HopeLives365

Mark Finley: Just like he visited John, that ancient apostle on the island of Patmos, Jesus draws near to us and gives us hope and encouragement when we feel lonely, when we feel alone, when we feel disappointed. You see, the Book of Revelation is the book about Jesus who intervenes.

Guest (Female): This is HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today's message, "Jesus in the Book of Revelation." Enjoy and remember you can always catch up with past messages and stay up to date with HopeLives365 and Pastor Mark by going to HopeLives365.com. And now, Pastor Mark Finley.

Mark Finley: We're going to begin a new series on the Book of Revelation. So, if you have your Bibles, you may want to follow along with us in this series. Sometime ago, I was taking an early morning flight from Baltimore to Denver, Colorado. I got up early in the morning, wiped the sleep out of my eyes, and headed for the airport.

As I boarded the flight, I thought, "I need a little time to read the Book of Revelation on the plane." I was giving a series in Denver on the Book of Revelation. I said, "I hope I have some privacy and nobody sits right next to me who wants to talk a great deal." So, I put my Bible down and, fortunately, nobody was sitting in the middle seat. I had an aisle seat. I hoped nobody would sit in the window seat. I put my Bible down, I had a little Bible commentary called *Revelation Verse-by-Verse*, put that on top of my Bible, and put it on the middle seat.

A nice-looking gentleman came down the aisle and asked me, "Sir, I'm sitting in the window seat. Would you please get up so I could get my seat?" I got up and stood in the aisle and noticed him looking down. He looked at my book, *Revelation Verse-by-Verse*, sat in the window seat, looked over at me and said, "Sir, what do you think about that book, *Revelation Verse-by-Verse*? Do you study the Book of Revelation?"

He was the CEO of a corporation, a very prominent executive. I said to him, "Are you interested in Revelation?" He said, "Am I interested? I've been reading the Bible. In the last two years, I've been concentrating on Bible reading. I felt a real lack in my life, but I've now come to Revelation and I just don't seem to understand it at all. Can you help me understand Revelation? What about all those symbols, those beasts, and strange images?"

So, for about most of that flight, I was explaining the Book of Revelation to this executive. Around the world today, men and women are interested in the Book of Revelation. I think of a number of books that have been written on the topic. The *Left Behind* series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins sold well over 58 million copies in the early months of the publication.

It's amazing to me why people would go to books about Revelation and some of them never read the Book of Revelation itself. You would think if you want to understand the Book of Revelation, you'd not read about what somebody said that somebody said that somebody said about the Book of Revelation. You'd want to go to the Book of Revelation and see what Jesus said about Revelation. That makes sense.

You also notice that there have been a number of movies on prophecy and Revelation. I think of one that was produced a number of years ago called *The Omega Code*. It was a blockbuster hit over its opening weekend with its sales. ABC, NBC, and featured television programs on the Book of Revelation have also drawn national attention. *Newsweek* magazine and *Time* magazine have recently come out with feature articles on prophecy. Why?

There's a sense in our world that something stupendous is about to happen. There's a sense that the last book of the Bible addresses the events that are soon to unfold in our world. Now, during this series of presentations here on the Salem Network, we're going to look at the Book of Revelation. We're not going to talk about what others say about Revelation. We're not going to talk about what some commentary says about Revelation or some Bible student says about Revelation. We are going to look at the Book of Revelation itself.

I am well aware that some people will say, "I want to stay away from the Book of Revelation. I want to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the Gospels." They'll say, "Just teach me about Jesus. I don't want to go to the last book of the Bible because it has so many symbols. So many people have different interpretations, so many people have different viewpoints. They have different ideas. I don't want to go to Revelation because it's quite confusing."

But yet, look what it says in Revelation 1:1. It says, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, that God gave unto Him, to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John." Notice it says, "The Revelation of who?" The Revelation of Jesus Christ. So, the last book of the Bible is a revelation of Jesus. So, if Jesus has given to me a revelation, I want to understand it, don't you?

