Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Who are the 144,000, and what does it mean when they are referred to in Revelation chapter seven as being sealed? Is this a literal moment in time, or is this some largely symbolic metaphor? If it's literal, how do we respond, and what does it mean for us? If it's metaphorical, what does it represent? We will answer those questions and more today on Light on the Hill. Here's Pastor James Kaddis.

James Kaddis: Revelation chapter seven. Now, I am going to lay some groundwork down for you because we need to do this. And again, I have told you this, if you have sat here under my teaching for any length of time, you are going to hear me share with you the same exact principles, but we will do it in different ways. And each of these principles have particularly important contexts in which we need to emphatically produce for you a better understanding as it relates to the particular text that we're in.

One of the principles that we talk about a lot is the difference between the English language and the Hebrew language, and not just the difference between those two languages, but the differences in the culture that those languages represent. Now, many of you guys know, I tend to be a language guy. My mom and my dad were both born and raised in Egypt, so Arabic was another language that we were speaking in the home. And of course, I have fallen in love with lots of other languages because I think they mean something, and I think there's a particular value associated with the constructs of each of them.

Often times, one of the things that we recognize with language very quickly is that language serves a purpose for the culture that forms that language, right? So when you get together and you speak a particular language amongst your people group or amongst your society, that language carries a specific formation that serves the cultural subsets of the area that you might be in. For example, when we speak in English, there's lots of different ways that English language can be represented.

If I'm a guy, for example, that sits in a culture of a bunch of building inspectors, and I actually said "what's cracking," then the second person might say, "I don't know, what is cracking? Tell me." Because in our world, when we use the term "cracking," we talk about the crack that protrudes six inches laterally from the pipe north of the particular joining mechanism that's off the rafter. That's how people talk. But if you go to certain parts of Los Angeles, Southern California, and go "what's cracking," everyone will go "hey, what's up," and everybody takes it a completely different way.

Just like within Spanish, we use certain terms that are very particular, and those terms change depending on the area that you're in. For example, if you're in Spain, you are not going to use the word *maqueta* or *preñada*. But if you're in East L.A., you're going to use those terms because there's a language subset, there's a different way that we use specific languages, and those languages change. And when those languages change, you have to understand they are custom-tailored for the principles that are often times associated with that language.

Like, for example, we deal with this in law enforcement. In law enforcement, I can give you a series of codes, which by the way, if you don't know the history of this, in law enforcement, we use all these codes not because we don't want people to know what we're saying. Sometimes that's an added benefit, but we use certain codes because it's easier to communicate using a code when you're in a hurry to be able to get something done and to be able to understand what's going on.

For example, if I get on the radio and I tell somebody that I'm about to arrest somebody because they are in violation of a particular crime, then I might not say well that person actually broke this crime, he was in possession of a gun, and there was a particular thing that he did with it, and outline all of the elements of that crime. What I might end up saying is to somebody that has a background or a training, I might say, "Yeah, that subject was 417 and he used it to 245 somebody."

If you're in law enforcement, you'll understand exactly what that means. I just basically using two codes explained to you that that person did a series of things that met the criteria of a particular crime as it's defined by the penal code that you see, which utilizes the guidance of what the law has recognized as appropriate or acceptable. This is why, by the way, it's very interesting. Police officers don't do well when they go to law school, and this is the reason why engineers don't do well when they go to law school because they don't understand Socratic, the Socratic mindset.

They don't understand that thinking. It was one of my biggest struggles when I went to law school is, "Hey, look, this is what the code says and this is what it must be." Well, actually, let's talk about the elements that drove that code. Let's talk about the difference between the spirit of that and the letter of it and let's actually find out where each of those actually intersect, which by the way, this is very interesting because critical theory actually originated within the context of law schools, which by the way, was a subset of the use of functional language.

So language changes, and language is something that is variable in every context, and when it is used a specific way, it carries a specific connotation with a particular value that is tied to it. Now, we have to understand this because there's something you need to know about the English language. I want to say this right off the bat, please, do not take this the wrong way. I am proud to be an American citizen. I love the English language. I think the English language is a wonderful language, and I spend a lot of time learning how to wordsmith in order to spend the most effective possible moments in how I communicate.

