Revelation 19: 1-10

“After these things I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, ‘Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God! ² For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her.’ ³ Again they said, ‘Alleluia! Her smoke rises up forever and ever!’ ⁴ And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sat on the throne, saying, ‘Amen! Alleluia!’

“⁵ Then a voice came from the throne, saying, ‘Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!’ ⁶ And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, ‘Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! ⁷ Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.’ ⁸ And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

“⁹ Then he said to me, ‘Write: ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true sayings of God.’ ¹⁰ And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.’”

Last week we talked about the world mourning the fall of the system of Babylon. I am sure that in the Tribulation, there will be a Head Office for the system of Babylon, maybe a Head City. But make no mistake; this is a system. A system that has transcended time, wars, tragedies, the death of human leaders, and it is here and alive and doing very well today. We see a system that questions all there is about God. It has permeated our schools, our entertainment, our literature, our politics and our very existence.

The Bible clearly states that it is the Fool who says in his heart there is no God (Psalms 14:1 and 53:1), but today it is the Christian who is called the Fool by society around us. It is foolish, they say, to accept the fact of Creation; foolish they say, to accept that Jesus is the ONLY WAY; look at all the religions, how can just one be right? It is foolish they say, to live by the moral code of the Ten Commandments. Yet we still arrest people for murder and stealing, we see the effects of adultery, it is still against the Law to lie under oath, and covetousness is bankrupting most of us; keeping up with the Joneses is killing us.

We have come face to face with a generation of children, even in the Lord’s churches, that are disobedient to their parents; some hold their parents’ hostage as adult children living at home and using up their parents’ resources without conscience. The system of Babylon has created a sector of persons who feel entitled to the ‘good life’ at the expense of others. Many refuse to work, yet expect all the benefits of those that work.

The system has peppered our political landscape with abortion-loving, climate-change indoctrinated, welfare-loving and anti-capitalism politicians that are killing our economies with taxes and fees. And lastly, the system of Babylon has filled our churches – and even more sadly, our pulpits – with people who hate the truth. They hate the conviction of the Holy Spirit, as He does His job of purging us and cleaning us as we are saved and then begin to conform to the image of Jesus.

They hate the boundaries that God puts in place to protect us, and they despise His commandments. But they love His benefits. And the system of Babylon has replaced Godly preachers who love the study and teach the scriptures, with pre-fab sermonettes that never get to the meat of the Scripture that God painstakingly oversaw for us to have, for some 1,500 years.

From what I hear in the emails that I get, there are very few pastors who broach the subject of eschatology, and most never deal with the OT prophets. One will never get to the end of the Bible and put it aside if you are an avid student. There is always more to learn, more for the Lord to show you; there is always another level to dig down to, and there is always something that you missed the last 100 times that you read it.

In complete contrast to the mourning that takes place on earth, there is GREAT REJOICING in Heaven. A great multitude, we are told, will be rejoicing. Let us look at this together and find some reasons to rejoice even here on earth as we look ahead.

The Great Multitude, Revelation 19:1, 6

If you were to listen to the world around us, it would be possible to believe that us Christians are on the losing end of the numbers game. In a recent conversation with a devout atheist, he pointed out that about 30% of people recently surveyed in North America counted themselves as having no religious affiliation. But in real numbers, according to a survey in 2014, only about 3-4% of the US population describe themselves as atheists.

In 1 Kings 19:18, we have God’s answer to Elijah the prophet when he is complaining that he was the only one left in Israel that worships God. God states to him, Elijah, that He, God, has more than 7,000 persons who have not bowed to Baal. Let that sink in; God has more than 7,000 men (not including their families) that were His servants. God was not losing the battle at all for the hearts of people.

Right now, there are ministries all around the world reaching the lost for Jesus. Our church is part of a small Baptist group called the American Baptist Association. We have missionaries in Russia, Japan, South America, parts of Africa, Thailand, France, Central America, Ukraine, as well as throughout the US and some in Canada. We have short-term mission teams that do 4-to-5-day mission trips to help churches and missions spread the Word of God. We are a part of the Bible Project, and we have teams that go to every major sporting event in the world and hand out Bibles and share the Gospel.

