Sunday. Napoleon restored the church but not the property. 1802 granted toleration to all and almost ended the political power of the Popes in every country. Talks about things that went on in the various countries. For example, Spain. The Reformation never made much headway there. Talks about England. It was revolt and then reform. From the days of William the Conqueror, there had been repeated protests against papal control of England. Henry VIII believed, as his predecessors had, that the English Church should be independent of the Pope. His divorce was not the cause, but the occasion of his break with Rome. Henry was no saint, but neither was the contemporary Pope, Paul III, who had many illegitimate children. In 1534, the Church of England definitely repudiated papal authority and settled down to an independent life under the spiritual direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. Under him, reform began. Monasteries were abolished on the grounds of immorality. An English Bible was put in the churches and a prayer book for services in English. The churches were stripped of many Romanist practices. Out of the English church came the Puritans and later the Methodists. In Scotland, the story of the Scotch Reformation is the story of John Knox, who was a Scotch priest. About 1540, he began teaching Reformation ideas. On the accession of Bloody Mary, 1553, he went to Geneva, where he thoroughly absorbed Calvin's teaching. 1559, he was recalled to Scotland by the Parliament of Scotch Lords to become leader of the National Reform Movement. The political situation made church reform a National Independence I movement. Mary, Queen of Scots, had married Francis II, King of France, who was son of Catherine de' Medici, of St. Bartholomew's Massacre fame. Scotland and France were thus in alliance, their crowns united by marriage. France was bent on the destruction of Protestantism. Philip II, King of Spain, with other Romanists, plotted the assassination of Queen Elizabeth. to put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the English throne. Pope Pius V aided the scheme by issuing a bull excommunicating Elizabeth and releasing her subjects from allegiance, which by Jesuit teaching meant that the assassin would be doing an act of service to God. So there was no chance for reform of the Scots Church as long as it was under French control. John Knox believed that the future of Protestantism was bound up in an alliance between Protestant England and Protestant Scotland. He proved to be a magnificent leader. The Reformed Church was established 1560, and with the help of England, by 1567 the French were driven out. Romanism was more completely swept away than in any other country. John Knox largely made Scotland what it still is. The Counter-Reformation In fifty years, the Reformation had swept Europe, with most of Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Scandinavia, England, Scotland, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Poland in its grasp, making headway in France. This was a terrific blow to the Roman Church, which in turn organized the Counter-Reformation, and by means of the Council of Trent and the Jesuits and the Inquisition, some of the moral abuses of the papacy were abolished. By the close of the century, Rome was organized for an aggressive onslaught on Protestantism, and under the brilliant and brutal leadership of the Jesuits, regained much of their lost territory. Religious wars. The Reformation movement was followed by a hundred years of religious war. First there was war on the German Protestants, then there was war on the Protestants of the Netherlands, Huguenot Wars in France, Philip's attempt against England, the Thirty Years War, and these wars political and national rivalries were involved, as well as questions of property, for the Church in most countries owned one-third to one-fifth of all lands. But every one of these wars was started by Roman Catholic kings, urged on by Pope and Jesuit for the purpose of crushing Protestantism. The Thirty Years' War in Bohemia and Hungary by 1580, Protestants were in the majority, including most of the land-owning nobles. Emperor Ferdinand II of the House of Habsburg had been educated by the Jesuits, and with their help undertook to suppress Protestantism. The Protestants united for defense. The first part of the war was a Catholic victory. They succeeded in driving Protestantism out of all Catholic states. Then they determined to recatholicize the Protestant states of Germany. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, realized that the fall of Protestant Germany would mean the fall of Sweden and perhaps the end of Protestantism. He entered the war and his army was victorious. He saved the day for the Protestant cause. Was this the way that the Lord intended for his church to be conquering? No. No. We'll let people sort out what is of God and what is not of God. The number of martyrs under papal persecutions far outnumbered the early Christian martyrs under pagan Rome. Hundreds of thousands among the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Protestants, and so on we've talked about. It's common to excuse the Popes by saying that it was the spirit of the age, but whose age was it? And who made it so? The Popes. It was their world. For 1,000 years they had been training the world to be in subjection to them. If the popes had not taken the Bible from the people, the people would have known better. And it would not have been the spirit of the age. It was not the spirit of Christ, and vicars of Christ should have known better. Persecution is the spirit of the devil, even if it's carried on in the name of Christ. What about Protestant persecutions? Calvin consented to the death of Servetus. Now, I believe that Ali is not totally within the bounds of reason here, and he does not give the full amount, but there were people killed by Protestants, and you need to understand that, in England, in Germany, and so on. There were many people killed by the Protestant Church, too. The Protestant movement was an effort of a part of the Western Church to free itself from the