00:00	Today I want to talk to you about the fifth book in the New Testament that is connected to the Apostle John, the book of Revelation.
00:09	The book of Revelation.
00:13	I have never in my 30 years of following Jesus ever spoken from this book.
00:18	I've quoted verses, certain profound verses throughout the whole book, but I've never actually taken time in our services to do this.
00:28	So today is the first attempt.
00:30	Treat this like a gelato ice cream shop.
00:34	There's so many amazing things.
00:36	You're like, I want this one, I want this one, which one?
00:39	And I'm like, have you ever been to a gelato ice cream shop?
00:42	Sicilian ice cream.
00:44	It's like, oh my goodness, they're all amazing.
00:46	Can I have all of them?
00:47	No, you can't.
00:48	You'll make yourself sick.
00:49	But today treat it like a little bit of a taster, a taster that's going to cause an appetite for you to develop an appetite for you personally to get into this incredible book.
01:03	And I've had great assistance in helping get ready for this message.
01:07	This book which I'm highlighting is called The Discipleship on the Edge.
01:11	It's the life work of Daryl Johnson, a Canadian follower of Jesus.
01:17	And this is apparently, again, this is the result of a man's whole life, dedication to really understanding this book.
01:24	So this has been a great aid and a great support to helping me today.
01:28	So what I want to do is I want to open it up for you.
01:30	I want to build on the last few weeks.
01:31	Is that okay?
01:32	You ready for it?
01:34	And I do want to say warm welcome to anyone who's joining us today, whether you've come family, friends, maybe you've come, you got lost in the, not the airport, in the hotel, sorry, and you just found yourself here.
01:46	But whatever reason has brought you, I really believe in God can speak to your heart, to your very situation at this present moment.
01:54	Amen.
01:56	So let me go through it again.
01:58	I'm going to, the idea about me doing this is not to give our church more information about the Bible.
02:06	You can know a lot about the Bible without me.
02:09	You don't need a pastor to know about the Bible.
02:12	You can Google things.
02:13	You can YouTube things.
02:14	You can go to certain colleges and seminars and things around the world.
02:18	But at the end of the day, it's meeting Jesus that's going to define your life, not how much knowledge you know about books and Bibles and letters.
02:26	So what I want to do, again, is just to reiterate what we're trying to do as a church is to just, again, take a different approach on Sundays.
02:34	It's life application.
02:36	Can you live it?
02:37	Can you put this to work in your life?
02:39	My approach today is not, again, information.
02:42	It is can you live this?
02:44	Can you walk out of this moment today?
02:47	Absolutely.
02:48	More in love with Jesus.
02:49	More aware of His goodness.
02:50	More aware of His majesty.
02:52	Can you walk into a hostile environment and absolutely be committed to, you know, no matter what, I am going to keep my eyes on Jesus.
03:01	Because if you can leave this room today, with all the pressures that society has, with all the temptations that is in our world, with all of the hypocrisy, heresy and falsehood that we are surrounded by.
03:16	If you can leave this place today, knowing that there is a greater purpose on your life, a greater mission in you and on you and through you, you can leave this place and go back to the workplace you're in right now.
03:30	You can walk back into the community, into the city that many of us have now called home and be a bright shining light for Jesus.
03:37	Then this message has done its job.
03:41	Amen.
03:45	So the title of the series that we've called this is Jesus, the Key that Unlocks the Bible.
03:50	Jesus, the Key that Unlocks the Bible, part three.
03:54	The Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ is often what it's called.
04:00	Meaning apocalypse, revelation.
04:03	It just got a simple meaning.
04:04	It just means opening or uncovering.
04:07	The uncovering of Jesus Himself.
04:10	That's what this book means.
04:11	30 years I've been a follower of Jesus and I've avoided this book.
04:16	I've scanned it, I've browsed it, I've seen all of the different images and the scary images that sometimes come from this book.
04:24	I've heard other people talk about it.
