Please turn to Revelation 22. I will start reading in verse 1. Revelation 22:1-14 says:
And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever. And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book. And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God. And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
I hope today that we can take a look at verses 10 through 14. I really cannot say why we are going here. I was just studying and this is the passage that I settled on. A lot of times, we are just reading the Bible and praying for wisdom and God leads us in regard to what we should be reading or thinking about.
So this passage that I want to look at starts in Revelation 22:10:
And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book…
Some people have tried to use this statement to say, “The Bible is not sealed.” This is because it is written here that God says:
Seal not the sayings…of this book…
But on the other hand, we find in Daniel 12:4:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Here God has indicated, “Seal the book.” This is talking about the whole Bible. When Revelation mentions “the book,” it is talking about the whole Bible, and Daniel is also referring to the whole Bible. God is just using Daniel because he was a prophet whom God gave much end-time revelation to as a figure of the whole Bible.
Daniel did not have any power or authority to seal the Bible or any revelation that God had given him, but God, again, was using him as an opportunity to make this statement, “Daniel, I gave you all kinds of revelation concerning the end of the world,” and most theologians would agree that Daniel was a prophet who dealt with the end of the world. Just about all of the theologians agree with this. So God told Daniel to shut up the words and to seal the Book till the time of the end, and then knowledge would be increased.
We have looked at this before and we have realized that what God was actually saying can be likened to an analogy of a well. It can be likened to a well of water, like in the book of Genesis where we read that Abraham dug a well. Then we read that in the days of Isaac, the Philistines filled it up. They threw dirt and rocks and other things into the well; therefore, someone could go to that well looking for water, maybe a thirsty traveler under the hot sun who saw the well off in the distance and assumed that there was water there. Everything looked fine and there was a bucket to lower into the well. So he went to the well and lowered the bucket and had all kinds of expectations that he would get a nice cup of cool water; but when he brought it up, it was full of dirt and rocks. This is a good analogy because God refers to the Gospel in Isaiah 12 as “the wells of salvation,” and He likens the Gospel to water in many places in the Bible.
So just try to visualize a well that has water in it, but the Philistines out of envy or jealousy have sealed it up. They filled it with dirt, maybe several feet deep. A traveler could come along and jump down in there and use some kind of shovel to start digging, but it is so deep that he has to give up after a couple of hours. He is just getting thirstier and thirstier. He does not find any water and so he concludes, “There is no water in this well”; then so it goes with the next person.
This is a good way of looking at what God did with the whole Bible when He made the statement, “Shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end.” Man would not be able to access information concerning the time of the end, as well as other information that was not dealing specifically with the end of the world, whatever God decided for His own reasons to wait until the end of time to teach us; for example, how and why and when Christ paid for sin, that it was from the foundation of the world and not in 33 A.D. He also wanted to teach us His plan of judgment, which is that His Word is what has judged people all throughout their lives. They die; at that point, they have ceased to be. They will not be brought back to life as a conscious living person to face judgment.
Why did God save this information for up until the very time of the end? I do not know. Maybe one reason was so that His people could be comforted. God is very interested in the comfort of His people, their consolation. So here He intends to show them when the end of the world will be, knowing that they have wives and children and brothers and sisters and friends. It would be especially grievous if we were thinking that May 21, 2011 is the day that God was going to create hell and throw people into hell eternally where they would suffer without end. This would bring great sorrow to the people of God.
So God, in His wisdom, has shown us that May 21 is not going to be pleasant. It is Judgment Day and there are going to be five months of torment, which is not going to be a good experience for any person who is left behind. However, we need to know that it will have an end. The suffering of men, the torment of people, will have an end on October 21. At that point, He will destroy the world and all of the unsaved in the world completely as He burns it up with fire.
God says something in the book of Isaiah that connects the destruction of this world to the destruction of people that we also read about in 2 Peter 3. It says in 2 Peter 3:10:
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
God is also telling us here that people will be burned up because they are “the works.” When speaking to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul said, “Are not ye my work in the Lord?” So this has to do with people.
There are some works, as we read in 1 Corinthians 3, that are like “gold, silver, precious stones.” This is referring to the believers who will be taken up into Heaven. But then there are also works of “wood, hay, stubble,” which are all part of the works that God’s people have been involved with in bringing the Gospel to the world to people who have heard the Word and yet they are going to be burned up with fire, as it also says in 1 Corinthians 3 that “man’s work shall be burned.”
