Zac Poonen: The Final Triumph - A verse by verse study of the book of Revelation

Copyright - Zac Poonen (1982) Revised (1994)
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V. 1-3: The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bondservants, the things which must shortly take place; and He sent and communicated (signified) it by His angel to His bondservant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.

In these first three verses we find seven expressions that are an introduction to the whole book of Revelation.

First of all, this book is called a revelation. The word “revelation” is the translation of a Greek word which means “an unveiling”. God alone can unveil His truths to us. This is the first thing that we must bear in mind. We need the Spirit of wisdom and revelation if we are to understand what God is trying to say to us in His Word. Human cleverness can never grasp it.

Secondly, we read that this revelation was given to be “shown to His (Christ’s) bondservants”. It is not meant for everyone. It is only for the willing bondservants of the Lord.

There is a difference between a paid servant and a bondservant. A servant works for wages. But a bondservant is a slave who belongs to his master and has no rights of his own, whatsoever.

Who then are the bondservants of the Lord? Those who have joyfully given up all their own plans and ambitions, and all their rights, and who now desire to do the will of God alone in every area of their lives. Only such believers are true bondservants.

The Lord has many servants, but very few willing bondservants. God’s Word can be understood accurately only by His bondservants. Others may be able to study it intellectually, as one studies a text-book. But they will never be able to grasp the spiritual realities that are hidden in it. Jesus made it clear in John 7:17 that it was only through obedience to God’s will that one could know the truth.

Thirdly, we are told that this book was “signified” to John (v.1 - KJV). This means that the message was communicated through symbols. We read in the first three chapters alone about lampstands and stars, bronze feet and a two-edged sword, hidden manna and a white stone etc., These are not literal. They are symbols of spiritual realities. We need to compare Scripture with Scripture to understand what these symbols mean.

Fourthly, John calls this unveiling “the Word of God” (v.2).In Revelation 22:18,19, a severe judgment is pronounced on anyone who attempts to add to, or to subtract from, the “words of this book”. There is no book in the entire Bible that contains such a solemn warning.

Every part of God’s Word has been given to us “for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness” so that we may become “perfect, and thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim.3:16,17 - KJV).

The book of Revelation has also been given to make us perfect. Only those who are interested in perfection in their life will get the maximum benefit from the study of any part of God’s Word.

Fifthly, this revelation is the “testimony of Jesus Christ” (v.2). In Revelation 19:10, we are told that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”. True prophecy will always point to the Lord and not just to events. A true understanding of prophecy will humble us before the Lord and not make us proud of our imagined knowledge of coming events. Even if we are mistaken about the correct sequence of various events in the coming days, if we are not mistaken in our knowledge of the Lord, we would have done well.

Although this revelation unveils “the things which must shortly take place” (v.1), yet that is not its primary purpose. It is called “the testimony of Jesus Christ”. It has been given, not to give us a detailed knowledge of future events, but to show us that the Lord Jesus is in control of those future events. It is the triumph of the Lord that we see primarily throughout the book of Revelation.

Sixthly, a blessing is promised on those who “keep the things which are written in it” (v.3 - KJV). This last book of Scripture has been given to us to OBEY. It is blessed to obey any part of Scripture. But the book of Revelation is the only book in which a specific blessing has been promised to those who obey what is written therein.

Even if we don’t understand much of the symbolism in it, it will suffice if we obey what we read. There is no blessing promised to those who understand what the symbols mean or to those who can interpret the sequence of coming events accurately. Obedience means far more to God than mere intellectual understanding of His Word. Unfortunately, most believers value knowledge of the Word more than obedience to it.

The food we eat is converted into flesh and blood and bone, even if we don’t understand how that happens. It is enough if our digestive system is working properly. So too in the spiritual realm. Knowledge without obedience to God is like undigested food. It brings death instead of life. Knowledge plus obedience brings life.

At the beginning and at the end of the book of Revelation we see this call to obedience repeated (1:3; 22:7). The whole book of Revelation is sandwiched between these two calls to obedience.

Seventhly, a blessing is also promised on those who “read the words of this prophecy” (v.3) - referring to those who read it aloud publicly and teach it to other believers.

Remember that individual copies of the book of Revelation were not available to believers in the first century. The only way one could hear the message of the book was when it was read out in the meetings of the church. This was why Paul encouraged Timothy to “give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching” (1 Tim.4:13).

The application for us today is that we should share with others what we receive from God through His Word. A blessing is promised here to all who do this.

V.4-8: John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace, from Him Who is and Who was and Who is to come; and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne; and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him Who loves us, and released us from our sins by His blood, and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father; to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. Even so. Amen. ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘Who is and Who was and Who is to come, the Almighty.’

“Grace” means “God’s help offered to us according to our present need”. If we need forgiveness, grace can forgive us. If we need power to overcome sin, grace can endue us with power. If we need help to be faithful in a time of testing, grace can give us the needed help. God’s grace is always sufficient for our every need.

“Peace” is another great gift of God - peace within our hearts, with no nagging sense of guilt or condemnation; and peace with others around us, bringing fellowship in the church.

The One Who ever exists in the present, past and future is a reference to the Father.

“The seven Spirits” refer to the Holy Spirit. Seven symbolises perfection in the Scriptures. And the “seven Spirits” refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of perfection. In Isaiah 11:2,3 the Holy Spirit is referred to as : (i) the Spirit of the Lord; (ii) the Spirit of wisdom; (iii) the Spirit of understanding; (iv) the Spirit of counsel; (v) the Spirit of strength; (vi) the Spirit of knowledge; and (vii) the Spirit of the fear of the Lord.

Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity is referred to by a number of titles, which we can look at one by one (v.5).

“Faithful Witness” refers to the absolute trustworthiness of our Lord in relation to the promises that He has made.

“The firstborn of the dead” refers to Him as the first man to have overcome death and come out of the grave permanently. Others who were raised from the dead before Him, died again. Now that Jesus has permanently conquered death, we need never fear sickness or death anymore.

Jesus is also referred to as “the Ruler of the kings of the earth”. Our Lord has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. He controls the hearts of earthly rulers as well. “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Prov.21:1).

Our Lord is further referred to as the One “Who ever loves us and has once for all loosed and freed us from our sins by His own blood” (v.5 - Amplified). His love for us is everlasting. And He shed His blood not only to forgive us our sins but also to free us from our sins once and for all. The first promise in the New Testament is that Jesus “will save His people from their sins” (Mt.1:21). To be freed from sin’s power is the great theme of the entire New Testament. No sin can now have the mastery over us, if we live under grace (Rom.6:14).

We are told further that the Lord Jesus has formed us into “a kingdom, priests to His God and Father” (v.6).

The “kingdom of God” is the sphere in which God exercises absolute authority. The church is a representation of “the kingdom of God on earth - that is, a group of people who have become “one kingdom”, because they have submitted to the authority of God in every area of their lives. The Lord has converted an unruly mob into an orderly kingdom - a people who are now being governed by God.

We have also been made priests. Every single believer - man or woman - has been made a priest unto the Lord. In God’s eyes, there is no such thing as a special class of people called “priests” in the church. That is an Old Testament concept. Where such a thing exists in any church today, it is leading people back into B.C. conditions !! We are ALL priests.

As priests, we are called to offer sacrifices to God. Whereas in the Old Testament they offered the bodies of animals, today we offer our own bodies to God as a living sacrifice (Rom.12:1).

The expression “His God and Father” is similar to the expression that Jesus used after His resurrection, “My Father and your Father, My God and your God” (Jn.20:17). His Father has now become our Father too. We can now find our security in God as our Father, just as Jesus found His security therein. “Amen”, says John (v.6). And we too say, “It shall be so”.

Then in verse 7, Christ’s return to earth is prophesied. The last that this world saw of our Lord was when He hung in shame on the cross of Calvary. But one of these days the world will see Him coming with the clouds in glory. Every eye will see Him. Those who pierced Him (the nation of Israel) will also see Him. The tribes of the earth will weep when He comes. But we will rejoice. Again John says “Amen”. And we also say, “It shall be so!”

In verse 8, God refers to Himself as the Alpha and the Omega, the Almighty and ever-existing God. He was there right at the beginning, when nothing existed. He will be there right at the end of time. There is nothing that can ever take place anywhere at any time that is going to take God by surprise. Our Father not only knows the end from the beginning. Being the Almighty God, He controls everything as well. Therefore we need have no fear whatever concerning the future.

At the end of the book of Revelation, God is again referred to as the Almighty and the Alpha and the Omega (ch.19:6; 22:13). We could say that the whole book of Revelation is also sandwiched between these two statements referring to the all-knowing, almighty power of our God and Father. This is what gives us perfect security, as we read here about the trials and tribulations that will befall God’s people, and the calamities that will befall the world around us, in the last days.

In the entire New Testament God is called “Almighty” only 10 times. Nine of those 10 references are in Revelation. The reason for this is that God wants us to be rooted and grounded in the fact that He is Almighty and in control of everything, as we read this book. The only other reference is in 2 Corinthians 6:17 and 18, where God calls His people to be separated from all that is unclean. This shows that it is only to those who desire to be separated from all that is unclean and contrary to the word of God, that God reveals Himself as “ALMIGHTY”. It is primarily for such people that the book of Revelation is written.

Some of the greatest truths that we need to be established in, during these days, are those concerning our Lord and our relationship with Him, that we have just considered :

We need to be rooted and grounded in these truths if we are to remain steadfast and unmoveable in the times that are going to come.

V.9,10: I, John, your brother and fellow-partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos, because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet.

Here we read John calling himself “your brother”. John was at that time the only living apostle of the twelve whom Jesus had chosen. He was about 95 years old when the Lord gave him this revelation on the island of Patmos. He had walked with God for over 65 years by then. But he was still a brother.

He wasn’t Pope John or Reverend John. He was not even Pastor John! He was just an ordinary brother. Jesus had taught His disciples to avoid all titles and to refer to themselves always as only brothers (Mt.23:8-11). And the apostles obeyed Him literally, unlike many today.

We have only one Head and one Leader - even Christ. All the rest of us are brothers, whatever our ministry or our experience in the church may be.

John also refers to himself as a “fellow-partaker in the tribulation which is in Jesus”. Every wholehearted disciple of Jesus should be prepared to partake in the “tribulation which is in Jesus”, as long as he is in this world.

John did not get this unveiling while living in comfort. He received it, while experiencing tribulation at Patmos, because he had been faithful to “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (v.9). He had to experience tribulation himself in order to be able to write about the saints experiencing the great tribulation from the Antichrist in the last days. God takes us through trials and tribulations first before giving us a ministry to others who are facing tribulation.

Paul said, “God encourages us in all our affliction so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the (same) encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God” (2 Cor.1:4 - Amplified).

It is not surprising therefore that the doctrine that Jesus would come secretly and take (rapture) His church out of the world, before the great tribulation, arose for the first time in a country (England) where Christians were living in comfort, and at a time (mid-19th century) when they were not facing any persecution for their faith at all. Today this doctrine continues to be proclaimed and believed by Christians who live in ease and comfort, in countries where there is no persecution against Christians at all.

Since the prayers of most Christians are basically of this order : “Lord make my life more comfortable on earth”, it is not surprising that they have gladly accepted this teaching of a pre-tribulation rapture of the church. Thus Satan has succeeded in lulling multitudes of Christians with a false comfort, so that they will be unprepared for the great tribulation when it does come upon them.

The words of Jesus are clear: “In the world YOU HAVE TRIBULATION. But take courage; I have overcome the world” (Jn.16:33). He never promised that we would escape tribulation - whether small tribulations or the great one. But He did say that we could overcome even as He overcame. He is far more interested in making us overcomers than in saving us out of tribulation, because He is far more interested in our character than in our comfort.

Neither did Jesus ever say that escaping the great tribulation was a reward for faithfulness, as some teach. On the contrary, He said that those who forsook everything to follow Him would have even more tribulations than others who didn’t follow Him (Mk.10:30).

When He prayed to His Father for His disciples, He said, “I do not ask Thee to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil.” (Jn.17:15). He did NOT want His disciples to be raptured out of the world at that time, just because they were going to face tribulation.

In the 3rd-century when Christians were being thrown to the lions in the Roman amphitheatres and being burnt at the stake in different parts of the Roman empire, the Lord did not rescue them from such tribulations. The God Who shut the lions’ mouths and took away the power of the fiery furnace in Daniel’s day, did NOT. do such miracles for these disciples of Jesus - for these were new-covenant Christians who were going to glorify God through death. Like Jesus their Master, they neither asked for, nor expected twelve legions of angels to come and protect them from their enemies.

From heaven, God watched the Bride of His Son being torn to pieces by lions and being burnt to ashes; and He was glorified in their testimony - for they had “followed the Lamb, wherever He went”, even unto a violent physical death (Rev.14:4). The only word that the Lord spoke to them was, “Be faithful until death and I will give you a crown of life” (Rev.2:10).

Even today, when the disciples of Jesus are being tortured and persecuted for His Name in many lands, the Lord does not take them away from the earth. And He will not rapture us to heaven before the great tribulation either. He will do something far better. He will make us overcomers in the midst of the great tribulation.

Jesus is far more interested in saving us from evil than in saving us from tribulation. He permits us to go through tribulation because He knows that that is the only way that we can become spiritually strong.

Such a message is strange teaching indeed to a comfort-loving Christendom that has been coddled in their pews every Sunday for years by ear-tickling preachers. But this is the message that the apostles preached to the early churches. “They (the apostles Paul and Barnabas) strengthened the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, saying, `Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God’” (Acts 14:22).

The little trials that we face at home and at work now, are but a preparation for the greater ones that will come in the days to come. That is why it is essential that we are faithful now. For God says, “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses?” (Jer.12:5).

John speaks here about being a “fellow-partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus” (v.9). We have to enter into fellowship with Jesus in tribulation first, before we can share His throne with Him in His kingdom.

Perseverance is a great virtue that is emphasised throughout the New Testament. Jesus Himself said “They will deliver you to tribulation……. but the one who endures to the end shall be saved” (Mt.24:13).

John received this revelation on the Lord’s day (v.10). The first day of the week was called “the Lord’s day” because that was the day that Jesus rose from the dead, having conquered sin, Satan, death and the grave.

The early disciples met together on the first day of every week, to build one another up and to break bread (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor.16:2). They had no special days in the year. They had no “Good Friday” or “Easter” or “Christmas”. They had been freed from keeping days and seasons etc., for they had come under the new covenant (Col.2:16,17).

John was “in the Spirit” and that was why he heard the voice of the Lord. We can hear that voice too - if we are in the Spirit. It all depends on where our mind is set. If our mind is set on the things of earth, then the voices that we hear will be concerning earthly things.

We know, for example, that there are many voices in the radio-waves in the air around us. The voice that we pick up will depend on the frequency that our radio-set is tuned to. You can hear God’s Word over radio or you can hear Satan’s rock-music over it. The choice is yours.

It is just the same with our mind. If we are in the Spirit - that is if we are filled with the Spirit and our mind is set on the things that are above (Col.3:2) - we will be able to hear the Lord’s voice.

But there are other voices in the air that are clamouring for our attention too. There are voices that would like to tell you how to make more money, how to get your share of the family property, how to settle scores with that person who cheated you and how to defend yourself against those who are spreading false stories about you etc., etc., Satan’s radio stations are broadcasting lies, bitternesses and anxieties etc., 24 hours of every day. All you have to do is tune in, and you can pick up what you like!!

When believers complain that God doesn’t speak to them, it is not because God does not speak. He is speaking all the time. But their minds are tuned in to this world and its interests. I am convinced that there is much that the Spirit has spoken in the past that was meant for us, but which we never “picked up”, because we were not in the Spirit.

You can sit in a meeting of the church and hear absolutely nothing that the Spirit is saying, even though you may understand everything that the preacher said. Someone sitting next to you who is “in the Spirit” may however hear the Lord’s voice just like John did. John heard the Lord’s voice so clearly that he says it was as loud as a trumpet! That’s how loudly God speaks! But those who are deaf wont hear even the blast of a trumpet.

Let me exhort and challenge every one of you to keep yourself in the Spirit every day - especially in these the last days of this age. Keep yourself sensitive to sin and walk in humility before the face of God, so that your ears can be open to hear what the Lord has to say to you.

V.11-20: Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His breast with a golden girdle. And His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire; and His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been caused to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. And in His right hand He held seven stars; and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as a dead man. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades.’ Write therefore the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall take place after these things. As for the mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

God gives us messages not only for ourselves but also for others. When God speaks to us, it is a good habit to write down what we hear, as John was commanded to do here (v.11). He might otherwise have forgotten what God had spoken to him.

The message in this case was for the seven churches in Asia. What was known as Asia then is today a small part of Turkey. All these 7 churches were located within a radius of 75 miles of each other. But notice that even though they were so close to each other, they were still NOT collectively called “The CHURCH in Asia”. They were called “The CHURCHES in Asia”.

This is a small point but a very important one, nevertheless. “The church in Asia” would have meant that these churches had become a denomination with a central headquarters. But “the churches in Asia” indicate that each church was a local church directly under the headship of the Lord.

The church is a work of God, built by Christ. But denominations are the work of men. All the teachings and the writings of the apostles make it clear that the will of God is for each church to be directly under the headship of Christ, and not part of a denomination.

There was no bishop or superintendent in charge of these seven churches, to whom John could send these letters for distribution to the churches. Each letter had to be sent individually to the messenger of that church - for each church was an independent unit. The Lord had given apostles to the church. John himself was one of them. But the Lord had not appointed any bishops or superintendents.

There is no such thing, for example, as “The church in India”. There are churches in India, and these are built by the Lord in different localities, each one directly under His headship.

Satan’s final aim is to build his counterfeit world “church”, Babylon. And his first step towards that goal was to group churches into denominations, many centuries ago. He knew that the task of building Babylon would have been impossible otherwise. We should not be ignorant of Satan’s schemes.

The seven golden lampstands symbolise the seven churches (see v.20). Under the old covenant, the temple had ONE seven-branched lampstand. This was because all the tribes of Israel were branches of one “denomination” with its central headquarters and leaders at Jerusalem.

But it is different under the new covenant. There are seven different lampstands, each completely separate from the other. The reason, as we saw above, was because each church was independently under the headship of Christ, although in fellowship with the other churches, through the Head.

The church being called a lampstand indicates that, in God’s eyes, its primary function is to give light. The lampstands being golden indicate the Divine origin of a true church. It is built by the Lord and not by men.

A lampstand is not meant to be a mere decoration. Neither is a church! The light that every church should hold forth is God’s Word, which alone is a light for our path in this dark world (Psa.119:105). Instead of holding forth that light, when so-called “churches” begin to major on running schools and hospitals and on doing social work, we can be sure that they have strayed from God’s primary purpose.

When John turned around to see who was speaking, he saw Jesus (v.12,13). But he saw Him in the midst of the churches. It is through the local church that the Lord seeks to reveal Himself and to speak to others.

The first dwelling-place of God mentioned in the Bible is the burning bush that Moses saw in the wilderness (Deut.33:16). Like John at Patmos, Moses also turned aside at that time to see that marvellous sight. And that’s when God spoke to him (Exod.3:3).

Today the church is God’s dwelling place. God desires every church to be aflame with His Spirit like that burning bush was. When people look at a local church, they should be able to see the life of Christ revealed through the members of that church. Then God can speak to people through the church.

John then goes on to describe the Lord Jesus as he saw Him. Even though the Lord is risen, He is still called the “Son of man”, emphasising the fact of His identification with humanity permanently.

His long robe (undoubtedly white in colour) reaching to His feet, points to His High-Priestly ministry of intercession for us - for this was how the Jewish high-priest was dressed when He went into the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle, on the day of atonement every year (v.13).

The Lord was wearing a golden girdle (belt) across His breast (v.13). Gold symbolises what is Divine. The girdle symbolises righteousness and faithfulness (according to Isaiah 11:5). This emphasises the perfect righteousness of God that was seen in Jesus’ earthly life and the perfect faithfulness with which He keeps His promises to us.

His head and His hair were white like wool (v.14). Daniel 7:9 uses this very same symbolism to refer to God’s eternity (His endless age). The white hair also speaks of wisdom. So this emphasises the fact that Jesus, although the Son of Man, is nevertheless also the Eternal God, perfect in wisdom.

His eyes were like a flame of fire (v.14). That means that “all things are open and laid bare” to Him (Heb.4:13). His eyes penetrate through all religious veneer, and can see through the flowery and pious language and the “form of godliness” of the religious hypocrite. It also sees beyond the broken, stuttering words of the Godfearing soul into the sincerity of his heart. As a result, His evaluations are totally different from man’s.

His feet were like burnished bronze (v.15). Bronze was the material with which the altar of sacrifice was made (in the outer court of the tabernacle), where the sin-offering was slain. Bronze therefore symbolises God’s judgment of man’s sin at Calvary. While crushing the serpent’s head, Jesus’ feet had to be pierced on the cross (Gen.3:15).

His voice was like the sound of many waters (v.15). The rivers of living water symbolise the Holy Spirit (Jn.7:37-39). The speech of Jesus was always full of the gentleness and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

He held seven stars in His right hand (v.16). The seven stars are the seven messengers of the churches (v.20). God has ordained that the New Testament church be led by a plurality of elders (Acts 14:23; Tit.1:5; Acts 20:17). But God usually equips one among the elders with the gift of proclaiming the Word in the church, as His messenger. This one is referred to here as “the messenger of the church”. (The word translated as “angel” is a Greek word which actually means “one who brings news” or “a messenger”).

These messengers are held by Christ in His hand. That is why we are commanded to give double honour to the elders “who work hard at preaching and teaching” (1 Tim.5:17).

It is necessary however, to mention that many elders of churches and many who preach God’s Word today are NOT held by Christ in His hand, for they are self-appointed and not appointed by Him.

A messenger appointed by the Lord will be a man of God, who inspires your confidence, and through whose life and ministry you will be fed, led and blessed. Such a man should be respected - for he is held by the Lord in His hand. There are few men like that in the world today - but praise God there are a few.

God’s servants are special targets of Satan. Therefore they are specially kept by the Lord in His hand. As long as they remain there in humility, Satan cannot touch them. But when they are puffed up, or if they sin and do not repent, then God allows Satan to inflict them in various ways so that they can come to repentance. It is a tremendous privilege to be held by the Lord as His messenger in His hand. But it has awesome responsibilities as well.

Out of Jesus’ mouth came a sharp two-edged sword (v.16). This refers to the Word of God that He speaks (Heb.4:12). We noticed in verse 15 that His voice was like the sound of many waters. These two verses put together indicate that Jesus always speaks God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit. He speaks with great gentleness, but He also rebukes firmly, where necessary.

His face was like the sun shining in its strength (v.16). This is how Peter, James and John saw Him on the mount of transfiguration as well (Mt.17:2). This symbolises the “unapproachable light” in which God dwells (1 Tim.6:16). The holiness of God is compared here to the noonday sun, which we cannot look at directly. The sun is a ball of fire in which no germs or bacteria can dwell. No sin can dwell in the presence of God either (Isa.33:14).

The same John who leaned on Jesus’ breast at the last supper now falls at His feet as a dead man (v.17). John had walked with God for 65 years. He was undoubtedly the saintliest man on earth at that time. Yet He could not stand erect in the Lord’s presence. Those who know the Lord the most, reverence Him the most. Those who know Him the least, pretend to have a cheap familiarity with Him.

The seraphs of heaven cover their faces before the Lord (Isa.6:2,3). Job and Isaiah saw their sinfulness and mourned when they saw the glory of God (Job 42:5,6; Isa.6:5). But “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”!! Such is the folly of the carnal believer.

The more we know the Lord, the more we will fall at His feet in adoring wonder, with our mouth in the dust. Only as we see the glory of the Lord constantly, will we see our own un-Christlikeness. Only then will we stop judging others and start judging ourselves. And only then will we experience His touch of power like John experienced at Patmos.

Jesus laid His right hand upon John (v.17). This symbolised enduement with power and authority. He told John not to be afraid.

“Do not be afraid” and “Follow Me” are the two most oft-repeated statements of Jesus in the gospels. He speaks the very same words to us today.

Jesus went on to tell John that He was the First and the Last - the very same title used by the Father earlier (verse 8). He knows the end from the beginning and He Himself is before the beginning and after the end. This is why we need never fear.

Jesus then tells John how He has conquered death and the grave and now holds the keys of death and Hades (the place of departed spirits) (v.18). Keys symbolise the power to open and close doors. Once it was Satan who had the power of death (Heb.2:14,15). But when Jesus died and rose again, He took those keys from Satan.

Today Jesus has the keys of death and Hades. That means that if you are a wholehearted disciple of Jesus, seeking to do the will of God alone in your life, you cannot die until God’s appointed time comes. No accident or sickness can claim your life, until Jesus decides that it is time to open the door of death for you to go through into His presence. This is a tremendous encouragement for all who are truly disciples of Jesus.

