Automatic Transcript Generated:
Speaker 1
All right, so Eva is asking, is Revelation written in the order it occurred? If not, could you please clarify which chapters have occurred, appears to be occurring presently, and is yet to occur?
Speaker 2
Great. Excellent question, Eva. Yes. This is something that so many people struggle with. You have people who are called historicists that say, oh, Revelations all in the past, people who are futurist and say it’s all in the future. And then there’s I don’t know the name for the people in the middle, but I think you probably see that what I’ll explain is we’re kind of partway in things, actually, probably through a lot of things. And I have made a chart to show you to take this step by step. Now, I don’t know, Mr. Producer, do you want to put that up or should I? Go ahead. He changed how this works.
Speaker 3
We’ve got all sorts of fun things going on tonight.
Speaker 2
Good thing I have the folder open. I’ll be right there in a moment.
Speaker 1
Yeah, there’s another comment from Darius that you want to check out.
Speaker 3
Interesting. Darius, I got you covered, brother.
Speaker 2
I see a slide up. I don’t know if that’s through me or no, through a producer. Great. So I see Revelation is giving us a timeline that spans from around 31 Ad. So that’s the crucifixion of Jesus, and it continues all the way up until this day and beyond that. So let’s show the first row of things. And this is going to be the seven churches. So when you’re reading Revelation, like two and three, you start hearing about these seven churches. And we advanced the slide. Great. So these seven churches are well, the first one is Ephesus. Good thing I know that one by memory, because on my screen it’s blocked. So the first one is Ephesus. And this is about this church that’s going to be going out and conquering. It’s just like the apostolic times, where the message was pure, the Gospel is pure. They were generally pretty good. Great church to be a part of, but it didn’t last for forever. The party didn’t last. And then we ended up with persecution of that church. And this is the Church of Smyrna. And that sort of span roughly 64, 80 to 313 Ad.
Speaker 2
Again, the Bible doesn’t necessarily go with like, there’s a fixed date for these things. Sometimes there is, but these dates could be a little bit flexible. I don’t think God necessarily cares, but think of these as general periods of time. Then we have the Pergamum Church. This is going to be a church. The church is being persecuted. There’s martyrs left and right. You have, like, Nero and then his successor. That just making things terrible. Dominion dominant. Oh, I can’t think of his name. So they’re making life miserable for Christians, trying to stamp it out, but we hear that the blood of Christians is seed, and so they kept making it. They kept surviving and growing, but eventually there was a big judo chop and things like reversed. And now Christianity starts becoming the dominant religion and we see that in the Church of Pergamum. And this period reflecting 313 Ad to about 538 Ad. And what we have is compromises being made. We’re saying, you know what? Christianity will spread better if we fudge things a little bit and if we adjust the cultures of people, if we make the pagans feel a bit more comfortable in here and maybe we worship on their day, maybe we’ll accept their idea of many gods and we’ll call them saints.
Speaker 2
And just all these things start creeping in now because let’s be ecumenical, let’s make everybody feel welcome here. And after several hundred years of this, you end up with a church that’s just utterly corrupted. The Bible means nothing. The Bible, in fact, has to be hidden in the corner because the truth there reveals the falsity that has entered into the religion. So this is a church of Thai tyra and you come to Sardis and now the church has gone from just being corrupted and being in darkness to trying to stamp out people who are trying to reform it and trying to fix it and calling things out. And then we end up in Philadelphia, where there’s this huge revival in the church. This is a period of time where I think it’s called like the Great Awakening, especially in America, where there’s religious freedom and people are starting to believe that way. The Second Comings here, people are getting worried, people changing their lives, giving a heart to Jesus. Not religious, but denominations in America spring up right around that time period. And then over the past 150 years since then, Christianity has really been cratering.
Speaker 2
People like, I’m Christian, but I’m not really religious. Right? Or people have like, a very outward form of Godliness. We often talk about this here in Bible Ask, but they’re not really living the love and the passion that Christ wants us to have. So these seven churches sort of layout the motif that we’re going to repeat again and again and again in Revelation. So let’s show the next row of things. So the next row we’ll see here is these are the seven seals. So the seven seals, I think, start in Revelation five, five and six. And everybody talks about the Four Horsemen and are they going to come? And the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse. So they’re going to mark the end. No. Apocalypse just means revelation. So these are the Four Horsemen of Revelation and each one corresponds with those churches. You have the white horse that’s going out to conquer. You have the Red Horsemen, the blood is on him. Then you have the black horsemen, and then you end up with a dead horseman, right? And death is just in Hades right behind him. So this just is 100% consistent with those four churches.
