Revelation: Part 35

When anyone anywhere responds to this knowledge, by having a desire to know this God, God will move heaven and earth to get the message to them.

Last week we talked about the fact that Revelation 12 really gives us the secret behind anti-semitism. And this is one of those chapters in the book of Revelation, which is an interlude. The symbols that are used in this chapter are described in the book of genesis. For instance, when it says in verse 1, a great sign appeared in heaven, and when it says a great sign, it means something that is very, very important for all the world to understand.

A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth. Now, I read last week from Genesis 37:9-11, how that like most of the symbols in the book of Revelation, they are explained somewhere else in the Bible. All you have to do is take a concordance and trace the word back and you will usually find someplace else in the Bible that explains the symbol. And in this case, it happened when Joseph, one of the sons of Jacob, had a dream.

I’ll read it again. Now he had still another dream, talking about Joseph, and related it to his brothers and said, lo, I have had still another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars -see, he was one star and the other were the eleven brothers, eleven stars were bowing down to me. He related it to his father and to his brothers and his father rebuked him and said to him, now note carefully, because Jacob interprets the dream. He says what is this dream that you have had?

Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground? All right, well, he interpreted it, didn’t he? He said I saw a woman -or he said I saw the sun and the moon and eleven stars bow down to him. Jacob interprets the sun to be himself, the father.

The moon is the mother. And the eleven stars are his brothers, right? All right. Well, that interprets the symbol that John uses here.

I want to just stop for a second and remind you, there are many new people here, one of the keys to understanding the book of Revelation is to understand it was deliberately written with symbols that only sincere christians would be able to understand. Why was that? Because the Roman Empire would have killed them all if they thought that he was talking about God replacing their empire with his kingdom. They would have said you’re teaching the overthrow of the Roman Caesar.

So, much of this is written in symbols that a christian could find and understand, but people that were not christian would not be able to understand it. To them it was just a mystery. And frankly, it’s a mystery to most of the Church. Why?

Because a system of interpretation was started in the second and third century of saying that prophecy should be interpreted allegorically and not literally. And so when that happened, well, they lost touch with the meaning of prophecy. And when I say literally, I mean that if it’s a figure of speech, okay, you realize the figure of speech has some literal importance, but you take that figure of speech and seek to understand it from the Bible. And thank God there are men long before I was born who took prophecy literally, and understood most of what I’m talking about 300 years ago.

Now, this then explains that when he says he saw a great sign appear in heaven, a woman, and the woman is clothed with Jacob, his wife, and on her head are the 12 stars, which are the 12 sons of Jacob. The 12 tribes. So the woman is who? Israel.

Now, there are some who try to make the woman the Church. The Church did not give birth to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ gave birth to the Church. Right?

Okay. Now that we got that straight, we can proceed. And now putting the symbol into the context, we can proceed with some interesting observations. It says that he saw that -that the woman was in labor.

It says, and she was with child, verse 2, and she cried out, being in labor, in pain to give birth. Now, take that, the fact that this is a description, these vignettes that the book of Revelation interjects in the chronological order sections, that this is designed to give a historical background, as well as a future prophecy about main players in the book of Revelation. So when it says the woman is in pain, and in labor to bear a child, what that’s actually saying is that -this looks at the nation of Israel and its suffering to remain a nation with all of the persecution and so forth it had in order to give birth to the male child who is the Son of God, Jesus Christ. You follow me?

All right. Now, let’s go to verse 3. And then another sign, the Greek word is, allos, which means another of the same kind. Not heteros, which means another of a different kind.

The Greeks always had a word for everything. Then another sign, in other words, a great sign like the previous one, appeared in heaven. And behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. Now, who is this character?

A great red dragon, okay? Look at verse 9. We’ll leap ahead because this chapter describes and interprets some of the symbols. It says and the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.

