*Note - Due to recording sound issues outside of DTBM's control, some lessons in this series are not available.

Transcript

All right. Hello again. I'm back again to introduce this time, so I'm going to go ahead and do that, so we can get right to it. Make sure everybody gets seated here. Alright. You are in for a treat here for the next, actually, two weeks, right? You have a guest lecturer for two weeks, which isn't usually the normal, but he is here to teach the book of Revelation for you guys as a part of your Daniel and Revelation course. This is Dr. John Barnett. Dr. Barnett is the founder of Discover the Book Ministries, which focuses on the teaching and preaching of God's Word, as well as Bible study resources to help people dig deep into the Scriptures.

Dr. Barnett has served as pastor in many local churches located in Michigan, Georgia, Rhode Island, California, and Oklahoma. He also served as a senior pastor at Calvary Bible Church for nine years. He was an associate pastor for five years to Dr. John MacArthur at Grace Community Church, overseeing the shepherding ministries there. He was on faculty also at Master's College and Seminary, and he was the assistant Dean of Men at Bob Jones University for five years. So, he has lots of awesome experience. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and Bob Jones University. He received his Master of Theology at Master's Seminary. He received his Doctor of Biblical Ministry at Dallas Theological Seminary.

He's the author of many books, too many to count, which takes up, if you look, it takes up three pages on Amazon. Dr. Barnett and his wife Bonnie, who is also here somewhere, I'm sure, there she is in the back. Hi Bonnie. You'll be getting to know her as well. They're currently serving as full-time global partners engaged in equipping current frontline great commission partners, as well as mobilizing the next generation of great commission partners through training centers across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. They have eight children. Please welcome Dr. John Barnett.

That...hello? Hello? Hello. There we go. That introduction should tell you one thing. It makes me tired having eight children just like you. I have kids your age, and I had as much hair as Mr. Sidney or whatever, Soapy or Snoopy, whatever your t-shirt says when I started. Look how much hair he has, and now, look at that. But I can't tell you what a privilege it is every time Bonnie and I get to come. I may have taught some of your parents. I've been teaching here since 1987. So, if any of your parents were around back then, I may have seen them over the years, the STCERs and over the years, whoever. So, I can't believe that at my age, I'm still teaching you all at your age. It's a thrill because you have, except for a few in the front row, you have a long time ahead of you, but Mr. Marine here is a good friend of mine, and I'm thankful that he has half his life ahead of him, and you have most of yours ahead of you.

The book of Revelation is unlike any other book of the Bible. We're going to dive into it for 20 hours. I know you've been on like Easter or Spring Break or whatever. I know. I saw. I came in while all of you were unloading your cars, and I know, I think the schedule said you might've even had a test this morning. So, it's amazing what you go through. But we went through the same thing when we were your age. All those classes and tests and memorizing verses and chapter content and exams and everything else. So, we're praying that the Lord will use these 20 hours in your life.

So, what I'm going to do is as much as possible transport you back to where this book began, show you what it meant as they heard it, and then every hour before we end, come right back to this moment and try and connect the two. That's what biblical teaching is all about. It's taking you back. That's the context. You go back to where the book was originally heard and understood, and you show everything it meant, and then you come back to 2025 and say, so what? So, what does that mean to me? It was great for them. Look, we know in church history everything they accomplished. They overcame everything. Even the progressive, almost persecution and martyrdom of the Church, it almost went extinct. During our course, we're going to look at how the church of Christ came closest to extinction. There was one man who hunted down every pastor of every church, destroyed every copy, complete copy of the Bible, and leveled every meeting place of the Church. No one's ever done that before. That's how close they got to extinction. So, they did great. Look at us, we're descendants of the Early Church. But how can we get that same fervor and passion and understanding of God's Word? So that's my goal.

So, this is what we're going to do, and many times throughout the 20 hours, we're going to do this. Did you know that back then, most often in the Jewish assemblies, when they heard the Bible read, do you know what they did? Anybody read Ezra? You remember the book of Ezra? They hadn't read the Bible for a generation, so he had them all stand as he read the Bible to them. Did you know that's where this whole…do you ever stand in church for the reading of God's Word? Any of you? Some of you. That's where it comes from. Ezra made the entire returning 50,000 people stand, and he read them the book of Deuteronomy, and it started raining, and they stood for hour after hour, but we're only going to stand for about a minute. Okay? You ready? Everybody ready?

