Cross Examined 1 | "Humblodoxy"

Amen. Amen. God is good. Oh, that was good. That was good. Would you open your Bibles to the book of Revelation? Revelation chapter 1. If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of the ushers will bring you one. Revelation is the last book of the Bible, so you can turn there with no problem.

As you're turning there, I just want to point out two quick things in the bulletin. The praise and worship night that we're having on the 26th is coming up soon. Many of you have probably been following along with the news story and praying for Pastor Saeed, who has been held captive in Iran for quite some time now. When we gather together for praise and worship on September 26th, we're going to spend a significant amount of time praying for Pastor Saeed and for his wife and their children who are here in the States. So make sure you come out to that. It'll be a great time as we pray together and worship together.

Also, if you're new to the church in the last several weeks and you'd like some more information, Josh mentioned the cross-training class. Additionally, tomorrow afternoon, after the second service at 12:30, we will have our newcomer's lunch. So come on out to that if you are new to the church.

Now, back to Revelation chapter 1. Look at verse 12, if you will. Revelation 1:12. The apostle John is writing, and he says, "Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes like a flame of fire. His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. He had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword. His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying to me,

Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am He who lives and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. I have the keys of Hades and of death. Write these things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this. The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.

Father, we pray as we stand here tonight, opening to a new section of Scripture, beginning a new series, and discussing a topic that many people are interested in. This topic causes excitement in the hearts of some, while in the hearts of others, it brings fear and anxiety. Lord, I pray that You would help us sort through the emotions that might arise when we think about this text. Help us navigate all the different sound bites and the various things we have heard or think we might know about this passage. As we explore this section of Scripture over the next seven weeks, may You speak to us, reveal Yourself to us, and help us to know You more. God, make us more like You. We pray that You would speak to us. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all God's people agreed and said, Amen. You can be seated.

I remember it fairly well. I was about six years old, a first grader at Juniper School here in Escondido. Some of you know Juniper Elementary School. It was there that I received my first love letter, the first love letter from a secret admirer. Even as a six-year-old, there was something about it that caused a little bit of excitement in my heart. After all, who doesn't like to be told sweet things about being cute? The excitement continued as I received the second letter from my secret admirer and then the third.

How many of you are excited when you get a letter? None of you? Come on, we like to get letters! The excitement was suddenly dashed upon the rocks when I found out that it was my older sister and her friends playing a trick on me. True story. I still remember that, although my sister may not. I may have blocked that memory, but I did not.

Handwritten letters are something we enjoy receiving. There's a certain excitement that comes with them. Nowadays, it's not something you see very often. In fact, most of our correspondence that involves any sort of writing is electronic. It's sent with a keyboard and a computer, or now, it's sent with our thumbs. Sometimes it even includes weird lingo like "LOL" and things like that. So, there's just not the same kind of excitement when you receive that.

If you're anything like me, when you go out to check the actual post mail, you don't find any handwritten letters or notes. What you typically find are ads and bills. Again, if you're anything like me, you probably don't check that very often—maybe once a week. However, there is that occasion when you go out to the mail, open it up, and see your name and address handwritten. There’s a certain anticipation when that happens. We kind of like it when we receive that sort of correspondence—actual mail written to us.

So, I wonder, what would it be like to get a letter from Jesus? Could you imagine? What if Jesus took the time to write you a letter? Think of the excitement you might feel when you received it. What might Jesus write if he wrote to you or to our church?

The fact is that we don't really need to imagine it because nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus did send seven letters to seven churches, which still have application to His church globally today—not just our church, but His global Big C Church. Jesus has written letters that are relevant to us. Yes, I know that some of you, who are astute Bible students, are aware that these letters, written in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, were addressed to seven actual churches that existed in what is now southwestern Asia.

Turkey in the modern day is believed by many to have been home to churches along a Roman postal route. Many of you recognize and know that these were churches that actually existed. So how, you might ask, do these things apply to us in our day? Yes, these letters were written to seven actual churches in Asia Minor 2,000 years ago.

Each of these seven letters ends with the exact same words. In fact, you can see those words in Revelation chapter 2, verse 7. It says, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." Even though these letters were written to Ephesus, Smyrna, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, and were directed at specific individual churches, each of these short letters was written so that we might know what the Spirit of God says to the churches as a whole.