He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Now, is there anyone in here who doubts the fact that Satan has deceived the whole world? I mean, just look at what you see out there. I mean, if what we’re talking about here, if what the Bible says is true, and the things that we’ve talked about is really true, isn’t it amazing that the vast majority of the world is just whistling along and tooling along with no idea of what is impending and about to happen.

And I realize that before a person comes to know Jesus Christ as Savior, before you experience a spiritual birth that gives you -what that is, the moment someone accepts the gift of pardon that Jesus Christ died in our place to purchase for us, the moment you do that, you don’t feel this, but God instantly puts inside of you a new spiritual kind of life. This was lost when man first rejected God and went his own way. We remained physically alive but we became spiritually dead. And we’re all born spiritually dead.

But we can gain a great deal of knowledge in the soul. But to understand God, you’ve got to have the same kind of life he does. And that’s why it is so easy for those who do not have spiritual life to be deceived. Because you just don’t have the kind of life to perceive spiritual things.

That doesn’t mean you’re unintelligent. It doesn’t mean that you’re -you’re some kind of a evil person, just per se. But it does mean that you don’t understand the things of the spirit of God. But you see, Satan has a fertile field to work on to deceive people.

That’s why, you know, God never tries to prove himself in the Bible. You know what he says about it? The fool has said in his heart there is no God. And that’s as far as he goes.

The heavens declare his glory and the earth shows his handiwork. Now, Satan has been deceiving mankind from the beginning. But he’s really having a field day today. Well, that’s what it talks about, but you can see the symbols that are used about this highest of all created beings, an angel who was named Lucifer, until he rebelled against God and became known as the dragon, the serpent, the devil and Satan.

All right. Let’s read on. It says that the dragon had seven heads and ten horns and on his head were seven diadems. Now, I hesitate to get to this, but I think I will.

Turn to Revelation 17:7. Now, John was shown a vision of a woman, it was another woman, not the same woman we’re talking about in chapter 12. A woman who’s a harlot. And it’s called mystery Babylon, the great mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.

Verse 6, I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, and when I saw her, I wondered greatly. And the angel said to me, why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has seven heads and ten horns. All right.

Verse 8. The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go to destruction. And those who dwell on the earth will wonder whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, and when they see the beast that he was and is not and will come. They will marvel, see.

Here’s the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, and they are also -that’s literally from the Greek, they are also seven kings, kingdoms, literally. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. All right.

Now, this describes the seven heads. He says, first of all, they are seven mountains on which the woman sits. This takes up where chapter 12 was speaking. All right.

We need to know who is the woman. Look at the last verse of chapter 17. And the woman whom you saw is the great city which reigns. In the original Greek, this is the present tense.

And in Greek, they cared more about how the action took place than exactly when it happened. The present tense in the Greek means continuous action, presently. So literally what it is saying, the woman whom you saw is the great city which is reigning over the kings of the earth. Now he could have said the city, but all the christians would have been put to death.

But to the mind who has wisdom, meaning a believer who knows the Bible and takes it seriously and literally, what city would that have been? Only Rome. So the harlot, mystery Babylon, and so forth is Rome. And that city is sitting on this beast.

And he says about the beast, look again now. Here’s the mind that has wisdom, verse 9. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. Now I’ve said this before here, but some of you weren’t here, but it was such a revelation to me I never forgot it.

I was a young believer in houston, Texas, I was studying under a great scholar, colonel robert thieme, berachah Church. He was going through the book of Revelation, and I guess I’d been a christian about a year and a half, two years, and I was just enthralled. I mean, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I worked in downtown houston, so I was off for lunch, but I was thinking about this chapter that he had just taught the night before.

And he had told us to ponder it and to see what we came up with. And I was going around thinking about the woman sits on the seven mountains and so forth. And I passed the old rice hotel in houston. And there was a travel agency for pan American airways there on the street.

And I looked in there and it had this big chart, travel chart up there. Come visit the ancient city of the seven hills. Rome. So I saluted, thank you, Lord, and proceeded on.