Right now, we have a team of 4 men translating the Bible into the Yefta language so that tribes can read the Bible in their own language; and on, and on I can go. We are just a small group of the Lord’s churches doing this work. Imagine what the larger groups are doing to get the Message of the Gospel out.

I have a dear friend who ministers to prisoners, and every year this ministry sees over 100 men get saved. God has people everywhere, people that you don’t even know about and never will see until we get to Heaven. God has a great multitude. The devil wants you to think that he is winning; he is not. God’s grace is greater than the wiles of the devil, and God’s Holy Spirit is still speaking to the hearts of men and women all over the world.

Every day in some city, some town, on some corner, in some ministry setting, online, face to face or at a hospital bed, people come to Jesus. A Great Multitude. We will be slack-jawed when we see the Great Multitude in the Kingdom. We will be there rejoicing at the fall of the system of Babylon with the Great Multitude.

Our shouts of “Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God! For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her” will drown out the lamenting on earth. No one will care about the burning Babylon, at least not anyone in the Great Multitude.

People sometimes picture Heaven as this quiet and serene place where we are going to rest (relax) for eternity. But the Bible tells us that Heaven is loud, full of life, a busy place with the work of the Kingdom going on. If you are looking for serene, I do not think Heaven is for you.

Folks, we are part of a Great Multitude, one that will sing the praises of our God and Savior and shut the mouths of the angels. They sing out of obedience, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty, but we sing from hearts of gratitude, hearts of thanks and hearts that understand that were it not for the grace of God, were it not for His mercy, were it not for His love, we would be burning in Hell. And so we drown out the angels, we drown out the mourning on earth, and we make the noise of the redeemed.

The Bride of Christ, Revelation 19:7-9

The time has come for the wedding of the Lord to his wife the New Testament church. The betrothal time has come to an end, and the time for the union has come. Jesus told us about the betrothal in John 14:1-3,

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

In a Jewish betrothal, a friend would make an agreement on behalf of the groom in negotiating a marriage. In our case, that friend is the Holy Spirit; he lives in us as the ‘down payment’ on our salvation. Jesus, the Bridegroom, has returned to Heaven, his home, to prepare a place for us, just like a man would in Biblical days to prepare a home for his new bride. I use “the bride” because, unlike our modern engagements that can be broken at a moment’s notice, the betrothal in Biblical times could only be broken by the issue of a ‘writ of divorce.’ You will recall in Matthew 1:18-19,

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.”

Betrothal was considered marriage; and as such, Joseph thought that Mary had been unfaithful to him. He was a just man, so he was not going to make a public spectacle of her; he would then simply issue a writ of divorce and end their relationship had not God intervened with an angelic message.

Jesus had come and betrothed us as his wife, those of us that make up the New Testament churches. He, as was the custom, went away to prepare a place for us; and at the Rapture he came for us, suddenly.

Remember the parable of the Ten Virgins. The bridegroom came in the middle of the night, and only those that were prepared went into the Wedding reception. Notice that the Virgins all knew that the bridegroom would return, but NOT when. They needed to be ready. As such we need to be ready to meet the Bridegroom at any time when He returns. We need to be saved, to have the Holy Spirit represented by the oil, in us. Then when the Bridegroom appears, we will be ready to attend the feast.

In Revelation 19, that time of the Wedding Feast has come; the system of Babylon is dead. The next event is a massive war that will usher in the Millennial Kingdom. Before that happens, the Lord and His Bride are united forever.

This idea that a saved person can lose their salvation is ludicrous. God tells us he hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). Thus, if you are betrothed to the Lord Jesus and have the Holy Spirit in you, God will never divorce you. It simply will not happen. You are His and He yours. Jesus fulfilled the role of the husband laid out for us in Ephesians 5:25-32,

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourished and cherished it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

Will you be at the marriage supper of the Lamb? I pray that you will.

Worshipping Angels, Revelation 19:10

There is not much to say here. And I hate to end on a downer note; but God put it here, and we must address it. John tried to worship the angel, and he was immediately stopped by the angel. The angel points out that he and the other angels are just fellow servants like we are. They are different, but not God, and never will be. Do not worship angels and be wary of those that do and encourage you to as well. True angels of God will never allow you to worship them, ever. This is idolatry.

