The Last Days (Are We There Yet?) Series

Good morning. If any of you watch the History Channel, you probably recognize that trailer. It is a two-day miniseries that begins tomorrow and goes for two days. I am not one to really be into the end-time stuff, but this one seemed to catch my attention given all the weird stuff that seems to be happening in the world lately. Things like those epic storms and sand storms out west and the drought out west. Sinkholes all over the world that swallow everything up from cars to houses. Birds that have been said to fall out of the sky. Animals have washed up on shore. Just the all-around attention in the world on violence and wars. We may possibly be in the end times. We don’t know that for sure, but one thing we do know for certain is that we are at the very last sermon in this year-long series called The Story. Can I get an amen? Frankly I am tired of it. We have been going through this year-long series called The Story: God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. We actually did start the first week of January last year. It was meant to originally run 31 weeks. I went a little bit over, specifically about 20 weeks over but who is counting. We started in the book of Genesis and we are going to end in the book of Revelation because obviously Revelation is the last book of the Bible.

A little bit of background on the book of Revelation. The word Revelation just simply means unveiling. It is also where we get the word apocalypse which often is associated with chaos and catastrophe and that sort of thing. In its simplest form, it just means an uncovering or an unveiling or a disclosing. When we look at the book of Revelation we see the unveiling or the pulling back of a curtain by God and allowing us to see into his throne room and to see his agenda that is coming down the road, his judgments. Really we are able to see a new heaven and a new earth. The book of Revelation could actually be called the Revelation of Jesus because in the book of Revelation we actually see Jesus in a new light. We see the exalted Christ really more so than we see him in the gospels. It could be called the Revelation of Jesus because it is actually the revelation that has been handed down from God to Christ onto his messenger and in this case John. The first verse of the first chapter says “The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.” So the book of Revelation is actually considered written by the writer John who was also the one who is believed to have written the gospel of John and also the three books of John, I, II, and III John. The book of Revelation was believed to be written about somewhere between 90-96 A.D. At this particular time, John would have been getting up there in age. He would have been at least 80 years or more old. At this time, all the other disciples were deceased and probably martyred for their faith. John is on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. He is there as a political prisoner. He shared his faith too much and got in trouble by the emperor Nero. He was sent to this colony on the island of Patmos where he lived out the remaining days of his life. As much as I would have liked to go through the complete book of Revelation, time would not allow it today obviously. So I have to give you a really condensed version of the book of Revelation.

As the story goes, John is on this island and he receives a visit by an angel who instructs him to write some letters to some of the churches around the Mediterranean. Specifically the seven churches that were well known. These letters were a little bit complimentary but they highlighted some criticism that Jesus had of the church. Things like the fact that the churches have lost the passion for Christ. The church was probably falling back into immoral behavior within the congregation. They were still involved in some forms of idol worship. Their faith was kind of lukewarm. They were disinterested in the things of God. As a side note, as I thought about it, this stuff pertained to the first century church but obviously could pertain to most any church in America if their priorities get out of sync. He was given these letters to write to these churches. Following the writing of these letters, he actually got a peek up into heaven. He actually began to look behind a door and was able to look into the very throne room of heaven. The passage Revelation 4:1-2 goes on to say “After this, I looked and there before me was a door standing open in heaven and the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, ‘Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.’” When I thought about this passage, it kind of reminded me of the old Star Wars movie. The “Beam me up Scottie”-type imagery because really he was brought right up into the very throne room of heaven and caught a real glimpse of what it is like there. I don’t have time to go through all the passages. He said that he saw a throne with someone on it. He didn’t say what that someone looked like. But he said he saw a throne that was surrounded by a rainbow like an emerald-type rainbow. Out of the throne all these bolts of lightning were coming and sounds of thunder and the throne was surrounded by seven flaming lamps. Then he went on to say that around the throne were 24 other thrones where the elders were seated. They were dressed in white gowns with crowns on their head. That isn’t too weird but then things get kind of weird because he goes on to say that he actually saw four what he would describe as living creatures. All these creatures were surrounded with eyes all over their body front and back. He tried to describe them and he said one kind of looked like a lion. Another like an ox. One had kind of a face of a man and the other one looked like an eagle. Although we don’t know what all those things meant symbolically. We do know one thing for certain. These living creatures love to worship. We are told that they bowed down day and night and never stopped saying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” Then we go on to read that as soon as these living creatures started to bow down and worship and the elders saw the creatures doing it, then they began to worship together. They began to say “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”