This is what I do when I prepare Bible study. When I prepare Bible study, I have to choose my words wisely. Why? Because I have a specific time, and within that time, I have to communicate a whole wealth of information, and in doing so, I need to make sure language is utilized in order to functionally facilitate, and relationally for that matter, the information that's necessary to you. And so I want to say that I love the English language, but the English language works against Bible students.

Can I just tell you that one more time? It works against Bible students. Here's the reason why: because the English language carries a somewhat of an imperialistic nature. When I say imperialistic nature, I'm not talking about imperialist like you're a white imperialist. Not that kind of imperialistic nature. I'm saying that the measurement by which the communication is facilitated both grammatically and structurally is very different and its connotations that it carries are very different. Let me give you a modern-day example where you might appreciate this.

If I go to you as an English speaker and I tell you that I have a poem for you, and then I read you a piece of literature where there's not a single rhyme in it, or there are no real ties to it that would even emulate closely what we understand as modern poetic genre, you would look at me and you would go, "You're crazy," right? For most Americans, if it's a poem, it has to be a "Jack and Jill went up the hill," "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall." Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, that might even work.

So let's get into this because this is very, very important. In the Hebrew language, when we talk about poetry, it carries a completely different meaning. Hebrew poetry is a completely different world, and I'm focusing on Hebrew, folks, just so you understand, because we're talking about the Old Testament Bible language. Greek becomes significant here when we look at the Book of Revelation, but Hebrew is more significant because here's the principle. I've shared this with you on many occasions, and we'll bring language back into this.

If you want to understand the Book of Revelation, you must understand the Old Testament. If you understand the Old Testament, you must understand the Hebrew language, and you must understand Hebrew culture. Now, I'm not saying that you need to sit here and tell me *aleph-beth-gimmel-daleth*. I'm not asking you to give me the Hebrew alphabet. I'm not even asking you to pronounce Hebrew words. I'm not asking you to identify Hebrew structures. I want you to understand the mindset that drives the language.

You have to know the mindset that drives the language. This is one of the things that I oftentimes used to tell Hebrew students when we would sit down and we would talk about this. It was very difficult for them to understand Hebrew concepts, especially when we're talking about these types of languages that structure the same way because if you don't understand the culture that drives the language, you will never understand the representations of the language.

Can I give you an example of this? When I tell you in Arabic, *ruh faltag wa gidinee haga sa'aa*. I just told you, if I translated it word for word, I literally told you this: go into the ice and get me something cold. Now, that makes zero sense, right? But there's a context and there's a cultural subset that drives what those words actually mean. And if you take it and you seek to interpret it based on the way it was intended to be interpreted, my intonation, the voice structure, what I say, what I point to, how I react, the world that I live in would actually mean something completely different.

Today, those words would mean something completely different than those words that you would hear a hundred years ago. As a matter of fact, a hundred years ago, you probably wouldn't even hear those words in a sentence. Just like you would never hear anybody talk about Twitter or X, for that matter, in a sentence. Those are words that you hear now, but you wouldn't hear twenty years ago because those things didn't exist. So if I were to translate what I just told you, *ruh faltag wa gidinee haga sa'aa*, not the word-for-word way but the dynamically equivalent way, which takes into account the culture, the subset of all of the communication variables that surround it, then what I just told you is, go to the fridge and get me a Coke. Completely different, right? It means something completely different.

The idea here is important to understand because the aspect that we need to be reminded of today when we get into the Book of Revelation is that the Hebrew mindset in storytelling is completely different. It's driven differently because of the culture and it makes the language different. Now, remember, in America, what do we do? The English mindset, and specifically, mutually exclusive to almost all Western countries—and when I say Western, meaning Western on this continent—is we tell a story from beginning to end.

We start at the starting point and then we plow through the narrative, and then we end at the end point. We do not float things around. As a matter of fact, if you try to tell somebody a story, especially in court, for example, let's say you go to court and you go before a jury and you want to tell a jury a story, the best litigators in the world will tell you this right off the bat: do not be all over the place. Use visual aids. If you want to explain a timeline, start it from beginning to end. Do not insert yourself anywhere in that timeline because if you do, you'll confuse the jury. If you confuse the jury, it translates to reasonable doubt. If you have reasonable doubt, you have a problem.

