Revelation 1
Author: The Father
(The Father gave this Revelation TO CHRIST JESUS; Christ then gave the information to John the apostle.)
Written Down By: John, the apostle of Christ, one of the original 12.
While you may not understand it first my beginning our look at Revelation 1 with this information, I ask you to be patient and consider what I have to say:
Lazarus is the only named person in the Gospel of John who is called "the one Jesus loved".
Lazarus is also the only person named in John 11:36 when a group of people say, "See how he [Jesus] loved him [Lazarus]".
The idea that the gospel bearing the name of John was written by the apostle John is purely speculation of later generations of the church. There is no internal evidence in the book itself to suggest this.
Just as we know that the gospel bearing the disciple Mark's name is actually the gospel of Peter, Mark having been Peter's scribe and pupil, we know much more about the gospel of John than most people realize.
To begin with: the theory that John is the author of The Gospel is built solely from the fact that John is the only apostle who is not mentioned by name in the book itself, and an early church preacher's opinion that John wrote the account of Christ Jesusâ life and purpose for coming to us at all.
So, like so many other pop cultural beliefs it was just accepted because nobody had a better solution to offer for the authorship of the book. And NOW, this THEORY is taught authoritatively throughout almost of Christianity.
But it's it TRUE???
They tell us that out of extreme humility John does not mention his own name in the gospel account that he himself wrote down, but instead only refers to himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved".
I've never understood their rationale, how they would conclude that someone singling themselves out from a group to specifically tell everyone that Jesus REALLY loved them is humility.
We know from the author's own hand near the end of this gospel that the writer is definitely the one with the Koine Greek nickname which translates roughly, "the much loved one".
And again, fellow students of the Word, when we just let the scriptures interpret the scriptures, much of our confusion is done away with.
The book itself, when we pay attention and allow the Bible to speak for itself, identifies exactly through this one singled out as "the one Jesus loved" is, there is no grand mystery about it.
John 11:3
(READ IT)
WHY IS THIS RELEVANT? Because you may well run across an article or 50 written by professional linguists who have historically and at present age emphatically insisted that by comparing the writing styles and grammar of first, second, and third John, and the book of Revelation, all of which we know John the apostle wrote -
to the writing style and grammar of the gospel bearing the name of John, it is simply evident that the same person did not write this book who wrote the other four aforementioned books.
So what exactly am I saying? I'm telling you that the gospel we call the gospel of John is actually the gospel of Lazarus. Written about the time that the apostle John was in prison on the Isle of Patmos, a Roman prison camp island, I would conclude that Lazarus left the name of John completely out of the book to keep from instigating any new persecution against the old brother.
I conclude that Lazarus did not name himself in the gospel because he had a family to worry about, including two sisters, and at the time of the writing and subsequent circulation of this work there was quite an energetic and very active persecution going on against Christ followers, both at the hands of the Israelites and Rome.
Ultimately, the Authorship of the entire Bible belongs to God Himself.
So who He used to pen the words on a page is to a great extent completely irrelevant.
If He is not God enough to be trusted to keep one book intact just as He would have it to be to guide His children safely home, how in the world are we to trust him to be God enough to put all of the molecules of our bodies back together and raise us from the dead?
All of the remarks you have ever encountered about how untrustworthy the Bible is because it's been translated and retranslated so many times that we don't know what it said in the beginning were all made by people that don't know their tail- end from a hole in the ground about the Bible, the original autographs, the copies that are in existence today, or translations. They're just saying stupid things that give them an excuse for not bowing down to the authority of the scriptures.
It doesn't matter how many times you translate a text or mistranslate the same text, the text being translated doesn't change. And today we have over 6,000 copies and partial copies of the same letters that the early church adopted as authoritative. The Bible has never been changed. Your Old Testament is the same Old Testament in use when Christ was born into this world as a human being, there is just a difference in the order of the books.
And our New Testament is the same New Testament agreed upon by all of the churches as far back as our knowledge of those churches reaches.