04:26	Joyce, my wife has been a follower of Jesus since she was in the womb.
04:31	You know, got saved at four, filled with the Spirit at eight, started tithing at nine and preaching at 10.
04:38	You know what I mean?
04:39	Like Jesus and the Holy Spirit, Joyce and the Holy Spirit, like, so Joyce, my wife, told me when she was growing up, she used to see films, Christian films that were taken from the Book of Revelation.
04:54	And it scared the life out of people.
04:56	Maybe you grew up in that as well, but I didn't, thank God.
05:01	But there was always this subconscious barrier to this book.
05:06	You don't tend to go towards something you don't understand.
05:09	You don't tend to get involved in something you don't really trust.
05:15	But this book is so trustworthy, so amazing and so mind blowing.
05:20	I'm like, how could someone rob me of the joy of being able to dive into this book?
05:25	And I'm gonna try and help you get a little bit closer today in Jesus' Name, because it's amazing.
05:32	It's amazing.
05:34	It means the opening.
05:36	It means the curtain being pulled back.
05:38	It's like you're in a theatre and there's a curtain, and suddenly at the beginning of the theatre production, the curtain open and the show begins.
05:49	The only difference is this is not a show.
05:51	This is real.
05:53	This is about everything you could ever imagine.
05:56	This is about the greatest wake-up call you're about to get exposed to.
06:00	The curtain has been pulled back and the revealing is about to take place.
06:05	And so this is what this is about.
06:06	The book, the revelation, it's an apocalypse of Jesus Christ.
06:11	It's the revealing.
06:12	It's the curtain being pulled back.
06:14	It's the opening of something that is there, but we just have never seen it.
06:20	Have you ever walked around the streets of Berlin and sometimes looked up and went, I never noticed that?
06:26	The architecture, the amazing apartments, the characters and the heads and the faces, all sorts of features that are on these buildings and you can go past them a million times and never noticed them.
06:36	Well, this is kind of what's going on.
06:39	And I wanna just try and get you a little bit in different angles and different directions so you can at least have a fresh appreciation, a renewness in you to say, you know what?
06:49	I'm not gonna ignore this book anymore.
06:51	Because I believe it's a blessing for us.
06:54	And that's what the Bible says.
06:55	It's a blessing to all those who hear it, all those who read it, all those who receive this.
07:00	So the letter is about Jesus.
07:02	That's the essence.
07:03	It's about Jesus.
07:04	All of the books of the Bible in essence are about Jesus, directly or indirectly.
07:10	A risen, reigning, glorious King.
07:13	Not abstract, not distant, not one day, not someday, but now, present and victorious.
07:20	That's what this book is about.
07:22	Jesus now, not Jesus someday, not Jesus round about then and there and somewhere out there, abstract.
07:30	He is here now.
07:32	He's here now.
07:35	That's what this book is.
07:37	So Revelation 1 verse 1, the Revelation of Jesus, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must be taking place.
07:50	He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John.
07:54	So here, again, one of the key verses, I believe, there's so many key verses, but this is the one that many of you would know.
08:00	It's spoken profoundly so many times.
08:03	Revelation 1 verse 8, So here's God straight away, right in the first part of this is going,
08:19	I am the beginning, I am the end.
08:21	It started with me, it finishes me.
08:24	I'm in the middle, I'm in every detail.
08:26	I was there, I am there, I am here.
08:29	And He's just put Himself everywhere.
08:33	And sometimes you and I need to know where He is.
08:35	He's not just there, He's not just in the future, He's not just in the past, He's with me now.
08:40	He's here when the pain's real.
08:43	He's here when the tears are falling.
08:45	He's here when the job isn't coming.
08:47	He's here when the relationships are not working.
08:49	He is here, He is always present.
08:54	He's not abstract, He's not a figure of your imagination.
08:59	And that's what we get from this.
09:01	So we know again, through looking at this, the author is the Apostle John.