Yes, He has specific words for those individual churches about things happening in their day and in their city, but they have a much bigger reach. What the Spirit says to the churches is reiterated in Revelation 2:7, 2:11, 2:17, 2:29, 3:6, 3:13, and 3:22. They all end with the same words: "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."

Although these letters were historically dictated by Jesus through the apostle John to specific churches that existed in Asia Minor 2,000 years ago, they hold significance and application for us as part of the Church of Jesus Christ in the year 2014. Jesus wants to say something to us, which brings us to the reason why we will take the next seven weeks to look at these letters and consider them.

We will examine these letters because I believe that God wants to speak to us. He wants to reveal something from this passage that is applicable to our lives today, whether in the environment where you work, at the place you go to school, or wherever you live here in North County. God wants to speak something to us individually, but also as a church.

Body, God wants to speak something to us, and that's why we're going through this section of Scripture. Now, some of you are thinking of this passage and wondering how it applies. Some of you are saying, "Listen, I know how it applies because we're living in the last days." Don't you know that the book of Revelation is all about the last days and the second coming of Jesus? To a certain extent, that is true.

There are some people I know very well who are super excited that we're going to be stepping into the book of Revelation. I know because you've told me over the last six weeks or so. I've had quite a number of people come up to me with this anticipated look on their face, like Christmas is coming. "Ooh, we're going through the book of Revelation!" They are super excited.

I have to be honest, and I hope I don't bum any of you out or disappoint any of you, but although we are stepping into the book of Revelation, we're kind of dipping our toe in it. We're only going to be taking seven weeks to look at the seven churches of Revelation chapters two and three. I know there have been a few people who have come up and shared their concern, saying, "Wait a minute. I thought we needed to go through all 22 chapters." No, we're just going to look at this from more of an application level. God, what do you want to speak to us?

While I recognize that there's probably a lot of excitement, I don't want to lay a wet blanket over it. I want you to still be excited because God wants to speak to you and to me. He wants to reveal something.

It's really important to remember as we begin to step into this study that the book of Revelation is not the revelation of the tribulation. It is not the revelation of the Antichrist. It is not the revelation of the mark of the beast. It is the revelation—look at the first five words of Revelation chapter one, verse one. It is the revelation of who? The revelation of Jesus Christ. The revelation of Jesus Christ, not the Antichrist.

We're going to study this section of the book of Revelation for what the Spirit of Jesus Christ would say to us in our day through this passage and how He might reveal Himself to us. But wait, someone says, "Isn't this the apocalypse?"

I know that some of your Bibles may even have, instead of the Revelation or the Book of Revelation, it simply says the Apocalypse. There’s something about that word, isn’t there? The Apocalypse. When you hear the Apocalypse, your mind instantly goes to Armageddon. In some people's minds, they see Bruce Willis on an asteroid up in space. This is exciting—the Apocalypse.

If you look up the word "apocalypse" in most modern dictionaries, you find a definition that speaks about something related to the end of the world. It says something like the coming complete final destruction of the world. Now, pardon me if this word offends you, but the reality is that many of us in the modern day have bastardized the word "apocalypse." Just about every modern English translation of that word or definition says something about the final judgment.

However, the fact is that the word "apocalypsis" in Greek means the revealing or the manifestation. On your outlines, that’s the first one there: the revealing or the manifestation. The word "apocalypsis" in Greek and "apocalypse" in English—its very earliest understanding and definition—is the revealing or the manifestation.

It is the idea of anticipation. I’ve used this illustration before because it’s the perfect example. Imagine that there is a present under the Christmas tree. If you celebrate Christmas, and most of you do, you have a Christmas tree with presents underneath. Maybe there’s a present that has your name on it. You can pick it up, shake it, and feel how heavy it is and how big the box is. You think, "Okay, I think I know what this is," and you might have a hunch.

Perhaps you have a spouse like I do who can’t help but give clues. Don’t you want to know what’s inside? Let me give you a clue. I think my wife loves giving gifts more than receiving them. There’s so much anticipation, but you don’t know what it is until you have the apocalypse—the opening, the revealing, the manifestation. When it finally comes on the scene, you go, "Oh, that’s what it is!"