As for the rumor that Constantine changed the Bible at the council of Constantinople in 325 AD, I would remind you that up until a decade or so before that counsel Christians were being slaughtered for their faith. The same people that stood up in the face of death to proclaim the name of Christ were the people that Constantine called together to give him their judgment on which letters were to be counted authoritative, which word to be considered legitimate teaching from brothers and sisters but not divinely inspired, and which were just spurious nonsense.
The books of the Bible canonized in 325 AD are simply the books already approved by and in use within the world's Christian churches of the age.
A few years earlier our fellow believers were laying down their lives for the name of Christ. They would not have stood by silently and cowardly all of a sudden if the ruler of Rome had stepped in to change the Word of God!
Had this actually happened we would read about another persecution in the 320s AD.
PART TWO
HOW does the BIBLE say Christ will return?
"Behold, He (Jesus) comes with the clouds, and EVERY EYE WILL SEE HIMâŚ."
(Rev.1:7)
How does this plain statement of God's Word fit with the idea of some kind of "secret rapture"?!?
There's nothing secret about every human being on the planet seeing Christ when He returns.
What about Matthew 24:27?
"For as lightning comes out of the east and shines even to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be."
Anything secret about that?
Christ will be universally visible when He returns, according to God's Word.
And you may find it interesting, I do, that the Scripture uses the compass directions of East to West, not North to South. Why is this interesting? Well, at a point, North becomes South and South becomes North. If you travel all the way to the top of the world you're heading north, but if you keep going, once you pass the peak, you'll be headed south.
Likewise, if you travel south far enough, eventually you'll be going north again.
But traveling east never ends, nor does traveling west.
I think the Biblical stress here is that as far as there are human beings on planet Earth, they are going to see Christ in all of His Glory when He returns.
"He comes with the cloudsâŚ."
Q: What does THAT mean?!?
When the Lord returns, He will be accompanied by all of His angelsâ ALL of His angels! (2 Thes. 1:7)
Matthew 25:31
"And when the Son of Man shall come in His Glory, and ALL THE ANGELS with Him, then shall He sit on the Throne of His Glory."
ALL OF THEM!
How many angels remain in "heaven"?
None!
Zero.
ALL of them will be by the Lord's side. Ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousandsâŚ.
Innumerable.
His return will also be AUDIBLE!
Mt. 24:31 states:
"And He shall send His angels with a GREAT SOUND of a trumpet, and they shall gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other."
They shall gather, the angels will gather up the bride of Christ, they will not magically levitate up into the air. That is religious mythology.
I Cor. 4:16&17 actually says WHAT?
"(16) For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (17) Then we who are
alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them IN THE CLOUDS to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord."
I defy you to show me anywhere in the Bible where, during this event, it says you will go any further than to the clouds.
There actually is a rapture, but it's no secret. It's going to be really, really loud, and every eye on the planet is going to see it happen. And you're only going into the air, period. No further.
1 Cor. 15:50-58
"(50) I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
(51) Behold! I tell you a mystery. We
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
(52) in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at THE LAST TRUMPET. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
(53) For this perishable body must put on the
imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
(54) When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
"Death is swallowed up in victory."
(55) "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"
(56) The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
(57) But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
(58) Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."
WHEN will we be caught up into the air?
What does God's Word tell us?
AT THE LAST OF THE 7 TRUMPETS!
Not before the first one blows, not mid way through the trumpets, but at the very LAST one!
The only thing left to be fulfilled at that point is the destruction of the rest of humanity that was left standing on the planet, watching angelic warriors swoop down and snatch God's elect up into the air to get them out of the way. Because everything left standing on the planet is about to die!
Rev. 6:15-17
"Then the kings
of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of
the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the
wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?'"
Q: Hide them from who?
From Him who sits on the Throne? Didn't we just read about Christ sitting on His Throne when He returns?
They SEE HIM!
His return is no secret! And when He comes back, He's not leaving for another seven years, peopleâŚ.
When Christ returns, this world is OVER!!!
Jude 14&15
"Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of
ungodliness that they have committed in such
an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
Jeremiah 25:30-33
"You, therefore, shall prophesy against them all these words, and
say to them: "The LORD will roar from on high, and from his holy habitation utter his voice; he will roar mightily against his fold, and shout, like those who tread grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. The clamor will resound to the ends of the earth, for the LORD has an indictment against the nations; he is entering into judgment with all flesh, and the wicked he will put to the sword, declares the LORD.'