John may be persecuted by men at Patmos. But they could not kill him until God’s time for him had come. And the Lord still had a ministry for John to fulfil.

John is now empowered and commissioned by the Lord for a new task - to write this wonderful book of Revelation (v.19). We need to be empowered again and again by the Lord if we are to complete our ministry triumphantly.

(i) What John has already seen (chapter 1) - the vision of a triumphant Lord Jesus saying, “Do not be afraid”. Fear has absolutely no place in the heart of a disciple who has seen the glory of the Lord.

(ii) The situation in John’s time (chapters 2 and 3) - referring to the condition of the seven churches in Asia Minor. The Lord’s messages to these seven churches are a warning and a challenge to all churches of all time and to their “messengers”.

(iii) Events future to John’s time (chapters 4 to 22) - the phrase “after these things” that is used here, is used again in chapter 4:1, indicating that the third part of the book begins there.

The Lord then explains to John the meaning of the lampstands and the stars (v.20). We studied these when we looked at verses 12 and 16.

The Lord alone can give us revelation on the secrets of His Word. To receive such revelation, we need two indispensable qualities - the fear of God and humility. “The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him….and He teaches the humble His way” (Psa25:14,9).

Although these seven letters are addressed primarily to the messengers of the churches, yet at the end of each message, we find an invitation to anyone who has an ear to hear, to pay attention to what the Holy Spirit is saying to ALL the churches. They have a message therefore for every disciple in every church in every generation.

We saw in Chapter One that our Lord is described as the Faithful Witness. We see Him fulfilling this ministry in these letters of His. To use a modern expression, Jesus “tells it like it is”. Christ is the Judge in the midst of His church, judging both the messenger and the church itself. He tells the messengers and the churches exactly what He thinks of them.

In His evaluations, the Lord doesn’t “touch-up” the portraits like modern photographers do. He loves His people far too much to do that!! He knows that it is better that we deal with sin, worldliness, lukewarmness and self-centredness right now, than to have to face up with these things at His judgment-seat later. To be judged for these over there would not be profitable for us; and He has our eternal good in view. So it is good for us to pay careful attention to everything that the Lord says in these letters.

Where there is room for appreciation, the Lord expresses sincere appreciation. And where there is need for rebuke, He does not hesitate to rebuke scathingly. Cancer cannot be washed away with soap and water. It cannot be removed gently either. It has to be excised by radical surgery. Even so with sin.

V.1-7: To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, The One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this: ‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you, and will remove your lampstand out of its place - unless you repent. Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.’”

In the letter to the messenger at Ephesus, the Lord describes Himself as the One Who holds the seven stars in His right hand and walks among the seven churches (v.1).

The Lord is always walking in the midst of the churches, examining everything that is said and done by everyone therein, and especially by the messengers Whom He holds in His hand. And He measures everything, not by the low standards that carnal Christians have, or even by the standard of the ten commandments, but by the plumbline of Divine righteousness.

He expresses His approval and appreciation first before He points out the failures (v.2). The Divine nature is like that. The Lord always looks for that which is good first, and expresses appreciation for that, before pointing out what needs to be set right.

Man’s nature however is quite different. He does not look for that which is good in others first, but for that which is bad. Man is naturally slow to appreciate and extremely quick to criticise. This is but one mark of the poison of the “Accuser of the brethren” that is in our system. The more we partake of the Divine nature however, the more we will be like our Lord - quick to appreciate and slow to criticise.

It is good to follow this principle all through life : “I will never point out a fault to someone, in whom I have found nothing so far to appreciate”.

Following that simple rule can lead us to greater heights of godliness than we have ever imagined. It will make us a far greater blessing in the church and far less of a nuisance to others than we have been thus far.

It is only when we appreciate others that we have laid the foundation to constructively criticize them. Otherwise we will only be hurling bricks at them. You cannot write with a chalk on thin air. You need a blackboard if people are to see what you are writing. Even so, expressed appreciation forms the blackboard on which we can write and “speak the truth in love” to others. Then, what we say is also more likely to be accepted by them.

Appreciation and rebuke are both signs of love. But we must begin with appreciation first. Notice how Paul follows this principle even when writing to the carnal Corinthian Christians (1 Cor.1:4-10).

The Lord commends the messenger at Ephesus for his toil and perseverance and for his efforts to keep the church pure from evil men. No doubt he had fought a battle against worldliness to keep it from entering the church. Not only that, he had also striven to keep the church pure in doctrine. He had tested those who claimed to be apostles and had proved their claims to be false.

The Lord’s reference to “apostles” in verse 2 clearly indicates that there were other apostles in the church in the first century, besides the eleven whom the Lord had appointed when He was on earth. Christ has given apostles to the church even after He “ascended on high” (Eph.4:11), and there are apostles even today. But there are also many who claim to be apostles who are not. And so we must not be deceived by false apostles (v.2).

The messenger in the church at Ephesus had also “endured” for the sake of the Lord’s Name without giving up (v.3). What a wonderful man this messenger was, according to the standards of most believers. And what a wonderful church the Ephesian church appeared to be - one that toiled, persevered, kept away evil men, kept out false doctrine and exposed deceivers - thus emphasising both purity of life and purity of doctrine.

One would have thought that such a church had everything that the Lord wanted to find in a church. But alas it was not so. It lacked the main thing that the Lord looked for. It had left its first love - love for the Lord and love for one another (verse 4).

What the Lord said to them was essentially this : “In the midst of all your zeal and your activity, you have lost sight of ME. You have lost that fervent devotion that you once had for Me. You have kept yourself from evil and you have steered clear of doctrinal error. But remember how you loved Me fervently when you were first converted and how you did everything out of love for Me then. Now everything has degenerated into a dry routine. You’re still going to the meetings, reading your Bible and praying. But it has all become a ritual.”

The church here had become like a wife who once served her husband joyfully out of love for him, but who now considers the same tasks a drudgery - because the fire of love has gone out of her marriage. In the olden days, she used to wait eagerly for her husband to come back from the office every evening. But not now. She is still faithful to Him, but she has lost her first love.

What does a true husband desire from his wife first of all? Is it her love or her labours? Certainly, it is her love. It is the same with the Lord. He desires the love of our hearts first and foremost. When that is gone, everything that we do becomes dead works.

Good works become dead works when love for God is not the motivating force behind them.

The believers here had also cooled off in their love for each other. They were no longer able to bear with each other’s weaknesses or to overlook each other’s sins. They had lost their first love for one another too.

The messenger had lost his first love - and gradually the church too had become like its messenger.

This was not a small error. It was a great fall - for the Lord says, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen”. We usually think of a believer as having fallen only when he falls into adultery or theft or smoking etc., When we become sensitive to the voice of the Spirit however, we will recognise that even a slight loss of devotion to the Lord and a slight cooling off in love for others is also evidence of backsliding.

Ephesus was the place where some 40 years earlier the apostle Paul had come and established a church. There was such a revival there at that time that the whole city had known about it (Acts 19). Here was a church where Paul had laboured for three years, preaching DAILY with tears (Acts 20:31). When finally he left Ephesus, he called the elders of the church and warned them of some of the dangers that the church would face after his departure (Acts 20:17-35).

Four years later, Paul wrote a letter to them - a letter containing some of the deepest truths of the new covenant found in the entire Bible. He could write to them about such matters because he considered the church at Ephesus to be the most mature and most spiritually-minded of all the churches that he had established. We also notice from the letter that Paul had found nothing to rebuke or correct in them. Such was the high position that they had occupied at one time.

Paul’s letter could be called the first letter to the Ephesians. Here in Revelation 2, we see the second letter to the Ephesians. The story is entirely different now. A new generation had arisen in the church and they did not have the devotion or the spirituality of their fathers.

This is the sad history of almost every church and movement in Christianity, throughout these twenty centuries. The second generation has the same doctrine, but not the same life as their fathers.

And so the Lord tells the church at Ephesus, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen”.

There was only one solution for this problem. “Repent and do the deeds you did at first”, says the Lord (v.5).

The word that we normally think of preaching to unbelievers - “REPENT” - is the word that the Lord preaches to the church. “Before you tell others to turn from their sins, turn from your own sin of leaving your first love”, He tells them. They must mourn for having left their first love.

“Do the deeds you did at first”, says the Lord (v.5). If their works did not spring out of love, then all their activities had no value before Him. Their works were wood, hay and straw now, fit only for being burnt.

The motive behind each action is what gives value to the action. The motive behind your perseverance and your toil and your purity is what makes them acceptable or unacceptable to the Lord. In the day that we stand before the Lord, we shall find that the question “WHY?” will be far more important than the question “WHAT?”. Why we did what we did will be the test by which the Lord evaluates all our actions. We must never forget this.

Remember, that we are commanded to repent of dead works. Hebrews 6:1 tells us that this is part of the foundation for pressing on to perfection in our lives.

If the messenger and the church do not repent, then the Lord says that He will remove their lampstand from out of its place. That means that He will no longer consider them thereafter as one of His churches on earth. They may still have their meetings and their conferences, and their numbers may keep increasing. But, as far as the Lord is concerned, they would be dead and non-existent, without the anointing of His Spirit and without His grace.

The Lord then commends the messenger for hating the deeds of the Nicolaitans which He also hated (v.6).

There is no reference anywhere in Scripture that tells us who the Nicolaitans were or what they did. So we cannot be certain about what deeds the Lord was referring to. However, the word “Nicolaitans” means (in Greek) “conquerors of the people”.

If that was what the Lord meant, then it would be a reference to those who sought to “lord it over the flock” (1 Pet.5:3) - elders who behaved like kings and not like servants. Such elders set themselves up as a separate priestly class (as the Levites were in the Old Testament) and rule over other believers. The Lord said that He hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans.

Today we have Christian preachers using titles such as “Reverend” (a title that is used in Scripture for God alone - Psa.111:9 - KJV) and “Pastor” (which is a gift and not a title or an office - Eph.4:11). etc., to exalt themselves over others in the church.

However, it is not just with titles that preachers seek to rule over others. There are many who call themselves just “brothers” who dominate their fellow-believers by their soul-power (dominant personality), their financial-power and their spiritual gifts.

In India we see the sad spectacle of multitudes of Christian churches and organisations ruled by their Western masters through money-power. Because of financial indebtedness and the obligations that have come through being invited to Western countries, many Indian believers have ended up as slaves of “the white man”. Such slavish subservience of one believer to another is “Nicolaitanism” and is an abomination in God’s eyes.

Consider another form of Nicolaitanism. There are some priests who teach that Mary is a mediator between Christ and man. The priests then act as further mediators between Christians and Mary!! But this unScriptural, mediatorial attitude can be practised just as much by a pastor as by a priest!

When a pastor “finds God’s will” for one of his flock in matters concerning employment or marriage or whatever, he is acting as a Nicolaitan mediator. By such methods, priests and pastors gain power over their flock in a way that God detests.

To give spiritual counsel and advice is a godly thing. But to “find God’s will” for another member of the body of Christ is to rob him of his connection with Christ as his Head.

Under the old covenant, there were prophets who found God’s will for the people, because the Holy Spirit had not been given to individuals then. But now, under the new covenant, things are different. All can know God personally (Heb.8:8-12). In fact the Lord eagerly desires that every member of His church (His body) should have a direct connection with Him as Head (Col.2:18,19). Nicolaitans however hinder this.

The church in Ephesus had successfully resisted Nicolaitanism. They hated it, and the Lord commended them for it because He hated it too. He hated it in the first century and He hates it still.

What about you? Do you hate this evil just as much as the Lord hates it? If not, you are unlike Christ, and you cannot be a true messenger of His. A Nicolaitan can never build the body of Christ.

Finally, the Holy Spirit exhorts everyone who has an ear to hear, to hear what He is saying, for the message is for ALL the churches (v.7). Not every believer is willing to obey what the Lord has to say - for most of them are either wanting to have their own way or wanting to please their fellowmen. Recognising this fact, the Holy Spirit proceeds to challenge individuals in the church to an overcoming life.

The Holy Spirit gives recognition here to a group of wholehearted and faithful believers whom He calls “overcomers”, in the midst of a church. These are the ones who overcome sin and worldliness and who stand faithfully for the Lord in the midst of the spiritual decline around them.

In every locality, God is looking for those who will stand true to His standards and who will fight for those standards at any cost. In the letters to the seven churches, we see that the Lord is primarily interested in the overcomers. Even today, He looks for overcomers in every place. He may not find them in every church, but He looks for them in every locality.

The Lord promises a reward to those who overcome. In this case, it was the privilege of eating from the tree of life (v.7) - the privilege that Adam missed. The tree of life is a symbol of the Divine life, the Divine nature. The greatest reward that God can ever give a human being is to partake of His nature. Here on earth, even most believers don’t think too highly of this. But in the clearer light of eternity, we shall discover that this is indeed the greatest of all rewards that God can ever give a human being.

V.8-11: And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: The first and the last, who was dead, and has come to life, says this: ‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.’

The Lord describes Himself here as the First and the Last, the One Who has overcome death. A church that is facing opposition and persecution needs to see the Lord as the One Who is in control of all events from the beginning to the end and as One Who has conquered man’s greatest enemy - death.

Tribulation is a recurring theme in the book of Revelation - and notice that it is faced by the most faithful among God’s children, and not by compromisers. In the first chapter of Revelation, we saw John undergoing tribulation. Here we see a faithful church undergoing the same. It is a church against which the Lord does not have a single charge, that is being persecuted. The worldly, compromising churches have an easy time.

All this is meant to remind us that tribulation is a part of God’s perfect will for His wholehearted children. So when we ourselves are faced with the great tribulation one day, we need not think that some strange thing has befallen us. We will be treading the same pathway that God’s faithful children have trodden through the centuries.

God allows the very best among His children to face tribulation. It was so in the first century. It has been so throughout these 20 centuries of church-history. And it will be so even at the end of time.

The best of God’s children, the most faithful among them, the elite commando-troops of the Lord’s army will be the ones who will be here on earth to stand as witnesses for Him in the days of the Antichrist. Every General sends his best troops to where the battle is raging the thickest. The Lord does the same too. It will be a great privilege and honour to be among those troops of the Lord.

God will certainly not take the overcomers away to heaven at a time when He needs their testimony on earth the most. He has never done that in the past and He will not do that in the future either.

The Lord’s elite troops who stand up to the Antichrist in the days of the great tribulation are referred to in the book of Revelation as those “who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev.12:17). They will refuse to bow down to the Antichrist or to receive his mark on their bodies. Many of them will therefore have to lay down their lives for their faith (Rev.13:7,8,15-17). Thus they will join that select company of martyrs of all time who “did not love their lives even to death” (Rev.12:11).

None of us naturally have the courage to face death for the Lord. But if God has called us to seal our witness with our blood, then we can rest assured that He will give us special grace for that when such a time comes. It was through such a special supply of grace that every Christian martyr faced death fearlessly in the past. And what God did for them He will do for us too - even for the weakest and the most cowardly among us. All we have to do is tell Him that we want to be faithful to Him at any cost. If we have the willingness, God will give us the boldness.

The saints in the church at Smyrna were poor. Poverty is another thing that God’s faithful children have faced throughout church-history.

Many Old Testament saints were rich. God had promised earthly wealth as a reward for obedience in Old Testament times, because Israel was called to possess an earthly kingdom.

But Jesus inaugurated a new covenant and brought the kingdom of heaven to earth. Now the wealth we are promised is heavenly, not earthly. That was why Jesus Himself and the apostles were all poor.

Today, there are many who are teaching that becoming wealthy is a sign of God’s blessing on His children. This doctrine was first invented by preachers in the West, who used it to justify their becoming wealthy from the tithes of God’s people! Christian businessmen then latched on to it as a convenient doctrine to justify their own amassing of wealth. Covetous preachers everywhere have found it to be a convenient doctrine for them as well!!

The poverty of Jesus and of the apostles should suffice to show that all such preachers have been thoroughly deceived by their own covetousness.

The believers at Smyrna were faithful to the Lord in the midst of great trials, and they were poor. The believers at Laodicea, on the other hand, were thoroughly dead, and they were materially rich. What does this prove? The answer is plain for anyone to see.

“God has chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith..... God has chosen the foolish things of the world..... God has chosen the weak things of the world..... God has chosen the things that are not..... that no man should boast before God.” (Jas.2:5; 1 Cor.1:27-29).

God has promised to provide all our material needs, if we seek His kingdom and His righteousness first (Mt.6:33; Phil.4:19).

We have seen evidence of this again and again in the churches in India, where believers who were living in abject poverty and who were heavily in debt, have been blessed financially by their heavenly Father, when they honoured Him in their lives. This is a miracle in a country like India, where there is no government-funded social security system and where unemployment is high and bureaucratic corruption rampant. But we have also seen that such believers have not become wealthy. God has met their needs. But He hasn’t made them rich.

We have also seen that where believers have pursued after wealth, they have destroyed themselves spiritually (1 Tim.6:9,10).

What should a believer do if he is already wealthy - as a result of inherited family wealth or some other reason? He should obey God’s Word: (i) Recognise first of all, that all that he has belongs to the Lord (Study the following Scriptures : 1 Cor.10:26; 1 Cor.4:7; Lk.14:33; Jn.17:10); (ii) Obey the Lord’s command to use his wealth for the spread of the gospel, thus seeking first the kingdom of God with his money (“Use your money to make friends for eternity” - Lk.16:9 - paraphrase); (iii) Obey God’s command to share his wealth with other needy believers (1 Tim.6:17-19).

If he follows these three steps, he wont be able to stay wealthy for long. But he will become a spiritual man, for God rewards us spiritually exactly according to our faithfulness with material things (Lk.16:11). Many are spiritually poor, because they have been unfaithful with “the mammon of unrighteousness” that God entrusted them with, and tested them with.

God has not promised us material wealth in the New Testament. But He told the church in Smyrna, “You are rich” (v.9). They were rich in God’s eyes, because they had been faithful in their trials and thus partaken of the Divine nature. This is the true eternal wealth that God gives us in the new covenant.

The church in Smyrna faced the “blasphemy of those who say they are Jews” (v.9).

Slander is another thing that all of God’s faithful children have to face. Notice here that the slander and opposition that this church was facing was from those who called themselves God’s people - “those who say they are Jews, but are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (v.9).

Those Jews were religious people, who studied their Bibles (Genesis to Malachi). Yet the Lord called them “a synagogue of Satan”, because they were hypocrites. That was why they persecuted the true disciples of Jesus.

Many a synagogue that was started by God-fearing Jews degenerated into a synagogue of Satan over a period of time. In the same way, many churches that were started by God-fearing believers, have also degenerated into “churches of Satan”, in God’s eyes, today.

Opposition for the true disciples of Jesus today, comes not just from heathen religions (which is understandable), but also from “those who say they are Christians, but who are not, but are a church of Satan”.

Today if we said that a so-called Christian “church” was “a church of Satan”, many would accuse us of being un-Christlike. But they forget that it was Jesus Himself Who rebuked Peter, saying “Get behind Me, Satan” (Mt.16:23), and that it was Jesus Who called this group of religious people “a synagogue of Satan”. He would use exactly the same strong language today to rebuke “churches” that have drifted from their calling.

Jesus warned His disciples, “They will make you outcasts from the synagogue; but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. And these things they will do, because they have not known the Father, or Me.” (Jn.16:2,3).

What He said then that the people in a synagogue would do to His disciples, was in later centuries done by “churches” too. In the middle ages, Godfearing disciples of Jesus were killed by “Christian” inquisitionists.

This hatred of the disciples of Jesus will reach its peak during the time of the Antichrist and the Babylonian “world church”. We must be prepared to face it when it comes. That is why we must not be afraid of the little slander and opposition that we face from so-called Christians these days.

We must never be afraid of being slandered - for Jesus Himself was maligned. He was called a gluttonous man, a false teacher, a blasphemer, an insane man, a demon-possessed man, a half-breed and one who had Satanic power (Lk.7:34; Jn.7:12; Mt.26:65; Mk.3:21,22; Mt.12:24; Jn.8:48).

He told His disciples, “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become as his teacher, and the slave as his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul (a Jewish title for Satan, the prince of demons), how much more the members of his household!” (Mt.10:24,25).

Peter exhorts us saying, “Keep your behaviour excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.” (1 Pet.2:12).

God’s promise to us is, “No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. And their vindication is from Me.” (Isa.54:17). So we need not fear slander. The Lord Himself will vindicate us at the right time. Until then we can afford to keep quiet and ignore what ungodly people say about us.

The Lord then tells the church at Smyrna not to fear (v.10). “Don’t be afraid” was a word that fell from Jesus’ lips frequently when He was on earth. And it is the same word that He speaks now to a church that is facing suffering for His Name’s sake. Perhaps it is the one word from the Lord’s mouth that all of us need to hear the most in these days.

There is a spirit of fear all over the world today and it is gripping people more and more powerfully. Jesus warned us that it would be so in the last days (Lk.21:26). But He also told His disciples that they should not be affected by this spirit of fear. The sad thing is that most believers are not free from this spirit. Many believers are enslaved by the fear of what will happen in the future, fear of men, fear of sickness, fear of death and various other types of fears.

Fear is one of Satan’s master-weapons, with which he enslaves many believers. It is this spirit of fear that prevents many believers from boldly testifying for the Lord in the meetings of the church and from being bold witnesses for the Lord in their places of work. Many believers confuse timidity with humility and thus Satan deceives them.

It was fear that prevented Peter from boldly testifying about the Lord to the servant-girl who questioned him in the high-priest’s palace. But when Peter was baptised in the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, that fear was driven away. He could then testify about the Lord boldly to anyone.

Later, when he and the other apostles were tempted to be afraid again, they prayed and they were filled with Holy Spirit again, and the spirit of fear was driven away from them once more (Acts 4:31).

This then is the answer : We must be filled with the Holy Spirit again and again.

God doesn’t want you to be enslaved to the spirit of fear that prevents you from opening your mouth and being a witness for Christ among your friends and relatives and in your place of work. He wants to fill you with His Holy Spirit and to make you bold. All you have to do is to acknowledge that you are a coward and ask God to fill you with His Spirit so that you can be His bold witness. Those who hunger and thirst will be filled.

We will be tempted to fear far more in the days to come. So let’s use every opportunity that we have now to overcome fear of every kind.

God does not protect His faithful children from suffering. He knows that suffering is necessary for our spiritual growth. And so the church in Smyrna was not spared suffering. But the Lord encouraged them saying, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer”(v.10).

The Lord warned them that Satan was going to cast some of them into prison. God has given Satan the power to cast believers into prison unjustly. But we must remember that Satan can’t do anything to us without first getting God’s permission. And even if we are cast into prison, it will only be in order to test us (v.10). God uses even imprisonment to fulfil His purposes.

Paul said, “My circumstances (in prison) have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel” (Phil.1:12-14). God used Paul’s imprisonment to fulfil a number of purposes: (i) to sanctify Paul; (ii) to convert a number of Paul’s jailers; (iii) to give Paul an opportunity to write his epistles; and (iv) to encourage many other believers to preach fearlessly.

Truly our God is able to turn the tables on Satan in such a way that everything (including imprisonment) works only for the fulfilment of the Divine purposes (Rom.8:28; Psa.76:10).

How long we spend in prison is also determined by the Lord. “You will have tribulation ten days”, the Lord tells them (v.10). It is our Heavenly Father Who decides the length of time that His children have to undergo tribulation.

Even in the days of the great tribulation, Jesus said that “for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short” (Mt.24:22). “God remembered Noah” when the flood was on the earth (Gen.8:1). And He won’t forget His elect when they are encompassed by the great tribulation on earth. “I will not forget you. I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands”, is His Word to us (Isa.49:15,16).

It is a great comfort for us to know this. And we must remember it in the days to come, when we have to suffer for the Lord’s sake. He will never allow us to be tested beyond our ability. He has His Hand on the control knob and He will turn down the pressure (that we are facing) when the right time comes.

“Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life”, is the Lord’s exhortation (v.10). We should be willing even to die if necessary, in order to stand true to the Lord. Don’t follow the example of believers who compromise their witness just for the sake of a little earthly gain - some honour, or promotion, or money etc., How will such believers stand true to the Lord in the day when we won’t be allowed to buy even our necessary food without the mark of the Antichrist (Rev.13:16, 17)? Surely such “believers” will accept “the mark of the beast” in order to survive.

Remember that the crown of life is a far greater reward than any earthly honour and even than physical life itself.

Again the Lord recognises that not all have ears to hear such a message. And so He calls those who have ears to hear, to hear.

The second death is eternal death - being cast away from the presence of God for all eternity, into a lake of fire. It is significant that the promise of escaping the second death is made only to the overcomers. That’s why it is so important to overcome sin - for death is the end-result of sin (as James 1:15 makes clear).

The fundamental message of the Spirit throughout the New Testament is that we should overcome sin in every form.