There is an excitement that surrounds the idea of the Apocalypse. But anytime we hear that word in our modern day, we instantly think, "Oh, it’s the end." I will give a caveat: I do recognize that the ultimate revealing, and we just saw that it is the Revelation, the apocalypsis of Jesus Christ, is when He is revealed in all His power.

All His glory at the second coming is significant. The book of Revelation does predictively and poetically point to the second coming of Jesus Christ. There is a sense that it looks forward to the ultimate revealing of Him from heaven. Remember there on the Mount of Olives when Jesus ascended into heaven in Acts chapter 1? His disciples stood there gazing, thinking, "Wow, this is far out." Two angels appeared and said to them, "Hey, why do you guys stand here looking up into heaven? Don't you know the same Jesus who ascended into heaven will return in like manner?" This is the apocalypse; He is going to come again. That is exciting.

However, we need to ensure that when we look at the book of Revelation, we do not miss the fact that this is ultimately about the revealing of Jesus. If we read and study the book of Revelation and all we see are allusions and metaphors that seem to point to nuclear bombs, cobra attack helicopters, the mark of the beast, and the Antichrist, then we have missed the point. The point is Jesus. The book reveals Him, His power, His glory, and His ultimate triumphant victory.

Although the book of Revelation is one of the most well-read books of the Bible today, it is also one of the most misunderstood. I know this because if you go to Amazon.com and type in the book of Revelation, you will find thousands of commentaries and interpretations. You will come across everything from discussions about events that happened in the first century under Nero, the emperor of Rome, to claims about cobra attack helicopters in Revelation chapter 16. There is a wide range of interpretations, and much misunderstanding has arisen from this book.

Since many people recognize that this speaks about things yet in the future, it can be overwhelming. The book of Revelation can seem gnarly. The focus of our study over the next seven weeks will primarily be on uncovering what God wants to reveal about Jesus to us. We aim to see Him more clearly and comprehend His desires for us as His church more fully. Now, all that said, when you step into a book...

Like the Book of Revelation, this isn't the only apocalyptic book of the Bible. In fact, some people who count those things say that more than a third of the Bible is prophecy. It's predictive in nature; it points to things that haven't happened yet, or it pointed to things that hadn't happened yet when those passages were written.

Books like Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah contain these different prophetic works. When you get to the New Testament, which includes writings after the first coming of Jesus, the new covenant passages, there is only one primarily apocalyptic passage: the Book of Revelation.

Anytime you step into a book like this, apocalyptic literature, you have to lay some ground rules for how you interpret it and how you look into it. What we're going to do tonight is not really get into the first letter to the church at Ephesus. Instead, we will lay the groundwork for what the ground rules are when we look at a passage like this.

You have to bear with me because when I start to do this, I tend to put on my Bible college teacher hat and default to using big words. I will try to explain those big words, so just hang on with me, as there is some importance to these concepts. After studying the Book of Revelation and working through Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, as well as teaching many of these books in the past, I believe that if we don't establish ground rules at the start, we can easily get off into the weeds and into some pretty rough territory. You golfers understand what that means.

You need to be careful about how you interpret these things and how you step into them. When you start to engage with a prophetic work like this, we need to recognize that there are basically two different kinds of prophecy in the Bible. This is point number two on your outline. The two different kinds of prophecy are, number one, didactic, and number two, predictive prophecy.

Let me explain. Didactic comes from the Greek word "didaktikos," which means "able to teach." It is found in a couple of places in the New Testament. Paul uses it when he talks about bishops and elders within the church, stating that they need to be didaktikos; they need to be able to teach. Thus, didactic prophecy...

Is that kind of prophecy a word from God that reveals something of His nature, something of who He is that we wouldn't know about Him other than Him speaking it to us and revealing it to us? There is a lot that we cannot know about God without Him revealing it to us.

Now, there is plenty of stuff we can know about God without Him directly speaking it to us through a prophet. We read in Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the earth shows forth His handiwork. Day unto day they utter speech." The basic view of Psalm 19 is that there is a revelation coming to all humanity through everything we see in this world. When you look at the trees, the stars, the sky, or the human eye, you can't help but recognize that these things declare there is a Creator.

