We are going to continue looking at some aspects of Heaven, which I have been trying to do. There is a lot of information, as I said the first day; and so this is just really skimming the surface. What I have tried to pretty much do is to start with Revelation 21 and, where it is applicable, go back to the Old Testament.
Yesterday, we left off at this word “overcometh.” There is this phrase, “him that overcometh,” that we find repeated quite a bit. Interestingly enough, it is found in each of the seven churches that are mentioned in Revelation 2 and 3, and so I would like to look at this.
Before doing this, if we turn to John 16:33, we find an important statement here with regard to this whole idea of overcoming. It says:
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
I believe that this is a clue as to how we are to understand this particular word “overcome.” It is because Christ Himself overcame. He overcame sin, He overcame death, and He overcame the devil. By extension, this would apply to us, if indeed we are in Christ.
We read about this as well in 1 John 4:1-6:
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
When I was in college in California, I had just started learning about the Bible. It was all brand new to me because I had come out of a Catholic background. I did not know anything at all. I did not even know that Jesus died on the cross. That is how bad off I was, even though I had been in the Catholic Church with crucifixes everywhere.
But at one of the local colleges, U. C. Santa Cruz, they had a group of people running around with these little cards. These cards said, “Jesus is Lord.” They would walk up to you and hand you a card and then say, “Go ahead and read the card.” So you would read it and say, “Jesus is Lord,” and then they would say, “God bless you! You are saved!”
This is one way in which some people take this passage out of context, because this is not what it means to confess Christ; however, this is what they think. These people just went around and handed out these cards. Of course, this is just one example. We could give many more examples.
But, really, this is speaking about overcoming the world, overcoming false prophets, and Christ has done this. In the process, He has given us the means whereby we can discern truth and we can discern error, and this is the Scriptures. This is the yardstick or the measurement by which we have to test everything. We have to test everything against the Scriptures.
If we go to 1 John 5:4, we also see that this says:
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
This is speaking of the faith that is “our faith.” This is possessive because it is in the genitive case; but, of course, it is the faith of Christ that saves us. It is His faith that He has to give to us, which amounts to saving faith. Unless He gives us His faith, we cannot muster up any kind of faith. There is nothing that we can do.
There is a passage in the Old Testament that says, “And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.” We cannot do this. The reason that we cannot do this is because, by nature, we are spiritually dead, and dead people do not do anything; they are dead. This is what it means to be dead; and if you have a spiritually dead person, the only way that this person is going to come to life is by God Himself, because God took that life and God is the only One who can bring that person back to life.
This is just like what we read about concerning the man Lazarus in John 11. He had been in the grave four days; his body was stinking. Christ comes to the grave, like we talked about yesterday, and Mary and Martha are weeping, legitimately so. Then Mary said, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”
It is in this chapter that Christ makes the beautiful statement, “I am the resurrection, and the life.” Of course, Mary and Martha understood this and believed that their brother, Lazarus, would be raised up on the last day. They understood this. Martha said unto Him, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” and so Jesus is assuring them of this fact. Nonetheless, He goes to the tomb of Lazarus, calls him by his name, and says, “Lazarus, come forth.”
This is a tremendous picture of salvation, as we all know. We have learned this for many, many years. Nonetheless, it is important to be reminded of this because of the fact that God is still calling people out of spiritual death today, and He is doing this in our day like He never has at any other time in history.
This is because God is bringing this great salvation program—the one that He started way back with Abel 13,000 years ago—to a close. This is like the grand finale, like when they blow off those last few minutes of the fireworks on July 4th. They always have the grand finale where the fireworks just go off and off.
We are seeing this and it is very similar to what happened in Nineveh where God saved that whole city, which is such a remarkable illustration of how merciful God can be to a people who knew nothing about the Gospel. They were totally ignorant of anything in the Bible.
This is a great comfort because we know that this has nothing to do with who we are or what kind of background we come from or what our social status might be or how old we might be. We know that in absolutely every single category that we could divide man into, “God is no respecter of persons.” God has His elect. He is going to save them. None of them will be lost. Jesus said, “No man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” This is a perfect work that Christ has instituted and He is bringing this rapidly to a close.