V.12-17: And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The One who has the sharp two-edged sword says this: ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; and you hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith, even in the days of Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit acts of immorality. Thus you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.’”

The Lord describes Himself here as the One Who has the sharp two-edged sword of the Spirit - God’s living and powerful Word (v.12; Eph.6:17). This was the sword with which He overcame Satan in the wilderness, when He was on earth. This sword still comes out of His mouth today. And this is the weapon that we need for our battles against Satan as well.

Pergamum was a city which was so evil that the Lord says that Satan had his earthly headquarters there. This is mentioned twice in verse 13. And right in the midst of that city the Lord had placed His church.

The Lord tells them, “I know where you dwell”. He knows exactly where we are living, and in what circumstances we are living. And He can keep us pure and triumphant, even if Satan has his earthly throne right where we live. With the sword of the Spirit we too can overcome.

No lampstand ever complains that the surroundings are too dark for it to shine in. The brightness of a lampstand has nothing to do with its surroundings. Its light depends solely on the amount of oil it contains.

It is exactly the same with any local church. The surroundings may be evil. Satan may have his throne in that city. But if the church is filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit, the light will shine brightly. In fact, the darker the surroundings, the more brightly any light will be seen in such surroundings! The stars are seen at night - not during the day.

The Lord commends this church for holding fast His Name and not denying the faith even in times of persecution. He specially mentions Antipas, who was a faithful witness who laid down his life for his faith.

Antipas was one who stood for God’s truth, even if it meant having to stand alone. He was a man of conviction and not one who sought to please men. Those who know God do not have to look around to see how many others believe what they believe. They are willing to stand alone for the Lord, if necessary against everyone else in the whole world. Antipas was a man like that. And as a result he was killed.

If he had been a man-pleaser, he could have escaped death. He was killed because he stood uncompromisingly for God’s revealed truth. People probably called him narrow-minded, stubborn, hard-to-get-along-with and insane. But it made no difference to him. He just stood true to his Lord, standing against all sin, worldliness, compromise, disobedience to God’s Word and against the devil. Here was a man who was a threat to Satan’s kingdom.

Perhaps it was because Antipas was in Pergamum that Satan decided to place his throne there. What a man Antipas must have been if even Satan dreaded him!

God needs people like Antipas in every part of the world today. The time is soon coming when we will have to pay a price for our faith. All of Babylonian Christendom around us will compromise and bow to the Antichrist. Will we stand firm in that day, like Antipas did? Or will we bow the knee to Satan to preserve our life? Are we convinced that it is worth losing our life for the sake of God’s truth?

Today, God is testing us through little trials. It is only if we are faithful in these little testings that we can be faithful in the bigger trials that will come in the future. Satan should consider you such a threat to his kingdom that he moves his throne to the town where you live.

The sad thing was that the church at Pergamum lost out spiritually, after Antipas died. Antipas was probably the messenger of the church when he was alive. When he died, someone else took over and the church went downhill. This is the sad history of many churches.

When Paul was leaving Ephesus, he told the elders there that he knew that after his departure, the church there would compromise and backslide (Acts 20:28-31). As long as Paul was there he fought against worldliness and sin and kept the spirit of the antichrist at bay. But there wasn’t anyone strong enough in Ephesus to do that after Paul left. And so the wolves got in among the flock and devoured the sheep freely, while the elders stood by and watched!

Satan changed his tactics at Pergamum, after Antipas died. The fact that Satan’s throne is in a place does not necessarily mean that he will always attack the church with persecution.

He is described in the Scriptures, not only as a roaring lion (1 Pet.5:8), but also as a wily serpent who transforms himself into an angel of light (Rev.12:9; 2 Cor.11:14). He has found through the centuries that he accomplishes his purposes far better by corrupting the church with worldliness from within than by persecuting it from without.

This is what he finally did at Pergamum through “Balaamism” - and thus he succeeded, where he did not succeed with persecution!

The Lord tells the church here, “You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam” (v.14). Balaam was one who was hired by King Balak to curse the Israelites. He was the first of the “hired preachers” that we read of in the Bible.

Christendom is flooded with these hirelings today, for whom preaching is a means of earning a living. God is against such hirelings, who pretend to be shepherds of God’s flock, but who are interested only in fleecing the sheep.

Balaam did not go when Balak called him at first, because God specifically told him not to go. But when Balak offered a higher pay and greater honour, then Balaam “sought God’s will again” - just like many do today, in similar circumstances !! God allowed Balaam to go after money, and to destroy himself thereby. And God allows many Christian preachers today also to follow in Balaam’s footsteps and finally to come to Balaam’s end.

When Balaam saw that he could not curse Israel, he suggested to Balak that the Israelites be corrupted by tempting them to immorality and idolatry (Num. 24 & 25). Thus Balaam succeeded in getting God Himself to punish them.

That was how Satan succeeded at Pergamum too. He knew he could not overcome the church, until the church became worldly in some way. So he corrupted the church from within. Thus the church became ineffective in its witness for the Lord and also in its battle against Satan.

“If you can’t beat them, join them”, has been Satan’s motto in relation to the church. And thus he has succeeded in destroying the witness of many churches throughout these twenty centuries.

Idolatry and immorality were the two sins that God condemned the most throughout the Old Testament. And these are the two that he condemns even today. According to new-covenant standards, to be greedy, or to worship money or one’s profession or a person or anything earthly is idolatry. And to lust after a woman with one’s eyes is immorality. To compare your wife unfavourably with someone else’s wife in any area is to “covet your neighbour’s wife”. This too is immorality.

Where these new-covenant standards are not consistently preached in a church, hidden idolatry and immorality will prevail among its members and the church will soon become like the one at Pergamum.

When worldliness overtook the church at Pergamum, the sad thing is that the messenger of the church just watched it happen and did nothing about it. Many elders are just as powerless today against worldliness that has come in like a flood into their churches.

The messenger in Pergamum had not himself succumbed to the doctrine of Balaam. There were only “some” in Pergamum who had fallen a prey to it. But the messenger was guilty in that he had not rebuked the worldliness that had come into the church. This is where he had failed.

The reason for his failure must have been that he had not judged such worldliness severely in his own thoughts. We can have authority in the church only over those things that we have crucified in our own flesh. It is when we treat sin and worldliness lightly in our own lives that we become tolerant of it in the lives of others in the church as well. What looks like a “merciful” attitude on the part of an elder towards a worldly person in his church is usually dictated by the fact that there is unjudged worldliness in the heart of the elder himself.

The messenger at Pergamum was so lax about worldly teachings that he even permitted the teaching of the Nicolaitans to flourish in his church (v.15). Priestcraft was being taught as a doctrine by some in the church at Pergamum! And the messenger had done nothing about it. That was another thing that the Lord held against him.

The Lord warns him and the church to repent. If they don’t, He says that He will judge them with the sword of His mouth (v.16). It is by His Word that God judges us. Jesus said that we would all be judged in the final day by the word that He has spoken to us (Jn.12:48). Our lives will be compared with the words of God that we have heard, and we will be judged thereby.

The overcomer is then promised the reward of the hidden manna and a white stone with a new name written on it (v.17).

In the Old Testament, Moses was told to hide some of the manna that fell from heaven inside the ark, in the most holy place of the tabernacle (Ex.16:33,34). While manna that was kept by the Israelites in their tents began to stink within 24 hours (Ex.16:19,20), the “hidden manna” in the ark remained fresh throughout the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. Such is the power of God’s presence in the most holy place to keep us fresh, if we live there before His face at all times.

The most holy place can be entered only through the rent veil of the flesh (Heb.10:20). If we walk on this new and living way, we can receive the hidden manna that God gives - revelation from His Word and fellowship with Him. And our lives will always carry the fragrance of the freshness of the Lord.

The hidden precious stone with the overcomer’s name written on it (v.17). speaks of an intimate relationship with the Lord such as a bride has with her bridegroom. This is the spiritual equivalent of the engagement ring (with an expensive precious stone and a name engraved on it) that worldly men give their fiancees.

The bridegroom calls the bride by an intimate name that no-one else knows (v.17). Bridal intimacy with the Lord is a reward that is promised to all who overcome.

The average believer has a dry and boring relationship with Christ, because he is not radical in his hatred of sin and worldliness. But the true overcomer enters into a spiritually ecstatic relationship with his Lord such as a bride has with her bridegroom with whom she is deeply in love. This is the type of relationship described in the “Song of Solomon” - and only an overcomer can understand it fully and experience the reality of it.

V.18-29: And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write : The Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this : ‘I know your deeds and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bondservants astray, so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time to repent; and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold I will cast her upon a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. And I will kill her children with pestilence; and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds. But I say to you, the rest who are in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them - I place no other burden on you. Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come. And he who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces, as I also received authority from My Father; and I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

The Lord says here that He has eyes like a flame of fire (v.18). He searches the hidden thoughts and motives of the heart - and so He does not judge as men do, who only look at the outward appearance. His feet are like burnished bronze - which means that He believes in severe judgment on sin. If there is one clear message that comes down to us from Calvary’s cross, it is this : God hates sin and will judge it severely wherever it is found.

The Lord knew the deeds, love, faith and perseverance of the messenger and the church at Thyatira. And He notices that while the quantity of those deeds had increased considerably (v.19), their quality had come down. Compromise and worldliness had come into the church.

This compromise had come about mainly because the messenger had permitted a woman (symbolically called “Jezebel”) to influence the church in an evil, worldly way (v.20). She had pretended to be a prophetess, and the messenger of the church had been deceived.

Although Christ has given prophets to the church, He has not given any prophetesses (See Eph.4:11,12). Women can be anointed by the Spirit to prophesy in the meetings of the church (Acts 2:17; 1 Cor.11:5). The daughters of Philip are examples of those who did that (Acts 21:9 - KJV).

Men and women can prophesy - that is, share God’s Word to the encouragement and edification of the church (1 Cor.14:3). All believers are encourage to seek for this gift (1 Cor.14:1; Acts 2:18). But there is a difference between one who prophesies and a prophet. The Lord never appointed a woman to be a prophetess. under the new covenant - the reason being that God never intended a woman to have authority over men.

There were prophetesses under the old covenant. We read of five of them in the Bible, with Anna being the last (Lk.2:36). They all spoke the word of the Lord with authority. Deborah is one example of such a prophetess (Judg.4). But under the new covenant, authority in the church is always invested by the Lord in men.

Paul gives us two reasons why God does not allow a woman to exercise any authority over men in the church: (i) She was created after man - to be his helper; (ii) She was deceived by Satan first (1 Tim.2:12-14).

A woman is more prone to deception by Satan than a man is. This is one reason why Christ has not set any women-teachers in the church either.

Jezebel however called herself a prophetess. And the messenger of the church at Thyatira was so weak and spineless that he could not silence her.

In a home, if the man who should be the head of the house, is weak and effeminate, his wife will take over the leadership of the home. This will be true in a church too. When powerful women see that the elders in a church are weak, they will begin to assert themselves in the church.

God’s Word exhorts us to “act like MEN” (1 Cor.16:13). There is a great need for that exhortation, for many elders today have just about as much backbone as a jellyfish, when it comes to silencing powerful women! They are like King Ahab who was so scared of his wife Jezebel, that he allowed her to do whatever she liked in his kingdom - even to the extent of murdering innocent, Godfearing people (1 Kings 21). Ahab was the head of Israel only in name. Jezebel actually ran the kingdom. Many church-elders function exactly like Ahab too!

Elijah however was a fearless man of God who stood against all of Jezebel’s false prophets and slaughtered every last one of them (1 Kings18:40). That’s why Jezebel hated Elijah. And she feared him too. There were 7000 people in Israel at that time who did not bow down to Jezebel’s idols. God Himself had said so (1 Kings 19:18). But Jezebel never feared any of them. She feared only Elijah. She knew that those 7000 were scared of her, even if they didn’t bow down to her idols.

A Jezebel today does not fear 99.9% of believers, because she knows that those believers cannot stop her, even if they don’t agree with her. Jezebels fear only Elijahs. And Elijahs are rare in Christendom today.

Today’s Jezebels hate Elijah-like elders and love Ahab-like elders. Every elder of every church follows either Elijah or Ahab in this matter.

The Greek word translated as “woman” here can also be translated as “wife”. This would mean that Jezebel was the wife of the messenger of the church. This would certainly have made the situation more difficult for the messenger.

If the messenger had been a true disciple of the Lord and had learnt to “hate” his wife (as Jesus had told His disciples to do - Luke 14:26), there would have been no problem at all. But he obviously loved his wife more than he loved the Lord and the church. And so he did not want to offend her. And so he let her have her way in the church. That was how the church at Thyatira was corrupted. And that is how many churches are corrupted today.

Many a church has been ruined by a Jezebel, who is often the wife of one of the weak, effeminate elders. A woman like that can seek to make herself prominent in the meetings of the church through frequent speaking in tongues, or through interpreting her own “tongues”, or through long prayers or in other crude, unBiblical ways. She may also seek to change the decisions of the elders by influencing her husband at home.

There are foolish elders who, after having discussed church matters at the elders’ meeting, then go home and discuss these matters with their wives. Then being brainwashed at home by their wives, these effeminate men express their changed views at the next meeting of the elders!! And the decisions that were taken in the previous meeting are then changed!! Such is the power of a hidden Jezebel to influence a church!

In other cases, the Jezebel could be a woman who has acquired influence over one of the elders in some soulish way. There are some elders’ wives who have such powerful personalities and such soul-power that the other men in the church (including the elders) are afraid to displease her in any way. In some cases, even her own husband is frightened of her.

It will be impossible to build the body of Christ in any place, if the elders in the church there, allow a woman to have power over them in any way.

The wife of an elder must be an example as one with “a meek and a quiet spirit”, taking extra care to hide herself at all times. She must not be an Assistant Pastor or Songleader or Assistant Administrator (as many women are), but a hidden helper to her husband and not one who seeks to run the church from behind the scenes. Praise God that there are such wives too, who are real helpers to their elder-husbands, because they recognise their boundaries as women. Blessed is the elder who has such a wife.

All elders must keep a special eye on any woman who seeks to be prominent in the church in any way. She will almost certainly have the spirit of a Jezebel. If she is allowed free rein, she will certainly become Satan’s agent to destroy the church slowly but surely.

The “adultery” spoken of here (v.20) is obviously spiritual - because a righteous God cannot possibly punish innocent children born of physical adultery. Spiritual adultery is more dangerous than physical adultery, because it is less recognized. Religious harlotry results from the teaching of false grace that leads believers to take sin lightly. Disobedience to God in small things and little unfaithfulnesses are glossed over. It is such teaching that builds Babylon, the harlot church. And this is what the Lord denounces here.

The Lord gave Jezebel time to repent (v.21). Even Jezebels are given time to repent. Such is God’s mercy.

But God also placed a time limit for her to repent. If she did not repent within that time, she would be judged. Not only Jezebel, but all those who committed adultery with her, and her children (v.22,23) would also be killed. God’s patience with sinners and hypocrites is not endless.

Jezebel’s partners in spiritual adultery were those who propagated this false teaching along with her. Her “children” were those half-converted hybrids who were the products of this teaching of false grace, who imagined that they were converted without having repented from sin first, or who imagined that now that they were “converted” they could take fleshly indulgence lightly.

People who live in sin in the world are not judged so quickly by God. But those who come into the church and treat sin lightly are dealt with more severely and more quickly.

God’s judgment of Ananias and Sapphira and of those who sinned in Corinth (1 Cor.11:29,30). are examples of the severity of God towards those who take the name of Christ lightly.

The Lord goes on to say that He will give to each one according to his deeds (v.23). This is to counter the teaching of false grace in Thyatira that taught that “our deeds won’t matter if we just believe”. Our deeds do matter.

God’s Word says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor.5:10). “If you are living according to the flesh, you MUST die” (Rom.8:13).

The Lord said that He would cast the sinners in Thyatira into “great tribulation” (v.22).

There are two types of tribulation spoken of in the New Testament, and we read of both of these types in the book of Revelation : (i) that which comes from men in the form of persecution against the disciples of Jesus - (most of the references in the New Testament are to this type of tribulation); (ii) that which comes from God in the form of judgment “on every soul of man who does evil” - (Romans 2:9 and Revelation 2:22 are the only two references to this type of tribulation).

God threatened to cast the unrepentant sinners of Thyatira into great tribulation. But this could not possibly be referring to the great tribulation to come in the days of the Antichrist - for that is still in the future, whereas the sinners of Thyatira have already died. So the Lord must have meant the judgment that God brings on sinners and hypocrites.

There were some however in Thyatira, who did not agree with Jezebel or follow her teachings. To these, the Lord says that He will place no other burden on them (v.24). They had steered clear of “the deep things of Satan”, because the anointing within them had told them that something was wrong with this false grace that Jezebel preached; and they had listened to the anointing (1 Jn.2:27).

Notice that the Lord calls the teaching of false grace as “the deep things of Satan”. False grace is one of Satan’s masterpieces, with which he has deceived most of Christendom. So it is appropriate to call it one of “Satan’s deeper truths”!!

Doctrine is like a seed. The proof of whether a seed is good or bad is seen in the fruit it produces. Many Christians analyse various types of seeds (doctrines) under their theological microscopes and pronounce some as bad and some as good. But that’s not the way to find out the quality of a seed. It is better to sow the seed and to see what type of fruit it produces.

Any doctrine of “grace” that takes away the fear of sinning is certainly a false teaching. If a doctrine enables you to sin lightly and to ask for forgiveness cheaply, without the deep sorrow and vehement hatred for sin that true repentance brings, then you can be sure that that doctrine is one of the “deeper truths of Satan”!

There are many believers nowadays who mouth impressive phrases such as “End-time truths” and “Kingdom truths” etc., The test by which we can evaluate every so-called “truth” is the test that Jesus Himself gave : “The truth shall make you free...from sin”(Jn.8:32-36). A “truth” that does not liberate you from sin in your daily life is not the truth of God, however Scriptural it may appear to be to you. It is a false doctrine.

One indication that you have understood God’s truth correctly will be that you experience more and more liberty from every type of bondage in your life. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor.3:17).

The Lord then exhorts the remnant in Thyatira to hold fast to what they have - that is, to “the true grace of God” (1 Pet.5:12). We need to hold fast to this, because Satan would like to snatch it away from us. We are commanded to hold fast to it until Jesus comes (v.25).

The overcomer is described by the Lord here as one who keeps His deeds until the end (v.26). Jesus’ deeds are His victories over temptation, in the days of His flesh. The overcomer is one who overcomes temptation, even as Jesus overcame, and who endures in this path until the end.

The Lord promises the overcomer the reward of authority over the nations in the future (v.26). This is not a domineering over others, as we understand authority in the world today. The expression “He shall rule them” (v.27). actually means “He shall shepherd them” (the word “rule” here comes from a Greek word meaning “to shepherd”).

This is the type of authority that the overcomer exercises in his home and in the church now, and that he will exercise one day over the nations of the world. Those who domineer over others today, whether in a family or in a church, are actually exercising a Satanic form of authority and will be unfit to shepherd the nations. All of us who have authority - fathers, mothers and elders - are being tested by the Lord now.

The Lord then uses the expression, “As I also have received authority from My Father” (v.27). The Father gave Jesus authority primarily to give eternal life to all whom He had chosen (John.17:2). This is the purpose with which the Lord gives His messengers authority in the church too - to lead others to take hold of eternal life (1 Tim.6:12). Any elder who exercises authority in any other way is actually misusing his authority.

Those who reject this authority of the Lord over their lives will be dealt with one day, with a rod of iron that Jesus will wield (Psa. 2:7-9; Rev.12:5; 19:15). The Lord will share that rod of iron with the overcomer, who would have learnt during his time on earth, how to use the rod of authority with gentleness and firmness (v.26,27).

“He who rules his spirit is better than he who captures a city” (Prov.16:32). It is only those who have overcome the lusts in their flesh, the attractions of this world and the wiles of Satan, who are truly qualified in God’s eyes to rule the nations one day in His kingdom.

The overcomer is also promised “the morning star” (v.28). The morning star is Jesus Himself (See Rev.22:16). Jesus is also called the Sun of righteousness Who will burn the evildoers and bring healing to the nations (Mal.4:1,2). The world can see Him only as the Sun of righteousness, but the overcomers will see Him as the morning star.

The morning star is seen just before the rising of the sun. In the last moments of this age, at the end of the great tribulation, while the world is lying in darkness, the last trumpet will sound, and the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout. The overcomers of all generations will then be taken up to meet Him in the air to welcome Him back to earth. Then they will see Him as the morning star.

The Lord will then descend to the earth as the Sun of righteousness to judge and heal this sin-sick world. And every eye will see Him. The overcomers will also come down with Him at that time to reign with Him on earth.

V.1-6: And to the angel of the church in Sardis write : He who has the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars says this : ‘I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, and you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. Remember therefore what you have received and heard; and keep it and repent. If therefore you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you. But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with Me in white; for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

The Lord refers to Himself here as the One who has the seven Spirits of God, or the sevenfold Holy Spirit. We saw the meaning of this in Chapter One. He also has the seven stars. He expects each star (messenger) in His hand to be a Spirit-filled representative of His in the church.

The messenger in Sardis was one who had built up a tremendous reputation before others as a spiritual man. But the Lord’s opinion of him was the exact opposite of that of his fellow-believers in Sardis. This shows how carnal and gullible most believers in Sardis were.

More than 90% of believers are unable to differentiate between a carnal preacher and a spiritual one. And more than 99% of believers are unable to distinguish between human-soul-power and Holy-Spirit-power.

Most believers are impressed by the display and exercise of spiritual gifts and that is how they evaluate a preacher or an elder. And that is how they are deceived. God however looks at the heart. The messenger at Sardis may have had the gifts of the Spirit. But he was spiritually dead.

This is a warning for all of us to take heed to : The opinion that 99% of our fellow-believers have about us can be 100% wrong! God’s opinion about us could be the exact opposite of their opinion.

The same applies to a church. Others may consider a church to be “spiritually alive”. But God may know it to be spiritually dead. And vice-versa. Churches that God considers spiritually alive could be considered dead by undiscerning men.

Most believers evaluate a church by the warmth of the welcome they receive when they come to the meetings, the size of the congregation, the amount of noise and emotion in the meetings, the musical quality of the singing, the intellectual content of the sermon and the amount of the offering!! But God isn’t impressed by any of these things.

God evaluates a church by the Christlike humility, purity and love and the freedom from self-centredness that He finds in the hearts of its members. God’s evaluation and man’s evaluation of a church can therefore be at total variance with each other. In fact, they usually are.

There were no Jezebels in Sardis and no teachings of Balaam or of the Nicolaitans either. But they had something worse - hypocrisy.

The messenger at Sardis must have felt a secret satisfaction in the reputation that he had built up for himself. Otherwise he would not have ended up as a hypocrite. There is nothing wrong in being known by others as one who is spiritually alive, provided we don’t get any satisfaction out of their opinion of us.

But if we are seeking a name for ourselves in what we do for the Lord, then we will certainly end up living before the face of men and not before the face of God. Then we would have to admit that we haven’t realised that man’s opinion is worthless.

Christendom is full of preachers who are constantly doing things and writing reports in order to get a name for themselves. All of these will end up like the messenger in Sardis. And they will be judged by the Lord in the final day, because their works were not perfect before God. It is impossible for our works to be perfect before God if our motive is to impress men.

Jesus warned His disciples of the great need of being alert and praying, in order to be ready for His coming - for worldly cares and the love of mammon have a way of putting the best of believers to sleep (See Luke 21:34-36).

When a man is asleep, he is unaware of things happening in the real world around him. He is more conscious of the unreal world of his dreams. This is how it is with those who are spiritually asleep too. They are unaware of the real world of the kingdom of God, of lost souls around them and of eternal realities. They are alive however to the unreal, temporary world of material riches, pleasure, comfort, earthly honour and fame.

The Lord exhorts him to wake up - in other words to give up the unreal world of his dreams (the world of materialism) - and to strengthen the few things in his life that were sinking towards spiritual death, but which had not yet died (v.2). The embers had not died out completely. But he had to “fan them to a flame” soon, or they would die out completely (2 Tim.1:6 - Amplified).

The Lord tells him that his works were not perfect in God’s sight (v.2 - KJV). Many believers are afraid of the word “perfection”. But here we see that the Lord expected this messenger’s works to be perfect before God.

Spiritual perfection is a vast subject. But what it means here is that this elder’s works were not done with singleness of heart to secure God’s approval alone.

His works were good works - that’s how he got a name that he was spiritually alive. But they were not done for the glory of God. They were done to impress men. And so they were all dead works. There was “iniquity in his holy activities” (Ex.28:38). He had to cleanse himself from this filthiness of spirit, before God could approve of him (2 Cor.7:1).