Do you think if Jesus places the Book of Revelation as the last book of the Bible to reveal to a last generation the things that are coming upon the earth, that He would make it as plain as possible or as complicated as possible? Do you think Jesus sat up there in heaven with the angels and said, "Now, how can we make the Book of Revelation so complicated that nobody can understand it?" Do you think He said that?

I give Jesus Christ credit for making the last book of the Bible plain. What do you think? He's not going to try to make it complicated. If you knew that your child was traveling down some windy, narrow road with a bridge out in the rain coming down on a night of thunder and lightning, and your child didn't know where they were going and you had to make them a map, would you take particular care to make the map pretty plain?

I give Jesus credit that when He met with the angels, that He made the Book of Revelation plain. So, this is the revelation of Jesus. Now, we've looked at Revelation 1:1, the revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave unto Him to show His servants things that must shortly take place. But let's just look at the last book of the Bible. Now let's go to the last book, Revelation 22:16. Jesus says this: "I've sent my angel to testify to you these things to the churches." So Jesus says, "I'm sending my angel to make the last days these events of the last days plain."

I'm sending my angel to clear up the confusion about what's coming in the future. I'm sending my angel to cut through all of the human babble and the human error and the human jargon. I'm sending my angel so the Book of Revelation is a book sent by Jesus to men and women living in the last days of Earth's history. Every book has a major theme. Let's see if we can discover in the first chapter of the Book of Revelation and the last chapter of the Book of Revelation what that major theme is.

So we go back to Revelation 1 to try to discover this major theme. Let me ask you this question: if the Book of Revelation is the last book of the Bible, what do you think the major theme of the Book of Revelation might be? If it's the last book of the Bible, what do you think its central message is? Jesus. What? Jesus coming, that's right. So then, if the theme of Revelation is the second coming of Christ, wouldn't it be wise that we look at every chapter and every verse in the light of the second coming?

Now let's see if that's true. Revelation 1:7 says, "Behold, He's coming in clouds, and every eye shall see Him." Notice it doesn't say it's likely He will come, but it says He's coming in clouds. That's a major theme. He's coming. Now let's go to Revelation 22. The first chapter says He's coming. What does it say in Revelation 22:7? "Behold, I might come back"? No, it says, "Behold, I'm coming quickly." Revelation 22:12, again, "Behold, I'm coming quickly."

I thought we read that in verse 7. Did He make a mistake and read it twice? Not at all. Does He say He's coming quickly in verse 7? Yes. Does He say He's coming quickly in verse 12? Yes. But look at verse 20: "He who testifies of these things says, 'I'm coming quickly.'" He's coming quickly in verse 7, He's coming quickly in verse 12, He's coming quickly in verse 20. Why do you think He says three times, "I'm coming quickly, I'm coming quickly, I'm coming quickly"?

So that if you're yawning in verse 7 and if you fall asleep in verse 12, you better wake up by the time you come to verses 13 to 19 and focus on verse 20. He wants you to know for sure that He's coming quickly. The Father says, "I'm coming quickly." The Son says, "I'm coming quickly." The Holy Spirit says, "I'm coming quickly." But somebody says, "Wasn't this written 2,000 years ago, almost, in Revelation when John wrote it at the end of the first century? How could it be quickly when John wrote it?"

There are two ways to look at this. One, when the prophecies of Revelation are being fulfilled, we can know that the coming of Jesus is near, He's coming quickly. But the other aspect is this: He is coming quickly for every generation because every generation only lives a short period of time. At the end of that heartbeat, when that heart stops beating and you die if you're a Christian, the next thing you'll know is Jesus coming in the clouds of heaven.