But there is a warning that God gives to the seven churches. Of course, He has things to say about each of these seven churches because they represent all of the churches during the church age. But in Revelation 2:5, He says:
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
This is a very, very serious warning that God gives. People get upset about the end of the church age; but when you think about the nation of Israel, which lasted for 1,480 years, and that God was married to this nation and the implications of this, it is really, I think, harder to believe that He would divorce national Israel, whom He was married to, than to believe that He has cut off the churches and denominations, whom He was not married to. I think that people forget about this and they forget about the fact that God is the One who raised up the nation of Israel, as we talked about concerning Abraham. God started this nation.
He also started the New Testament churches. It was His Divine organism. He brought it into existence. It did not just pop up by itself. God, therefore, also has the prerogative to finish something that He had previously used, and we have to recognize that He has this prerogative.
The bottom line here is that nothing, no matter how holy it might have been in its beginning, if at some point it becomes greater than the Word of God, then God has to shut it down. This is what has happened.
This also has to do with a false understanding of what the Gospel is. We talked about this yesterday when we talked about a true, spiritual Jew, one who has been circumcised in the heart, and how man is so prone to these works gospels, which really try to give us security but it is a false security.
This is why we read in Matthew 7, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name…and in thy name done many wonderful works?” This is because they did not understand that God is the One who has to bring about salvation, number one. Number two is that any works that we do are as a result of salvation.
As a matter of fact, as Chris mentioned yesterday, it says in Ephesians 2:10 that these “good works” were “before ordained.” So we cannot take any credit for this either. There is nothing that we can take any credit for. All of the glory, all of the honor, all of the praise, has to go to God Himself.
This is because if we are going to be honest, He is doing everything. There is not anything that He is not doing. We are just merely the recipients or the vessels—if indeed we have become a child of God—of His mercy, of His grace, of His kindness, of His compassion.
God says this in 2 Timothy. He says that the believers are “a vessel unto honour,” but there are also “some to dishonour.” Everybody is a vessel. The question is: what kind of a vessel are we? Everybody is a vessel in the same way that everybody is a servant. But, again, who is our master? Is it Satan or is it God?
This is the big issue. This is the big question that we have to ask ourselves. As we look in the mirror, we have to ask ourselves if we are really God’s child or if we are just playing games. Am I just putting on a show of some type?
This is extremely serious because of the fact that this Day is rolling right along. We are going to get to this Day; and on this Day, we will know. In fact, it says in Romans that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”
This is all very, very frightening because of the fact that we have examples in the Bible, like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram who were Levites. They were leaders, along with the other 250 “men of renown” in the congregation. Someone may have mentioned this, but this is worth looking at again. We read in Numbers 16:3:
And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you…
Notice the language here:
…seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and JEHOVAH is among them…
How did they know this? Could they look into the hearts of their fellow Levites? Could they look into the hearts of these 250 “men of renown” and make this kind of pronouncement?
Then notice Moses’ response in Numbers 16:5:
And he spake unto Korah and unto all his company, saying, Even to morrow JEHOVAH will show who are his, and who is holy; and will cause him to come near unto him: even him whom he hath chosen will he cause to come near unto him.
This is a big, big statement that Moses is making here. He is saying that the only One who is able to really prove who is holy and who is not is God Himself. In the same way, May 21st is the same exact scenario; but here in Numbers 16, it is on a much smaller scale. On May 21st in 2011, God is going to reveal who the “sons of God” are and who they are not.
This is an incredible account because of the fact that God destroyed Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. The earth opened up and swallowed them and their houses and all of their children, everything that they possessed, and then the earth closed up again. Then the 250 men who had censors, the “men of renown,” were burned up instantly.
It is after this that we find the congregation murmuring. Look at what they say a little later in the chapter. We read in Numbers 16:41:
But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of JEHOVAH.
First of all, Moses and Aaron did not do any killing. Did they cause the earth to open up and swallow up the people? No. More than this, the rest of the congregation did not understand because they said, “You have killed the people of the Lord.”
So after this incredible event took place, these people had the gall to say to Moses that he had killed the people of the Lord. They said this even though Moses had told them the day before that God would show who was His and who was not. It was then that the plague started and 14,700 additional people died.
Again, this just points out the fact that we cannot make any judgments about someone else’s salvation, who is saved and who is not, like they did here. Of course, there has been a tendency to do this throughout the church age. We can see that this was the case during the nation of Israel as well, but God is the only One who can do this.
