Revelation Class #27

Revelation Class #27 -- Judgment Upon Jerusalem

Last week we looked at the fact that Christ is seen as prophet in Rev. 7:2, he's seen as priest in Rev.8:3-5, and here he's seen as king, absolute dominion over the world. Then we talked about how He cries out, and the seven peals of thunder utter their voices, and he swore to himself. We talked about the fact that God swears to himself alone because He himself is true. Then, we talked about in the days of the seventh angel when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is finished. We talked about the fact that that period of time was the period of the Roman empire and that what finished the mystery of God, was the incarnation of Jesus Christ. His perfect life, living what we could not do, and his incredible death, taking upon himself the sin for all of those who are saved and that that is indeed the mystery of God. In fact the mystery is not really a mystery in the sense of 'we don't know it.' Mystery, particularly in the New Testament, is always something that was unknown in the past, but has now been revealed, as we see in Romans 16:25-56. So that's where we ended up.

Revelation 10:8 And the voice which I head from heaven, I heard again speaking with me, and saying, “Go, take the book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the land.” (9) And I went to the angel telling him to give me the little book. And he said to me, "Take it, and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey." (10) And I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it, and it was in my mouth sweet as honey, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. (11) They said to me, "You must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings."

Why in the world would Christ tell John to eat a book? If I were to stand up here and say "You pick up that bible and eat it!" It would be pretty strange, wouldn't it? What do you think is being taught here? Christ used various illustrations to teach, and I think clearly this is an illustration, of taking the Word in. But this has also happened a couple of other times in scripture. In Ezekiel 2:1 Then He said to me: son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you. And as He spoke to me the spirit entered and set me on my feet; and I head him speaking to me. (Ezekiel goes on and talks about his call) Chapter 3:1 He said to me, son of man, eat what you find, eat this scroll and go speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he fed me the scroll. And he said to me son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll that I am giving you. Then I ate it and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. Then he said to me, son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them for you are not being sent to a people of unintelligible speech or difficult language but to the house of Israel.

So what we see here is that God is telling the prophet Ezekiel, “Take this word which I give you and take it to the nation of Israel.” Remember we talked about the official office of prophet. That the prophet was caught up in a vision into the very throne room of God. You see this most clearly in Isaiah Chapter 6 where Isaiah in his vision sees the throne room of God. We see the same thing here when Ezekiel has this vision of God and he's given a specific word to take to a specific people. He's given a commission by God. That's what we see going on here with the prophet Ezekiel. He's taking this word in, then he's taking it to Israel.

Remember that Ezekiel is taking this message to Israel, and it is indeed a message of judgment upon Israel for their disobedience. Then Jeremiah 15:1 Then the Lord said to me, (to the prophet Jeremiah) “Even though Moses and Samuel were to stand before Me, My heart would not be with this people; send them away from My presence and let them go!” So if we look at the context there, he's talking about Israel again. In verse 4 he says “And I shall make them an object of horror among all the kingdoms on earth because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, King of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.” In verse 16 the prophet says Thy words were found, and I ate them, and thy words became for me a joy and a delight of my heart because I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts. So again here we see the prophet Jeremiah taking and eating the words of God. So I think clearly what's being illustrated here in Revelation is that we are to take those words in. They are to become part of us. We are to meditate on them and remember them. Remember in Psalm 2 where it says "meditate" and that word meditate really is the idea of muttering. Of speaking under the breath. How do we memorize stuff? We kind of say it out loud under our breath, don't we? So that's the idea of meditation in the Old Testament. It is to take that word in, reflect on it, memorize on it, and let it become part of our lives.

Q: Does the obscurity of the symbols, etc. have to do with the danger that these people were in due to the politics of that time?

A: I think clearly yes! I would say that we are even in more danger, because we don't understand these symbols, do we? Most people don't even read Revelation. They don't think they can comprehend it, that's it's far beyond them. But, see, the problem is that if we understood the Bible, I think we would understand the symbols of Revelation. That would then equip us, we would be taking in the word of God, we would be reflecting on it, we would be dwelling on it, we would be changed by it, and we would be better prepared to deal with the political situation of the time. The symbols here would have been very, very clear to the Christians of a Jewish background, who understood the Old Testament symbolism. But it would not be clear to the Romans, who did not have that Old Testament background.

As we'll get to later, the number of the beast of Revelation, the '666' very probably is a way of communicating to the Jewish Christians of the time, without communicating to the Romans. Because the Jews would have understood what John was talking about. They would have understood who he was talking about. The Romans, on the other hand, would not have understood, because they didn't understand the language, etc.

After he took the book, remember it was in my mouth sweet as honey, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. That's not just indigestion, folks. Remember what John is being told here. We're going to see in Chapter 11, that God is pouring out judgment upon Jerusalem, upon Israel. What land was John a native of? He was an Israelite. He was very probably very high up in the political hierarchy of the time. A quick aside, we see in the Gospel of John that he never speaks of himself. He speaks of himself as the apostle whom Jesus loved. But it says when Jesus was brought before Pilate, that this man, the apostle whom Jesus loved, had access to the high priest area and that he went in. Then he came out and got Peter. He got Peter permission to go in to the trial. So he was very probably very high up in the political hierarchy of Israel. So he's an Israelite, he's a Jew and here he's being told that God is going to pour out judgment upon his country for their unbelief. I think clearly he understands the message and he is like Jesus, seeing Jerusalem and weeping because he knew the destruction was coming upon Israel.

(10) And I took the little book out of the angel's hand Notice that (11) And they said to me, (these beings in the heavenly council) "You must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings." Then it goes on to Chapter 11 and it says:

11:1 And there was given to me a measuring rod like a staff; and someone said, “Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it. So here John is being given this message to measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it. Now there are several things that are significant about that. What's the significance of the measuring reed? The Greek word there is 'canon'. We also might talk about the canon of scripture, which is the Bible. This word means 'rule' or 'standard.' So when I talk about the canon of scripture, I'm talking about the standard of scripture. I'm talking about a ruler by which something is measured. This reed (the canon) was the standard. It was like our Bureau of Standard's foot or pound, etc. It was the thing by which everything was measured. So what is God saying when he says to John, take the reed, rise and measure the temple of God? Why is he measuring the temple of God? To see if it's worthy. To see if they're doing the right thing. Measure the temple of God and the altar and those who are in it, by God's standard.

Now, let me ask you, when you hear a preacher say 'You can't judge people!' What is Jesus saying to John here? Judge people! Judge people using God's standard. That's why Jesus says 'judge' (that's a commandment) the righteous judgment. What standard are we supposed to use to judge people in the temple who say they are Christians? We are to use God’s standard. By the way, we don't judge people outside the temple, we judge people inside the church, and we use the standard of God's word. That's what's going on here. John is being told - use God's word, use God's standard and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship in it.

What else is significant about the fact that John is told to go measure the temple and the altar and those who worship in it? The temple must be there! Must it not? If John is told to do that! What does that say to those who date the book of John about 96 AD? I think clearly they're wrong. John is very clearly here told to do something to the temple in it's present tense, and I think that's a clear indication that the temple was in fact still standing. That to me says this book then must have been written sometime prior to 70 AD.

Those who believe in a futuristic interpretation of the book say that this is like the rebuilt temple. This is sometime future. My position is that if they ever do rebuild the temple and start worshipping in it, the disaster is going to be worse because as God was so mad that they were continuing to offer sacrifices after the sacrifice of his son that he came in and leveled the temple and the whole of Jerusalem. So clearly, I'm not one who believes that the temple is going to be rebuilt.

When we get further into Revelation we're going to see that, I think, Gentry has proved fairly conclusively, that the beast of Revelation, the man who has the mark of the beast, the 666 is Nero. Nero of course was not alive in 96AD. Those people who believe that John wrote it in 95-96 believe that the tribulation that was going on at the time was in the time of Domitian and that Nero was already was dead. Clearly, if John was referring to Nero, then the book was written earlier, it was written during the time of Nero. Matthew Henry in his commentary believes the same thing. As I've said over and over again, most all commentators prior to the mid-1800s believe that Revelation was written early. It's only since the pre-millennial dispensation view has come into being that commentators believe in a futuristic interpretation of Revelation. You go back in church history, basically that position does not exist. Virtually everyone believed that Revelation was written prior to the destruction of the temple in 70AD.

Jesus says “Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it”. In the New American Standard, it says "leave out the court" but really in the Greek in the original language it says "cast out the court" which is very different. I don't know what other translations have, but he's saying 11:2 And cast out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations; and they will tread underfoot the holy city for forty-two months. The nations are the gentiles, that's what the word is. Cast out the court because it has been given to the gentiles. As an interesting historical thing, when you look at the temple in Jerusalem, not with the tabernacle, but the temple in Jerusalem, there was the temple itself with the holy of holies, and the holy place, and the altar, and then there was what was called (as I recall) the court of women because the women could go that far and no further.

Q: Do you have a reference for that?

A: No. This is not scriptural, this is Jewish. Alfred Eidersheim and others have pointed this out.

They had the court of the women, and then the inner court and only the men and the priests could go in. And there was the court of the gentiles, which anybody could come into. Anybody could come into that part of the temple. Going into the court of the women, there were gates and on those gates in several different languages and on the walls, was 'Do not enter here, except on pain of death, unless you are an Israelite.' There was a temple guard to make sure that no gentile came into the court of the temple. You did not come in unless you were a believer. Israelite women could come in, but Israelite women could not come into the inner court because that was reserved for the priests. The temple was an incredibly beautiful building. It was adorned with gold filigree and jewels. It was a marvelous structure. That why the disciples, remember in Matthew 24 were so proud of it and said, 'Lord, look at this building.' and He said 'Not one stone here shall remain upon another.' It's all going to be torn down. This was a magnificent structure. By the way, parts of it were still being built during the time of Jesus. It wasn't actually finished until later.

Q: Why would they allow gentiles access to that part of the temple?

A: Why do we allow unbelievers to come into our worship service? In the hope that they eventually become believers. That they will see people dedicated to worshipping God and they will be moved by that and they will become believers. Who do we allow into communion with God? Only believers. Jesus has changed that part. But here, there were only men because they were talking about federal headship. The man represented the family.

C: You wouldn't get that idea that Jews would want anything at all to do with the gentiles.

R: They were evangelistic though. Remember Jesus says “You search the heavens and earth to make proselytes, and then you make them twice the son of hell as yourself.” So they were evangelistic. They just were wrongheaded about it.

So what we see going on here is that you've got to be a believer to be in communion with God. Even in the Old Testament we see that. On pain of death... that's why Paul says let a man examine himself. He who eats and drinks wrongly drinks judgment upon himself. If you weren't a believer, you were cut off. We don't literally cut people off anymore, but we excommunicate them. We "ex", cut them off, from communication "communion" with God. Then we treat them as unbelievers, and we try to win them back. We don't shun them. We build bridges, we give them the gospel in hopes that God will bring them back into the fold. So we see that the Bible message is consistent folks! It is incredibly consistent!

What about the forty-two months? Why "forty-two months"? That's 3 1/2 years. On the Jewish calendar, it's 1260 days. That's an interesting number in Scripture. How many camps did Israel have in the desert? How many times did they camp in forty years in the desert? Forty-two. How many generations were there in the genealogy of Jesus Christ from Abraham to Christ? Forty-two. Actually, there were more. But Matthew says there were forty-two. Matthew 1:17 Therefore all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen and from the deportation to Babylon to the time of Christ, fourteen. Forty-two. There's got to be something about this number. Matthew would not lie. He excluded a couple of generations. A couple of people we know were in the genealogy of Jesus and he excluded them for a specific reason to come up with forty-two. There's something about that number that's very important in Scripture.

You've heard me talk about chiaisms. Chiaisms are all over Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, but there are a lot of them in the New Testament and I'm going to just point out one because it has to do with forty-two months. In Revelation 11:2 it talks about 42 months. In Revelation 11:3 it says 1260 days. In Revelation 11:9 it says 3 1/2 years. In Revelation 11:11 it's 3 1/2 days. In Revelation 12:6 it's 1260 days. In Revelation 13:5 it's 42 months. Now, what do we have here? We have a big arrow pointing to 3 1/2 days. There's something important about that in Scripture. That's what chiaism does. There's an "A" thought and a "B" thought and then a "C" thought then "C" prime, "B" prime and "A" prime. You'll find this throughout Scripture particularly in the original language. You don't see it in the English because it doesn't appear. But the Bible is absolutely incredible!

A 11:2 42 months

B 11:3 1260 days

C 11:9 3 ½ days

C’ 11:11 3 ½ days

B’ 12:6 1260 days

A’ 13:5 42 months

I studied a passage in Seminary where not only is the passage chiaistic, pointing to the central thought of the passage, but when you look at that central thought, that sentence in Hebrew, the letters are chiaistic from beginning to end. Pointing back to the middle of the sentence. There's no way men could have done that. So what we see here is a pattern that God has caused to be put into scripture to say, this 3 1/2 days is important. Now you're going to ask me what's important about it! I don't know! I'm not smart enough to know that yet.

Q: Didn't Jesus go out and teach for 3 1/2 years?

A: 3 1/2 years. Absolutely. Very likely what we're talking about here is the ministry of Jesus. Remember in Daniel it says in the middle of the seven, he will be cut off. What's the middle of seven? 3 1/2. How long did Jesus teach? 3 1/2 years. What we see here is that we're talking about, although it says days, it's very likely talking about the ministry of Jesus here.

Q: I know that in Genesis or somewhere it says that days represented years. Do you know where that is?

A: There's a passage in the New Testament that says with God one day is as a thousand years.

Q: Yes, but the day and year correlation. One day to one year. I think one of them was where somebody did something wrong for the amount of days it said they will be punished that many years.

A: Yes. In the Old Testament when Israel disobeyed God, He said you'll be punished and wandering the desert one year for each day.

Q: Right. So there you get your day for a year. A person familiar with the Old Testament would see this and know that there's a connection between a year and a day. It was Daniel. We know that the seven weeks are weeks of years.

A: Yes. There's definitely something going on here to tell us that these things are important. Again, I'm not smart enough to give you every jot and tittle of Revelation. That's not my purpose. My purpose, as I said before, is to get you thinking about what God's word really says, and not to accept the popular teaching out there. Not even accept what I say. Look at what the scripture says and decide for yourself, is this what God is really teaching, because that's what's important folks. Not what I say or anybody else says, but what does God say.

He says: they will tread underfoot the holy city for forty-two months. How long was the Roman siege in the holy land? Forty-two months. When the Romans came in under Vespatian and Titus, they were there from 67 AD to 70 AD. 3 1/2 years. So, here again we see the consistency of Scripture with history.

He says 11:3 “And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1260 days, clothed in sackcloth. (4) These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.” What is Jesus talking about with John here? Why two witnesses? Biblical law requires two witnesses. You've heard me say before that if someone comes to you and says Dave Crenshaw is doing thus and so or Ron Lassonde is doing something sinful. What should be your response? You should tell them to go talk to them privately. When your brother sins, confront him. Jesus says in Matthew 18 if your brother sins, go to him in private. Don't go spreading the word.

We've got a situation in the PCA right now that is incredible because it was handled unbiblically, where a church did something in their worship service that other people thought was unbiblical. Rather than that person going to the pastor and the leadership of that church and confronting them, that person went to their presbytery back in the East and their presbytery sent an overture, a request to the general assembly and said these are the kinds of things that are going on in the Northern Pacific Presbytery. The leadership of the PCA and the general assembly accepted this resolution and put it on the docket and it became public knowledge, and nobody's ever gone to that pastor and said what you did was wrong. That is totally unbiblical. Now it's all over the PCA. Everybody's talking about it and knows everything about it. It's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Q: Let's say that someone came to me and he offers me advice to go to you, I know what he's told you, so do I go separate or do we both go?

