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Guest (Male): I’m sure you’ve been to a memorable party in your life. Maybe it was a reception following a wedding or a graduation or a birthday event. As great as that is, it does not hold a candle to the great party in heaven we'll hear about today on Light on the Hill.

It's the marriage supper of the Lamb, and the great thing about it is it never ends. The celebration will continue for eternity. Here's Pastor James Kaddis with the exciting details from Revelation chapter 19.

James Kaddis: Verse 3: And again they said, "Hallelujah!" And her smoke rose up forever and ever. Interesting about the smoke rising up forever and ever. The picture that comes from the destruction of Babylon and the smoke that rises from the destruction of Babylon.

There are so many different aspects of this that you can stop and consider. One of the aspects goes into the Gog-Magog encounter that we read about in Ezekiel 38 and the problem that people have with it, where they think that Gog-Magog has to take place prior to the tribulation and actually prior to the rapture because of the seven years of smoldering that ends up taking place as a result of the battle that ends up happening.

Well, that’s completely crazy, right? Just because we’re at the end of the tribulation, that doesn’t mean there can’t be any smoke smoldering, right? We’re going to see smoke coming out of the temple that’s in the millennial period, right? The temple that we read about in Ezekiel 40 all the way through 48.

So, this mindset that people have where they sort of compartmentalize everything because they’re not really seeing it or understanding it. Look, we are going to see the judgment and justice of God memorialized in front of us forever. We are going to see the result of God’s judgment upon a world that hated Him, and we’re going to see the effects of that forever.

And guess what? More importantly, we’re going to experience the effects of that forever, and the experience that we get from that is going to be nothing but bliss, right? It’s just going to be a great thing. And notice the phrase "forever and ever." I was talking about this with my brother yesterday, or the day before yesterday.

We were talking about this as we went to my nephew’s graduation, and me and my brother just beginning to associate how old we were at the time that my dad was at the time we graduated, and now thinking about how old we are at the time that one of my nephews has now graduated.

And me and my brother just start talking about like, realistically, if we go by life expectancy and we go by the genetics of our family and so on and so forth, maybe we have 30 years to live, right? Maybe 40 years, maybe, but the reality of it is it’s probably closer to 25.

And then when you think about that for a second, you realize you've lived more years behind you than you know you're going to have in front of you. It makes you think about things a lot differently, right? And the thing that I think about a lot differently is the fact that, man, we just don't have a lot of time.

And then think about this for a second: my brother and I were talking about this because he's a stats person, right? And we start talking about numbers and we started looking at things in terms of areas that are very viable to us, like things that we can better understand.

Do you understand that the average person that lives in the United States of America—and for those of you guys that spend a lot of time in front of TV or playing video games or do this kind of nonsense—think about this for a second: the average time that an American spends in bed is 34 years of their life if they live to the average life expectancy.

Okay, so let's just say you live to 75. Okay, 34 to 35 years of your life is spent in bed. How about this? If you take work, eating, sleeping, taking a shower, and all of the things that typically go with that, that accounts for—are you ready for this?—another 25 to 32 years of your life.

Okay, so you are now in that 68-year range only from sleeping, eating, working, cleaning, brushing your teeth, taking a shower. All of us have to do those things, right? So now that 68 years of our life—68 years. Do you know that the average American—and my brother corrected me because I saw the stat from a few years ago, he says no, that's very wrong today—the average American that watches TV, whether it be on YouTube or whether it be on their TV, their large screen or whatever, the average American is spending anywhere from six to 12 years out of their life watching TV.

So if you already are at 68 years of your life, 68 years of your life, and you watch TV at the lower level, you are already at 74 years old. The average amount of time that Americans spend with their children doing something outside of any of those things? Maybe a year at best. Maybe.

Here's a question that my brother asked, and it was one of the questions that stuck in my head: What about the time you have with God? Where’s that? You’re going to spend eternity with your Creator, and an overwhelming majority of the time that you spend is not given to Him at all.

Do you understand, if you give to God one hour a week in church—one hour a week—you’re not even going to hit the year for your whole life if you look at the average amount of time that people spend going to church? Think about that for a second. Okay, let me give you something that might help you better understand the significance of this.

If you take all of my Bible studies that I have available, whether it be online or in my library of all the Bible studies that I’ve ever taught, okay, and there’s like 10 years of those studies that don't even exist, right? Maybe 12 years of those studies that don't even exist.

