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GALACTIC NEWS FROM THREE ANGELS #1
DIDN’T THE WORLD END IN 1994?
Today I’d like to invite you to join me for a wonderful
. . . scary . . . hope-filled . . . challenging . . . Scripture-based
. . . and mysterious adventure. It’s a radio journey that goes right into
the heart of one of the Bible’s most challenging books — Revelation. But
not only that, we’re going to leap, by faith, right into the very middle
of the book, one of the most intriguing passages in the Word of God.
Now I have to tell you something right up front. Ironically — and it’s
been pointed out to me on many occasions — this radio ministry is The
Voice of PROPHECY. For more than seven decades, the concept of Bible prophecy,
the study and preaching of Bible prophecy, has been right in our name.
It’s been a hallmark of our organization: not just in our over-the-air
broadcasting, but in our Bible study lessons, in the meetings that I’ve
held, and those who went before me. I remember how when I was just a boy
myself, Pastor H. M. S. Richards, Senior, and the King’s Heralds would
circle the globe with their great prophecy meetings. Those were thrilling
adventures, and here in a new millennium, those key Bible truths about
end-time events are more timely than ever.
However — and again, critics have pointed this out — we’re sometimes a
bit cautious about digging deep into the very heart of Revelation’s prophecies
— on the radio, at least. And really, for a couple of reasons.
One of them should be obvious. Here we are on your favorite radio station,
Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday, for these 13-minute time slots.
And these grand prophetic themes in Daniel and Revelation simply don’t
slice up very easily into such brief chunks of study time. A preacher
in a pulpit would want a whole 45-minute sermon slot to even get started,
and he might invite his Christian friends and fellow seekers to join him,
four or five nights a week, for a good number of consecutive weeks, in
order to really go though this last book of the Bible in an organized
fashion. In my own Adventist church family, there actually is a study
experience you can sign up and attend — doesn’t matter what your own denominational
affiliation is — called a “Revelation seminar.” Where you go right to
the book of Revelation and just march right through it with a seminar
leader in exactly that fashion. Some of you listening today might have
been to a thing like that . . . or your own church might have something
quite similar. That would certainly be the optimum way of doing it.
Here on the radio, of course, we don’t have that luxury. In about ten
minutes from now, someone else will be on the air . . . or maybe a radio
commercial for Pepsi-Cola or Amazon.com. And if a few days from now, you
and I are exploring some of the heavy truths, the deep-and-dark concepts
in the very heart of Revelation, and someone wanders into the fray for
the very first time, and goes: “Wow! What in the world is THIS?” . . .
well, we simply have to ask the Lord to protect that person, and to give
us wisdom in opening up the Word to those virgin ears.
In any case, that’s why we’ve sometimes decided in our broadcasting to
give greater emphasis to other great Christian themes — and allow the
more diligent student to either attend a seminar like that in their own
community, or join a small group fellowship, or even get more involved
in prophetic study with one of our Bible courses where time constraints
and schedules aren’t such a factor, and where you’re not as likely to
wander into Chapter Fourteen on the very first day and get blown away
by beasts and dragons and bottomless pits, so to speak. You understand
what I’m saying.
I want to tell you a second reason why we do proceed with boldness, but
with very cautious boldness. Here it is. The book of Revelation is filled
with Christian truth, and with Christ as the focus . . . but it’s also
replete with mystery. Names and numbers and the aforementioned beasts
and images. And you know, friend, it’s so possible to put things together
in a way that seems right to you and start constructing your charts and
time lines. A hundred years ago our spiritual ancestors probably used
a banner in a big tent; today our brightest evangelists are probably highlighting
the same concepts with Microsoft PowerPoint slides or CD-ROM visuals.
And here on the radio we have to be very careful not to hit you with a
bunch of verses and say: “A leads to B, B leads to C, and here are the
dates and here’s what it all means, and we’re right, and that’s the end
of it. Start packing your Samsonite suitcases for the great tribulation.”
