Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: As Christians, when we recognize what God has for us in the future, it radically changes the way we live in the current moment and in the current day. I think that this is a very important aspect of what we do when we look at the book of Revelation, because it should modify the way that we see things. It should change us. When we don't look at it, we don't understand the future, when we don't recognize what God has for us, then we begin to develop the mindset that is created by sin. It's the mindset that I oftentimes call the poverty mindset. It's the mindset that teaches us to walk in complete destruction and complete depravity. God has no desire for us to have that. He doesn't want us to be living in that way. We think differently when we know what our future holds.

Guest (Male): There's a time coming when all things will be made new, and almighty God will correct every wrong by judgment and destroying all evil. We will be left with eternal bliss as we witness the fruit of the tree of life. Join us for Light on the Hill as we see what the book of Revelation says about the coming days. Here's Pastor James Kaddis in Revelation chapter 22.

James Kaddis: Revelation chapter 22. Now, as I have said, and indulge me again as I repeat myself, but as you go through the book of Revelation, there are several key things you need to be able to do in order to better understand the book of Revelation and to recognize what's going on. The first of those things is that you have to have a very good understanding or grasp of the Old Testament. If you don't know the Old Testament, you are going to struggle with the book of Revelation, which is precisely why I continue to take my time to teach you much of what the Old Testament has to offer as it is very relative to what we're dealing with in the book of Revelation to deepen and broaden your understanding of what's going on. That's a very important thing. The better you understand the Old Testament, the easier the book of Revelation is actually going to become.

The other thing that you should also know is that you need to understand the timeline of the book of Revelation. This is something that we've talked about before. Actually, we've talked about it many, many times to the point where you're like, "Get on with it already, James," because we've talked about it. That can be found in Revelation chapter one, specifically when we focus on verse 19. The direction that's given to us there is very, very important because John is told by Jesus to write the things that he saw, to write the things which are, and to write the things which are to come.

That's right in one verse, and there is a very important aspect of this verse that you must recognize and that is, it is in essence the key to understanding the book of Revelation. Why? Because the things which he has seen, literally is what we find in chapter one of Revelation. The things which are, are in essence what we read in Revelation chapter two and in chapter three. Then, of course, the things which are to come start in chapter four of the book of Revelation all the way through chapter 22. So if you have that timeline, you have that understanding, you're not going to have a difficult time beginning to develop an awareness of the timing issues that take place, the timeline issues, and your growth will increase and be enhanced. I think it's really important.

The other thing that I want you to know is how critical it is for you to be studying the book of Revelation. There is a very distinct thing that you should also know about the book of Revelation and that's this: lots of people are scared to study it. Lots of people are confused by it. Lots of people don't even want to begin to contemplate it. It will blow your mind how many pastors I have heard saying, "I'll teach through all of the Bible, but the one book I will not touch will be the book of Revelation." One of my very best Bible college teachers I've ever had actually said that. It was striking to me. It was like, "Wow, that's unbelievable."

But the reality of it is, the reason why the book of Revelation is that way isn't because it's hard to understand. It isn't because it's some mystical type thing that if you read it, you'll end up dying or you'll have curses. There's a lot of people that think that too. It has nothing to do with all of that. It has everything to do with one verse that's in Revelation chapter one and that verse is this: that God will bless you if you read and practice the words of this book, or if you even listen to the words of this book being read.

The devil knows that one of the fastest ways you can gain blessing in your own life and in your own walk is by reading the book of Revelation. He's going to do everything he can to make Revelation impossible for you to understand and to know. There's a lot of reasons why you'll be blessed for reading the book of Revelation. Perhaps one of the greatest reasons why you'll be blessed for reading the book of Revelation simply sits in the fact that if you know what your future holds, that it's going to change the way you live in the present. Do you guys understand that? If you know that there are certain things that are coming in the future, it will change the way you think about the moment that you are in, in the current day. It will change the way you think about the time in which you are living and how you think about things.

It will completely change your focus almost entirely about how you deal with things from day to day. I think that that's really, we're really important that you recognize it. I had somebody come up to me recently and say, "James, aren't you bothered by the fact that you pretty much have no life?" I went to them and I just said, "Can you expand upon the fact that I have no life?" And they said this: "James, you pretty much work whatever as many hours a day that you do. The only thing that you do is you do work at church, then you go home to work at home. Yeah, of course you hang out with your family, you do things like that, but you don't go on vacations, you don't go and do this, you don't go and do that, you don't go see this or see that. You don't spend any time doing all these things. You don't take time out of your day every day to go hang out and do this hobby or do that type of thing or all that kind of thing."