But if you take all the other years of all of those studies and you play them back-to-back with no break, no nothing, you have about a year’s worth of material to listen to. One year. For every one of those Bible studies, right, there's hours of study. So let's just pretend that for that one year of listening, it's about a year and a half of listening material.

We just give it another four hours, okay? Then maybe, maybe, maybe I have five or six years of my life dedicated to God. Five or six years. Is it really significant? Think about it. Five or six years out of a life expectancy of let's just say 80, or 90, or 100. Heck, let's just say my life expectancy is 50.

Is four of those years reasonable? Does it seem reasonable? It isn't. Isn't that funny how that works? We don't think about things like that. What we think about, honestly, is we think about the perspective that's given to us from the world, that the world has and wants to put in front of us.

Yet there are so many better uses of the things that God has put in front of us. Look what it goes on to say because this gets heavy, right? Smoke rose up forever and ever and ever. So that shows you just how minimal our time is. We have very little time in this world, right?

And the four and 20 elders and four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, "Amen, Hallelujah." Now there are two groups of people here that are very difficult to understand who they might be. I have assumptions with both of these groups, right?

The first group are the four beasts. I think these four beasts are probably some type of an angel, a group of angels that maybe kind of like a specialized group of angels. I’m not quite sure. A very unique group of angels. We see them throughout the Old Testament.

But here’s another group of people we don't see throughout the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, the first time that we see them introduced to us is after Revelation chapter four, and that's the 24 elders. Now, I've had some different thoughts about who these 24 elders are.

I have thought that maybe in the past we're talking about the 12 tribes of Israel, one of the each of the fathers of those tribes represented there, and then of course we're talking about 12 disciples that represent the church and the combination of them represent the 24 elders.

That's always been a thought that I've had, but the reality of it is that might not necessarily be a correct or accurate thought because these 24 elders don't appear in heaven until the church is actually raptured, which would imply that we're probably talking about all people in the church.

But if they are all people in the church, then who are these individual elders? Who do they represent? Are they certain pastors of specific notoriety that had a significant effect in the church? I don't know. But what I do think is happening is I think that the 24 elders represent us, represent the church in one way or another.

And what that looks like I can't specifically tell you, but I do think that I can make a reasonable argument that we are actually talking about what is representative of the church, right? So they're also saying, "Hallelujah," they're also saying, "Praise the Lord," but they're also saying this: "Amen," right?

Which by the way, "Amen" is not the opposite of "a woman," okay? Understand that. When we talk about "Amen," it means "so be it." That's what it means. So these guys are saying, "Yes, this judgment, so be it this judgment, let it be," right? They're seeing it, they're recognizing it.

Verse 5: A voice came out of the throne saying, "Praise our God, all you His servants and you that fear Him." Notice this: "Both small and great." I love this stipulation that it creates for us, both small and great. I love what that potentially means and the implication that it carries for us.

Because God's determination as into whether or not you have been successful is not predicated upon the size of the work that is being given to you, right? God doesn't do it that way. What God does is He looks at your obedience. He looks at what you do with what He's given you.

And if what you do with what He's given you is wasted, then you are not being found faithful. I think about this a lot with people that I know and people that I love. There's a lot of people that I know and that I love, especially non-believers, that God has given them an incredible mind. Remarkable intellect.

The ability to put A and B together in ways that nobody else can, and they use it for purposes of gratification of themselves and do not use it to the potential that God wants them to use it to, and it is staggeringly saddening, right? We all do this, by the way. Tonight we're going to have this conversation in our Christian mindset series, and I hope all of you can come because I think it's really important. We're going to talk about the subject of idleness and laziness.

By the way, when we talk about the subject of money right now in the United States of America, the number one reason why people lack money in the United States of America—there's two of them actually, but number one, number one is probably laziness and idleness, right?

Number two—and this is kind of an important one—is they don't manage the little that they have, right? Because people tell me that if I had a whole bunch of money, life would be easy. No, it wouldn't. Life would become way more complicated for you if you had a whole bunch of money.

Why? Because if you can't manage it when you have $5, how are you going to manage it when you have $5 million? If you don't know what to do with 50 cents, what are you going to be able to do with $50,000? See my point? All of that comes from an idle mentality, from a mentality of poverty, and that poverty mentality is the mentality of sin.

It's very interesting. God looks at these people who are making these proclamations, what? Both great and small. You that fear Him, all you His servants, you that fear Him, both small and great. By the way, He's not talking about the physical size of somebody.