authority of Rome and to gain for every man the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. Inevitably, In the breakaway, the struggle for freedom resolved itself into different streams with different emphasis carrying over some of Rome's errors. The movement, now about 500 years old, has made enormous growth and remarkable improvement." And he goes on to discuss that, some of the things that he says in his day are not true about today. He talks about some of the other more modern movements, which I won't get into right now. He talks a lot about the Greek or Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church. Christianity was first established in the Eastern or Greek part of the Roman Empire. For 200 years, Greek was the language of Christianity. In AD 330, Constantine made Constantinople capital of the Roman Empire. Henceforth, there was rivalry with Rome. In 395, the Roman Empire was divided into Eastern and Western. Constantinople, the seat of the Eastern, and Rome, the seat of the Western. 632, there were three Eastern centers of Christianity. Syria, Palestine, and Egypt gave way to Mohammedanism, and Constantinople was the only one left. At the Eighth Ecumenical Council in 869, there was the final schism between Greek and Latin churches. At times there have been attempts to reunite the churches, but they have been futile so far. I believe that day will come, however. Well, he mentions one more time some of the reformers. I don't think I will go back into them, except ones that we haven't talked about. For example, Puritanism, he mentions. We're on 797, if you're following with highly. Early half of the 17th century, the Puritanism arose in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was produced by a popular interest in the Bible. It was a reform movement within the Church of England protesting against the lifeless formalism of the times and aiming at general purity and righteousness of life. Because they were persecuted by the ecclesiastical authorities, they separated themselves into independent churches, mostly Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian. It was from among these Puritans that New England was colonized, lured to the shores of the New World in search of liberty. Yes, the Puritans persecuted also, and they could be very nasty at times. Roger Williams, 17th century and Episcopal clergyman, was driven out of Massachusetts and founded the colony of Rhode Island, where he affiliated himself with the Baptists. The Puritans had been very zealous in demanding liberty of conscience for themselves, but Williams insisted on it for all, and there's where a difference came. His great passion was for the absolute separation of church and state. Thank God for the Baptists, he says, all honor to them for their unceasing emphasis on it. John Wesley, 18th century, a hundred years after the rise of Puritanism, and a product of it, his mother was Puritan, at a time when the Church had again fallen into lifeless formalism, he preached the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit and of a holy life. He was a rector in the Church of England, but they would not let him preach his doctrines. in the churches. So he preached in the fields, in the mining camps, and on the street corners. He organized societies of holy living and spent his long life looking after them. That's John Wesley and of course with his brother Charles. He talks about some of the geographical places we've really basically covered and I'm not going to go any deeper geographically with the church history. The present world situation is on page 100. I'm not sure how much of this is still even close, because when he did this in 1961, the total world population was 2,500,000,000. So all these numbers are way off. If you put all the Protestant groups together, it's still smaller than the Roman Catholic Church. An Eastern Orthodox would be smaller than that. I think we'll let it go at that. You're not probably interested in all the history of all the religions. Let's let it go and say we've covered church history, even though as a fact we have not. But let's go to the questions and end up Lesson 51 right now, so we can hurriedly get back into the Bible. I imagine you're just getting a little hungry right now, as I am, to feed on the Word of God. Number 56 question, in what other countries did the Inquisition slaughter believers? That was Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Italy, and Spain. Number 57, who was Torquemada? He was a Dominican monk in charge of the Inquisition and with much blood on his hands. Number 58, how was the Spanish Armada a turning point in Romanist history? Catholics were defeated in their bid to world dominion. I believe they'll make another bid, however, and I don't believe they will be defeated. I believe Romanism will be on the rise with all of its sisters back and some of its daughters back. We're going to see a new world someday soon. Why did England break with Rome? They wanted independence and no papal control. Was Henry VIII any different from the Popes in his marital affairs? No, not at all. Sixty-one, who carried the Reformation to Scotland? That would be John Knox. 62. What happened during the Counter-Reformation of Rome? Moral abuses were addressed. Protestantism was attacked. 63. What king saved Germany from being re-Catholicized? That was Gustavus Adolphus, the king of Sweden. 64. Did Protestants persecute believers? Yes. On a lesser scale, but undeniably yes. 65. What religious groups first settled your country? For the United States, on page 794, that would be Puritans, Reformed, Catholic, Baptists, and Quakers. 66. Name some heroes of the modern church. Roger Williams, Robert Rakes of the Sunday School, David Livingstone is brought out, and Carey, and Morrison, and Judson, and Moffitt, men of the missionary movement that has been so effective and sent out so much by the United States and England. 67. What was the first location and language of Christianity? the Eastern Roman Empire and Greek. 68. What are the three divisions of Christianity in our day? That would be Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. 