Simple Faith

Guest (Male): With the thought on the end of the world and death, here's Pastor Bill Henry.

Bill Henry: Even if we all died tomorrow, guess what? It's just like we all got raptured. Amen? If a plane just fell right on this building right now and we're all dead, everybody would be going, "Oh, so sad." We'd be up there going, "Woo-hoo! I'm glad I went to the second service this morning!" We're with Jesus.

That's the blessed expectation. Don't get me wrong, I know we have hurts here. I know we have pains here, but don't focus on those pains. We don't mourn as the world mourns. They have no hope. We know that Jesus Christ is holding all your tears in a bottle, by the way. How blessed is that? That's how much he loves you.

Guest (Male): Great to have you along for today's edition of Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry, coming to you once again today from Simple Faith Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, Washington. If you were with us last time, you'll remember Pastor Bill began a message based on Revelation chapter 16.

In history, there have been some memorable battles, but the battle of Armageddon will outdo every one of them for destruction and bloodshed. Satan is fighting his last fight and although he knows he must lose, he fights on. After this battle comes the final destruction of the earth. It's frightening to think about, isn't it? Well, as believers, we won't be around for the terror, so we can take comfort in that fact as we begin today's program. Here's Pastor Bill Henry.

Bill Henry: We also need to understand that when he comes the second time, he will come as a thief in the night. They'll know generally when he's coming, but they won't know the exact day or the exact hour. So they're always to be ready. Now, what's interesting is Jesus told his church these same things when he was giving us the signs of the times before these things would happen. He also said, "Look, be ready because I'm coming as a thief in the night even for the church."

The rapture of the church will come at a time that no man knows the day or the hour. Many today have made false predictions of when this would happen. Several years ago, Harold Camping made another date. He set another date, and this was at least the second or third time that I know about. So a friend of mine who's a Calvary pastor contacted his ministry and said, "Hey, since you are sure this is going to happen on this date?" "No doubt this is going to happen." He goes, "Okay, well, do me a favor and sign over all your ministry's property and all your ministry's money over to our church."

So when you guys are gone and if we're still here, we'll be able to make use of it. He didn't do that. Why not? Because he knew. And so obviously, Jesus didn't come because no man knows the day or the hour. I don't know how plain the Lord has to say this. And even his second coming, God didn't say it's going to be the exact day or whatever after the seven-year tribulation. Is it the last day? Is it a day after, a day before? What is it going to be? He didn't tell us. So he's going to come like a thief of the night, but so too when he comes for us as church.

In Matthew 24:42, it says this: "Watch therefore." Watch therefore literally means stay awake. How many here are awake looking for the return of Jesus? Stay awake, man. Stay awake, woman, because I'm telling you what, Jesus tells us this because we're going to have the tendency to want to fall asleep. Amen? Who doesn't want to turn the news off? I don't want to hear this anymore. I don't want to see the wickedness anymore. Amen? Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.

But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore, you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not expect. And so even with the rapture of the church and the second coming of Christ, there's going to be this sudden event where Jesus comes as a thief. And so even in a future time, Jesus is warning those believers, "Hey, it's going to come. You remain ready. Be on guard. Be on watch."

Even today, he tells us, "Be on guard, be on watch." Now, how many of us, are you prepared for if a thief breaks into your house? Do you have maybe stuff in your drawer, night table, a flashlight, other things that might go bang in the night, anything like that? I don't know about you, but we kind of prepare a little bit. But imagine if you knew tonight, you don't know what time, but you know there's a thief that's going to break into your house. What would you do?

Would you break into your pajamas? I'd have my shoes on, I'd have my clothes on, I might be laying on top of the bed, I'd have a flashlight and maybe something else in another hand. Protect my family. But you see, that's what he's talking about here back in our text. Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame. If you know a thief is coming, you're not going to jump up—you might have to, but that's where he's saying you don't have to go unprepared and show your shame. No, you're one who's ready.

Now again, he's saying this to them that are coming in the future. Because remember, the Bible's not disappearing with us when we go. When we're raptured, the Bibles are staying here, praise God. And so the believers then are going to be able to open up and they're going to say, "All right, what's next? We just saw the sea turned to blood. What's coming next?" And all of a sudden they're going to get this word of encouragement: "Hey, look, Jesus is coming quickly. Be ready." And even today, be ready, beloved in Christ, for Jesus is coming soon.