My statement to them was this, which was meant to be harsh to a degree and I know that it is very difficult to say something like this to somebody: "You know the difference between you and me? The difference between you and me is I know what awaits my future and I live right now as though I know what's happening in the future, because I do. What you do is you don't recognize or you refuse to recognize what awaits in your future, so you live in the present day because you don't want to confront what's going to happen. People like you end up finding yourselves in the future to be shocked by the fact that you were never ready, but you have nobody to blame except yourself."

As Christians, when we recognize what God has for us in the future, it radically changes the way we live in the current moment and in the current day. I think that this is a very important aspect of what we do when we look at the book of Revelation because it should modify the way that we see things. It should change us. When we don't look at it, we don't understand the future, when we don't recognize what God has for us, then we begin to develop the mindset that is created by sin. It's the mindset that I oftentimes call the poverty mindset. It's the mindset that teaches us to walk in complete destruction and complete depravity. God has no desire for us to have that. He doesn't want us to be living in that way.

We think differently when we know what our future holds. As we've been going through Revelation chapter 21, it has been a description to us of the new heaven and the new earth, and the end of that description goes through the passage that we're going to read today. That is going to be Revelation 22, all the way up until from verse one all the way into verse five. We're going to read the first five verses and there is so much to learn in these verses. Like last week, I'm going to talk a little faster, but I think it's going to be well worth it because the time that we're investing in being able to better understand what's being communicated here is going to change the way we live in the current day.

Here we go. Verse one says this: "And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of," notice this, "the throne of God and of the Lamb." Now this is really powerful because first of all, I just want to stop and communicate something. My very first cursory view of this passage just gets me to think of a very pleasant thought and that's the idea that there's a river that's going to be coming from the throne of God. That's a pretty spectacular picture. The river's going to be clear water and it's going to be a very beautiful thing and it's pure and there's so many wonderful implications of it.

Of course, I don't have to spend a lot of time talking about the theological significance that this bears, because we have spent a lot of time in the book of Revelation talking about the water issue and speaking about rivers. Even when we went through the book of Ezekiel, we talked about the significance of the river and the descriptors provided to us, especially during the Millennial reign. We've had a lot of conversations about that. The implication of the river speaks of life, and life is coming from the very throne of God, which is a spectacular picture.

But there is something I need you to focus on, especially because of the current day in which we're living and because we are living in a time where the enemy is doing everything he can. This is his last run against humanity. He wants to destroy humanity and he's deploying every tactic that he can think of to do it because he wants to prevent what we know is going to happen in the future for him and he does not want us to be able to experience what could be our future, right? If we choose to say, "Christ, I accept your free gift."

But look at this phrase. There is a river, but look at where the river emanates from. Look at where it comes from. It says that it is proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. I want to spend some time focusing on this because this is the throne of God and of the Lamb. The Lamb is clear reference to Jesus Christ. What we are seeing right now is we are seeing a combination of thrones taking place here where the throne of the Father with the throne of Christ is now combined, and this is the throne that will be existing for eternity.

This is really important because one of the things that we know of right now is we have to stop and we have to contemplate the promise that was made to King David in the book of Samuel. You have to think about this for a second. If you don't, you're going to be in big trouble because you're not going to be able to make the connection that I desperately need you to make as we consider this first chapter and that's this. David has his palace, if you remember the story, and he finishes building it. He's very excited about the fact that his palace is built, but then he has a moment of disruption in his mind and his heart and he recognizes, "I live in this beautiful palace, but God dwells in this tent."

He's looking at the Tabernacle. He goes to the prophet Nathan and he says, "You know what? This is wrong. I'm going to build a temple for the Lord." You know what the prophet Nathan does? Prophet Nathan says, "Right on! I'm with you. Go for it. God's with you. Let's do it." He goes to bed that night and God says, "Hey, wake up. I'm not with David in this. You told him that I was with him and I'm not. You go back and tell David this very important thing. You tell him he can't build that house because his hands are too bloody to build that house. You tell him that his son will build that house."

That's why oftentimes it's referred to as Solomon's Temple. It really should be called David's Temple because David is the one that wanted to do it in the first place and David is the one that gathered all the materials for it. In reality, they call it Solomon's Temple because Solomon built it. But here's the thing that's interesting. He tells David, or God tells Nathan to tell David, he says, "By the way, you tell him that he cannot build this house, but you do need to understand something. I will build him a house." You tell him that. In essence, what the promise is, is that somebody from his bloodline will rule in perpetuity.