Let's stand. You don't have to have your copy because they didn't have a copy. You understand that? You guys are way ahead. Look at that giant Bible he's holding. They didn't have that. The only contact they had was saying, God, when the Bible, when the Word of God, when I hear Your voice, I want to hear it. I want to hold onto it. I want to understand it. I want to apply it. So, just think you're a hunted, persecuted Christian. You're in a church where the Roman Empire has you tagged. They've probably already gotten your pastor, but you still came to church. You don't know if they're going to raid you and haul you away. You hear the famous pastor of Ephesus, who's a prisoner of the Roman Empire on a prison island, kind of like Alcatraz, if you've ever heard of that.

John got a letter from Jesus. Jesus spoke it. His angels affirmed it. John wrote it down, and now your copy was copied in Ephesus and sent on the postal route to the seven churches, and you're gathered. This is what you would've heard that Sunday morning, the first time the Book of Revelation was read almost 2000 years ago. Revelation 1:1-3, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, who bore witness to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. Verse 3, blessed is he who reads. That's me. So, I just got blessed by God. And those who hear you don't, may not feel it, but you just got a blessing, those of you that are listening, from God. If you really believe the Bible, that's what God just did to you. He just gave you a blessing. Now, listen, those who hear the words of this prophecy, that's all of us, and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is near.

Let's bow for a word of prayer, and then I'll let you sit down. Oh, Father, we just joined the Early Church. We just heard, standing like we're there, Your voice. I pray that we would get that blessing today of reading and hearing, and most of all, keeping, treasuring, responding to Your voice today. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated.

Let's see, I have 41 minutes. The book of Revelation is this: it's God sending us the plan. There is no other book in the Bible like this book that we're looking at. God gave the only map of the future. Now, there are a lot of demonic mediums. Nostradamus, you might have heard of, all these seance people, and they predict the future. You may have heard of the Oracle of Delphi, that was demon-possessed. It's when you studied the book of Acts in chapter 16, the fortune-telling girl in the book of Acts in the city of Philippi. If you were studying, I'm sure your teacher told you that the word for that girl is a word we know in English. It's the Greek word, python, like snake. It really is like the snake because Apollo, the god, was the god of the future that told the future, and those who allowed him to do it, he, like a snake, spoke through them.

Doesn't that sound like something in Genesis? Yeah, it is the same thing. It is Satan speaking through an instrument, like Satan spoke through the serpent in the garden. He indwelt it. The demonized girl in Philippi spoke the words of Apollo, which there is no Apollo, it's a myth. It was Satan and a demon. So, that speaking is what the oracle of Delphi was all about, and the world would go. Alexander the Great went to Delphi to hear the future from Satan. Nero, as in the New Testament, Nero went to Delphi to hear the voice of Satan, to know the future, because everybody wants to know the plan.

Boy, my kids want to know the plan. We had eight children. We wouldn't get in the car for 30 seconds, get their seat belts and all of their car seats fastened. Before I even had it out of park in the drive, I'd hear, when are we going to get there? They all wanted to know the plan. God gave us a plan and He gave it to show us His servants the things which must, that's interesting, shortly. When were these words first spoken by Jesus to John? Late 90s, maybe, maybe 95 A.D. That was a long time ago. What's the short? What's interesting, again, the Greek words are fascinating. If you take your Logos and right-click, this word is a derivative of the Greek word taxa, TAX, ada, and that is what's in every car, a tachometer. It shows how quickly the engine is spinning. So, it's the speed. What that's saying is when these things take place, they're very speedy. It's rapid and we'll talk much about that. Okay.