09:05	Five of the New Testament books are connected to him at least.
09:09	We know because we've been looking at this over the last few weeks, the Gospel of John written towards the later part of the first century, the three letters of John written towards again, the back end of the first century.
09:21	And then we get this book, which is called the Book of Revelation, which actually is a letter, a prophecy, a proclamation, which is at the very end of the first century going into the beginning of the new millennia.
09:35	And so it's very interesting what's going on.
09:37	And it's interesting that John is the one that authors this, because we get amazing letters from Paul.
09:42	We get so much of the New Testament from the Apostle Paul.
09:44	But this is profound what John is doing.
09:46	And I wanna just take us on this journey.
09:48	So the location is Ephesus, which is today modern day Turkey.
09:52	Me and the staff this week, the team, we were there in Ephesus this week, walking down the streets, the main streets towards the library, where the seaport was.
10:03	And thank God for an engineer, a railway engineer, 100 years ago, Mr. Wood that was there on a commission to try and build a railway in that part of the world and came across a lot of the ruins.
10:13	A lot of this stuff is just buried under, nature has claimed it back and grown over it.
10:18	Trees have come up.
10:19	And so today you can see ancient Ephesus.
10:22	You can see, again, the remains of it, but I'm telling you, it's good enough to get your imagination going and just to imagine them.
10:28	I could see the toilets of Rome.
10:30	They're all there, very close to each other, by the way.
10:33	No privacy at all.
10:39	You can see so much.
10:41	But ancient city of Ephesus is the location where we get the letters and the gospel.
10:47	But it's in the island of Patmos.
10:49	When I was on this week in Turkey, I could look across and I could see the island silhouettes.
10:55	And right in the middle, there was this bigger island, a bigger island, and right in the middle, there was Patmos, little tiny island.
11:01	Still there and you can go there, but that's where Paul was sent.
11:05	And that's where we receive this, what we're actually reading today, is this book, this apocalypse of Jesus Christ.
11:13	It's given to John while he's on the island of Patmos.
11:19	He was there because he was considered a troublemaker.
11:22	He's in his 80s.
11:28	So what kind of literature are we talking about here?
11:32	Well, it's referred to as a letter with messages, symbolic numbers and very interesting images.
11:39	It's a prophecy to be read to the churches.
11:41	We get that in Revelations 1 verse 3 and Revelations 22 verse 10.
11:45	So we know very much it's a prophecy to be read in the churches in Asia, in Asia Minor.
11:51	It's a proclamation to encourage all those who follow Jesus.
11:54	The purpose of this apocalypse or this revelation well, a symbolic vision for the seven churches in Asia.
12:03	An encouragement for every believer for every generation to look and see, look and see, look and see Jesus as risen reigning victorious King seated on the throne.
12:15	It also shows historical pattern that kingdoms rise and fall however God's promise always prevails.
12:21	So the purpose of the book is to let the believers who are in modern day Turkey, in this part of Turkey, what you and I can visit and go to today.
12:31	We flew into a city called Izmir.
12:33	Izmir is a Turkish city, I think the third largest.
12:37	It's a very innovative city.
12:38	It's growing, it's population's growing, it's industry's growing, it's doing pretty well even in a tight, difficult inflation and economy.
12:46	But Izmir was one of the, in the ancient world, it was one of the cities that is mentioned here.
12:52	So this letter was written to an audience that was real, present, living in Roman Empire cities.
12:59	So the Roman Empire was dominating and these cities were populous.
13:03	They were prosperous, it's where trade was flowing.
13:06	They were in very good trade routes, good jobs, good circumstances, building, architecture, you name it, it's all happening.
13:13	And so this letter is written to an audience that's already on the ground, living in these cities, surrounded by all of this Roman propaganda that's going on to a certain degree.
13:24	Rome had a vision and they were very good at telling the citizens of Rome what the vision was.