The first step to perfection is to do everything before the face of God. If we don’t begin here, we wont get anywhere. Whether it is praying or fasting or helping others or whatever, the important question that we need to ask ourselves is :”Am I thinking now of some man seeing me do this and appreciating me, or am I doing this before God’s face for His glory alone?” A wrong motive is what corrupts many good deeds and makes them imperfect in God’s eyes.

The Lord reminds the messenger to remember what he has received and heard through the years and to obey those exhortations (v.3). The Lord expects more from those to whom more is given. This messenger had heard much about perfection and about the necessity of doing everything for the glory of God. But he had not taken those exhortations seriously. To know the truth and not to obey it is to build one’s house on sand. One day it will collapse. And that was what happened to the messenger and the church at Sardis.

The messenger is now exhorted to repent (v.3). This is the message of the Lord to all churches in these last days : REPENT.

There was still hope for this messenger, for he was still a star in the Lord’s hand (v.1). The Lord had not given up on him. But he had to wake up first and repent.

John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ who prepared the nation of Israel for the Lord’s first coming by preaching repentance. Now the prophets in the church have to prepare God’s people for the second coming of Christ by preaching repentance to them. The message of repentance is the greatest need in the church today.

If the messenger does not wake up and repent, the Lord says that He will come upon him in judgment, as unexpectedly as a thief comes at night. The Lord comes as a thief in the night primarily for unbelievers - but also for believers who walk in darkness. The sons of the day who are walking in the light will not be surprised by the coming of the Lord, but the sons of the night will (1 Thess. 5:4,5).

The overcomers will always be ready for the coming of the Lord because they are always walking in the light. Those who are walking in darkness, however, with unconfessed sin in their lives will not be ready, even if they call themselves “believers”.

Revelation 3:3. indicates clearly that those believers (even if they are messengers in a church) who are spiritually asleep and who do not repent will be surprised by the Lord when He comes. They will be in the same category as the sons of darkness. These are the foolish virgins who will be left outside the closed door, when the Lord comes (Mt.25:10-13).

The Lord says, “Behold I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his garments, lest he walk about naked and men see his shame.” (Rev.16:15).

There were however a few people in Sardis who had not soiled their garments (v.4). This was the only redeeming feature of this church.

God has a list of names of those who have kept their hearts pure. This purity refers not only to freedom from the sins of the flesh, but also to freedom from the sin of seeking the honour of men and other sins of the spirit.

This was the remnant of the overcomers who lived before God’s face in Sardis. As the Lord Himself pointed out, these overcomers were FEW. This remnant has always been small in every generation, for there are few who find the narrow gate and the narrow way that lead to life (Matt.7:14).

The Lord says that these few are worthy and that therefore they will walk with Him in white (v.4). These are the ones who had obeyed the Lord’s exhortation in Luke 21:36 : “Keep awake then and be attentive at all times, praying that you may have the full strength and be accounted worthy to escape all these things and to stand in the presence of the Son of man” (Amplified). They were accounted worthy. And so they will walk in the white garments of the bride on the wedding-day of the Lamb.

All overcomers are then promised the reward of being clothed in white garments (v.5). This indicates clearly that only overcomers will form the bride of Christ.

Overcomers are also promised that their names will not be erased from the Lamb’s book of life (v.5). This makes it clear that a person’s name can be in the book of life and then be erased from it. The promise given to the overcomer here would be meaningless, if such a danger does not even exist. The plain teaching of Scripture is that believers who live after the flesh WILL DIE SPIRITUALLY (Rom.8:13). They will lose the salvation that they once had.

The Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of my book” (Ex.32:33).

In Psalm 69:25 we read of a prophecy concerning Judas Iscariot that is quoted by Peter in Acts 1:20. On reading further in Psalm 69, we see a prophetic reference there to Judas Iscariot’s name being blotted out of the book of life (v.28). His name was once in that book and then it was erased.

The Lord also promises to confess the overcomer’s name before the Father and before His angels. This is a reward promised to those who unashamedly confess His Name before men (Mt.10:32; Lk.12:8). The Lord places great value on our publicly confessing His name before our relatives, friends, neighbours and colleagues at work. Many believers are unfaithful here. And thereby they prove that they are not overcomers.

What an honour it will be for our name to be publicly confessed by the Lord in that final day. Even if we have to bear shame and persecution for the Lord’s sake, every day for a hundred years on earth, it will still be worth it all, if the final reward is that the Lord proudly acknowledges us before the Father and His holy angels one day. One word of approval from His precious lips will erase from our minds the memories of a lifetime of suffering and ridicule.

V.7-13: And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write : He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this : ‘I know your deeds. Behold I have put before you an open door which no one can shut, because you have a little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name. Behold I will cause those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews, and are not, but lie - behold, I will make them to come and bow down at your feet, and to know that I have loved you. Because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell upon the earth. I am coming quickly; hold fast what you have, in order that no one take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it any more; and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

The Lord calls Himself here the One who is holy and true. “He committed no sin, nor was any deceit (hypocrisy) found in His mouth” (1 Pet.2:22). He looks for holiness and for reality in His messengers too.

He also says that He has the key of David. The gospel concerns the Son of God who was born of the seed of David (Rom.1:1-3).

One of the last exhortations that Paul gave Timothy was “to remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David has risen from the dead” (2 Tim.2:8).

The key speaks of ability to open a door. By overcoming sin, death and Satan, Jesus opened a way for us to walk in. Our Lord Himself is the Forerunner and Example for all who want to overcome.

The Lord also describes Himself as the One who can now open or shut any door. If we are overcomers, we need never stand before a closed door at any time, when it is the will of God that we should go through.

But the Lord also shuts certain doors before us, so that we don’t go into paths that He has not ordained for us - paths that He knows will not be profitable for us. It is really an exciting life to be an overcomer. The Lord Himself decides which doors we should go through, and which doors we should stop knocking at.

In the book of Jonah, we see how the Lord shut one door (of a ship, by getting Jonah thrown overboard) and opened another (of a fish’s mouth, by getting it to swallow Jonah). When the fish came to the coast of Israel, the Lord opened the fish’s mouth once again to place His servant ashore. Thus God brought Jonah back to “Square One”. Then He told him once again to go to Nineveh, where He wanted him to preach. Then Jonah went.

If God wants us in any place for any purpose, He has ways and means of closing the wrong doors before us (getting us thrown out of somewhere perhaps!) and of opening the right doors in front of us. He even has means of transporting us back to “Square One” in our lives, so that we don’t miss His best! What He did for Jonah, He will do for us too. He will do even more.

The key to every door is in His hand. If you are a wholehearted disciple of the Lord with no ambition in life but to glorify God, you can be certain of one thing - that nothing can stand in your way. Like automatic doors that open as soon as a person comes near them, every closed door that hinders you from moving forward in the fulfilment of God’s will, will open up before you - as soon as you come near it. He opens each door at the right time - not too soon and not too late. He will also close those doors that would make you miss His perfect will for your life.

Here in Philadelphia, we see the second of the two messengers and churches that receive no rebuke at all from the Lord. The first we saw was the one at Smyrna.

These two examples show us that it is possible to be such a messenger of the Lord and to be such a church as to receive no rebuke at all from the Lord when He examines us. This should be a challenge to all of us.

The messenger and the saints here were a weak people (v.8). They had very little human influence and power. But they had obeyed God’s Word and confessed the Name of the Lord.

These are two primary requirements for the days in which we live - and that is why we find them being repeated again and again in the book of Revelation: OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S WORD AND HOLDING FORTH THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS.

Because of their faithfulness, the Lord says that He has set before them an open door to witness for Him. No one will be able to shut that door (v.8). Their witness will naturally be opposed by Satan. But the gates of Hell will not be able to prevail against this church - for this is a triumphant church that Satan himself is afraid of.

The church here was being opposed by a synagogue of Satan - similar to the one that was in Smyrna (v.9). Notice that the synagogue of Satan opposed only two of the seven churches in Asia - the very two that the Lord commends unreservedly. Those churches that are most wholehearted for God are the ones that Satan opposes the most. And Satan’s opposition comes mainly through religious people.

Jesus was opposed on earth, not by the Romans or the Greeks, but by religious Jews who studied their Bibles daily! It will be the same for the body of Christ. Our main opposition will come from those who claim to be Christians, but who don’t preach freedom from sin’s power.

The Lord says that He will make the synagogue of Satan recognise in an obvious way that He is with the church at Philadelphia. The agents of Satan will be compelled to bow down before the church (v.9). God has destined that Satan should be crushed under the feet of the church (Rom.16:20). We must never forget this that God is always on our side against Satan. So we need never fear Satan or his agents at any time.

Jesus prayed that the world would know that His disciples were loved by the Father (Jn.17:23). This prayer was to be answered in Philadelphia. The synagogue of the Jews would be made aware of the fact that the Lord loves the church and that He would stand by them (v.9). God has wonderful ways of confounding our enemies and of making them aware that we are the objects of His love and care!

The church in Philadelphia had kept the word of Jesus’ perseverance (v.10). They had obeyed the word of the Lord and endured to the end in obedience. It is only by enduring faithfully in times of temptation, that we become perfect, lacking in nothing (Jas.1:4).

The Lord’s promise to this church was, “I will keep you from the hour of testing that is about to come upon the whole world” (v.10). Here the Lord warns them in advance of a time of trial that was going to come upon the whole world at that time (at the end of the first century or in the early second century). The church in Philadelphia was promised Divine protection during that time of testing.

How did the Lord “keep them from that hour of testing”? It was certainly not by rapturing them out of the world. No. They were KEPT SAFE IN THE MIDST OF THE TRIAL. They experienced the Lord’s protecting hand in the midst of their tribulations.

This is a word of encouragement for us too - for the Lord will similarly keep us also safe from evil in the midst of the great tribulation during the time of the Antichrist. He will keep us exactly as He kept the church in Philadelphia in the second century - on earth, safe from evil, even though we may have to suffer for His Name’s sake.

Jesus has said, “You will be hated by all on account of my Name...but do not fear those who kill the body....for the very hairs of your head are all numbered...Not a hair of your head will perish” (Mt.10:28,30; Lk.21:18).

Even during the tribulation, not a hair on our head can be touched by anyone without the Lord’s permission. So we can be at rest.

The Lord then tells the church at Philadelphia that those who are going to be tested during “the hour of testing”, are “the earth-dwellers” - those who have made this earth their home, whose minds are set on earthly things, and who pursue after wealth and seek the honour of men (v.10).

No overcomer is such an earth-dweller, for His mind is set on the things that are above.

The Lord goes on to tell the church here to hold fast to what they have until He comes back to earth, so that they may not lose their crown (v.10). It is possible therefore for someone else to get the crown that God meant for you.

God has planned a task and a crown for you. But if you are unfaithful in fulfilling that task, you won’t get that crown. God will raise up someone else to fulfil that task and he will get the crown that was meant for you. This is a real possibility. So we must be watchful.

God had planned a specific task for Judas Iscariot, just as He had planned tasks for the other apostles of Christ. But Judas was unfaithful. So he lost his crown. Someone else (perhaps Paul) fulfilled the task that Judas was to have fulfilled. That person will now get Judas’ crown in addition to his own.

We have to hold fast what God has given us. We cannot afford to take things easy at any time.

The overcomer will be made a permanent pillar in the church (v.12). What that means is that he will be a support to others in the church, bearing their burdens. He will be a spiritual “father” to others. In every church there is a great need for such pillars.

The overcomer will have the name of God, the name of the New Jerusalem and the Lord’s new name written on his forehead. In other words, he will be publicly identified as a wholehearted disciple of Jesus, wherever He goes. This will lead to his being despised on earth now, but honoured by the Lord when He returns.

The New Jerusalem is a symbolic name for the bride of Christ. (Rev.21:9,10). The name of that city will be written on the forehead of the overcomers. And so we see once again that only overcomers will constitute the bride of Christ.

Those who have ears to hear must take these words of encouragement very seriously (v.13).

V.14-22: And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write : The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this : ‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I would that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eyesalve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore and repent. Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

The Lord calls Himself here the Amen - the One whose word will certainly be fulfilled. He is also the faithful and true Witness who tells the truth exactly as it is. He is also the Beginning (or the Author) of the creation of God. He is the One who created the first creation and He is the One Who began the new creation, through His death and resurrection. “He is BEFORE all things” (Col.1:17) - the Author of everything visible and invisible, the Beginning and the End.

Here is another church that did not have any Jezebels or false teachings in it. They were neither immoral nor evil. But they were not on fire for God either. They were just plain “lukewarm” (v.16). They were dead right in their doctrines - but they were both dead and right! They were morally respectable - and spiritually dead!

The Lord wants our hearts to be on fire at all times - aflame with a fervent love for Him and for other believers.

“Fire shall be kept burning continually on the altar; it is not to go out”, was the old-covenant Law (Lev.6:13).

Symbolically we see here what God expects the normal state of the true disciple of Jesus to be. Anything less than this is sub-standard. When the burning bush was aflame with the fire of the Lord, no insects or germs could survive within it. And when our hearts are aflame with the fire of the Spirit, no unloving attitudes can survive therein either.

This is one way by which we can test whether we are hot, cold or lukewarm : To be “hot” is to love others fervently. To be “cold” is to be bitter and unforgiving towards others. To be “lukewarm” is to have neither bitterness nor love towards others.

When a believer says, “I have nothing in my heart against anyone”, he is lukewarm. Did Jesus say, “All men will know that you are my disciples when you have nothing in your hearts against each other”? No. The absence of evil attitudes towards each other is NOT the identifying mark of the disciples of Jesus (cf. Jn.13:35).

We must have something in our hearts. We must have fervent love for all our fellow-believers. Love is a positive virtue and not just the absence of evil.

To cast out the spirit of bitterness from our heart and then to leave it cleansed and empty is the surest way to be lukewarm and to finally end up in a worse state than at the beginning (Lk.11:24-26).

The world says, “Something is better than nothing”. If so, then one would think that it is better to be lukewarm than cold. But that is not what the Lord says. He says, “I would that you were cold” (v.15). He would rather see us totally worldly than half-hearted.

The lukewarm, compromising Christian does a lot more damage to the cause of Christ on earth than the unbeliever. The unbeliever does not take the name of Christ, and so his worldliness cannot be a hindrance to the gospel. But a compromising, half-hearted Christian takes the name of Christ and disgraces that Name among the heathen by his worldliness.

The cold, worldly unbeliever is also far more likely to come to an awareness of his spiritual need than the lukewarm, self-righteous Pharisee (See Mt.21:31).

It is for these reasons that the Lord says that He would rather see us cold than lukewarm.

In practical terms this means that if you have no longing to be free from the love of money and from anger and impure thoughts (to take just three areas of sin), it would be better if you remained an unbeliever than one claiming to be a disciple of Jesus. There is more hope for you if you are cold than if you are lukewarm. This is amazing, but true.

The church at Laodicea was proud of what it possessed. The “believers” there considered themselves rich and needing nothing - perhaps because they were rich in knowledge of the truth and had a good reputation before men and had a lot of money as well. Respectable leaders in Laodicean society may also have been members of their church.

Like the Pharisee who prayed in the temple, these Christians may have imagined themselves to be spiritual, because of the wealth of their religious activities (Lk.18:9-14).

Whatever the reason, there was certainly no poverty of spirit either in the messenger or among those in the church.

Both the messenger and the church were completely unaware of their backslidden state - just like many today. The Lord’s opinion of them was the exact opposite of their own evaluation of themselves. He calls them, “wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked” (v.17). What strong adjectives the Lord used to show them that their condition was pathetic indeed!

In Sardis, the messenger and the church had a reputation before others that they were “spiritual”. In Laodicea, they didn’t even have that reputation. They were “spiritual” only in their own eyes.

The vast majority of believers have a far higher opinion of their own spirituality than the Lord has of them. This is true of believers in every Christian group. Very, very few believers have a realistic estimate of themselves - because very, very few are ruthlessly honest with themselves.

It is more than likely that YOU yourself have a far higher opinion of your spirituality than the Lord has of you. Humble yourself and cry out to the Lord to give you His evaluation of your life. Why not put this book down for a few moments and make that prayer right now....

The believers at Laodicea may at one time have been on fire like those in Philadelphia. But they had backslidden and become careless about their spiritual life. They still held the doctrines of the Spirit-filled life. But they had lost the reality of that life.

Peter says about such people, “It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them” (2 Pet.2:21).

What does the Lord do with such people? He says that He will spit (vomit) the messenger and the church out of His mouth (v.16).

What do we vomit out of our mouths? We vomit out food that we ate, but which did not get digested, and therefore which did not become a part of our physical body.

When we give ourselves to the Lord, the intention is that we should be “digested by Him” (“No longer I but Christ”) and thus become a part of His Body. If however, we still continue seeking our own, then we will end up like that undigested food - finally vomited out by the Lord.

You may even have been the Lord’s messenger for a time, and yet be vomited out so that you are no longer His messenger. We can be “in Christ” at one time and be vomited out later so that we are out of Him.

However, the Lord still had hope for this messenger and for this church. This is amazing indeed. He is always seeking to redeem even that which is wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. What men would have discarded long ago, the Lord still seeks to salvage. That’s why even the worst among us can have hope. We can all be salvaged - if we repent.

The Lord advises the messenger and the church to BUY gold, white garments and eyesalve from Him (v.18).

There are some things in the Christian life that are free. Forgiveness of sins and the baptism in the Spirit are free gifts of God.

But the parables of the hidden treasure in the field and of the man seeking fine pearls, teach unmistakably that the kingdom of God can be obtained only by those who are willing to give up everything. (Mt.13:44-46).

To the Christians at Laodicea too, the Lord says the same thing - that they have to pay a price to obtain spiritual wealth. They have to buy it.

Gold refined by fire symbolises the divine nature that is pure, without any alloy in it. This is what we need to partake of - within us.

The white garment speaks of outward righteousness - purity in our external life, speech, behaviour etc.,

Eyesalve refers to the revelation of the Holy Spirit that enables us to see everything from God’s point of view. Thus we can understand God’s Word and His purposes, and also see ourselves as God sees us. It enables us to see the worthlessness of earthly wealth and honour too.

To obtain all of these, we have to pay a price. We have to forsake everything and be “sold-out” for God. If we do that, we can have these riches that the Lord offers - real riches that have eternal value.

The Lord then says that He rebukes and disciplines only those whom He loves (v.19). It is a great comfort to know this. When we are corrected and chastened by the Lord, we can bear in mind that these are but indications of His great love. They prove that He still has hope for us.

If on the contrary, when you sin, you don’t feel rebuked in your conscience, and you are not chastened by the Lord, then you are truly on dangerous ground. Perhaps the Lord has given up trying to change you. And maybe the reason is that you have persistently refused to hear His gentle voice of correction in the past.

“If you are without discipline, of which ALL (true sons) have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” (Heb.12:8).

The Lord exhorts the messenger and the church at Laodicea to “burn with zeal and repent” (v.19). Even our repentance can be sluggish. We must be zealous and wholehearted about our repentance too.

The Lord is now standing outside the church, knocking, trying to get in (v.20). In the meetings of the church however, it is “Business As Usual” with praise and prayer and preaching going on with monotonous regularity. But the congregation is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the Lord Himself is on the outside!

Don’t ever belong to a church where the Lord Himself is outside the door. For if He is on the outside, you have no business to be inside yourself!! You should be outside too. If the bridegroom is standing outside, the bride should be with her bridegroom.

The Lord now calls individuals in the church to open their hearts to Him. How can they do that? The context makes it clear that it is by burning with zeal and repenting that they can open the door. The door is not the door of our intellect or the door of our emotions. It is the door of our will. When the will is yielded, then the Lord enters in and fellowships (dines) with us in our spirit.

Again there is the call to overcome. This time He specifies that we can overcome EVEN AS HE ALSO OVERCAME in the days when He was on earth (v.21).

Jesus was the first Overcomer. He is our Forerunner, Who has already overcome the world and the Devil. Thus He was exalted to sit down with the Father on His throne. Now we can overcome all of these just as He did. If we do, we too can sit with Him on His throne one day, as His Bride.

Finally, we hear the same word again at the end : “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (v.22).

The seven messengers and churches that we have looked at are pictures of seven types of messengers and churches that have been in existence in all these 20 centuries. These seven types of messengers and churches are existing in the world even today. Each of us can evaluate ourselves and see where we stand.

When we look at the five messengers and churches that are rebuked by the Lord we see in them a definite downward trend:

(1) In Ephesus, we see the loss of first love for the Lord. When we lose our devotion for Christ, we have taken the first step downwards. In a little while, this leads on to our losing our love for our fellow-believers too.

(2) In Pergamum, we see that worldliness has crept in slyly through the teaching of Balaam. The Nicolaitans (who were kept out of the church at Ephesus) have now got power here. When devotion to Christ is lost, worldliness creeps in and the religious hierarchy takes over the church. Once a religious hierarchy has taken over the leadership of a church, Babylon is built easily.

(3) In Thyatira, the church has become thoroughly worldly, and as a result religious harlotry is rampant. A woman now has power to influence the church, and is proclaiming false grace and counterfeiting the gifts of the Spirit too (prophecy in particular).

(4) In Sardis, we see hypocrisy. Sin is covered up and man’s opinion is valued more than God’s. The messenger of the church is spiritually asleep (unaware of spiritual realities). The form of godliness however hides from the eyes of men the spiritual death that the Lord sees in him.

(5) In Laodicea, things have degenerated to such an extent that the body has not only died, but also begun to decay and stink. Lukewarmness and spiritual pride are the cause of the death. In the above four churches, there was something good that the Lord could still see in each of them. But here in Laodicea He could see nothing.

None of the messengers of the above churches were aware of the true spiritual condition of their own lives or of their churches. All of them were complacent because of the high opinion they had of themselves. They could not hear what the Lord had to say to them personally, because they were all busy preparing sermons to preach to others. They were more interested in preaching than in seeing their own need.

It is very easy, once a person has become the messenger of a church, to imagine that he himself is beyond the need for correction. The Bible speaks of “an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to receive instruction” (Eccl.4:13).

The messengers of these five churches were all like that foolish king. Their word had been law for so long that they could not even imagine the possibility of their now being wrong in any matter!! Such was their deluded state. They imagined that they could never lose the anointing of God from their lives. Their proud attitude was what made them spiritually deaf.

King Saul was another foolish king who had started out well but who fell by the wayside very soon. He was “little in his own eyes” when he was first anointed by the Lord as king (1 Sam.15:17). But he did not keep himself in low thoughts about himself. And so he lost the anointing of God. The anointing then moved on to young David. Saul realised this, but he refused to face up to it. He stubbornly continued to sit on his throne and sought to kill David. Finally, God took away Saul’s life and put David on the throne.

We see similar situations in many churches today. The anointing of the Spirit has departed from many who were once the Lord’s messengers, and is now resting powerfully on some younger brothers in their churches. But the “old and foolish kings” cannot bear to see this. So what do they do? Their jealousy and their selfish desire to preserve their kingdoms prompts them to suppress those young brothers in one way or the other.

Perhaps something similar may have been happening in the five backslidden churches of Asia Minor as well. So the Lord gave those messengers one last warning.

There is no partiality with God and He has no special favourites. Even the apostle Paul realised that he could fall away and be disqualified if he was not careful to live a disciplined life (1 Cor.9:27).

Paul told Timothy, “Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you” (1 Tim.4:16).

Timothy had to watch over his own life first of all. He would then be able to experience salvation from unChristlikeness in his own life and thus be enabled to lead others to such a salvation as well. This is the way the Lord has appointed for all His messengers in every church.

Paul told the elders of the church in Ephesus also to watch their own lives first of all and then the lives of their flock (Acts 20:28).

This is the responsibility of every messenger of the Lord - to preserve his own life first of all in purity and under the constant anointing of the Spirit. “Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head.” (Eccl.9:8).

The Lord had wanted to speak to these messengers directly. But they did not have listening ears. Finally He had to speak to them through an apostle. Thank God that there was at least a John who could hear the Lord’s voice clearly.

In spite of their failures however, the Lord had hope for all five messengers - for He still held them all in His right hand (Rev.2:1). If they repented, they could become glorious brothers once again. And their churches could radiate the glory of the Lord once more. If however they failed to heed this last warning, then the Lord would cast them off.

In the midst of all this degeneration, there were two wonderful messengers and churches (at Smyrna and at Philadelphia) against whom the Lord had no charge at all.

The Lord had to rebuke and correct the five backslidden messengers and their churches because they had not judged themselves.

The two faithful messengers and their churches did not need any rebuke, because they were constantly judging themselves and cleansing themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit (2 Cor.7:1).

God’s Word says, “If we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged” (1 Cor.11:31).

“It is time for judgment to begin with the household of God...it begins with US FIRST” (1 Pet.4:17). This is the identifying mark of the true house of God that we judge ourselves FIRST and CONSTANTLY.

The Lord gives us the privilege of judging ourselves now, so that when we stand at His judgment-seat one day, there will be nothing left to be judged in our lives. That is why it is important for us to read and meditate on God’s Word with an attitude of self-judgment. Thus we too can be among those in whom the Lord finds nothing to rebuke or correct.