Now that is referring to Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God who he himself is God. We know that. The Lord is going to rule in perpetuity and we know that he's going to come from David's bloodline. We know that to be the case. We've already talked about it when we look at the genealogy that is taught to us in Matthew, as well as the genealogy in Luke. It shows us how that happens, especially when you consider the curse of Jeconiah and how that changes everything in the bloodline of Joseph versus the bloodline of Mary and all the other cool things that go with that.

We know that even those very genealogies tell us that Jesus was born of a virgin and the significance of all of that and just the power that comes from just understanding that whole picture. But here's the thing that gets really interesting, okay? Because it's really important. Jesus right now is not sitting on the throne of David. Do you guys get that? He's not. He's not in that place right now. As a matter of fact, the very throne that Christ sits on right now is one that speaks of a priestly line. You understand that?

In other words, he is functioning as our High Priest after the order not of any Aaronic priesthood, but after the order of Melchizedek. If you remember, he comes from the Melchizedekian line, as the book of Hebrews tells us, as opposed to the line of the Aaronic priesthood. We know that he is not from the tribe of Levi. What tribe is Jesus from, anybody? Yeah. You could say that more confidently. You're right. So how in the world can a priest come from the tribe of Judah? Well, it's really important because Jesus comes from the tribe of Judah or the line of Judah, which is the kingly line, which again allows him to be coordinated as king from a human perspective.

But the more significant perspective is that his priesthood is actually after the line that is not considered to be human. It is after the order of Melchizedek, which is a more significant priesthood because Melchizedek was a priest that was around before Aaron was even a thought in the mind of his mom and father, okay? Understand that. When you start looking at the significance of Christ and ruling as our priest, as our High Priest, it's really important. But look at what Revelation chapter three, verse 21 tells us. Let's go over there for just a second because it's important. It gives us some detail as to the throne that Jesus is sitting on and where he stands and what's happening here.

Look at this. This is talking to those who overcome. This is verse 21 of Revelation chapter three and it says this: "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am sat down with my Father in his throne." So understand this. There's three very specific positions of thrones that we're talking about here because remember, I could spend again hours talking about the significance of the use of the aorist as we look at this verse here in Revelation chapter three, verse 21.

But look at what it's telling us. It's telling us of a future time. Jesus is acting as our High Priest, but there is a throne that he will sit on where we will rule and reign with him during the Millennial reign. When that Millennial reign is over and there's a new heaven and a new earth, there's going to be another throne and that throne will be the throne that he will sit on with the Father. They will in essence sit on the same throne. That's the throne that we read about.

Why am I spending a lot of time talking about this throne and that throne and over here and over there? Because you need to understand what drives the mindset of people who claim to be doing the will of God in the world in which they live today, but do not understand the Scriptures and do not understand Bible prophecy and they come to seriously erroneous conclusions. Let me give you an example of that. Can I give you just one?

There is a very powerful and significant movement going on right now in the church that are being led by a group of pastors who believe that they can bring the kingdom of God to this earth. It's an ascription of a way of thinking called dominion theology and it is completely broken. As a matter of fact, most dominionists who believe this, that they can bring the kingdom of God to this earth, don't even believe that Jews are supposed to be validated as God's ancestrally chosen people and that the covenant that God made with Israel is an everlasting one.

They actually ascribe to the idea that we as the church are spiritual Israel, which by the way is a satanic philosophy. It's called replacement theology and it's oftentimes broken with those who hold fast to the ideals of dominionism. That's a very important stipulation for me to draw. The thing that I have to point out, because I think it's critical and it's really, really important that everybody understands this, is the way of thinking that they ascribe to is that you can bring to this earth the very things that are being described that God will do in the new heavens and the new earth.

That if you just do enough work in politics, in this and in that, then you will bring the kingdom of God to this earth and there will be a heavenly ruling and it'll all be perfect and so on and so forth. Well, I got news for you. That'll never happen because God has to destroy this heaven and this earth in order to create a new heaven and a new earth. I promise you, you want it to be that way. I promise you, you want it to be that way because so long as this heaven and this earth exist, there's always the possibility for sin destroying it even more. There's always the possibility of corruption. There's always the possibility of brokenness.

This is the problem with the movement that is oftentimes represented by dominionism or Kingdom Now theology, and that is this: they put their whole lives and they put all the weight of what they do in politics. I'm telling you this right now, the church is absolutely called to get involved in politics because politics come from the pulpit. If the pulpit is not managing itself truthfully and honestly, then in reality they let go of politics, which in my opinion is a political position all in and of itself, okay? Here's the problem: when it becomes the hope of your future, then you have now chosen to make something else your god that God never intended for you to make.

