Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Word. Revelation chapter 6, beginning at verse 1. And I saw when the lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts, saying, “Come and see.” And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow, and a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, “Come and see.” And there went out another horse that was red.

And power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another. And there was given unto him a great sword. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, “Come and see.” And I beheld, and lo a black horse. And he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny, and see, thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, “Come and see.” And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was death, and all followed with him.

And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth. Let us please be seated. And those that need to be cared for in the nursery may be dismissed along with the nursery workers.

We finished up last Lord’s day going through chapter 1 of Revelation. And when I return preaching four Sundays from today, we’ll take up the seven letters to the seven churches, which really was sort of what drove me to this particular series of sermons to begin with.

Let me just mention that in preparation for those sermons on the seven letters to the seven churches, it would be good for you to read through chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Revelation. Acquaint yourself with those. We’ll try to deal with them basically one week per letter. And I’ll say at the outset here, and I’ll say it again at the end of the sermon, if I forget, you’ll maybe remember that central to the message to the church at Ephesus, the first church, the one thing that they were upbraided by our savior for was that they had left, not lost, that they had left their first love.

And the love of the Lord Jesus Christ is our first and best love. It should be our primary love in life and in death. And it should be our comfort as well. And the church at Ephesus had doctrinal correctness. They tended well for the faith, but without the love of the Lord Jesus Christ they were found wanting by our savior. May it not be that we are like those saints. And if it is your particular conviction today that you somehow have wandered from the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, pray for that sermon to come in four weeks from today, that you would regain it, and that the words of the letter to the church at Ephesus would not convict you because you’ve made amendment to your life already and returned to your first love.

And it’s related to our subject for today. It’s why I bring it up. We’re going to talk about evangelism in the book of Revelation. And evangelism really flows from a motivation of love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so when I return in four weeks, it really will be picking up where this sermon on evangelism left off, because we’re talking about the primary motivation for evangelism: a love for our savior and for what he has accomplished for us.

Now, I want to talk about basically four snapshots from the book of Revelation on evangelism. And the one, the sermon or the text I just read it will be the first of those four snapshots.

But first I want to remind us a little bit of where we’re at in the book and kind of make this as clear as we can through repeated repetition. This is not supposed to be a tough book. It’s supposed to be an easy book. The subject of this book is a revealing of Jesus Christ. And so the end result of the book of Revelation shouldn’t be intellectual curiosity. It should be a love for the Lord Jesus because he’s being revealed to us.

In the last few sermons, we talked about him as our exemplar and a manifestation of who he is as he reveals himself to John on that Sabbath day. And that should drive us to a love of the savior.

So, Revelation is a book revealing Jesus Christ. Remember Jesus Christ. What does that mean? Jesus Christ. Jesus is the name given. He was going to save his people from their sins. Christ means the anointed one, the Messiah, the anointed Messiah, the prophet, priest, and king.

And so salvation and lordship are brought together in the very name of our savior. And this book reveals those things. It reveals salvation. It reveals his lordship.

The theme of the book we’ve said is perseverance in faithfulness of witness in the midst of difficulties. The church that received these was going to go through the great tribulation. At least this is what I believe leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and a complete change. It wasn’t just a little destruction of a city. Complete removal of the covenant, a renewal that resulted in a new creation. It’s the way the scriptures talk about it.

I was in the rooms of the Evans and Angers in the hospital this week after they had their children, and I thought to talk to John and Theresa about this a little bit, remembering our the births of our five children. You know, you sort of feel like you’ve gone into a different world or something when a child—at least I do—when a child is born, it is so overwhelming that you feel like you’re in a dream state almost.

And I was remembering last night our girls were trying on my wife’s wedding gown 22 years ago. And I remembered that as my bride approached me on the day of our wedding, I had that same sensation. It was like I was in a dream. I think that God does something through birth and through marriage to show us that this is a big deal. A married couple, it is almost a new creation. They’ve come together as one person now.

And when a child is born into the world, as much as medical science can explain it, it is a miracle of creation. I say that because all of that is a picture of the great transformation that came about in the world through the coming of Jesus Christ and through his ascension to the throne.

We’ve talked about this in terms of revelation relating it back to the book of Daniel. Things changed demonstrably and definitively with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The world would never be the same again. Paul would go in the book of Acts to pagan groups and he’d say, you know, in the past it was different, but now God is not overlooking any sins. He is dealing definitively with pagan nations. The devil will not be able to deceive the nations. And things are going to be changed.

