Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): The devil doesn't want you to read and study the book of Revelation, and we'll explain why next on Light on the Hill.

Yes, there's a reason the devil does not want you to study the book of Revelation. Doing so will lead you down a road of blessing, especially when you heed and obey the words you read. Here to explain is Pastor James Kaddis in Revelation chapter 22 in part one of The Time is at Hand.

James Kaddis: All right, Revelation chapter 22. This is, of course, a very important chapter for us in that it is the endcap of the book of Revelation and in essence it becomes the endcap of the old world, right? By the time we get to Revelation 22, we're in a new heaven and a new earth and there is so much that the Lord is wanting to tell us, which is why we are taking this piece by piece. There is a lot that we can learn from the passage that we are in. Now, it's really important that I reiterate this because if I don't reiterate it again, it's going to cause us to lose the understanding of the timeline and the timeline is absolutely critical and pertinent to being aware of the passage as a whole. I think that if we don't do it then we're going to end up becoming very confused and dilapidated in some ways.

We'll go over that in just a second, but the other thing that I want to bring out and I think is also really important is to recognize that the book of Revelation is a very spiritual book. When I say spiritual book, I'm not talking about the account that it gives us of things that are happening in the spiritual realm. I'm not talking about the account of the book of Revelation that continues to tell us about the things leading up to and in the middle of and after the end of the world or the creation of the new heaven and the earth. It's not spiritual for any of those reasons. The number one demarcation for the spirituality of the book of Revelation centers around the fact that the devil does not want you to read it.

As you're about to find out, when you start the book of Revelation, it tells us that you will be blessed for reading and heeding the book of Revelation and at the end of Revelation you hear the same thing as we're going to actually go over today. I think that this is really important because when you understand the depth of what's being communicated in that, you will recognize precisely why the devil does not want you to know it. You'll understand why the devil doesn't want you to learn it or recognize or realize it, and it becomes something completely different. It takes you to a whole new level.

I think about this a lot because if the devil knows that one of the fastest ways you'll be blessed by God is to read the book of Revelation, then he's going to do everything he can to keep you from reading it. Think about it like this: how many people oftentimes say on a day-to-day basis that they won't touch the book of Revelation? There's all kinds of beliefs around it. It's too hard to understand. I don't know how to make the differentiation between what's metaphorical and what isn't, or what's allegorical and what isn't. It's hard to understand what's being said in these words or what language is being used here, what's being meant over there. It's interesting how people just look at it with utter confusion.

I had a Bible college professor—God bless him, he's with the Lord now—who in my opinion was probably one of the greatest Bible college professors alive. He was one of the smartest men I ever knew, with an IQ level at a ridiculously high level. The guy was absolutely brilliant. As a matter of fact, when I struggled during certain aspects of something I was looking at in the Greek language, he would be the guy that I would go to. When I talk about that, the kind of struggles I would have would not be something like, "I wonder what this word means in this context." My type of struggles would be, "What significance does the rendering of the imperfect in this particular sentence after the aorist is looked at from a definitive area through the use of a split infinitive? How does that work in John 1:1?"

I would go to him for questions like that. By the way, that's not me making up a bunch of word salad. This is an actual question. I remember because it was one of the first questions that I had to ask him when I was trying to work through a real issue in the Greek language. He was just a brilliant guy. But you know what he told me? He said, as much as I love teaching the Bible and as good as I think I am—by the way, this was a man who was personally discipled by J. Vernon McGee, just so that you know. That's how brilliant this man was. A man that I looked up to immensely and was by far my favorite Bible college professor. He said I was his favorite Bible college student and that's no lie. It is true. I have witnesses that saw him say that. Anyway, I would go to him and he would tell me this all the time, "But I will never touch the book of Revelation. It's so hard. I'll never touch it."

I used to think that through, like why is it so hard? Why is it so hard? I have struggled with that question. I have struggled with why is it so hard because so many people have said that. So many people say they don't understand it. It's so hard. I won't teach it. Lots of pastors say, "No, we won't touch that book. That book's the difficult book," when in reality it is probably one of the easiest books to read and understand, especially if you know the Old Testament. Especially if you know the Bible, the book of Revelation is very easy. So why is it that it's so hard? I'll tell you why: because the book of Revelation is the only book in the Bible that makes the promise that if you read it and heed it, God will bless you.

Here is the thing that's interesting. The devil, who hates your guts, knows about that promise, which is made multiple times. The devil knows the very truth about that promise, which is why he goes and works as hard as he possibly can to keep you from being able to understand it or know it or even want it. He has created this stigma about the book of Revelation that keeps people from seeing it. By the way, if you don't think that this is a real thing or if you don't think that this is something that has credibility, let's just talk about church for one second. All of you guys make me laugh only because I can identify with this.

