His Perfect Love

Gary: Think you can build some sort of shelter to protect you from the coming judgment of God? Think again. Pastor Matt says the only way to avoid it is by placing your faith in Christ.

Matt VanderVen: It's not like you can buy a bomb shelter. And and by the way, just check the data. Just since December, the purchases of bomb shelters and or shelters around the world has gone up 20%. You tell me that people aren't keen and aware that this is the last of the last days, even unbelievers. But yet all the experts, all the scientists experts are coming out and saying that's foolish. There is no bomb shelter that could protect you. You want to know how to escape this? Place your faith and trust in Jesus. And I'm not afraid to say I'm going to escape this because the Bible talks about a rapture plan.

Gary: We're so glad you've joined us for His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt Vanderven. We'll be picking up where we left off last time in Revelation chapter 6. We're in the midst of the sealed judgments, which is part of God's plan to bring an end to wickedness and judge a Christ rejecting world. Some have wondered when will this occur? While many in recent years have made their guesses, the Bible makes it clear no man will know the day or the hour. Only the heavenly Father knows. Here's Pastor Matt with more.

Matt VanderVen: Something that caught my attention in verse 8 here. Look look in your Bible. The final sentence of Revelation 6 8 could either be the fourth rider or a summary statement about all the riders. Did you notice that in verse 8? I I told you circle it in your Bibles if you remember. And power was given to them. Who's the them? Who's the them there? Is it is it the four riders, three other riders that have come previously? Or is it the two riders that were told in seal four is death and Hades, right? So, you know, I I believe very clearly the antecedent, without being too grammatical here, the pronoun them, okay?

It is ambiguous. I I will give anybody that. But I do believe that the pronoun them refers to the fourth rider of Hades and and death, really death and Hades. And I believe it refers to the fourth rider because there's a reference to death and Hades as them. He's saying it right in contact them and after he just said their name, okay? If it was a single rider, then I would I think it would refer then to all four horsemen. And just to be clear, I I can convince myself otherwise. You know, I could flip flop right now and convince myself otherwise because the reality is we're told there the authority to kill with the sword refers to the riders.

I believe of all the horses. And it's said that each time authority was given to each horse and rider to do these things, including seal one and two. So, authority to kill with famine refers to the rider of the black horse of seal three. Authority to kill with pestilence by the wild beast refers to the rider in the pale green horse in seal four. And I think the scope of the seal judgment, that death that's brought here, it affects the entire earth, right? Again, four seals. I think that's why it's obviously called the four horsemen here.

And it's going to affect the entire earth. And this is really really important. There is no way to escape this other than Jesus Christ. It's not like you can buy a bomb shelter. And and by the way, just check the data. Just since December, the purchases of bomb shelters and or shelters around the world has gone up 20%. You tell me that people aren't keen and aware that this is the last of the last days, even unbelievers. But yet all the experts, all the scientists experts are coming out and saying that's foolish. There is no bomb shelter that could protect you, no matter how deep down you dig that, no matter what you do, because the catastrophe from a nuclear weapon or an EMT or anything else that's going on, is going to set human civilization back 100 years.

The effects that are going to come from just this alone, 2 billion humans dying all at once, the amount of disease, the pestilence, all the things that Matthew 24 talk about that are labor pains, famine, starvation, wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, natural disasters. We just had a group in North Carolina. Calvary Chapel Philly just sent a group down to North Carolina this week being prayer for them as they're on missions trip down there. We were there a couple weeks ago continuing to send people down to help out. We're going to see that on such a global scale more and more.

And we already are in frequency and intensity. No humanitarian effort is going to be able to keep up. Or we're not going to be able to keep up. It's going to be that kind of catastrophe and frequency Matthew 24 talks about. And that's before the great tribulation even begins. That's the labor pains. We need we need as Christians need to hear these things, be prepared, understand. But there's no bomb shelter. There's no bunker. You want you want to know how to escape this? Place your faith and trust in Jesus. And I'm not afraid to say I'm going to escape this because the Bible talks about a rapture plan.

Amen. I'm not I'm not afraid to say that and interestingly enough the number four, the four horsemen. Did you catch that as well? The four horsemen. You know what's significant about that? The number four throughout is we're going to read the book of Revelation. Every time we see that number four, it's it frequently refers to the totality of the earth. When it'll say oh and four, it'll talk about the population and it's affecting the whole earth. When we see four, four, four. And I'll point that out as we go through this book. Further as we're going to see below again, as I sort of mentioned when I say see but we're going to continue reading Matthew 24 3 through 14, Mark 3 through 13 and Luke 2 21 verses 7 through all indicate that the death of the horsemen is going to be worldwide because Jesus just said and we just read that in Matthew 24 together this morning that this is going to affect everyone and not a single soul would be saved if it wasn't for the elect.