And you know, you look around the world today. I thought of this last week. Yeah, we got a lot of troubles in our world. The world has waxed fat and forgotten the Lord. But look at the blessings we have compared to before the coming of our savior. Do you see cultures today sacrificing maiden virgins for the sake of their religion openly? An entire culture such as the Aztecs. No. Now, why? Because the church came and no matter how perverted or corrupted the church was at that time, it said, “No, Jesus doesn’t allow this to happen in the world. This is coming to an end.” And God took that message of the gospel and eliminated it just like he did in the Old Testament when infant sacrifices were going on. It’s different today. Yeah, we still got problems. Abortion is a real heinous sin, but things are different. We cannot miss the societal advance that has happened for the last 2,000 years with the preaching of the gospel. We’re in a new creation now.

Things were definitively changed. But they weren’t there yet. They were in the midst of difficulties. And Jesus told them, “Be faithful in witness because I reign.” He said, and we’ve talked over the last nine Sundays, the last nine sermons in this text or this chapter. We’ve talked about the fact that we are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we’re exalted servants who serve and exalt the Lord Jesus Christ by the primary means of his word. That’s what Revelation tells us—that he reveals his word to us, and that’s how we exalt Jesus Christ. And we’ve been given this high calling to rule in the context of the nations. We’re the household servants to take the message to the servants in the field so to speak. We are to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re supposed to persevere.

And Jesus says over and over in many different ways in chapter 1, he’s coming. He’s going to come and take care of the enemies of the church in AD 70. I am, I was, and I am coming in the future. And that coming in the future is to give deliverance to the church. He’s victorious. And on the basis of that, we’re supposed to persevere.

It’s not a long, slow, grinding perseverance that sees no earthly success. It’s just the reverse. The whole point of Revelation is you’re going to see manifestations in the earth of my reign, Jesus says. And we’re supposed to persevere then because of those things.

We’re repentant sinners. Remember, we looked at those central verses, the quote from Zechariah and Daniel, the world will look upon the one whom they’ve pierced and they’ll mourn. That’s a repentant mourning. Zechariah tells us that’s us. And the whole world will come to a realization. The world, I believe, is covenantally elect. God so loved not just a small portion of humanity through the ages. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son. And I believe this world will increasingly manifest the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it will praise him. It won’t happen because of political action. It won’t happen because of using guns and swords. It’ll happen because we use the sword of the spirit. We use the sword of the scriptures.

Now, that relates to our political action, putting out a voter’s guide to talk about the crown rights of Christ Jesus in relationship to those areas. But you see, it’s the preaching of the gospel of the savior that will make an increasing world increasingly manifest a world coming to repentance. They’ll look upon him whom they pierced, whom they crucified. And we were those who said crucify essentially in Adam, and God has brought us to salvation.

We’re to be literate servants. You can’t know the word of God without being literate. You got to know language. Jesus is alpha and omega.

We are to be worshiping servants. We said that the context of all of Revelation is a worship service. And worship is critical for the church. I praise God for this church, for people that see that the need to set aside a whole day, Sabbath day, the whole thing, the Lord’s day, the whole thing in a special way, like Isaiah 58 talked about from our sermon scripture, our call to worship this morning, and to understand the importance of the corporate worship of the church.

This isn’t something we do just because it’s, you know, required duty. We’re transformed through this worship. We go out different. We come in and we’re built up and God pushes the attributes of Christ into us through worship. And we go into the week as different people than we came to this worship service by.

Now, that happens little by little. It’s like putting money in the bank and the bank account is adding up and there’s interest added. The spirit moves in our lives the rest of the week. And I’m telling you, it is the long, slow progression of the correct worship of God in spirit and in truth that produces a changed people who will produce a changed world.

We’re worshiping servants. We are watching servants. We’re sent forth into the world as those almond trees, the candlestands, Old Testament, that said explicitly the candlestick has been made in the image of an almond tree. There’s no Hebrew word for almond. It means watcher. It’s a watcher tree. It sees things. So God told Jeremiah, “What do you see? I see a watcher tree.” God says, “You see, right? Because I’m watching over my word and I’m going to perform it.” We’re the watching trees. We’re not just passive watchers, though. We’re not voyeurs. We go out there and see and report back to God. We get in our prayer closets at the end of the day. We pray to God. Not literal it’s from that story I made reference to in that sermon. We pray to God and we report what needs to be done as far as we can understand it. Who needs help? Who needs strength? Who needs some curses brought down on God’s head to bring him to repentance? We’re watching trees. And we’re servants who watch and report.