So the second coming of Christ is a predominant theme of the Book of Revelation. One of the common questions that people ask when we talk about the Book of Revelation is this: if Jesus wanted it to be so plain, why didn't He just say it and tell it like it is? Why does He talk about beasts? Why does He say in Revelation 13, for example, "I saw another beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon the crowns the name of blasphemy"?

"The beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and he had the feet as the feet of a bear, and the mouth like the mouth of a lion, and a dragon gave him his power, his seat and great authority." And I saw the beast coming up out of the sea. And the beast got its authority, the Bible says, from the dragon. It was like a bear, a leopard, and this dragon. What does that represent? Why doesn't God just say it? Why does He use the figure of this beast coming up out of the sea? Why does He use like a lion, a bear, a leopard, a dragon? Why does He use a symbol of horns and crowns?

There are at least two good reasons about this. First, could it be there's a war between good and evil, between Christ and Satan? When the United States government is at war with some hostile power or with a terrorist, do they just say, "Here's our plan, you take a look at it so you know what we're going to do"? Is that what we do? Do we give all of our plans to the KGB or the Russian security forces? Do we give all our plans to China and their security forces? Do we let the Royal Guard in Iran know exactly what our plans are?

No, not at all. We have a code language when we're in war. My dear friends, there are two reasons why the Book of Revelation is written in symbols.

Guest (Female): You're listening to HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We'll be right back. And if you like what you're hearing, we invite you to check out our website, HopeLives365.com. There you can find many ministry resources, encouraging messages, and even a link to our HopeLives365 YouTube ministry. And of course, an opportunity to sow into this valuable ministry. Find out more by going to HopeLives365.com. That's HopeLives365.com. And now, back to Pastor Mark Finley.

Mark Finley: The first is this: when the Book of Revelation was written, it identified powers down through the ages. Had it fully exposed those powers, and some of them were church powers, those powers would have destroyed those portions of the Bible because those powers were the custodians of the Word. You see, the Book of Revelation reveals religious institutions that have drifted from God's Word. It also reveals state powers that unite with those religious institutions.

So, had the prophecies been plain in the early centuries before the printing press in 1456 with Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, had those prophecies been plain and people didn't have the Word of God, they wouldn't have known the truth. What about 100 AD, 200 AD, 300 AD? What about when those Bibles were chained in monasteries? What about when they were written by hand? If they exposed religious and political powers so clearly without symbolic language, they could have easily been destroyed and never come to mass printing.

So the God who is all-wise protected His Word by putting it in symbolic language so that those who would have destroyed it wouldn't understand it fully. Now, there's a second reason. The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius said, "A picture is worth what? A thousand words." In a short period of space, through symbolic language, God described the rise and fall of empires. God described the destiny of nations. God described religious and political and totalitarian powers.

He uses pictures and word pictures to describe. Now, if God has written the Bible in symbolic language, and if He's described in word pictures, would you not think that the same God who gave us those symbols, that He would enable us to understand them? So we look at symbols in Bible prophecy and we look at how God explains those symbols, and if we do that, we'll understand them. Let me give you some examples.

You remember in Revelation 13 it says, "I saw another beast come up out of the sea." Well, what does the sea represent? In Revelation 17:15, we represent "the waters which you saw, the sea, are nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples." So the Bible explains its own symbol: a beast coming up out of the sea represents peoples. What does a beast represent? In Daniel 7:17 and verse 23, it says, "The great beasts which you saw are kings that arise out of the earth." Or verse 23, we've mentioned, remember, "the fourth beast shall be the fourth what? Kingdom."

So a beast represents a nation, a king, or a kingdom. It could be political, it could be religious. And as we do that, as we look at that, a beast rising up out of the sea then is a kingdom rising up. Or take, for example, Revelation 17. It says in Revelation 17:1, "Then one of the seven angels who had seven bowls came and talked with me saying to me, 'Come, and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth are drunk with the wine of her fornication.'"