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

 

Chapter 18: 21-24

“Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, ‘Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore.  ²² The sound of harpists, musicians, flutists, and trumpeters shall not be heard in you anymore. No craftsman of any craft shall be found in you anymore, and the sound of a millstone shall not be heard in you anymore. ²³ The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore, and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore. For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived. ²⁴ And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth.’”

I continue to get emails from you, and I will answer all of them as fast as I can. Thanks for taking the time to read the articles and to respond whether positively, negatively or just with a question or observation.

We have been talking about the fall of Babylon for some time now, and it may seem that this chapter is drawn out. Why did I not just go to the end last week? I try to go as I am being led, and I felt that this part was for this week. Other than the resurrection, I do not think any other day in church history will be like this day. I say history because, even if it has not happened as yet, since God says it will happen, it is as if it has been done already. This day will be a day of rejoicing, a day that will culminate more than 6 millennia of war between the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness.

There are still a few wars to come on the earth. We will see one in chapter 19 and then another in chapter 20 and then the final judgment. But this spiritual battle and this destruction of the system of Babylon will bring to a close a rebellion that began in Genesis 11. Satan will meet his doom in the next chapters. But this is the system that we are talking about – the system that Paul talks about in Ephesians 6:12,

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

A system that permeates every aspect of our world. Our schools, our NEWS, our media, our governments and even our churches. A system that promotes religion, all the while hating Jesus, and a system that preys on the God-given needs of men and women to worship something. A system that can’t be Jesus, but tries to copy Him. A system that calls for total allegiance and costs you everything. A system that trades grace for works and offers nothing in return. A system that allows a few into the inner circle, all the while creating a hierarchy amongst mere men. A system that costs men everything, even their eternities, and offers just smoke and mirrors.

Satan, the father of all lies, is the father of the system. We see this in John 8:44,

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

This is the truth about the system of Babylon; it is built on lies and has been from its inception. The first and most important lie is that man is his own god and he alone can determine what is righteous and what is not. Man, as we are told often in the book of Judges, lives according to what is right in his own eyes.

We can follow the carnage left behind by the system of Babylon, not to mention the disillusioned billions that have entered Hell, a place they were told did not exist; but the truth came rushing at them too late, and the lies they swallowed were their demise. A system that leaves broken men and women in its wake; a system that has given people the tools to kill over 50,000,000 babies in the name of convenience over the past 40+ years; a system that has bankrupted and handicapped our youth and left us with a very uncertain future. Were it not that we had the rapture to look forward too, we would have almost no hope. So, let us look at the system of Babylon and why the world will be in such sorrow and such mourning.

Guilt, Shame and Conviction.

In John 16:8 we see these words: “When He comes, He will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment.”

The Holy Spirit is sent to convict us of sin, to show what is righteous, and then to remind us that there is a judgment. These three things are in direct opposition to the system of Babylon. We hear things like ‘live and let live,’ or ‘I am doing what is right for me,’ or ‘you have no right to judge me.’ But God claims the right as the Sovereign standard of right and wrong to be able to show us what is sin, what is right and then to judge us. Even the Lord’s churches have been infected with this mentality of ‘live and let live.’

I recently met a young lady who, as we were speaking, gave a testimony of her salvation, a clear one. Nonetheless, she was currently in a bad situation. She had been living with a man who was not her husband; and when I asked what she did for a living, she was an office secretary to one of the largest churches here in Southern Ontario. How is this possible? She is not married to the man she is living with and yet she is working in the church office. This may seem trivial but it is symptomatic of what is happening. I know of churches that have people serving in ministry that are not members. They have no authority over them, yet they allow them to minister to the people that they are responsible to God for.

We have supposed churches that have openly gay men as their pastors. I recently had a conversation with a man who claimed to have been saved and was even in ministry for some time, and yet he vehemently hates the Lord now. He always complains about the things that God asks us to do – like live right, attend church, serve each other and love one another. He is convinced that we don’t need God for that.

