You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
6 And[kai] he said[epo] unto me,[moi] These[houtos] sayings[logos] are
faithful[pistos] and[kai] true:[alethinos] and[kai] the Lord[kurios] God[theos] of the holy[hagios]
prophets[prophetes] sent[apostello] his[autos] angel[aggelos] to shew[deiknuo] unto his[autos] servants[doulos] the
things which[hos] must[dei] shortly[en][tachos] be done.[ginomai] KJV-Interlinear
6 And he
said to me, "These words are faithful and true"; and the Lord, the
God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants
the things which must shortly take place. NASB
Either the Bible states the truth or it states lies. If the Bible is true, then all other religions are lies. If the Bible is false, then it is just another book on the shelf.
There is only one God, one faith, one spiritual life, and that is presented in the Bible.
Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, are the big four religions of history, plus you can add to these, all of the little religions from the ancient gods to the many cults of our modern day, these many beliefs which occupy the minds of about seventy percent of the worlds population, are all false.
There is nothing noble about them, nothing legitimate about them, nothing of value within them. There is no honor in lies or false claims, and certainly there is nothing to respect or admire about something that is there to intentionally mislead you and make you a loser in life, much less something that would send you to the Lake of Fire.
The Bible promotes truth and is there to better your life. Anything else will result in loss for you. Why would you pursue anything that means certain failure and loss?
Christianity numbers about two-billion out of the worlds seven billion population. That is just under thirty percent. Not all of those folks are active believers, of course. Look at your own life. Most likely you have not been active in a daily study over the years, if ever. Those who study regularly, are probably a very small percentage of that total. So if you are now engaged in a daily study, then you are in a minority. The best minority that one can be a part of, but none the less a minority.
You have choices in this life. You can do what the bulk of the world does, and ignore all of this new universe stuff, or you can consider that there really might be something to it all.
John wrote the words. The angel told the prophecy. Christ gave John the vision of what was to come.
Either it is so, or it is not. You can believe the story told in this book, or you can invent your own interpretation, as many do, or you can ignore it all.
The same God, Jesus Christ, who spoke to the prophets of old, the same God, Jesus Christ, who revealed these things to John, and the very same God, Jesus Christ, is the One to whom we are to direct our faith and trust. There is no other.
There is no Allah, no Buddha, nobody else to whom you can direct your faith and trust, and expect everything to work out well for your life.
These things are to take place. What things? The things of history which this book has revealed to us through John.
We have studied the seals, the trumpets, and the bowls of this book. We know that they refer to events of history in three forms.
The seals are upon scrolls which are recordings of history, sealed in heaven and revealed to John through this book. God wrote them. They are going to occur.
The trumpets are the announcement that the time is very near. They are the warnings of impending doom and the extreme shortness of ones life. Therefore, make the right decisions or else.
The bowls are the actual events of history, the unleashing of Gods wrath on humanity and evil. In one sense God allows these things of history to occur, and in another sense, humanity brings all of the terrible events of history onto himself, by means of his own thoughts and actions.
Today, the Bible is available throughout the world, yet the bulk of the world ignores it. Today the Bible is available throughout the Christian world, and yet even the bulk of Christianity ignores its own writings of faith. Even the worthless religions of the world receive better support and allegiance from their followers than does Christianity.
Christians typically are a docile and non-committal crowd. That is because they lack spiritual growth. Only those who have some significant spiritual growth will approach life more aggressively through confidence, rather than through the timidity of wishes, or of not getting involved.
God does not force, nor coerce anyone into any position in life. God simply gives information and lets each person decide to accept or reject it, believe or disbelieve it, commit it to ones life or ignore it. Indifference is the typical response. Non-commitment is the typical response. Inventing ones own personal and convenient spiritual experience is the typical response. Making up ones own rules making responsibility and obligation easier to avoid is the typical response.
But whatever path you decide to take, 'these things,' the events of history future, will occur with or without you.
None of the terrorist's plans will derail Gods plans. None of the politician's plans will derail Gods plans. None of any evil nation's plans will derail Gods plans. Certainly no personal plans can derail Gods plans.
Does that mean that we do nothing?
No. A part of our spiritual life is recognizing our responsibilities in life. And to that end we do all that we should do in order to maintain some semblance of peace in this world.
This is no different than maintaining peace within our neighborhood while attempting to maintain law and order and limiting the actions of criminals within society. We don't allow law breakers to run amuck at home, neither should we allow tyrants to run amuck in the world. There, the stakes are far too high.
But regardless of whether you agree with this or not, history will roll right along.
What is ahead of us? We can guess pretty close as to what is ahead. When the number of the spiritual base of people in the world is up, the blessings from God are up. When the number of the spiritual base of people in the world is down, the blessings are down, and the curses and problems, if you will, are up.
