Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: God's judgment and the execution of His judgment is necessary in order for the place of restoration to come in bringing things back to the way God intended for them to be brought. Now, what that tells us is something significant as believers and that's this: there's no such thing as God letting people in the back door. There's no such thing as someone coming in by the hair of their chinny chin chin. God will do what He says He's going to do.

And folks, I want to make myself clear. The most rewarding and powerful lives lived by people on this earth are the ones when they trust in God's word even when it's not convenient to do so. Even when it feels like His word is not going to bring anything to the table, God always comes through on His word. So follow Him, right? Believe Him, trust Him. Great things are coming.

Guest (Male): Today on Light on the Hill, we're going to study what many refer to as the prelude to the bowl judgments. Just like all the other preludes in the book of Revelation, there is so much we can learn from what we read is coming. What does the sea of glass mean? What is the significance of it being mingled with fire? What is the other sign in heaven? We'll talk about this and much more in an exciting study through the book of Revelation. Here's Pastor James Kaddis.

James Kaddis: This will go by pretty quickly. So let's read this because it's important. There are times when you teach the Bible, you have to give people the education and the background before you actually read the text. And then when you read the text, it begins to just make all kinds of sense. It might if all you do is listen to me read the text and it's going to be confusing. But now that you have the background and the education, reading the text is going to be awesome.

So let's dig into it. It gets interesting. Revelation chapter 15, verse one: "And I saw another sign in the heaven, and all the other signs that he's been watching in the heavens, guys, have been very obvious what they are. He's seeing them. Great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues." He knows what they are. They're great and marvelous, and he knows what he's looking at. He's clear. There's no ambiguity as to what he's looking at.

And here's the other piece of information we get. It says this at the last part of this, "having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God." So when he's looking at this, he realizes these judgments that are coming, these plagues that are coming in these vials—these bowl judgments as people would call it—is the finality of God's judgment. In other words, this is the last of it. It's kaput.

So when you look at the sky and you see an eclipse, don't say it's going to be the end. When you look at the sky and you see this happening, you can say it's going to be the end. You understand what I mean when I say that? It's very important that we recognize this.

Verse two: "And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God." By the way, when we talk about the sea of glass mingled with fire, we are talking about heaven. They're in heaven right now.

And what he is seeing is he is seeing saints. When we talk about this, he's not looking at the church here; he is looking at saints. He is looking at believers who believed in the time of the tribulation. They didn't believe before the rapture, but when the rapture happened, then they did believe. And the Bible says that they had victory over the beast.

Now, when they say victory over the beast, does that mean they destroyed the beast and they eliminated him? No. Victory in that they didn't give in to the mark of the beast, they didn't give into the worship of the beast, they didn't give into the image of the beast. They didn't give into any of that. They basically resisted and they died as a result of it. So they're in heaven and they're experiencing the reward and the benefit of that very thing taking place.

Watch this, verse three: "And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints." This is an interesting thing that ends up happening because what you're actually seeing is you're seeing two people groups that are singing two different songs.

The first people group is my guess is the 144,000. They're in heaven and they are singing the song of Moses. The other people group are the people group that has just been mentioned, those saints that actually died in the midst of the tribulation at the hands of the Antichrist because of their belief in Christ over the belief of Antichrist. And they are singing a song of the Lamb.

Now, we know what these songs are because we have records of both of these songs. Let me just go back to the song of the Lamb because that's the easier one. Well, they're both easy, but the more obvious one is the song that we see given to us or that we hear about in the book of Revelation, chapter five. Remember, who's worthy to open the scroll?

John cries when he realizes there's nobody worthy to open the scroll, understanding that the scroll is a title deed to the earth. And then the Messiah comes forth. Jesus is the one, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He's the one that is worthy to open up the scroll. He breaks the seals on the scroll and we know exactly what happens as the story progresses.

And then in that moment, there is a song that is being sung by these saints and of course that is the song of the Lamb. But then there's another song that they're singing, and this is what we call the song of Moses. Now, again, this is where you have to know the Old Testament in order to be able to understand what you're looking at. So let me talk to you about the relevant portion of the Old Testament that you might not be familiar with that will help.

It is about the book of Deuteronomy. Now, here's the problem with the book of Deuteronomy. It's not the problem with the book, but here's the problem with the way people look at the book. One of the common assertions that I hear made regarding the book of Deuteronomy is the fact that the book of Deuteronomy is referred to as commonly the second law. That is not correct. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now, the reason why they call the book of Deuteronomy the second law is because Moses appears to be handing down to the people the law of God. And it is kind of different from the law that you heard handed down the first place, where it almost seems like it's a different set of laws, which is why they call it the second law.

But what's actually happening in Deuteronomy is Moses is about to die. Moses is a lot older and a lot wiser than he was when the law was first given to him. So Moses in Deuteronomy is giving the people of God his final words. He is telling them the words that he wants them to know. And what's really substantial about the book of Deuteronomy is it's not the second law; it is the reiteration of the law in a way that better encapsulates the spirit and the letter of it, if that makes any kind of sense.

So when Moses is speaking in Deuteronomy, Moses is not only giving you the law, Moses is warning you of what happens when you rebel against it and he's encouraging you of the results of when you obey it. And he also says all kinds of things that are encapsulated with the instruction that the laws provide. What he does is he actually comes to you and he's telling me and he's telling the children of Israel, he's saying, "This is what you must do. You must obey the law of God."

But he goes beyond that and he says, "Here are the things that you gain from doing so. Here's the wisdom associated with it." In essence, it's an older, wiser man who's much better at what he does than when he was younger. Look, I've been teaching the Bible for almost 32 years. And in doing so, I can tell you this right now: I'm a lot better at it today than I was when I first started. A lot better because of a lot of years of practice, a lot of years of study, and a lot of years of wisdom.

And so you learn how to apply the things that you learned way better and you can communicate better because you have a better understanding of the passage. So Moses is reiterating in Deuteronomy the law. Now, why is that important? Because in Deuteronomy chapter 32, he teaches the people a song. And that is what people understand as being the song of Moses.

Now, I would highly recommend that in your own time, you go over that passage and you learn the song and you understand the significance of the song. But what Moses is doing here is actually pretty brilliant. Moses designed the song to teach the people for the sake of the younger generation. Why? Because sometimes when you learn the words of a song, you learn the tune first and as the years go by you understand the significance of the song.

And that's something that's really interesting. When you take a moment to examine the words of the song later as you get older, you begin to realize what the value of the song is and the significance of that song. By the way, it's interesting because we learn all kinds of songs when we are kids and when we get older we realize those are probably not the best songs to be knowing. Ring around the rosies and there's all sort, you know, you learn some of the history of those songs and you're like, dude, they teach us songs about witchcraft when we were young kids. "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down." It's like, whoa, my goodness. You don't understand like some of that is just founded in some real ugly history.

But Moses was wise. Moses was smart. Moses was like, I am going to teach them the law of God in a song that will cause them to remember the importance of applying it so that when they get older they're going to understand. Now, by the way, this also does something that can be very harmful, and that is when you learn certain facts using a song, you'll understand the song and you'll remember the song but you sometimes won't understand the mechanics of the facts that are being communicated.

I'll give you a great example of this. When I learned how to read Greek, my Greek teacher refused to teach us the Greek alphabet using a song. He said that it's harder, but if you learn to sing the Greek alphabet with a song, you will forget many of the significant variables involved in you being able to understand Greek words and vocabulary and reading certain phrases and understanding phrases. And I'm very glad that he did that with us because while other students were learning how to read Greek with a different teacher by learning the song, I realized that with time they dropped out. And they lost their understanding of it.

And by the way, this is why we have such terrible literacy levels here in the United States of America. Some of the worst reading that we have is founded in some of the terrible educational mechanisms deployed to teach students how to read. For example, it's not good to teach your kids "A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P" because what you do is you teach them to memorize something based on a song instead of emphasizing the phonetic part of the alphabet, instead of emphasizing the heuristics behind how you actually read and understanding some of those things. It becomes very difficult.

That's why Hooked on Phonics, although it was made fun of when I was a kid—people made fun of Hooked on Phonics all the time because Hooked on Phonics was a tool that you used when a kid couldn't read. And so if you were a kid when I was in school and you said, "I use Hooked on Phonics," you'd get made fun of because it was considered to be a tool that was used for really stupid kids. Well, the reality of it is it's actually the most brilliant tool or the mechanics behind it, the mindset behind the heuristical approach of Hooked on Phonics is actually the smartest tool available for teaching literacy in virtually any language.

There are some exceptions to this, by the way. When you start getting into some Asian languages, some of the Cyrillic languages, and Semitic languages, it might not work that well. It might not work on that level for a lot of reasons and there's a whole lot to say about that. Phonetics don't necessarily apply in the use of Semitic languages, for example, or Asian languages. Like if you're learning Japanese or so on and so forth, it's a very different approach.