Speaker 2
And those periods of time that we just discussed. And then you go on to the Fifth and 6th Fields. They also correspond with these times could go very much in depth. And what’s interesting now, the 7th seal starts something which is the second coming of Christ. And the coming of Christ starts getting foreshadowed with the churches of Philadelphia and Laodicea. The Christ says, I’m coming, and he says, I’m coming soon. So it’s like he’s getting closer and closer and closer. And now, like with the 7th seal price. With the second coming of price. Then let’s move on to the next row of items. So these are the seven trumpets. And you see these in Revelation eight and nine. I think these seven trumpets, again, correlate very well with this timeline that I’ve shown you. And you have basically judgments against the people who are opposing God. So we start off with the Jews made things very difficult for the Christians. They started persecuting the Christians, and then you have destruction Jerusalem and the diaspora there. The Jews would like, spread out and have to go all over the they no longer have Judea, their hometown.
Speaker 2
Second trumpet, you have Rome falling apart, rome getting conquered by the barbarians. Third trumpet, you just go and now we have Europe. Western Europe is plunging deeper and deeper into darkness. And by the time we get to the fifth and 6th Trumpets, a lot of people aren’t really sure what to say, what it is. It could be many things. So a lot of people say, like, the fifth trumpet is Islam, but also it could be militant Christianity, like you see with the Crusades and things of that nature. And then if you go all the way to the six trumpet, that could be like the Ottoman Empire and their eventual collapse could be the Counter Reformation. Some people say secularism. I was shocked, honestly, on all the different viewpoints. Even within the same denomination, there could be multiple viewpoints on this, but the general gist of it shouldn’t be undercut, which is there’s forces. Satan, behind the scenes, is actively acting to take people away from Christ. And it’s sort of like Star Wars, where whether you have the clone army or the robot army, it’s still the evil emperor behind both of them. He doesn’t care which one wins.
Speaker 2
It’s sort of the same thing with Satan going on here and he’s just behind the scenes, really trying to plunge the world into darkness. Take us away from God, take us away from the Bible. Meanwhile, God is trying to restore his true people, bring us back out of this great apostasy that Satan is working and have a people that’s ready by the time of the Second Coming. And that’s what the 144,000 are about, god’s trying to have people in his image. And actually, this could be a good tie into one of the future questions we have, if we can get to it so we get to the 7th trumpet. Everybody agrees 7th trumpet is the second coming of price. And now we could go quickly through the next things. Landon says praedoris futurist historis is only accurate possible version. His sources, maybe historic, is those that say something’s happened. Reader is go even further back in historic. So. Yeah, good point, Landon. Those are the three main views. All right, so let’s advance to the next line. Within Revelation, and even in Book of Daniel, there’s this period of the 1260 days, or you hear about 42 months or time times, and half the time you hear all these references to it in Revelation.
Speaker 2
And that’s what language comes out of Daniel. Also, seven times in the Bible, it comes up. The Bible is telling you this is an important period of time. And that period sort of defines the lowest point for Christianity, like when it’s in its most corruption, the peak rate of policy, in a sense. And so during that time, the Bible is suppressed. During that time, God’s people are persecuted. During that time, just in general, the world is in darkness. So this is a very important time period. And so if you understand that that goes from 538 80 to 798 1798, I don’t have time to explain why I’m giving you the blueprint and you can start matching things over. Next slide. All right. So probably a lot of people worried about the tribulation mark of the beast and all those things. So that hasn’t happened yet. I think we all agree that’s coming in the future very soon. And then the next thing shortly after that will come the last plagues of Revelation 16, and then the judgment of Babylon, that’s Revelation 1718. So you now start seeing that these later. Once you get to Revelation 16, it’s really far in advance.
Speaker 2
Even parts of Revelation 1314 are in the future. And then we close out the Bible talking about the millennium. And before the millennium is the second coming, as we’ve been talking about. So how much of Revelation has or hasn’t happened? I don’t know the percentage, but a lot of events. I mean, just look where we’re at. We right now, the time between the 6th seal and the 7th seal. At the time between the 6th trumpet and the 7th trumpet, we’re just before the Second Coming. There’s not really much to happen besides the triple agent mark of the beast and then the things that will happen to spiritual Babylon and then the Second Coming. And a lot of people believe the millennium will start. There will be this time where you have the secret rapture, and then Jesus will come, and there’ll be some sort of rain on the Earth, and then people get another chance. No, revelation doesn’t teach that. Revelation shows second Coming. There’s the millennium where the world is dead and Satan is the only person on Earth, and meanwhile, God’s people are in heaven and then we end with the return of God and his people to the earth.
Speaker 2
There’s the judgment, there’s the GOG versus maggog, and then the destruction of the wicked and then recreation of the world. God starting over with a new heaven and a new earth. Just kind of like there’s a recreation through baptism. I hope that is very helpful for you. This is a roadmap to give you an idea of where things can land. And it’s probably up for you, though, to read it and see if that drives for you. And God hopefully will give you assurance there. Alright, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 3
Amen. Amen. That’s a really good summary and I appreciate you putting all those visuals together. That’s awesome.
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BibleAsk Team