A: The bible says do not receive a charge against an Elder, or anyone else when you look at scripture. So when someone says, you know what so and so was doing? I saw him.... You say, excuse me, the Bible says I can't accept it except on the basis of two or more witnesses. The flesh doesn't say that. The flesh says tell me more! You see, if we did what the Bible says, we wouldn't have all the backbiting, all the gossiping and rumor mongering.

Q: Question on this passage here. Given your interpretation of this that they're all present tense, in 70 AD, the people who don't agree with that are put in the position of desperately having to determine the meaning of these forty-two months. It appears as though that's not particularly important if you take the interpretation that this happened in 70 AD. It's like, okay, well, there was some significance to that. That happened 2,000 years ago. Let's press on.

A: I think most people who look at it as a futuristic interpretation would say that it will be forty-two months. They would recognize the importance.

C: I guess it becomes critical, now especially if we're going to be raptured on out of here, and all of a sudden these numbers start taking on incredible significance whereas to me they don't seem to be a very major point. It would be like I'd like to know what exactly the meaning of this once was, but I don't think that that really remains the main point.

R: Good point. If you look at it as a futuristic interpretation, the numbers are in fact critical.

C: You can get carried away and spend all your time and energy on all this and it doesn't have too much to do with the main point.

R: Right. Absolutely.

C: The big problem comes in when you try to adhere to scripture literally and these numbers don't add up and they're forced to struggle with that.

R: Yes and when you do that, — by the way I've gone through this extensively in Seminary, when you look at Daniel and you look at the numbers that are involved, nothing lines up. You have to manipulate the numbers. Again, Jay Adams in his book The Time Is At Hand, goes into all of this and he shows none of these numbers actually line up. There is a way that makes the numbers all line up but I'm not going to confuse you with all of that. One of my professors in Seminary, M.G. Kline, shows how everything in Daniel lines up with Revelation and fits perfectly, but it's not using a calendar.

C: People would argue that from Daniel, you would get to Jesus, the premillennialists, they all agree with that.

R: They all agree that it was so many years from the decree of Cyrus to rebuild the temple until Messiah comes. But even that doesn't fit. Historically, it does not fit. If you use an actual calendar. It's close.

But that's not the important part here. The important part here is that when we're looking at Revelation particularly, John is talking about measuring Israel. Christ has told him to measure Israel. He's talking about the two witnesses, I'm running out of time here so I'm going to peak your interest a little bit. He says these two witnesses these are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. Next week we'll talk about who are these olive trees? Who are these lampstands? It goes on to say if anyone desires to harm them, fire proceeds out of their mouth and devours their enemies. If you want to study ahead a little bit, read Zechariah 4 and that will get you prepared for the lampstands and the witnesses.

C: It seems to me, and I'm not arguing at all with the chaiasm, watching documentaries on the Koreschs and those kind of people seem to really persuade a lot of people when you dig in to the numbers and find these kinds of things. I guess for me, I'm at least cautious when I hear 'this is a secret pattern discovered.'

R: Absolutely right, and I hope I didn't present it that way. When people are saying there is a secret pattern to this and you need me to help you interpret it, I say "Uh Oh, standby." YOU CAN UNDERSTAND REVELATION - without any help other than the Bible. If you study the word, and you learn what the word says, you will be knowledgeable enough. Remember the message this morning, you are filled with all goodness and with all knowledge. You have the capability in and of yourselves to understand God's word.

C: If you see a pattern like that, I certainly wouldn't want in any way to discourage you.

R: No, you should investigate it. Why is it there? It's important.

C: What is does for me is show the majesty of God. That even in words that He asked His prophets to write down, the patterns are there, I'm not sure I take out of that anything more than that. Other than God has all kinds of mysteries of the universe, when we look into Biology or Mathematic patterns. We see a pattern here. Obviously there may be some symbology there. What I take out of it, again what Pastor Dave says, is man wouldn't have come up with that in those writings. It had to be God-inspired to put those kinds of patterns throughout Scripture and to be consistent. That pattern is not just one time, it's thousands of times in the Bible.

C: I do want to thank you for the one thing that you pointed out, that the Koreschs and those guys say, 'you need me. God has chosen me to explain this to you.' You’re certainly not saying that.

R: Right. Thank you.