However, that kind of revelation, which Bible theologians call general revelation, is limited. We cannot know everything about the nature and character of God by looking at the sky or these sorts of things. In fact, there is very little you can know about His character by observing creation. How do I know? One person will look at the world and say, "Look at how beautiful this world is! Look at all the wonderful trees that give fruit for us and the plants that provide food for us. God must be a good and loving God." But another person looks at the same creation and sees a typhoon, a tsunami, or a whirlwind that comes to destroy a building and kill people, concluding that God is angry and vengeful.

We can obviously come to different conclusions by looking at the heavens, the earth, and the things around us. Therefore, for us to really gauge or know the character of God, He has to speak to us. He has to reveal Himself. The Bible records that God has revealed Himself through individuals that we in the Old Testament used to call seers, which is a kind of cool name, but now they are referred to as prophets. When God reveals Himself to humanity through an individual, we say that person is a prophet.

When we hear the word "prophet," we think of figures like Moses and Samuel, as well as Isaiah and Jeremiah—individuals to whom God revealed Himself, and who wrote it down so that we could see who God is and what He is like. Didactic prophecy reveals the nature, character, and will of God, and many times it has a moral application. God shows us who He is, what He is like, and what He wants us to do. That is didactic prophecy.

Now, predictive prophecy...

That's the general thing that people think of when they hear the word prophecy: predictive. It's telling us something that's going to come to pass. But there are two kinds of predictive prophecy. We have didactic and predictive, and within predictive prophecy, there are two kinds.

One kind of predictive prophecy is what we might call cause and effect predictive prophecy. Now, you may wonder, what in the world is cause and effect predictive prophecy? It is perfectly illustrated for us in the book of Deuteronomy, specifically in Deuteronomy chapter 28. You don't have to turn there; you can just jot it down.

In Deuteronomy chapter 28, just before the children of Israel come into the promised land, we remember that they came out of Egypt. Moses went to Pharaoh and said, "Let my people go." How many of you remember Charlton Heston? All right, "Let my people go." There were ten plagues, and finally, they came out of Egypt and crossed over the Red Sea on dry ground. Then they were in the wilderness for 40 years. God provided food from heaven and water out of rocks for 40 years.

At the end of those 40 years, they were just getting ready to enter the promised land. Moses stood up and said, "Listen, I have one final sermon," which is the book of Deuteronomy. You think I'm long-winded? There are more than 30 chapters in this final sermon, the second giving of the law.

In Deuteronomy chapter 28, Moses tells the children of Israel, "Listen, Israel, if you will obey and heed the word of God and keep His commandments, then here are all the blessings that are going to come." For 14 verses, he describes how they will be blessed in the field and blessed in the city. They will have blessings upon their crops and blessings upon their children. If they obey, then these blessings will come.

However, in verse 15 of Deuteronomy chapter 28, we read, "But it shall come to pass if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all of His commandments and His statutes, which I command you this day, then all of these curses will come upon and overtake you." If they do not obey, then here are the curses, which are almost the exact opposite of the blessings. He says, "Cursed will you be in the field, and cursed will you be in the city, and cursed will your children be." All these things will come if they do not keep His commandments.

That is a predictive if-then prophecy. He is saying, "Listen, if you do this, then this is going to be the outcome." He is predicting what the outcome will be because God knows how these things work; after all, He created everything.

If I said to my kids, "If you eat all your dinner, then I have a great dessert for you," I would be prophesying what is going to come if they do this. If they don't, there will be no dessert. I'm one of those kinds of dads: "To bed with you," right? This illustrates a cause-and-effect predictive prophecy.

This concept becomes really important when we get into the book of Revelation, chapters 2 and 3. As we will see, when Jesus writes to these churches, some are doing good things while others are doing bad things. No church is doing everything perfectly, and no church is doing everything poorly. They are all commended for certain things, and some are told, "Hey, this is bad." At the end of each of these letters, Jesus says, "Listen, here's what you need to do. If you do this, then this is what you're going to get. But if you don't do this, then this is what you're going to get."

He is presenting a prophetic if-then scenario. If you repent, then I will give you everlasting life. If you don't, then I will come and remove my lampstand from you. You might wonder, "What in the world is a lampstand?" We'll get to that. These cause-and-effect predictive prophecies are significant, and this is one of the major applications we will explore as we go through these letters because they have relevance for us today.