13:29	It came through their sculptor, it came through their buildings, their civic buildings, their religious buildings, their libraries, the streets, their baths and their piping and their water and their sanitation.
13:41	Everything about the Roman Empire was communicating the grandeur, the bigness of this vision.
13:47	So these people, believers like you and I, living in these cities, they would have been familiar every day with what Rome was about.
13:56	It was seen, it was smelt.
13:58	They could taste it, they could see it and that's what happens with this letter.
14:03	Paul's in Patmos, it's a quarry.
14:06	The Roman Empire's using it to build their buildings, to build their vision.
14:11	It's also an outpost for troublemakers and criminals, kind of like what the British did with sending all the criminals from the UK down to Australia.
14:22	Now all the English want to go to Australia
14:27	because it's a paradise.
14:31	But make sure you put sunscreen on because the sun is ferocious.
14:35	The point I'm making is he's written because he's wanting those who are in the churches in these cities to look and see because they're under pressure.
14:45	But the purpose of this letter is also to show the history, the history of kingdoms coming and going.
14:52	The purpose of the letter is to show that there's a pattern historically.
14:55	Kingdoms come, kingdoms go.
14:57	Tyrants come, tyrants go.
14:59	Kings come, kings go.
15:01	Civilisations come, civilisations go.
15:04	The rise and the fall of the mighty.
15:07	And that's what's going on in this letter.
15:09	So it's so interesting because for you and I, we need to understand sometimes this situation is not gonna last forever.
15:18	And the followers of Jesus needed to hear something that's gonna get them to look beyond their current situation.
15:26	John 16, one of the most profound verses that you and I, and I think it's interesting, it comes from John himself.
15:32	John 16, verse 33.
15:34	I have said these things to you, Jesus speaking, that in me you may have peace, shalom.
15:41	In the world you will have tribulation.
15:44	Really?
15:45	But take heart, I have overcome the world.
15:49	I spoke this message in our church right before, a few months before the pandemic hit the earth.
15:56	I didn't know a pandemic was coming.
15:57	No one really knew.
15:59	So many years ago, 2000 years ago, we were given through the Gospel of John, the words of Jesus.
16:06	In me, you will have peace.
16:08	But in the world you have tribulation.
16:10	Take heart, I have overcome the world.
16:12	See the Revelation, the apocalypse of John is to let those who were in Asia Minor realize that they need to see the way God sees it.
16:26	You've got to understand some of the characteristics of John's literature.
16:29	If you read these five books connected to John, or at least John's circle, you will see they're full of tension and conflict.
16:35	Duralistic symbolism, light and darkness, truth and lies, spirit and flesh, God and Satan, us and them, life and death, Christ and even antichrist.
16:47	John in his writings is showing us how Jesus has overcome the evil of the rulers and the kingdoms of this world.
16:54	John encourages the believers to remain faithful to the one who called them and shows them how love, unity and true worship will overcome the enemy and the evil that they face.
17:11	In John's Gospel, the narrative for, in the John's Gospel, the narrative reflects external conflict.
17:18	Jesus is being violently resisted by the Jews.
17:21	John 7 verse 1.
17:32	But we, us, in the 21st century can be encouraged by this.
17:37	The letter wasn't written to us, but we can lean into it and borrow from it because we feel still the same pressure.
17:45	If they hated Jesus, they'll hate you.
17:47	You're in good company.
17:49	In the letter, the three letters that we see from John to the church towards the end of the first century, the conflict seems to be more internal.
18:00	Leadership tensions, falsehood, arguments, fighting, disagreements, deception, opposing fractions within the community.
18:09	So we've got Gospel of John, it's external, pressure's external.
18:13	We've got the letters of John, the pressure now is a little bit more internal.
18:16	It's not out there, it's within the church.
18:20	It's very rare that a church will be taken out by the external pressures, but a church that I've ever known about, churches in Berlin, churches around the world, the way you can take a church out is not from the outside in, it's from the inside out.
18:34	It's when we start fighting, arguing, comparing, bickering, judging.