"Thus says the LORD of hosts: Behold, disaster is going forth from nation to nation,
and a great tempest is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth!
"And those pierced
by the LORD on that day shall extend from one end of the earth to the other. They shall not be
lamented, or gathered, or buried; they shall be dung on the surface of the ground."
Why won't they be gathered, why won't they be buried? There's nobody to gather them, nobody to bury them. There's nobody left.
"I will utterly consume all things from off the land, " says the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fouls of the heavens and the fishes of the sea semically the stumbling blocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, says the Lord."
(Zeph. 1:2&3)
"I beheld the earth, and indeed it was without form and void seminal and the heavens, they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and indeed they trembled, and all the hills moved back and forth. I beheld, and indeed there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens had fled. I beheld, and indeed the fruitful land was a wilderness, and all its cities were broken down in the presence of the Lord, by his fierce anger. For thus says the Lord: the whole land shall be desolate; yet I will not make a full end. For this shall be Earth-Morn, and the heavens above be black, because I have spoken. I have purposed and will not relent, nor will I turn back from it."
(Jeremiah 4:23-28)
Together let's
read 2 Thes. 2:1&2.
READ about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD!
Every detail of this was fulfilled!
The one who restrained wasn't "the Holy Spirit", he was the father who ruled Rome and kept his kid on a leash! When he died that kid wasn't on a leash anymore, and he wanted the treasure of the temple in Jerusalem! ALL of this was fulfilled IN DETAIL in 70AD.
What is the broader, larger international fulfillment of this going to look like for us in the last hours of the end of the end times?
Well, God tells us in His Word that the "beast", the religious/political system (kingdom, if you will) that will be responsible for the slaughtering of untold millions of the bride of Christ,
will be an ACTUAL PART of the original Roman Empire that survived the death of the Roman Empire.
What "head" of the Roman Empire made a world conquering comeback after the fall of the Roman government? What aspect of Roman rule, alive and thriving and ruling during the reign of the Roman government over most of the known earth, what aspect of that fourth beast of Daniel was healed and went on to rule the world and slaughter millions of God-fearing, Bible believing followers of Christ?
The Roman Catholic Church, under the leadership of one position of power - the Pope.
Rev. 7:9â14
"After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in
their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, âAmen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."
"Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "WHO ARE THESE, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?" I said to him, "Sir, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones COMING OUT OF THE GREAT TRIBULATION. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
Remember: WE ARE ADOPTED INTO the PROMISES OF ISRAEL! That isn't a metaphor! We are ADOPTED by God Himself into the bloodline Family of Israel.
If you ARE now a child of God through the sacrifice of His Son, Christ Jesus, then you ACTUALLY belong to one of the original 12 tribes of Israel - whichever tribe God had placed you inâŚ.
âŚ. And, now this is only my loose opinion and not sound doctrine â just an idea that I have considered:
How did Israel mark their territories! Stones, with the name of the owning tribe written on them. They built monuments of stones as witnesses of oaths that the tribe name was inscribed upon⌠so, I'm thinking, the stone that the Lord will hand you that has a name written on it that previously no one had known?
I think that could possibly be the name of the tribe of Jacob you belong to. BUT, that's just an idea that seems to make sense.
Again, as many of you have heard me say repeatedly: the outworking of the history of Israel was a prophetic analogy of what God had ordained for his children in world history through Christ.
When the plagues struck Egypt, the trumpets if you will, were the children of Israel raptured away from Egypt? Or did God protect them from the plagues that came directly from His hand?
Have you read the book of Revelation?
Rev. 7:2-4
"Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads."
1 Thes. 5:2-4
"2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon
a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But YOU ARE NOT in darkness,
brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief."
The Rapture and the Jesuits
The first thing I tell a person who asks about the Rapture is this: "Please do not throw what I am about to share out the window without first carefully examining this historical information.
"The Rapture has seated itself into a lot of the evangelical churches, and few church members question it, as they grew up with the idea. They have never studied its origin and are trusting wolves in their pulpit to sell them on this apostate doctrine."