Now, there are five things in those verses. You first read them and you say, "What in the world does that mean, right?" You wonder. But I want to show you how simple it is. If you know the symbols, you can understand what that means in five minutes. Look. "Come and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot that sits on many waters." So you have one symbol is the harlot or the prostitute. The second symbol is the water. The third symbol is the kings of the earth. The fourth symbol is fornication, and the fifth symbol is wine.

In the Bible, what does water represent? Yes, we already discovered that. It represents people, multitudes, nations, and tongues. Water represents peoples. The Bible says it. The Bible says there's a harlot that sits on many waters. The harlot dominates many peoples. Now, in the Bible, and again, I'll explain the symbols clearly just to show you the method we're going to use as we study the entire Book of Revelation.

The Bible says, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church." The man is to love his wife as Jesus loves His church. Jesus is the husband, the church is the bride. In the Bible, a pure, chaste woman is described as the bride of Christ or the church. We'll show you that later. But Jesus is the husband, the church is the bride. Now, if a bride loves her husband, she is faithful to him. If a bride leaves her husband and commits adultery, she becomes unfaithful.

So when the church leaves her true lover Jesus and compromises with the world, she is no longer the pure bride of Christ, but she becomes the harlot. So the symbol of the harlot is the symbol of apostate religion, fallen churches, churches that have drifted from the truth of God's Word. They've left their true lover Jesus. They substituted man-made teachings. So the church dominates over many peoples, this fallen church. She's riding on what? A beast.

So somebody read for me, if you have your Bible there, I want you to look at it. I've quoted it already, but Daniel 7:17. If you can find it, go ahead and find it. If you're driving, don't do that, though. And here it's, "the great beasts are what? Kings that arise out of the earth." Or verse 23, we've mentioned, remember, "the fourth beast shall be the fourth what? Kingdom." So a beast represents a kingdom. Now we have three of the symbols explained.

A harlot woman dominates many peoples. The fallen church dominates many peoples. But she unites with the state powers or the kingdoms of the world. So here you have the church uniting with the state, passing around a wine cup. What does wine represent in the Bible? Wine in the Bible represents false doctrine that affects your judgment. It affects the forebrain, it affects our concentration. So wine has to do with false doctrine.

So you have the harlot woman, the fallen church, dominating over many peoples, uniting with the state powers, passing around her cup of, indeed, false doctrines. The kings of the earth or the political powers have united with this false church, and she has an illicit union trying to get her power from the state rather than her power from the true lover Jesus. She's passing around her wine cup of false doctrine to the whole earth. This all comes under this one conglomerate as church and state unite under this false religious end.

You see how you can understand these symbols. It becomes plain when you let the Bible explain itself. That's what we're going to do throughout the Book of Revelation as we study it. But let's go back to Revelation chapter 1 because we're going to start; we have to start at the beginning. I was just showing you that we are going to let the Bible explain itself. But you're going to go on a journey with me. In Revelation 1, it's a journey to the island of Patmos.

There are different ways to get out there to the island of Patmos. John wrote the Book of Revelation at the end of the first century. He was exiled by Domitian onto this island of Patmos. You can get there if you travel from Greece, but I don't like to go from Greece because you have to travel all night, often the swells on the Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea are quite high and the boat goes up and down, you can easily get seasick.

I like to go from the Turkish side. I usually go from Kusadasi. It's a little port in Turkey. It takes you about two and a half, depending on the conditions, three hours to get there. The last time I actually went there was when I was coming back from Patmos once, and the sea was really rough. The boat was going up and down and up and down. All the crew that I had with me went down into the bottom of the boat, into the hold of the boat, and they were heaving and lying over their seats.

But I love the waves and I hardly ever get seasick. So I said to one of my colleagues, "I'm going to go up and sit on the deck and let the waves come crashing over my feet." I sat on the deck of this big boat and the waves came crashing over my feet. It was just a wonderful experience. I loved it. The island of Patmos is a magnificent place. You have to travel out past the Greek islands and the Turkish islands through narrow channels. It's just an idyllic journey as you go.