18:39	We would never do that at our church, but you know, other churches in other parts of the world, we all love each other in this room.
18:47	All the cultural differences, no, that just makes us stronger.
18:53	We would never have cultural differences, would we?
19:02	But in the three letters, there is different tension, it's more internal.
19:05	But when we get to the book of Revelation, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, the conflict is both internal and external.
19:12	Just to help you understand what's going on, it's both.
19:16	Internal issues because the seven churches of Asia are facing incredible pressure.
19:22	It's organised opposition now.
19:26	We've got pressure where people have been discriminated.
19:30	I was in Ephesus this week, walking down the streets where all the shops were.
19:34	It's no different from the markets in Berlin.
19:37	Trading, selling, buying, talking, banter, lattes, cappuccinos, flat whites, back in their style.
19:46	You could buy, you could trade.
19:47	Apparently Paul had a business there.
19:50	Priscilla and Aquila, who led the church after Paul started it, basically got the young believers going and on their feet for the church to go forward for the first 10 years.
19:59	They had a business there.
20:00	It's amazing, if you can get to Ephesus, go there because you can smell it, you can see it.
20:04	I even saw a real bore in the hills behind where the Roman built a theatre.
20:10	True story, I was like, there's a bore.
20:12	No one believed me because I was the only one who saw it.
20:14	But I was like, the wildlife is still there.
20:18	But the internal issues that the church was facing, we find that because the letter has messages to the seven churches.
20:27	There's more churches, but why these seven?
20:29	Probably because John was connected to them in a more personal way.
20:34	The external pressures was because the oppression of the Roman Empire was increasing ferociously.
20:39	It was intensifying.
20:41	It wasn't getting easy, it was getting harder.
20:45	So these are the things you need to understand what's going on.
20:47	Understanding the title again is just apocalypse.
20:50	It just means to reveal, to uncover, to lay bare, to disclose.
20:54	Another title, obviously, is the apocalypse of Jesus Christ.
20:57	But listen, the most word used in this book, in this letter, in this prophecy is look.
21:03	Everyone say look, behold.
21:09	It's said more than any other letter in the book.
21:13	It's repeated constantly, look, look.
21:15	What do you need to see when you're facing hardship?
21:17	See something different.
21:18	I need to look beyond the present situation.
21:21	All I can see is despair.
21:22	All I can see is the economy is faulting.
21:24	All I can see is enemy price and energy prices are rising.
21:28	All I can see is that it's getting difficult.
21:30	It's not getting easier.
21:32	And He's constantly through this letter saying to the followers of Jesus, look, behold.
21:37	He is risen, He's alive.
21:39	He's not a soon coming King, He's already King.
21:48	The other thing that is most said in this book, in this letter, in this prophecy is fear not.
21:54	Look, behold, fear not, look, behold, fear not.
21:57	Sometimes you just gotta learn to look at the right things.
22:00	It will stop you being fearful.
22:02	The reason we get fearful is because we're looking at the wrong things, looking in the wrong places, looking to the wrong people.
22:08	And this letter is all about John saying, hey, look to the King, look to the Saviour, look to His Majesty, look at the throne of God.
22:19	Look beyond the Roman Empire, look beyond Demetia, look beyond Nero, look beyond the Caesars.
22:26	Their small Caesar, He is the Caesar that you should be looking to, amen.
22:30	He's above them all.
22:33	47 times we get this thing called the throne of God mentioned, the throne of God.
22:38	It's the image that stands out the most.
22:40	Out of all the images you get in this letter, in this prophecy, it's the throne of God.
22:45	Isn't that a great image to get?
22:47	The throne of God.
22:49	What is it you need to make bigger in your life?
22:51	The throne of God?
22:53	Or the small throne of the enemy, amen?
22:56	He's a defeated enemy.
22:59	Don't buy into the lies and what are you gonna pull back to?
23:02	There's nothing back there.