What He's talking about is He's talking about what's been given to them and the thing is this: Are you faithful with what God's been put in front of you? Here's the funny thing with people that think that they have small things put in front of them, right? That they're in the days of small things and it'll never get big.

People tell me this all the time. It's one of the most insulting things they can tell me: "I don't have a big ministry like you." I have pastors that tell me that all the time, and I just want to smack them, right? Because my thinking is this: You have no idea what is a great and small ministry.

Your definition of a great ministry or a small ministry is predicated on what the world tells you, that you think you're successful when thousands of people show up at the door. Who gives a dean? Forgive me, I'm not trying to be vulgar, I'm not trying to sound harsh or whatever. No one cares about that.

What they care about is this: Is what God has asked you to do, are you faithful in that arena? Think about it like this, you guys, this might give you some perspective. Do you understand we're reading the book of Revelation together? When it was written over 2,000 years ago, or about 2,000 years ago, when it was written, the guy who wrote it was exiled on a little island and actually wrote what he wrote because God told him to.

He had no idea that it would get handed to anybody else. When he was writing it, he probably didn't even know it was going to be read by anybody else other than what he was doing. He never thought in a million years that people in continents different from the one that he was on all over the world would be discussing this into the ages.

He has no idea that one day he would be in heaven and hundreds of millions if not billions of people will go to him and say, "Thank you for giving us hope by writing what you wrote." Jeremiah, he had one convert, folks. One. It was an eight-year-old king that didn't even listen to him until he was a teenager.

When Jeremiah wrote what he wrote, literally it got burned down. His writings were burned to the ground and God said, "Write them again." He had no idea that it would go to anybody. No idea that for the rest of the world's existence, people would be pontificating on his writings.

You think about that for just a second. Whatever you think is small is not small because in the eyes of God, it is great if you do what He's asked you to do. The question is, are you faithful with what you have? So many people are so hell-bent on not being faithful with what they have because they’re so focused on what they don’t have.

Do you understand that was the first major sin that destroyed mankind in the book of Genesis? The first major sin. They were so focused on what they did not have that they lost sight of the fact that they had everything, and they ate of that fruit. They had the whole world at their fingertips.

Everything that God puts in front of you is a work that He’s put in front of you for a reason, and you have no idea who it’s going to affect. You have no idea how substantial the work is. Some of you may think you’re ordinary people that really don’t have anything to show for. That is a lie from the pit of hell.

Take it back to hell where it came from. It’s a lie. God has given you a purpose, He’s given you a call, and He’s given you a function. Your job is to be faithful, and you don’t worry about whether or not you’re great or small. I can promise you—I can make this great promise to you—what people call greatness today is the number one killer of the potential of those people that are founded in that great place.

Do you understand that I have an easier time working with people who are in small places in their life, or what the world would call small places in their life, than I do with people that are great? I work with people all the time that walk in greatness that are so comfortable with what they have that they are not willing to be faithful with what God’s given them.

The question here is not whether or not you are small or great. The question is, are you a servant that has feared Him? Verse 6: And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude and the voice of many waters and the voice of mighty thunderings, "Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."

God is the God of all power, and He reigns. And look at what’s screaming that out, right? It’s that massive voice, like a great multitude, right? It’s that voice from heaven. Verse 7: Let us be glad and rejoice. Notice this: "And give honor to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready."

We're going to get into this marriage principle in just a second. As a matter of fact, we're going to end on verse 10, but I'm going to revisit it next week because the marriage supper of the Lamb is really important. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.

And he saith unto me, "Write, blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb." And he saith unto me, "These are the true sayings of God." And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, "See thou do it not. I am thy fellow servant and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."

Now we're going to get into the significance of this verse next week because it's really important. But I want you to understand what we're going to be celebrating in heaven. You see, the thing that's really interesting about the celebration that takes place in heaven is a lot of people think that the marriage supper of the Lamb is based in the destruction of Babylon.

The reality of it is it's not based in the destruction of Babylon. The marriage supper of the Lamb is the greatest party that will ever take place. The greatest party that will ever take place in heaven. The greatest party because of something completely different than what a lot of people think they will be celebrating there.

By the way, understand the marriage supper of the Lamb is very different from the supper of the great God. You want to be at the marriage supper of the Lamb; you don't want to be at the supper of the great God. Because the supper of the great God—you can read about that in Revelation 17—you do not want to be there because that supper is going to be bad, okay?