It's kind of like that whole mindset of Johnny Cochran, "If it don't fit, you got to acquit." Brilliant, by the way, super brilliant lawyering. It's a language thing that he played on. It was a very important language structure. Look, in criminal law, law students still to this day spend hundreds of hours talking about that one case for that very reason. Language has something to do with it. Johnny Cochran brilliantly was able to utilize language and the subsets of a particular language to drill inside the jurors that there was reasonable doubt. And the very moment the jurors accepted that there was reasonable doubt, then O.J. couldn't have done it.

Language matters. And not only does language matter, but once we master language, then we also have to understand the culture that drives that language. Remember, language does not drive culture, culture drives language. And that's really important to understand that. So with that in mind, you have to understand that the Hebrew storytelling picture is completely different.

In the Hebrew mind, you know what we do? In the Hebrew mind, even in the Arab world, what we tend to do is we tend to tell a story by making a declaration of a fact somewhere within the story as the start of the story. And then we start plowing through the timeline by going to the end and then going to the beginning, and then going to the middle, and then going to the third of it, and then going to the twenty-minute mark versus the forty-minute mark.

By the way, I just want you to understand what is changing the world in how America tells its story, especially in the cinema world, is YouTube. A lot of people don't know this, but with YouTube, we're beginning to understand, and if you study YouTube—and we do, we spend a lot of time studying YouTube because we think that it's a format that God has asked us to be very involved with and to use very aggressively—you understand that seventy percent of the YouTube audience is not an English-speaking audience.

And not only is it not an English-speaking audience, but seventy percent of the YouTube audience that's out there looks at and processes stories a completely different way. This, by the way, is why TikTok-style videos are doing very well on YouTube. This is why Shorts are doing very well on YouTube, because Shorts are beginning to wipe away the Westernized mindset about how storytelling works. And now what's beginning to happen is the way we tell stories is not predicated upon time. It's actually predicated more upon the story itself and the way the structure is being brought to you.

By the way, I'm going to repeat a very ungodly, a wicked, and satanic statement, but this is where this statement comes from. People talk about time being a function of white imperialism. You want to know why they're doing that? Because they're examining cultures like some of the cultures we see in Africa, and they're looking at how time is treated completely differently. And so in their arrogant, racist assumption, they say that time is a function of white imperialism, when in reality what people call white imperialism, meaning the adaptation of time as we hold it today in the United States of America, is a function of the many gifts that people have given us from the African continent, especially as it relates to the world of engineering and science and all of those things.

We honor time right now in the world in which we live because of the contributions given to us by people on the African continent and the Asian continent and several other continents that have given us something that have built the society we have. Remember, the United States of America was created based on other cultures and languages. That's why it's called the melting pot.

Now, with all of that to say, let me tell you what the Hebrew mindset of time is. This is very similar, by the way, to what you still see today in African cultures, what you still see today in the Middle East, and actually in many Asian cultures, you'll see this. Very interesting, not so much in Southeast Asia, but you will see it in other portions of the Asian continent. And this is how it works: when you tell a story, you never tell the story chronologically. It doesn't happen.

You tell a story by mentioning something that happened in a particular point in time and then building the story around that point in time while bringing in other subsets of that time. Meaning, you develop the same understanding of the picture as the storyteller. Now, this is the thing that we have to understand. The storyteller in most of these cultures sees the whole story in their mind, not through the order that the dimension of time creates, but rather outside of the dimension of time.

They're looking at a timeline, they see what happened from beginning to end, and they're making observations from everything that's in that timeline and saying, "Oh yeah, by the way," "Oh yeah, by the way," "Oh yeah, by the way," "Oh yeah, by the way." And the more information you get from them going, "Oh yeah, by the way," the better of an understanding you actually have. By the way, I want to just simply say this: the best storytellers in the world, the absolute best storytellers in the world, are not American.