69. Where did Puritanism arise? In England. It was a reform of the Church of England. 70. What was Roger Williams' desire? Separation of church and state. 71. What Church of England rector was forced to preach in the fields? That's Wesley. 72. What city is the true mother of Christianity? That's Jerusalem, not Rome. What was the world's leading religious population in 1961? It still is, Roman Catholicism. In what continent is Rome still master? Well, Southeast Asia and Europe. I'm sorry, not Southeast Asia, but South America. and Europe, Southeast Asia, small, small minority of anything Christian. Seventy-five, where does Protestantism lead? Lead as far as how many people there are, the most numbers, that's in North America. Seventy-six, in what continents is Christianity in all forms a minority? That would be Asia and even Africa to a lesser extent. Seventy-seven, in the sixties, how many of the major countries of the world were Protestant? And how many Catholic? That was 10 Protestant, 17 Catholic. 78. What Protestant denomination is the largest in the U.S.? That's Southern Baptist. There's a lot of other trends we could discuss as I brought out on my lesson plan here. The Charismatic Renewal, that changed things very drastically from the 60s on. The Promise Keeper Movement, the 2000 movements, which are now, well, they're licking their wounds, I guess. The status of missions. Rome's present program, the ecumenical movement, Billy Graham's place in all of this for the last 50 years, liberalism, apathy, immorality, media, what it has done with the church, music, and of course your own personal history and how you fit in. But let's let it go. Would you turn with me to Lesson 52? Let's go right over to Lesson 52. Now if you want an introduction to all of the book of Revelation, you'd have to go back to lesson 50. I'm not going to go back there right now. But as far as chapters 4 through 22, it leads us to the end of all things, following a gap. And that gap is really between 5 and 6, we could say, because 4 and 5 is introductory matter. But after 3, there is a major break in the style of the book, and different things begin to happen. But that gap includes all of church history, and we've tried to at least briefly go over that. This is similar to reading Daniel's Last Prophecy. If you read Daniel 10-12, and I have a book on that, and an audio on that, if you want to check that out on the website. In Daniel's Last Prophecy, Daniel begins telling the story of intertestamental time, that is the time between Malachi and Matthew. He tells that story there. And he ends, however, in the last days. There's this huge gap. The break in Daniel occurs after 1135. Daniel and John have a lot else in common, too. Both were young men when they first saw the Lord. Both were old when they received their final vision. Both were beloved disciples. Both were in captivity while they wrote. And the things they saw and the persons they saw were very similar. Well, here's John's view now of the end of history. I do believe that John, that is Revelation, chapters 4 to 22, especially, actually chapter 6 through 22, are about things that have never happened yet. In fact, from 6 to 19 or 20, would have to do with, I believe, the Tribulation. It could be seven years covered here. It could be just three and a half years. I'll try to bring out some of the reasoning behind that as we travel through Revelation. That makes the book a little more able to be grasped when you look at it that way. We don't want to just randomly look at something to make it easier, but I believe there's enough proof for that and it does consolidate things a little better when we look at it that way. Let's go to chapter 4, and then I'll explain some other things about that tribulation period. A whole lot about it, in fact. After he receives his message to the churches, and those were churches in John's day that have similarities to your church and mine. We covered that. But after that's all passed, he sees a door open. and he hears a voice, and the voice says, come up here. Now you know what many people do with that. It's kind of disgusting to me. I mean, hermeneutically speaking, and I'm definitely not an expert in hermeneutics, interpretation of scripture. I understand my lacking, but listen to me. Because a voice said to John, come up here, it has been interpreted, it has been just flat out stated with no evidence whatever, that right here in the book of Revelation is when the people of God are all caught up into heaven. Except for the tribulation saints who get saved later and they were just lukewarm or whatever. A lot of whatever's there. Oh, my friends, if you use that sort of interpretation throughout the book of Revelation, throughout the Bible, what chaos you will have, because God said this to him. He's saying it to all saints of all time. No. No, it's just not true. He said, come up here, John, and John went up there. He was in the Spirit. He couldn't stop himself from being there. By the way, John came back, and he preached to many other people. apply everything that's said to John to the people of God, then when they got in heaven they came back and preached some more. Like John did. No, no, no, please. John's in heaven and he's seeing. What a wonderful vision he sees in the rest of this chapter. A description that sounds a bit like what Daniel saw. And he sees heaven and the thrones. He sees 24 thrones and on them the elders. We don't know. I'm not going to try to tell you who the 24 elders are. This is a Bible survey, and even if it were not a Bible survey, I have no clue. Yes, I know 12 plus 12 is 24. I know there's Old Testament and New Testament saints. I'm not going to try to put men on that chair. We'll know when we get there, but I just want to let you know they're there. Seven lamps of fire burning. We saw that before in chapter 1, verse 4. Right in front of the throne, there's a sea of glass crystal. In the middle of the throne, four living creatures. We have no idea what those are about either. Full of eyes. And then it tells you what they look like and it reminds you of something that Isaiah saw. And it