God Almighty in heaven, how great it is
to know you while we live upon the
earth.
And how wonderful to know that when our
day comes to finish this life here, we
get to go to heaven to be with
you.
Lord, how we thank you that here in
the book of Revelation, there is so much
more that we learn about you in such
a different dimension than anywhere else in the
Bible.
We thank you that you put it in.
And we thank you, Lord, that you promised
a blessing to all who will study it.
So, Lord, bless us now by revealing yourself
to us in our hearts by your Holy
Spirit, through that warm glow of your love
and your presence and your peace.
And may we know that quickening life within
us as we study Jesus Christ and your
plan for man here in Revelation.
And we ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
This message is all about the force of
fear in the last days and the wrath
of God upon man that really generates that
fear.
But in the end, it's all about the
Lord God and Jesus Christ, ultimately.
We're going through the book of Revelation verse
by verse, and we have arrived in chapter
six at verses 12 through 17.
In verses 12 through 17, we have the
men of the earth hiding in the rocks
and praying for them to fall on them.
What leads to that?
Well, what leads to that is the wrath
of God that begins to be poured out
on man.
And leading up to this, we have been
studying the seals, the seven seals that are
loosed, and with each one comes a judgment
from God.
The first one, when the first seal was
loosed in chapter six, we had the force
of world peace.
Then we had after that the world peace
shattered by the second seal being opened and
the force of worldwide war.
That was followed by famine and plague worldwide,
which is followed by pestilence that brings about
death on an unparalleled scale worldwide.
Then the scene switches from there and goes
up into heaven, and we find the cry
of the martyrs praying with the force of
prayer, and that force then unleashes the wrath
of God upon the earth.
When we come to the sixth seal in
chapter six, verse 12, and it is opened,
we are in the last three and a
half years of man's history on this earth.
That's where we are.
The ruler of the earth is the Antichrist
at this point in time.
The earth has been blasted with all the
things we just listed off.
You would think there would be worldwide repentance,
but there isn't.
Man is now believing on God and Jesus
Christ, but not repenting.
You can know all about Jesus Christ, even
to the point you believe about him, but
not repent.
These are the people hiding in the caves.
They now believe there is God on his
throne.
They now believe in the Lamb of God.
They believe in the Christ.
Get this, that the people that they killed
preached to them.
All those people they sent into heaven through
persecution.
They killed them because they didn't believe their
message, but now they believe it as God
begins to pour out his wrath, and we
find that here, that they begin to believe
in the Lord as his wrath begins to
fall upon them.
Now, here we have our Bibles and we're
open to the book of Revelation chapter six.
As we hold our Bibles this day, mankind
as a whole is utterly indifferent to all
of the things that we are studying, which
is pretty shocking.
And there's an indifferent attitude about us today,
even in the church concerning these things.
Part of it is, is that so many
people today don't like to talk about the
wrath of God.
That, I would assert, is because they have
been programmed to not like the wrath of
God or want to think about it or
believe in it or believe that it's true
or study it because it's not positive.
And we're in a world where everybody wants
everything to be positive.
So if you shy away from it, if
you refuse to go there, if you don't
want to study it, if you refuse to
study Revelation, it's because you've been programmed by
someone to stay away from it.
And if it isn't a human being, it's
the devil.
Because the full counsel of God's word contains
the wrath of God taught in so many
places.
Why do so many people deny that this
is part of God's nature, the wrath of
God?
R.A. Torrey put it so well.
He said, shallow views of sin, shallow views
of God's holiness, shallow views of the glory
of God and Jesus Christ and shallow view
of his claims upon us lie at the
bottom of the weak theories of the doom
of the impenitent.
All of these shallow views of sin, God,
Jesus Christ and his claims upon us lie
at the bottom of the weak theories of
the doom of the impenitent.
That's a thought for you to chew on,
the weak theories of the doom of the
impenitent.
Torrey went on to say this, the more
closely men walk with God, the more devoted
they will become to his service and the
more likely they are to believe in the
doctrine of the wrath of God.
The closer you get to God, the more
likely you are to believe in the doctrine
of the wrath of God, because it's in
the Bible and it's here in front of
us.
So we will study it because it's in
front of us.
And that is the benefit of going verse
by verse.
Revelation 6, 12.