We’re servants who have the exemplar of the Lord Jesus Christ set before us, which drives us to repentance, but it also drives us to resurrection.

Turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 7. I want to go over this a little bit again. I want to drive home this point from last week. I just reviewed this text from last week, and I thought, you know, there’s so much here.

Ecclesiastes. Now, the whole point of Ecclesiastes 7, remember we quoted this where it says in verse 10, “Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? For thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this?” Remember we said that sentimentalism is awful. It’s a curse upon an apostate nation. Sentimentalism, thinking the golden ages in the past.

Jesus says that he was the first in that he died and he is the last and that he’s perpetually alive, and he is alive forevermore in that he is actively working in history. And the Christian moves from death to life. We are continually mortifying the flesh. And God makes the world advance through crises and pain and discomfort and disease—not being at ease—because, you know, if you’re happy and you don’t have a degree of disease and you don’t have a degree of discomfort, you’re not going to change.

And God wants you to change. He wants you to change every Lord’s day. He wants you to become more and more like that exemplar, the Lord Jesus Christ. And being human beings, we tend to get, you know, fat and sassy and forget God, or at least maybe not forget him, but we don’t want to move on. God says no, you can’t rest. When you die and with Christ in heaven, that’s when you can rest. Even there, I think there’s lots of work to go on.

But the point is that our life moves from death to life. The past was not better than the future. And in the Christian worldview, the prophets always said the golden age is in the future.

Well, look at this whole chapter. A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one’s birth. This is what he’s saying. The day of your death is better than the day of your birth, for the Christian, because death leads to life. Prison leads to rule. Joseph. Okay. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. For that is the end of all men. And the living will lay it to his heart.

Now, we can say, “Yeah, well, that’s because you’re going to meditate on your death. You think about it.” Well, that’s true. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? It is a good thing to be made uncomfortable through the death of loved ones because that uncomfortableness causes us to come to resurrection power in the power of the Spirit. It changes us.

You see, that’s what this whole section—verses 1-14 of Ecclesiastes 7—is about: sentimentalism is bad, and we want to be forward-looking, understanding that we go through pain that we might reign with the Lord Jesus Christ. No pain, no change. No change, no continuing manifestation of reign in our lives.

Look at verse three. Sorrow is better than laughter. For by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. It’s through the pain that God brings into our life and the sorrow that we’re made better, because we move from death to life. We move from pain to health.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. You don’t want to be satisfied in life. You want to be continually progressing. And God does that through sadness.

It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool. This also is vanity. Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad, and a gift destroyth the heart. Better is the end of a thing than the beginning of it. Same thing over: better is the end of the thing, the life, than the beginning, which is death. And the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.

There’s cash value for you men who are prone to anger. And that’s pretty much all of you at one time or another. Men do that. They get angry. They want to rule things. That’s good. You want to rule things, but you want to rule it your way. And here’s cash value from this truth of death to resurrection being our pattern for life.

He says, “The end of things is better than the beginning. Patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger resteth in the bosom of fools. Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days are better than these?” You see the relationship there?

We get angry because we want to be at ease. And things happen that make us not at ease. And impatience says, “This thing is in my way. I don’t like it. And I’m going to get mad.” And God says it’s following because the end is better than the start—because it’s not in the past is best, it’s in the future is best.

And the way God moves you men from now to then is through pain and it’s through unpleasantness and it’s through things not working out. You see, we keep saying we don’t get it. You know, there was a movie Big Trouble in Little China. We’re not put on earth to get it. We’re put on earth to serve God and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. And he tells us over and over in this passage of scripture that the way we do that is to move from death to life. The past isn’t best. Change is good, but it’s hard for us. It’s hard for people. We don’t like change.

We’re talking about change in the prayer groups. Oh, we’ve been doing it the same way for a while now. And we’re getting kind of content in the way we do it. There’s things about it we like. That’s good. It’s good. Maybe we shouldn’t change it. I don’t know. But just because you see pain in change doesn’t mean it’s bad. And in fact, it might mean it’s a very good thing to do.