talks about what they are saying there in verse 8. Holy, holy, holy. Again, back to Isaiah. These men have all gone to the same heaven. Now if their descriptions are different, you better believe heaven is varied. Oh, it's got so much, so many different persons and things that are there. My, my, what a wonderful place it is. Daniel got a glimpse of it, and Isaiah got a glimpse of it, and here's John getting a glimpse of it. Oh, what a scene was his. They're just sitting around praising the One who sits on the throne all the time. They're telling Him, You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created. And you know, the people who hate the Lord and don't want Him to be found in this book, who do not want Him to be called God, they will take passages that are obviously about the deity of Jesus and twist and pervert them in such a way that it doesn't seem to be saying that anymore. Well, I want to take passages that you think are referring just to God the Father, and I want to show you that they also are referring to Christ the Son. If you look in Colossians 1.16, by Him, Jesus is referring to in this passage. You can look it up. that all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth. All things were created through Him and for Him. And here it says, by your will they exist and were created. That's Father, Son and Spirit. They are one. There are separate manifestations, but there is a oneness there that we better get more and more used to. because Revelation does bring that out quite a bit. You know that John was a receiver of that Revelation quite a bit. Chapter 5, in the right hand of the one that sat on the throne. Who is that? We'll talk about it. He's got a book. It's going to be called a scroll here, but for our purposes, since we're so much more used to booklets, call it a book. But whatever you call it, it's in his hand. and it's sealed. This scroll was sealed with seven seals. When you open one seal, you get to read a little part of the book and so on. A strong angel cries out, who can open the scroll? Who can loose the seals? Nobody can do this. I don't understand the emotion that John is experiencing right here. I'm not sure that anyone does. You have to have been there. But he's all, shall we say, psyched up to find out what's inside that scroll. It's a book. It's obviously going to be read, or so it seems. And he wants to know what's on the inside of it, but suddenly he's being told, no, there's nobody here worthy to do that. At least that's what he thinks. No one is able to open the book and to read in it. So I started crying. Verse 4, I started crying. Here's the God who has ordained the future of mankind and John's future. John wants to know what's on that book. But nobody can open it. And he weeps. But somebody comforts him in verse 5. One of the elders tells him, don't be crying. There is somebody after all. The Lion of the tribe of Judah. The Lion. He has prevailed to open the scroll. The Father now is going to give this privilege of opening the scroll to his son. And there in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures stood a lamb. But I thought it was the lion. Well, it is. It's the same person. Lion of Judah. Lamb of God. Right in the middle of all that you see the seven spirits standing for the Holy Spirit, which is also God, who is also God. Then he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. Now this seven spirits idea goes back to chapter 1 verse 4 and chapter 4 verse 5, talking about who God is. There's a unity, there's a tri-unity all together. Now he sees them in different categories, one sitting on the throne, one as a lion, then as a lamb, and the seven spirits, and he somehow figures out what that is, but you put it all together. There's a oneness there. They're all in the same place. Well, when He takes the scroll, there's praise time. He receives worship. This Lamb does. He better be God to receive worship in heaven. Our God's a jealous God. He would not tolerate anyone else receiving worship but Himself. But they did. They bowed down at Him and said, You are worthy to take the scroll. They're worshipping Him. You've redeemed us to God by Your blood. You've made us kings and priests. And they fell down before Him. That's worship. Then I looked and I saw and heard the voice of many angels. Now it's multiplied. They started it, but these others are joining in. Worthy, worthy is the Lamb. Worthy is the Lamb. It's a praise time. Has Revelation begun yet? No. The book of Revelation, the sealed book, the book that we really named this whole thing by John about. The whole book is really starting in chapter 6. There's nothing that's confusing yet. If you're wondering why you're not confused yet, we haven't started the book yet. The book is still there in His hand. It hasn't been read yet. It's praise time. And they all are just praising the Lord. What a wonderful scene. Let's cover chapters 4 and 5. on Lesson 52 Answer Sheet. Number one, what two Old Testament prophets saw visions similar to John's? If you put Isaiah and Daniel's, because I misled you, Ezekiel ought to be put down there too. Especially Ezekiel when we're talking about the angels and so on. Number two, what are the creatures called? Well, Ezekiel calls them cherubim. Who might the 24 elders be? Well, 12 Old Testament prophets, 12 apostles. That's a wild guess. Number four, what is on the scroll and why is there weeping when it cannot be opened? There's writing on it. There's the future on it. The rest are revelations on it. Well, John had tasted it. He wanted to know the will of God and now he doesn't think he will. I hope you're that intense about knowing the will of God. Would you get upset if your Bible was misplaced and you couldn't find it one morning? Would it bother you that you wouldn't be able to read the book? Number six, list those who join in the praise. Well, you've got the four creatures, the 24 elders, a hundred million angels, that's what I read, 10,000 times 10,000, and all living creatures, anybody that's on the earth, under the earth, in the earth, above everybody, anyone that has life and breath anywhere is right here praising