In the messages to every one of these churches is a call to individual believers to overcome. Overcomers are those who arrest the downward trend (that we have seen above) in their own life, and thus radiate the glory of the Lord. They recognise that they have the same flesh with the same evil tendencies to backslide that are found in others around them. But they stand against those tendencies and crucify them in the power of the Spirit.

What should overcomers do today? Should they stay in the dead churches that they find themselves in, or should they come out?

In the letters to the seven churches in “Revelation”, we find no command to the overcomers to leave their local churches. But that was because there was ONLY ONE CHURCH in each locality. And the Lord had not yet removed the lampstand from any of them.

The situation is very different today. There are many “churches” in our towns and cities these days. But we cannot call all of these the lampstands of the Lord, for in most cases the Lord never founded them. Their messengers were never stars in the Lord’s hand at any time, because He never called them or appointed them to eldership.

In many other cases the Lord has given up both messenger and church long ago, because of their refusal to repent. So we need discernment to see whether the “anointing” of the Lord is on a messenger and a church before deciding to become a part of that church.

Overcomers must certainly not become a part of any local “church” that does not proclaim “the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27).

The messenger at Ephesus was warned that if he did not repent, the Lord would remove the lampstand out of its place (Rev.2:5). What would have happened if the messenger had NOT repented? The Lord would have set him aside as His messenger and appointed someone else.

What would have happened if the church at Ephesus also had NOT repented? The church would have been set aside and thus become one that was unrecognised by the Lord. They would no doubt still have continued as a congregation - but only as a Babylonian “church” thereafter, in the Lord’s eyes.

They would have pulled out of the old “church” as soon as the Lord pulled out of it. And they would have started gathering separately. Those who had eyes to see the moving of the Lord away from the old system to the new church would then have gathered together with these overcomers. That new gathering would then have become the church at Ephesus - for the Lord would have placed His lampstand in their midst.

If at any time this new church now refused to walk in the ways of God or to judge itself, then the Lord would have had to remove the lampstand from their midst and start all over again. There is no partiality with God.

The history of the Christian church shows how this process has been repeated over and over again in every part of the world, during these past twenty centuries. This is why we now find so many Babylonian “churches” in every place. It can become so bad at one stage that there is no lampstand left in a city at all. Every so-called church can be a Babylonian one.

We must in any case, never stay in a “church” after the Lord Himself has pulled out of it. Our loyalty must always be to the Lord and to His church - not to “the church we grew up in”. Human attachments can hinder us from moving on with the Lord.

From our study of these seven churches, we have seen clearly what it is that the Lord looks for in a church. And so, overcomers must seek to fellowship with a church in their locality :

To build such churches, the Lord needs messengers who are gripped by the truths that we have considered in Chapters 2 and 3.

May the Lord find many such men and many such churches in every part of the world in these last days.

Before we turn to Chapter Four, it will be good to remember what we read earlier, “Blessed is he who reads and those who hears the words of the prophecy, and obeys the things which are written in it; for the time is near” (Rev.1:3).

When believers study prophecy, their interest is usually related to knowing all about the tribulation, the millenium and the symbolism of the trumpets and vials etc., But the important thing is not understanding prophecy but obeying what is written. Prophecy, like the rest of Scripture, is also meant for obedience!

There are many symbols and signs used in the book of Revelation. It is impossible for anyone to be dogmatic in interpreting them. God has deliberately left these things vague, so that He can separate those believers who are preoccupied with explaining the symbols from those who are seeking to obey His commands.

We are all familiar with the beatitudes - the “Blessed”s in Matthew 5. There are seven “Blessed”s in Revelation too. There is one in the first chapter: “Blessed is the one who reads and obeys”(Rev.1:3). And there is one in the last chapter “Blessed is the one who keeps on obeying the words of this book” (Rev.22:7).

Right at the beginning and at the very end of this book, you have this blessing promised to all who obey what is written in this book. Between these two “Blessed”s lies the whole book of Revelation.

Obedience is what God requires even in the last book of the Bible. In no place in Revelation, do we find a blessing promised on those who understand and interpret all the symbols or on those who can draw a prophetic chart to show the time-schedule for the various events prophesied etc., It is obedience that God looks for - right from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22.

Revelation 4 to 22 is written for those who have already listened to the call of the Spirit in Chapters 2 and 3, to overcome. Never forget that. These chapters have not been written for those who want to merely increase in understanding.

In Revelation 1:1, we saw that God gave this revelation to Jesus Christ to be shown to His servants. The meaning of this book is not something that God wants to conceal from us. No. He wants to reveal its meaning to us. This is the faith that we must have as we study this prophecy. According to your faith, be it unto you! If you come in faith saying, “Lord, I am Your bondservant. I want to be an overcomer. I believe You will make me understand this prophecy”, then you will understand - not otherwise.

V.1: After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.’

In Revelation 3:20 we saw the necessity of a door being opened on earth. There we saw Jesus standing at the door of our hearts and knocking. If we open that door (yield our wills) to Jesus, then Jesus opens a door for us “in heaven”, as we see here. We cannot experience the opening of the door in heaven, if we haven’t yielded our wills to Him and made Him Lord of our lives. And then we hear Jesus saying, “Come up here”. John was on Patmos on earth. And Jesus told him to come up higher - to heaven - so that he could see what would happen in the future.

God is always calling us to come up higher. But we have to respond to that call. If we don’t respond, we will remain forever where we are. If John had not responded, the book of Revelation would have closed with just three chapters!!

V.2: Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne.

This is how God lifts us up also in the Spirit so that we can see the things of earth from a heavenly standpoint! As we approach the end of time, it is important that we learn to look at the things that are going to happen on earth, not from an earthly standpoint, but a heavenly one.

Jesus told us in Luke 21:28, “When these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads”. That means the same thing - to look at things from heaven’s viewpoint. Otherwise, we will be filled with fear. But when we look up, we see that our Father is in control of everything. And so we need to experience what John experienced too - in our spirits.

And what was the first thing that John saw? Not the antichrist or the tribulation, but “GOD’S THRONE”. That’s what we need to see in these days - God Almighty RULING and CONTROLLING everything. If we don’t see that first of all, we will have many problems and difficulties on earth.

V.3: And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance.

The jasper stone is a stone that is crystal clear (Rev.21:11). And the sardius is flaming red in colour, speaking of God’s judgement on sin. So we see that the very first thing emphasized about the One who sits on the throne through both these symbols is His holiness and purity.

There was a rainbow around the throne. The rainbow was given by God immediately after the flood, when Noah came out of the ark. It was a sign of God’s covenant with the people of the earth that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood”. The rainbow therefore is a symbol of God’s grace.

So we see “TRUTH AND GRACE” on the throne. This is the glory that was seen in Jesus too (Jn.1:14).

Throughout the book of Revelation we see these two aspects of God’s glory alternately - grace and judgement. God is both good and severe (Rom.11:22).

V.4: And around the throne were twenty four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw twenty four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads.

Among the angels whom God created, we read in Colossians 1:16 that there are “thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities”. So these 24 elders symbolize such spirit-beings who have authority around the throne of God. And we will see, later in Revelation that one of their primary tasks is to lead people in the worship of God. Their white garments speak of their purity, and their golden crowns speak of their authority.

V.5: And from the throne proceed flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.

The lightning and thunder are meant to emphasise God’s majesty and glory, and the fact that He has total control over everything that is going to come.

And the seven lamps of fire we are told are the seven Spirits of God - or in other words, the sevenfold Holy Spirit (Isa.11:2,3). Notice that the Holy Spirit is represented by seven lamps of fire - symbolising perfect purity.

“Our God is a consuming fire” (Heb.11:29). Many would like to think of God always as a God of love. But He is also a consuming fire.

I have seen wall-plaques in many homes with the words, “GOD IS LOVE”. But it is rare to find a wall-plaque with the words, “GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE”. Man does not like to think of God as a consuming fire. But whether we like to think of this fact or not, He is still a consuming fire.

When people speak about their being filled with the Holy Spirit, and of having experiences in the Holy Spirit, they must remember that any genuine experience of the Holy Spirit will bring the fire of God’s purity into their lives. If that doesn’t happen, the experience must be regarded as counterfeit.

V.6-8: And before the throne there was, as it were, a sea of glass like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind and the first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf and the third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.

The lion is the king of beasts, the calf the king of cattle, the eagle the king of birds and man the king of creation. The four living beings represent the heavenly cherubs. This is clear when we compare this passage with Ezekiel 1:4-20 and 10:20. There we read that there were wheels on earth for each of the cherubs, and that whenever the cherubs moved, the wheels moved with them. We also read that the wheels moved in the same direction as the Spirit was moving. Those wheels represent earthly events and circumstances, and the vision was meant to portray this truth that “Although our circumstances may seem to go round and round in different directions like wheels, God is in total control of every one of them”. God alone determines the direction in which our circumstances move.

These cherubim are the guardians of the glory of God. The book of Ezekiel deals with the subject of the glory of God departing from Israel, because Israel sinned. We read, “Then the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub to the threshold of the temple, and the temple was filled with the cloud” (Ezek.10:4). And then in verse 18, we read, “ the glory of the Lord departed”.

When Adam and Eve were turned out of the garden of Eden, we read in Genesis 3:24 that “God drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction, to guard the way to the tree of life”. The cherubs with their flaming sword were to prevent sinners from taking part of the tree of life. That sword finally fell on our Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross and now the way to the tree of life has been opened. Today, we can all partake of the tree of life, if we agree with God’s judgment on our flesh - if we allow His sword to fall on our flesh. It is impossible to enter into the Divine life, without first being crucified with Christ.

True servants of God stand in the church today, like those cherubs, with flaming swords, and guard the glory of God and His holiness.

Isaiah too had a vision, where he saw the seraphs in heaven crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts” (Isa.6:1-3). Isaiah saw those seraphs using only two of their six wings to fly. With the other four they covered their faces and worshipped God. Those seraphs had never sinned. Yet they had to cover their faces when they came into the presence of God. How much more you and I need to do that!

This is the God we worship. “HOLINESS” is the predominant characteristic of heaven - whether of cherubs or of seraphs. That’s why it is a disgrace when a person calls himself a Christian and doesn’t seek to live in purity.

V.9-11: And when the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, ‘Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honour and power, for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they existed, and were created’.

The 24 elders are quick to cast their crowns down before God. In other words, they are saying, “Lord, if we have crowns upon our heads, they are what YOU gave us, and so we give them back to You.”

When God gives us some position or authority in the church, that is not something we are to be proud of. If God places a crown on our head, we must immediately cast it down at His feet, recognising that He alone is worthy of all honour. To show off our authority or gift is of the very spirit of hell.

In heaven, they cast their crowns down and say, “Thou alone are worthy, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power.”

The elders remind us in their song of another matter that we must never forget: That God created us according to His will, and we fulfil the purpose of our creation only when we do His will, and not our own.

V.1,2: And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a book written inside and on the back, sealed up with seven seals.And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the book and to break its seals?’

Here we see God holding a book (a scroll). A scroll is a large length of parchment rolled up that has to be unrolled in order to be read.

To understand what this scroll symbolizes, we need to turn to the Old Testament. In Leviticus 25:24,25, we read “For every piece of your property, you are to provide for the redemption of your land. If a fellow-countryman of yours becomes so poor that he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsman is to come and buy back what his relative has sold”.

There was a law in Israel, that when a man became so poor that he had to sell his property, his nearest relative had to buy it for him. That was called “redeeming the land”. How does this apply to us?

God gave Adam the whole earth. He told him to rule over it and to subdue it. But Adam disobeyed and became poor. Thus he gave away the title-deed of the earth to Satan. Then Satan became the ruler of the earth.

When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he showed Him the glory of the world and told Him, “I will give you all this, because it has been handed over to me” (Lk.4:6). Who had handed it over to him? Adam.

There are many gifts that God has given man that He has handed over to Satan. For example, God gives men money and health, and they hand them over to Satan, by using them for indulging in selfish pleasures.

But we read in Leviticus 25 that only a close relative, a near kinsman could redeem it. That’s why Jesus had to come as a Man. Only thus could He be our Relative and Redeemer and redeem the earth back to God.

In Jeremiah 32:6-9 we read of Jeremiah buying a land for his relative according to this law. He paid the money and signed the purchase deed. The deed was a scroll which was then rolled up and sealed (Jer.32:10).

It is a similar scroll that we read of in Revelation 5- the purchase deed of the earth. And the angel asked who was worthy to redeem it.

In the book of Ruth, we see one more picture of this type of redemption. Ruth was a Gentile who had married a Jew in Moab. When her husband died, she came to Israel with her mother-in-law Naomi. They were both very poor and someone had to redeem the land that belonged to Ruth’s late husband. The one who could redeem it was a near relative called Boaz. So Ruth went up to Boaz and said “Can you redeem it for me?”

The Law stated that if a man died leaving his wife, his brother must marry her (Deut.25:8 to 10). So Boaz had to purchase this land as well as marry Ruth. But when Ruth came to Boaz, he told her, “There is someone who is a closer relative to you than I am. We will have to ask him first. If he is unwilling to purchase the land and marry you, then I will do both.” So Boaz told the other relative. But the other man was unwilling. So Boaz redeemed Ruth.

Ruth is a type of the church - poor and needing redemption. The first relative, the LAW could not redeem us. Then, Boaz typifying Christ, redeems us and marries us. This is what Romans 7:4 says, “My brethren you are dead to the law, so that you can be married to Christ”.

V.3-5: And no one in heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, was able to open the book, or to look into it. And I began to weep greatly, because no one was found worthy to open the book, or to look into it; and one of the elders said to me, ‘Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.’

No one was found worthy or able to unseal the book of earth’s redemption. The Law of God could not do it. And when John saw that no one could redeem the earth that man had lost, he wept.

He wept greatly - because no one was found worthy to open the book. There was no relative who came forward to help this poor “girl” who had lost all her lands, and no one to marry “her” either.

And then one of the elders proclaimed the good news to John that the Lion of Judah, the Root of David, was worthy. Jesus, the Root of David also became the Seed of David (Rev.22:16). Jesus came as a Man, became our closest relative and redeemed both us and the earth.

So the gospel message is, “Stop weeping! Someone has come as a man - as your close relative - and loved you enough to redeem you.”

He could not have become our closest relative if He had not come as a Man. That’s why Paul says, that an essential part of the gospel is the fact that Jesus Christ was born of the seed of David (Rom.1:3; 2 Tim.2:8). That is why our Lord Jesus Christ is worthy, and that is why we read further in Rev.5. that they sing a new song of praise to Him in heaven.

V.6,7: And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. And He came, and He took it out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.

When John turned to see the lion, what he saw was a lamb- a lamb as it has been slain - symbolising Jesus Christ crucified - standing between God and man as the one Mediator between them.

Jesus was always like a lion, towards Satan, sin and the spirit of the world (wherever He found it) - fighting them and resisting them. But towards people, Jesus was always like a lamb. People could beat Him, insult Him, and ill-treat Him, and He would never retaliate.

In the world, we see the opposite of that. People are like a lamb towards the Devil, afraid of him, submitting to him and yielding to sin. But they behave like lions towards each other - tearing each other apart and fighting with each other. This is the spirit of the antichrist - the opposite of Christ.

The word “Lamb” is a frequently used title of Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. (Jn.1:29).

The seven horns that the Lamb has, symbolize “all power”. Seven is the perfect member and the horns speak of strength and power. All power in heaven and on earth has been given to our Lord.

The seven eyes are again the sevenfold Holy Spirit of God. This is another symbol of the Holy Spirit, that speaks of His perfect discernment.

Here we are also told that these seven eyes have been sent out into all the earth. Why? The answer is found in 2 Chronicles 16:9, “The eyes of the Lord, (the sevenfold Holy Spirit) move to and fro throughout the whole earth to strongly support those whose hearts are completely His”. It is very important, as we look to the future, that we recognise that the Holy Spirit is working all across the earth to support us strongly, if our hearts are completely His. When we see this, we won’t be afraid even if the Devil himself opposes us.

And then we read, “And He came, and He took it out of the right Hand of Him who sat on the throne” (v.7). Look at the authority here - walking up to the Father and taking the book from His hand. Which man can do that? Only Jesus, our Lord and Saviour.

There are some “Christian” groups that teach that there are NOT three Persons in the Godhead but only one. Therefore they baptize people in the Name of “Jesus only”. This is a great deception of the devil that removes the distinction between the Father and the Son as two separate Persons and thus leaves us without any Mediator (See 1 Tim.2:5).

But here we see the Father sitting on the throne and Jesus coming and taking the scroll from the Father’s hand, proving that He had the right to take it - as the only mediator between God and men.

In Ezekiel 2:9,10 we see something more about this scroll: “Lo, a scroll....written on the front and the back, and written on it were lamentations, mourning and woe”. Various judgments were written on the scroll. Zechariah also saw a scroll, showing God’s curse going over the earth, because people had disobeyed God’s commandments (Zech.5:1-3). Two of the 10 commandments are mentioned especially: (1) Do not steal; and (2) Do not to take the Lord’s name in vain. Everyone who stole would be judged according to the writing on the outside of the scroll. And everyone who swore would be judged according to the writing on the inside of the scroll.

God had written the ten commandments on two tablets of stone. On one were written four commandments relating to man’s relationship with God. On the other were written six commandments that related to man’s relationship with his fellowman. Swearing broke one commandment on the first tablet and stealing broke one commandment on the second tablet. So the two sides of the scroll represent the ten commandments of God that have been disobeyed by the human race, necessitating God’s judgment falling on man.

As the 7 seals are opened, we can therefore expect to see the judgment that will come upon man for his disobedience to God’s commandments.

We could therefore look at the question, “Who is worthy to open the book and to break its seals?” (verse 2), as “Who is worthy to execute judgment upon the human race for their disobeying God’s commandments”.

When the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus, He asked them, as it were, a similar question, “Who is worthy to throw a stone at her? (Jn.8:1-12).”

In the case of the adulterous woman, only the sinless Jesus was qualified to throw a stone at her. But He did not. He said, “I do not condemn you”. Jesus had come then to initiate the age of grace. 2000 years have gone by and the age of grace is almost over now. One of these days, the same Jesus will return to judge the world.

The unsealing of a scroll also means giving us understanding on what is written in the scroll. A sealed book is a book that we cannot understand. A book that is unsealed however is something that we can understand. Isaiah 29:11-12 says, “The entire vision shall be to you like the words of a sealed book, which when they give it to the one who is literate, saying, `Please read this’, he will say, `I cannot, for IT IS SEALED’. Then the book will be given to the one who is illiterate saying, `Please read this’. And he will say, `I cannot read’”. The literate person becomes as foolish as the illiterate person when confronted with a sealed book!! Why so? Verse 13 gives us the answer. The Lord says, “Because the people draw near with their words and honour me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from me”.

If we approach the book of Revelation with this attitude - drawing near with our words but not with our hearts - then the book will be a sealed book to us. “The Lord poured a deep sleep upon the prophets and covered the eyes of the seers” in Isaiah’s time, so that God’s Word was like a sealed book to them (Isa.29:10).

The book of Revelation however is not a sealed book. It says in Rev.22:10, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near”. If our eyes are blinded to its meaning, the reason must be that our hearts are far from the Lord. God has given the book of Revelation, to open the eyes of His bondservants.

V.8: And when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

Previously we saw the 24 elders falling down before the Father - (4:10). Now they fall down before the Lamb. We also see each of them having a golden bowl full of incense (representing the prayers of the saints).

These bowls contain the prayers that believers have prayed for 2000 years. Every prayer of ours goes into those bowls. One day, the bowls will be full and they will be poured out. That will be the result of the sum total of all the prayers that believers prayed - especially this prayer “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”. That prayer is asking the Lord to redeem the earth and to let His kingdom of righteousness come on earth.

Jesus told us to pray always! And even if nothing happens immediately, our prayers go into the bowl. One day that bowl will be filled - and then you will see things happen. That is why it is important to pray. Pray especially for the coming of the kingdom of God. That is more important than prayers for physical healing and other such matters.

In a few more years the bowl will be full and those angelic authorities will pour out the bowls before the Lord. And God’s final programme for winding up the affairs of this earth will begin. It is important for us to see that God acts in response to the prayers of the saints.

V.9,10: And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and Thou hast made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth”.

When it says that they sang a NEW song, it means that every time they sing “Thou art worthy”, it is fresh!

How is it with us? If we are filled with the Holy Spirit and walk the way of the cross daily, we can be fresh in our expressions of worship and praise to the Father and the Son, EVERY single time we do so.

Here it also says we will reign on the earth. Jesus has made us kings and priests. We rule in our spirit now. One day we will reign in our bodies as well.

V.11: And I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriad of myriads and thousands of thousands”.

That means that there are a hundred million angels in heaven plus many more millions!! So there are enough angels there for God to allot one for each child of God quite easily - many more than one each!!

We read in Hebrews 1:14 that the angels are ministering spirits sent forth to serve those who inherit salvation. God has allotted angels for each of us. When we believe that, we will be encouraged. Jesus taught that every child has an angel who sees the face of the Father and helps it (Matt.18:10). And those angels don’t leave us when we grow up.

V.12: And they also said with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.’.

All men are to honour the Son, exactly as they honour the Father. There is no doubt here that Jesus Christ is God, to be worshipped just as much as the Father is worshipped.

V.13,14: And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, ‘To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever’. And the four living creatures kept saying, ‘Amen’. And the elders fell down and worshipped.

Some people are offended when they hear people in a church say “Amen” and “Hallelujah”. How will such people live in heaven??

God has exalted Jesus because He humbled Himself, and given Him a Name that is above every name, so that one day at the Name of Jesus every knee, every thing in heaven and earth and under the earth will bow down to Him, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (Phil.2:8-11).

The most important confession that we must make to the unbeliever is that “Jesus Christ is Lord”. One day, the whole universe will say that. How wonderful that our eyes have been opened to see the Lordship of Jesus even now, and to see the worthiness of Him Who came as a Lamb towards men and as a Lion towards Satan. Jesus overcame the world (Jn.16:33), and paid the price for the earth to be redeemed back to God.

From Chapter 6 onwards, we see the more prophetic part of Revelation- the things which Jesus told John would take place in the FUTURE.

Whenever we study prophecy that is as yet unfulfilled, we must bear 1 Cor.13:12. in mind: “Now we see in a mirror dimly - but then face to face. Now I know in part but then I shall know fully”. God in His great wisdom, has allowed a lot of prophecy concerning the future to be seen by us only dimly as in a mirror. We must never forget that.

There is a great curiosity in our flesh to know everything about the future exactly. But the word of God has not been given to satisfy our curiosity. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God but the things which are revealed to us and to our children”. So there are things that are clearly revealed and things that are hidden.

Here are some things that have been clearly revealed: 2 Peter 1:4 states that “all things pertaining to life and godliness have been given to us”. Everything relating to partaking of the Divine nature has been revealed clearly. That is neither dim nor unclear. Romans 6:14 also is crystal clear when it says that “sin cannot rule over you when you are under grace”.

But the amazing thing is that most believers don’t look at such truths that are taught clearly. Instead they argue over the details of prophecy, that are often unclear. This is a dangerous attitude. We must have our priorities right. The greatest thing is not prophecy but love. We are never told to pursue after a clear understanding of prophecy. But we are told to pursue after love - the Divine nature (1 Cor.13:8,9,13; 14:1).

There are many parts of Biblical prophecy that we will know clearly only when they actually happen, and yet other things that we will know only when the Lord comes. But since the Lord has given us the book of Revelation, He must be expecting us to understand something, albeit dimly, about the future.

In chapter 6 we have a bird’s eye view of the future, upto the very end. Then from chapter 7 onwards, the Spirit comes back and fills up certain details in the remaining chapters. Praise God that this book has been written like that - so that it doesn’t satisfy our curiosity. In all of us, there is a great lust to study prophetic charts that claim to explain the sequence of events at the end time. But God does not satisfy our curiosity. The word of God, including the book of Revelation, was not given primarily for that.

Consider what Jesus told His apostles just before He went up to heaven. The apostles had asked Him, “Lord is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” They had thought that since Jesus was risen, He was now going to drive out the Romans and establish His millennial reign. Jesus did not say that such questions were unimportant. No. Instead, He said, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts 1:6,7). He told them that there was something else that they needed to know right then, and many other things that they did not need to know. And then He told them of the absolute necessity of receiving spiritual power. Not knowledge - but power! (Acts 1:8) - power to be His witnesses to the end of time. And remember that those were His last words on earth. This fact is important for us to bear in mind as we approach the book of Revelation.

V.1: And I saw when the lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, ‘Come’.

This invitation is extended 4 times - “Come”. In verse 3, the second living creature says “Come”. In verse 5, the third living creature says “Come”. And in verse 7, the fourth living creature says “Come”.