23:03	There's no one better than Jesus.
23:06	Apostasy is real.
23:07	That's what Hebrews is about.
23:08	Five warnings to the church, Hebrew church, or five warnings to the church, the book of Hebrews is all about.
23:15	But apostasy is not just an abstract idea.
23:18	It was real.
23:18	People were working away.
23:20	People were pulling back and going, it's too hard, it's too hard.
23:24	Well, what's back there?
23:27	To move forward, you're gonna need Him.
23:29	To move forward, you're gonna need to see something bigger, better, stronger, amazing.
23:33	You're gonna need to borrow from Him to get you to the future.
23:40	You know, to get them 13 young boys out of that cave in Indonesia recently, this film's on Netflix now or Prime Amazon, whichever one you wanna pick.
23:48	It's an amazing film, but them boys were never gonna get out of there because them caves were flooded for the next eight to nine months.
23:57	But people risked their lives to get in there and to take them out.
24:00	I don't know how they did it to this day, but they did it, amen.
24:03	Well, if that's in the human spirit, what is gonna pull you through the chaos of life?
24:08	Jesus.
24:10	But not how He was, but how He is, and how He is forevermore.
24:17	So who's the audience?
24:18	Like I've said, it's believers living in the cities of the Roman Empire, all across Asia.
24:23	Today, modern day Turkey.
24:25	They would have understood revelations better than us because they had better understandings of the numbers and the images that John used across the letters.
24:32	The numbers, listen, represent, the numbers represent symbols,
24:44	not statistics.
24:46	There's been so many confusion from this letter because people have turned the 144 ,000 into something that it was discouraging.
24:54	Well, I'm not obviously a part of the 144.
24:59	And like all scripture can be misused, it can be misinterpreted, it can be done where it actually disheartens you instead of puts heart into you.
25:07	But that's why John is so good at this.
25:08	He's always using the same things.
25:12	Why you can have heart, not lose heart.
25:14	So there's numbers in there, but they're not to be misused, they'll be there because they're more symbolic than they are statistics.
25:20	It's the book of sevens.
25:21	I love this book so much because I love seven.
25:24	Seven is not just every great footballer in the world has worn numbers.
25:28	Seven, I'm telling you, seven, seven, seven, seven.
25:32	It's seven everywhere.
25:33	Seven churches, seven angels, seven scrolls, seven messages, seven balls, seven, seven, seven.
25:42	Zeben, it's everywhere.
25:47	I'm like, how did I not know this?
25:49	30 years, but I'm there now.
25:55	The messages were not so abstract because they lived in a time, listen, where Roman vision and Roman success and victories were everywhere.
26:02	They could see Roman propaganda, astrology, Hellenistic folk religion, civic and religious buildings, architecture, statues, rituals, festivals.
26:14	They understood some of the Old Testament prophets like Ezekiel, Daniel.
26:18	All of this is resonating with this first century believers because they had a connection to it better than us.
26:25	The image John sees and shares with the believers is helping them to see what God is doing.
26:30	Not just what the Roman Empire is doing.
26:33	Read this book and it'll help all of us to realize what God is doing.
26:37	Not what the world is doing.
26:39	Not what Joe Biden is doing.
26:41	Not what Donald Trump is doing.
26:42	Not doing what Overlord Schultz is doing.
26:44	It's not what political leaders are doing.
26:46	It's not what political parties are doing.
26:48	It's not what successful entrepreneurs are doing.
26:50	It's not about a man and a woman or an institution or a company that will come and go.
26:55	Apple will come and buy, it will go.
26:59	Disney will come and Disney, but not just yet because we've just signed up.
27:06	What I'm trying to say is that whatever is, this is what he's trying to do with the images.
27:12	See, this is what God is doing.
27:15	Not what he's done, what he's doing.
27:18	The curtain is laid back.
27:19	It's on now.
27:21	It's not coming, hold on, do your best.
27:26	Come soon, Jesus.