Let us turn to this verse in Isaiah that relates to 2 Peter 3. We read in Isaiah 51:6:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner…
What happens to the world and the universe—the sun, moon, and stars—is the same thing that happens to them “that dwell therein.” It is “in like manner.”
No one thinks that when God destroys the world that He is going to have anything further to do with it, because we know that it will be gone. It will be gone forever and He will create a new Heaven and a new earth. The first world will be completely destroyed and utterly annihilated.
Just like He spoke to bring this world into existence, He speaks and—poof—it is gone, as well as all of the people. They are going to die “in like manner.” They are going to be burned up and that will be it. This will be an “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord” because God’s act of destroying them is an eternal act. They will forever be gone. They will have no existence whatsoever. This is God’s plan on October 21, 2011, which we can be thankful to God for.
I remember when we first began to learn about this, we realized that this is very merciful of God. Even in wrath, to some degree, He has remembered mercy because these people will not suffer on and on and on into eternity. They are just going to be gone, just as the Bible says of men who have died before this day that “in that very day his thoughts perish.” Job says that man will perish “like his own dung.” What happens to dung? It is gone from us and it is gone forever; and so, too, will the unsaved and the wicked be gone forever.
So we know that it was God’s plan to seal up the Book till the time of the end, but what is He saying here in Revelation 22:10:
…Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book…
The Greek word for “saying” is logos, which is translated as “word” in other places. Seal not the Word. This is equivalent to what He said to Daniel, “O Daniel, shut up the words.” This was referring to the Word of God, and Revelation 22:10 is also referring to the Word of God. There is no mistake about this:
…Seal not the sayings [or the words] of the prophecy of this book…
We would have a problem if not for the fact that God explains what He means in the second part of Revelation 22:10:
…for the time is at hand.
He is making reference to the time of the end, just as He told Daniel, “Daniel, seal up the words till the time of the end.”
So Revelation 22 is looking into the future. It is looking forward to our day, to the day when God takes off the seals and gives information to His people.
This is very much, since we are at this time, like someone jumping down into the well and digging. Because it is the proper time, they find a little water. They see a little water come up as they are digging.
Theologians have dug and dug and dug into the Scriptures, trying to understand the end of the world. They teach eschatology in the seminaries, which is the doctrine of end-time things.
Actually, this word “last” that we read in Revelation 22:13 where Jesus says:
I am…the first and the last.
This word “last” is the Greek word eschatos. This is where the English word “eschatology” comes from. It means “the doctrine of last things.” However, the churches teach pre-mill doctrine, post-mill doctrine, and a-mill doctrine. They have done this for centuries and none of them have been right. None of them have been correct because they were digging into a closed Book. They were digging in a well that God had shut up. The Bible says that what God shuts, “no man openeth.” It is only when God opens it that “none shall shut.” And this is what is going on today.
Are we smarter than Calvin or Luther, these great theologians of the past? Are we really more knowledgeable than these men who thoroughly knew Greek, Hebrew, and Latin? They were indoctrinated again and again in studying the Bible in its original languages, and they studied for hours and hours and hours. They did not have electricity; they studied by candlelight. They also did not have the distractions that we have today, all of the flashing lights: the TVs, the radios, the computers, and all of the gadgets and games. We have the whole world at our fingertips and we are distracted by this on a daily basis. They had none of this to the degree that we do. Of course, the world was still sinful, but it was nothing like it is today. Do we really think that we could know more than they did if it were not God’s will that we do so?
So God did not bless their efforts to come to truth concerning end-time things; however, now people look into the Bible and they understand. They see and they realize, “Oh, this is what God meant all along.” But it is only because we are at the time of the end that we can now lower the bucket and it comes up overflowing. It comes up to a point that we cannot even take it all in because there is so much information coming from the Bible, and this is only because “the time is at hand.”
Moving on to Revelation 22:11, we read:
He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still…
I do not know exactly what God is saying by this except that to be unjust or to be filthy would be referring to someone who remains in their sins, someone who is a transgressor of the Law of God and is subject to the penalty of the Law, which is death.
