To The Church Of The Namby Pamby

To the Church of the Namby-Pamby

I’ve been somewhat bothered with something lately and can’t seem to get it off of my mind. A feeling that God is pushing us to get things sorted quickly because His return is VERY SOON.

Anyone else felt this? Felt the urgency of the church’s mission? Felt like there’s something that we just have to do and do NOW?

Well, that is what made me think about what we are going to talk about today.

Now I’m going to go ahead and insert my disclaimer right here at the beginning before I even get into any bible verses. I am NOT trying to add to or take away from anything that is written in Holy Scripture. In fact, I am trying to say something today that should make you want to go to the scripture and look at it yourself. To find out what each of us individually need to be doing in these days to be ready for the Lord’s soon return. And in doing so, I am going to propose what I think one of the authors of the bible would have really said if they had the knowledge and understanding of where we are in the world today.

So, as you may have already guessed, we are going to be in the book of Revelation today. The youth are about to dive into the book of Revelation and go through it in depth. And this was asked by them. It wasn’t something that we put out there for them, or something we are force feeding them. They really are interested to learn it. So, we are going to learn it.

That being said, I want to cover the first part of the book together with everyone so that we can set the stage for our ongoing study in the youth group.

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Let’s take just a minute right now to pray. And more specifically to pray that our minds would be opened. Eyes would be opened. Ears be able to hear. And hearts be soft and able to accept what the Lord is telling us in the introduction to His word on the end times.

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At the beginning of the book of Revelation we start off with John welcoming the reader, praising God and glorifying Jesus. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be??? Even in the Lord’s prayer we have this example from Christ Himself. Our Father who art in heaven, HALLOWED BE THY NAME…… There is a whole message right there, but that’s not what we are after today, so let’s move on.

Alright, when we get to chapter 2, we have John writing letters to 7 churches in Asia. They are actually all in the modern day country of Turkey. That right there is enough to hopefully perk up your ears about end times stuff. How can you talk about current news and issues in the middle east without involving Turkey? Do you think this is a coincidence??? There are no coincidences with GOD!!!

These are churches that John is familiar with. He was their founder, so he knows them, and most importantly he knew that they would accept the Revelation of Jesus Christ with open arms knowing that it came from him.

When I was talking to the youth about this part of revelation we took time to ask the question….”Why does John write all of Revelation in these weird descriptions and fantastical visions. Well, first, John writes this while he is a prisoner on the isle of Patmos. Do you think that John would have been able to walk out of a Roman prison with a bunch of writings about how Rome would be destroyed, fire would rain down, and nothing would survive the wrath of God that is coming on the earth? I’m pretty sure that would have landed the Revelation of Jesus Christ in the nearest bonfire and swiftly landed John into another attempt at killing him!

Alright, so we have to read this book with the understanding that the true meaning lies in the layers underneath, and with the discernment of the Holy Spirit (ears to hear and eyes to see), we can understand just how intentional God is with His message of hope offered in this book.

So, we have these letters to seven churches, and today I want to do part history lesson to really understand what these churches represent, and part message. More of a “how we got to where we are” and a “call to action”.

Our core scripture is going to be fairly long and I’m not going to just read it all to you, but the reference is Revelation Chapter 2:1 – 3:22. So, all of chapters 2 and 3 to make it easy. But so many people read over these because they are not the “fantastic” things that we find in the rest of Revelation. But ….. they tell us so much more that what most people understand. So, we are going to spend a few minutes to put this all in perspective.