I want you to understand that, because the best stories that are told do not use that mindset. As a matter of fact, I want to say this because I think it's really important to note, in my opinion, one of the greatest historians alive right now in this country—there is no historian I think that's greater, he is probably, in my opinion, he's a national treasure—is William Federer.

I think he's an amazing historian because anything about American history that you want to know, he'll have it, and he's amazing and he's very good with world history. But what William might not realize, but I realize it because I watch stuff like this all the time, is William gives you an account of history the same way the Bible gives an account of history. And I don't know if that's just the spirit of God living inside of him that inspired him to do that, but he doesn't give it to people in the chronological method that is oftentimes given to people.

You want to give you an example of this in the Bible so that you guys will understand it? Because you have to understand this before we get into Revelation seven. If you don't understand this before we get into Revelation seven, we're in trouble. One of the best examples of this in the Bible: Genesis 1:1. It says this: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And then verse two says what? And the earth was without form and void.

Do you understand that there is a theory that people have about something that they identify between verse one and verse two as a gap? They call it a gap, and they call it the Gap Theory. And you'll hear American preachers—you won't hear anybody else—you'll hear American preachers tell you that there was a gap between verse one and verse two because when God created the heavens and the earth, he created it perfectly, but then verse two says it was without form and void, which means it had to have gone bad and something had to have happened between verse one and verse two. Actually, wrong.

Hebrew culture demands that it be looked at completely different. In the Hebrew culture, this is what is happening: you have the author saying, "God is the one who created the heavens and the earth. I want everybody to know, hey, that guy over there, God, he's the one that created the heavens and the earth. It's him. I want you to know that." Then he begins to say, "Now, let's get into the story of how it was done. God was the one that created the raw material. The earth was without form and void. God started with this raw material that he created, and then he began to form and fashion it."

By the way, so that you know, the next three chapters of the book of Genesis account the story of God's creation out of order. People don't know that. The only order that you tend to find in the creation account of Genesis is what happened day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six, and then you go back and God gets into lots of details. Like for example, he gets into the details of how man was created. And he talks about what happens and what actually took place that man was working. God told him, "Hey, these are the animals. I want you to now go into naming the animals."

But you wouldn't know about the animals unless you knew that the animals were actually created, which is why God told you about the fact that they were created first. But then he had to go back into that time period where it says God created the heavens and the earth, get a little bit more into it, expound upon it, so that your understanding of it would be much better. And then what he begins to do is he begins to bring you into a much stronger and a much greater picture of how it works.

Which, by the way, I just want you to understand something. If you understand the timeline behind God's creation, and you understand what God exactly did in the garden, do you understand that right now, if you're a single person and you don't have a relationship and you want to have a relationship and you want to get married, you just found the answer on finding the perfect spouse? Did you know that? Men, listen to me and listen to me good. Women especially, you should listen to me.

What the Western world wants to tell you is if you want to find a man or you want to find a woman, get on an app. You can find the man or the woman. Or, you know what you should do? You should go to church with the mindset of seeking to hook up with somebody. I hate that ugly word. Or how about the fact that oftentimes, what you hear is you hear well, maybe you should just go out and go to the club and "hey baby, what's going on."

Look, I got a question for you. If you meet somebody in the club, are they going to be the type of person you want to bring home to mom and dad? Probably not. But the world gives you all these prescriptions on how you should meet somebody. But you know what I learned from a very young age? You know what I learned as a young man? Because my mom and my dad taught me this. I learned that in the garden, after God created man, you know what he told man to do? He said, "Get to work."

Man started naming the animals and he started doing the work that God had told him to do. And it was only then when he named the animals and did the work that God had told him to do that he was able to observe, "Hey, that man hippo has a female hippo. That man giraffe has a female giraffe. They all have partners, but I don't have a partner." And he notices it. You know what God does immediately, from the moment, from the moment Adam notices it? What does God do? God puts him to sleep.

And God recognizes—he doesn't realize—he doesn't go, "Oh wow, I made a mistake, I should probably make him a woman." That isn't what happens. The Bible actually tells us that he puts him to sleep, and what does he do? He brings that woman into his life. So this is what I tell single men: shut your mouth and get to work. Seriously. Stop looking for the perfect woman and close your mouth because what you're going to do is you're going to find the unperfect woman and it's going to make your life miserable. And if you find the perfect woman with that mindset, all you're going to do is destroy her.