On the other hand:
…he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
These would be the true believers whom God gives righteousness to, those whom God makes holy. No one in and of themselves is righteous, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” No one in and of themselves is holy. We are unholy, profane. We are definitely not holy people until God makes a change in the life of someone.
Why is God saying “let him be unjust still” or “let him be righteous still”? This could be a verse given from God’s perspective of knowing who His elect people are and knowing who are not His elect people, which is exactly how the human race will remain. No one is going to frustrate the grace of God or the will of God. He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy. Each person whom He decides to save will become righteous and will be considered holy because they will be holy. Each person whom He does not save will remain exactly as they are: unjust and filthy in their sins before the sight of God.
Then it says in Revelation 22:12:
And, behold, I come quickly…
If we understand this statement along with the idea that “the time is at hand” and that now is the time that the sayings of the Book are opened, we can really see this as we think of God opening up the book in 1988, after which there is only this 23-year period to May 21, 2011, of which we have very little time remaining. It is going very fast; it is coming quickly, and this is probably in view to some degree. But also, from God’s perspective, what is 13,000 years? What is 13,023 years, to be exact, until Christ’s coming? It is not that long of a time!
God says of man’s life in Psalm 90:4-6:
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
Then we also read in Psalm 90:9-10:
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
This is our life. It is like a vapor.
These verses remind us of what it says in Job 14:1:
Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
What do people want out of this world? What are they expecting to get out of this world? It is guaranteed that they are going to get misery. They are going to get trouble. There are going to be afflictions and tribulations. There will be diseases and at some point death. At some point, the family whom they love will be taken away. At some point, the possessions that they hold dearly will be removed. Why do people cling so tenaciously to this world that God says is passing away?
He tells us, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” If you love the things, you love the world. Why would people think that this is just so great and wonderful? It can only be due to blindness. It can only be due to ignorance. It is due to a failure to understand the nature of this world.
Even if Judgment Day was not next year, which it is, but if it was not, how far into the future could you go avoiding calamity, avoiding disease, avoiding the evils of other men who might take your life at any minute, avoiding accidents, etc.? How far do you think that you could be able to go into the future of this world before you would be presented with the very same situation that we all have now, which is meeting God? This is guaranteed. There is no one who is going to live forever.
How long did the oldest man in the Bible live? Methuselah lived 969 years. Would you not love to be him and live 969 years? When was Methuselah upon the earth? It was thousands of years ago, and so he has been dead for thousands of years. The oldest man who ever lived, lived to 969 years. In his 969th year, he died. He died, just like people die today, and then his memory was gone. Except for what the Bible records, that is it; his life is over.
So the answer to man’s problem is not extended life in this world. If you live 70 or 80 years, like Moses says, this day will come. Even if you live to be 100 or 120, this day will still come, if God were to allow this world to continue on as normal. But it is just a prolonging of the inevitable, which is that there is a day when we must meet God. May 21, 2011 is that appointed day in which God has determined to judge the world, and this is coming quickly.
As generations over the course of history have come and generations have gone, they have been very much like our own generation, and yet their lives came to an end. Now God is bringing everyone’s life to an end. He is bringing the whole world to a conclusion. He is “the first” and He is “the last.” Hopefully, we will look at this in a second.
Returning to Revelation 22:12, we read:
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
There are churches that teach that God has a program of meting out rewards, that He will give rewards based on what you do in this life. If you do a lot, if you work a lot for God, you get a lot. This is very similar to a pay scale in the world. The one who works hard is the one who gets the raises; he gets all of the advancements at work.
Churches have picked up this very same idea and they try to present the Gospel as an offer, a reasonable offer. “Give up your life. Give up your own ways and your own desires. Take up the cross and live life as a Christian. God will make it worth your while.” This is how this is presented. You can obtain a better deal. You can get a better deal with God, more rewards; but this is false.
God has told us that the reward that His people will receive is certainly super wonderful and way beyond anything that we could ever imagine. It is an “exceeding great reward,” as He said to Abraham in Genesis 15. We read in Genesis 15:1:
After these things the word of JEHOVAH came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
So first of all, God removes all sin. He saves us. He creates a new Heaven and a new earth. He gives His people eternal life; they will never die. There is the removal of the curse, the removal of all the negatives that are identified with this life, like disease, like death. If this were our only reward, if it was that God just takes away all things that are bad in this life, this would be pretty great; but it goes beyond this because He speaks of blessing His people with love and with riches beyond anything that we could ever think or imagine, into eternity.