I looked when he opened this sixth seal
and behold, there was a great earthquake and
the sun became black as sackcloth of hair
and the moon became like blood and the
stars of heaven fell to the earth as
a fig tree drops its late figs when
it is shaken by a mighty wind.
Then the sky receded as a scroll when
it is rolled up and every mountain and
every island was moved out of its place.
And the kings of the earth, the great
men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty
men, every slave and every free man hid
themselves in the caves and in the rocks
of the mountains and said to the mountains
and the rocks, fall on us and hide
us from the face of him who sits
on the throne and from the wrath of
the lamb for great for the great day
of his wrath has come and who is
able to stand.
Believe me, these people believe in the wrath
of God.
They believe in the lamb of God.
They believe in God upon his throne who
sent the lamb and they are voicing that
right out of their mouth.
Here we have in this passage worldwide fear.
We studied that last time.
Worldwide upheaval, worldwide wrath and worldwide reprobation.
People worldwide choosing not to believe in Jesus
Christ.
We looked at worldwide fear.
Let's go on to look at worldwide upheaval.
Since we studied the fear last time, the
fear comes from the upheaval and it is
perpetuated by more of the judgment that now
comes upon them.
There is, if you miss the rapture of
the church of Jesus Christ.
A great upheaval waiting for you in the
great tribulation.
If you miss the rapture, this is what
you have to look forward to.
A great earthquake.
Look at verse 12.
When I looked, when he opened the sixth
seal and behold, there was a great earthquake.
The word here in the Greek is seismos.
It literally means a shaking, a shaking.
Matthew and Matthew eight, 24 chose to use
this word when he was writing and suddenly
a great tempest arose upon the sea of
Galilee so that the boat was covered with
the waves.
So here in Revelation 6, 12, we come
to this great earthquake.
The word could be translated.
Tempest could be translated earthquake.
It literally means a great shaking.
The reality is, if you look at the
entire passage, more than the earth is shaken,
more than the earth is shaken.
The heavens are shaken as well, as we
read that the stars begin to fall from
heaven.
And we'll look at that as we move
on.
But here is this great earthquake.
It is greater than anything we have ever
seen.
The earth right now is experiencing great earthquakes.
There was a great one yesterday and they
are increasing.
And yet here is something that has never
been seen before.
Basically, what's going to happen is every earthquake
fault on the earth is going to begin
to fracture simultaneously with a cosmic global earthquake.
Every earthquake fracture on earth will suddenly be
shaken.
The result is going to be that it
will affect the way we see the sun
and the moon on earth.
So that in Revelation 6, 12, it says
that the sun became black as sackcloth of
hair and the moon became like blood.
Scientist Dr. Henry Morris, in his book, The
Revelation Record, has some really good words on
this.
He said that the great earthquake described here
for the first time in history is worldwide
in scope.
Seismologists and geophysicists in recent years have learned
a great deal about the structure of the
earth and about the cause of nature and
of nature upon earthquakes.
The earth's solid crust is traversed with a
complex network of faults with all resting upon
a plastic mantle whose structure is still largely
unknown.
Whether the crust consists of great moving plates
is a current matter of controversy among geophysicists.
So the ultimate cause of earthquakes is still
not known.
In all likelihood, the entire complex of crustal
instabilities is a remnant.
Get this is a remnant of the phenomena
of the flood of Noah and especially what
the Bible calls the great breakup of the
fountains of the deep.
In any case, Morris goes on to say
the vast worldwide network of unstable earthquake belts
around the world suddenly will begin to slip
and fracture on a global basis and a
gigantic earthquake will ensue.
This is both evidently and naturally accompanied by
tremendous volcanic eruptions spewing vast quantities of dust
and steam and gases into the upper atmosphere.
It is probably these that will cause the
sun to be darkened and the moon to
appear to be blood red.
That makes absolute sense to me.
What is amazing?
Those are the words of a scientist.
What is amazing to me is that in
Acts chapter 2, 19 and 20 on the
day of Pentecost, when Peter quoted Joel about
the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, he
was quoting Joel word for word.
And the first part of the quote had
to do with the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit in the last days.
I will pour out my spirit.
That was fulfilled right there with Peter.
He went on to say that in the
last days God would show wonders in the
heaven above signs in the earth beneath blood,
fire and vapor of smoke.
The sun shall be turned into darkness and
the moon into blood before the great and
notable day of the Lord has come right
before Jesus Christ comes back to rule and
reign on this earth.