27:28	All through the pandemic, I heard my wife say, Jesus, I know, I know, but come now, please.
27:34	And he's like, no, no, my dear.
27:37	My beloved, I'm doing it now.
27:40	It's happening at the same time.
27:42	We have stepped into a disruptive decade.
27:46	Oh, really?
27:47	2022, eight more years to go?
27:52	Yeah.
27:54	But the paradox is that they coexist.
27:56	Disruption, opportunity, disruption, opportunity.
27:59	Most of us are perplexed by the disruption because we don't like it and a few see the opportunity and we'll create even better days.
28:08	How does the economy bounce back?
28:11	It's so interesting what's going on right now, but this is not abstract, people.
28:15	This is exactly the way this letter was supposed to be used.
28:19	It was supposed to lift the hearts and the spirits of those who were following Jesus in modern day Rome.
28:25	Demetia is the Roman Empire around this time.
28:29	He's intensifying the pressure towards Christians and rulers with terror, brutality.
28:33	It would have caused great unrest and concern.
28:35	Believers would have been discouraged and afraid.
28:37	There was massive amounts of pressure to conform to the emperor's wishes.
28:41	All you had to do, I went past it this week.
28:44	They've taken it out of the ashes and put kind of the framework of his palaces and all you had to do was take a little bit of incense and chuck it in there and call him Caesar, call him Lord.
28:56	Most people would do it because they didn't really care.
28:58	They had lots of gods.
28:59	Pluralism was normal.
29:01	It's like Berlin today.
29:03	Searching is acceptable.
29:05	Spiritual is acceptable, but found?
29:07	What do you mean found?
29:09	Going from lots of options to one?
29:11	That's offensive.
29:15	I don't know why they didn't kill John because they were killing people all the time, especially Christians because they were problematic to the vision of Rome.
29:25	But I guess what do you do when he's an old man, 80 years old, just send him off to Patmos because what's he gonna do there?
29:31	Write a profound letter that will go for the generations that will come for thousands of years.
29:40	Oh my goodness.
29:41	I mean, that was not a smart game plan by the Caesar.
29:48	Because when he's in Patmos, what does he do?
29:50	On the Lord's Day, he goes into prayer, into worship.
29:56	He's surrounded by rocks.
29:59	It's a beautiful island in the Mediterranean.
30:01	There's no doubt about it, but there's just rocks.
30:06	Criminals, troublemakers.
30:09	And on the Lord's Day, he goes into prayer.
30:12	He goes into work,
30:59	gives himself.
31:29	Lift our spirit, and it will lift our head.
31:33	And it will cause, like John, he fell before Jesus, if though he was dead.
31:42	The presence of God to the point where you have to get so prostrate on your face before the King of Kings.
31:49	And that's what the Bible says.
31:52	You get so distracted, so easily.
31:54	You get so Instagrammed up.
31:57	I'm not saying that to ignore you.
31:58	I'm just saying, you're not supposed to be distracted.
32:04	I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
32:19	I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, like a trumpet saying, write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus,
32:33	the others.
32:35	Philadelphia, La Silla, Sardis, Pergamon.
32:39	Jesus pulls back the curtain so that we can see.
32:43	So I've run out of time.
32:44	Gosh, Lord, so many things here.
32:49	The seven images of Jesus.
32:51	Revelations one, verse 12 to 18.
32:54	Let me read it to you, because I've got to land on something, and I want to give you this.
32:58	Look, this is seven, seven, seven, seven everywhere.
33:00	But this is seven images of Jesus.
33:02	This is right in the first chapter.
33:03	Ready for it, ready for it?
33:05	Verse one, verse 11, come on the screen.
33:25	Listen to me, the robe is long.
33:28	It speaks of priesthood.
33:30	High priest speaks of a king.
33:32	He's a high priest and a king.
33:35	His sash, a cross, it wasn't around his waist.
33:38	It was across his chest.