So, what is the context of Revelation? Number one, it's the final Apostle. There were 12 Apostles. There was one dud in the 12, so there are 11 Apostles and Judas. God picked John. That's one of the first amazing things about Revelation. God picked John. What was John like? When you study the Gospel by John, it's different than the other three. In fact, Jesus' relationship to John is different than His relationship to all the other Apostles. I hope you realize Jesus loves all of us equally and has a different relationship with each of us. We don't all have the same relationship. If you love Him supremely, if you focus on Him completely, you have a different relationship than the casual Christian. John was really focused, and he was much like Peter. He couldn't stay away from Christ. He just wanted to be as close to Him as possible. So, he would be right next to Him at all the key events, you know that, at the Transfiguration, to Last Supper, all the big events, John is right there. Even at His final moments in the high priest's courtyard, John was right there. Peter came stumbling in and ran away. John never left.

John was the final Apostle. Jesus promised that. You remember that? In John 21. He says, if I let him live until I come back, don't worry about it. This was Jesus coming back for him. By the way, everything that John wrote about in his Gospel and the epistles is reflected in this book. It's unbelievable. I'll show you that, but we'll never get through this. This is the final book of the Bible. It has the final message from God. It actually has the only epistles Jesus Himself personally wrote.

Now, if there's any fascinating part of the Bible, there are seven postcards Jesus wrote to seven churches, and you're going to see in just a moment, these seven churches represent what we're like today. Now, that's the fascinating thing about this. There were a lot more than seven churches. Paul planted many more than seven churches. The Early Church records many more than seven churches. Why did Jesus only write to seven? Because it's the, now, here's a funny word, the heptadic, the hepatic structure of the Bible. God is into sevens. That's what heptad means. A dozen is 12, heptad is seven. God is into sevens, and sevens represent full sets. Eight represents a new beginning. Now, I'm not making this up. It's all the way through Jewish writings, tradition, and the Bible. Seven days in the week, seven colors in the spectrum, seven notes on the scale. That means you have all, a set, a week, a complete panorama of visible light, a complete picture of the Church.

So, did you know every one of us is represented in this final message, and one of those seven churches is what you're like? It's what I'm like, and it's going to be fun to look at these. By the way, the best part about Revelation is that it connects everything. This is the capstone. This is the conclusion. This is the connector.

Now, think about the Bible. The Bible has 1,189 chapters. It has 31,103 verses. This book is the most connected book in the Bible. This book puts every prophecy, a third of the Bible is prophetic, actually, 28%. It connects them all and shows you where they fit and what they mean.

Have you ever wondered what a prophecy means? Every prophecy in the Bible fits in the book of Revelation. It's actually, when I used to teach this class when I was young and had lots of room in my bags, I would always bring to this class a box with a jigsaw puzzle inside. The whole time up here, so, you can just imagine this, I'd be shaking my puzzle box like this while I was introducing the book of Revelation. And then when I used to talk faster and didn't have to be in a rush, I would open the box, and I would have a bunch of you young people come and grab one piece of the puzzle. I'd have them stand up here, five or six, and I'd say, look at your puzzle piece and tell me what the puzzle is a picture of. Do you think anybody could tell what it was? Are you kidding? Have you ever seen a puzzle piece? You can't even find one that goes next to it, let alone what the whole thing looks like. That's why it's a puzzle.

Then while they're all looking at their pieces, I flip over my box. What's usually on the front of the box? The picture of what is cut up into 1,000, 2000, however many pieces. Did you know, you can figure out a puzzle really fast if you look at that picture, you find the edge, you look at the color blops, you put the pieces in groupings, and all of a sudden it starts fitting together. The picture on the front of the puzzle box is the book of Revelation. And there are 31,100 pieces, the verses of the puzzle. Revelation shows where all of them fit. Oh, it's just, it's my favorite book. It's what I did my dissertation on at Dallas Seminary.

There are 404 verses in the book of Revelation, and 800 cross-references. Now, if you use Logos, one of the resources in Logos, I don't know if you have it, but it's called, in Logos, TSK, Treasury Scripture Knowledge. It's something, a project I think R.A. Torrey, Dwight L. Moody's successor, started, and it was a project to find every cross-reference where, what the reformers called analogia scriptura, the analogy of Scripture. In other words, the Bible explains the Bible. That's what a cross-reference is. It's where this verse in the Bible, you can find that talked about somewhere else in the Bible, a cross-reference. So, they made the Treasury of Scripture knowledge, this project, they made 500,000 cross-references that they found in the Bible. It's amazing. The book of Revelation has the most 800-plus references, allusions, and quotations to the rest of the Scripture. Okay?