The seal judgments, however, are measured compared to the trumpet and bowl judgments. We just need to be aware of this. This is why now it's important for people to see this and make their decision. And even during the seal judgments, it'll be important for people to make their decision because when we get to the trumpet and and and the bowl judgments as we're going to go through this together, it's going to become very clear the survivability statistically. Oh my. We are going to talk more about that. It 's a progressive judgment though. It's to punish wickedness and evil.

And again, I believe it's God's example of mercy even in his judgment and punishment. I want us all to see that here. So, I think many are going to begin to question and believe during the great tribulation. And I think it's going to test humanity's belief and it 's going to test humanism and it's going to test self order and self dependency. I'm going to present again the world population. Each week I've been showing this to you. And each week you've noticed the numbers have increased. And I purposed that a couple weeks ago to start this so you can see that.

We're almost now to 8.2 billion. Everybody see that current world population? That means that if this was to occur today, we were raptured out today and tomorrow the great tribulation begin and the culmination of the four seals happen, that means that you're talking roughly just statistically. Again, minus off maybe so many million because Christians will be part of that population that will then be raptured out. So, take some take some of those numbers out. But you're talking about 2.05 billion human beings that are going to experience death in moments. Moments. That's a quarter of the earth's population.

And it's going to be everywhere. And that's significant because there's no part of the earth that you can go to escape this. It's not oh I'm going to go to the mountains. I'm going to go to Israel. I'm going to go over here to the most desolate remote part of the earth. There will be no place to escape this on terra firma on the earth. And if you're born again here, you're saying okay. If you're not, I'm sure I have your attention right now. I want to scroll down here and look at this. I want to just make this very concrete to us all.

We've been looking at these things. This is the top 20 largest countries by population. This is live data. You'll see these numbers adjusting real time right now. You'll see that there's approximately 1.457 billion people alive in India today. And I know that number is going to change as I'm talking probably just some just to mock me. Second, you see China which is four 1.417 billion people. And then you have the United States of America, the the third. And it's approximately 346 million, okay? So, let's just talk about these numbers for a minute. Since this is worldwide, we can start by dividing populations here as you see on the screen.

So, India. India alone as a nation, as a country, is going to decrease somewhere by 364 million 267,879 according to last week. That's larger than the population of the entire United States right now. Does everybody understanding the scope and magnitude of this? That means like the entire USA and all of the states and all the people are going to just just and this is just one country are going to be no longer on the earth. And death to the point of the smell and stagnation, the disease because of the rotting corpses. And I I I'm sorry to be so graphic here this morning.

But I need everybody to understand what we're talking about in the intensity of what Revelation is communicating to us. China, that would be 354 million 446,574 according to the last week's numbers. And again, larger than the population United States just in the top two countries. They're both larger than the United States, the death toll of each country. And then the United States, if we're even here by the way, 86 million 576,234. That's a quarter of the population. Think of what if 86 million people you knew. Think about the COVID numbers in the United States alone.

Million, 2 million or less. One's too many. We all agreed on that. 86 million. What do you think that's going to do to transportation? What do you think that 's going to do to farm lands, trucking? I can go on and on. Employment, communications, electricity, water. Who's going to operate the water companies? Who's going to keep water pressure coming to your home? Who's going to keep the electricity on in the grid because somebody has to manage that? I mean start to you start to understand what the devastation's going to be like. It's not even that if you survive if you survive as it reads in Revelation 6 16, you're going to want to hide yourself.

If you're not a believer here, it's going to be so bad that if you are alive, you're going to want to hide yourself in rocks. You're not partying. You're not out there going I did it my way like Frankie Sinatra said. You you don't have nothing to do with that. You're running and you're hiding because you literally want a rock to fall on you because the devastation is so much your heart almost wants to implode because you can't believe what you're seeing. I think the question that most people want answered is when? When will Jesus break the first four seals in on the scroll and release the four horsemen of the apocalypse upon the world?

Matthew chapter 24 verse 36 tells us very very clear. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only. If there's one thing you remember here this morning, I beg you let this be it. For the last 20 to 25 years, I have watched charlatans, false teachers, heretical teachers stand up and say Jesus is coming in 2020. Jesus is coming in 2000 Harold Camping. I I could send your money in billions and millions of dollars being sent to these charlatans, false teachers with false doctrines. And you know what?