Because when you go through pain and death, there is health on the other side of that and resurrection to something else. If we’re happy with what we have, doors of new opportunity aren’t opened up for us. Jav Brooks went through the pain of unemployment for a couple months. Got a much better job now. Wouldn’t have that job if he didn’t go through the pain of being laid off at the work if the work hadn’t slowed down where he was.

You see? That’s what our life’s all about. And Ecclesiastes says that from beginning to end.

Okay. So we move through pain. We’re resurrected servants. And that’s what this book is all about.

Now, I want us to review briefly the book. We’ll get to these four snapshots in just a moment. It won’t take us long once we get there.

Review of the book. I’ve got a working outline of the book. This book is not hard. This book is easy. Okay? Just keep telling yourself that as you read the book of Revelation. Easy. Long as you know the structure, and the structure as I’ve laid it out here, the working outline is this sevenfold pattern that repeatedly goes through scripture.

Leviticus 23, there are seven feasts listed in Leviticus 23, and one can draw correlations. This is information primarily from James B. Jordan, but other commentators see much of this as well. This information seems to lay itself out well. The book of Revelation according to those seven feasts of Leviticus 23—don’t take the time now to go through that—but you know, you think about the correlation we make here, and you’ll see that we’ve gone through now. We’re at the end of the first major portion of the book, first section, which has the seven attributes. That’s what I’ve labeled it to remind us that the sevenfold attributes we’ve talked about for the last few weeks of Jesus is what’s central to chapter one. And that’s the first section, chapter 1.

Leviticus 23 begins with the Sabbath day as a whole day of holy convocation. And on the Sabbath day, on the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, and in the cool of the day and the spirit of the day, God comes to be with John, and he reveals Jesus to him, and he judges him. Sabbath day is what that’s all about. We’ve gone through that, and there’s a call to worship.

The next two chapters, chapters 2 and 3, are seven visitations, seven letters to the seven churches. Just like God came in terms of the Passover, which is the second feast in Leviticus 23, to judge his people, so he comes in chapters 2 and 3. He’s going to visit them, gonna visit this church, gonna evaluate, gonna tell us what’s right, gonna tell us what’s wrong, making a list, going to share the list with us, and going to bring some pain that we might be better, that we might move from death to resurrection.

Seven visitations.

And then there’s the ascension of Christ in chapters 4 and 5. And then in chapter 6 and 7, seven seals the book. And here, sevenfold, we see a sevenfold structure in the scriptures as we do in this book. We look at the central thing because that’s central to the structure usually. And this is the fourth of seven things.

And what’s central? The seals of the book. The book of rules, the covenant book. The scriptures are central to the book of Revelation.

Now, after the seals are opened up, the angels are going to trumpet them forth. The same way that I read to you the scriptures every Lord’s day, we’re called to worship. Jesus comes with us. We rise up and ascend to heaven. And I take this book and I open it up and I read it. And then I preach on it like I’m doing now. And I trumpet things out. The center is the book and the opening of the book itself. And then comes the trumpeting forth of that book.

And after the book is trumpeted and we do some stuff transactionally with God in the worship service, we then move to the seven bowls. We move to communion. And there’s two feasts described: Marriage feast of the lamb and then the vulture feast. And those seven bowls of wrath are poured out as the book of Revelation continues.

And after the seven bowls, the beautiful bride then is commissioned at the end of the book, correlating to the seventh feast.

Now see number one and number seven on the list. Chapter one, the seven attributes of Christ. Chapters 20-22, the beautiful bride is pictured. Why do I? Why are those important? Because the church becomes like Jesus by the end of the book. By the end of all the pain and death and resurrection and changes to things in their lives that they don’t like, and trials and tribulations, the church gets beautiful by the end. She looks like Jesus. He’s beautiful in his attributes, he shines forth, and the church by the end of the book shines forth as well. You see, they correlate.

The second and six things correlate: Passover and atonement. He comes to the seven churches, shakes them up, and in correlating to that, the seven bowls, he comes to the church of the apostate Jews who won’t believe in Christ, and he destroys them. They don’t have the blood of Jesus on the doorpost so to speak. They’re destroyed, and men’s sins are atoned for.

Okay, so that’s the structure of the book.

Now, let’s talk about evangelism in the book.

Well, obviously, if the subject of the book is Jesus Christ, the gospel is central to the book of Revelation, and the gospel is what we, what evangelism is all about. Evangelism comes from the word to evangelize or to spread the gospel, the message of the book: Jesus Christ. And the gospel is central then.

Now, what is the gospel? Well, we think of the gospel as people can be saved from their sins through the work of Christ. Partly that’s true. But, you know, in the sense that something is new after Jesus comes, that isn’t new. Abram was saved just like we are, right? Justified by faith. That’s what the animal sacrifices pointed to in the Old Testament—to tell people Messiah’s going to come. He’s going to die for your sins. You’re not good. You’re not good enough in and of yourself.

So that’s not really new. But what changes when Christ comes is what now is described as what we preach forth: the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel is the message that things are going to change now since Christ has completed his work, gone up to the father, received reign from the father, and exercises judgments in the earth, and things are different now. And he gives that reign as well. Daniel tells us to the church. We ascend up and receive the kingdom in AD 70. Okay? So things change now.

The gospel is the good news of the kingdom. The gospel is that those Aztecs aren’t going to sacrifice virgins anymore. Done, over. Now their enemies may rise up in history. You see, the gospel—the good news—R.J. Rushdoony says it this way: The good news of the ascension of the savior king Jesus Christ savior king to the throne. He sits at the right hand of all his enemies’ footstool, not inactive, doing, working through the church to bring change. Jesus has ascended and he’s received the rule from the father and he is savior king, and the world changes. Judgments come forth. Evildoers are stopped. The gospel is preached and the world moves to conversion. That’s the gospel, and that’s what Revelation is all about: Christ receiving that reign and exercising it.

So evangelism is central to this book.

Remember, witness has to do with the central message: be faithful in your witness. What’s witness? We think of witnessing to Christ, talking about Jesus, and all that we do and say. That’s true. But remember the other aspect of witness in the Bible. The witness is required to come forth and testify against an evildoer. And he as it were prosecutes the case against sinners. And Jesus is the faithful witness who testifies to the apostate nature of the Jewish people that refuse to repent. And he prosecutes the case. He brings the judgments. You see?

So if we’re going to be faithful witnesses, we’re going to preach the gospel and evangelize, which has two components. We are going to preach salvation through Christ, but we’re also going to preach that he’s not just savior, he’s king. And if men don’t repent, we’re going to prosecute them by witnessing against them to the father and asking for his judgment, that they might repent or be destroyed out of the way.

Okay? So we’re to witness. Central to the theme of the book. The whole point of the book, theme of the book, involves our faithfulness and the evangelistic task.

The conclusion of the book. Turn to Revelation 22, verse 17.

Some people get this wrong. They think this is referring to asking for Jesus to come. Well, that’s what the end of the book does say. But before you get to that, in verse 17 at the conclusion of the book, “And the spirit and the bride, bride is us of course say come. And let him that heareth say come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will let him take the water of life freely.”

It’s an evangelistic call—command really. It’s not an invitation. It’s a command. We command the earth to come and give thanks to God and worship him, to take the water of life freely.

So the whole capstone of the book is this: the beautiful bride is not in heaven that people think. No, the beautiful bride has to be on earth in Revelation 20-22, because the bride is saying at the end of all of that come. If it’s talking about the culmination of all things and us being in heaven, in heaven we no longer issue an evangelistic call to the nations. We do that on earth. So the beautiful bride has come to pass by the end of the book. And by what it prophesies, the end of AD 70. Okay? I do believe there are some things done about the last—the final coming or say the second coming—but for the most part, chapters 21 and 22 talk about the beautiful bride still bringing in the nations.

There’s still a division between heaven and earth. It can’t be the end of time because at the end of time, the division is done away with. In any event, the whole point of that is the book at the beginning presents it as the revealing of Jesus Christ. And that’s what we do when we witness and when we evangelize our neighbors and our friends in the world. And the book says the theme is faithfulness and witness. And that’s what we’re called to do: be faithful evangelism of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the book culminates in saying we’re supposed to invite, command the nations to come in and worship. You see, the book is filled with evangelism from beginning to end. It is there.

Now, what I want us to do very quickly is take these four snapshots. We’re going to go to heavenly perspective. You got a history book in Acts, and it says Paul did this and went here, and we got more history. The epistles are written. These are things that actually happened on earth that we see from an earthly perspective.

Now, in Revelation, go through that same forty-year period of time, but we’re seeing it from a heavenly perspective. The heavenly perspective helps us to know how we’re supposed to evangelize. Okay, we see Paul evangelizing in the book of Acts. That helps us. But then we see this heavenly perspective of what Paul was doing, and that helps us again.

So if we want to be better at evangelism, at talking to our friends and neighbors about Christ, then we want to understand what this heavenly perspective that John sees of this history on earth of evangelism is all about. So we want to lift up our hearts to heaven and see a heavenly perspective.

Now, caveat—we’ll get this as we get to the seven letters to the seven churches—but there’s seven churches, right? And the second church and the sixth church. That’s why I pointed out the match in the outline of the book between Passover and Day of Atonement: the inspection of the seven churches, the inspection of the harlot. As we went through the outline, because two and six come together in the seven churches.

Okay, the second church and the sixth church are a matched set, and we’ll get to these when we get to them. But this is the point. In the second and sixth church, they are not chastised. They are the best churches if you want to look at it that way out of the seven. They’re said, “You’re doing a great work. Keep doing the great work.” Jesus tells them virtually no chastisement of them. But they’re different, too.

Because the second church, Smyrna, is little. It’s suffering. It’s afflicted. And he says, “Just hold on. You’ll be okay. You won’t die.” Okay? But the sixth church, Philadelphia, just as faithful as the second church, it’s got an open door that no man can shut. Jesus says, “And I’m going to cause those who call you bad. They’re going to come in and worship. You’re going to convert them. You’re going to grow and flourish. You’re going to be a big church, thousand members in your church.” And Smyrna? You’re going to have about twenty-five people.

You see, the point is, you cannot see with earthly eyes and determine who’s being faithful and who isn’t. A faithful church can be huge. And when we’re a small church, think, well, those big churches are compromised churches. They’re just got all those people because they’re entertaining folks. Not so. Maybe, but not necessarily. So Philadelphia was promised an open door, and yet it was faithful. And when you’re a big church, think that church has been struggling along for ten years, little like that. They must be not doing anything right. Oh no, Smyrna struggled along. It was faithful too.

So the caveat is that God is sovereign in evangelism with nothing else. Understand that. Okay.

Let’s look at the four snapshots now real quickly.

First: four horsemen, 6:1-8. We just read that. And what these verses tell us in chapter 6, verses 1-8, is something you probably haven’t thought of. Hear what? The four horsemen of the apocalypse. Now they’re all bad and everything. And maybe the first one’s Jesus, but the rest of them are bad. Oh believe that the horseman is always, in those four figures, Jesus Christ, and the horse is the church. Now, we know that’s true of chapter of the first one, the white horse, obviously, going forth conquering and to conquer. We know that. But then the second horse, we say, well, bringing division on the earth, Jesus came to bring peace, not a sword, didn’t he?

But no, he says, no. In point of fact, he says in the gospel, “I came to bring division.” And I think that the progression in this particular snapshot of evangelism shows us that what will happen between 30 AD and 70 AD is that the gospel we preach forth in purity—whiteness, purity of doctrine, purity of life—and it will send out its message. And what will happen is division will occur. And we see it throughout the book of Acts. Division happens when the gospel is preached in faithfulness. God acts through his Spirit, and he brings division between the sheep and the goats.

And then the third horse comes along, and he brings a diminishment of bread and barley, wheat and barley. These are the elements of the Old Testament sacrificial system. He’s not talking economics here. Now, it has economic significance, but first and foremost, these are sacramental terms. Bread and wheat and barley, wine and oil are sacramental terms of the Old Testament.

And what he says here is that as the gospel is preached forth and division happens, that Old Testament church—they’re really not the Old Testament church, but they think of themselves as the Old Testament church—who reject Christ, who could not drink wine, they’re characterized by the bread and the barley, the wheat and the barley. They’re diminished. Inflation goes on because there’s less and less benefit coming from that bread to that Old Testament church. Sacramental sanctions occur in the context of the preaching of the gospel. And the enemies that the division showed forth as enemies are diminished over time. And they lose weight, a lot of weight. Thin, thinner, thin, thin, thinner, thinner still. And they eventually the fourth horse comes along and it’s death that kills the enemies of Christ.

In the meantime, the oil and the wine are not diminished. Picture of the New Testament church. Those who accept the Lord Jesus Christ, they’re part of the body of Christ, they’re not diminished at all.

So when the—and I believe this pattern holds true in our day and age—if we are faithful in purity of preaching of the doctrine of Jesus Christ and purity of life, and God’s going to bless that faithful evangelism that we perform, he’s going to bring about division. He’s going to bring about diminishment of his enemies and then he’ll destroy the enemies if they don’t repent. That’s what the pattern of. So when we look at evangelism, don’t think you’re not being successful if there’s division. Being true. Now application: purity is obvious here. Purity of doctrine. Understand the nature of what the gospel message is.

That’s why we went through those canons adored. Understanding God’s sovereignty and salvation so we can talk about it to our friends and neighbors. Purity of life, holiness. And this aspect of the gospel evangelism in the book of Revelation tells us to be pure in lifestyle and pure in doctrine.

Now I do want to bring another caveat to bear on this. However, I know of a man years ago who the Lord used to bring a lot of people to the faith, and most of those people their fruit still remains. This man’s fruit does not remain. He apostatized from the faith, left the wife that he had actually led to the faith, deserted her, adulterous relationships, got involved in drugs and corrupting youth, ends up in jail. That’s who this guy was.

Now, I don’t know the end of his life. Maybe by the end of his life he repents of all that and exhibits his true life in Christ. But as of right now, if he dies, my assumption is God used sin sinlessly. He used a man preaching the gospel who was not pure in motivation or doctrine or anything else. And yet God used him to bring many people to the faith. God’s sovereign.

My most productive times of evangelism was right after my conversion. Went back to Minnesota and lived amongst a group of people in the counterculture there, and lived very shamefully. Hate to say it, but I did, in terms of drugs and stuff. And yet, you know, all I knew was that Jesus was Lord and this Bible was his word. And I talked to people about that. And after I came back to Oregon, I found out that there had been a revival in that counterculture, and most of those people had come to the faith.

See, now I’m not advocating, you know, a bad lifestyle. This verse tells us to aim for purity of lifestyle, but I’m telling you that God is sovereign in evangelism. So don’t think if you find yourself today saying, “I’m not very pure. I’m not very holy. I guess I shouldn’t evangelize yet.” No. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Talk to your buddies about the Lord Jesus Christ. But aim for personal holiness in your life to go along with that. That’s what God blesses in its general sense.

Okay.

Next snapshot of evangelism from the seven trumpets section: chapter 9, verses 13 and following. Turn there please.

Okay, let me set this up a little bit. This is the trumpet section of the book. Okay, and the word is being trumpeted forth, and history is going to be changed. And let me describe how this all begins. This all begins in chapter 8 when the trumpet section begins with an angel taking coal from off the altar and casting it to earth.

And the seven trumpets are basically fire judgments, and those that fire is thrown to earth. It’s the day of Pentecost, I think, that’s being described. The tongues of flame coming down at the ascension of the savior. Why was the holy spirit not given yet before Pentecost? Because Jesus was not yet ascended. That’s what the Bible says. Jesus’s ascension then takes, what happens next is that the fire of the Holy Spirit is sent to the church on the day of Pentecost, and the church then begins its task. And that’s pictured in these seven trumpets here beginning in chapter 8.

Fire is thrown down. First it’s thrown to the land, that’s Israel or, you know, Jerusalem, that area. Then it’s thrown to the sea. That’s the nations roundabout. Okay, big mountain of fire. Then it’s thrown into the temple itself, the spring of waters. Okay, so you have these pictures of progressive sending forth of the Holy Spirit upon all the earth. And then the sixth trumpet comes on the fifth trumpet. By the way, the fifth trumpet, a demonic army is raised up. It’s just before these verses in chapter 9. We don’t need to read it now, but it’s a demonic army that look like Nazarites. They got hair like women, but they’re locusts. They’re not Nazarites at all really. They’re demons. Okay? And when God brings his gospel to bear, things become evident, and division occurs, and the demonic look demonic.

But then the sixth trumpet is blown. And that’s what we want to look at here.