How many of you believe that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever? Jesus said, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the one who was and is and is to come." We read that just a few minutes ago. What that tells us is that He is the same today, the same tomorrow, and He does not change. If God dealt with His church 2,000 years ago by saying, "If you do this, this is what is going to happen. If you don't do this, this is what is going to happen," how many of you think He might still do that? There is application for us and lessons we can learn.

The other kind of predictive prophecy is apocalyptic predictive prophecy. This is simply God revealing something that is going to happen in the future, which has nothing to do with our actions or inactions. It is just a declaration: "Hey, I'm going to do this."

What might that look like? In Isaiah 7:14, God says to Ahaz, the king of Judah at that time, "Listen, I'm going to give you a sign. A virgin shall bear a child. She will have a son, and he will be Emmanuel, God with us." A couple of chapters later, He says, "The government shall be upon his shoulders, and he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." This is a promise of giving His Son to us, and it has nothing to do with our actions.

Inaction. Whether you believe it or not, I'm going to do this, and He did it 700 years later when Jesus came. That's kind of that apocalyptic predictive prophecy where He is revealing to us something that He is going to do in the world. The book of Revelation presents, I believe, some things that God is going to do in the world in the future. Nothing we do can hasten it or make it come here more quickly, and nothing we do can stop it. He will accomplish His word. He will do it.

Jesus said to His disciples, "I will come again." Did He say to them, "If you keep My commandments, I'll come again?" No, He just said, "I will come again." Will He come again? Yes. Is there anything that I can do to make Him come more quickly? No. How do I know that? Because at the end of the book of Revelation, the Spirit and the bride say, "Come, even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly." That was written 2,000 years ago, and He hasn't come yet, even though the church is begging Him to come. Some of you have been in a place in your life before where you're saying, "Would you just come now? Just take me out of here." And He didn't come, did He? Why? He's saying, "It's not up to you. It's up to My Father in heaven."

Jesus' earliest disciples, just before He ascended into heaven, asked, "Will you do it now?" He replied, "No. It's not for you to know that. I will do it when I'm ready to do it." But you, and then He has a message for us: "You do this."

Now, hopefully you're with me. Hopefully I haven't totally freaked you out. Didactic and predictive, and cause and effect predictive, and apocalyptic predictive—because now I'm going to confuse you if I already haven't. There are four lenses through which we interpret prophecy. Your outline, point number three. I gave you the first one because I didn't want to spell it for you: Preterist. The second one is the historicist or the historic. The third one is the idealist. And the fourth one is the futurist.

The preterist lens, the historicist, the idealist, and the futurist. I know some of you are experiencing total overload. You might be thinking, "I didn't come to church for this."

Tonight, it's like a prophecy 101. You could write that on your outline if you wanted to. The word "preterist" comes from the Latin word "praeter," which means "past." The preterist view on prophecy is that every prophecy of the Bible, even those included in the Book of Revelation, is fulfilled and completed as of the year 70 AD. That's a long time ago. All of the prophecy of the Bible is complete as of the year 70 AD, when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. That's the preterist view.

The historicist view, or the historic view, is that the prophecies of the Bible, especially the prophecies of the Book of Revelation, are fulfilled throughout church history from the time that they were written. Most Bible scholars believe that the Book of Revelation was written around 90 AD. The historic view holds that all of the prophecies of Revelation and everything that hadn't been fulfilled after Jesus' first coming are fulfilled in the church throughout church history. So, it's being fulfilled right now. Those who hold that view normally look at the seven letters to the seven churches and say that they correspond to seven epochs of Christian history. You may have read that before, but we're not getting into that tonight. That's not where our study is going.

So, for the preterist, it's all done; it was completed as of 70 AD. For the historicist, it's been happening and is still happening throughout church history. The third view is the idealist view. The idealist view posits that these prophecies do not have any specific fulfillment; they simply speak of the great battle between good and evil in every age. There is some sort of battle between good and evil, and it is depicted for us in the Book of Revelation.

The fourth view is the futurist view, which holds that there are still prophecies in the Book of Revelation and the Bible that have yet to be fulfilled. I would venture to guess that most people at a church like ours, Cross-Connection, connected to the Calvary Chapel movement of churches, probably hold to a futurist view on Bible prophecy. Many of you here likely believe that there are things that are still yet to come to pass in the prophetic calendar. And that's perfectly fine. I do believe that there are things that God is still intending.