When we get to talking and we start to know each other, you guys oftentimes tell me about your work habits, like what happens with your jobs and what time you have to get up to go to work. We have lots of people in this church that have to get up at 4:00 in the morning to go to work and sometimes they have to be at work by 5:00 in the morning or 5:30 in the morning, and they're always there much earlier. They're ready to go. As a matter of fact, some of you tell me that you have your devotions at work because it's just that time where you have some dead time. You get over there a half hour early and it's all good. You guys do this day in and day out. It's a system. It's just a habit.

Some of you have your own little habits that you put in. Some of you go through the drive-thru first to get your cup of coffee, whatever it might be, but you are always there at work all the time like clockwork. Now, let's put this in the proper perspective for just a second. Some of you in your jobs have been sent to training schools. In your training schools, you hear the most boring, obnoxious, ridiculous things voiced to you on the face of the earth, right? "This is how you not misgender somebody." I mean, just dumb things. It doesn't even have to be that. Sometimes it's just ridiculous. Let's just leave that be. But you can go through and listen to the most boring of lectures and you are constantly telling yourself, "I want to fall asleep. Lord, help me to fall asleep."

I know some of you have told me stories that you have actually taken sleeping pills to try to fall asleep during some of these lectures that you go to for work because all you have to do is be a warm body. All of you tell me that. But here's a funny thing. This is how it goes. You have three options of going to church on Sunday morning. There's an 8:00 service, a 9:45 service, and an 11:30 service. Most of you that wake up—I guess I said "you people," but that's all of us, right? I'm the pastor, so I get it. But you guys that will wake up at 4:30 in the morning, 4:00 in the morning, 5:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, 5:30 in the morning, you will plan to be at the 8:00 service and for whatever reason, you literally struggle to come in to the 9:45 or the 11:30 service, and even then you come in late.

You come in after the worship. Some of you are looking down right now like, "I can't believe he's calling us out. This is ridiculous." Yeah, okay. You're about to feel good when I say this. You really are. Believe me, you're going to understand. Then many of you—and I see this especially with the married couples. This is so funny. With the married couples, it's either the men or the women; it happens with both. The husband or the wife will jab their spouse. They think they're being inconspicuous about it, but I can see it. It's obvious. As a matter of fact, when it happens in church today, I'll just call it out, "Hey, look over there." No, I won't do that.

You guys jab each other to wake your spouse up because your spouse is falling asleep. I see it happening so many times. I'll tell you how it looks. First you see it from a distance. It looks like they're headbanging a little bit. Then after a second, you see that. It's obvious. Let me just help you out for all of you guys that fall asleep in church and all of you guys—and by the way, how in the world do you fall asleep when I'm this loud? I don't get it. Actually, I do.

You fall asleep all the time in church. You struggle to get here. When you do, you oftentimes show up late. Statistically, that's half the people in this room. You want to know why? It's because it's a spiritual issue. You could have slept for 15 hours prior to going to church and you will still be sleepy when you sit down to hear a Bible study. I'll tell you why: because you guys are all warriors. It's not the fact that you fall asleep in church; it's the fact that you made the decision to be in church. It's not the fact that you were late to church; it's the fact that you got up to make the effort to do it.

The devil through his demons will do everything that he can to keep you from coming to church, from hearing the Word of God, and from being in fellowship with one another. Why? Because the devil knows that's the way you get stronger. The devil knows that's the way you get blessed. The devil knows that's how you grow. So don't worry. When I see you all doing this—and many of you do—and when I see you doing this and all that, don't worry. I don't look down on you. I just recognize they're all in the battle. You're in the foxholes. That's what's happening.

It's very rare that I see people doing this because they're hungover from the previous night, and most of the time when that does happen, it's the third service crowd. But most of the time when it does happen, they're people that won't be doing this for long because God gets ahold of their heart. The point is this: you are all warriors. You guys get it? You're fighting. The devil is doing everything that he can to put an effect on you to keep you from understanding. This is why it's so hard to understand the book of Revelation, because there's a spiritual component. There's something happening in the invisible realm that is seeking to keep you from understanding and seeing and knowing.

This is, by the way, the thing that affects marriages. This is the thing that affects relationships. Any decision you make to separate yourself from ungodliness and bring yourself into righteousness, there's going to be a price to pay for it. There just is because this is how the devil works and this is how God works, and you've got to understand it. But there are a lot of things that we can find in the book of Revelation that not only guarantee the blessing that God wants to give us, but it also will comfort us in many ways. We see lots of references in it, right?