These are the four living creatures that we saw in Chapter 4:7. We saw there that they were like the cherubs that Ezekiel saw, and that they are leaders among the category in which they were created: the lion - king of the beasts; the calf - king of the cattle; man - king of creation; and eagle - king of the birds. So these 4 creatures who are saying “Come” in Chapter 6:1,3,5 & 7 are expressing the voice of creation, saying to Jesus “Come”.

At the end of the Bible we read that, John himself says “Amen, come Lord Jesus!” (Rev.22:20). But all creation itself is crying out for the Lord to come, as we read in Romans 8:19 to 22. It is a shame when those who call themselves believers do not have as anxious a longing as the rest of creation. The whole of creation is waiting for the “revealing of the sons of God”, when Jesus comes in His glory. In that day, the whole of creation will be set free from its slavery to corruption and enter into the glory of the sons of God. Right now however, creation is suffering “the pains of child birth” - a travail that will be completed only with the return of Christ.

And when these creatures say “Come”, the Lord Jesus will come - not as a lamb to take away the sins of the world, but as a lion to judge the sins of the world.

V.2: And I looked and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow, and a crown was given to him; and he went out conquering and to conquer.

Compare this with Revelation 19:11-16, where we read “I saw heaven opened; and behold a white horse, and He Who sat upon it is called Faithful and True; and in righteousness He judges and wages war. And His eyes are as a flame of fire and upon His head are many crowns....and on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS”. His name is called the Word of God”. That is our Lord Jesus Christ.But what we see here in Revelation 6:2 is slightly different. He doesn’t have many crowns on his head. Here it says that a crown was given to him. In other words, it is not something he obtained by his own right. He was allowed to have a crown. But he was on this white horse and he had a bow, and he went out, conquering and to conquer. This is a symbol of someone IMITATING Christ - someone claiming to be Christ.

If you read Matthew 24, you will find it to be very similar to Revelation 6. Both passages are dealing with the end of the age. There the disciples came to Jesus and asked Him “Tell us when will these things be, what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”(Matt.24:3).

And Jesus replied saying, “See to it that no one misleads you”(v.4). Here is the first white horse: “Many will come in my name saying that I AM THE CHRIST and will mislead many” That is the first sign that Jesus gave. And that is exactly what we see in Revelation 6:2 as well. Someone comes on a white horse drawing a whole lot of people after him - people who don’t know the Scriptures, who follow a person thinking that they are following the Lord and who are thus deceived and led astray. Jesus warned us saying that many would come IN HIS NAME and deceive us. Such a person is symbolised here as a rider on a white horse. He is a counterfeit Christ!!

Notice the number of times in this chapter that the phrase “it was given” occurs - “a crown was given to him...it was given to take peace from the earth....a great sword was given to him...authority was given to him” (v.2,4,8). In every instance, something evil comes forth. But in each case, it was after God had granted him permission. The first rider was permitted to have a crown. The second was permitted to take peace from the earth and allowed to have a great sword. The fourth rider was permitted to have authority over one-fourth of the earth.

When Pilate told Jesus that he had the authority to crucify Him, Jesus replied, saying, “You would have had no authority over me, unless it had been GIVEN TO YOU from above” (Jn.19:11). It was the Father Who allowed Pilate to have authority over Jesus. No-one can do anything on earth without God’s permission. It is our Father Who allows deceiving spirits to enter this world to deceive those who do not love the truth (2 Thess.2:10,11). All this deception will culminate with the arrival of the Antichrist - the counterfeit Christ - on the world scene. And most people will be deceived into thinking that he is indeed their “Messiah” and their “Saviour”, and that only by following him they can be saved.

But before the Antichrist arrives, many little antichrists have already arisen through the centuries and are arising even today.

“Children it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). If it was the last hour (11 pm) in 96 A.D., when John wrote that, it must be past 11.59 pm now. Only a few seconds are left now.

Many political leaders in history have been little antichrists, who drew people after themselves by demonic power. There are many heathen “godmen” in India who do the same. But that spirit is found in Christendom too. Gifted “Christian” leaders often get people to follow them instead of connecting them to Christ. There are many such leaders in Christian groups today, who are counterfeit “christs”.

The antichrist comes on a white horse, as Christ does. Satan comes as an angel of light, deceiving multitudes - and God permits him to do so, because He sees that the people do not love the truth so as to be saved from their sins.

We read here that the rider “went out conquering and to conquer” (v.2). Satan is bent on conquering man thoroughly.

V.3,4: And when He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, ‘Come’. And another, a red horse, went out, and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men should slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.

Permission was granted to him, to get people to slay one another and to take peace from the earth. This is a picture of war. The red colour of the horse speaks of bloodshed.

The second sign that Jesus gave His disciples was: “You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, see that you are not frightened, for those things must take place but that is not yet the end - for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom” (Mt.24:6).

The second rider on a red horse takes peace from the earth and men kill one another. There have always been wars, throughout the past 19 centuries, since John wrote the book of Revelation. But in all these 1900 years, there were never any wars that were called “World Wars” until the 20th century. Wars between nations also have increased tremendously in the 20th century. There was no terrorism (as we see it nowadays) until the 20th century.

V.5,6: And when He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying ‘Come’. And I looked, and behold a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard as it were a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine’

The third horse is a black one - and signifies famine and scarcity of food. This corresponds to the third sign that Jesus gave His disciples - famines (Matt.24:7). Things will become very difficult especially for the poor people. They will be able to buy only one kilogram of wheat with a day’s salary. Or if they want cheaper food, they will be able to buy 3 kilograms of barley with a day’s wages. As we approach the end, there will be increasing shortage of the necessities of life. But luxuries like the oil and wine will not be touched. This means that the rich will live with plenty, while the poor will have to struggle in order to survive.

James says, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you .. your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure! You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter” (Jas.5:1,3,5).

V.7,8: And when He broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come’, and I looked, and behold, an ashen horse: and he who sat on it had the name ‘Death’; and Hades was following with him. And authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Here we see a sickly pale horse. And its rider was “Death”. Following it is “Hades” - which is a name for the place where people go when they die. Authority was given to them over a quarter of the earth . The world’s population is over six billion, and so this represents authority over 1500 million people. Four instruments used to kill people are mentioned here: (1) weapons of warfare, (2) famines, (3) diseases and (4) wild beasts.

It is important for us to know why God permits these four judgments, so that we have no part in them.

In Ezekiel 14:13,14, we read that the Lord says, “If a country sins against me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch out My hand against it, destroy its supply of bread, send famine against it, and cut off from it both men and beasts, even though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, by their righteousness they could deliver themselves”.

Noah, Daniel and Job were the most righteous people of their time. Noah saved his wife, his three sons and their wives. Daniel saved His three friends. Job saved his family. But God says that if they had lived at this time, they would have been able to save only themselves. They would not be able to deliver their sons and daughters, if those children were not righteous themselves.

And then God says, “If I were to cause wild beasts to pass through the land, and they depopulated it, and it became desolate so that no one would pass through it because of the beasts, though these three men were in its midst as I live, declares the Lord God, they could not deliver either their sons or their daughters. They alone would be delivered.” (Ezek.14:15,16).

And then the Lord adds, “How much more when I send my four severe judgments against Jerusalem - sword, famine, wild beasts and plague of disease.” (v.21). These are the four judgments mentioned in Revelation 6:7,8.

But God is gracious in that only one-fourth of the world’s population is wiped out, so that the others may turn to righteousness. It is only by righteousness that we can protect ourselves from these severe judgments. We cannot save our wives, our sons, our brothers or our sisters, unless they are righteous too.

For all righteous people the promise in Psalm 91 is particularly relevant. There we read of these four judgments:

(3) famine - “the destruction that lays waste at noon” (noon is the time when we eat and this refers to lack of food) (v.6);

(4) wild animals - “you will tread upon the lion and cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will trample down” (v.13).

These judgments will not touch the righteous. “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not approach you” (v.7).

One-quarter of the world’s population may be affected. But “IT WILL NOT APPROACH YOU!”

“You will only look with your eyes, and see the recompense of the wicked. For you have made the Lord, your dwelling place...No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your house”(v.8-13).

Why? The Lord says, “Because he loved me, therefore I will deliver him, I will set him securely on high” (v.14). The Lord will set us on high. Let us make sure that we qualify for that promise to be fulfilled in our lives.

V.9-11: And when He broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; and they cried out with a loud voice saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, wilt Thou refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ And there was given to each of them a white robe, and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, should be completed also.

The fifth seal symbolises tribulation. These people were killed “because of the word of God and because of the testimony which they held”.

Paul exhorted Timothy to “hold fast the form of sound words” (2 Tim.1:13). Here were people who had held fast to the whole counsel of God. They were not compromisers or men-pleasers who preached to tickle people’s ears. “If we please men, we cannot be servants of Christ” (Gal.1:10). These were true servants of Christ who held fast the word of God as their testimony; and because they held fast to the word of God, they were killed.

In Matthew 23:34,35, Jesus said “Behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes (or Bible teachers); some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your assemblies and persecute from city to city, that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar”.

When Cain killed Abel the Lord told Cain, “Your brother’s blood is crying unto me from the ground - because you’ve slain him”. Here in Revelation 6, those who were slain cry out with a loud voice saying, “How long O Lord will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” This is the cry of the Old Testament prophets and saints. In Psalm 79:10, we read “Let there be known among the nations in our sight vengeance for the blood of Thy servants, which has been shed”. We read similar prayers in Psalm 94:1-7 and 119:84. These all express the same thing: “Lord take revenge on these people who have shed our blood” - just like Abel’s blood cried out for vengeance.

But when we turn to Hebrews 12, we see something different. Here the old covenant is contrasted with the new covenant. We today have not come to Mount Sinai and to Moses, but to Mount Zion and to Jesus “the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood (of Jesus) which speaks better than the blood of Abel” (v.21-24) . The blood of Abel cried out for revenge, whereas the blood of Jesus cried out for mercy and for forgiveness!! Therein lies one fundamental difference between the old and the new covenants.

Those who seek for vengeance have not understood what the blood of Jesus was shed for. When the blood was flowing from Jesus’ body - from His head, hands, back and feet - He prayed, “Father forgive them”. When the blood was flowing from Stephen’s body, he prayed, “Lord don’t lay this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:60). That is the cry of the new-covenant saint. One mark of a true disciple of Jesus is that He does not desires vengeance on his enemies.

So these slain saints in Revelation 6 are obviously Old Testament saints because they are asking for vengeance to be taken on their enemies. When John was given this vision, it was only about 65 years since the church had been established and there were very few Christians who had been slain for their faith by that time. Most of the slain saints were the ones that Jesus spoke of - from the time of Abel to Zechariah. These were the ones whose souls were under the altar. They were given white robes and told to wait a little longer UNTIL the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed (during these 20 centuries of the church age) would also be completed. These “brethren” are the new-covenant saints who are slain for the word of God.

There is a particular number of saints that have to be slain for the Word of God and for their testimony. God knows that number. In the past 2000 years, many Christians have died like Jesus and Stephen, asking God to forgive those who killed them. They were killed for the Word of God and for the testimony they held. As soon as this number is complete, God will come down in judgment on this world that killed His servants. Till then we must be patient.

So the fifth seal shows us that tribulation and persecution are our appointed lot on earth. In Matthew 24:9, we see the fifth sign that Jesus gives His disciples is tribulation, being hated by ALL nations and being killed for His Name’s sake.

The day is coming when EVERY NATION on the face of the earth will hate the true disciples of Jesus. Nominal Christians and compromising “believers” will not be hated. They will be accepted and honoured! But the ones who hold to God’s Word and proclaim the whole counsel of God will be hated. And at that time many will fall away. They will join Babylonian Christianity (false, compromising Christian churches), because there their lives will thereby be safe. Such Christians will betray the true disciples of Jesus. These things are happening even today in many lands.

Jesus said to His disciples, “In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage, I have OVERCOME the world” (Jn.16:33). Jesus taught there, very clearly, that we will have to face tribulation. The doctrine that believers will escape tribulation is not the teaching of the Holy Spirit, but a doctrine of men.

It is a comfort-loving, compromising, diplomatic Christianity that wants to escape tribulation. And such a Christianity has naturally produced a theology that teaches that “the church will escape tribulation”, even though Jesus clearly stated, “In the world you shall have tribulation.” The Lord is not going to take us out of the world. No He said, “I have overcome (not “escaped from”) the world.” And He wants us to be overcomers too.

Jesus prayed to the Father saying, “Father, I am NOT asking You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from evil (sin)” (Jn.17:15). How do many Christians then teach that we will be taken out of the world so that we do not face tribulation. Jesus prayed that we should be kept from sinning, not from tribulation. He wants us to be kept from disobedience to God and from the power of Satan, the Evil one, but not from persecution - because Jesus knows that persecution and tribulation are good for us. That is our calling.

When the early apostles went around establishing churches and teaching the disciples, did they teach them saying, “God loves you so much that He will help you to escape from all tribulation”? NO. They told them, “We all have to enter God’s kingdom through many tribulations” (Acts 14:22). That was the message of Jesus and of the apostles. But unfortunately, that message is not being preached today.

In Revelation 6:12-17, we read about the wrath of God that is going to fall upon the earth. Tribulation is the wrath of man and Satan poured out on true believers. God has never promised us that He will protect us from such wrath. Millions of true disciples of Jesus have faced unimaginable tribulation and persecution and been killed during the past 20 centuries. God allowed them to face all of that bravely.

But when it comes to the wrath of God (Rev.6:12-17), we will certainly escape.

V.12-17: And I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth and the great men and commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the WRATH of the Lamb; for the great day of their WRATH has come; and who is able to stand ?

Here is the first place in the book of Revelation where we find the word ‘wrath’ appearing referring to the wrath of God and of the Lamb. In contrast, tribulation (which we saw under the fifth seal in verses 9-11) was the wrath of man instigated by Satan.

The disciples of Jesus will be taken up to meet the Lord in the air, before this judgment falls. We see this sequence described by the Lord in Matthew chapter 24:

“Immediately AFTER THE TRIBULATION of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, the powers of the heavens will be shaken (compare Rev.6:12-14), and then the sign of the Son of man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn (compare Rev.6:15,16), and THEY WILL SEE THE SON OF MAN COMING IN THE CLOUDS of the sky with power and great glory. And HE WILL SEND FORTH HIS ANGELS WITH A GREAT TRUMPET AND THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER HIS ELECT FROM THE FOUR WINDS. (This is the sequence described in 1 Thess.4:16. as well).” (Matt.24:29-31).

That is the rapture of the church that we look forward to, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ - immediately AFTER. the great tribulation and just BEFORE the wrath of God bursts upon this earth.

Jesus will appear as “the bright Morning Star” (Rev.22:16). at that time to take us up to be with Him. The morning star appears JUST BEFORE the sun appears (Christ setting up His kingdom on earth), and JUST AFTER the midnight and the period of darkness (the great tribulation). The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

Our Lord further confirmed this by teaching in Matthew 25:6 that it was “at midnight” that there would be a shout, “Behold, the bridegroom comes” In the midst of the pitch darkness (midnight) of the tribulation, the shout will arise, “The Bridegroom is coming”. And before the sun rises on the earth, those who are ready will be taken up. They shall see Jesus as the `Morning Star’. At the end of Rev.6. we read of what the Old Testament prophets called “the DAY of the Lord”. This is called here “the great DAY of the wrath of God” (Rev.6:17) - a very brief time of judgment upon the earth.

In Acts 2:17-20, Peter quotes from the prophet Joel, on the day of Pentecost, saying, “`It shall be in the last days’, God says, `that I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all mankind;and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions .. and I will grant wonders in the sky above, and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the GREAT AND GLORIOUS DAY OF THE LORD shall come.’”

The pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and the end of the age are brought together there by Joel. And in between verses 18 and 19 comes this 2000-year period where we can be filled with the Spirit and can partake of the divine nature. What we read of in verses 17 and 18 is the beginning of this ‘church age’. Verses 19 and 20 then speak about the end of the church age. Because the prophet Joel did not know about the church age which lay between the outpouring of the Spirit and the second coming of Jesus Christ, he called that day, ‘the great day of the Lord.’

Why does this final judgment (“the day of the Lord”) come upon the earth? Let us look at some Old Testament verses for an answer.

First of all, let us look at Isa. 13:6- 11: “Wail, for the day of the Lord is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Therefore all hands will fall limp, and every man’s heart will melt. And they will be terrified, pains and anguish will take hold of them, they will writhe like a woman in labour. (Jesus also spoke of that period as the beginning of birthpangs - Matt.24:8)...for the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when they rise. And the moon will not shed its light. Thus I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud”. So we see that it is mainly because of the pride of man that this final judgment comes. Pride is the root from which all the other sins grow. God says, “I will abase the haughtiness of the ruthless” (v. 11).

Let us also consider Isa. 2:10-21: “Enter the rock and hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord and from the splendour of His majesty. The proud look of man will be abased. And the loftiness of man will be humbled... For the Lord of Hosts will have a day of reckoning against everyone who is proud and lofty, and against everyone who is lifted up that he may be abased... and the pride of man will be humbled and the loftiness of man will be abased. And the Lord alone will be exalted in that day”.

Notice again that the judgment of the Lord is against “PRIDE”. Man’s pride and exaltation are going to be brought low. Men commit many sins, but it is primarily the pride of man that is highlighted as the thing that God is going to judge in `the day of the Lord.’

In the midst of a section on the day of the Lord, in Isaiah 3:10,11, God says, “Say to the righteous that it will go well with them...Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him.”

Consider also Zephaniah 1:14: “Near is the great day of the Lord, near and coming quickly. Listen, the day of the Lord! In it the warrior cries out bitterly.” And then the prophet says in Zephaniah 2:3: “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth who have carried out His commandments. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. Perhaps you will be hidden in the day of the Lord’s anger”. Certainly the humble will be hidden.

We see from all these passages that whenever the Old Testament prophets prophesied about the coming of the Lord, they always said that it was going to come as a judgment on the proud. It is the humble who are going to escape. And if you were to ask me who are going to be raptured, I will say, “Those who have learned during their earthly life, before the Lord returns, to humble themselves.” We are told to “seek humility and you will be hidden in the day of the Lord’s anger.”

In Zephaniah 3:11-13,17, we are told: “In that day, I will remove from your midst your proud, exulting ones. But I will leave among you a humble and lowly people, and they will take refuge in the name of the Lord. The remnant of Israel will do no wrong and tell no lies, nor will a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths.The Lord your God is in your midst a victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.”

This is a promise given to the humble. Not everyone can claim that “The Lord my God is rejoicing over me”, but only those who have responded to the earlier exhortation to seek humility and who have humbled themselves. In confirmation of what we have just considered, look at Revelation 6:15, and see the seven categories of people who are going to hide in the caves, rocks and mountains when Jesus comes in glory: “Kings, great men, commanders, the rich, the strong man and the free man” - six categories of great people -and every slave”.

It is the proud exulting ones who are going to be humbled in that day. That is why it is very important for us to learn from Jesus in these days what He urged us to learn: “Learn from Me,” He said, “for I am gentle and humble in heart”. He is coming only for such disciples of His.

Let us now look at a New Testament passage about the day of the Lord, 1 Thess. 5:1-6 says, “Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need for anything to be written to you. For you yourself know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, `Peace and safety!,’ then destruction will come upon them suddenly like birth pangs upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day should overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness.”

Do you know what it means to be a son of the light and of the day? It means to partake of Jesus’ humility - the Divine nature. To belong to the darkness, on the other hand, means to exalt oneself like the prince of darkness has done from the time he fell.

The Antichrist will finally be the head of all those who exalt themselves. And Jesus will be the Head of all those who humble themselves.

Those who live in humility will never be in darkness and the coming of the Lord will not come upon them like a thief. They will not be surprised by His coming, because they are always ready for Him, having learnt the way of humbling themselves - the new and living way that Jesus opened.

V.1-8: After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the bond servants of our God on their foreheads.’ And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred and forty four thousand sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: from the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand, from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand, from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand, from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand, from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand, from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand, from the tribe of Zebulon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand, from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed.

Here we see this phrase again, “After this” or “After these things”. We saw this phrase as the beginning of a new section in Rev.4:1.

The first section (v.1-8) deals with Israel: “I heard the number..... 144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel” (v.4).

The second section (v.9-17) deals with the church. “From every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

The godly remnant in Israel is protected during the time of wrath, but the church itself is raptured to stand before the Lord. Just before the wrath of God is poured out on the earth, the dead in Christ will rise and along with the living ones will be taken up to meet the Lord in the air to welcome Him back to earth - like a bride going out to welcome her bridegroom. They stand “before the throne and before the Lamb” (v.9).

In Israel, there will be at that time, a godly remnant who have not become Christians. The Lord will protect them from His wrath. In verse 2, we read of an angel coming to seal these Israelites.

In Daniel 12:1 we read about this angel: “Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time. And at that time, your people, every one who is found written in the book, will be rescued”.

There seems to be a close connection between the archangel Michael and the children of Israel. He will arise at the time when the wrath of God is going to be poured out upon this earth - a time of terrible distress - to seal and protect the God-fearing Israelites.

In Daniel 12:2-4, we read that those who died in faith in Old Testament times, will also arise along with the church and be raptured: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground (those who have died) will awake, some to everlasting life, and others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”

Many people feel that as far as God is concerned, His purpose for Israel is finished with the coming of Jesus Christ. But that is not true, as we read clearly in Romans 11. After explaining the gospel of salvation in Chap.1 to 8, the Holy Spirit explains about Israel in Chap.9-11. This is New Testament teaching, and not Old Testament teaching. “God has not rejected His people of Israel, has He? May it never be!” (Rom.11:1). (That, by the way, is the same expression the Spirit uses in Rom.6:1,2: “Shall we sin again? May it never be!”) Just as in Elijah’s day there was a remnant of 7000 people, there will also be in the last days, “a remnant according to God’s gracious choice” (Rom.11:2-5).

When Jesus returns, there will be a Godfearing remnant in the nation of Israel. If they had put their trust in Christ they would have become a part of the church in which there is no distinction between Jews and non-Jews. But these did not recognise Jesus Christ as their Messiah.

“If the rejection of Israel has resulted in the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” (Rom.11:15). The whole world has had the opportunity to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ when Israel was rejected. Then when Israel is accepted back again, the earth is going to experience something like a resurrection. The wild animals will become tame again. Thorns and thistles will disappear.

“If you (Gentiles) were cut off from a wild olive tree and you were grafted contrary to nature to a cultivated olive tree, (into the chosen people of God), how much more shall these who are the natural branches (the Jews) be grafted into their own olive tree? I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery lest you become wise in your estimation that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in” (v.25).

“The fulness of the Gentiles” refers to those whose names are written in the book of life among the nations of the earth. And when the last person whose name is written in the Lamb’s book of life is gathered in, it will be time for the rapture and time for the hardening to go away from this Godfearing remnant in Israel. We must not be ignorant of this fact. “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (v. 29). God never changes. He called the nation of Israel once. He will never change His mind about them.

Look back at Rev. 6:13. There we read, “The stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind”. The stars falling from the sky are pictured as a fig tree shaking off its unripe figs. Immediately after that, we read about Israel in Rev.7:1-8. The fig tree is a picture of Israel. Then we read about “four angels standing at the four corners of the earth” (Rev.7:1). The four corners refer to `north, south, east and west’. The Lord has brought back the Jews to the land of Israel from all corners of the earth.

In the Old Testament, David is a picture of Jesus Christ Who overcame Satan (Goliath). And the initial part of Solomon’s rule before he became an idolater is a picture of the future reign of Jesus Christ on earth for a thousand years. ‘Solomon’ means ‘peaceable’, and in Solomon’s time, “Judah and Israel lived in safety, every man under his vine and fig tree” (1 Kings 4:25). The vine and fig tree mentioned here were two symbols used to represent Israel in the Old Testament.

Jesus said in Jn.15:1: “I am the true vine”. But He never said, “I am the true fig tree”. We in the church are now part of the vine. But the fig tree remains as Israel.

When Jesus comes to rule on the earth, “the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains and the word of the Lord will go forth from Jerusalem. And He will judge between many peoples. Nation will not lift up sword against nation and never again will they train for war (during the 1000-year reign of Christ) and each of them will “sit under his vine and under his fig tree” (Mic.4:1-4).

In Deut. 32:8, we read about God giving the nations their inheritance. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (1 Cor. 10:26). And because the earth is the Lord’s, He has apportioned different parts of the earth to different people. “When He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of all the nations. But first of all, He set the boundary for the sons of Israel.” (Deut.32:8).

The Lord had told Abraham, “I am going to give your descendants this land, from the river of Egypt to the River Euphrates”(Gen.15:18). That was the land God had promised Israel and that was the land over which Solomon ruled when he was king of Israel. And that is the land which will once again become Israel’s possession when Jesus reigns on the earth.

