Cross Examined 1 | "Humblodoxy"

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. And 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. And 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. And 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. — Revelation 1:12–20

What would it be like to receive a letter from Jesus—and how should we read the prophecy that contains them?

A Letter From Jesus

I still remember the first love letter I ever received. I was about six years old, a first grader at Juniper Elementary School here in Escondido, and a secret admirer sent me a note. Even as a six-year-old, there was something exciting about being told sweet things—who doesn't like to hear that you're cute? The excitement grew with the second letter and the third, then was suddenly dashed upon the rocks when I discovered it was my older sister and her friends playing a trick. True story.

We like handwritten letters. In our day most of our correspondence is electronic, sent not even with a keyboard but with our thumbs, full of strange lingo like "LOL." When you check the mail, you find mostly ads and bills. But every now and then you see your name and address handwritten, and there's a certain anticipation. So I wonder—what would it be like to get a letter from Jesus? What might He write to you, or to our church?

We don't have to imagine it. Nearly 2,000 years ago Jesus sent seven letters to seven churches, and they have application to His global church today. Yes, astute Bible students know these were written to seven actual churches in what is now southwestern Turkey, likely along a Roman postal route. So how do they apply to us? Each of these short letters ends with the very same words: "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (Revelation 2:7).

Though dictated by Jesus through John to specific congregations in Asia Minor, these letters were written so we might know what the Spirit of God says to the churches as a whole. That is why we'll take the next seven weeks to consider them. I believe God wants to speak to us—individually, where you work and go to school and live here in North County, and as a church body.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ

Some of you are excited because you know Revelation is about the last days and the second coming of Jesus. To a certain extent that's true. I've had quite a number of people come to me over the last several weeks with anticipation, like Christmas is coming. But I want to be honest, so I don't disappoint anyone: we're only dipping our toe in. We're taking seven weeks to look at the seven churches of Revelation 2 and 3, on an application level—God, what do You want to speak to us?

It is crucial to remember that the book of Revelation is not the revelation of the tribulation, the Antichrist, or the mark of the beast. Look at the first five words of Revelation 1:1: it is "the revelation of Jesus Christ." We're going to study this section for what the Spirit of Jesus Christ would say to us and how He might reveal Himself.

But isn't this the apocalypse? Some Bibles even title it that way, and the word instantly sends our minds to Armageddon and Bruce Willis on an asteroid. Most modern dictionaries define it as "the final destruction of the world." But the Greek word apocalypsis means the revealing or the manifestation. It's like a present under the Christmas tree with your name on it. You pick it up, shake it, feel the weight, and you have a hunch—but you don't know until the unveiling. Then it comes on the scene and you say, "Oh, that's what it is." There's excitement in that.

Now a caveat: the ultimate revealing of Jesus is when He is unveiled in all His power and glory at the second coming, and Revelation does predictively and poetically point to that. Remember the Mount of Olives in Acts 1, when the disciples stood gazing into heaven and the angels said, "Why do you stand looking up? This same Jesus will return in like manner." That is exciting. But if we read Revelation and all we see are nuclear bombs, cobra attack helicopters, the mark of the beast, and the Antichrist, then we've missed the point. The point is Jesus.

Revelation is one of the most well-read and most misunderstood books of the Bible. Search Amazon and you'll find thousands of commentaries ranging from "this all happened with Nero in the first century" to "there are cobra attack helicopters in Revelation 16." So our focus over these weeks is uncovering what God wants to reveal of Jesus, that we might see Him more clearly and comprehend His desire for His church more fully.

Two Kinds of Prophecy

When you step into a prophetic, apocalyptic book, you have to lay ground rules for interpretation. Some people who count these things say more than a third of the Bible is predictive prophecy—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Micah. In the New Testament, the book of Revelation is the one primarily apocalyptic work. Bear with me, because I'm going to put on my Bible college teacher hat and use some big words. If we don't establish these ground rules at the start, we get off into the weeds.

There are basically two kinds of prophecy: didactic and predictive. Didactic comes from the Greek didaktikos, meaning "able to teach"—the same word Paul uses when he says elders must be able to teach. Didactic prophecy reveals something of God's nature that we wouldn't otherwise know without Him speaking it.