We see the fact that God's words are faithful, as we're going to learn about that. We know that Christ is going to come soon, as we're going to even read about that today. That's another blessing that we get. There's a blessing for obedience that we're going to get. We're going to learn about that as well today. Another blessing that we're going to see is a comfort element about what we do, which is the fact that God deserves to be worshipped. He deserves our worship. We're going to see that today as well. By the way, prophecy is being unsealed to us. That's another thing that's going to be comforting to us, something that we're going to learn.

Just so that you know, when you look at the book of Revelation and you tear it apart into pieces, you make yourself aware of all of these things. In Revelation, because we're looking at chapter 22, which is the very end, you're going to find lots of words of comfort being given to you from verse 6 all the way to verse 17. We're not going to make it to verse 17; we'll stop at verse 10. These are the words of comfort that are going to be given to you, and it's going to be pretty amazing when you think about the effect of that and what it actually means and how life-changing it actually is. A lot of this stuff is incredible stuff. So understand that as we're talking about now the end of the world, we know what's going on. These are the things that God wants us to know.

By the way, we know how we know we're there. Because when you look at Revelation chapter 1, which we talked about before, and you look at verse 19, Revelation 1:19 gives us the key to understanding the book of Revelation. He tells John to do what? Write the things which he has seen, which is Revelation chapter 1. Write the things which are, which is Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3. Then write the things which shall be hereafter, which of course is Revelation chapter 4 all the way to the very end of the book of Revelation, which is chapter 22. Where are we at in that physical timeline? We are in chapters 2 and 3.

When you begin to see chapter 4 happening, we won't be on this earth anymore, which is really exciting and important to understand that timeline. When you're freaking out about whether or not you have taken the mark of the beast, you never have to be worried about that because we have to be raptured for that to even happen and you haven't been raptured. There's a very important aspect of this to know. When you begin to develop an awareness of the timeline, it begins to change everything. With that said, let's continue on with verse 6 of Revelation chapter 22.

It starts off, verse 6, "And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done." I have to stop for a second because already there are some things we have to focus on. These are really incredible, really important things. Perhaps the most significant variables to consider when we look at the Word of God being given to us relates to the very credibility of the Word of God, right? What actually is being said? This is something that we talk about a lot because when people lie, they lose their credibility.

When people find themselves to be inconsistent or incorrect, their credibility must be questioned. We see this a lot, that we do not look to people to do things when we understand them to be not factual or to lack credibility. The reality of it is, when something or somebody lacks credibility, it can be a very, very difficult thing for us because you can no longer trust those things. But look at what God says concerning his words in the book of Revelation here. This is actually true of all of his word, but specifically to the words in the book of Revelation.

Look at what he says in verse 6. I'll read the first part of it again: "These things are faithful and true." Now there's a very important thing to understand because there's a significant difference between faithful and the word true, but when you put them together it means something that is literally unremovable. It cannot be denied. It cannot be taken away. It's unmovable. It's literally at a point where it will never change. You have to understand something. God's Word being faithful is different than God's Word being true, but when you put them both together, it's an extraordinary picture that's being drawn for us.

Faithful, by the way, speaks of consistency. Faithful speaks of the fact that what is said is never going to change. The meaning of what is said will never change. The way that an adaptation is carried concerning any type of precept that's carried over to us is never going to change. God's Word will remain the same as it always has been, right? God's Word will never be affective. It will always remain the same. The only reason why God's Word changes in our lives is because the more we get to know God's Word, it changes in that it's changing us.

Our awareness and understanding of the Word of God becomes dynamic, but God's Word will always remain static. Our awareness of or the practical application of the knowledge that we continue to develop concerning the Word of God is because we're changing, not because God's changing. What's practically substantial and perhaps even more beneficial than that, especially on the relational level, is to recognize that as the Word of God remains the same and never moves, it has the power to change us. That's what's really important.

We know that as we read these words, these words will remain faithful to us and they'll be true and they'll never be lost from us. That's a very important picture to draw. But look also at this. This is really interesting. Let me read the last part of verse 6. It says, "And the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done." The other cool thing that God does, in the same verse that he says that the words are faithful and true and promises us that God will never turn his back on us or lie to us, in that very same verse, do you know what else he does?