So we have this warning to the seven churches. It is interesting that God puts this little phrase in all of these introductory comments that are directed towards each of these churches. For example, let us look at Revelation 2:7. We will start there. It says:
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
This is in the context of these local churches that started in Turkey. Eventually, they all became apostate. Nothing else happened in Turkey, from what I have been told, for the next thousand years. It was not until Family Radio was able to get into Turkey a few years ago when they ran across a gentleman who had a radio station there. It was then that Family Radio started broadcasting there. I remember that Mr. Camping used to comment on the fact that there had been no visible church there in Turkey during the church age for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. He never thought that they would even be able to get into Turkey. Then one day, this all changed and it has been really wonderful to see how God has brought this about.
But here, within the context of Revelation 2:7, He is, of course, speaking to the true believer:
…To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
I am going to just briefly go over these. Then in our next study, I will hopefully spend a little more time on each of these.
If we go down a little further with regard to the church at Smyrna, it says in Revelation 2:11:
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
This word “overcometh” comes from the root word nike (nee’-kay), like the shoe. It means “victory,” and this is the idea. Christ has won the victory. Of course, the true believer will “eat of the tree of life,” which is Christ Himself, and he “shall not be hurt of the second death.” We know that “the second death” is “the lake of fire”; and we read that “death and hell were cast into the lake of fire”; it is annihilation.
As I said yesterday, the worst part of this is that man—who wants to be remembered, who wants history to remember him—will not be remembered anymore. This is actually probably worse than death for mankind because of man’s pride. We know that pride is the root of all sin: “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” These things are “not of the Father,” but they are “of the world”; and we know that “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
Mankind, with all of his striving, cannot take anything with him to the grave, and so he is going to lose everything. He is the ultimate loser. What it really comes down to is that he loses everything.
This is what is so tragic. It is not just that you die and that you are annihilated, which is bad enough—and it is a lot better than burning in hell forever as we had previously thought, a whole lot better—however, nonetheless, what he fails to see are these things that we are learning about Heaven, these promises that God gives to the true believer, that we will be with Him forever, that we will be one with the Lord Jesus Christ, that we will “eat of the tree of life,” that we will sit at His feet, that we will not have anymore tears, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain. All of these things are going to be wiped away. It will be like starting with a fresh, new hard drive; nothing is on there. This will be the new reality.
You and I only know this reality here on earth. As a believer, the Bible tells us that “we have the mind of Christ,” which is enormous. This is something that the nonbeliever does not have. Yet even for the believer, the Bible says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
We just have no idea of what lies ahead, other than it is super, super glorious. Our prayer, of course, should be, “May God have mercy on me and also on my family and loved ones and relatives and friends.” Of course, we want to get this message out there.
One of the reasons that I chose this as a topic is to hopefully encourage us as we go out with the Gospel and to realize that not only do we want this for ourselves but we also want this for our fellowman. May it be that God will use all of us in a little way to get the Gospel out to those who are still perishing and yet are God’s elect: the widows, the orphans, the strangers, as God puts it in the Old Testament. These are people who are elect but they have not become saved as yet. God has not regenerated their souls as yet, even though He has paid for their sins. We could say that they are slated to be saved. It will happen at a certain day and at a certain hour, but not according to our plans. It is not according to us, obviously; but according to God’s timetable.
When we were talking about Christ being the only foundation in 1 Corinthians 3, we read “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” The one who plants is not important. The one who waters is not important. The One who is important is God, because He gives the increase. He is the Divine Farmer who is caring for the plant and giving it the sunshine, the nutrients, the fertilizer, everything that it needs, and pruning it to get it to the point where He wants it.
We have that wonderful promise where God says, “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it.” We have this assurance that God will complete what He has started. This completion, ultimately, will take place on May 21st in 2011 when the believers will inherit this wonderful and glorious and magnificent resurrected body to go along with our resurrected souls. In this new completeness, in this wholeness, in this new state, we will be forever with the Lord.
Let us now look at Revelation 2:17. This is in regard to the church at Pergamos. It says:
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
Also, if we go down to Revelation 2:26, this is the church at Thyatira. It says:
And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
We know, of course, that God is the One who is working in the believer’s life, as I mentioned, “to will and to do of his good pleasure.” These works were already foreordained before the foundation of the world. God has meticulously set all of this up.
It is like this conference. Nobody knew about this conference five years ago, but God did. God put everything in motion so that the exact individuals who are in this room today would be here at this time and that we would be discussing these things. This is because God has mapped everything out in accordance with His will and, ultimately, for His own glory and honor.