We look at the state of the world today. We look at Israel. When Israel became a nation, May 14th, 1948, that prophetic clock all of a sudden is like click, click, click. And we see over the last 70 years plus all the fulfilling of prophecy that's happening before our eyes. And as we've talked about this many times, we can talk about lawlessness increasing. It's crazy how the lawlessness is increasing not just here in America but all around the world. We see the great falling away of the church before us, these signs that Jesus said to be looking for.

And he said when you see these things begin to happen, what did he say? "Look up, for your redemption draweth nigh." To me, again, I think that's again another thing of the church: looking up. He didn't say, "Hey, look down because I'm going to come back to the earth and rule and reign." No, I'm going to be taking you up. Look up for your redemption draws near. Anybody excited about that? We should be excited about that. So many times it's so easy to get focused on the yucky stuff here, amen? Because again, we live in a world that is calling darkness light and light darkness.

We live in a world that's calling good evil and evil good. They're rejoicing. We're living through a month right now where all these cities and states and countries around the world are celebrating sin. And now they're actually beginning—I don't know if you heard about this, but up in Seattle there's some boys on trial. They face I think it's up to 10 years in prison because somebody put a mural of a rainbow for homosexual month on one of the streets and they took their bikes or something and skidded on it.

So now they're facing hate crimes. Now listen to this. You can take a Bible and burn it on that same street and they won't do nothing to you. You can take an American flag, you can take a Jewish flag and burn it—they will not do anything. But man, their god of homosexuality—don't touch that god. And so again, you see the wickedness growing. But that's why the Lord tells us to keep our eyes up, even us here today. Because it gives us that certain hope. It reminds us that Jesus is returning.

It helps to keep us heavenly minded. I don't know if any of you heard this, but years ago there used to be this saying that was going around: "Oh, you're so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good." Anybody hear that? I'll be honest with you, I've never met one person like that. Honestly, I've never met one person who's so heavenly minded, because if we're heavenly minded, we're going to be so earthly good it's not even funny. Because we're excited. "Hey, I know I'm going there." Anybody here ever been to Hawaii? Raise your hand if you've been to Hawaii.

And raise your hand if you want to go to Hawaii. Now if you knew you were going to Hawaii, would you prepare? Would you get your bathing suit ready and maybe start going to a tanning booth or maybe start working out a little bit more, get a little bit more bathing suit body weather? You'd get excited too, right? You'd be counting down the days. And rightfully so, it's an exciting, fun thing. How much more so the return of Jesus for us as we keep our eyes—we don't have the exact day, we don't have the hour, but we know as we look around, man, Jesus is coming soon.

And we live with that blessed expectation because don't you get excited when you know you're going on a vacation, going somewhere exciting? It's like, "Hey, this is so—I can't wait, man. I cannot wait." I had an old friend of mine and his dad, if they were going on a vacation, they literally would get off Friday night at five o'clock. They would leave Monday night at five-thirty, and then they'd take the whole week. He would not come home until Monday morning the next Monday morning at like five in the morning.

Because he goes, "I'm taking advantage of every minute of my vacation." And he was excited. They looked forward to it. That's how we need to be with heaven. And that's what the Lord's reminding them here. "Hey, keep your eyes up. It's tough right now." And it's going to be tough for them, but it's getting tough here, amen? It's getting rugged as we look around and we see what's happening and things that are happening. But you know what, guys and gals, keep your eyes up. Keep your eyes up.

Don't keep your eyes just on your family. Don't keep your eyes on your work or your school or these things. It's okay to do those things, but keep your eye first and foremost on Jesus Christ and know that he's returning. And even if we all died tomorrow, guess what? It's just like we all got raptured, amen? If a plane just fell right on this building right now and we're all dead, everybody would be going, "Oh, so sad." We'd be up there going, "Woo-hoo! I'm glad I went to the second service this morning!" We're with Jesus.

That's the blessed expectation. Don't get me wrong, I know we have hurts here. I know we have pains here, but don't focus on those pains. We don't mourn as those who mourn of the world mourn. They have no hope. We know that Jesus Christ is holding all your tears in a bottle, by the way. How blessed is that? That's how much he loves you. All right, look back at our text. So we come back now to what's going on in verse 16. And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew Armageddon.