And this is what I explain: What so many people in the modern evangelical world do not know is that the Rapture is actually a "new theology" which was not taught by Jesus or His disciples, the primitive early church, or by ANY OF the Protestant Reformers such as Luther, Tyndall, Wycliff, etc.
In fact, this idea, which is referred to as "prophetic futurism," was dreamed up by a Jesuit priest named Francisco Ribera, who reached back to a second century heresy and used it as the basis for his made-up teaching of his â
A teaching he created to defend Roman Catholicism, and particularly, the POPE, against the TRUTH in God's Word that the Reformers were using to point a finger in Rome's face and shout publicly, "THIS IS YOU! YOU ARE THIS BEAST!"
*Modern Christianity has largely forgotten the importance of the Protestant Reformation, which took place only a short time ago in history, during the 1500s.
The Protestants were "protest-ing" against the abuses and corruption of the Catholic Church. This time period was referred to as "The Dark Ages," and it was a very dark age. Those who "protest-ed" were silenced by prison, torture, and death. Millions were martyred for their faith in "Sola Scriptura", "Sola Fida", and "Sola Christos",
Scripture Alone as our sole authority, Faith Alone is the sole means of our salvation, and Christ Alone (without His mother's or anyone else's help) for our complete lives and righteousness.
But no matter how hard the inquisition tried to silence the voice of these protestors, the Protestant movement continued to grow. Something had to be done to take the heat off of the pope and the Catholic Church.
In 1545, the Catholic Church convened in a place north of Rome in a city called Trent.
This meeting became known as "The Council of Trent".
One of the main purposes of this council was for Catholics to plan a counterattack against Martin Luther and the Protestants.
Thus, the Council of Trent became a center for Rome's self named Counter-Reformation.
Up to this point, Rome's main method of attack had been the burning of Bibles AND OF THOSE IT NAMED HERETICS, who were none other than true Bible believing children of God.
NOW they were going to try a new approach by spreading false ideas through a theological attack.
Some eleven years before the Council of Trent, on August 15, 1534, Ignatius Loyola founded a secretive Catholic order called "the Society of Jesus", also known as the Jesuits.
The Jesuits definitely have a dark history of intrigue and seditionâthat's why they were expelled from
Portugal(1759),
France (1764),
Spain (1767),
Naples (1767),
and Russia (1820).
They were, in a sense, the military arm of the Roman Church.
At the Council of Trent, the Jesuits were commissioned BY THE POPE to develop a new interpretation of Scripture that would counteract the Protestants naming of the Bible's Antichrist prophetic- figurehead as the Roman Catholic Church.
Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), who was a brilliant, smooth talking Jesuit priest and doctor of theology, accepted the task.
In 1590, just five years after Trent, Ribera published a commentary on the book of Revelation as a counter- interpretation to the prevailing view among Protestants, which identified the Papacy with the Antichrist.
Another brilliant Jesuit scholar, Cardinal Robert
Bellarmine (1542-1621) of Rome, also got on the band- wagon.
Agreeing with Ribera, both began a counter- interpretation putting all Bible prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation way off into the future. This interpretation was later referred to as "prophetic futurism".
If you do your own research, you will find out a lot
in regards to this. This is purely a historical fact, I didn't make these things up.
The problem the Catholics had was getting the Protestants to swallow this "new theology".
It took a while, but modified versions of this Jesuit-inspired "prophetic-futurism" were introduced into the Protestant world by a man named John Nelson Darby, an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher. He was the first Protestant to bite the hook of this "Roman Catholic, Counter-Reformation" teaching.
Dispensationalism and Futurism
John Nelson Darby infused this "new theology" into the Protestant world in the mid-1800s.
The Rapture was not accepted in America at that time, even though the idea was spreading across parts of England.
Charles Spurgeon rejected Darby's "new theology" and convinced the American evangelical world of his day that it was HERESY.
DID YOU HEAR ME?!?
Charles Spurgeon labeled this entire false teaching HERESY!!!
One of the most important figures in this whole drama is Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921), a Kan- sas lawyer who was greatly influenced by the writings of Darby.