This is why there are whole Christian movements that center around putting a particular political leader on the throne and worshipping them as God. I have news for you, not only are they fallible, and not only are they sinful, and not only are they broken men, but they will never be able to do what God is going to do for us in the future, okay? Here's the thing. Do we get involved? Do we go out to school board meetings? Do we get involved in political movements and so on and so forth?

Absolutely we should. We should get involved in all of these things. I want to fight for a better life for my children so long as we're on this earth. Absolutely. God tells me to do it. Whether or not I lose, I'm called to speak out about these things and to do these things. The problem that we have right now is there's a lot of people who ascribe to this way of thinking who are making alliances with the world in order to accomplish what they think is going to be the kingdom of God. But what they don't realize is, when you try to create a kingdom of God, as you would call it, using corrupt mechanisms, you will never produce anything that's righteous. Never.

It's just never going to happen. Think about it like this. I got a little bit in trouble because of the way I did it when I was a kid, but I remember being a brand new pastor. I think I was 18 years old, just getting ready to turn 19 and I had a couple come into my office. They came to me and they basically said that they're getting a lot of opposition from their family about getting married and that they just wanted to get some biblical counsel about how to handle it and they're just getting persecuted and so on and so forth.

So I asked them, I said, "If you don't mind me asking you this question, can you tell me the circumstances of how you guys met each other and how you're getting married and so on and so forth?" "Well, well..." and the second he's doing this, I know what's coming. I already know and I'm not even experienced in counseling yet. I know nothing about a lot of it. This guy says, "Well, you see, I was married before." "Oh, there it is! There it is! Okay, can I ask you a question? Were you married too?" "Yeah, I was married too to my husband."

"Okay, so you both were married before. This is how this story is going to start. Yep, okay. All right, go ahead. I already know what they're going to tell me." "Well, you see, we were going distant. I was going distant from my wife. She was going distant from her husband and things kind of got difficult and so on and so forth and so we both kind of separated, and then while we were married, we kind of met each other and we kind of got close and we developed a relationship."

I just stopped. This is what I did. I just stopped. I said, "I'm going to waste your time if I continue to go on with this and you're going to waste mine. I'm going to tell you this right now, your marriage will never work and that's why your family is busting your chops. Your marriage will never work, no matter how hard you try to make it work. Your marriage will never work. To the point, don't come to any of us here at this church and ask us to marry you because we won't marry you, because we're not going to set you up for failure. Your marriage will never work." I said it just that way.

"How dare you! How dare you!" "Okay, you want to know the reason? Do you at least want to know the reason before you get out of my office and storm out and make all kinds of accusations at me and tell me I'm unreasonable and I'm too young and I have no tact and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? So here it is. Here's the reason why. Because you were both cheating on your spouses with one another. If you're cheating on your spouses with one another, how do you think you're going to have a good healthy marriage in Christ? Your marriage was started in Satan. Do you think it's going to end well? It's not. It's not."

They barfed on me all mad, everything. Went out and got married. I think they got divorced like six months later or something like that, you know what I mean? My whole point is this: if you have the mentality, the Kingdom Now mindset that says you're going to make something spectacular, the kingdom of God you're going to bring to this earth, you're starting it in corruption. You're starting it with an adulterous relationship. What do you mean an adulterous relationship? The relationship God intended for us to have was with him. A mutually exclusive relationship.

You know what man did? Man committed adultery. Men said, "We're going to worship other gods. We're going to seek other gods." So now you're telling me you want to bring this world that God intended to be used for purity, and you're going to take God's kingdom and bring it into an adulterous relationship? It won't work. It won't work. It's never going to happen.

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

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

If you hunger for more Bible prophecy, you may want to seek out Pastor James's videos live 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 the website lightonthehillradio.com. We hope to hear from you soon. Now here's Pastor James with the rest of his message.

James Kaddis: That doesn't absolve us from getting involved in all of these incredible things that God wants us to get involved with. But just understand the throne of God, the throne of God, the throne of God. Can I say it again? The throne of God, the throne of God, the throne of God. The throne that Jesus Christ sits on is not one that you're going to find on this earth. So don't try to bring it to this earth because it'll never happen, okay? That's the significance of verse one of chapter 22.

Put it in your head. Get it, get it deeply embedded within your head. Now, does it mean that it's wrong for you to stand up in the political arena? Actually, I would argue that it's wrong if you don't stand up in the political arena, okay? But what I'm saying is the political arena is not your hope for what the future is, because the kingdom of God is not anything that is made up of the efforts of man to make something euphoric, okay? You've already seen the efforts of man seeking to make things euphoric. You just don't do it. You just don't. 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.