Verse 13. “The sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice as from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, and which were prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year, and to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were 200,000,000. And I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision and them that sat on them having breastplates of fire and of jacinth and brimstone. And the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions. And out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. And by these three was the third part of men killed—by the fire and by the smoke and by the brimstone which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails. For their tails were likened to serpents and had heads. And with them they do hurt. And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, but they should not work worship devils and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and of wood, which neither can see nor hear nor walk. Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, or of their thefts.”

Now, notice what it just I read the whole passage to get to those last couple of verses. The rest of the men which were not killed didn’t repent. This tells us, I think, by way of logic, that the men that were killed did repent of these fornications.

What we have here is the death and resurrection of conversion. This is an army that comes according to verse 14. It comes from the great river Euphrates.

Now, we don’t know our Bibles, but let me just little bit of biblical stuff here. The river Euphrates was to be the northern boundary of the land given to Abram. When Abram comes in obedience to God’s command into the promised land, he comes from across the Euphrates, goes kind of this way up, goes west, and then drops down south into the promised land, across the river Euphrates. Abram comes from the other side of Euphrates and comes into the promised land.

Now, when Abram wants to get wives for Isaac and when Isaac wants to get a wife for Jacob, they send up there to where he came from, across the river Euphrates. That’s where the cities are. So he sends his servant out, obtains the bride, and she comes across the Euphrates, just like Abram came across the Euphrates. You see, David in his time has to go up there and secure the Euphrates again. And Jeremiah says, when the people of God go into captivity, God tells Jeremiah at the end of the book to plant the book in the river Euphrates. Why? Because when God’s people come back from the Babylonian captivity with Ezra and Nehemiah, they’re going to come across the Euphrates into the promised land.

Do you see the picture? Do you see the progression that’s being set up here? The father of the faithful, the seed of the faithful, those that are repenting of their sins, come back into the land. All of them crossing the Euphrates. It’s not some bad army up there to the north, which we’ve been taught by people that I don’t think that know their Bibles very well. This is us. God has raised up a demonic army, and now he raises up a righteous army, and he brings them back into the land to witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The breastplate of the demonic army is lead. It’s a fake breastplate. Remember the breastplate of the high priest? But this breastplate isn’t lead at all. It looks like the high priest’s breastplate. You see what we read here in verse seventeen? They have breastplates of fire. The high priest had a breastplate with fire stones on it. You see? Well, these guys have breastplates. That’s us. Breastplates of fire and jacinth, that’s a stone that was on the breastplate of the high priest specifically. It is specifically named as one of the stones, and brimstone. You see, we do have a double-edged sword. And we do bring some to life through conversion, but others are not brought to life. And we go through a place, out of our mouths comes this sword, just like the sword of Jesus Christ portrayed in Revelation 19.

When people don’t repent, our tails sting them. We’re a savor of life to those that are being saved by Jesus Christ, but we’re also a savor of death. The tail sting we have shake the dust off the feet when we preach the gospel to people and they don’t repent.

So this army is an army that is righteous. God brings up two armies, and his army is going to win. And how do they win? They win because their breastplates are fire and jacinth and brimstone. And then it goes on to say fire and smoke. And that word smoke is the same word that’s used in the scriptures for incense. The incense are the prayers of the saints.

How does all of this start? The sixth trumpet—we read verse 13—the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar. What was the golden altar? We don’t know? Two altars in the tabernacle. The altar of bronze, which we’ve talked about, the sacrificial altar, but then there was the golden altar, which was the altar of incense. The sixth army is issued from the altar representing the prayers of God’s people. That’s the point of all of this.

This evangelistic snapshot is a picture, a heavenly picture, of the Apostle Paul, of John and the two witnesses going forth to preach. The two witnesses representing the whole church, the church of Jesus Christ, marching forth, preaching the gospel. This army is an army of prayer. It is called up by God from the golden altar of incense.

And that’s where we come from. What’s the point of this? The point is we’re going to evangelize people in our neighborhoods and our communities. We’ve got to be pure doctrinal lifestyle. It’s what we seek for. And secondly, we’ve got to be people of prayer. We’ve got to be people who understand that the golden altar of prayer and incense and our breastplates have that picture of fire and smoke, the Holy Spirit, and prayer to God, that he would bless the endeavors of his saints as they go forward to evangelize the world.

We’ve got to be that kind of praying army. And that army wins, as Revelation portrays, over the army of the demon.