so that you may eat the flesh of kings, of generals, of the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all, free and slave, great or small. Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to fight the war against the rider on his horse and his army. The beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who performed the signs in its behalf, With these signs, he deluded those who would receive the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. And the rest were killed with a sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse. And all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh. So far, the reading of God's own word. Thanks be to God. War. Yeah, war. That's what this text is about. And let's think about some of our own wars. August 1914, 108 years ago, this very month, World War I broke out. about eight weeks after the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of the Austrian-Hungary Empire by a Serbian terrorist who'd been trained by the Serbian espionage forces. And so Erlang's Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and pretty soon Russia and Britain and everybody else in that European world was at war with one another. Our American troops entered that war in 1917 under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson. He called it the War of Righteousness. He called it, believe it or not, and this from a Presbyterian Calvinist, he called it the War to End All Wars. A Presbyterian said that? Someone who allegedly believed in the total depravity of the human race? Really? Benjamin Warfield, by the way, never liked Woodrow Wilson. He had been the president of Princeton University when Warfield was still professoring at Princeton Seminary right next door. He thought Wilson had gone awry. Historians tell us that the chief cause of World War II was actually the armistice treaty that ended the hostilities of World War I. Germany ardently punished by the terms of that armistice. And so World War I was not the war to end all wars. It was the beginning of a far greater war. And really World War I and World War II are kind of sort of one war out of the same set of circumstances. Woodrow Wilson should have known better. He was a Presbyterian. Human wars are vile. They are horrible things. Often fought for self-aggrandizement, for pride, for ego, for power, for territory. Yeah, we see that today. And sometimes to prevent the evil of tyranny, we must fight. But most wars are done for evil purpose. But in this text, Revelation 19, did you notice? There is one who wages war righteously. We see him in verse 11. With justice, he judges and makes war. And that person is given four names within our text, faithful and true, verse 11. And a second name, a name written on him that no one knows but he himself, an ineffable name, a name beyond all human knowing. And then thirdly, he's called the word of God, which means there's a revealed name that we can call him by. John alone of all the biblical writers uses that name for Jesus Christ. And then famously, verse 16, king of kings and Lord of lords, And you want to say with Handel's Messiah, hallelujah, hallelujah. And in fact, this text is the only New Testament text that uses the word hallelujah. And we get it four times in a row. No other New Testament book uses that word. The Hebrew Bible uses it, I think, nearly 30 times in the book of Psalms. It begins and ends many of the Psalms near the end of that wondrous book called Psalms. But here alone in the New Testament, the hallelujah is reserved for this great scene of the final glory of God and the wedding supper of the Lamb and the end of all evil. Yeah, that's what the book is about here. The story today, the end of all evil. There is someone who wages war righteously. And here's the main point today, because he is the faithful and the true, the king of all kings, the Lord of all lords, the very word of God, the one with the name that no one knows but himself, namely ineffable deity beyond our knowing, the one whom we also know as the second person of the Trinity, the Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, the Emmanuel. Because he is this person, Jesus Christ will wage the final war of righteousness, the war to end all wars, and he will judge the world righteously. We've read of it responsibly in the Psalms, Psalm 97, Psalm 98, both called upon the world to rejoice because he comes to judge the world. He will judge the world with equity and the peoples in his truth. It's the last line of Psalm 98, and the world is called to rejoice in this. And we need to understand why it is a matter of rejoicing. Verse 11, our key verse. I saw heaven standing open, and there before me was a white horse, and whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. Now salvation, of course, is ministered by Jesus Christ. And verse nine clues us into something of that. Write this, says the angel. This is only the second time in the whole book that John is called upon to write something. Blessed are those who were invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. These are the true words of God. We are going to celebrate the foretaste of that, ere the morning is out. The Lord's supper is a foretaste of that wedding supper. All who are invited to the gospel, which means the whole world is invited to this wedding supper, but many are called and few are chosen, says Jesus. And this blessedness in verse nine is the blessedness of the elect. Those who were invited not merely by the outer call of the gospel, but by the inner call of the Holy Spirit, the call that woos us and wins us. So that we say from the heart and from the will and from the most ardent recesses of our souls, yes, amen, I come, I come Lord Jesus. Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb, hallelujah. Now many would like the story to end there. And if perhaps we were the authors of the Bible, we would end it there with the wedding supper of the Lamb. Paul Simon sang it this way, I have reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland. Quite a hopeful wish. But that's not what the Bible does. And God is not bound to follow our preferences. And there is a second supper within that text, the great supper of God, which is the birds of the air coming upon the metaphorical battlefield and the slain, who were slain by the sword that comes from the mouth of the very word of God, namely from the mouth of Christ. It is a gruesome image drawn from our other texts in the book of Isaiah, especially Isaiah 66, which we did not read. And so we have to say two things here. That salvation, of course, is ministered by Jesus Christ. But we also must say that damnation is likewise ministered by Jesus Christ. And that is an awesome thought. Now the offer of gospel, the offer of mercy goes out to all the world. And we ardently wish that every person in all the world would receive that with faith and repentance. But there are those who say no to that again and again and again and again and again. And I don't know how many agains we need. A long list of agains in the patience of God. God was very patient with me again and again and again and again and again. How many agains do I need to describe my own experience? I do not know. But our text does teach that there are those who are finally and fatally impenitent. And they refuse the mercies of Jesus Christ. And so we have the final judgment. For the Christian, that is a day of joy because evil ends. It's consigned to its own place within the dustbins of history. Oh yes, it exists, but under the wrath of God, away from his blessedness, everlasting punishment, away from the presence of the Lamb, says this book. And so there are six great questions that every good journalist knows that we should ask of our text. What are the questions? What, when, where, who, how, and why? If you're writing a newspaper article, I don't know if there are any reporters in the room, but if you're writing a newspaper article, those are the sorts of things you have to say. And so what is the judgment? When is the judgment? Where is the judgment? Who was involved in the judgment? How does this judgment happen and why? Why is there a judgment? And by the end of the morning, I hope that we shall all know the answers to those six questions. And as I read the scriptures this morning, did you think maybe of the influence of this great story upon many later stories? Hollywood movies and novels often tap into this very text, operas and oratorios, and of course, Handel's Messiah taps into this text massively. As I read the story of the white rider, one upon the white horse who wages the final war for God, I can't help but think of, Lord of the Rings. Now if you've seen the movies, I'll just say you've seen the heretical version of those stories. It's like the Book of Mormon compared to the Bible, you know, it's not quite right. And Peter Jackson, the director of those films, thought he was a better novelist than Tolkien, and he was greatly mistaken. So the stories are massively tilted in the film versions. If you've not read the books and you're a reader of books, I ardently recommend All my literary opinions, of course, are objectively true. That's a joke. But I ardently recommend The Lord of the Rings. In the second volume of that set, The Two Towers, there's a chapter called Helm's Deep. And the key scene happens this way. And with a shout, the king came. His horse was white as snow. Golden was his shield. His spear was long. At his right hand was Aragorn, Elendil's heir. Behind him rode the lords of the house of Oro the Young. Light sprang in the sky. Night departed. Forth Elongus! With a great cry and a noise they charged, down from the gates they roared, over the causeway they swept, and they drove through the host of Isengard as a wind among grass. Behind them from the deep came the stern cries of men, issuing from the caves, driving forth the enemy. Out poured all the men that were left upon the rock. And ever the sound of blowing horns echoed in the hills. On they rode, the king and his companions, captains and champions, fell or fled before them. Neither orc nor man withstood them. Their backs were to the swords and spears of the riders and their faces to the valley. They cried and wailed for fear and great wonder had come upon them with the rising of day. So Theoden king rode from Helm's gate and clove his path through the great dite. Dyke, between the dyke and the eaves of that nameless wood, two open furlongs lay, and there now cowered the proud hosts of Saruman, in terror of the king. They streamed down Helm's gate, until all above the dyke was empty of them. But below it, they were packed like swarming flies. Vainly they crawled and clambered about the walls of the coombs, seeking to escape. Upon the east, too sheer and stony was the valley's side. Upon the left from the west, their final doom approached. There suddenly upon the ridge appeared a rider, clad in white, shining in the rising sun. Over the low hills, the horns were sounding. Behind him, hastening down the long slopes, were a thousand men on foot, their swords in their hands. Behold, the White Rider, cried Aragorn. Gandalf has come again. And the host of Isengard roared, swaying this and that, turning from fear to fear. Again, the horns sounded from the tower. Down through the breach of the dyke, charged the king's company. Down