God. What a scene this is. Oh, my. Number seven takes us back to the text. And with this, we truly begin the book of Revelation. I'm going to try to break this down for you as much as I can. Would you take this down first? This much I can see clearly. Whatever I can see clearly, I'll try to label it as clear. for you. And I think if you look far enough, you'll see it clearly too. Other things I'm going to just have to say, I'm sorry, I don't know. Bible survey, I can always go back to that, you know. This is a Bible survey, and I just don't know all the details. That's what I'll do. But chapters 6 and 7 are about the seals themselves. Chapters 6 and 7 are the seals. In fact, a little bit of chapter 8 are the seals. When you get down through the sixth seal, I'm telling you in advance now, you are finished with all of history. Did you know that the whole book of Revelation, I'm sorry, from chapter 6 all the way to the rest of the book, let's say from chapter 8 all the way to the rest of the book can be taken and fit inside of the first six seals that are found in chapter 6 and 7. That means that chapter 6 and 7 can form an outline for this whole book. It can form an outline. I can't tell you where every piece goes in that outline. I'll show you why later. You take 6 and 7, use it as your outline because by the time you get to the 7th seal in chapter 8, you are actually opening the trumpets. The 7th seal is the seven trumpets. Did you hear me? The seventh seal is the seven trumpets. So you can see this flower opening up just a little bit more over here, blossoming out over this way. I wish I could give you a better picture of how this book looks to me. But the first six seals go down and all of it's covered in six seals. The seven trumpets are in the seventh seal, but in fact they talk about Hear me now, they talk about stuff that's back in the 5th seal too, and in the 6th seal. Let me say it again, the 7 trumpets are the 7th seal. There is no real 7th, there's nothing new in terms of seals in the 7th seal except 7 trumpets. And there's a lot of new stuff in there. But 7th seal and all 7 trumpets, the same thing. But the stuff that they cover is already covered a little bit in the 6th seal. And I think in the 5th seal too. And I say I think. I'm not sure about 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th seals. If they and the trumpets are related in any way. Not sure. And then you go beyond the trumpets. When you get to the 7th trumpet, the book of Revelation states completely that the whole mystery of God is finished in the days of the 7th trumpet. which is also the 7th seal, which is also the 6th seal, because everything ends in the 6th seal too. He keeps bringing the story to an end and starting over. If you try to read the book of Revelation in chronological order, that is, if you try to read it in chapter order and think you're reading it in chronological order, there's where you'll start to get confused. And I know some of you are confused already. This takes some work, okay? I do not say I have more insight than you do, but I worked about it. If you haven't worked in this book, don't expect to just pick it up overnight. Work a little, ask God for more, and things begin to develop. When you get to the seventh trumpet, you'll find that in the days of the seventh trumpet are the seven bowl judgments or vials in the King James Bible, seven vials. So you see how one leads to another. I want to say it one more time, then we'll go to the text. The seventh seal is all seven trumpets. The seventh trumpet, in those days somewhere, happens all seven bowls. And all of that happens somewhere in the sixth, and I think fifth, and maybe more, seals. So there's going to be a lot of repetition. And when they're not talking about seals, and when they're not talking about trumpets, and when they're not talking about bowls, they're talking about some close-up of something inside one of those things. So here we go. The first seal is a problem right away. It's a conqueror. It's a horse. It's a white horse. Good guys always sit on the white horses, or at least guys that want you to think they're good. There's a bow in the man's hand, but no arrow. There has been speculation this must be Antichrist. And as I look at it, I have to agree that this is the world conqueror. Because Jesus is not going to come to earth and just start going around conquering things. When He comes, it's just going to be a short battle and it's over. And by the word of His mouth, it's done. But here's a man with a bow. But how is He conquering then if He doesn't have an arrow? we're led to believe that he's conquering by peaceful means, that he starts out, anyway, peaceful. That's why I don't know whether this first guy happens in the first half of the seven-year period or the second half. Now, you need to understand that there is a seven-year tribulation period. And I'm not going to go back to Daniel. I'd have to refer you back to there, but that's where it comes from. a week or a week of seven years that hasn't been fulfilled in biblical history yet. Biblical prophecy hasn't been fulfilled. It's just not anywhere. So does the book of Revelation talk about those seven years or just three and a half? We know it talks about three and a half several times. Are we in the first three and a half or the second? I'm leaning toward this all being in the second three and a half years. I just lean that way and I'm not sure why yet. This could be just the unfolding, though, of the whole situation and setting it up. I'll tell you this, once you get past Chapter 6, you'll never want to go back to the first three and a half years again, probably. It will look from that point on like everything's in the second three and a half years, at least it does to me. The first seal is the Conqueror. He shows up on the scene peacefully and begins taking territory. Hitler was able to do that. Before he fired a shot in many places, there were nations just succumbing to him because of his saber rattling. But he is a peaceful man. He's a conqueror. He maybe has solved the world problem. Maybe he's the one, probably is the one who's come up