In Gen.35:9-12, we read that God appeared to Jacob and told him, “Your name is Jacob. You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name...The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give it to you, and to your descendants after you”. This gives us a clear answer. The whole earth belongs to God. And God has said, “I have given this land to the descendants of Jacob”.

In Joel 1:12 we read, “The vine dries up and the fig tree wastes away”. That was the beginning of the decline of Israel which was completed soon after Christ ascended to heaven. But then we read further in Joel 2:22, “After the Lord has done the work, the fig tree and the vine have yielded in full”. The fig tree that wasted away starts blossoming again.

There are many promises in the Old Testament that we can apply to ourselves spiritually. But they will also be literally fulfilled in the nation of Israel before Jesus establishes His kingdom on earth. Joel 2:28 says, “It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit upon all mankind, And your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your old men will see dreams. I will pour out My Spirit in those days. The sun will turn into darkness, the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes”. The first part of this was fulfilled spiritually on the day of Pentecost when the first disciples were baptised in the Holy Spirit. It will be literally fulfilled in Israel when the day of the Lord comes.

In Mk. 11:12-14,20, we read that Jesus saw a fig tree once and when He came close to it looking for fruit, all He saw were leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And He cursed it saying, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again”. The next day the disciples saw the fig tree withered up. That action of our Lord’s was a prophecy that could be interpreted like this: “Jesus came to the nation of Israel to look for fruit for the glory of God. But all that He saw were leaves of religious rituals and no fruit. Jesus cursed Israel. But the nation did not wither away immediately. In fact it looked as if nothing happened. But by the next day (40 years later) it had dried up completely”.

At the completion of His ministry, Jesus walked out of the temple saying, “Your house is left to you desolate. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I wanted to call you, but you did not know the time of your visitation. Henceforth you will not see Me until you say, `Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matt.23:37-39). The fig tree was cursed.

Jesus Christ was crucified in the year 29 AD or 30 AD. The Jews then cried out saying, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matt.27:25). God took them at their word and forty years later in 70 AD, the Roman army entered Jerusalem under General Titus and destroyed the temple. The Jews were then scattered to the ends of the earth. But that was not the end of the fig tree.

Once the disciples of Jesus asked Him about His return saying, “What will be THE sign?” (Mark 13:4). Jesus replied saying, “Learn this parable from the fig tree” (Mark13:28). Notice that He told us to learn something! Just like Jesus told us to learn gentleness and humility from Him (Matt.11:29), He also told us to learn from the fig tree. So it is important for the church to know about Israel - the fig tree which Jesus cursed and which dried up in the morning.

What are we to learn from the fig tree? Jesus said, “When its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves you know that summer is near. Even so, you too, when you see these things happening, recognise that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Mk13:28-30) Which generation was Jesus referring to? Obviously the generation which sees the fig tree (Israel) budding again! He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

The fruit has not yet come in Israel. They are not converted and there is no fruit for the glory of God. But the fig tree has started putting forth its leaves. In Lk. 13:6-9, Jesus spoke a parable about a man who had a fig tree and who came looking for fruit on it but did not find any. That too was about Israel. So the master said to the gardener, “Cut it down. Why is it wasting the ground? Why is it occupying the land?” The gardener pleaded saying, “Let it alone Sir. Let me try for a little more time. And next year if you still don’t find any fruit, then cut it down”. So Israel was spared for 40 years and then cut down. But now it has started budding again.

But very few in Israel are God-fearing. The Lord once showed Jeremiah two baskets of figs. One basket had good figs while the other had rotten figs (Jer.24:1-3). Today in Israel, most of the figs are rotten. But there are also a few good figs, who will form part of that remnant of 144,000 that we read of above. We see one example of that in Jn.1:47. Jesus said about Nathaniel, “Here is an Israelite in whom there is no guile (no rottenness).” Nathaniel asked the Lord, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said, “I saw you when you were under the fig tree!” Nathaniel was a good fig, although unconverted at that time. He is a type of that remnant that will be in Israel in the last days. God has His eye on them and He will gather them together.

Before Israel even entered Canaan, Moses had told them that one day the Lord would scatter them from one end of the earth to the other (Deut.28:64). When God chose Abraham (around 2000 B.C.), He took him to Canaan. God allowed Abraham’s descendants to become slaves in Egypt for over 400 years, and then, around 1400 B.C., brought them back to Canaan through Joshua. After Solomon died (900 B.C.), the nation of Israel was split into two. The southern kingdom called itself Judah and the northern kingdom called itself Israel. In 722 B.C., the Assyrians came and conquered Israel (the northern nation) and took them captive. Israel then ceased to exist. Later, in 586 B.C., Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, came and conquered Judah (the southern kingdom), and took them also captive. But God had already told them through Jeremiah, “After 70 years in Babylon you will come back to your land” (Jer.29:10). Exactly 70 years later the Jews came back. They built their temple in the days of Ezra, Haggai and Zechariah.

But in all those years, Israel was never scattered to all the nations of the earth. They had been taken to Assyria and to Babylon but they came back. But Moses prophesied of a time when they would be scattered from one end of the earth to the other. This happened only in 70 A.D. After the Jews had crucified Jesus, God gave them 40 years to repent. But they did not repent. Then He scattered them to all the corners of the earth.

But Moses also prophesied saying, “Then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back. And the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers” (Deut. 30:3-5). That is what has happened in our time. The fig tree has begun to blossom. Israel has been gathered back from the four corners of the earth.

Isaiah prophesied saying, “On that day that the Lord will again recover the second time the remnant of His people who will remain in Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath and from the islands of the sea. And He will lift up a standard for the nations and will assemble the banished ones of Israel (the northern kingdom), and will gather the dispersed of Judah (the southern kingdom) from the four corners of the earth” (Isa.11:11,12). The first time the Lord brought Israel back was after their 70 years of captivity in Babylon. The second time was in this century.

This passage in Isaiah is connected with the millennium, when “the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra.” (Isa.11:6-8). The animals will no longer be wild when Jesus reigns on the earth. But that could happen only after Israel had come back into her land. So we can say that Jesus could not have returned to earth until Israel had come back to the land and occupied the city of Jerusalem. On May 14, 1948, Israel declared itself to be a nation. In June 1967, they occupied the temple-site in Jerusalem. So Jesus could not have come in 100 A.D. or even in 1900 A.D. The earliest He could have returned was only after June 1967.

Another prophecy is in Ezekiel, “I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land” (Eze. 36:24).

Yet another prophecy is found in Jeremiah. The Lord told him, “Have you not observed what this people have spoken saying, `The two families which the Lord chose (Judah and Israel), He has rejected them? (That is what many people are saying today that God has chosen the church and rejected the Jews). Thus they despise My people, no longer are they as a nation in their sight. But thus says the Lord, `If My covenant for day and night stand not, and the fixed patterns of heaven and earth I have not established, then I would reject the descendants of Jacob and David My servant, not taking from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But I will restore their fortunes and have mercy on them’” (Jer.33:23-26). In other words, as long as there is the cycle of day and night, we can be certain that God has not rejected Israel. That is crystal clear.

The land of Israel was ruled by the Romans (63 B.C. to 313 A.D.), the Byzantine empire (313 to 636 A.D.), the Arabs (636 to 1099 A.D.), the Crusaders (1099 to 1291 A.D.), the Mamluk rulers (1291 to 1516 A.D.), the Ottoman empire (1517 to 1917 A.D.) and finally by the British (1917 to 1948 A.D.).

It is interesting to see how various people through the centuries tried unsuccessfully to get the Jews back to their land. In the 4th century A.D., the Roman emperor Julian promised the Jews that he would build their temple. But each time he tried to build the temple, some calamity would take place and he would not be able to build it. Why? Because God’s time had not yet come. In the 16th and 17th centuries A.D., three Jewish leaders tried to bring the Jews back to their land. They also did not succeed. Why? Because God’s time had still not come. At the end of the 19th century, Benjamin Disraeli (a Jew) became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He too promised to bring the Jews back to Palestine. But just before he could do it, he was voted out as Prime Minister. In 1917, Lord Balfour of England, put forth what is known as “The Balfour Declaration”. promising Palestine to the Jews. But because England wanted to please the Arabs, she went back on her word to the Jews for 30 years. Finally, when God’s time came, He used one of the greatest enemies of the Jews, Adolf Hitler, to help fulfil His purpose. Hitler was inspired by Satan to kill over 6 million Jews. But that resulted in Jews everywhere fleeing to the nation of Palestine for refuge, and there they established their homeland, some four years after Hitler’s death.

In Jeremiah 16:14-16, this exodus to Israel is prophesied. There God said, “The days are coming when it will no longer be said, `As the Lord lives Who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt’, but it will be said, `As the Lord lives Who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north (Hitler’s land, Germany is north of Israel) and from all the other countries where He had banished them.’ For I will restore them to their own land. (And how was He going to bring them back?) I am going to send for many fishermen and they will fish for them; and afterwards I shall send for many hunters, and THEY WILL HUNT THEM from every mountain and every hill, and every cleft of the rocks”.

First of all, God would get fishermen (friends of Israel) to draw them to Israel with attractive baits. When that didn’t succeed sufficiently, He would send hunters (enemies of Israel) to chase them out from every nook and corner and make them flee to Israel. Notice the amazing sovereignty of God that used both the friends and enemies of Israel to fulfil His purposes.

Consider another interesting verse. Isaiah 43:5,6 says, “`Do not fear, for I am with you’, says the Lord, `I will bring your offspring from the east (that includes India from where many Jews have gone back to Israel), and gather you from the west (that includes England and America). BUT I WILL SAY TO THE NORTH, `GIVE THEM UP’ AND I WILL SAY TO THE SOUTH `DO NOT HOLD THEM BACK’”.

Notice the different expressions used here. There was never any problem about Jews migrating from the East or from the West, so the Lord uses the phrases, “I will bring them and gather them”. But when it comes to the north (Russia), He says, “I will tell them that they had better GIVE THEM UP!” This was because Russia did not allow the Jews to emigrate. But the Lord destroyed Communism in Russia and thus made Russia send 600,000 Jews to Israel after 1990. And when it comes to the countries south of Israel, the Lord warns them NOT TO HOLD THEM BACK. This was because those countries also did not permit the Jews to emigrate to Israel. Yet the Lord brought them from there too. It is an amazing story how every single Jew from the country of Oman - 43,000 of them - came back to the nation of Israel in 1948 and in the following years. 30,000 Jews were brought back from Ethiopia through two amazing operations conducted by Israel in 1984 and 1991. All this was an exact fulfilment of Biblical prophecy.

The Lord has also said in Amos 9:15 that once He has planted the Jews a second time in the land of Israel, they would never again be rooted out from that land. So Israel will stay forever in their own land. And that will not be by the help of any super-power, but by the power of the Lord.

Another verse that is relevant to the time in which we are living is Zechariah 10:9,10: “When I scatter them among the peoples, they will remember Me in far countries, and they with their children will live and come back. I will bring them back from the land of Egypt and gather them from Assyria, and I will bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon until no room can be found for them”.

Here we are told that the number of immigrants will be so large that no room will be found for them. This is why Israel is constantly building new settlements for its immigrants. Not enough room can be found for them! The word of God is up-to-date! God is giving back to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all the land which He gave to their fathers 3000 years ago. No-one can play the fool with God.

The amazing thing is that in all these 19 centuries of their dispersion, the Jews did not get assimilated with the people of various countries. They have always remained distinct, unlike any other people on the face of the earth. After 19 centuries they are still Jews. They have been like the prophet Jonah. The Jews scattered into all nations have been like Jonah in the whale’s belly. The whale tried to digest Jonah for three days. But it did not succeed and finally spewed him out on the Israeli coast. In the same way, all nations tried to digest the Jews for 2000 years, but did not succeed. Finally they threw them back into the land of Israel.

In Revelation 7:1-8, we see how God protects His people in the last days. This remnant of 144,000 people are like Nathaniel who did not initially believe that Jesus was the Messiah. But when Nathaniel saw Him, he believed. There are going to be people like Nathaniel in Israel in the last days - Godfearing people - who do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah until they see Him in glory. The number of 144,000 is only symbolic of a small number and not literal. These people are going to be protected from the wrath of God that is going to fall upon the world at that time. In Egypt, when the Israelites were being harassed by Pharaoh (a type of the Antichrist), they were protected from the plagues (judgment) that God sent on Egypt. God’s judgment fell on Egypt, but it did not touch Israel. In Babylon, when Nebuchadnezzar (another type of the Antichrist) forced everyone to bow down to his image, there were three Jews (a type of the remnant) who refused and who were put into a flaming furnace. But the fire could not harm them. Even so God will preserve His godly remnant in the last days. They will be sealed and protected.

“Say to the righteous, it will go well with them” (Isa. 3:10). It will always go well with humble, Godfearing people.

V.9,10: After these things I looked and behold a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice saying, ‘Salvation to our God Who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.’

This is the church - which includes Jews and Gentiles who are born again. And this is the time when the church is raptured to meet the Lord in the air.

In Song of Solomon 2:10, the bridegroom says to the bride, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along.” Why ? Because “the fig tree has ripened its figs” (v.13). That call is going to come from the Bridegroom (Christ) to the Bride (the church) one of these days. So that is why Jesus told us to learn from the fig tree. Then we will be ready for His call, “Arise, my darling, and come”. The marriage of the Lamb is drawing near.

During the time of judgment, the church is not going to be on the earth. 1 Thess. 5:9. is clear: “God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Jesus said that the last days will be like the days of Noah and the days of Lot. Just as Lot was taken out before the judgment fell on Sodom and Gomorrah, and Noah was taken into the ark before the judgment fell on the earth, in the same way, the church will be taken out before judgment falls on the world.

We see the saints here standing with palm branches in their hands. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were told to celebrate the feast of tabernacles with palm branches (Lev.23:40). All the feasts of Israel had symbolic meanings. The passover portrayed the death of Christ and the feast of tabernacles pictured the millennial reign of Jesus Christ on this earth. That is the significance of the believers holding palm branches in their hands.

When they cry out saying, “Salvation to our God”, what they are saying is, “Our salvation is entirely due to our God and not due to anything in us”. They gladly acknowledge that their salvation is by the grace of God and the Lamb. “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev.7:14).

Every true child of God will confess when he stands before the Lord that it was only the grace of God and the blood of the Lamb that brought him there.

V.11,12: And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and around the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God saying, ‘Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.’

In the book of Revelation, in the midst of all the many sevens - 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpets, 7 vials, and 7 thunders - we also have 7 glimpses of worship in heaven. And here is one of those glimpses. We saw two of them earlier in chapters 4 and 5.

We see in all these glimpses that people in heaven - the angels, the twenty four elders, and the four living creatures - are always waiting for the slightest opportunity to worship God and to say, “Hallelujah, praise the Lord!” How wonderful if we can have this atmosphere in our hearts at all times! We sing in a song, “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul”. One mark of heaven coming down into a person’s soul is that he is forever waiting for the slightest excuse to worship God and to praise Him.

So when the believers say, “Our salvation is due to our God”, all the millions of angels, the 4 living creatures, and the 24 elders immediately say, “Yes. Amen. That’s right. Let us give glory to this wonderful God”.

V.13,14: And one of the elders answered saying to me ‘These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and from where have they come ?’ And I said to him, ‘My lord, you know.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Verse 14 teaches very clearly that the church is going to go through the great tribulation and then come “OUT of it”. When we say that someone has come OUT of a room, we mean that he was in the room and then came OUT of it. In Rev.18:4, when God tells His people to come OUT of Babylon, He is calling people who are in Babylon to come OUT. Likewise here, when it says that the believers have “come OUT of the great tribulation”, the plain meaning is that they were in the great tribulation and then came OUT of it.

It is because the flesh of man does not like tribulation that a doctrine was invented 150 years ago in the Western world that the church would not go through the great tribulation. That is the doctrine that my flesh would like to believe too - just like your flesh. Everybody’s flesh would like to hear a doctrine that tells us that we are going to have a comfortable time.

BUT THERE IS NOT A SINGLE VERSE IN THE SCRIPTURES THAT TEACHES THAT THE CHURCH WILL ESCAPE THE GREAT TRIBULATION.

God has never promised to protect us from tribulation from man. Throughout the history of the church, the church has always faced tribulation. Even today, more than one-third of the world’s population is under anti-Christian rulers who persecute Christians. And believers are suffering tribulation in these lands. That is not something strange. It has happened for 20 centuries and it is happening right now. It will happen on a wider scale in the future.

Humanly speaking, we may not have the courage to be burnt at the stake or to face lions. Our flesh is fearful and cowardly. But God will give us special grace when that time comes. That is His promise. That is why we do not fear the great tribulation.

We have already seen how John who wrote this book says in Rev.1:9, “I John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation.”

If you had told John that tribulation was not for the church, he would have told you that he was going through tribulation himself. The doctrine of a “pre-tribulational rapture of the church” originated in comfortable, Western Christianity. No believer living in a country where he is being persecuted, would ever have invented such a doctrine or believed it.

These saints came OUT of tribulation triumphantly! They were glad to lay down their own lives and to be slain, counting it a privilege to suffer for the sake of Jesus Christ. And they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They were cleansed and they were faithful.

V.15: For this reason they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in the temple; and He who sits on the throne shall spread His tabernacle over them.

Only the pure in heart can stand before God and see Him (Matt.5:8). These are pure because they were cleansed in the blood. Therefore they stand before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night. This teaches us that even in eternity there will be some form of service that we will do for the Father. And God Himself will be a covering protection from them. They will have the comforting presence of God, wherever they go.

V.16: They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun beat down on them, nor any heat.

Every unsatisfied longing that we had on earth will be satisfied over there. There will be no heat of any trial or tribulation over there, as there is on earth.

V.17: For the Lamb in the centre of the throne shall be their Shepherd, and shall guide them to the springs of the water of life; and God shall wipe every tear from their eyes.

The Lord will be our Shepherd there in a far deeper and greater way than here on earth. He will guide us to the springs of the water of life - to deeper experiences in the Holy Spirit - far deeper than we can ever have on this earth. And God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. There will be no more sorrow or death.

This is actually a glimpse of what it will be like in eternity. But God gives this vision of grace, before the judgment begins in Chapter 8

Again and again in the book of Revelation, we find that every glimpse of judgment is preceded by a glimpse of God’s grace.

V.1: And when He broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

With the opening of the seventh seal, the judgment of God begins to fall on the earth.

In Chapter 6, we saw various riders bringing calamities on the earth. We also saw great tribulation. But we did not see any judgment being poured down FROM HEAVEN on the earth.

The church is on earth when five of the six seals are opened - wars, famine, earthquake, pestilence and persecution. But immediately before the judgments of God begin in Chapter 8, we find that the church is taken up in Chapter 7. And the Godfearing Jews are sealed and protected.

Silence - even for 30 minutes - is so unusual in heaven that it has to be recorded, because the normal atmosphere of heaven is one where praise is rising up to God continuously like the noise of thunders and mighty rivers. John wonders what is happening when everything is quiet.

But here is the reason for the silence: In Isaiah 28:21,22, the Lord’s decision to carry out “decisive destruction on all the earth,” is described as His “unusual task” and “extraordinary work”. Judgment is not God’s usual task or His ordinary work. It is a strange work for God. It is not something He delights in. It is something strange and foreign to Him. It is almost as though God is waiting and saying, “I wish the people would repent, so that I won’t have to judge them at all.”

That is why there is silence. God is not willing that any should perish. His longsuffering is waiting for all men to repent. And there is a pause in heaven. God waits even today, for people to repent before the final judgment comes.

In Revelation 6, we saw Jesus opening a scroll. Here we see that scroll fully unrolled - with the opening of the last seal. Until now it was only partially unrolled.

In Lk.4:16,17 we see Jesus opening another scroll - the scroll of the book of Isaiah- in the synagogue in Nazareth. He found the place where Isa.61:1 and 2 were written and began to read. But he stopped before the end of the second verse. If you compare Lk. 4:18,19 with Isa. 61:1,2, you will find one significant difference. What Jesus read was, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favourable year of the Lord.”

Jesus stopped there and did not read the next sentence about “the day of vengeance (of judgment) of our God”. Notice here that it speaks of the favourable YEAR of the Lord - 365 days of favour - and the DAY - just 24 hours - of vengeance (judgment)! God is both kind and severe. But His kindness is 365 times greater than His severity! That is how He wants us to be too.

The Lord is also trying to impress upon us here that He is longsuffering and patient and that the age of grace is a long, long period. Jesus stopped with “the favourable year” - the year of grace that has now extended for nearly 2000 years. And then He left the rest unread and rolled up the scroll (Lk. 4:20).

But when we come to Rev. 8:1, we see that God has waited long enough - 2000 years. But He still waits for a little more time here. One day is with the Lord as 1000 years. So the 30 minutes of silence would be about 20 years. God waits. He is waiting so that people will repent. But finally when they don’t, then Jesus opens up the rest of the scroll and reads that last sentence too: “The day of vengeance of our God has come.”

V.2: I saw the seven angels who stand before God; and seven trumpets were given to them.

We need not think of the seven trumpets as seven different trumpets. When we saw the seven lamps of fire, which typified the seven Spirits of God (Rev. 4:5), we saw that they were not seven different Holy Spirits but the seven-fold Holy Spirit. Even so here, this is one trumpet - the last trumpet- seven-fold in its duration.

The significance of this trumpet is seen in 1 Cor. 15:51,52: “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep (we shall not all die; some will die, but not all), but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. (when the church is raptured).”

What we read in Rev. 8:2, is the beginning of that last. seven-fold trumpet. That trumpet will sound and “the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:52), as we saw in Rev. 7. The last trumpet sounds immediately after the great tribulation, and the church is caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

When the last trumpet is blown, in the twinkling of an eye (and how long does it take to blink) in a moment, we will be transformed and we will be gone from the earth. And as soon as the church is gone, the judgments will begin to fall on the earth.

In Numbers 10 we see seven reasons why trumpets were used in the camp of Israel. We can relate those to the sevenfold trumpet here:

(1) To summon the congregation (v.2). To call the church to meet the Lord in the air.

(2) To make the camps set out on a journey (v.2). The last journey the church will make will be from earth up to the presence of the Lord in the air.

(3) To blow an alarm (v.5). To inform the world that something serious is about to happen.

(4) To indicate that a war has begun (v.9). The war between God and ungodly people (headed by the Antichrist) has begun.

(5) To indicate a day of gladness (v.10). The church is full of gladness because she is going to see her Lord face to face.

(7) To proclaim the first day of the month (v.10). The church is making a new beginning.

V.3,4: And another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.

We saw earlier in Rev. 5:8, about the prayers of the saints accomplishing something. We see it again here in Rev. 8:3- especially this prayer, “Our Father, let Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven”. People have prayed that prayer for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is now going to be answered.

Incense was added to the prayers of the saints. The incense is the Name of Jesus Christ. That Name is “like ointment poured forth” (Song 1:3), like a sweet smelling incense. It is when that Name is added to our prayers that our prayers ascend before the Father and bring an answer. I am not referring to a meaningless repetition of the Name of Jesus, but a spiritual entering in, to the value and the worth there is in that Name, because of Who He is and what He has done for us on Calvary’s cross. In that Name, we are acceptable to God.

By itself, our prayers cannot ascend before God. But when we come in the Name of Jesus Christ, our prayers are accepted by the Father - just as much as Jesus’ own prayers were accepted by Him.

As soon as these prayers ascend - the multiplied prayers of millions of saints in thousands of years - the result is seen in Rev. 8:5. There is an immediate answer.

V.5: And the angel took the censer; and he filled it with the fire of the altar and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.

This is symbolic language to teach us that although God waited for a long time to answer those many prayers of ours, when He does begin to answer them, it is going to be quick and powerful! And He will do a mighty job and a thorough job!

If He waits and waits, it is only because He is very patient with unrepentant sinners.

V.6,7: And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them. And the first sounded, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all the green grass was burnt up.

The first judgment destroys the greenery and the forests on earth, causing ecological and environmental problems for man.

V.8,9: And the second angel sounded and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown down into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood. and a third of the creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

V.10,11: And the third angel sounded, and a great star fell down from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood; and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.

In Jeremiah 9:13-15, the Lord says, “Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice nor walked according to it, but have walked after the stubbornness of their heart and after their idols, therefore I will feed the people with Wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink”. The reason for this judgment is man’s stubbornness, idolatry and disobedience.

In Jeremiah 23:9-15, the Lord says, “As for the prophets….the land is full of adulterers....both prophet and priest are polluted....among the prophets I have seen a horrible thing...committing adultery, and walking in falsehood and they strengthen the hands of evildoers....Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets, `I am going to feed them Wormwood.’”

The preachers were living in sin and not turning the people away from their sins. This is the condition of a lot of Christendom today. So God decides to feed them with Wormwood too.