To do that, He has not yet done. It is yet to be fulfilled, but there's always a caution. There's always a "but," right? We need to hold that view if that's the view that you hold. Or maybe you're here tonight and you say, "No, I kind of hold to an idealist view." Okay. Someone might say, "Well, I hold to a historic view or a preterist view." Okay. But predominantly, you probably hold to a futurist view.

Whatever view you hold, my encouragement, my exhortation, is that we hold that view, number one, carefully. We hold that view carefully. Most of what we see today that is put forward as eschatology—another big word, a five-dollar theological term—eschatology is just the study of the last things. "Eschatos" in Greek means the last things. So, eschatology, the study of things in the last days, most of what is put forward as the study of things in the last days today is overly speculative.

There is a caution for us to lean towards a futurist view of Bible prophecy and to recognize that we have to be careful in what we do, that we do not fall into a purely speculative theology when interpreting the last days. Speculation is not one of the three aspects of inductive Bible study. There are not observation, interpretation, and speculation. There are observation, interpretation, and, does anybody know the last one? Application.

Speculation is not part of the inductive method of taking the Bible, reading it, and trying to determine what it is that God is saying or doing in this passage. That is what we do at a church like ours. We open the Scriptures and go verse by verse, line by line, asking God what He was speaking then, what He is speaking now, and how He wants us to apply it.

So, not only do we need to hold that futurist position on Bible prophecy carefully, but we also need to hold that position humbly. Humbly. You'll notice at the top of the sermon guide that I gave you, right under Revelation 2, I made up a word. Some of you are probably looking at that and thinking, "That's not a word." You're right; I made it up. It's in the Miles de Benedictus lexicon: humblodoxy. Say it with me: humblodoxy. What does it mean? Humble orthodoxy.

We want to hold a humble orthodoxy in our interpretation of Scriptures. Therefore, we need to approach these matters carefully and humbly. This is point number four on your outline. We must hold our positions on prophecy with both care and humility.

How do we do that? We hold these things humbly by recognizing that those who hold a preterist, historic, or idealist position on Bible prophecy are still our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. Can I get an amen? Those who believe in a preterist position, asserting that all the prophecy of the Bible was fulfilled as of 70 AD, are still lovers of Jesus. They are still Christians; they are still our brothers and sisters.

One of the tendencies we have when we hold a position steadfastly is to become very passionate about it. We may start to view anyone who disagrees with us as a heretic. Historically, five or seven hundred years ago, heretics were burned at the stake. Thankfully, we cannot do that anymore; we live in a civilized time. However, there is a part of us that may react negatively. You have probably experienced this before, and I know I have.

You start interacting with another Christian, discussing something about the Bible, and when you reach the topic of eschatology or end times, you suddenly realize that this person holds a different view than you. You might think, "Oh, I don't know if I can spend any time with that person because they hold a different view than I do." This reaction can lead to an unwarranted dislike.

We need to hold our views humbly and recognize that those who hold differing positions are not ignorant. They are not foolish. One of my pet peeves is when someone says, "Well, my Bible says," as if to imply that the other person does not have the right version. I often want to say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. I'm pretty sure we're reading from the same text. We might just be looking at it from a different angle with a different lens."

This is why I refer to these as the four lenses of Bible prophecy. How many of you have ever accidentally picked up someone else's glasses and put them on? You might have thought, "Whoa, how can you even see?" It can be quite a revelation!

You go, man, I don't know how you see. I don't know how you get around. And you know what? That's the same thing when you meet someone who looks through Bible prophecy through a different lens. You think, I don't know how you came to that. I don't get how you came to that. But the wrong thing to do is to arrogantly say, "Well, you're just stupid and wrong."

We need to hold our position humbly, recognizing that each of these views actually has important things from which we can learn from those who hold a different view. That's what I'm going to point to in just a moment—what we can learn from these different views. Not only do we need to hold our position on Bible prophecy carefully and humbly, but we also need to hold our position on Bible prophecy lightly.