God explains all of human history in the Bible. I'm going to wear out. I'll have to stand still, or I'll give you motion sickness. You can tell that I was a youth pastor. Now, you should be thankful you have the old me. The young me used to go up the aisle. No one was playing games or sleeping in my class. I went up and down the aisles while I was teaching. I'm too old to do that anymore. You should be thankful.

By the way, another thing I should tell you is this: that camera over there, you see the camera over there? Did you know that shows what's on your computer screen? Do you ever think about that? Did you know I teach these classes all over the world? They have one of those all over the world. They give me a copy of this class when it's all over. I teach in the Bible Institutes on three or four continents. Do you know that people on YouTube send me notes? They said, did you know that one of your Bible class students was playing a game the whole time you were teaching? I said, no. They said, does it bother you? I said, no, doesn't at all. I'm not sure if it bothers God. That's what they should wonder, but it doesn't bother me. Another one told me that they could see what they were buying. They were buying stuff during class on their laptop. Isn't that amazing? Now, those were past classes, and I know none of you do that, right?

My wife just went like this. Aren't you glad she's in here? This is my best friend and the one person in the whole world I would love to spend all my time with. Wave your hand, honey. They don't know where you are. That's my wonderful wife. You are a blessing. I hope I have enough time in this class to explain how I met her. I went to a Christian school. What are there, about 250 of you? The Christian school I went to, the University, had 7,200 students, 3,600 of them were young ladies. I was one of the 3,600 young men. I wanted to find a godly Christian wife, so I dated 741 of the 3,600 one time. I dated 741 girls one time, and I didn't ever date any of them the second time.

It scared me because my parents were divorced. My dad used to knock my mom out. My parents met in a bar. That's not a wholesome place to meet a wife. I was afraid to get married. Who wants to be like your parents, fighting, throwing plates at each other? Choking each other, knocking each other out. I didn't want that for marriage, so I dated 741 girls in a row one time, and then I gave up. I told them I was going to be a BTTR. You know what that is? Bachelor till the Rapture, BTTR.

Then, my friend called me and said, there's one last one, number 742. You need to meet her. I knocked on her door, she was faculty, and I went [knocking sound]. She opened the door this far, and all I saw were her eyes and her smile. So, I saw this much. She leaned around the door, and in my heart I went, that's who you've prayed for your whole life. See, what I did since I was 13 years old, so for 14 years from 13 to 27, I prayed every day that the Lord wouldn't let me marry the wrong person because I didn't want to be as unhappy as my parents. So, I said, don't let me marry the wrong person. Let me know who you want me to share my life with and serve you with. And as soon as she opened that door, I went, that's who I prayed for. So, I was really good. I didn't tell her that till the second date. Then I looked at her, and I said, did you know you're the one I prayed for my whole life? And as soon as those words came out of my mouth, I went, oh no! Isn't that a pickup line? To try and really, I prayed for you my whole life. Can you imagine that?

God explains all, there we go, of human history. Just look, this is the whole Bible. We know where we came from, the creation, how sin came, how God destroyed, and why the world looks like it looks. There are fossils on top of the Andes Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, the Himalaya Mountains, and every other mountain. Where Abraham came, and the mighty Exodus out of Egypt, and David, the man after God's own heart, the most talked about person in the Bible, human. There are 141 chapters about David in the Bible. That's why he's called the man after God's own heart. He broke all 10 commandments, and he was still beloved by the Lord. And the exile.

Here's the Septuagint. That's the Bible that Jesus and the Apostles preached from. It's a translation of the Hebrew. Isn't that amazing? They didn't preach from the original. They preached from a translation, which should be comforting to us. There's the nation of Israel. The Diaspora after A.D. 70. Israel was restored, and the book of Revelation looks from the New Testament period forward to the end, and that's God explaining all of human history. Boy, am I going to talk fast. Is this class over in 25 minutes? Yes. I have 26 slides. Wow.