with that seven-year treaty and has made Israel at peace with the Palestinians. I'll show you how he does it later on. Second seal. Something backfires and suddenly there's war. Lots of war. There's no peace on the earth. People begin killing one another. That's all we know about the second seal. It's probably, it could be in the first three and a half, it could be in the last three and a half. I don't know right now. The third seal is poverty, that is scarcity of food. People can't find food. It's getting to be a famine, a worldwide famine. Now, Jesus talked about these kinds of things in Matthew 24, and if you want to say that some of these verses refer to all of history, I understand why you want to say that. I think you'll find it a little safer to consolidate all this into one package, though. And in the third seal, I just said, in the fourth seal, widespread death, lots of death. Death everywhere. People are just dying from the sword, that we already heard about in seal 2. Hunger, seal 3. And death. There's all kinds of death. People, now the beasts of the field. Just like we had way back in the days of Nimrod. So these are called the four horsemen of the apocalypse, if you've ever heard that. These guys are all sitting on horses. And I believe one of them is a real guy. A real man. The others are symbolic. Maybe they're all symbolic. Whatever. Something is very intense is beginning to happen here. It gets much more intense as the book continues. In the fifth seal, there's a change. We don't have a rider or anything. We just suddenly see a bunch of people being killed for Jesus' sake. You need to see what's happening here. In chapter 6, verses 9 to 11, and they're crying out to the Lord, how long, how long, until you avenge those people who killed us. Lord, what's going on? They're all given a white robe. This is symbolically speaking. They're all with the Lord. They have the righteousness of Christ on them. They've died for the Lord Jesus Christ, for the Word of God, and for their testimony in Christ. Oh, be sure your testimony is polished up and ready to go. You may need it quicker than you realize. But they're told here in verse 11 that they're going to have to just hang tight there a while until the rest of the fellow servants come in and they're going to be killed. They're not going to be raptured. Now, I want to switch you real quick. We're going to switch a lot back and forth because you need to understand that John has spread these pictures out. I believe the Holy Spirit did it on purpose to be sure that only the true seekers would find these things. If you just look over to the next chapter, at the end of it, John sees a great multitude of people that nobody can name. These are all Gentile believers, although they're from every nation that could be Jews, too. Save Jews, too. I'll tell you the difference between these Jews and the 144,000 in a minute. But these are Gentiles. These are Jews. This is church. And they're all standing around the throne and they're praising God. They've done exactly what these martyrs were told they would do, that they have joined them. This is moving ahead to the very end of things. This is a picture that takes you to the end. I'll get to the 6th and 7th seal in a minute. But having started with the martyrs, I want to show you how it's happening. At the beginning of the tribulation, the martyrs are starting to be killed. And all the way through the tribulation, they're being killed more and more and more and more. And then at the end, they all finally wind up with Jesus. And this last scene, this last scene of earth's history, and really, we're at the end. This is the end. We're going to come to the end several times, but this is the end of it right here. This last scene of earth's history is people standing before God and praising Him. And how did they get there? Through rapture. Wrong! They got there through death. Verse 14, He said, These are the ones who came out of the great tribulation and washed their robes. That's where we get that word, by the way, great tribulation. It's not made up. Washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. And He talks about how they're not going to hunger or thirst. And the Lamb is there and He's going to wipe away the tears. And you see language just like that at the end of the book of Revelation. Well, go back. Go back to the sixth seal. By the time we get to the sixth seal in verse 12, we have come to the end of all things. These are the climactic events. Suddenly, the earth quakes. The sun is dark. Just like Jesus talked about what would happen right at His coming in Matthew 24, 29. Look it up. The stars of heaven falling and the sky receding and every mountain. We're at the end. You have to agree with me. The sixth seal is it. and the kings of the earth are all hiding. Everybody's hiding themselves. Because the day of the wrath of the Lamb has come. When Jesus comes back, He comes with wrath. But we who know Him are caught up with Him to be with Him in the air as He's coming back. And when He pours personally His wrath on the rest of this world, we won't be here. Yes, we're going to be saved from His wrath. Of course we are. You don't have to be a pre-tribulation rapture person to believe that. He will pull out his wrath when he comes, but catch us up first. That's what it says. Before the tribulation, nobody's caught up. You'd have to argue from silence here. There's nobody caught up here. The people that are showing up in heaven at the end of chapter 7 are the ones who died for him. There's nothing else anywhere. The rest of it, I'm afraid, my friend, is fable. You've been deceived. Change that. Look and see for yourself. Don't listen to him. Don't listen to me. Read the book and see what it says. Well, chapter 7. is a picture. This is one of those things that I was telling you about when you're not talking about seals and you're talking about other things. There are pictures that belong in those seals somewhere. Somewhere, I believe at the beginning of the three and a half years, because he says, I want you to do this before anybody harms the earth. And some of the earth has already