Come!

Revelation 22:7-21

I am blessed to come to the end of Revelation with you today and wrap up this amazing book. I looked back to see that my last message was 3½ months ago in Chapter 8. We have actually been pondering this book together for exactly 5 months now. And it has been a wonderful journey, hasn’t it? We have seen vivid depictions of God’s judgment on evil, exalted visions of heaven, words of hope and words of warning. Last week Carl talked about the glory of the new Jerusalem, the “place prepared for us” that Jesus referred to in John 14. This is exciting stuff: the dazzling city of light, no more tears or pain, dwelling with God forever. What a blessed hope we have! This world is not all there is; death is not the end; one day everything will make sense.

Now His Dwelling is With Men

Revelation 21:1-22:6

Welcome! Today we are in our next-to-last week in our current series on the book of Revelations. Our passage today is the “good stuff” – we are past the terrible stuff; in fact, last week, we saw basically the end of our universe and a throne room in which everyone will be judged. Those whose names are not found in the book of life will be cast into the lake of fire. As we discussed last week, that would be where we all would go if it were not for Christ; for believing Christians, those who have agreed with God about their sin, who have accepted Jesus’ sacrifice of His own life in payment for their sins, who have trusted Jesus going forward with their lives, these are the ones whose names will be found in the book of life. And so this week we will see where these blessed ones will go, we will see what will happen to them (to us).

Now, although I love these verses we will look at today, I feel nervous about expanding on them. Revelations 22 warns people not to “add any words” to the prophecy that is the book of Revelations. Unfortunately, people have done exactly this for the last 2000 years and led many people astray.

The Books Were Opened

Rev. 20:1-15

Welcome! If you have been with us these past several months, you know that we have been making our way through the book of Revelation. At one point John had presented an outline of the book and indicated the final parts of the book with smiley faces; well, we are now up to the smiley faces!

But with the smiley faces, we are also in the part of the book that creates the greatest number of questions with regards to interpretation. I believe my co-pastors and the others who teach here on Sundays probably breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that they would not have to deal with the questions that inevitably arise with today’s passage.

But you know, I actually think it is sad that this passage, Revelations chapter 20, has such negative associations with it. After all, we are in the smiley faces part Revelation! What we will read today is glorious, awe-inspiring, celebration-worthy, fantastic stuff! And so my approach today will be to treat this passage exactly like we have treated every other passage in Revelation; we are going to take it face value, see what it says, look at its connections to other passages, and contemplate on what it really means for us. Then at the end, I will say a few brief things about the interpretation issues and what the interpretative questions are. But I want the focus of our time to be simply on what this wonderful passage says.

And I Saw Heaven Open

Revelation 19:11-21

Hello and Happy New Year!  Welcome to the year of our Lord two thousand and fifteen.

The new year is the time when we set goals.  We even have a special name for those goals at new year’s.  We call them resolutions.  Isn’t that the kind of thing that governments are supposed to do?  Doesn’t the U.N. make resolutions?

I think when we say New Year’s resolution, we mean that we’ve decided to do something.  We’ve resolved in our minds to change a behavior or begin to do something that we haven’t or stop doing something that we shouldn’t. 

What about you?  Do you have a New Year’s resolution for 2015?  Resolutions?