Revelation. The 2nd generation Church saw the world, and it was very confusing to them. You just stood up and heard me read that. Think about whether you'd have been in that congregation. This is what your life was like. It appeared God was not winning. Rome was winning. The Roman Empire was expanding rapidly. The Roman Empire was enslaving almost everyone in their path. There were 60 million slaves. Talk about America's past history with slavery. The Roman Empire was really big into slavery. And in the path of the Roman expansion was pride, cruelty, and witchcraft. And at the highest echelons, all that was flourishing, and Christians needed hope.

Now, here's Jesus being crucified, A.D. 30ish. The ascension, He returns to Heaven. This is the 1st generation Church, from 30 to 40 to 50 to 60. By the end of the 1st century Church the gospels were mostly written, and the Epistles were mostly written. They had been copied and spread widely. But look at this, Paul and Peter, and the Apostles were primarily martyred.

Then we go into the 2nd generation Church. They're the ones that are getting this letter in the 70s and the 80s, and now it's in the 90s, and only John is left. The context of this entire letter is that Jesus speaks to John after he went and visited the seven churches. He's already been there. He's already gone to the seven churches that represent Christendom in its fullest. To this day, there are no Christians you'll ever meet that are not like either an Ephesian, a Smyrnaian, a Pergamon, a Thyatiran, a Sardian, a Laodicean, or a Philadelphian. Every Christian is represented, every problem we're going to face, every struggle the Church is going to go through, these people represented it. So, Jesus visits them and reports back to John. Wow.

Revelation is the most powerful dose of hope God could ever send. In Revelation, God shares the history of the future, the history of the future. Now our world calls the past history, and they should. That is history, but only God can write the history of the future because only God knows what's going to happen. He describes it. Basically, Revelation says God wins, Christ returns, and we're forever with Him. It's all about God knowing the future.

So, here's the lesson of Revelation. The revelation of Jesus Christ. That's the opening words of the book, which is to tell us that the only thing you need to make it through life in every dimension is Jesus. That's why it's the revelation of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.

When I teach the Bible, anybody who teaches the Bible, in fact, anybody who talks on the news, you know they have a framework. Have you ever noticed that in the news, they have a framework? Either they're harping on, you probably don't even watch the news, your parents do. Your parents notice all the newscasters have a frame of reference. Either they're constantly talking about the new, horrible thing the current administration did, or they're talking about the horrible weather that's coming, or the horrible oppression, or the environment, you know what I mean? They have a frame, and they emphasize it.

What do I emphasize? Just these things. Number one, I'm an evangelist, which means people must be saved. I intensely believe everyone was born lost, pagan, horrifically in opposition to God, and headed to destruction. By the way, that's what the Bible says. We're God's enemies at birth, and God is against us at birth because we're rebels. Jesus put it this way, a horrible way of introducing His ministry. He said to this group He was speaking to, you are of your father, the Devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abides not in the truth, and neither can he, because he is a liar and the father of it. And that's your dad, and that's what you're like. You don't win friends and influence people that way, but you sure tell them the truth. That's what an evangelist believes.

I'm an imputationist. Only Christ can save us. He lived a perfect life. His perfect life is applied to mine. All of my sins go on Him. The doctrine of justification, the greatest doctrine in the Bible, teaches me that God put my sins on Jesus and the penalty on Jesus. The record of my sins on Jesus. So, God sees me, because of that process, as a saint. Wow. That means there's no record in God's eternal registry that I've ever sinned because He looks at me and He sees Christ and all my sins, this is how the Bible puts it, much shorter than I can. For He, God, has made Him, Christ, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. That's 2 Corinthians 5:21.