Fleece, sheep being fleeced. Let me let me just back up for a minute. And you'll understand why I said I 'm going to take a moment to go a little topical here and we're going to you know, as I'm going through the scriptures because as I was sitting here and preparing for this, I started realizing this is already started happening. I have some data to prove it. It's not my it's not it's not like I'm standing up here giving you my opinion. I have the data to show this is already happened and happening. And I'll show that in a minute.

But as I was thinking about this, I said Lord, you clearly told us they're going to say Messiah is over here, Messiah is over there. You said there's going to be a great falling away. He was talking to the church, people that either didn't believe or going through the motions you know, that were coming to church thinking that saved them instead of a true heartfelt relationship with Jesus Christ. This is going to be a falling away. People are going to go off and they're going to believe all kinds of alternate doctrines. And oh by the way, just when you think all that can't happen, Paul wrote about it, didn't he?

In Galatians. He said right away. And that was only what 20 years after he planted the church? He said so quickly you've given yourself to an alternate doctrine. Now, I like to study things strategically. My brain works the way it may probably a lot like you. And and and I don't want to spend a whole lot of time studying my enemy, right? When I think of Satan, Lucifer, the enemy is the principalities and powers. But I also know our military and our strategy in military is that we study our enemies so we know exactly what their tactics and moves are, right?

You with me? We do reconnaissance, we have intelligence, we do those things so we can have some predictive analysis. As a matter of fact, just a few miles from here, we have the Army War College where you have generals, colonels, all kinds of people brought from all over the United States travel here. And they'll attend that college and they'll learn about strategic warfare, tactics, all kinds of things that are way above my head, way above my pay grade, way above things I can understand. But they're looking at things that are primary, secondary, tertiary orders, all that kind of stuff thinking about how this all plays out.

There's professors there, really really smart people that have studied civilizations throughout generations, war, how things are going. They know what's going on in China, they know what's going on. They're they're studying war tactics, war games, all of these things. They're not they're very smart people. And they're studying these things. And as as you think about this, humans do that. How much more so we understand our enemy? There's nothing new under the sun. Let's go back to history for a moment. In the 1960s, you've heard me mention to you that they took the Bibles out of schools.

Now, we call public education today public schools. It's really known around the rest of the world as socialized education. That's the real term for it. And we should call it that, socialized education. And within socialized education in the 60s and 70s, we started seeing a change, a propaganda machine where information started being put in. And the Bible was what? Taken out. They stopped reading the Bible. It wasn't enough that you can read multiple religious books. You could do that. We don't want the Bible there. It's okay to have the Quran, it's okay to have other but don't read the Bible.

Now, again, studying your enemy. If you're the enemy, what is the most convincing way that you can begin to bring in an alternate gospel or an alternate opinion or an alternate ideology? You make them biblically literate. If they don't know the Bible, they don't know what to stand for. They can have something that seems like a relationship with Jesus. They can think they're Christian. They can even go through the motions and not who not even know who Jesus Christ really is. After all, he said to disciples, he said to many people, he said one day you're going to say to me what?

Lord, Lord, he says I'm I'm going to look at you and say I didn't know you. Depart from me, you worker of iniquity. Now, Jesus again isn't grammatically challenged. I don't want us fearful here. But I do want us not playing church and playing Christian. So, at the end of the day, we need to understand the word of God is important. And it's how we know the character of God. It's how we know his his ideologies, his his design for us. And I'm bringing this up this morning because as I mentioned to you, one of the things that we know is going to happen is there's going to be a falling away.

So, I said hey, if you remember one thing, but the day, the hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, but my Father only, remember that because there's going to come a time. If Lord should tarry and the puzzle doesn't happen yet, that there are going to be men that are I'm over here. You need to do this, you need to do that. This is how you get to all of their false doctrines. And much of the church isn't going to be aware of it. Did you know that? I'm talking worldwide. And you know how I know that?

I want you to look at another screen with me, please. Would you mind flipping over? This was an article that was put out. I collect all this stuff and I keep it in my files like probably some of you. Sometimes I print it out. I've got files for stuff like this in my house. But I also leave love digital. I keep digital and I keep this up because I go back every so many years to see how it's changed, probably like many of you do these things, clip clip articles and this is back in July 6 2022.