been harmed. And by sixth seal, I mean the whole world's about to come to an end. So you know chapter seven does not come after chapter six. This is a picture, a close-up of something that happens before all the destruction began. What happens? God takes His people aside, the Jewish people. I don't believe they're saved when He calls them to Himself. I believe that Hosea talks about Him calling them to Himself and revealing Himself to them, and them weeping before Him and recognizing Him as their Savior and Lord, and they will weep for Me whom they have pierced, Zechariah says. He reveals Himself. I'll show you in other places in Revelation how He catches them up, takes them away. Where did they get the idea that these 144,000 people that are Jews are Gospel preachers going around? Where did they get that? It's not in the text. It's not hinted at. All we're told is that before the destruction begins, these guys really are Caught up. I don't mean caught up into heaven. I mean taken aside. These are the elect, the Jewish elect, and I think they're taken aside before they're saved. Otherwise, why would He not take them on up to heaven if they already were saved, like He's receiving the martyred Gentile, and perhaps other Jewish Christians too, because they're coming in from every nation. And Israel is a nation. And so the 144,000, I believe these are the people that Jesus said to go run when you see everything start to happen. Run! And these people are selected and sealed by God. And some of them get on to airplanes, as you will see later on, and are airlifted to a place of safety. And they're kept by Christ secure for three and a half years when He reveals Himself to them. Perhaps later, when He comes, well, we'll talk about that later too. in Isaiah talks about, indeed, how some Jews are going to go preaching the Gospel, but not before Jesus comes, after He comes. The islands of the sea, there's going to be places that haven't been reached by foreign missions that these 144,000 Jews are going to reach. I hope that doesn't bother you, just sharing with you what I found in the texts. In chapter 7, then, it's the ceiling first, of Jews. That's one picture. Notice, we've got these chapters and we put it all together like they all belong together, but understand the divisions in here are clear, but they're not chapter divisions. The divisions are when he says something like this, after this I saw, after this I looked, after this he showed me this. It doesn't mean this happened after this, it just means I saw it. after this. He's getting a whole series of pictures. It's his job and ours to put these pictures in the proper order until they make sense. Until God says to us, yes, that's it. And I haven't got it perfectly yet, but I've got some things that I didn't have before, that's for sure, by seeking and asking God for help. That takes us up to the eighth chapter when he opened the seventh seal and there's silence. There's been a lot of speculation about that. One thing I think this might be about the silence in heaven, is what I've been talking about. That John is being told that what's to come does not necessarily follow in order what has already preceded. There's a big break in the action here, 30 minutes, whereas before he's getting one thing after another, suddenly it stops, and not only just stops, but stops for a half hour. And John is allowed to collect his thoughts and think about it all. And then As he begins to hear some other things, he's going to see some things that are very familiar to him. As you can see, verses 1-6 in chapter 8 are preparation for the next phase, and that is the seven trumpets. There's nothing new that happens here. All that's happening is happening in heaven, and there's prayers talked about, because whatever God does, He's doing in response to His Spirit, which is being which is praying His will through His people. There's a real cycle of life that's flowing there, and that's explained in the first six verses. But no new action on the earth, no new catastrophe. The seventh seal simply means the seven trumpets. And we better go back to the questions for a little while. Number seven, how many of the seven seals are opened in chapter six? Six of them. Number eight, the first four seals reveals four what? Horses and riders. representing what four circumstances? Well, that's world conquest, war, famine, and death. Perhaps the Antichrist himself in all four of those. Number nine, the fifth seal. Clue. How long must the martyrs now wait for the final vengeance? Just a little while. So there's a clue that the fifth seal is related to chapter 7, that this is all happening in a short period of time here, not all through history. Number 10, where do we seem to be at the end of only one chapter into the future? Chapter 6, we're at the Judgment Day. We're at the Judgment Day. Number 11, read Jesus' words in Matthew 24, verses 27 to 29, and put Revelation 6.12 in its proper place, 612, which says, I looked and He opened the sixth seal and there's an earthquake and the sun. Well, it looks like it's just prior to the return of Christ right here because everybody's saying Jesus is coming, the wrath is here, so it's right there as He's coming. And then in chapter 12, who is sealed? It's 144,000 Jewish believers and I believe it's in their unbelief at first. What do you think sealing means? We didn't talk about it. It could mean marked in a special way. It could mean hidden away. It could mean protected. It could mean in the spirit, saved. If they're marked in their forehead, that could stand for their mind, their hearts renewed. Renewed and Christ has saved them. Who appears before the throne in 7, 9 to 17 and how did they get there? Well, the persons that appear there are the martyrs. The rest of the martyrs. And they got there through, of course, death. the meaning of martyrdom. What clue as to the timing of the Jewish sealing? Well, it talks about don't harm the earth. So it has to be before the tribulation. Don't harm the earth. And the earth at the end of chapter 6 is already harmed quite a bit. It's about to disappear altogether. So we're backing up in time