All around us, churches are no longer preaching the truth of the Bible so that the Holy Spirit will convict us of sin and purge us. There is not a lot of exegetical preaching that dives into the truths of the scriptures and shows us how sinful we are and how Holy God is. Very few churches, according to the feedback I get in emails, seem to broach the subject of prophecy or eschatology anymore. No, we hear pep talks about how good we are and that God owes us the ‘good-life.’ And since there is no truth, the Holy Spirit is disarmed, so to speak.

Guilt, shame and conviction are an essential part of the life of a Christian. Read Daniel 9, Ezra 9, and Nehemiah 9 and see the confessions of righteous men. 1 John 1 tells us that we are sinners and that confession is the key to fellowship with God.

In Luke 5:8 after being confronted with Jesus’ power, Simon Peter utters these words: “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!’

Adam, when he disobeyed God, hid from the Holiness of the Lord and tried to cover himself.

We are told in Luke 18:13 that the Publican (tax collector) did this: “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even raise his eyes to heaven but kept striking his chest and saying, ‘God, turn Your wrath from me—a sinner!’”

Do you see? Do you get it? When confronted with the Holiness of God, mere men should fall face down in guilt and shame, asking for the loving forgiveness of our Loving Lord.

But the system of Babylon has pre-empted that. There is no shame – men doing unmentionable things with other men. Worse, there is a growing push to make sexual relationships with children acceptable. No one is guilty of sin; they flaunt it on main streets, and the world cheers on at the defiance of God.

The world will mourn because they will realize that their beloved Babylon was a myth, a lie; it was not eternal, not strong and certainly no help to them in eternity. And oh yeah, there is a God that even Satan has to answer to. They will realize that the One who could destroy Babylon could also destroy them, and that judgement is coming on them as well. They have to come face to face with the God that the system told them did not exist. They will realize that all the promises that Babylon made to them are lies, and they have evaporated with the fall thereof.

They Chose the Wrong God

In Matthew 6:24 we are confronted with this verse: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Notice that the option to not have a God is not included. Something or someone will be your god. We are designed to worship, and we will find something to worship – something that guides the way we think, something to frame our life and our goals with, something to live for – and we will find something to bow down to.

Satan lied to those in the system of Babylon and told them that either they can be their own god, or that there was no God, or that he was God. They made a choice to turn their backs on the truth of the living God and to put their trust in something else. They chose wrong. They, here in Revelation 18, are standing on their choice, and it is shifting sand. Their foundation is eroding away, and they have cast a lot that cannot be taken back. They took the mark of the Anti-Christ; they swallowed the lie “hook, line and sinker,” and now the lie is burning in front of them and they cannot put out the fire. But they also know that there is no going back.

If the system is going up in flames, so too will those who have chosen the system. Sadly, for them, the fire that will burn them will never go out.

The world around us is celebrating the open sinfulness of men; they revere those that are ‘strong’ enough to defy God and reward those that live without shame before the Holy Lord. But their celebrating will come to an end, their reverence for sinners will cease, and their rewards will tarnish while they mourn and weep over the fall and destruction and end of the system of Babylon.

Heaven Rejoices.

The saints of heaven will rejoice. Heaven will be jubilant over the fall of the system.

Revelation 18:20 “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her!”

This system will never kill another saint again. Right now the blood of the saints is found in her; but after this day, no more. I wonder if the jubilant shouts of heaven will drown out the mourning on the earth?

My brothers and sisters, hold the truth to be precious. It is all we have; it is the currency of the Lord’s churches. We are to guard it and teach it like our very future depends on it, and it does. Truth is the enemy of the System of Babylon. That is why the hatred for the Bible, the hatred for street preachers, the hatred for those that share the Gospel, the hatred for the Ten Commandments, and on and on the hatred goes. That is why they want to take the Bible out of everything and replace it with their own gospel.

We should be more diligent now, as we see the end coming at us like a freight train, to read more of the Scriptures, to study more of the Scriptures, and to seek God’s wisdom in the application of the Scriptures.

If you love the truth of God, the system will hate you. They hated Jesus; they will hate you. You will not fit in, and you will not be comfortable. Thank God when you are hated, thank God when you don’t fit in, and thank God that the Holy Spirit still convicts you of sin, righteousness and the judgment to come.

Rejoice in John 8:32, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca