Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: Here's a funny thing about what's been happening recently in the last few years. This is the phrase that I continue to think about: "Be thou faithful unto death." How many Christians over the last two years or three years will be able to say that? There's a lot of them. But how many of them are going to say, "I stopped being faithful because of my fear of death"? Big difference between the two.

"Be thou faithful unto death" or stop being faithful because of fear of death. It's kind of an eye-opening moment there. But what do we do? We continue to walk in the fear of God. We continue to say, "God, I fear you more than I fear death. I fear you more than I fear anything," and you run towards it.

Guest (Male): Hello again and welcome to Light on the Hill. Today, we return to our exciting study of Revelation by looking at the Lord's message to the church in Ephesus. While they were commended for some things, they had left their first love. It happened to the Ephesians, and it's still happening to Christians today. If things aren't what they used to be in your relationship with Jesus, today's message will show you how to get back on track. Here's Pastor James Kaddis in Revelation Chapter 2.

James Kaddis: He says in verse five, this is how to fix it. I call it the three R's. He says, "Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, repent, and do the first works. I will come unto thee quickly, or else I will come unto thee quickly and remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent." So, remember and repent, because if you don't, there's a removal that's coming. Think about the picture that's being involved here. He's asking you to follow through with a very simple principle. Just take a moment to stop and remember the things that you did in the very beginning—the very first days.

Now, this is not Jesus telling you to do the things that you did in the first days. He's asking you to just simply remember the heart and the mind that drove you to do those actions. I can't do some of the things that I did in the first days because if I did some of the things I did in the first days, I'd get myself in a whole lot of trouble. I remember being so in love with the Lord early on in my relationship with God that I would grab my old guitar that I was learning how to play, and at 5:00 in the morning, I would play it in the house because I was singing worship. I just wanted to play in the house. My family would lose their minds. "Shut up!" They didn't want to hear me say anything.

So I thought, well, I've got a balcony. I have a two-story house with a balcony. I’m coming out on that balcony at 5:00 in the morning. I put that little seat right there, and I didn't want it to be too comfortable of a seat, so it was kind of like a block that I sat on. On that balcony, I just started singing worship as loud as I could. Then I had neighbors roll down their windows and tell me to shut up. I just thought, this is persecution, God. Help me to deal with persecution. It wasn't persecution; it was stupidity. I'm never going to go back and do something like that again, but I can remember the heart that I had that wanted to do that on a regular basis.

I remember very early on when I first started walking with the Lord, I wanted everybody to know that I loved the Lord. I went to a sign place that was very close to my house. They were one of the prominent sign makers at the time. I must have spent a stupid amount of money. It was a lot of money in the mid-90s, maybe 100 bucks, to have these stickers put on the back of my car. I had the back of my truck tinted pretty heavily so that they could see this sticker that I put on the back of the car. It wasn't a sticker; they were custom vinyl that said in handwriting, "Jesus is Lord."

I actually really wanted to just dress it up, but I couldn't afford to do the premium package. So I did that. Any time I drove my truck around, I wanted everybody to know that Jesus is Lord. I would never do that today. Let me tell you why: because I would drive my truck around and I would do things that you're probably not supposed to do as a Christian when you drive. Maybe go a little bit faster, maybe not pay attention to something. Maybe I'm going towards an intersection and it's turning yellow and I go faster and faster and faster.

Then people get behind me and they say, "Some Christian you are, you fake!" They’d say every kind of thing in the book, and I’d say, "Lord, thank you Jesus, they're persecuting me because I'm standing for you." No, they're not persecuting me; I'm being dumb. I remember one time getting pulled over by a cop because I did something that I shouldn't have done. It was like one of those California rolling stops. I thought in my mind, "He's persecuting me because he hates God and he sees the 'Jesus is Lord' sticker on the back of my truck."

I'm just thinking in my mind, no, he's not. I'm being stupid. That's the problem. So, the idea here is I don't think the Bible is saying to go back to doing the things that you did. What the Bible is saying is remember the heart. Remember the mind that drove you there. And then when it says the next step, do the first works. In other words, what he means is don't go out and stand on the balcony and yell. That's not what he's saying. Remember where you came from and go back and do the things that you felt motivated and led to do in the first place.

In other words, glorify God. The idea for me was I loved worshipping the Lord. Maybe I've been lacking that in my life. You know how many times I find myself in that position? I'm in the ministry. I share the word of God with people. I know the word; I'm in the word every day for hours and hours. I have half the Bible memorized in other languages. No one's going to tell me what to say or do or think. Oh, yeah? You may be in the word ten hours a day, but are you seeking God in a time of devotion to hear instruction from him? Well, maybe not.

I think I'm okay because I'm in the word, but does it mean anything if I'm not in it for me? If I'm not in it for my heart? Or how about this? I tell people about Jesus all the time. I've got a YouTube channel and millions of people hear about Jesus when I speak. I don't need to go out and witness. Really? Maybe when you first were walking with God, you were willing to go up to people face to face and sit down and ask them how they're doing and really wait for a real response and engage in a conversation and tell them about Christ.

I'm not doing those works. Maybe I need to turn around. Maybe I need to repent by remembering what I did and going back and doing those first works. That's the point. The whole point is, what is it that drove me to go share with people? That's something I used to do all the time. I'm not doing it like I used to do. What drove me to bring people to an awareness of God? I do it professionally; it's part of my career. It's part of my life goal. But am I really taking advantage of these opportunities? It's interesting how that works. We lose sight of that all the time.

God wants us to have a different attitude. He wants us to have a different mind about that. I think about this a lot. Do you know our understanding of what God wants us to do would change so dramatically if we went back to that same heart that we used to have? Imagine, I think about this a lot, and it's embarrassing that I have to admit this to you. I feel kind of ashamed to a degree that I have to say something like this, but there is a part of me that often tells myself this when I read passages like this: I wish I could take the heart that I had as a new believer and bring the knowledge that I have in the space that I'm in now back to the heart of a new believer.

That's embarrassing that I would say something like that, because wouldn't my heart be to love God more now than I ever have loved him? I have to confront that often with my own mind and myself. I told my wife something very interesting that I'll never forget, and I constantly tell myself this. I told my wife the day she was in her wedding dress: "I just want you to understand something. In the wedding dress you're in right now, you will be the ugliest you've ever been to me." She looked at me like I was already messing up on our wedding day.

My statement to her was very simple, and the Lord gave it to me. Every day, I've made the decision that every day in my mind and my heart, you will become more beautiful to me. I think sometimes we forget to do that when it comes to our relationship with God. We don't look back and say, "I want my heart for the Lord to develop even more intensely than it did in the previous days." On my plane ride to Texas is when I first watched the Jesus People Movement movie. When it first came out, I texted Greg and I said, "I'm going to take my family over there to watch the movie. What do you think?"

He said, "Don't take your family," because he knew I had young girls and probably some of the scenes that were in it weren't appropriate. He made a good call. So I watched it on the airplane. I thought the movie was a great movie. I thought Greg did a great job with it. I think the part of the movie that I loved the most was it reminded me of a mentality that we have lost as Christians. We have lost the mentality that says, "I'm going to learn to love God more today than I ever did back in the day."

The reason why movies like that are so powerful and resonate so much with people is because it reminds them of a day that has been removed from them—a different heart, a different mind. He says to repent and go back to that mind, and then go back and do those works that are driven by that mind and that heart. So your ability to do those works is going to be far greater. Look what he goes on to say. He goes on to say, "But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate."

By the way, when we talk about the Nicolaitans, it's a compound Greek word. The first one is where we get the word Nike from, and that is overwhelm or rule or defeat. The other one, laity, is the idea of the everyday average person. So the idea is that he hates the deeds of the Nicolaitans, people that pretty much dominated over the church. They took on the roles of these priests that said you could only do things through us and you can't do it through anybody else. The church at Ephesus denied it. They said they're not going to tolerate that nonsense.

I think there are a lot of churches that are very good at not tolerating evil, but at the same time, their love for God has dwindled. There's an eye-opening aspect to that. Look what he says in verse seven: "He who hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches; to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." Isn't that so beautiful? Listen, the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God means this: you eat of the tree of life, you live forever.

It's nourishment that sustains you for eternity. Now, I don't know about you, but I love the idea of living forever. What I don't love is the idea of living forever in a nasty world like this. Who wants to live forever in this world? I want to be able to live forever in a world that's perfect. That's what's given to us here. You are going to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. In other words, you are going to live forever with God as you choose to overcome. That's pretty heavy, isn't it?

Look at the letter that he writes to the church in Smyrna. He says, "Unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write these things that saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive." I love that. That phrase is super important. He was there in the beginning; he's always been there at the end. He died and rose again. He says, "I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, but thou art rich. And I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan." It’s interesting what he's talking about here.

He says you guys may be physically poor in this world, but you're actually rich. There are people right now literally quoting this passage to talk about the fact that Jews are of the synagogue of Satan. But that's not what we're talking about here. What Jesus is talking about is people who claim to be God's people but want nothing to do with God and completely deny him. In other words, the context here is you claim to be a part of the family of God because of your cultural identity or even your ethnic identity, but you're not close to it because you yourself have walked away from that family.

That's the picture. Does it disqualify the Jews from being God's ancestrally chosen people? Absolutely not. Think about this, fathers and mothers. You have a son or daughter that completely separates themselves from you. They hate you, they curse you, they rip you off. Are they no longer your son? Are they no longer your daughter? The Jews will always be the children of God. There's always going to be an ancestral connection to God. We as Gentiles had to be adopted, grafted in. So he says, listen, you guys have received persecution from people that are saying you're not the real deal, but I'm telling you right now you are.

How many of us are dealing with that right now? How many of you are being accused of not being a child of God because of the righteous stand you're taking against things that the world is saying is acceptable to embrace? Remember that phrase everybody throws out, "Love is love"? You drive through the city of Long Beach, and I kid you not, probably 25% of the churches in Long Beach have pride flags everywhere. They say that you are evil if you stand against that lifestyle, even though the lifestyle is literally destroying people. He says, "I see these things. I recognize it. Clearly, you are rich in the Lord."

He makes that very clear. Look what he says in verse 10: "Fear none of these things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." By the way, interesting how he talks about ten days. There are a lot of us teaching the Bible that believe these ten days are indicative of ten different Roman emperors that existed, starting with Caesar Nero and ending, of course, with Constantine. Constantine would have been the one that stopped it all.

Starting with Caesar Nero, Christians were dramatically persecuted and were dying at exorbitantly high rates. It was one of the greatest times in world history of Christian persecution. Jesus was talking about this time period which spanned over 200 years. They were going to be persecuted and it was going to be difficult. He said, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life." Here's a funny thing about what's been happening recently in the last few years. This is the phrase that I continue to think about: "Be thou faithful unto death."

How many Christians over the last two or three years will be able to say that? How many of them are going to say, "I stopped being faithful because of my fear of death"? It's kind of an eye-opening moment there. But what do we do? We continue to walk in the fear of God. I fear you more than I fear death. I fear you more than I fear anything, and you run towards it. I saw a video recently of an active shooting take place. The law enforcement officers, including federal agents in this video, were running towards the shooter while everybody else was running away.

These bold and brave men and women knew exactly what they were getting into. That's what I call faithful unto death. They had no idea if that was going to be their last day. While everybody else was running away from the bullets, guess who was running towards the bullets? A group of people who were willing to be faithful unto death. We are supposed to be believers who say, "No matter what, Lord, we're not going to be fearful because we trust in you." And God says, "You do that and I'm going to reward you." No matter what, we stay faithful to the Lord.

Faithful unto death. Because when we die on this earth, it's the beginning of life. Verse 11: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." I have prepared myself emotionally for going over this last sentence, and I'm not going to cry. But I am so thankful that we have a promise like this. Every single letter to the church, he gives a promise to those who overcome. I love the fact that those that overcome will not be hurt of the second death.

All of us as believers will never experience the second death. But if you don't know the Lord, you're going to experience the second death. You have the first death, and then you're going to have a second death. For those of us that are Christians, some of us might not even experience the first death. We could get raptured before that happens. I'm not really scared about dying. I've never really been scared of dying. I'm more scared about how it's going to happen. I kind of want to die in a blaze of glory very quickly.

I just don't want it to be slow. Just take me right away. But that's the cool part about the rapture, because if I'm raptured, I'm not going to die the first time. But it's the second death that we have to be worried about. The Bible says that if you're an overcomer, you're not going to be affected by the second death. I'm so grateful for that, because there are so many people that have gone before me that I cannot wait to see again. They kicked that second death right in the rear and they're alive because they overcame.

We have all the encouragement in the world because what God has given us is substantial and powerful. Let's go for it. God has given us the call. Let's remember the first works. Let's remember the heart that we had. Let's go back and do what God has asked us to do. For those of us that are just chucking along and things are just difficult, stay with it. Why? Because God will give you the reward that he promises you. Stay in the fight. Father in heaven, we just thank you for your word and the insight it brings to us. Inspire us to live righteously for you. We just thank you now and we ask these things in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): Pastor James Kaddis is leading us verse by verse through Revelation here on Light on the Hill. Today, you encouraged our listeners to be faithful unto death rather than fearful of death. Maybe someone listening right now is really struggling in this area, and fear is a present reality. What can help those people when fear has a grip on their lives?

James Kaddis: God is faithful to us. If we can trust that he is the one that created us, if we can believe that salvation is real, then we can also thrust fear from our line of thinking, knowing and understanding that it's all under control. If you think about how bad things are on this earth, you can really understand this principle. If you don't know the Lord, enjoy your time on this earth because it's the closest thing to heaven you'll ever see. If you do know the Lord, hang on because the time that you have on this earth will be the closest thing to hell you've ever seen.

And if the time that you're having on this earth seems to be a pretty good time, then you can only imagine what awaits for you when you are reunited with your creator. So the truth is, God has never lied. He tells us the truth regarding all of these things, and we can find peace in knowing that when that time comes, we will be with him and there is absolutely nothing to fear.

Guest (Male): 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 today or 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." In "The Last Book," Pastor James takes us through Revelation chapters one through ten and shows us why we must live wholeheartedly for God. You can order a copy today at lightonthehillradio.com or Amazon.

If you hunger for more Bible prophecy, you may want to visit and seek out Pastor James's live videos or on-demand. Many of them relate to current events and Bible prophecy. You can access them at jameskaddis.com. You can also send us your questions about Revelation and Bible prophecy through our website. We hope to hear from you soon. 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.