Our trip normally takes us, as I said, about two and a half to three hours. Now, Patmos is nine miles long. It was on this island that John wrote the Book of Revelation. In John's day, it was a penal colony. It was a rocky, barren island. There was no life on there, although a few small villages and mining communities. Today, it has a magnificent harbor. One of the lasting memories in my life that's etched in my brain is we came out through this harbor and to the island of Patmos. It was a Friday night, the sun was going down.

On this particular occasion, I did not have a tour group with me. I just had a few people, my film crew. I get out by myself and sat on a rock by the harbor and read the first chapter—11 chapters—of Revelation and thought, "I wonder what John must have thought as he wrote it." The next Saturday night, as the sun was going down, I read the rest of the Book of Revelation. It was a thrilling thing to read the Book of Revelation on the island of Patmos.

Patmos is still a magnificent, just a magnificent place today. It's a place where you get the sense that God came down and revealed His last-day message to John on the island. Little chapels dot the island. These chapels are private. Almost every home has a little chapel. These are family chapels and so the families go out and pray in these chapels. There are hundreds that dot the countryside.

In the first century, the Roman government exiled John here. The Roman government looked at the old man and John is dying. He writes with a shaky hand, he writes with dimmed vision. John writes with the wisdom of the ages as he's there sitting on the island of Patmos. The Roman government wants to get rid of him. They want to exile him. They want to silence him. So they send him to the island of Patmos.

But there Jesus comes down with His angel and reveals to John the Book of Revelation. Sometime in the greatest trials of our lives, sometime in the greatest difficulties of our lives, sometime in the greatest heartaches in our lives, that's when God speaks to us the clearest. John was going through the worst trial of his life. He was separated from his family, he was separated from his friends. He was probably living in Ephesus before this time, but now he's taken to a penal colony.

He's an old man already in his 90s. He wonders if he'll ever get off the island again. Here, this frail old man on the island of Patmos, where the devil says, "Now you are chained and you can't bless anybody," but God comes down and gives him a vision of the Book of Revelation. And for 2,000 years, it's been a blessing for the church. What's your deepest trial? What's your greatest heartache? What's the greatest sorrow you're going through right now?

What's the greatest pain in your heart and your life? The living Christ, like He did for John, will give you a vision of the future. He may not reveal Himself as an angel and give you a dream in the night, but He will give you conviction in your heart. He'll give you the warmth of His presence. Jesus visits us just like He visited John, that ancient apostle on the island of Patmos. Jesus draws near to us and gives us hope and encouragement when we feel lonely, when we feel alone, when we feel disappointed.

You see, the Book of Revelation is the book about Jesus who intervenes. He's not a God that merely sits upon His throne, but Jesus enters into the affairs of life. He enters the trauma, the heartache, the disappointment of life, and Jesus comes and ministers to us.

Guest (Female): You've been listening to HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We hope you've enjoyed today's message and remind you that you can find more in our many ministry resources at HopeLives365.com. And you can support this ministry by going to HopeLives365.com/donate. And now, a final thought from Pastor Mark.

Mark Finley: The ancient apostle was sent to this rocky, barren outcrop in Patmos, but it was illuminated with the glory of God. There's no place that you can be sent beyond the glory of God. There's no place that you can be sent beyond the presence of God. God will meet you there and He will give you rich revelations like He gave John. Let's pray together.

Father in heaven, Father, help us to see in the Book of Revelation a revelation of Christ, a revelation of the Jesus who is with us always, the Jesus who'll never forsake us and never let us go. The Book of Revelation reveals Jesus and it reveals a Jesus who is coming again. It reveals the truths to prepare a people for His coming. It reveals errors that would creep into the Christian church. It warns us against apostasy. But most of all, the Book of Revelation uplifts Jesus. So, Lord, may we be faithful to Him today and always. In Christ's name, amen.