He establishes for us what I would like to call the chain of custody of his word. Some people call it the chain of command, but I like the term the chain of custody. In other words, God is going out of his way to show us that the way the word was delivered to us is also a way that cannot be tampered with or messed with. How many of us, when we were kids, played that game? I forgot the name of the game where you had one person who had a message and then he shared the message to another person and then to another. Telephone. Okay, Telephone.

You have the can with the string and all the other fun stuff. It's always funny when you play that game because the guy who has the message at the beginning writes down the message that he has, and then for the last guy to hear the message, it's a completely twisted version. It's not even the same. It's completely different. No matter how hard you try to keep it consistent and perfect, small little things change along the way and by the time you get to the end, it's a jacked-up mess. You know what I'm talking about, right?

Here's the beautiful thing about the Word of God. God goes out of his way to talk to us about the chain of custody here with his word, that teaches us we don't have that problem. Because what happens is God the Father passes the message down to God the Son. God the Son then goes to his messenger, to his angel, who then passes down the word to John himself. John writes it down to the angels of the church, meaning the pastors of the church, the seven churches. It's written down to be memorialized forever for all of us to hear it.

In other words, we know that this is not like some telephone game where there was one message here and then it was completely different on the other side. By the way, there's lots of people right now trying to communicate that it is a different message, but it's not. I got news for you, it's not. I don't understand why some of these famous people in pop culture who claim to know the word or think they understand the word will go so far because they wrote a song on it to become self-proclaimed experts on the book of Revelation and literally play the game of telephone with it.

They'll tell us something that's completely different than what the Word of God says. As well-meaning as they are and as hard as they try to work to make something happen, they're completely out of their lane because they're not having integrity in the way that those things are being communicated. They don't recognize the characteristics that are oftentimes associated with the very fundamentals that are being communicated to us. Here's a reality of it: God's Word will never change. It never has changed and it never will change. The reality of it is, I don't have to go to a commentator from 200 years ago to substantiate what I know was given to us thousands of years ago. I just don't.

Because God's Word is consistent and it's the same and the chain of custody here has been established for us. You don't have to worry about what's happened to it because God's Word is untampered with.

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.

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 countdowntoeternity.com. We left off in Revelation chapter 22 at verse 7 a moment ago. Here again is Pastor James.

James Kaddis: Behold, I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book. First thing we have to talk about for just a second is he says, "Watch out. Pay attention. I come quickly."

I want to say this for the record because I think it's important. When he says, "I come quickly," the use of that term "quickly," I believe is more of a function or carries more of the function of an adverb as opposed to a verb. You guys remember from school what an adverb does? An adverb actually describes the very verb that it's associated with. When Jesus says, "I come quickly," I believe quickly is the adverb to the verb "come." I think it's really important to understand that because the picture that's being created for us here is that Jesus says when he comes, it will happen fast.

It will be faster than you can possibly imagine. He's not here one moment, he's here and boom, it's done. I look at specific guys who have been talking about the phrase "Jesus is coming soon" and speak about not really liking it. Don Stewart has been saying that a lot lately and I will tell you, I get into disagreements with Don all the time and most of the time Don wins. He is a smart man. He's brilliant. The reason why Don says he doesn't like people to say "Jesus is coming soon" comes from the understanding of the way this text works.

His understanding of this text is correct. He is not wrong when he says that. But you have to understand, this is where he and I will disagree. Again, he's a brilliant man. But this is where I'll disagree. I still encourage the use of that phrase, not with the delineation that creates a promise of a specific date. That's not why I use this term. I use this term to communicate the principle of imminency. You know what I mean when I say that? Meaning I want you to know the fact that Christ can rapture his church at any moment.

That's a technicality that Don likes. He would rather that I say "Christ can come at any moment," which is actually the more biblically correct and more biblically sound term to use. But I oftentimes say "Jesus is coming soon" because we see the same terms being used here. More importantly, there's a dualism that's associated with this. That dualism is designed to be an adverb to the verb of coming. In other words, the intent here by Jesus himself who said these words was to explain to John that when he comes it's going to be faster than anything you could possibly imagine.

That was clearly the intent. But there's a dualism. There is not only something that is didactic in nature, which is that when Christ comes it's going to be faster than anything anybody understands, but there's also a prophetic element in this in that Christ wants us to understand the imminency of his return, meaning any moment. There's nothing that has to happen according to the Bible right now in order for Christ to rapture his church. He could rapture us right now. I think that'd be great, by the way. If we got raptured while I was teaching the Bible, that would be like my dream come true. If it was happening while I was teaching, then when we got caught up I'd be like, "Ha, told you so!" I'm just joking. But I just think it would be awesome.

Guest (Male): 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.