Of course, the great reward is God Himself. He will be with His people and dwell amongst them. We will be able to go directly to the source of knowledge and truth and wisdom and understanding. We will be able to communicate with Him and He will communicate with us.
This will be a tremendous blessing for the people of God who love to study the Bible. They love to study the Bible. Why? Because God has implanted this in the heart of His people. They are blessed. They cannot think of anything better than going to a Family Radio Bible conference and sitting there with their Bibles open for hours and getting into discussions with other people about the Bible, and then going back to their room and praying and reading more of the Bible.
You see, people of the world do not understand this. They say, “There are other books, you know?” But they fail to realize that there is no other book like this Book. There is no other writing like this writing. Even the Jews said of Jesus, “Never man spake like this man.” He spoke and they had to admit that His speech was unlike anything they had ever heard before.
This is the Word of God, the Bible, and so we will be directly with the source. Every time God speaks, it will be a declaration from the Word. This will be a great joy.
God also speaks of rewards for the wicked. Look at Psalm 91. It says in Psalm 91:8:
Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.
This word “reward” can be understood as “payment.” The Bible declares that “the wages of sin is death.” The reward or the payment of the wicked for their transgressions will be evident shortly. It will be seen shortly on May 21 of next year. God’s people will be taken out of the world. All of the rest will remain. They will be left behind and they will experience this terrible reward that God has in mind for the five months of torment.
Going back to Revelation 22:12, we read again:
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me…
By the way, we read here, “I come quickly.” Look at Revelation 22:20:
He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen.
And the response is:
…Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Let me ask you a question. Do God’s people want Jesus to come? Yes. Yes, we want Him to come. Why? Because we understand that everything that God has told us in the Bible of His great and wonderful promises is going to be fulfilled by Him. The future is just so incredibly great that who would not want this? Who would not want this if they knew that they were going to get it?
When God is going to remove the aches and the pains and the sniffles and the fevers and the cancers and all of the things that are the troubles of this body, the physical problems, and equip us with a new resurrected body, a spiritual body that will never experience the least ailment again, who would not want this?
We will be with God and we will be with the people of God in a loving family of God into eternity future. Never again will a family member pass away whom we love. We will never again have to put someone into the ground and never be able to see them again. Never again will they become only a faint recollection in our minds. Never again. Never again.
The family of God will be with God together and we will safely love and trust. Everything good that this world only gives glimpses of will be in its complete fullness in God’s presence forevermore. Who does not want this? Who?
Of course we want Him to come, but this is tempered with a bit of sadness because we know that we have family and friends who are not saved and who will not experience this, and so there is a little sorrow mixed with it. But, finally, yes, come! And not only come, come quickly! Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Look at 1 Thessalonians 4. This is the chapter that describes in a little detail the resurrection and the rapture, which occur simultaneously on May 21 of next year. Notice what it says in 1 Thessalonians 4:17-18:
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
God offers us comfort, consolation, and peace because there are some people who have been struggling who are God’s people, wherever God has placed them in the world. For one thing, their righteous souls are vexed day by day with what they see in the world because God has given them His Spirit and He is troubled by these things, even though they previously would have been all for these things within their own hearts. Secondly, there could be a situation with a wife in a marriage where the husband is very abusive. Or there could be a Muslim, maybe a young man who grew up as a Muslim, and now he hears the Gospel and becomes a child of God who is living a very difficult life because no one is accepting of the fact that he has become a Christian.
There is great persecution and tribulation and affliction for God’s people in this world in so many ways that we do not even know of, but God knows about each and every one of His people. He knows of the longing and the desire, “O please, Lord Jesus, come quickly. I know whatever problem or trouble that I have right now, You are the answer. Your return will solve these things in a way that the world never could.” So God’s people, yes, are excited and happy and desirous of His coming.
Look also at 2 Timothy 4:8, which says:
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness…
This is our reward, eternal life. It continues:
…which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.
They love it, not dread it, not, “Please, make May 21 go away! I do not want to hear anything else about Judgment Day. I just do not want to hear this anymore. Make this go away! I will make it go away. I just will not listen.” But this is not loving His appearing.
