Revelation

Because Jesus is where? On his throne.

That's the great theme of the book of Revelation.

And Pastor Kolokoff said, you know, Mark, as I read that passage in Romans, I just kept saying to myself, in Christ, we are more than

conquerors.

In Christ, we are more than conquerors.

The book of Revelation presents a people.

In the last days of earth's history, church and state will unite.

There'll be an economic boycott.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

And the Antichrist is governed as it is influenced by the dragon in Revelation or Satan himself.

So for instance, Hinduism is not just another worldview.

The caste system tells us that people are devalued and marginalized based on value perceived by birth or tribe.

And I think it just shows that, like you said, it's not strange to find the sense of God as a wicked God.

So Revelation chapter 14 talks about the lake of fire and those that come into the presence of God in the holy angels and the presence of the Lamb so that we come into God's unquenchable fire so that if you're evil, you get burnt up.

But this sounds really bad for God, but when you look at Psalms 34 verse 21, it says that evil itself... shall slay the wicked.

By our own choices, we put ourselves into a position and we become timber or gold.

And while we go there, I just wanted to mention a few things.

You read throughout the Bible, God's spoken visions.

You read the book of Revelation, often John has seen a vision, but then he doesn't write – God doesn't tell him, hey, this is what you saw.

The Bible says that he recorded what he saw, and then he put it into his own words.

You read throughout the Bible, God's spoken visions.

You read the book of Revelation, often John has, you know, seen a vision, but then he doesn't write, God doesn't tell him, hey, you know, this is what you saw.

You know, the Bible says that he recorded what he saw, and then he put it into his own words.

You hear Paul in the New Testament, Paul says, you know, this I speak, not the Lord, but I.

Oh, that's so interesting.

You know what, coming to Revelation, it's quite fascinating that you mentioned that.

I never really thought about it from that perspective, but you are right.

When Often John will say, and I heard the thing, then I saw, and I saw that which looks like a...

And it is the church which Jesus established and guides with the power of the Holy Spirit, as he says, John 16, verse 13, guiding the church into all truth.

That is what we know that the canon of Scripture, what books should be in, what books shouldn't be in, because there were some disputed books, including the book of Revelation.

You know, were these things going back to the time of Christ or not? It was that church visibly affirmed.

And as you noted in your introduction, that there is no list, even in the canon of Scripture, of anywhere in the Scripture books that these are the 66, or as our Protestant friends said, or the 73 books that is the complete Catholic canon.

Isn't that powerful testimony? It's a powerful testimony of his journey of life.

seeing the confusion of these things and slowly recognizing the carnal mind and then slowly coming to Revelation and Genesis and beginning to see the living word and listening to his voice.

Because obviously there were divisions and God's kingdom is not divided, which made him re-look at it all for what should be.

See, Constantine decided which gospels were put in the Bible and which ones were to be destroyed, right? What narrative was he trying to convey? The slaves in the British Isles were given a Bible that didn't contain any verses on masters being kind to slaves or the entire book of Exodus because they didn't want to encourage an uprising.

Not because Pastor Kurt or Pastor Dan couldn't preach this sermon, but...

It's just that I want to wrap this all up as we've been spending these last seven weeks in the book of Revelation, and obviously primarily in the churches of the book of Revelation.

And I want us to... understand, as we've ended each week, that the message that is given to the church is given to the church for all time.

So when I say, and we look at the text, and we're looking at certain things that are particular to that specific message, a time frame in that specific church understand there is a lesson there is a message that can transcend that that small church or big church at the time in Asia Minor and it can transcend that that church and is a message in which we that we can hear With that, we are going to be in Laodicea today.

And that theme of love obviously is going to come up again this week because God is a God of love.

But what I want to... for us to look at is this church in Laodicea.

This is one of those churches that is not only mentioned in the book of Revelation.

This church in Laodicea is mentioned elsewhere in Scripture.

But if we actively gave $5.9 trillion, which is not a crazy thing by any stretch at all, even if we just gave 2% or 3% or a little bit more, the possibilities are insane, guys.

It's the type of stuff that if you've been a Christian for any length of time, If you ever get a chance to read the book of Revelation, at the very end of the book of Revelation, John gets a vision from Jesus of what the world's gonna look like when Jesus brings the kingdom of God and the entire world is renewed in what's called the new heavens and the new earth, a complete restoration of all of humanity.

resurrected bodies are given to all of us so we could live eternally in the existence of God on this earth in a new Eden where Los Angeles is not destroyed.

Los Angeles is beautified and made whole and new, operating for what it's meant to be for all of eternity.

And then we get to experience the cosmos itself because we will never die.

That vision is a vision where there is no pain, there's no suffering, there's no heartbreak, there's no loss, there's no crying, there's no death, there's no sickness, there's no hunger, there's no disease.

This is all described in Revelation 21 and 22.

It's the heart of God.