leapt Shadowfax, like a deer that runs sure-footed in the mountains. The White Rider was upon him. and the terror of his coming filled the enemy with madness. Should I stop? It goes on for a while, I'll stop. All right, so the enemy, the powers of evil in that story that represent in some ways the great principles of good and beauty against that empty opposition of evil, the evil that is ugly, The evil that is hatred. The evil that's the denial of the good. Okay, we see it in that novel wondrously well. And we see that Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien was a devoutly and deeply Christian imagination in constructing that novel. It is wondrous. And the films just don't do it justice. Against that story, we ought to place another story. This one's sadly real. From this very week, in this very month, 450 years ago, August 23rd, 1572. Now, if you know your Protestant history well, you know that I'm going to say the words, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. How many know of that event? All right. Okay. The fellow who went to seminary knows. Yeah. August 23rd, 1572, Catherine de' Medici, the Queen Mother of France, sends her son, the young King Charles IX of France, into a panic with threats of an imminent French Protestant insurrection led by those who were called the Huguenots. They were French Calvinists. Theodore Beza, Calvin's right-hand man, was their leading pastor and scholar in Geneva, just across the French border. Frenzied, the young king yells, kill them, kill them all, so that not a single one is left alive to blame me. They'd been invited to the city for a royal wedding. They thought they were coming for a wedding. Instead, they came for a funeral, their own. And somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 French Calvinists died that day. And the massacre went on for most of the rest of August inside France. When I was bicycling through France, oh my, 40 some years ago, I was near Tours and I was looking for a Protestant church for that Lord's Day morning. I was told the closest one was 40 miles away. That is, the massacre of 1572 still had its effect upon French religion 400 and some years later. And it is estimated by some historians that perhaps as many as 50,000 French Calvinists, French Protestants, we might call them Presbyterians, died in that month of 1572. We call it the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Hence texts like this one, Revelation 19 verse 11. I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called faithful and true with justice, he judges and wages war. That's why we need it. Because not all repent. Saul of Tarsus, yes, responsible for martyrdoms and imprisonments and suffering and beatings and terrible things. Acts 8 describes it as breathing out murderous threats. And even the worst of sinners can be wooed and won by the Holy Spirit and converted, as was Saul of Tarsus. And the greatest missionary theologian of Christian history is that man in his repentance. Hallelujah. and about 25% of the New Testament from his pen. Astonishing. And so John the Revelator gives us this vision. It's the second time in the book that heaven is said to stand open. The first time was chapter four, verse one, where after the letters to the seven churches, a door stands open in heaven and a voice from heaven says, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this. And so the rest of our story in Revelation, up to this point, is essentially in heaven, John seeing things from the heavenly point of view. John the Revelator entering the visionary world of Christ and the Lamb upon his throne, and the one who sits upon the throne, who is the Father. And so he writes this script for this movie in the mind. The door opens, he enters heaven, he sees the King. And now for the second time in the book, heaven opens. But now it's to bring the King. down to earth, followed by his army, all on white horses, the white rider with his white horse army to execute a righteous judgment. His eyes are like blazing fire and on his head are many crowns and he has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. Eyes like blazing fire, no one can escape his searching scrutiny. Many crowns, sovereignty piled upon sovereignty. And those crowns are mocked by the dragon of chapter 12, who is likewise crowned with many crowns, but his are fake. He has no real authority. It's sheer pretense. He is no king. In the third temptation of Christ, he offers Christ himself the sovereignty of the world, but it's all sham. It's all lie. Dominion belongs to Jesus, but dominion belongs to the triune God, and the dragon is no real king. And here in verse 13, we see a startling image drawn from Isaiah 63, which Randy read so well. Quote, he's dressed in a robe dipped in blood and his name is the word of God. Dipped in blood? Whose blood? The commentators struggle with this phrase and offer us three different choices. It's hard to choose which is best. It could be the blood of his enemies, but wait, the war hasn't happened yet. He arrives already with his robes in blood. Second option, the blood of the martyrs. And you may recall that Babylon, the great harlot, fills her goblet with the blood of the martyrs and is drunk with it. In this suffering, they share in the sufferings of Christ himself. And so to avenge their blood, Christ comes against those who murdered these innocent saints. Option two, I think, the blood of the martyrs is more likely than option one. Option three, his own blood, his atoning blood. The blood of the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. But now, this blood is not offered as atoning power, because the time of repentance has closed. With the opening of heaven on this great and last day, the day of final judgment and final salvation, the opportunity for repentance is no longer present. And if the blood is his own atoning blood, this atonement is now testimony against them for their rejection of it in all the years of their life. And so he comes in righteous judgment against those who refuse so great a gift. How do we choose among these three options? In favor of option three, one Greek verb, which is rare in the New Testament, gives us, I think, the best clue. His robe, it is said, is dipped in blood. The word dipped is bapto, from which we get our noun baptism and our verb baptize, to dip in blood. In the New Testament, it's rare. In Old Testament Greek, it mainly appears for the dippings of ritual purities in, say, the book of Leviticus. So you purify some unclean object by a dipping in water. And so I think with this verb, we're drawn toward option three, that it is the blood of Christ, but the blood of Christ, which has been spurred by those who are finally and fatally impenitent. And that is a terrifying thought. It is an awesome thing to fall into the hands of the living God. So says the letter to the Hebrews. Don't live your life that way. There are really only two ways to live life. Don't live your life that way. There is a better way offered by the blood of the Lamb. And so in verse 13, he's dressed in this robe, but notice his name is the Word of God. Elsewhere, we read that he had that name that was known only to himself, an ineffable name, a name beyond human understanding. But this name we know. And in John's other book, the Gospel of John, we see that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And by verse 14, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And by verse 18, we have seen His glory. And we see in that very paragraph that the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And what is grace? It's the particular form of the love of God that happens for those who have forfeited all rights to it by their sin. God is always good. God is always, in his triune nature, love. But grace is the form of the love of God that comes to sinners. and offers them reconciliation. Grace and truth came through Jesus. And in that paragraph in John's gospel, he is the word who was with God and who was God. And so John dips into his previous book and gives us that name, a name that is not ineffable beyond us, a name that is revealed. And by that name, we can know him because word means communication, speech. Something is disclosed to us. And even though we cannot know Christ entirely as He is, in the finitude of our own minds, in the puniness of our own hearts, and the limit of our love, even in final glory, we will never know Him as all that He is. We will indeed know Him. We will know Him. In fact, we do know Him, even now. We know Him truly. and we know him in his mercy. And so he is the word of God. He's also called in their text, faithful and true. And so he wages this righteous war and he wages it in defense of his church. We see elsewhere in this book, how that final army of the impenitent goes to make war against the very city of the people of God. And the lamb does not permit it. Now, unlike some novels, which give you 14 pages of a single moment of battle, the book of Revelation gives us these battles in a sentence or two. That's all you get. In chapter 12, a single sentence, the battle against the dragon. In this chapter, I think two sentences, that's all you get. And before too much happens, the beast and the false prophet are seized and thrown into the lake of fire, the two of them, the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. All right, so there's not much to the battle. Their efforts are puny. They pretend to have vast power, but they do not. It is Christ who is faithful and true. And the last name in this story here is perhaps the greatest king of kings and lord of lords. It's written on his robe and on his thigh. And that title was very ancient in the literature of the world. The earliest reckoning I can find of it goes back to 2350 BC, more than 4,000 years ago for us. And it's one of the titles of Sargon of Akkad. Sargon was one of the founders of dynasty, one of the first kings of empire, as far as we can tell in the histories of the world and written texts. And Sargon of Akkad in Mesopotamia bands together under his super kingship, a bundle of city-states all with their smaller kings. And he becomes the great king, the king of kings. That is all the city-states have their kings and Sargon of Akkad is over all of them. So he is the king of kings and the lord of lords. And his titles go like this in his inscriptions in Akkadian. I am Sargon, king, great king, king of the lands, king of the four quarters, king of kings. That's the king that all other kings must obey. Now in our English Bibles, It's traditional to print that phrase, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, in capital letters. Does your Bible do that? Not all of them do. The Geneva Bible, published in Geneva, Switzerland, 1560, the first study Bible in English, printed them in capitals. I think the King James Version also did it. The NIV does it. The ESV does it. A bundle of them do it. It became a tradition for the greatness of the name. King of Kings. and Lord of Lords. Now, you've gotten to know me a little bit. You know that I love classical music. I'm a concert-trained pianist, though I don't concertize anymore and shouldn't. Yeah, I shouldn't. When I was 20, I could play all kinds of things. Okay, not so much, okay. But in 1741, August 22nd, Elder Frederick Handel shut himself up in his house to begin writing the great oratory of the Messiah. That was this week in 1741. He finished that two and a half hour composition 24 days later, writing in a frenzy. And he says later, quote, whether I was in the body or out of the body when I wrote it, I know not. And the legend is that when King George II heard it in concert, this King of Kings, this Hallelujah Chorus, it is said, legend perhaps, that he stood up in the middle of that King of Kings. He was just so astonished by the music, he stood. And of course, when your king stands, what do you do? You also stand. And so the whole audience stood in the middle of the Hallelujah Chorus. Hallelujah for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. And then the choir bursts forth, king of kings and Lord of lords, king of kings and Lord of lords. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. I heard that piece, I think for the first time when I was about eight. I'm sure the church choir that sang it was not great, but for me, it was just magnificent. And it's Revelation chapter 19. And so this King of Kings, this Lord of Lords arrives out of the opening of heaven into the mortal world in a symbol of what is to happen on the last and the great day. Now, of course, every symbolic book must be interpreted in its symbolic meaning, but symbols never mean less than what they are. They always mean more. Would it be literal white horses? Well, I don't think so. But whatever it is, it is greater than that. And so the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty arrives in the world. The army of heaven arrives in the world. The justice of God arrives in the world, consigning impenitence to the place where it belongs. Verse 15, quote, Psalm 2 about the Messiah, quote, he will rule them with a rod of iron. That's a good description of hell. And then we come to another feast, only now it's no longer the wedding supper of the lamb. It's the great feast of God, and it's a grim feast. In verse 17, we saw an angel flying in midair. Previously, that phrase about an angel flying in midair was in chapter 10, where the angel flies and announces the gospel to all the world. All right, receive the gospel. And the midair idea is that all the world, all the human race hears this message. It's not in high heaven, remote, inaccessible. It's midheaven. And it's like the PA system, but over all the planet. And in chapter 10, the angel proclaims the eternal gospel to revere God and repent of idolatry, essentially to believe and to repent. But now on this last day, when grace has closed its door, the angel stands in the sun and the birds in midair are called. And they're called, in verse 18, to eat the flesh of kings and of generals and of soldiers and of the mighty and of horses and rider, and all in those armies, free or slave, great or small. God's justice is even-handed, free and slave, great and small. If you serve the idolatries of the world and not the Lord Jesus, this is where you are. Repentance is the call until that last day. And in verse 19, we see that the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war. Translations often say wage war. In the Greek text, there's actually a definite article there to wage the the final war. And we get that same little definite article in chapter 20, the millennial story, where they're waging war, Satan wages the war. It's all the same war, I believe. And this beast was captured, and the false prophet, and their end comes. And so here in Revelation 19, two suppers are offered. The first is all of grace, the wedding supper of the Lamb. Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. That's the fourth blessed saying in the book of Revelation. There are seven altogether in the book. Someday, maybe I'll do a series on the seven blessednesses of the book of Revelation. So here we are in the seventh of the visions of Christ in the book of Revelation. Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. But what of those? who finally and fatally rejected this grace, it's the great feast of God. Unless you think this is something other than what Jesus himself might say, I mean, isn't that true within our culture? That if there's a cultural image of Jesus out there beyond the bounds of the wisdom of the church of Jesus, that Jesus, you know, theory is, you know, gentle Jesus, meek and mild, he became a little child. I think, who is that poet? I forget. But Jesus in the Gospel of Mark quotes that Isaiah text and quotes this one, quotes the Isaiah text behind this one. And he says, there worm dieth not. And perhaps you have heard, and it's true, that no speaker or writer in the New Testament speaks more of final damnation than Jesus himself in the Gospels. The gentle Jesus, meek and wild, yes, he is that. I am gentle and lowly of heart. Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. but where there is no repentance. Jesus says it in Mark 9, 47. The worms that eat them do not die and the fire is not quenched. John agrees here in Revelation 19. And so we have the call in the here and now to receive the mercy that is offered, to receive the blessedness of those who are invited by ear and heart to the wedding supper of the Lamb. And who is this Lamb? He's the one who takes away the sins of the world. That is beyond all graciousness, beyond all that we can understand. It is lovely indeed, beyond all singing of it. But because he is also the faithful and true, the King of Kings, Jesus Christ also judges the world righteously. So now we're prepared to answer those six great questions that every good journalist knows. What, when, where, who, how, why? What is the judgment? It is salvation for those who have trusted in this Christ. It is the opposite. for those in a final and fatal repentance. Now, if you're impenitent today, this is no statement that you will be so tomorrow. The grace is offered, and the grace is offered again, and again, and again, and again, and again. And I don't know how many agains. When is this judgment? Well, in a certain sense, it happens at the moment of our death, when all such decisions are sealed. but also at the last day of our present frame of history. And that frame of history is not the end of the world. It's only the end of the world as we know it. And a new frame of history opens then where evil is signed away or consigned away, I should say, and only righteousness survives. And even the evil of our own hearts is put away and healed. and the mixed motives that now you come to church with, and with which you praise and worship God, and with which you pray, those mixed motives, those mixed motives will be healed at the moment of your death. And the resurrection then comes on the great and last day, and all are raised, good and wicked alike, says the scripture, and face the judgment seat of Christ. And it is a judgment seat of joy and mercy. or it is judgment seat of great fear and wrath. And where is this judgment? Well, in a certain way, it's all the universe because the human race is the head of the universe in its created form. And in our fall, the world fell. And in our rising, the world rises in what St. Peter calls the renewal of all things. But more specifically, it is the judgment seat of Christ. which we read of in chapter 20, in the end of that chapter. And who is the judge? Jesus himself, the Word of God, the King of kings. And who is to be judged? Well, all of us. And so we read in our larger catechism, I think last time I was here, I read question 90 with its answer, which is about the righteous. The previous question is 89. This Westminster larger catechism, 1646, London, 100 Puritan theologians developing this text. I call it the big cat. The smaller catechism is for children. That's the little cat. This is the big cat, the larger catechism. Number 89, what shall be done to the wicked at the day of judgment? The day of judgment, the wicked shall be set on Christ's left hand. and upon clear evidence and full conviction of their own consciences shall have the fearful but just sentence of condemnation pronounced against them. And thereupon shall be cast out from the favorable presence of God and the glorious fellowship with Christ, his saints and all his holy angels into hell to be punished with unspeakable torments, both a body and soul with the devil and his angels forever." Now that's not Bible. But all of it's true and clearly taught by the Bible. But let's not end with those thoughts. We are convinced that we are of a different sort. That is, if we have that faith and that repentance that the gospel calls. Number 90, which I read last time, and I'll read it again very gladly. What shall be done to the righteous at the day of judgment? The day of judgment, the righteous being caught up to Christ in the cloud shall be set upon his right hand, and there openly acknowledged and acquitted shall join with him in the judging of reprobate angels and men. and shall be received into heaven, where they shall be fully and forever freed of all sin and misery, filled with inconceivable joys, made perfectly holy and happy both in body and soul, in the immediate company of innumerable saints and holy angels, but especially in the immediate vision and fruition of God the Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit to all eternity, And this is the perfect and full communion, which the members of the invisible church shall enjoy with Christ in glory at the resurrection and the day of judgment. All right, it's the end of the world as we know it. And what's the next line of that song? And I feel fine. You know the song? It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine. And so here alone, in all of the New Testament, that word hallelujah comes back. What does it mean? It means praise the Lord. Hallelu, the command to praise, plural, okay, all of you. If we were in Georgia, we'd say, y'all praise. Hallelujah, and the y'all is y'all. Praise y'all is what? Our word means, and there's no H in Greek letters, so we have alleluia for our Greek spelling and our Latin and our English sometimes. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. For the Lord God omnipotent reigns. Hallelujah. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever, ever and ever. King of kings, Lord of lords. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. And can you say the fourth one with me? Hallelujah. Amen. Shall we pray? Lord Jesus Christ, you are merciful beyond all knowing, beyond all singing of it. And you've extended to us in the gospel and by the ministry of the church, this mercy. It is astonishing. It is amazing. And by your wooing of us, by your spirit in our hearts, you woo us and you win us. so that our hearts, not puppets on strings, but our hearts most willingly say yes to Jesus. Thank you for this great and persuasive fact that the wedding supper of the Lamb is coming, and already in this day and hour, we can partake of it by foretaste. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that already in this day and hour, we can partake of the final kingdom of God by faith and by repentance. So bless us, Lord Jesus, O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Take away even our sins and renew us in an everlasting righteousness with great joy and peace in believing this good news. And we pray it in your holy name, Lord Jesus. Amen. The communion song is printed in the bulletin from Psalm 98.