when we go to chapter 7. Number 15. Out of the seventh seal comes what? The seven trumpets. And then read Matthew 24, 1 Corinthians 15. What did Paul and Jesus say about trumpets? Well, Jesus came at the last trumpet. Jesus is coming at the last trumpet. So when we start reading about the seventh trumpet here, we're reading about the same thing that Jesus talked about and that Paul talked about. The last trumpet. They knew. They knew from the Spirit of God that there would be trumpets blasting in heaven and that the last one would mean it was time for Jesus to come. Then we go quickly to, I shouldn't say quickly, but for a little while because we have only a few minutes left, to the trumpets. We probably won't finish this. Notice the first trumpet where vegetation is struck. It mentions also the fraction one-third. I think that's an important thing to see here, because it's not total devastation yet, although this is a horrible figure. When we're talking about the trumpets, we're talking about escalation, but not the final thing, which you will see later. There's three levels in the book of Revelation. The seals are one level, where things just start happening, but we don't know how much. And that one third, where it's really escalating, getting worse and worse, may be somewhere in the middle of the tribulation somewhere. And then towards the end of the tribulation, you're going to see everything gone, or almost everything. Notice that this is also undoing creation days, too, all the things that are being struck here. You can see the creation days here. Sometimes if you're reading the vials and the trumpets, you can see the plagues of Moses also. All these familiar ways cursing God's people, or cursing the people of the world, I should say. Is this Armageddon? It seems to be, but I'm not totally sure, because Armageddon seems to be more with the very end, where we're not quite at the very end yet. The seas are struck with the second trumpet, the waters are struck in the third trumpet, and the heavens themselves, the sun, the moon, the stars are struck with the fourth trumpet, reminding us again of what happened. Did you notice that the... No, we haven't got to there yet. I'll share that later. So you've got the four trumpets. The first four trumpets, in a way, are like the first four seals in that they seem alike. They're in a kind of a set pattern. But when you get to the fifth in both categories, it's a different thing that begins to happen. In fact, verse 13 announces them woe to the inhabitants of the earth because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound. There are three more trumpets after these things are struck. Remember, it's one-third the vegetation, one-third of the sea creatures, one-third of the waters made bitter, and one-third of the light that's available to mankind. It's all struck. So, major, major difficulties worldwide here. but it's just beginning. There's three more things that are coming, he says, that are even worse. Let's go back to the questions before we run out of time. What fraction of greenery, what fraction of aquarium life and even heavenly bodies are affected during the time of the first four trumpets? That's one-third. Number 18, since the sixth seal brought us to the end, what is the seventh seal doing? Well, it's magnifying the end, giving more details. 19, 19th starts in chapter 9. Well, you know what, that's going to be, let's do that. The fifth angel sounds and a star falls from heaven to the earth. He opens the bottomless pit, smoke comes out of the pit, the sun and the air were darkened, even more, I'm led to believe, even more than before in the fourth trumpet. And these locusts come out, and if you look carefully at what these are, they're not living creatures, I don't believe. He talks about their different body parts, but when you start looking at it, it reminds you almost of a helicopter. Some type of war machine. It doesn't seem beyond possibility anymore at all. Look at it. Hair like women's hair, because when you're looking in at the big opening at the glass windshield, you see people sitting there. Maybe they're going to be women actually there, or maybe they paint them that way as they did in World War II. Tails like scorpions. Out of the tail comes the pain of the blast of the whatever it is they're firing. They're called Apollyon, which means destroyer. We have had war machines called destroyers, haven't we? I'm not real keen on these different types of war things, but I know everyone here has heard the term destroyer connected to a military machine. They're going around hurting the people that don't have the seal of God on their foreheads. They're actually tormenting the world at this point. For five months, they're allowed to do this. There is something that has been created somewhere, this whole battalion of machines, and they get them up out of wherever they've been hiding, and they take them out, and they start killing people with them and tormenting people with them. Actually, they don't kill them in verse 5, but a lot of torment, perhaps some kind of poison, chemical warfare of some sort. It's a horrible thing that happens. That's the first woe. That's the fifth trumpet. And two more are coming. We're going to leave it at that with one or two more questions. What might fit the description of the locusts released from the pit by an angel? I said military helicopters, destroyers. Sixth trumpet. No, we're not going to the sixth trumpet right there. That was the last question that we'll try to cover today. Wow, it's pretty deep, isn't it? But it is good to be back in the Word anyway. Lord willing, and I just don't know if I can promise this at all, but Lord willing, I would like to finish the book of Revelation in two more lessons. And we've got about 14 more chapters to go. That would mean seven chapters each time. But in Revelation, seven chapters are a lot of chapters. But let's see what God will do for us. Let's see if we can't finish seven chapters next time. And then the whole Bible series will be done, Lord willing, in just two more lessons. May God bless you today as you continue on in His Word. Amen.