I'm also an inerrantist. I believe the Scriptures are inspired, every word. And because I believe that I'm a creationist, because there's only one part of this Bible that God actually wrote with His own finger. Ya'll know that, right? Exodus 20, God told Moses, take two tablets of stone, come up to the mountain, it says with the finger of God into the stone He wrote the 10 commandments. What does the fourth commandment say? Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, for in six days God created the heavens and the Earth and on the seventh day rested. So, you should labor for six days and rest on the seventh. What did a million or 600,003 families understand that to mean? God just said, I created the whole universe in six days, like you have to work making bricks in Egypt, and now that I'm liberating you, you get to have the seventh solar 24-hour day off. The only part of the Bible, God wrote with His own finger. God said, I made everything in this universe in six solar days. So, that sure explains extraterrestrials, aliens, life on other planets, everything. You know everything in this universe, where it came from, because God told us that.

I'm also a catastrophist. Noah's flood really happened. A cessationist, the revelation of Scripture has ended, and that's really hammered in the last paragraph of Revelation. God said, don't add to this and don't take away from it. This is it. This is a capstone. This is all you need.

I'm a maximalist. That means that...there are minimalists and maximalists in Christendom. The minimalists say, oh, we're not sure if those scientific facts are true. We're not sure of some of those historical events, like Jonah and the whale, the burning bush, the flood, all that stuff. Maximalists say, we believe it. We believe what God said. And a dispensationalist. Israel is different from the Church. Israel is not the Church.

Okay, let me illustrate very quickly in 17 minutes. You know a picture's worth a thousand words. Here we go. This is a book of Revelation in seven, see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 events, and here they are. Number one, we are the Church on Earth, and Revelation connects all those passages and more that say the Church on Earth ends with Jesus taking us. So, Revelation 1 is saints love and serve God as we await His coming. We struggle through life. That's Paul. You know what Paul called Christians? In Greek, synagonizomai. Two Greek words: syn, meaning with, agonizomai, meaning what it sounds like, agony. He said, Christians are fellow strugglers. We struggle through life, so God shows us Jesus. That's what the revelation is about. He's the risen God, the Son in all His power and glory. He comes to help us and stand with us wherever we are.

Did you know John was way off the coast of Roman Asia on a Roman prison colony? And on the Lord's day, he hears a sound behind him like a trumpet, and when he turns, this is Revelation 1 we're going to see next hour. When he turns and looks. It's Jesus. Now, do you think that's the first time Jesus showed up on Patmos? No, it was the first time John noticed it. It was to show him, look at this, that He stands with us anywhere we are and everywhere we are.

Secondly, chapters 2 and 3 are Jesus walks among us in His Church, pointing out to each of His children what we're doing both right and wrong, so we can be even more useful to Him. And we're going to spend several class hours looking at that.

In the second event, we see the Church is in Heaven. By the way, this is the only chapter that's broken up. The Church is in Heaven around the throne here in 4 and 5, and then we have all this stuff, the Tribulation. Then we see the Church again in Heaven, ready to come back. So, it's the only section that's broken into two pieces. We have the Church in Heaven, and that connects this. Where do we give an account for our lives?

So, Jesus brings us each safely to Heaven, just like He promised. We see ourselves there standing around His throne after we've finished the plan He made for our lives here on Earth. See, God has a plan for you and for me. He made us a specific way. He put us in a specific family. He made us look like we look, everything you can't change about yourself, like who your parents are, how rich or poor they are, what side of the tracks you lived on, all of that stuff, what you look like, they didn't pick that, and you didn't pick that. God picked that, and it's part of His plan, and there's something you can do, nobody else can do.

David, when God wrote David's epitaph in Acts. Boy, I love the book of Acts. I'm glad you guys study that. In Acts 13, the Bible says this, God said this, when David fulfilled God's purpose in his generation, you understand that's David's epitaph. God says, David did what I designed him to do, imperfectly committed, broke all 10 commandments, committed adultery and murder, and broke the Sabbath day and defamed God's name. All those things. But he fulfilled My purpose. God wants to see if we're going to finish the plan He made for us.

Then here comes the main part of Revelation. In fact, this part of Revelation has one word in one verse that everybody in the world seems to be fixated on. You know what that is? Armageddon. That only is once in the Bible. It's in Revelation 16:16. I heard Elon Musk say it last week, two weeks ago, on the news. They were burning the…do you remember when they were burning the Tesla dealerships and Tesla cars all over the country? Do you know what Musk said in his beautiful South African accent? Oh, they're just doing, bringing an Armageddon to our dealerships. He actually said that, an Armageddon to our Tesla dealerships. Armageddon? See, everybody's heard that word they call traffic a trafficgeddon. They call weather a weathergeddon. They get that Armageddon thing. What is that?