There's plenty we can know about God without direct revelation. Psalm 19 says the heavens declare the glory of God; the earth shows His handiwork. But theologians call that general revelation, and it's limited. One person looks at the world's beauty and says God is good and loving; another sees a typhoon or tsunami and says God is angry and vengeful. To truly know God's character, He has to speak. He has revealed Himself through individuals once called seers, now called prophets—men like Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Didactic prophecy reveals the nature, character, and will of God, often with a moral application.

Predictive Prophecy: If-Then and Apocalyptic

Predictive prophecy is what most people think of, but there are two kinds. The first is cause-and-effect predictive prophecy, perfectly illustrated in Deuteronomy 28. Just before Israel entered the promised land, Moses gave one final sermon—the whole book of Deuteronomy. For fourteen verses he says, if you obey the voice of the Lord, you'll be blessed in the city, blessed in the field, blessed in your crops and children. Then verse 15: "But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God... then all of these curses will come upon you." That's an if-then prophecy—God predicting the outcome because He knows how things work; He created everything. It's like telling my kids, "If you eat all your dinner, I have a great dessert for you. If you don't, off to bed."

This becomes important in Revelation 2 and 3, because Jesus tells these churches: if you do this, here's what you'll receive; if you don't, here's what you'll get. "If you repent, I will give you everlasting life. If you don't, I'll come and remove your lampstand." We'll get to what a lampstand is. And since Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever—"the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the one who was and is and is to come"—if He dealt with His church this way 2,000 years ago, He may still deal with us that way. There's application for us.

The other kind is apocalyptic predictive prophecy—God simply revealing something He will do, regardless of our action or inaction. In Isaiah 7:14 God tells Ahaz, "A virgin shall bear a child," and a couple chapters later, "the government shall be upon His shoulders... Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." That had nothing to do with anyone's action, and He did it 700 years later when Jesus came. Revelation presents things God will do in the future. Nothing we do can hasten or stop them. Jesus didn't say, "If you keep My commandments, I'll come again." He just said, "I will come again." At the end of Revelation the Spirit and the bride say, "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly"—written 2,000 years ago, and He hasn't come yet. His earliest disciples asked, "Will You do it now?" and He said, "It's not for you to know that." But He has a message for us: you do this.

The Four Lenses

There are four lenses through which we interpret prophecy: preterist, historicist (or historic), idealist, and futurist. I know some of you feel like this is overload—it's prophecy 101.

The word preterist comes from the Latin praeter, meaning "past." The preterist view holds that every prophecy of the Bible, even those in Revelation, was fulfilled and completed by AD 70, when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

The historicist view holds that the prophecies—especially in Revelation, which most scholars believe was written around AD 90—are being fulfilled throughout church history. Those who hold this view often read the seven letters as seven epochs of Christian history. That's not where our study is going.

The idealist view holds that these prophecies have no specific fulfillment but picture the great battle between good and evil in every age. And the futurist view holds that there are prophecies in Revelation and the Bible that still have a yet-future fulfillment.

I'd venture that most people at a church like ours, connected to the Calvary Chapel movement, hold a futurist view—that there are things still to come on the prophetic calendar. That's perfectly fine. I believe God still intends to do things He has not yet done.

Carefully, Humbly, and Lightly

Whatever view you hold, my exhortation is to hold it carefully. Most of what is put forward today as eschatology—another $5 term, from the Greek eschatos, the study of the last things—is overly speculative. And speculation is not part of inductive Bible study. There's observation, interpretation, and application—not speculation. At a church like ours we open the Scriptures verse by verse and ask, what was God saying then, what is He saying now, and how does He want us to apply it?

Second, we hold our position humbly. At the top of your sermon guide I made up a word: humblodoxy. It's not in any dictionary; it's in the Miles DeBenedictis lexicon. It means a humble orthodoxy. We hold these things humbly by recognizing that those who hold a preterist, historic, or idealist view are still our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. They're not stupid; they're not heretics. Five hundred years ago we'd have burned them at the stake—we can't do that anymore.

One of my pet peeves is when someone says, "Well, my Bible says..." as if you have the wrong version. We're reading the same thing; we're just looking through a different lens. Have you ever accidentally put on someone else's glasses? You think, "How can you even see?" That's what it's like when you meet someone who reads prophecy through a different lens. The arrogant response is, "You're just stupid and wrong." The right response is to recognize each view has something important from which we can learn.