So the kings of the East, the kings now of the world will all come together and they will gather them in a place in the Hebrew called Armageddon. So this will be Megiddo, the valley of Megiddo, Armageddon in the Greek. If you look on the map there, it's also called the Jezreel Valley today. And this is where we'll be in, let's say, military terms. This will be a staging area. This is where the armies of the world will come and they will stage because they're about ready to go against Jerusalem.

Because why? Because Satan knows that that is where Jesus is returning on the Mount of Olives. If you go to the next picture, you'll see kind of where Megiddo is again and you'll kind of see that down—if you look all the way down south, you'll see Jerusalem far down, but it's not that far away. Just the West Bank away. And then you go to the next picture and you kind of see a topographical map. You see the valley there. And then if you go to the next picture, you see an actual picture of the valley, how huge it is.

So just picture that all that filled up with armies and just crazy to think about. Now again, this is no surprise to the Lord as they gather up and they're getting ready. Remember Ezekiel 38 and 39 and Daniel, but also this is not a surprise to the Lord when they gather for this to attack Israel, when they gathered. Because in Zechariah 14, verses 2 and 3, we read this: "For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem. The city will be taken."

So he's telling us what's going to happen with this battle. The city will be taken, houses rifled, the women ravished, half of the city shall go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as he fights in the day of battle. So the Lord's going to let them come to a certain point, and then Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives. If you go to the next slide, please, you'll see there the Mount of Olives, which is just east of Jerusalem.

The next slide will show you a little bit closer up how close it is. And then even the next slide you actually see that it's within walking distance. And the next slide will show kind of a little bit more what it looks like just outside the city of Jerusalem, the temple, not too far. And that's where Jesus is going to return, the Mount of Olives. So again, that army's going to be built up. Now look at verse 17. Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne saying, "It is done."

So this is it. This is the seventh bowl. This is the last bowl. This is the last of the wrath of God to be poured out upon the earth. "It is done." Verse 18: "And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings, and there was such a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth." So the first portion of this seventh bowl judgment will be announced by noises, thunderings, lightnings in the heaven, and then a great earthquake.

Note this is not any ordinary earthquake. And we even see in the book of tribulation earlier, there's other earthquakes that will happen before this. But this earthquake, notice it says here, great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake. Now great there in the Greek is megas. That's where we get the word mega from. So this is going to be a mega earthquake. And then it says a mighty earthquake. Now mighty means great, big, or vast. This is going to be all over the world. This is going to be this huge earthquake.

And it will be so mighty that no earthquake in the history of the world will come close to what this is. Now I looked on a website called Live Science website and they said this: I looked up the 20 largest earthquakes. I'm only going to highlight a few. The 20th largest earthquake ever recorded was in 1933 in Japan, and it had a magnitude of 8.4. It generated 100-foot waves along with a tsunami that swept away 3,000 homes. The 11th largest was in Indonesia in 2005 at 8.6.

Number five was in Russia in 1952 at 9.0. It caused a 43-foot tsunami. If you remember back in 2011, anybody remember the big earthquake in Japan? That was ranked number four on the list and it was a 9.1. Over 15,000 people were killed. The number one earthquake that we have in recorded history was a 9.5 that happened in Chile in 1960. Now check this out: 1,600 people died, thousands were injured, millions were left homeless. It also caused a tsunami that killed 61 people in Hawaii, 138 people in Japan, and 32 people in the Philippines.

So imagine now this earthquake that shakes the whole world. Imagine the tsunamis, let alone the damage from the earthquakes, but the tsunamis alone. And remember what the seas are right now. Does anybody remember? They're blood. Imagine a tsunami of blood coming at you. This is just too devastating to even think about. Now look at verse 19. "Now the great city was divided into three parts by this earthquake, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath."

Now there's been many books written about verse 19. Is this the great city, is this Jerusalem, is it Babylon, is it Rome? Is Babylon the Catholic Church or is it simply the city of Babylon rebuilt along the Euphrates River that the Antichrist will use as his headquarters upon the earth? And that's what I believe. I believe that this verse is actually talking about two different places. Number one is the great city, that's Jerusalem. I think it's going to be because it's called the great city earlier in the book of Revelation, and we're told clearly there that it is the city of Jerusalem.