Because that supper is one that the unrighteous will be at. You won’t be at that one. But here’s the thing with the marriage supper of the Lamb and why it’s so significant and why it’s so important and why it’s so critical: because you will be celebrating something entirely different than what a lot of people think they will be celebrating there.

I can't help but to think about the day that I married my wife. It's a very interesting set of emotions that I experienced. If you were to come to me right now privately and you were to say, "What was the best part of the day that you married your wife? Like, what was the best part of that day?"

The answer that I would give you would not be the one that you would expect, especially if you're a single person. I can tell you what the best day of my marriage was: the day of that celebration. The very best day. And by the way, I can tell you this: the celebration that followed in that very moment, in that best day, was the celebration of what had gone through in my mind.

You see, the best moment in the day that I married my wife was when I was literally walking off the stage and I had turned my back to my pastor. My pastor had actually—a lot of people don't know this and the video cameras don't catch it—my pastor was crying. He had tears in his eyes when he had pronounced me husband and wife with my wife.

No one could see that. I did. We saw it, right? It was kind of hard because I almost lost it myself at that point. I remember turning my back to him, walking down the aisle, and after I walked down the aisle—or walked down the stairway—I held my wife and we walked down the aisle.

I was fully oblivious to the people that were in the aisle greeting us and saying hi. I mean, I didn't even remember who they were, what was being said or whatever. The greatest moment of that day when we were married was the thought that happened in my mind at the moment we were walking down the aisle, the other way, outside of the sanctuary.

And the thought was, "I get to be with her for the rest of my life." It was the most significant and extraordinary moment of the day that I’ll never forget. The celebration that we had afterwards, whether it be from the food and all the wonderful joyful things and all the things that had happened in that day, pressed into me that overwhelming theme: she’s going to be by my side for the rest of my life.

I’m going to be with her for the rest of my life. The thought about that was overwhelming to me. Still is, actually, when you think about it. I’ve been married to my wife now for over eight years, and that is still an overwhelming thought in my mind. I get to be with her for the rest of my life.

When the marriage supper of the Lamb takes place, the overwhelming thought in the minds of all of us will be the very thing that drives the celebration, and that's this: we get to do this forever and ever. Time will not run out. We’ll never have the realization that time is going away because we’ll have time forever.

We’ve got the church picnic coming up. For those of you that have never been to the church picnic, it’s coming up. What I love about the church picnic is the very morning of the church picnic. It’s my favorite part of the picnic because I know that for that whole day, I am going to get to hang out with people from the church a completely different way than I normally get to.

The worst part of the picnic isn't when it's over; it's as we begin to get to the hours where it's about to be over. That's when I begin to feel the anxiety because I'm like, I wish this day could last not just one—I wish we could do this forever. The dynamic that exists in being able to hang out with the people of God and just enjoy the environment, the breeze going—all—it's such an amazing feeling, right?

We won't have that thought in heaven. We won't have the thought that says we're running out of time. We won't have the thought that says, "Man, I better rush up this conversation because I'm going to run out—I can't talk to anybody—" No. We're going to be here forever.

We can talk for as long as we want. We can fellowship, we can do whatever we want. Think about the power that comes with having that understanding. That's the celebration of the marriage supper of the Lamb. Think about what that means.

It means that the consummation of the moment to come will last forever, and we will never have to worry about the limited time we have or the resources or anything for that matter because it will all be there in front of us. And for eternity, we know that we will never see it go south again. How amazing is that, right? That’s the faithfulness of God. 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, today we heard about God's great party in heaven, but not everyone will be there. How can our listeners RSVP, so to speak?

James Kaddis: Well, that’s a really, really simple one, but I’m glad you asked it because it’s an important question. And the way to do that is by simply putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. There is no other work other than simply doing that.

And if you are interested in doing it, you must pray to the Lord and simply declare in your heart of hearts, "Lord, I trust You. Lord, I put my faith in You. Christ, come into my heart and change my life." It’s that simple, and you officially have put in your RSVP.

Guest (Male): If you'd like more information, get in contact with us. There's a place to reach us at our website, lightonthehillradio.com. 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. As we're going through Revelation, this is a great time to mention Pastor James's new book entitled *The Last Book*. It will share what you need to know about Revelation, the rapture, and the end times.

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 countdown2eternity.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.