This star could possibly also refer to a fallen angel, a demon named ‘Wormwood’ that is permitted to torture and trouble people.

V.12: And the fourth angel sounded and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were smitten, so that a third of them might be darkened and the day might not shine for a third of it, and the night in the same way.

Here we see God’s judgment preventing the heavenly bodies from giving light on the earth.

These four judgments that fall on the earth are similar in many ways to the plagues that God sent on Egypt. But notice here the fact that only one-third of each category is affected by the judgments. God is gracious. He is still waiting, hoping that some will turn from their sins. He does not want to bring a total end to everything in one blow.

V.13: And I looked, and I heard an eagle flying in midheaven, saying ‘Woe, woe, woe, to those who dwell on the earth, of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound.

Notice that the woes are pronounced on “earth-dwellers”- that is, on those whose minds are set on things below, whose interests are on this earth.

If you call yourself a believer, and yet your interests are on this earth, then this woe applies to you.

A true disciple of Jesus will have his mind set on the things above. This world is not his home and he is a pilgrim and a stranger here. The judgments of God are for those who have made their permanent home on this earth.

V.1-11: And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him. And he opened the bottomless pit; and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And they were told that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And they were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment them for five months; and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man. And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; and they will long to die and death flees from them. And the appearance of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle; and on their heads, as it were, crowns like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. And they had hair like the hair of women, and their teeth were like the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing to battle. And they had tails like scorpions and stings; and in their tails is their power to hurt men for five months. They have as king over them, an angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek he has the name Apollyon.

This star is clearly a fallen angel, most probably Satan. This fallen angel was given the key of the bottomless pit where some demons are locked up by God (as we read in (1 Pet.3:19). All demons are not there. Most demons have freedom to roam around on the earth. Remember the man with a legion of demons whom Jesus met? The demons within that man pleaded with Jesus not to send them into the bottomless pit. Jesus granted their request and sent them into the 2000 pigs that ran into the sea. But one day the bottomless pit is going to be opened. And the demons that are locked up there are going to be released on to the face of the earth.

That is part of the judgment that God is going to allow upon the face of this earth, as though the Lord says to the people, “You wanted to follow the advice of the devil. You wanted to obey the devil’s words rather than Mine. All right. Here are all your friends who are going to visit you now, the whole lot of them from the bottomless pit.” That is what we see here.

The smoke from the pit is the filth and muck of the unclean spirits. The locusts are the evil spirits who are granted power to poison men’s minds and torment them even as the scorpions of the earth have power to poison men’s bodies. The torment of these demons will be so bad that many people will want to die, but they will not be able to commit suicide!!

The description of the demons is terrifying - terrifying faces, flying hair like that of mad women and the teeth of lions - all pictures to show us how horrible it is going to be for those who will be tormented by these demons. But they are given permission to hurt men only for five months. Why only for five months? Because God is merciful.

Jesus told a story in Matt.18:23-35. of a man who was forgiven forty million rupees by a king, who would not then forgive his fellow servant a paltry sum of forty rupees. This unmerciful man caught his fellow servant by the throat and said, “Pay up.” And when the king heard it he was angry and handed the unmerciful servant over to the torturers. Those torturers symbolise demons who are permitted to torment unmerciful believers today. For Jesus said, “So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” (v.35)

This is something serious, and I don’t want anyone’s blood on my hands. If you who are reading this, (whether you call yourself a believer or Spirit-baptized or whatever) have not forgiven even one person anywhere in the world, I want to warn you (no matter how long you may have considered yourself to be a “believer”) that you will certainly not enter the kingdom of God. You will certainly not be taken up when Jesus comes. You will instead be handed over to these demons who have the sting of a scorpion. That is as clear as black and white to me, because I believe the words of the Lord Jesus. That man who was handed over to the torturers was a man who was once forgiven. But his master withdrew that forgiveness, because he would not forgive someone else. God will not hesitate to hand over such a man to the demons. That is why I would plead with you earnestly, “Get rid of your bitterness (your Wormwood). Forgive everyone freely. Your heavenly Father will not forgive you if you do not forgive even one human being on the face of the earth.”

The name of the angel of the bottomless pit, Abaddon or Apollyon, means “Destroyer”. That describes in one word Satan’s purpose for man - to destroy him with lust or an unforgiving attitude.

Jesus spoke of scorpions in Lk.10:19 to symbolise the powers of darkness. He said to His disciples, “I have given you authority over serpents and scorpions to tread upon them.” The demons can only harm those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. Spiritually speaking, you can’t have that seal on your forehead if you haven’t forgiven others.

V.12-17: The first woe is past; behold, two woes are still coming after these things. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ And the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released, so that they might kill a third of mankind. And the number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. And this is how I saw in the vision of the horses and those who sat on them; the riders had breastplates the colour of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone; and the heads of the horses are like lions; and out of their mouth proceed fire and smoke and brimstone.

The River Euphrates mentioned here is a very broad river that flows down through Iraq. Four demons have been bound at that river. These are demons whose main aim is to stir men to go to war against each other. The Middle East is going to be the centre of constant war in the last days. There was a long war there between Iraq and Iran for nearly 9 years and later between Iraq and the Western powers. But all that is nothing compared to what is going to take place around the River Euphrates in the future. As soon as the four demons are released, a great war will start which is described more fully in Chapter 16. We read here that the exact hour and day and month and year have already been determined by God.

200 million fierce demons are let loose on the face of the earth at that time to possess 200 million soldiers and to incite them to war. Jesus spoke about hell as a place of fire and brimstone. Here we see demons bringing that atmosphere to people on earth.

V.18: A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone, which proceed out of their mouths.

In Chapter 6:8, we saw that one-fourth of mankind was already killed by the ‘ashen horse’ ridden by ‘Death’. Now a further one-third of the remaining population of the world is killed. That reduces the world’s population to half of what it was originally.

V.19: For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents and have heads; and with them they do harm.

God is using various symbols here to teach us the horrible nature of these demons. It is horrible to expose oneself to demons and ignore the warnings of the Word of God. When Eve listened to Satan in the garden of Eden, she opened the door for the influx of demons into the human race. Jesus has come to enable us to shut that door. But it is WE who have to make that choice. We are warned in Eph. 4:27 not to give ANY PLACE to the devil. If we don’t give any place to the devil in our lives, we can live a life of perfect rest in God on this earth, even in the midst of many trials and sorrows.

V.20,21: And the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts.

Even after seeing half the world’s population wiped out, people still do not repent. Jesus once told a true story of a rich man who went to hell. Lazarus the beggar who sat at his gate however went to heaven. When the rich man went to hell, he asked Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to tell his five brothers to repent (Lk 16:30). That rich man realized when he went to hell that people go to hell not because they are sinners but because they do not repent of their sins.

First of all, idolatry- worshipping idols made of gold and silver, and the idols of money, position and earthly honour.

Then murder- which includes hatred. They did not repent of their hatred and bitterness and murder.

Then sorceries- Satan-worship has increased in the twentieth century much more than at any time in the history of the world. Sorcery also includes astrology, palm reading, fortune-telling, reading what the stars foretell for the week, ouija boards, tarot cards etc., etc., The Greek word for sorcery is ‘pharmakeia’ from which we get the English word ‘pharmacy’. You could therefore translate this word as ‘sellers of drugs’ too. People did not repent of selling harmful drugs like cocaine and marijuana and heroin that destroyed others.

Then immorality- that is their adultery and fornication, which have all increased tremendously in the world in the last 50 years since the advent of television, video-tapes and pornography on the Internet.

The reason why men do not repent even when they see half the world’s population wiped out is because their hearts have been hardened.

V.1-3: And I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, clothed with a cloud; and the rainbow was on his head, and his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire; and he had in his hand a little book which was open. And he placed his right foot on the sea and his left on the land; and he cried out with a loud voice, as when a lion roars; and when he had cried out, the seven peals of thunder uttered their voices.

The angel referred to here is obviously an archangel since he has this powerful appearance. The rainbow upon his head is a symbol of God’s grace. He had a little book open. This book was sealed in Chapter 5. Now all the seven seals have been opened, and the book is open.

V.4: And when the seven peals of thunder had spoken, I was about to write; and I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Seal up the things which the seven peals of thunder have spoken, and do not write them.’

John clearly heard what the seven peals of thunder had spoken. And he was about to write it down. If he had, that too would have become a part of the book of Revelation at this particular point.

But for some reason, God told him not to write it down. I don’t know what those thunders spoke and I don’t want to speculate. But considering the seven seals, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls of wrath that come later in Chapter 16, I certainly don’t think it was anything pleasant. It was probably something just as terrible as all these others.

This also teaches us that there are certain things that God speaks to us personally that we should not share with others, since they are meant for us alone.

V.5,6: And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and the land, lifted up his right hand to heaven, and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things in it, and the earth and the things in it, and the sea and the things in it, that there shall be delay no longer.

In Revelation, the sea is always spoken of separately from the earth. Gen. 1:1 says that “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth”. The sea was not created in the beginning. It was created later. The sea has something to do with evil spirits and demons. We will look at that later. Here the angel swears by the One who created heaven, the earth and the sea that there will be no more delay - the work of judgment will be completed quickly.

V.7: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is finished, as He preached to His servants the prophets.

Once the seventh of the seven-fold trumpet is sounded, the ‘mystery of God’ will be finished. What is this mystery of God ? In the New Testament, the word ‘mystery’ occurs a number of times. It means a secret which cannot be understood without God’s revelation. It is not a secret that cannot be understood at all, but one that only God can reveal. The mysteries mentioned in the New Testament can basically be summed up under two heads:

(a) The first part of this mystery of godliness is mentioned in 1 Tim.3:16. In the previous verse, the church is called “the pillar and support of the truth” (v.15). Of which truth? The one mentioned in the next verse: “Great is the mystery of godliness, Christ was manifest in the flesh and was pure in the spirit, beheld by the angels, proclaimed among the nations”. The essential message here is that Jesus Christ came as a Man like us and was yet pure in His spirit. So we too need not sin. We can walk as He walked. (1 Jn.2:6). That is `the truth.’ The church is to be a pillar upholding this truth! But unfortunately the church through the ages has not held up this truth.

(b) The second part of the mystery of godliness is mentioned in Eph.5:31,32. 1 Tim. 3:16, referred to a great mystery. Here too we see a great mystery - the mystery of Christ and the church being one flesh. Jesus Christ has now got a bride (the church) - who also walks as He walked, keeping her spirit pure.

(c) The third part of the mystery is mentioned in 1 Cor. 15:51,52, where we are told how we will be transformed into the likeness of Christ in the twinkling of an eye, when Jesus comes and the last trumpet sounds.

Now we come to “the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thess.2:7)- which is basically that Satan also manifests himself in the flesh - finally as the Antichrist.

In verses 9-11, we read of Satan working through the spirit of the antichrist with lying signs and wonders and the deception of wickedness to deceive people. We also read of God sending a deluding influence upon those who don’t receive the love of the truth so as to be saved - “so that they might all believe THE LIE” (v.11 - Literal).

What is the lie referred to here? It is the lie that Satan told Eve in the garden of Eden: “You can sin and get away with it. God won’t punish you”.

That is the greatest lie that Satan has deceived the world with. Even many believers believe that lie of Satan!! The mystery of iniquity is that this lie has worked and worked and drawn many into deception. This culminates in false Christendom giving Satan a bride - Babylon! She also is called a mystery in Rev.17:5, just as the church is called a mystery.

The false church can be identified by this mark that it proclaims Satan’s lie that “you can sin and God will not take it seriously”.

If ungodly atheists preached that, we could understand it. But how do Christian preachers preach that to their congregations? How are Christians taken up these days with false signs and wonders rather than with holiness. How can they say they have been filled with the HOLY Spirit and not be holy!! This is a mystery indeed - the mystery of iniquity. In the days of the seventh trumpet, all the mysteries will be finished and the deception of Satan will become clear to the whole world. But today God’s servants, the prophets, proclaim it (Rev.10:7).

V.8-11: And the voice which I heard from heaven, I heard again speaking with me, and saying, ‘Go, take the book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the land.’ And I went to the angel, telling him to give me the little book. And he said to me, ‘Take it, and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.’ And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it, and it was in my mouth sweet as honey; and when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. And they said to me, ‘You must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.’

Here we see that when John ate the book, it was sweet as honey in his mouth. That is a picture of the grace of God that comes to us through His Word. But by the time that Word got inside him, it was bitter. This indicates that there is truth in the Word too - the truth that judges our sin. It is not just grace but truth too. In the Book of Revelation, we see alternate pictures of grace and of judgment. It is alternately sweet and bitter - right through the book.

We also see here the right way to prophesy (preach) God’s Word. We have to receive the Word of God from the Lord and eat it and digest it ourselves first. Only then will God give us a prophetic word for others. This is so different from the way most preachers prepare their messages, who merely study books, listen to tapes and exercise their brains to produce an impressive sermon.

When we receive the Word of God, it is easy for us to be taken up with just the sweet part of it - “grace”. We can keep that forever in our mouth without allowing the whole counsel of God to penetrate into our system. We don’t relish this latter part, because then we have to judge the sin that we discover within us. “Judgment has to begin with us first” (1 Pet.4:17).

Most Christians chew God’s Word like chewing gum. They keep chewing it and chewing it because it is sweet. And then they spit it out!! It never gets down into their hearts to be digested. They do not take the Word of God seriously to judge themselves.

It may be through many bitter experiences that God makes the Word we hear to be digested. But in all those bitter experiences, we will experience God’s comfort too (2 Cor.1:4). Thus alone will we have a prophetic ministry to our generation.

“Now you must prophesy,” the Lord told John, after he had digested the Word. Contrast this with what the Lord told him earlier - not to write down what he had heard. We must know what to share with others and what we should not.

Paul was once taken up to the third heaven. But for fourteen years he never even mentioned that to anyone and even when he did mention it, all he said was, “I heard inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak” (2 Cor.12:4).

John distinguished clearly between what God had spoken to him personally and what was meant for others. From chapter 11 onwards, we see John prophesying what he had digested from that book.

The book of Revelation is NOT written in chronological sequence. We are given a bird’s eye-view of the future in chapter 6, and then the details are filled out gradually. What we see in the first part of Chap.11 actually takes place in the last 3½ years before Christ returns.

V.1: And there was given me a measuring rod like a staff; and someone said, ‘Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it.’

Solomon built the temple of the Lord over the rock on which Abraham had offered up Isaac (2 Chron. 3:1). That temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. But it was rebuilt by the Jews and later improved by Herod. But this was destroyed by the Roman armies in 70 A.D. Six centuries later, in 691 A.D., when the Arabs ruled Palestine, one of the Caliphs built a mosque on the site of that temple, and called it the ‘Dome of the Rock’.

If this mosque had not been there, the Jews would have built their temple there long ago.

Why don’t the Jews build their temple in some other part of Jerusalem? Because the Lord has said “I will restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob and have compassion on his dwelling places; and the city shall be rebuilt on its ruins, and the palace (the temple) shall stand on its rightful place” (Jer. 30:18). And the rightful place is occupied by a mosque at present.

That teaches us that part of Jerusalem is still being “trodden down by the Gentiles” (non-Jews). So the times of the Gentiles are not yet complete, because Jesus said in Lk. 21:24, “Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”. Most of Jerusalem is no longer trodden by the Gentiles in the sense that the Jews have got control of it. Yet the most sacred part of it (for the Jews) is still being trodden by the Gentiles. The Jews cannot even go there. This is an amazing situation that God in His great wisdom, has permitted.

John was told to measure the temple of God (“the inner sanctuary” - margin)- the most holy place - and the altar and those who worship in there. The Old Testament temple had three parts - the outer court, the holy place and the most holy place. The most holy place was blocked off by a veil, which was rent when Jesus died on the cross. This was the inner sanctuary.

V.2: And leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations; and they will tread under foot the holy city for forty two months.

The holy city will continue to be trodden under the feet of the Gentiles. In Matt. 23:37,38, Jesus went outside Jerusalem and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I wanted to gather your children together, but you were unwilling. Now your house is being left to you desolate”.

Notice that He referred to the temple as their house. Just a few days earlier, He had gone into the temple and called it “My house” (Matt. 21:13). The Lord wanted that temple to be His house, but the Jews would not receive Him. And then it says, “Jesus came out from the temple.” (Matt. 24:1). He never went there again. The withdrawal of Jesus from the temple at this point is very significant. As far as God was concerned, He had nothing more to do with that temple.

But a day is coming in the future when the Antichrist will make a covenant with the Jews and “he will take his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as God”(2 Thess.2:4).

The Jews did not receive the Son of God when He came. So He left the temple, saying, “From now on this is your house. I am leaving it. Your house is left desolate” (Matt. 23:38). But when the Antichrist comes into the temple, they will receive him. Jesus told the Jews, “I have come in My Father’s Name, and you do not receive Me; if another shall come in his own name, you will receive him” (John 5:43).

Many Old Testament prophecies are yet to be literally fulfilled in the nation of Israel. But we can apply them spiritually to our own lives even today. What is the significance of the inner sanctuary alone being measured and not the outer court? It shows that God is not counting all those who claim to be “believers”, but only those who come into the most holy place through the rent veil. This is the spiritual application of these verses for us.

The word used in Rev.11:2. is very strong. It says, “Throw out the court”. The church in Laodicea was in danger of being thrown out, because it was lukewarm (Rev.3:17).

John was told to measure only the worshippers in the inner sanctuary. The ones in the most holy place are those who have gone through the veil, who have judged themselves, and come into God’s presence. They are the overcomers.

The time period mentioned in verses 2 and 3 of 42 months (1260 days) occurs a number of times in Revelation. Jerusalem is in the hands of Israel now. But there is a time coming in the future when Jerusalem will be ruled by the Antichrist for a period of 42 months, immediately before the second coming of Christ. For the last 3½ years before Christ returns in glory, there will be this “treading under foot of the holy city” again.

In Daniel 9, we read of a time when Daniel was praying about the restoration of Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. The prophecy here looks beyond the restoration of Jerusalem, to the future also. “Seventy weeks (or “units of seven” - margin) have been decreed for your people” (Dan.9:24-27). The word here means `seventy sevens’, or 490. This refers to 490 years that had been decreed by God for the Jews, and for Jerusalem, “to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness”.

We know that it was at Calvary’s cross that atonement was made for iniquity. But “bringing in everlasting righteousness” is still in the future. 2000 years of the church age have come in between the two. Daniel was told that the counting of the years would commence from “the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” (Dan.9:25)- not the temple, but the city of Jerusalem.

We read in Nehemiah 2 that the order for the rebuilding of Jerusalem was given “in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, in the month Nisan” (Neh. 2:1)- which was around 446 B.C. Daniel was told that from the date that the order was given to rebuild Jerusalem upto “Messiah the Prince” would be exactly `7 sevens and 62 sevens’(v. 25)- 483 prophetic years of 360 days each, or 173,880 days. When converted to solar years, this becomes 476 years, which brings us to the year when Jesus was crucified. This Old Testament prophecy was very exact. So if someone in Israel had studied Dan. 9:24,25, when Jesus was on earth, he would have clearly seen that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Messiah.

The period of 69 sevens was split into two parts - one of 7 sevens and another of 62 sevens. During the first 49 (7 x 7) years Jerusalem would be rebuilt - “the city will be built again with plaza and moat even in times of distress” (v. 25). After another 62 sevens (434 years), “the Messiah will be cut off” (v.26)- that is, He will be crucified. It goes on in the same verse to say that the Messiah would “have no one” (Literal). That means He would be completely forsaken - by man and even by His Father - on the cross. The prophecy was very exact.

We read further in verse 26, that after the crucifixion, “the people of the prince who is to come will come and destroy the city and the temple”. The prince who is to come in the future is obviously the world-ruler, the Antichrist. “The people”. of that prince would refer to the world rulers of the first century, which was the Roman empire. That was fulfilled, as we have seen, in 70 A.D.

This still leaves a 7-year period out of the 490 years mentioned originally. That is spoken of in Dan.9:27: “He (the Antichrist) will make a firm covenant with the many (referring to the Jews) for seven (years).” That is the final 7 year period. The Antichrist will present himself to the Jews as their Messiah and the Jews will accept him.

Dan. 9:27. goes on to say, “In the middle of the week, he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wings of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

At the middle of this 7-year period (after 42 months), the Antichrist will break his covenant with the Jews. During the remaining 42-months (1260 days) the Antichrist will reign (see Rev.11:2,3). It is significant that the reign of the Antichrist is going to be for exactly the same duration as the public ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ which was also for 3½ years. The Antichrist is going to imitate Christ in every possible way.

The abomination of desolation mentioned here is what Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24:15, and is a reference to the Antichrist sitting in the temple as God. At the end of that period, it says here that the Antichrist will be “destroyed completely”.

V.3,4: And I will grant authority to My two witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lamp stands that stand before the Lord of the whole earth.

During that entire period of 1260 days, God is going to have two witnesses in Jerusalem, who will prophesy. They will be clothed in sackcloth - signifying their humility and simple life-style and also their grief at the ungodliness of the Jews.

These prophets are referred to as olive trees. In Zech.4:11-14, also we are told of these two olive trees who are “the two anointed ones, who are standing by the Lord of the whole earth”.

V.5,6: And, if any one desires to harm them, fire proceeds out of their mouth and devours their enemies; and if anyone desires to harm them, in this manner he must be killed. These have the power to shut up the sky, in order that rain may not fall during the days of their prophesying; and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with plague, as often as they desire.

In the Old Testament, we read of only two prophets who destroyed their enemies by fire - Moses and Elijah (Num.16:35; 2 Kings 1:10). Elijah was also the one who shut up the sky so that it did not rain for 42 months. (Jas.5:17). And Moses was the one who turned the water into blood and smote Egypt with plagues.

When Moses came down from the mountain the whole nation of Israel had gone astray worshipping idols and committing adultery. And Moses told them, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side, come to me” (Exod.32:26). That was the spirit of Moses.

Elijah too lived at a time when the entire nation of Israel worshipped idols. One day he gathered the Israelites on top of Mount Carmel and told them almost exactly what Moses had said, “How long are you going to sit on the fence? If the Lord is God, follow Him. If your idol Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21).

Elijah lived when Israel was being ruled by the most wicked king and queen that the nation ever had. King Ahab had sold himself to Satan to do evil. (1 Kings 21:25), He is a type of the Antichrist. And his wife Jezebel is a type of Babylon the harlot, the false church. We saw the Lord calling a false prophetess by the name Jezebel, in Chap.2:20.

Moses too prophesied to Pharaoh (another type of the Antichrist) and opposed and resisted him and his magicians.

The last two prophets mentioned in the Old Testament are Moses and Elijah. (Mal.4:4,5).

The two last-day prophets will prophesy in the fiery, uncompromising spirit of Moses and Elijah, for 42 months.

Today, as Christians, we do not call fire down on our enemies. When Jesus came to Samaria and the Samaritans did not receive Him, James and John (being good Bible scholars and knowing that Samaria was where Elijah had called down fire on his enemies), said, “Lord, shall we call down fire from heaven to consume them as Elijah did?” (Lk. 9:54 margin). The Lord replied, “You don’t know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of man has not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them”. Here lies the difference between the new covenant and the old covenant. Disciples of Jesus do not call down fire to destroy their enemies, but rather follow in the footsteps of Jesus Who said, “Father, forgive them”, and of Stephen who said, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”.

But although we don’t call down fire from heaven, or shut the heavens or call down plagues on the earth, we are to stand in the spirit of Moses and Elijah, in this sense that we challenge people saying, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Let him come out to me.”

We do not go into the midst of dead denominations to try and change them, because they cannot be changed. We stand outside of them (like Moses and Elijah) and say, “Come out of Babylon and stand with me if you are on the Lord’s side. Choose this day what you will follow - the Word of God or the traditions of men?”

That is how it is going to be in the last days even before the rise of the Antichrist. There is going to be a Moses-cum-Elijah ministry in the church during the last days.

V.7: And when these two prophets have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss (bottomless pit) will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them.

This beast is the Antichrist - a man possessed and ruled by Satan - about whom we will read more in Chapter 13. But notice here that he can kill these prophets ONLY. when they “have finished their testimony”. God had ordained that these prophets should prophesy for 1260 days - and so they will NOT die one day before that. That is true of prophets in the church today too.

In Psa.139:13-16, David says, “Thou didst form my inward parts. Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb...My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret and in Thy book they were all written the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them”

Before a Christian starts his first day on earth, God has already determined the number of days planned for him. That does not mean however that every Christian will live his full term on earth. Some will die before their time because they live for the world, and live in sin. But those who live to do the will of God alone will live their full term.

The Antichrist may try to kill these two prophets before their time is over, but he won’t succeed. They will fulfil their appointed 1260 days of prophesying!! Only after they have finished their testimony, will the beast be able to make “war with