And so and cities of the nations fell apart, and then Great Babylon was also remembered before God and he will give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness or the indignation of his wrath. And that is coming. We're going to see further on within our study. Now look at verse 20. "Then every island fled away and the mountains were not found." Now my old pastor used to say before he went home to the Lord, he said when they come back to rule and reign with the earth, he's going to put a request into the Lord to be stationed in Maui, Hawaii.

But he must have missed this verse because there will not be a Maui, Hawaii according to this. All the islands of the world will be gone. All the mountains will be laid flat. They won't be found anymore. And so this is how—think again how devastating this will be. So again, all the devastation that's coming. Then look at verse 21. "And great hail fell from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent." Now as I was going over the study yesterday, I don't know if how many of you got hit by the hailstorm that we got.

A little bit of hail, we got a lot of hail at our house actually. And so it was just little hail, but it was a nice little hail. But as we're looking at this verse, I went to a website and it's called Largest. And it records, I guess, the largest things. And this was the five largest hailstones ever recorded. So here's the five largest hailstones: In southwest Germany in 2013, there was a hailstone that measured 5.5 inches round and was 0.79 pounds. Now then number four was in Coffeyville, Kansas in September of 1970.

This one measured 5.7 inches around and was 1.67 pounds. Number three was in Bangladesh in April of '86. There was no dimensions given, but it weighed two pounds. Number two was in Aurora, Nebraska. Anybody notice the tornado alley thing? I'm not moving there unless the Lord tells me to, then I will, but number two is in Aurora, Nebraska. This was in June of 2003. It was seven inches and it weighed 1.33 pounds. And then in Vivian, South Dakota in July of 2010, this one measured eight inches and weighed 1.94 pounds.

Now that's hail. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen pictures where hail has hit cars and it dents them, breaks the windshields—that's that kind of hail. But this kind of hail that we're reading of in our text, notice it says it weighs a talent. Do you know how much a talent weighs? 100 pounds! These huge things. Now what's interesting when I was looking at those other hailstones, they said the fastest recorded is about 100 to 101 miles per hour coming down just because of gravity coming down, right?

So again, you have these huge hailstones around the world that will be falling, 100 pounds each. They would devastate a building like this. Houses, work buildings, devastated. Now what's interesting, God will do this to pour out his wrath, but I also see something a little bit—what's interesting is he tells them that this is coming. And again for me, I think part of that reason is that remember the believers will be reading this stuff. "Hey, the sea just turned to blood. Hey, we got hailstones coming, guys and gals. They're 100 pounds a pop."

"We need to—let's find some caves to get in. Let's find some places to be safe in." So I think that's part of it. But notice how the rest of the world reacted here at the end of our verse. It says this: "Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail since that plague was exceedingly great." Imagine how many people die because they don't read their Bibles and they're out in the open, they don't know these things are coming. Warning today, just like there's a warning for each one of us, huh?

It's like, "How does this apply to me, Pastor Bill?" You know what? I pray that you're not here during this time. And there's a way to be not here, and that's to be born again of the spirit of God. Because God has poured out his wrath upon us for our sin upon Jesus on the cross. And all we have to do is turn away from our sin—the Bible calls it repentance—turn away from our sin and to Jesus Christ believing that he paid the debt for our sin, that he died for our sin, that God rose him from the dead on the third day.

That we believe in him to be the Lord and savior of our lives and we are then born again of the spirit of God. Not to be religious but to be in a living, loving relationship with God through Jesus Christ his son. He can do that today. I tell you, I beg you to do that today if you haven't done it. Maybe some of you have been born again but you've just been asleep like we've been talking about and you're seeing this stuff and hopefully it shakes you a little bit.

No, this is coming. But again, the beautiful part is we don't have to endure through it. And by the way, it should shake us so much that we don't want anybody else outside to go through it. The lost, that we should have that heart looking at the lost and saying, "Oh Lord, that was me 20 years ago. That was me last year. That was me 40 years ago. I need to go share the gospel. I need to make disciples. I need to plant seeds, water seeds, and be a faithful disciple of you, Lord."

Guest (Male): I hope you were blessed by today's message from Pastor Bill Henry. This has been Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry from Simple Faith Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, Washington. And today we brought you a message from Pastor Bill's new series in the Book of Revelation. If you'd like to hear today's message again or share it with a friend, it's available at our website to either watch or listen or download in MP3 format. We have a large number of Pastor Bill's messages archived and you can find them all at simplefaith.org.

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