But my whole point behind it is it was a very valuable tool because for me, it kept me from making the wrong mistakes. But when it's used to teach a foundational principle, it's a genius tool. And that's what Moses was doing in Deuteronomy chapter 32. Now, this is very important because what that illustrates to us is that God allowed the law of Moses to be carried into heaven in the last days. The Bible was being recited even with a song in the last days. How incredible is that? Imagine what Moses would have felt like had he known that his—the very words that he reiterated, the word of God that he reiterated—would be sung in heaven. It's pretty cool.

Now, look at the song that they sing because this is really important. And they sang the song of Moses, right? Verse four: "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest." I love this verse four. Look at what it says. We learn this from this song: how important it is to do what? Number one, it's important to fear the Lord. We fear God, and as we fear Him, what are we supposed to do? We're supposed to glorify His very name.

It's pretty heavy when you think about the fact that we're told to glorify the name of God even though He regards His word above His name. Pretty amazing. So when we fear God, we're going to glorify Him. Why do we glorify Him? We glorify Him because He's holy, meaning He's different from anybody else. He's different from everything else. There is no God that is like our God. There is no God like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is no God like the God who gave us our salvation. And if we recognize and know that, then we're going to treat Him differently than everybody else, aren't we? Because He's different than everything else and He's different from everybody else.

And then notice it, "all the nations shall come and worship before thee." You know what I learn when I see this portion of the song? I realize, am I going to get with the program now and worship God, or am I going to have the program forced on me when I bow before God with all the other nations and experience the judgment of God? Pretty powerful message that is here. Why? For thy judgments are made manifest.

You remember when all the churches in America were beginning to march for George Floyd and not march for the gospel, and beginning to do all the things that they did, start to fall into the woke industrial complex and all of that? It was because they forgot this last line. It was because they forgot that God's judgments are made manifest. Why? Because when God judges, God's judgments are real and true. But when God judges, or when God says He's going to judge, God is going to do it.

When God actually says, "This is what you need to do, and I promise you I will give you this," then He's going to do it. We forgot the fact that God's word is true. We forgot the fact that when God makes a promise, that promise is going to come true. And the thing is, God told us not to fear death. And if He told us not to fear death, then it should have changed the way that we behaved during that time.

And the churches that didn't behave that way were churches that chose not to believe in the word of God, or at least they were led by men that chose not to believe in the word of God. We learn that from the song that they are singing here. They're recognizing this from heaven: that God is a God who will do exactly what He says. By the way, this kind of reminds me of an aspect of parenting. Can I give you a good, solid piece of parenting advice, everybody, coming from a very experienced father who's been parenting for, what, four years, whatever?

Let me just say this: very, very important piece of parenting advice. Don't ever forget this. Two things have to go in the discipline of your children, assuming the fact that you're disciplining them. You have to discipline them. You have to. The discipline has to be consistent, and the discipline has to be—and folks, believe me when I tell you this—the discipline has to be reliable.

You know what I mean when I say that? Meaning your children have to know that you will never back down from the consequence you promised them for the behavior that they're given to. Now, with that, let me just tell you so I can be very real with you and somewhat vulnerable: lately I've been feeling like all I'm doing is disciplining my children. You know what I mean when I say that? It feels like I'm telling them no 40, 50 times a day. They're getting consequences more times than you can imagine.

It's a very discouraging and somewhat frustrating process, but I can tell you it will always pay off in the end. It will always pay off in the end. Children, if you are here and you have parents that are disciplining you all the time and you don't like it and you think it's not fair and you think, man, Mom and Dad are so rough and they're so just—listen to me when I tell you this: your mom and dad love you. If they didn't love you, they'd let you get away with whatever you wanted to get away with. And as a matter of fact, it's a function of them actually hating you if they did that. But because they love you, they're not going to let you get away with anything.

And let me tell you what happened as a result of a mom and dad that never let me get away with anything. Because my mom and dad never let me get away with anything, I'm here to minister to you. So God's judgments are what? They're made manifest. It's going to happen.

Verse five: "And after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened." By the way, one quick thing I'll stop on and this is a very quick fact that we should all know if we're studying the Old Testament, and that is the fact that the tabernacle was specifically ordered by God to be built by His people. He made it very clear: you need to do it exactly as I say to the exact specs, exact everything.

And He said only the best, only the most skilled people were to build it. And even the most skilled people were supernaturally empowered by God to do the building so that it would be done perfectly. You want to know why? Because the tabernacle was modeled after heaven. So if you were to be familiar with the tabernacle and then you went to heaven, it would look very much like the tabernacle that you were used to looking to.