Lost Humanity believes in evolution, denies biblical creationism, so the Creator Himself shows them His power. Earth-dwellers. Earth-dwellers? That's the term God uses for unsaved people. Seven times in Revelation it says, those who dwell on the Earth, those who dwell on the Earth, those who dwell on the Earth seven times. They believe they've got to save this planet. They believe they should revere this planet. They believe their highest calling in life is to protect this planet. God says, okay, if you don't revere the Creator, I'll show you, Earth-dwellers who worship Mother Earth, so God allows natural disasters to amplify. That's what the beginning of the Tribulation is. Global warming, or really getting warm, food scarcity really gets scarce. The weather really gets wild. The sun and the solar cycle go on maximums, like someone turns it up to high. Unbelievable.

Next, in the chapter, that's only chapters 6, 7, and 8. Chapter 9 of Revelation, lost humanity is fascinated with demons. So, God opens the pit. The pit? That's interesting. Did you know every human being who's ever lived from Adam and Eve on is still on this planet? The lost ones, the saved ones, are in the presence of the Lord. The lost ones are here waiting, in what the Bible calls Hades, Sheol, the grave, or Ezekiel loves the term, the pit. They're here and part of that pit has these things, these cosmic Monsters, and so they feel chapter nine is all about that, and we'll cover that.

Lost Humanity wants to rule themselves, so God sends the fake Jesus. The beast he's called, you know him as the Antichrist. He has 33 different titles in the Bible. He is the incarnation of Satan, and he's the worst human who ever lives, and he leads humanity to destruction by becoming their God.

Then Armageddon. Lost humanity believes in evolution, reveres the Earth, denies biblical creationism, so God systematically destroys everything. The atmosphere, the oceans, the land. He sends the biggest earthquake ever. Smoke and fire. Red tides, all the fish in the sea die. Global warming. It burns everyone's skin. Volcanoes, tsunamis, asteroids, comets, meteors. The final divine environmental destruction. Then we have Armageddon.

Lost humanity wants false religion, so God destroys all religion. That's chapter 17. Lost humanity wants comfort and entertainment, and possessions more than God. That's the idolatry of covetousness. So, God destroys everything in a moment in chapter 18, and then look what happens. As Paul describes it, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those that know not God nor obey him. That's what the Second Coming is. Followed immediately by the fulfillment of 28% of the Old Testament of Jesus literally ruling the Earth. Then after a thousand years, almost all humanity won't follow Him.

So, lost humanity rejected their Creator and Redeemer, so Christ the King returns. He rules for a thousand years, keeps all of His promises, and renews the Earth. Everyone finally gets to live in a perfect environment, and almost everybody rebels. So, chapter 20 is the final judgment, and he casts all the rebels into the Lake of Fire.

Then, and this is what really buzzed the Early Church. They couldn't wait for this: to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Nero had a house during this time period that was acres and acres. Bill Gates, and I don't know who, has a big house these days. Gates does have a large one, but nothing compares to the size of Nero's house. It was acres. He had a lake inside his house where boats could fight battles, and galleys could fight. It was in the courtyard of his house. So, everyone knew they'll never have a house like that till now, till they dwell in the house of the Lord. So, as Saints in chapters 21 and 22, we see ourselves enjoying God's invitation. We dwell in His captivating, satisfying, sustaining presence. God is with us, and we're at home in Heaven forever.

So, this is going to be important. I'm going to show it to you every hour. This is the bulk of your 20-point final exam: matching, understanding, and not getting tricked by the kind of events, the seven events of the book of Revelation.

Back to verse 1. This book came to us as God's Servants. What are God's servants? They're the ones He describes in verse 3. Here you can tell if you're God's servant, number one, you want to read this book because when you read this book, you're hearing the voice of God. I got up this morning in the dark. I usually get up about five o'clock every morning. I get the supreme privilege if I will stop everything else and do not immediately go check everything online and look at all the latest from everybody. There's this little communicator sitting somewhere, everywhere I'm staying. And if I just open this up anywhere in the world I am, I can hear the voice of God. This is the Word of God, and He's speaking. As God's servant, I can't get enough exposure to His Word.