All right. Then it says, and they are also seven kingdoms literally, five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. Well, this took a lot longer to understand. But putting this with Daniel, the book of Daniel and studying these back and forth, it became evident that the seven kingdoms all had to do with their relationship with Israel.

The things, the grief that had caused and they’d become great empires and so forth. And they all -from God’s point of view, everything relates to Israel. So in looking up those great empires that had become great world empires and had an effect or impact on Israel, it was easy to see. The first kingdom was Egypt.

The second, Assyria. They’re the ones that wiped out the ten northern tribes of Israel. And they were a great power. After Assyria, Babylon.

The neo-Babylonian empire. The fourth one, the media Persian empire. They conquered Babylon. The fifth, who conquered media Persia?

Alexander the great. Greece. All right. That’s five kingdoms, isn’t it?

Now, in John’s day, God told him, he said, five have fallen. So the five were Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, media Persia, Greece. And he said one is. Which one was that?

Rome. And then that was the sixth, Rome. And then he says, the other has not yet come. And when it comes, it must remain a little while.

All right. Now, what is the seventh kingdom? A revived version of the sixth kingdom, Rome. I call the first Roman Empire, Roman Empire, phase one.

It says in John’s time, one it is. Then it says it will not. It is not. And yet will come.

And that, according to Daniel, very clearly says, that out of the kingdom of Rome would come ten nations that would revive the Roman Empire. That’s the Roman Empire, phase two. And it’s the seventh kingdom. And he says when it comes, it will only last a little while.

And the seven nations that are described by Daniel are described here as seven, or I should say, ten horns. Now, that is what, turn back to chapter 12, we’ll save some fireworks on that ’til we get there. And believe me, there’s some real fireworks in that chapter. But in chapter 12 again, it talks about the fact that Satan, the dragon, will virtually permeate -he’s permeated these kingdoms all the way down, but he will permeate the last stage, which is the ten horns.

The revived Roman Empire. And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven, the dragon. And threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.

Okay. Now, in many, many passages in the Scripture, and I will get into this another time, it talks about the fall of Lucifer. If you want to read about it, just make a note of this. Isaiah 14:12-16, and Ezekiel 28.

So those two describe the fall of Lucifer. But when he fell, he took a lot of the angels, that’s this order of beings the Bible describes who are vastly superior in power and knowledge to humans, but anyway, he led a great number of them in rebellion against God. And they became fallen angels and/or demons. But it doesn’t say in the Old Testament how many followed him.

It tells us here, one-third. That’s right. And it says his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven, and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.

You see, Satan really tried to destroy Jesus. And when God allowed Jesus to be put to death, it was his undoing. Because it was God’s plan that he would voluntarily take your place and my place, and being a true man and yet also true God, all united in one person. He as a man lived an absolutely sinless life.

And therefore, he’s the only man that ever qualified to take the penalty of all the rest of us and die in our place. And that’s the way that Satan was undone. And through his determination to destroy him, he destroyed himself. All right, in verse 5, and she, the woman, the nation of Israel, gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

The resurrection of Jesus. Verse 6. Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for 1,260 days. See, now we’re leaping forward.

We’re leaping from history to the future, aren’t we? Are you following me? Okay. I hope so.

Now, she delivered the child. He was caught up. And Israel, now it leaps to the time the book of Revelation covers. And it talks about the things that I believe are very near in the future.

It says the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God. Now, this is Israel, the believing Israelites of the future. These are ones that will be during that seven-year period that immediately precedes the return of Jesus Christ. 1,260 days.

A biblical year is a lunar year of 360 days, so what is that? Three and a half years. And that is the three and a half, the last part of the seven years. If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary, and he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives.

Thank you so much for standing with me as a watchman on the wall. I pray daily that he will reward your faithfulness and protect and prosper you in these difficult times. Thank you again for being a vital part of my team.