If we go on now to Revelation 3:5, this is the church at Sardis:
He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
This is the great confession. In other words, it is not holding up a little card to someone and saying, “Read this and you will be saved.” It is that Christ is going to confess to His Father that He knows this one and that one; that they are His children. Of course, this is the only thing that counts. It is not what other people think or say about us; it is what Christ thinks and says about us.
I am reminded of what Jesus told Peter, “Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” Then He said, “When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.” I am not sure what all of this means or if He is saying that Peter was not saved at that time. I have not looked at this verse in particular.
The point that I am trying to make is the intimate love that Christ had for Peter—and Peter was a saved man—yet Christ brings up the fact that Peter would be tested, that Satan wanted him and that Satan would try to sift him. However, Satan would be unsuccessful because of the fact that Christ had prayed for him that his faith would remain. Of course, Peter’s faith was the faith of Christ, which is the only faith that will remain. Everything else is going to be shaken out.
We could use the example of the man who “built his house upon the sand.” The rains came and the house was washed away, because it had no foundation. We could use the example of the plants in the parable of the sower. There was one plant that showed absolutely no sign of growth and died immediately. There was one seed that fell on “good ground.” The other seeds at least showed an attempt at growth, a very halting attempt at growth. There was an attempt at some type of growth, and yet they died. The bottom line is that three of these plants died; none of them produced fruit.
The only one who is going to be able to produce fruit is the true child of God, and, again, this is because God is working in him “to will and to do of his good pleasure,” pruning him, adding more fertilizer, more sunshine, more heat, more rain. He is doing whatever it takes, because God is interested in this plant.
If God is concerned about the sparrows, that they get fed and that the ants get fed, God says, “How much more are ye better”? He is concerned with every true child of God, in using them and in bringing them to God’s full potential in their lives. Their lives are of value to God because they are a “vessel unto honour” and God has a purpose in them.
I am always amazed at how everyone is so different. We all have different gifts and talents and abilities, and yet every single believer has a job to do. If we somehow had a television screen back here that could see at one glimpse all of the believers in every country of the world who are now alive, we would see this great army that God has mobilized.
Individually, we are all weak vessels. We are nobodies. We have nothing to offer in and of ourselves, and yet God is able to encourage and mobilize these individuals to get this task done, which humanly speaking seems impossible. But what does God say? He says, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”
This is what God is doing. He is using the “weak things of the world” and the “things which are despised…and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are,” and He is doing this “that no flesh should glory in his presence.”
It is like when God whittled down Gideon’s army to just 300 men so that they could not say, “Mine own hand hath saved me.” God told Gideon, “By the three hundred men…will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand.”
So it is a wonderful, wonderful encouragement to us that no matter what the situation and no matter how things might appear on the surface, God is completely in charge. We can go to Him and beg Him for His mercy continually in every situation.
Let us move on to the church at Philadelphia. We read in Revelation 3:12:
Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
Also, if we go to Revelation 3:21, we read:
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
If we turn to Revelation 15:2-3, this alludes to the Song of Moses, which is found in Exodus 15. It says in Revelation 15:2-3:
And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory…
Here, the same word for “overcometh” is translated as “victory.” It continues:
…over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.
The last verse in the Bible having to do with this word “overcometh” is found in Revelation 21:7. It says:
He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
So if we were to just list these, I came up with twenty of these characteristics or blessings that the child of God will inherit:
1. They will be given the right to “eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”
2. They are not hurt of “the second death,” which is “the lake of fire.”
3. They are given “to eat of the hidden manna.”
4. They are given “a white stone.”
5. In the stone that they are given, “a new name [is] written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”
6. Those who keep His works “unto the end,” will be given “power [or authority] over the nations.”
7. They “shall be clothed in white raiment.”
8. God “will not blot out his name out of the book of life.”
9. God “will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.”
10. God will make him “a pillar in the temple of my God.”
11. “He shall go no more out.” He is not going to leave Heaven.
12. God “will write upon him the name of my God.”
13. God will write upon him “the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem.”
14. God “will write upon him my new name.”
15. God will grant the new believer “to sit with me in my throne.”
16. They will have “gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name.”
17. They will “stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.”
18. They will “sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.”
19. They shall “inherit all things.”
20. To them that overcometh, God says, “I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”
Let us stop here. Lord willing, tomorrow we will look at each of these in particular and try to glean a little more from them.