When the Rapture occurs, one can pretty well guess that the spiritual state of the world will be low. We already know that in the final days of our dispensation, knowledge and life in general will be moving along at an accelerated pace. That should be obvious from the activities of just this last century. This next century will go no slower, only at an even faster pace.
We know that the population is growing at a rapid rate. We know that oil supplies are dwindling at a rapid rate. We know that a lot of things in life will come to a head in the next thirty to sixty years.
We also can assume that discoveries and technology will solve some of those future problems.
But there will come a time when the problems of the world will begin to get away from humanity. And life will begin to get more and more difficult for everyone.
We also know that the end of our dispensation will be characterized with a 'great' apostasy, as predicted by both Jesus and Paul.
Instead of turning to God, as people typically do now, when disasters strike in the life, people will begin to turn more and more toward hate. Government will be their answer, special interests will be their answer, groups or organizations or alliances with similar objectives will be their answers, and the prejudices and bias's and the selfish self preservation attitudes will begin to prevail, at everyone else's expense.
Christian beliefs or Christians period, will decline, and then the Rapture will occur, like a thief, when no one expects it.
When will that be? No one knows. Might not be for another hundred years or so. Another hundred years of history will bring three more generations into this world, and a great deal can occur in the attitudes of people even within one generation. Shoot, we can't go even four years between elections without seeing the most absurd changes of opinions in society. A fickle society is a spiritually deficient society.
We live in a drive up window world. People don't have the patience of earlier generations who had to wait for weeks just to get a letter in the mail. The patience of future generations will become less and less. And with less patience will come less tolerance and greater frustrations, and with greater problems in the world will come greater anger and the search for someone to blame.
This will all come to a head in the Tribulation. The single most violent and evil time in all of human history. But the ground work for the Tribulation will already be there, before it begins.
And thus we have the revelation of this book.
God has a plan. His plan does not desire for the great disasters of history to occur, but man will bring them on himself anyway, and God will allow it.
When it is all said and done, this universe will be destroyed, along with all of the evil people, demons and devils, and history will come to a close.
Then God will create for those who have believed in Him, a brand new city and universe. He will create for those who have been more faithful to His word, even greater blessings than one can begin to imagine.
We have just a few more studies remaining in this book, but regardless of where our subsequent studies take us, your decisions on a daily basis will determine your ultimate destiny. You can accept Gods plan for your life, or you can always go find something better. And of course the whole point is that there is nothing better.
In the beginning was God. Since God has never changed, His light has been with Him since the beginning as well.
Then one named Lucifer, rebelled and his name changed to Satan or the Devil, describing his attitude of deception, empty rhetoric, and argumentative nature. Darkness fell on creation and has been with us ever since.
Darkness will never leave until the Second Advent of Christ, where in the Millennium, the first signs of a never-ending daylight will begin, as the light of Christ will illuminate the planet for one-thousand years.
Then, when the new universe is created, Gods glory will illuminate not only the capital city of the New Jerusalem, but the entire universe. And we have no idea what the new universe will look like.
We will have no need for artificial lights, candles, lamps or anything that we are used to having in our lives now. This does not mean that we won't have access to light from various sources, like campfires for example. The purpose here, is to further show that the darkness of creation, Satan and evil, are permanently gone.
God has given us day and night to keep track of time, to give us periods of rest and so forth. But, one of the reasons that we have night and day now, is to teach us all that there really is a good and evil at war in this universe.
After all, the whole purpose of our very existence is to become a part of that angelic conflict solution. We are not here to conquer the stars, or to work our way through life as we look toward retirement or our next weekend adventure.
And, John reiterates our role in the new universe.
As peoples, made in union with Christ, our ultimate destiny is to rule the universe. And not for just a short time, but forever. And ruling here does not mean in the sense of kings or leaders, but as masters over our own environment as opposed to being slaves to our circumstances. We will, for the first time in history, be in full charge of our own lives and the universe (not just the world) around us.
To reign means to be in office, to be in a position of authority and power, to have control over something. And our domain is the universe.
And, since everyone is basically in the same job, then our authority is not over other people, but over the contents of the new universe.
A ruler, a king, in the truest sense, possesses the power, and authority, and has the resources to accomplish whatever he wishes. That is just the beginning of what, 'beyond ones imagination,' really means. And we, as mature believers, will have this forever and ever.
The eternal capital city of heaven, the New Jerusalem, will be a place of phenomenal indescribable beauty. From its center, the brilliant glory of God will shine through the gold and jewels to illuminate the entire new heaven and the new earth. We will enjoy unimaginable intimacy in fellowship with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, serving Them and being served by Them, and reigning with Them forever in pure joy and never-ending happiness.
How could anyone ignore God, Christ, or doctrine in their life, and thus miss out on this phenomenal and guaranteed future?