In 1909 Scofield published the first edition of his famous Scofield Reference Bible which adopted this new theology in his study guides and the footnotes found in that Bible.
And little by little, "futurism" made inroads in America.
It wasn't until the late 1960s and into the early 1970s that HAL LINDSEY started propagating this Rapture theology by introducing it at the Dallas Theological Seminary.
*I read his book, "The Late Great Planet Earth".
This, plain and simple, was nothing but prophetic futurism.
In 1976 there was a movie by the same name. And it was the movie that was the catalyst to the evangelical world in accepting this new theology called the Rapture.
Years later, in the 1990s, the Left Behind movie series became a big hit among evangelical Christians.
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins took the future one-man Antichrist idea of Hal Lindsey, Scofield, Darby, Irving, Newman, Todd, Maitland, Bellarmine, and RIBERA, and turned it into "the most successful Christian-fiction series ever" (Publishers Weekly).
It took the devil 500 years, but at last he had led professing Christians -like lambs to the slaughter- into believing a diversionary false doctrine that will leave them COMPLETELY UNPREPARED emotionally, mentally, and spiritually for what will happen in the last years of human history if they are in the generation upon which God roles time up and closes it. Protestants finally swallowed the Jesuit-inspired teachings of prophetic futurism!
HERE ARE SOME SUMMARY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS TEACHING:
1. The Rapture doctrine is one of the most recent "new doctrines" in the history of the church. The only doctrine more recent is the invention of the sinner's prayer, a practice begun by Wesley at his gospel revivals in the 1700s, presented by Billy Sunday in 1930, and made popular by Billy Graham beginning in the mid 1940s.
2. The fact that John Nelson Darby invented the popular, modern manifestation of the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine around 1830 AD is unquestionably true.
All attempts to find evidence of this wild doctrine before 1830 will fail you, with a single exception:
Morgan Edwards wrote a short essay as a college paper for Bristol Baptist College in Bristol, England, in 1744 where he described a "pre-tribulation" rapture.
However, friend, Edwards' ideas, which he admitted were brand new and never before taught, had no influence on the modern spread of this false doctrine.
That prize goes to John Nelson Darby.
3. Prior to 1830, no church taught the Rapture in their creed, catechism, or statement of faith.
4. Darby has had a profound impact on religion today, since Darby's "secret rapture" false doctrine has infected most conservative evangelical churches.
While the official creeds and statements of faith of many churches either reject or are silent about the Rapture, they also do not openly condemn this doctrine.
They are cowards.
And God hates a coward, in case you missed that:
Rev. 21:8 saysâ
"But as for the COWARDLY, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.â
NOTICE HOW GOD links together spiritual cowardice, faithlessness, and what is detestable to Him! DO NOT miss that!
A last thought about our attitude toward what we choose to stake our Eternity on:
We in modern Western society have fallen into the poor habit of judging Truth, and/or God's acceptance of whatever we choose to "believe", on the merit of our imagined "sincerity".
Family, you can be absolutely sincere about something you believe and yet be sincerely absolutely WRONG!
If there were no eternal danger in our buying into lies that masquerade as Truth, the Lord would not have warned us over and over about false gospels, false teachings ("doctrines").
He would not have moved Paul to recurringly warn us about heretical doctrines that would infiltrate the body of Christ, and further warn us NOT TO BELIEVE THEM.
So, again, BE CAREFUL what you choose to step off into Eternity chained to!
Many are going to go before Christ at the Judgement in full confidence that they are absolutely good to go â and Christ is going to tell them, "Depart from Me, I NEVER knew you!"
(Mt.7:21-23)
And on that text: if Christ never knew them, then they were never saved and so never had the Holy Spirit dwelling in them.
âŚ. so how were they doing these things they claim to have been doing in His Name?!?
Or is the truth of their situation that perhaps they were caught up in a false gospel movement that shouted a lot and PRETENDED to be doing miracles and casting out demons, but they weren't actually doing these things at all.
It was all hype. It was all imaginary. It was all pep rally, or, as the Scripture calls such things: vain jangling, storm clouds without water, beating at the airâŚ.
Amen