Now, for some of you, you're thinking, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a big deal." Why should we hold our position on eschatology lightly? First, issues of eschatology are non-essential doctrines. What does that mean? It means that you're not going to go to heaven or not go to heaven based on what you think about the Antichrist or what you believe about the rapture. It will not keep you out of heaven. It is a non-essential doctrine. It's tertiary or secondary. Tertiary would be one step away from secondary, further in the other direction.

So, it's non-essential. It's not primary. We need to make sure that when we look at these things that are not essential, we don't beat people over the head with the Bible and say, "You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're stupid." Even though that's a temptation, I know because I've had that temptation before too. You want to take someone and strangle them with these little ribbons, but they don't work very well for that.

Secondly, we need to hold our position lightly because, and I'm convinced of this, there are a lot of things that you and I are certain about in the Bible that are going to make us blush in eternity. The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, says, "For now we know in part." If you go back and read, and some of you remember this book, in the late 70s, a book came out called The Late Great Planet Earth. How many of you guys read that? A number of you read that. If you go back today and read it, you're going to laugh through about three-quarters of it because it talks about things that don't even exist today as if...

Those are fulfilling Bible prophecy. Now we just look back and think, "Well, that wasn't it." Hal Lindsey is not an idiot, but he was convinced that these things were the way they were going to be. And you know what? They weren't.

How many of you were around the church and remember when the church was all freaking out because there were 88 reasons why Jesus was going to come back in 1988? Don was there. I have a good friend who was telling me the story. He said, "I remember sitting in the sanctuary on December 31st, 1980, at Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa. Pastor Chuck Smith stood up at the pulpit as they were nearing midnight. He said from the pulpit, 'Calvary, Costa Mesa, 1980, December 31st, I am certain that the rapture will happen in 1981.' Why? Because it was seven years before 1988, and 1988 was 40 years from 1948 when Israel became a nation. 'This generation will not pass away until all these things be fulfilled.' So the rapture has to happen in 1981."

My good friend, Justin Alford, spoke at our couples retreat a few years ago. He said, "I was there, and I remember thinking, if this doesn't come true, this guy's ministry is sunk." Amazingly, I don't know how, but by God's grace, Chuck Smith weathered that, and it was okay. He didn't become the first Harold Camping.

We look back at that and laugh. Some of you may remember when the European Union became 10 nations, and the church started freaking out because of the 10 kingdoms in Revelation, thinking this was the fulfillment of all of it. Then it became 11 nations, then 12 nations, and now there are 22 nations. Everyone went, "Well, that wasn't it."

There are a lot of things that we are convinced about, confident about in Bible prophecy, that will make us blush in eternity. We need to hold this carefully and lightly.

The third reason why we should hold this lightly is that, as I mentioned, there is value in the other views: the preterist, the idealist, and the historic view. Yes, I do believe that there are things in the New Testament, specifically in the Book of Revelation, and things written in Isaiah and Ezekiel that have not yet come to pass. I believe that there are prophecies in the Bible that are still yet to be fulfilled.

I would be considered by many a futurist when it comes to Bible prophecy. However, I hold a humble orthodoxy on this, a humble eschatology, because I believe that...

There are important and good things that we can learn from our brothers and sisters who hold different positions. How many of you have been to the optometrist before? They have that big silver thing that you look through. It's a pretty gnarly-looking device. You look through it, and you can see the letters on the wall. They drop a lens, and you say, "Nope, that's not it." They continue adjusting it, and all of a sudden, it becomes clear.

When you look at a passage of the Bible, especially prophecy, how many of you have experienced the feeling of not understanding it? Sometimes we struggle to comprehend because we are trying to see something in the future within that passage. In reality, we need to ask ourselves if there is something that happened in the past that we should recognize. Is there something from which I can make an application? We need to drop the other lenses in place to see if there is something we can learn from this passage.

I teach the book of Isaiah at the Bible college, and I have been instructing my students that they will never understand the book of Isaiah if they do not thoroughly study the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles and 1 and 2 Kings. The book of Isaiah existed in a specific time in history and spoke about events that primarily occurred during that period. Therefore, it is essential to study and look through the historic lens. For example, is there something significant happening with the nation of Assyria in the 8th century BC that relates to Isaiah chapter 37? Yes, there is.