You see, this is why this reveals the true nature of the church today and of the congregations. They do not want Him to come. They do not want God to fulfill His Word to the uttermost, as He has said that He will do. They want to continue on living with the expectation that Christ might come some day, maybe even today. But do they really live like Christ is coming today?
Those of us who now realize that He is coming next year, has this not really impacted us over the last couple of years? While we have understood this, we see our lives and we see how we are living. We are troubled, and yet the churches are not living at all like Christ is coming today or tomorrow or next week or May 21, 2011. They are living as they please.
This doctrine that He could come at any point allows them to live really as though He is not coming at all. Yet God says, “I am coming. I am coming!” He promised that He would return, and God’s promises are “faithful and true.” He will fulfill every promise, and He is just about ready to fulfill the last promise, the greatest one, and end this world and bring man’s sin to a conclusion and put it all behind Him.
So we read next in Revelation 22:13:
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
This is Jesus who is speaking and He says, “I am.” “I am” is ego eimi and it is a name for God. Moses said, “Who shall I say has sent me?” God said to Moses to tell them, “I AM hath sent me unto you.” I AM was the voice from the burning bush. Christ was basically saying that He is eternal God, “I AM, ego eimi, Lord God.” After Thomas made his declaration of “My Lord and my God,” He did not say, “Thomas, I am just a great prophet, so do not say this to me. Do not worship me.” Christ did not say this to Thomas. He said, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed.” He thereby confirmed that He is Lord and He is God.
I am Alpha and Omega…
We have an alphabet. We get the word “alphabet” from the Greek, “I am Alpha.” In the original Greek, it is written just as the letter A and the letter omega, which is kind of like an upside-down horseshoe, but the definite article is in front of both:
I am [the] Alpha and [the] Omega…
He is the One who was at the beginning. He is God. He has been from everlasting, and so He is trying to explain to us that this is His character.
Let us look at Colossians 1. Colossians 1:16-18 says:
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
This is referring to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is “the beginning.” This is why He says, “I am Alpha.” He is “the firstborn from the dead” in that He rose from the dead from the foundation of the world; but also, He is eternal God who has been from everlasting. He never had a beginning, in this sense. He was not created. He did not just come to be. He has always been.
As far as our little minds could take us back into eternity past, it would never be possible for us to come to a point to where it could be said that God was not. He has always been God. We cannot understand this, but this is what the Bible tells us and this is the truth. Jesus is always God, and He says in Revelation 22:13:
I am…the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
God spoke and He brought the world into existence, all creation, the universe. He began it and He intends to end it. He intends to bring it to a close.
Let us just look at a couple of other verses in Isaiah and then we will just make one final observation before we close. In Isaiah 41:4, it reads:
Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I JEHOVAH, the first, and with the last; I am he.
Again, this is more proof and more confirmation of who Jesus really was and is. He is Jehovah God. Jehovah says, “I JEHOVAH, the first, and…the last; I am he,” and Jesus says, “I am…the first and the last.”
We read also in Isaiah 44:6:
Thus saith JEHOVAH the King of Israel, and his redeemer JEHOVAH of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
For people who insist on denying that Christ is God, the Bible will not permit this in any way. He is Jehovah Himself, as His name Jesus or Joshua declares.
The final point that I want to make is in Revelation 22:13 where Christ says:
I am…Omega…the end…and the last.
He is saying, “I am Omega. I am the end. I am the last,” but then He is not supposed to know when it is, as so many in the churches teach? They teach that the Son does not know, that Christ does not know, and yet His name is Omega. His name is “the end.” His name is “the last.” But He does not know? This just does not sound right because this is actually not true. It is not true. As it says in Job 24:1:
…times are not hidden from the Almighty…
And Jesus is Jehovah. He is the Everlasting Father, as it says in Matthew 24 or in Mark 13, “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man…neither the Son, but the Father.” Of course He knows. He has full understanding of when He will save the last of His elect. He is the One who appointed the day. He is the One who took the very name “the end.” It is impossible for Him to not know the time when He intends to save His last elect person and bring judgment on this world.
These are people who are desperate. They are desperate to try to make this go away. They are even willing to say, “Even Jesus does not know,” if this will just make it go away. But this is not going away. It is coming full force, quickly. Very fast, this day will be here.
Let us close.