So shut your mouth and get to work. This is really funny, I've had a lot of people accuse me of, "No, you don't know what it feels like." I always remind everybody I got married at thirty-nine years old, never being in a relationship prior to that time and never being interested in a relationship. The reality of it was while I was working, God brought the right person into my life and it wasn't until I laid eyes on her that God told me in that moment that would be the woman I would marry. And then that way I didn't waste any time.

Within a few weeks I told her, within five minutes worth of conversation, "I think God told me I'm going to marry you," and then God worked it all out. He did the perfect job. People look at me, "That's impossible, man, that's just you." Are you kidding me? Do you understand the kind of risk involved in going to a woman that you don't even know and saying God told me to marry you, being a pastor who's already on the radio and well known nationally? Do you understand the kind of risk that's involved in something like that? It's called trusting in the Lord. And I tell this to everybody: get to work. Here's the funny thing: if you don't know the Hebrew mindset behind the storytelling process that exists, you're never going to have those tools that you need to develop a new relationship, to understand the things that God has given you.

Guest (Male): Pastor James is leading us verse by verse through Revelation here on Light on the Hill. To hear this message again, visit lightonthehillradio.com or oneplace.com. It's also available through the Light on the Hill app. Light on the Hill is made possible through the generosity of our listeners. If the Lord is leading you to support this ministry, please visit lightonthehillradio.com to donate or you can give through the Light on the Hill app.

I also want to mention the new book written by Pastor James. It's entitled *The Last Book: A Guide to Revelation Part 1*. As the world heads toward its final chapter, the Bible has already revealed every detail. The Book of Revelation is God's message of warning, hope, and promise to prepare us for what's coming. In *The Last Book*, Pastor James takes us through Revelation chapters one through ten and shows us why we must live wholeheartedly for God, anchored in truth and awake to the times. You can order a copy today at lightonthehillradio.com or Amazon. As we return to Pastor James, he elaborates on the Hebrew mindset that drives their storytelling.

James Kaddis: Let's go back to this. The Hebrew mind is I'm going to tell you about all of the things that happened all at the same time. I'm going to tell you what happened and then I'm going to start getting into the story of how it happened. And most of the time, once I tell you what happened and I start telling you the story, I don't start at the beginning. I start in the middle and I expand out. And then I stop and I go back to the beginning and I expand out from there. And then I stop and I go to the end and I expand out, and then I re-summarize everything.

That is very typical of the Hebrew storytelling mindset. And by the way, if you will study the Old Testament with that understanding, the Old Testament will begin to come to life for you in ways that you never thought. By the way, guys, this is why in the Bible college when I teach through the book of Isaiah, we already have a pretty large attrition rate in that book. As a matter of fact, it comes close to the language attrition rates that we have.

Like when I teach Greek, I would typically start with thirty and I'd end up with five. That's typically how it goes in the Bible college environment. But in Isaiah, we typically had anywhere from twelve to fifteen percent attrition rate and sometimes a little bit higher because my requirements for my Isaiah students—and I did this with lots of different books—was no textbook. Now they see that and they go, "No textbook, oh, this is going to be an easy class." And they sign up and they realize that the reason why they don't have a textbook—well, there's actually one, Nelson's Book of Bible Maps and Charts, but it's kind of a peripheral tool.

But what I tell them is this: I say you are in my class required to read through virtually all of the Old Testament at least five times a week. Now they look at me and they go, "Oh my gosh, that's so hard." It's not as hard as you would think. I tell them these are the books you need to read through five times, then you need to read through these books, then you need to read through these books, and you need to read through these books. And you want to know why? Because what you will do when you do that is you will develop a much better understanding of how stories are told. And once you develop an understanding of how stories are told, you will have a better understanding of how God functions, especially as it relates to communication for the future.

Guest (Male): Join us next time when Pastor James Kaddis will continue through the Book of Revelation. That's right here on Light on the Hill, a listener-supported ministry of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.