Holding Prophecy Lightly

Third, we hold our position lightly. Why? First, issues of eschatology are non-essential doctrines. You won't go to heaven or miss it based on what you think about the Antichrist or the rapture. It's not primary, so don't beat people over the head with the Bible.

Second, there are a lot of things we're certain about that will make us blush in eternity. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, "For now we know in part." Go back and read The Late Great Planet Earth from the late '70s and you'll laugh through three-quarters of it—it described things that don't even exist anymore as fulfilling prophecy. Hal Lindsey isn't an idiot, but he was convinced, and he was wrong.

Remember when the church freaked out over 88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1988? My friend Justin Alford was there at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa on December 31, 1980, when Pastor Chuck Smith stood at the pulpit near midnight and said he was certain the rapture would happen in 1981—seven years before 1988, which was 40 years from 1948 when Israel became a nation, and "this generation will not pass away." Justin remembers thinking, "If this doesn't come true, this guy's ministry is sunk." By God's grace, Chuck Smith weathered it. Remember when the European Union became 10 nations and the church was certain it was the ten kingdoms of Revelation? Then it became 11, 12, now 22 nations—and everyone said, "Well, that wasn't it." We are confident about many things in prophecy that will make us blush.

Third, there is genuine value in the other views. I believe there are prophecies in Revelation, Isaiah, and Ezekiel still to be fulfilled, so I'd be considered a futurist. But I hold a humble eschatology because the other lenses teach me things. At the optometrist they drop one lens—"nope"—then another, until suddenly the letters become clear. When you look at a passage of prophecy and don't understand it, sometimes you need to ask: is there something that happened in the past here? Is there an application I should make? I teach Isaiah at the Bible college, and I tell my students you'll never understand Isaiah without studying 1–2 Chronicles and 1–2 Kings, because Isaiah spoke into a specific historical moment—you have to read it through the historic lens.

If we overemphasize one lens to the exclusion of the others, we become imbalanced in our theology and slide into speculation and danger. If the bulk of our views about the future come from a series of fictional novels from the late '90s, we've got a problem. If we get our eschatology from YouTube videos or the tabloids in the grocery checkout line—"Seven Bible prophecies the government doesn't want you to know"—we've got a big problem. The Bible must direct our theology of the second coming, not what some guy recorded in his mom's basement. We have to be careful with harbingers, shmitas, and blood moons. They may be interesting, but when the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.

What Each Lens Teaches Us

Before we close, consider what the seven letters teach when viewed through each lens. Through the historic lens, we learn there has never been a golden era in the church. Many Christians today wish they'd lived in the first century when "everything was awesome." But read the early church and the churches of Revelation, and you find sexual immorality, false teachers and prophets, persecution, and people who were religious yet had no love. There is no perfect church. If you came to Cross Connection thinking this was a perfect church, I'll tick you off at some point—I probably did tonight when I stepped on your eschatology.

Through the preterist lens, we learn the church survived tribulation and persecution. God's church survived Nero, Domitian, and Hadrian. For 1,900 years it has survived persecution and false teaching, and it will survive secular humanism and the neo-atheistic movement, because Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against His church.

Through the idealist lens, we find hope, because ultimately good will prevail. Talk to a hundred Christians from a hundred churches and you'll find a hundred views of Revelation, but the one thing we can all agree on is that in the end, Jesus wins. That's why the whole church cries, "Lord Jesus, come."

And through the futurist lens, our hope is increased, because Jesus is coming again. Each view offers important application: the church will survive, the church has never been perfect, Jesus ultimately wins as death and hell are cast into the lake of fire, and Jesus is coming again.

Hope and a Call to Change

Many people come to Revelation fearful, but I find in it a great deal of hope—because the church will survive, because the church isn't perfect yet Jesus still loves it, because in the end He wins, and because one day He's coming again. Over the next seven weeks we'll look at how these letters speak to us, because in light of all that's happening in the world, the church needs hope. But the church may also need to change, to be challenged, and to repent.

So we'll look at 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. Come each week, and invite a friend—even a non-believing friend who doesn't like the church. Tell them, "Come, because we're going to talk about the things Jesus doesn't like about the church." They'll say, "I want to hear that." A little bait on the hook. Jesus wants to say something to His church.

Closing Prayer

God, I thank You for Your word. Your word is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, and it is useful in our lives for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 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've called us to and created us for. Help us to live 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.