33:40	It means his work is finished.
33:42	His tasks are complete.
33:43	It means that he is resting in his dominion, his authority.
33:47	It is finished.
33:50	It's the picture of completeness.
33:59	And then he goes on to verse 14, the seven images of Jesus.
34:03	The hairs of his head were white like pure wool, like snow, speaking of purity, dignity, majesty, without defilement in any shape or form.
34:19	His eyes were like a flame of fire, penetrating, all-consuming, but absolutely restorative, warming the heart and the soul.
34:31	His feet were like burnished bronze, steadfast, immovable, unshakable.
34:38	No kingdom, no principality, no earthquakes, no man, and no plague could move him.
34:47	Refined in the furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.
34:54	In his right hand, he held seven stars.
34:59	Seven stars.
35:00	Why?
35:01	Because the Romans were infituated by astrology, the stars.
35:04	Hellenistic time, infituated by the stars, astrology.
35:07	This is where we have the temple of Aramae, Artemis,
35:12	the goddess of Diana for the Romans.
35:14	It was a massive one of the seven wonders of the world.
35:18	I went to the, really, it's like, it's there.
35:20	It's just the archaeological team that were there from Austria recently put it up, one of the pillars, just to see the size, the breadth of it.
35:27	But it was huge, 127 pillars, two, bigger than two size football pitches put together.
35:32	It was a temple that was built to the goddess of Diana, a god of fertility, the god of lust, the god of pleasure, the god of hunting, the god of this, and the god of that.
35:41	And it was massive.
35:42	People from all over the empire would come to this temple.
35:46	And that's probably what got Timothy killed because he was standing against these things.
35:51	Paul definitely got into trouble.
35:53	I went to one of the theaters, 25 ,000 people sitting in this theater.
35:58	It's there.
35:59	I was sitting in it this week.
36:00	I filmed part of Heart for the House from there.
36:06	And they wouldn't let Paul into it because it was filled with people complaining because Paul was preaching the gospel and it was stopping people buying all of the Diana statues.
36:17	It was affecting the local economy.
36:19	The goldsmiths and the silversmiths were complaining to the city leaders, get rid of Paul, get rid of the gospel, get rid of these Christians.
36:27	They're making us poor.
36:30	Have we ever affected Berlin to the point where they're trying to get rid of us?
36:33	I don't know, but we can't get a venue.
36:37	Read it.
36:38	Use your imagination.
36:39	It's not fantasy.
36:40	It's not a kindergarten.
36:41	It's not the stuff you read to your kids before they go to bed at night.
36:49	His voice is like the roar of many waters.
36:51	His right hand holds the seven stars.
36:53	He's saying, hey, He's got everything.
36:55	The cosmos is in His hand.
36:56	Everything that you look to, everything is in His hand.
37:00	His right hand.
37:02	And from His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword and His face is like the sun shining in full strength.
37:13	He's either on drugs or He's having an encounter with Jesus.
37:17	I don't mean that to cheapen this moment, but I'm telling you, some people, they just don't realize what.
37:24	But He laid His right hand on me and saying, fear not, I am the first, the last, the living one.
37:31	I died and behold, I am alive forevermore.
37:35	I have the keys for death and hates.
37:45	Jesus is saying, I've seen it all.
37:48	The rise and the fall of Assyria, the rise and fall of Babylon.
37:53	I've seen the rise and fall of Persia, the rise and fall of Greece and Rome together.
37:57	I've seen the rise and fall of world dominating empires like Spain and Britain and others.
38:02	I've seen the rise and fall and the collapse of ideologies like apartheid, Marxism, Darwinism, communism, oppressive systems and regimes have come and gone.
38:12	I've seen many kings and queens, rulers and tyrants have come and gone, but I am the one who is forever on the throne.
38:20	Do you see, look and see, He is the King who is not just coming, He is already ruling, He is already reigning.
38:31	The King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, that's who He is, that's who we serve.