And that's why when people hear they look at this reference and they go, "Oh, wow, there's a tabernacle in heaven, that means they're doing animal sacrifice." No, it doesn't mean anything of the sort. What it means is the tabernacle itself that we understood and read about in the book of Exodus and on is in essence the same tabernacle or modeled after heaven. It's a picture into heaven for us. And that's a very important fact to go by.

So he's looking at heaven and look at this, verse six: "And the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles. And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, who liveth for ever and ever. And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled."

So we know something from the beginning of this passage. We know from the beginning of the passage that these vials that are being talked about, these plagues, are going to represent the end of God's judgment. But then we learn something at the end of this passage and that's this: no one gets to enter into the structure of the temple in heaven until God's judgment is finalized. Funny how that works. God's judgment and the execution of His judgment is necessary in order for the place of restoration to come in bringing things back to the way God intended for them to be brought.

Now, what that tells us is something significant as believers and that's this: there's no such thing as God letting people in the back door. There's no such thing as someone coming in by the hair of their chinny chin chin. God will do what He says He's going to do.

And folks, I want to make myself clear. The most rewarding and powerful lives lived by people on this earth are the ones when they trust in God's word even when it's not convenient to do so. Even when it feels like His word is not going to bring anything to the table, God always comes through on His word. So follow Him, right? Believe Him, trust Him. Great things are coming.

And here's the wonderful, most spectacular part of all that we've talked about: we're all going to be in heaven when this is happening. We're not going to see any of this. God is reserving His judgment for the world that hates Him. But for us, He's preventing us from experiencing it because He's going to take us beforehand. All the more reason why we should trust in God's word. All the more reason why we should study God's word. All the more reason why we should integrate the word of God in everything that we do, every part of our life.

Amen? Father in heaven, we just thank You, Lord, for Your word. And we thank You for the amazing opportunity that we have today to dig in, to learn what You have to say. Father, one thing is certain: You are faithful and You are good to us, Lord. Thank You for that faithfulness. Thank You for that goodness. Thank You for all that You show us, Lord. You are awesome, Lord. And Father, just go before us. Fill us with Your Spirit, give us Your mind, give us Your heart, Your understanding, Your determination to do Your will. We love You, God, and thank You. We look to You. We ask these things in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill. He'll be right back with more. As we go through this study of Revelation, there may come a time when you miss a message or would just like to hear a program again. If so, visit lightonthehillradio.com and click on radio or listen through our app. We have a Light on the Hill app available for iPhone and Android users. Just search for Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

Pastor James, we've been studying about the future judgment of God on a Christ-rejected world. In light of the great wickedness going on right now, people often ask: why doesn't God just judge the world already and be done with it? What is really holding Him back?

James Kaddis: Well, God is sovereign and not only is God sovereign, but God is merciful. And so we think this way because we want to see the injustices dealt with, where God actually views it a completely different way. And the Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And so I think that's a big part of it. And quite frankly, we're not God. We don't have His mind. We're never going to be able to understand completely why He does what He does. But we can trust in the fact that He is brilliant and He knows exactly what's best for us. So we just trust Him and we watch the great things happen as a result.

Guest (Male): Well said. Thanks, Pastor James. Light on the Hill is heard all around the world and it takes a team to bring these shows to the radio and internet. With your help, we're able to reach people with the truth of God's word at a time when they really need to hear it. You can donate today at lightonthehillradio.com. You can also give through our Light on the Hill app. Here's Pastor James once again with a special offer for you.

James Kaddis: Hey everybody, listen. I am so excited to come to you with remarkable news and it centers around a project that has been in the making for three years. And the first part of this project is encapsulated in a book that is out right now. It's called *The Last Book*, and I go through the first 11 chapters of the book of Revelation. Now, I've said this before: you cannot really understand the book of Revelation unless you know the Old Testament. And in this book, I go through all of the Old Testament necessary to understand the first 11 chapters.

Once again, it's called *The Last Book*. And folks, I got to tell you, I am so proud of the effort that we have put into this book. I think it's going to be an amazing, eye-opening experience as you read every page that's been well thought out. And I am thrilled that you are going to experience direct blessing because the book of Revelation says it: if you will study the book, if you will heed the book, God will bless you.

Guest (Male): This guide to Revelation is part one of two and you can order it today at lightonthehillradio.com or at Amazon. We hope you'll join our online communities. You'll find James Kaddis on YouTube, Rumble, and Instagram. You can also hear our weekly prophecy show, *Countdown to Eternity*, wherever you get your podcasts and at countdowntoeternity.com. Our study of Revelation will continue next time on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. Remember, as a Christian, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.