Now, there are people who are exposed to sun lamps, right? Their skin gets darker and darker. The suntanning places. Do you know what happens when you're exposed to this? The more you're exposed to the voice of God, you and I unbelievably look more and more like Christ. That's how you can tell who's exposed and who's not. Do your friends look and talk and act, and think more like Christ or less? It's their exposure level.

Secondly, we don't; God's servants don't just want to be exposed to it. They want to focus on it. They don't just want to know about it. That becomes the focus of their life. Look at this, they want to do what God wants them to do. That's why we get to this seven church thing. There are a lot more churches in Asia, but this represents all of them. Jesus, what He says is for them and for us, and this is how you're one of His children, look at this: to Him who loved us and washed us from our sins. See, we're convicts, we're convicted sinners, and there's only one remedy. It's not us trying harder and being better and reading a few more verses. It's His washing of regeneration and renewing through the Holy Spirit.

Revelation connects all the Old Testament prophecies, and we'll talk about that. God introduces Himself in verse 8, and by the way, He repeats this seven more times. He is the panto, that means all, krator, which means power, kratos. Jesus reveals that He, with God, the three in one, is all-powerful, and we know that as omnipotent. So, that's the plan.

Now, look at the world we live in. We live in global fear. Russia has never been as aggressive as they are right now. They have been pulling these missiles out and showing them in public, and then slipping back into the, we don't know how many miles of tunnels there are across Russia, where they're hiding these things. There aren't enough bombs in America's arsenal to hit all these things. These are called the Sarmat missiles. Sarma missiles have 16 independently guided warheads. Each warhead can destroy an area about the size of Paris. One missile could completely evaporate the country of France. Russia has many of these, and they're building them as fast as they can. So, do you know anybody who pays attention? Older people really are onto the news. This thing travels seven times faster than a bullet. It's currently hypersonic and unstoppable, even for America. Okay? So, anybody who's thinking about this feels insecure.

So, Bonnie and I travel all over the place, and we were flying down to Florida. We just did Florida before you and the 95 or six of them. We got in late, and we were in Tampa Air or we were at RSW actually, and it was 11:30 when we landed, and we got our bags by 12:00, and I got the rental car. I said, honey, I need to get some milk. Do you mind if I go to 7-Eleven? And she said, no. So, we drove and drove till we found the 7-Eleven. Now, 7-Eleven's after midnight in a metro area usually are not the safest places, and I should have known it. When I walked into 7-Eleven, they had glass everywhere. You couldn't have gotten near that clerk if you wanted to. Anything valuable was behind the glass, all the cigarettes and alcohol, and I don't know what all they have back there.

And so, I found my milk. They didn't have that protected. I got in line. Instantly, I was confronted with three credit card scanner things and I thought, I wanted to use my Apple Pay, so I'd already got it up and I didn't know which one to hold it in front of. So, people were coming in behind me. So, I finally got up and I reached my head down to the little hole and I said, which of those three machines do I use for this? My Apple Pay? As soon as I said that, a voice behind me said, Dr. Barnett, is that you? I turned around. Now, this is not a person you want to see after midnight. Black leather piercings, tattoos, durag, giant muscles. He looked like the bad guy in every one of those action movies. You know what I mean?

And he looked at me and he said I'm a truck driver and I thought you look like a truck driver. The quintessential truck driver. He said, I would recognize your voice in the dark. He said, I've never seen you in my life. He said, I listened to six hours a day of your YouTube videos. I got saved riding in my truck. He said, I heard about all the end of the world stuff, and I just typed into my computer knowing God and you came up. And he said, I listened to one. He said, by about the fifth one, I got saved. He said, and you're here in my 7-Eleven. You know what? God wants us, look at this, to know the plan and to do our part, and my part is to share the Gospel with as many people as possible. Have a great break, and I'll see you back soon.