Here we are three years later in 2025. Not a full three years, two and two years and something. Fewer in US now see the Bible is the literal word of God. If you scroll down, there's a graph in here. It's it's it's astounding. Mo- most of the church isn't aware of this. We're so we're so spoiled. We're so spoiled by Jesus because we have the word of God and we're in the word of God and we do this every week. We read line by line and verse by verse. We think this is normal. Unless you're new to this church or unless you've been to another church visiting recently, you have no idea that other churches don't actually read the Bible anymore.

They go in, they might talk about topics, they might talk about things that are neat and whatever. But last time I checked, I went to a smorgasbord or I went to a buffet. They had meat over here, they had desserts, they had all kinds of things. And guess what? Where did I gravitate towards? The vegetables or the meat and the desserts? According to the data, only 20% of all churches today have congregants that actually believe the Bible is literal. That means one out of every five churches you drive by is actually teaching the word and believes that the word of God is God breathed and literal.

Is it again, remember I talked about studying your enemy? He's done a great job at stealing the foundation. He's even used public policy, social gospels and all kinds of things to make people ashamed. One of the best ways you can have your debates, your discussions is to bring out your Bible and to quote scripture. Most people when they're doing a debate, even in Christian circles sometimes, no no no, put that away. Let's just talk about the data. Let's look at what we see. Why do I have to undermine the word of God? You took the Bibles out of schools.

You've taken prayer out of schools. You know, I love our teachers that work in the public schools that are I call them like our undercover agents. There are Bible undercover agents. They're in there with the word of God. They're being faithful, they're teaching the word and they're getting people saved. But they're undercover agents because all of the propaganda and all the things that and we have many people that you know, have families that go to the pub. And the things they've told us, you know, furry I mean just all kinds of things between the school disc- It's one of the reason we started a school here so that we knew the word of God would be taught because just because you have a school and you call it a Christian school, doesn't mean the kids are actually getting the word of God memorizing it.

And I've said it before, our kindergarteners can get up here and say all 66 books books of the Bible. Our first and second graders can can tell you and write sentences, our third and fourth grade paragraphs. I mean you know, by high school they're writing inter testamental I mean this is not a game because the whole point is to create a biblical illiteracy so you willingly just walk into the pit lit and write to the pit of hell and not even knowing that you're walking contrary to God. This is the great deception. This is the great deception.

And it's been going on for 20 plus years.

Gary: You're listening to His Perfect Love as Pastor Matt Vanderven examined the church as a whole and where we're at as a society. Pastor Matt, here at the close of our program, you mentioned our school here at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg and why it was created, a great alternative to the public school system. If someone listening right now would like more information about the academy, where can they turn? And when do they need to register for the coming school year?

Matt VanderVen: Absolutely, Gary. I would encourage anyone interested in learning more about Calvary Chapel Christian Academy to go to ccharrisburg.org/academy. That's cc harrisburg.org/academy. We have a lot of resources online that would be, I believe, helpful to prospective parents and students including enrollment applications, financial aid information, our academy calendar, and information for anybody who would like to get in contact with us to set up a school tour. You know, we want to encourage anybody that's interested in rolling to register as soon as possible since we do cap our class sizes to 10 students per grade. And we do that intentionally so that we can provide individualized instruction and spiritual encouragement for each and every student.

We want to encourage and be an encourager of your faith. Education is a partnership. You know, when you send your children to Roma, we should never be surprised when they come home Romans. Again, the website is ccharrisburg.org/academy. You can hear the study from Revelation again when you visit His Perfect Love dot org. That's His Perfect Love dot org. We've expanded our podcast too. Look for us on oneplace.com and most of the major podcast platforms. The Calvary Chapel Harrisburg mobile app is another great way to listen to Pastor Matt's messages shortly after they're delivered. We can help you get started when you visit His Perfect Love dot org.

We're thankful for the listeners that come alongside of us with their prayers and financial support. If you're interested in supporting this radio ministry, there's a place to do that at His Perfect Love dot org. Together we can reach people with the love and truth of God in these last days. Pastor Matt loves to hear from his listeners, even just a quick hello telling him where you hear the program and how you're blessed by it means a lot. Email us there at the website His Perfect Love dot org. And whether you live in or around Mechanicsburg PA or will be visiting the area soon, we'd love to have you join us for a service at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.

Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek service too, Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. You'll find us at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg PA. Go to ccharrisburg.org for more information. Well, that'll do it for today. But come back next time when Pastor Matt will again study the book of Revelation with us here on His Perfect Love.

Gary: His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.