In other words, we have to be humble. Very humble. Super-humble. Especially
on the radio, where people are joining us from all spiritual walks, from
all churches and from no church at all.
I have right here on our studio desk in front of me, this very minute,
a book written by a Christian in my own church. Here’s the title of it:
WARNING! Revelation Is About to Be Fulfilled. Well, that’s a good title.
I believe that to be a true statement. But this particular writer, and
this was a layman’s publication, not an officially “blessed” or endorsed
book, looks at the themes of Revelation — the beasts and the metaphors
and the empires of history — and then says, right at the end: “A big year
is coming.” (This was published in 1991, by the way.) “Yes, a significant
year is coming. The great global earthquake of Revelation 8 is coming,
and I think something very momentous is coming up . . . in the year .
. . 1994.”
Well, friend, 1994 came and went rather quietly, and we’re a good ways
down the road from there. Unless you count the Northridge quake as a global,
Armageddon-type event, I don’t have to spell out the moral to the story,
do I? If we study Revelation, especially in 13-minute chunks on the radio,
then a big dose of Holy Spirit-sent humility and brotherhood and hand-in-hand
team study . . . that’s the only attitude we can take.
Will you join me in that? We’re going to spend several days here just
studying seven verses. Not from the easy part, if there is any such thing
in Revelation. But from the very core of the book — chapter 14. People
in my own Adventist church family love to explore these particular verses
and ponder what they mean, and maybe you’ve been through them as well.
I’d love to hear from you this week, and discover what the Lord has impressed
your mind to consider in your own study. But step by step, in these brief
one-day-at-a-time journeys together, I’d like to join you in seeing what
Jesus might have for us here in what we call “The Three Angels’ Messages.”
Well, for this Monday, we’re down from 13 minutes to about three. First
thing tomorrow, I’d like to share with you the very bold idea that YOU
. . . might well be an angel. What do you think about that? But for right
now, let’s just read the very first verse of this intriguing Bible puzzle.
Here’s Revelation 14:6:
“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven,
having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth,
and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.”
Just that one verse, friend, is so rich in wonderful
meaning that we could explore it — 13 minutes at a time — for a few months.
But let’s make some observations right here. First of all, this is an
end-time message. This is a message for the last days in human history.
Earlier in Revelation, and in the somewhat parallel prophecy book of Daniel,
the Bible takes us on a prophetic journey outlining four great world empires:
Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. And then extending down beyond
the rule of Rome, beyond the tumult of the Middle Ages, and into the final
generations of earth’s history, these proclamations in Revelation come
into view.
And here in verse six, an angel flying in the midst of heaven is proclaiming
“the everlasting gospel.” In a very exhaustive Bible commentary series
published in my own denomination — which admittedly does love to study
this passage — the writers make this crucial observation:
“There is but one gospel to save men. It will continue
as long as there are men [and women] to be saved. There never will be
another gospel.”
My friend, Pastor Henry Feyerabend, who preaches on
television up in Canada, says this in his book, Revelation Verse By Verse:
“The everlasting gospel never changes. There is only
one gospel, first announced in Eden and to the children of Israel, and
it is proclaimed anew in every generation. It meets the needs of every
crisis in the world’s history.”
So here in these “Three Angels’ Messages” is the news
about the everlasting, always true, never-changing gospel. Which is this:
JESUS SAVES. Friend, that’s the gospel. And right here in all the mystery,
two truths come cutting through the prophecy fog without any distortion,
any confusion, any possibility of misinterpretation. First of all, this
message is for the whole world: “every nation, and kindred, and tongue,
and people.” Which means, without a doubt, that you are included. This
message is shouting out, on this very Monday, to you. And the two words
God’s messenger is sending you, at full Revelation volume, are so simple:
JESUS SAVES.
That’s what this first glorious angel has to say. Right now. To you.
Have I got your attention? Good. Join us again tomorrow.
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