Each of these views has value. If we overemphasize one perspective to the exclusion of others, we become imbalanced in our theology and eschatology. This imbalance can lead us into the realm of speculation. Don't get me wrong; when you're examining Bible prophecy from a future context, there is a lot of educated guessing and speculation involved. However, if we lean too heavily in that direction, we risk entering a dangerous area.

If the bulk of our views about what will happen in the future regarding God and His second coming come from a series of fictional novels that emerged in the late 90s, we have a problem. If we derive our eschatology from YouTube videos or tabloid magazines, we face a significant issue. I know you've seen those magazines standing in Vons or Major Market, and there's that thing that says...

Seven Bible prophecies the government does not want you to know. You pick it up and think, really? I did not know that. That asteroid is not in the Bible. We need to make sure that the Bible directs our theology on the second coming of Jesus Christ. We must stand firmly on that and not on what some guy recorded on his eyesight camera in the basement of his mom and put on YouTube for ten million people to watch. We have to be careful about these harbingers, shmitas, and blood moons. They may be interesting and may have something to say to us, but we must be very careful in how we interpret these things. When the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.

Briefly, before we close, one of the great things we can learn from the seven letters in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, when viewed through the historic lens, is that there has never been a golden era in the church. There has never been a golden age in the church. Many Christians living in 2014 wish we lived in the first century because everything seemed awesome. However, when you read about the early church and the churches of the book of Revelation, you realize everything was not awesome. There was sexual immorality, false teachers, and false prophets. There was persecution. There were people who were very religious yet had no love.

There is no such thing as a golden era of the church, and there is no such thing as a perfect church. If you came to Cross Connection thinking that this was a perfect church, I will likely upset you at some point, and you will realize it is not. I probably did it tonight when I stepped on your eschatology. If we look at these seven letters through what is termed the preterist view, we can learn that there was tribulation, suffering, and persecution.

That came against God's church, and God's church survived. God's church survived Nero. God's church survived Domitian, the emperor of Rome. It survived Hadrian, the emperor of Rome. Each of these leaders fought against the church and tried to destroy it, yet the church survived. For 1,900 years, the church has endured persecution. It has survived false teaching and all kinds of different challenges that have come against it. It will survive secular humanism and all the things happening in our day, including the neo-atheistic movement.

Why? Because Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against my church. If we look at this through the preterist view, we realize that the church survives. If we examine this passage through the idealist view, we recognize that there is hope. There is hope because ultimately good will prevail.

If you talk to a hundred different Christians from a hundred different churches, you will likely find a hundred different views on the Book of Revelation. However, one thing we can certainly agree on is that in the end, Jesus wins. In the end, Jesus wins. That is why the entire church is saying, "Lord Jesus, come," because He wins.

If we look at these passages through the futurist view on Bible prophecy, we realize that Jesus is going to come again. Our hope is increased because He will come again. Each of these views has important applications. They show us that the church will survive, that the church has never been perfect, and that ultimately Jesus wins. Good overcomes evil, and death and hell are cast into the lake that burns with fire. They also show us that Jesus is coming again.

I know there are many people who, when they come to the Book of Revelation, feel fearful. However, I find a lot of hope in the Book of Revelation because the church will survive. I find hope because the church isn't perfect, but Jesus still loves it. I find hope because in the end, He wins.

And one day, He is coming again. Over the next seven weeks, I added a week after I studied this week. We are going to look at how these things speak to us because I think the church, in light of all the things that are happening in the world and in light of all the things that people are saying about these events, needs hope.

But the church also may need to change. It needs to be challenged and repent. We will examine these letters and see what happens when Jesus examines His church, when He steps in and takes a look at my life, your life, and our church. It's a heavy message. I hope that you will make sure to come each week and invite a friend. Tell them, "Hey, you have to come hear this because Jesus wants to say something to His church."

You can even tell a non-believing friend who doesn't like the church, "Come check this out because we're going to talk about the things that Jesus doesn't like about the church." They might be intrigued because they don't like the church either. It's a good way to engage them.

Let's stand. We are going to close in prayer.

God, I thank You for Your Word. Your Word is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It is useful in our lives for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, so that we, who are Your people and believe in You, would be ready for every good work.

So God, ready us for the good works that You have called us to and created us for. Help us to live our lives in such a way that on the last day, when we stand before You, we will hear You say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into Your rest."

We praise You, Jesus. We worship You. Amen.