Peter took those words from Joel chapter two,
verse 30 and verse 31.
So Peter spoke of it.
Joel spoke of it.
Zachariah in chapter 14, verse six speaks of
it.
It says it shall come to pass and
that day there will be no light.
The lights will diminish the lights of heaven.
Isaiah spoke of it.
Isaiah 13, 10 for for the stars of
heaven and their constellations will not give their
light.
The sun will be darkened and it's going
forth and the moon will not cause its
light to shine.
So Peter, Joel, Zachariah, Isaiah, further Zephaniah spoke
of it in the Old Testament.
Chapter one, verse 15.
That day is a day of wrath, a
day of trouble and distress, a day of
devastation and desolation, a day of darkness and
gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.
All of that is to say that it's
amazing to me that here in Revelation 6,
12 is the fulfillment of that which was
already spoken of in so many different places
in the Old Testament.
It's coming.
We see the verses in the Old Testament.
Men and women who reject Christ will live
to see this and experience it on this
very earth.
And it's going to disrupt and affect every
aspect of life because the normal cycle of
daylight and darkness.
Think about it.
The normal cycle of daylight and darkness is
going to be completely disrupted.
It's going to be dark, just dark.
Great earthquake.
The sun and the moon darkened.
Then we read this interesting thing.
The stars of heaven and verse 13 of
Revelation 6, the stars of heaven fell to
the earth.
Now, think about that for a minute.
The stars of heaven fell to the earth.
I'm going to help you interpret this.
The stars of heaven fell to the earth.
Could one star fall to the earth?
Is that even possible?
If one star fell toward the earth, it
would burn up the earth before it ever
got here.
And the earth would be like a pinpoint
in size compared to the star.
So what's this talking about?
Well, the word in the Greek is asteris,
asteris, from which we get the English word
star.
It can refer to actual stars, but it
basically describes any heavenly body other than the
sun or the moon.
Any heavenly body other than the sun or
the moon.
So obviously, in the context, it doesn't refer
to actual stars because they're too large to
fall on the earth.
So what would that be then?
And later on in Revelation, in chapter 8,
verse 12, we find the stars are still
in their place.
So we know that it isn't the stars
just by comparing with chapter 8, verse 12.
It would most likely refer to asteroids or
meteor showers bombarding the earth.
Asteroids or meteor showers bombarding the earth.
And we pick up in Revelation 6, 13,
the velocity basically of this.
When John uses the analogy, he says the
stars of heaven fell to the earth as
fig, as a fig tree drops its late
figs.
I wanted to touch on that because I
know you have no clue of what that
means.
How could you?
What is he saying?
Well, when a fig tree in that part
of the world has late figs that didn't
ripen when the other ones did during the
harvest, by the time these late figs are
getting ripe, there's no more leaves on the
tree.
So if a sudden wind comes up, they
fall very easily.
So that what's going to happen is for
those on the earth, they're going to see
the asteroids or meteorite showers coming at them
just random with great philosophy pummeling the earth.
It is very likely, if you think this
through, that this is what causes the worldwide
global earthquake.
If you think this through, all it would
take is huge asteroids to pummel the earth.
The earth spins at a thousand miles an
hour.
All it would take is a huge amount
of asteroids to pummel the earth and you
would have worldwide earthquake.
Very possible that's what triggers it.
Either way, there's going to be a great
earthquake.
The sun and the moon will be darkened
because of the volcanic ash and fire and
everything in the air.
Stars of heaven, asteroids, meteorites hitting the earth.
Not a very good time.
Then we read in verse 14 of chapter
6, then the sky receded as a scroll
when it is rolled up and every mountain
and island was moved out of its place.
Why are mountains and islands together?
Because islands are the tops of mountains in
the ocean.
So that the point is that with the
pummeling of the earth and the earthquake all
over the earth, there's going to be a
dramatic stress that is going to cause great
segments of the earth's plates to begin to
slip and shift realigning whole continents.
It is most likely that when you read
of the earth being rolled up like a
scroll, it will be with that slide of
the earth underneath your feet receding away that
it will cause the sky to look like
it's being rolled up and taken away from
you.
This is very heavy.
This is not allegory.
This is real.
This is the real thing.
Now, the reaction then is that these kings
of the earth, verse 15, and great men
and all these different people run to the
caves and the rocks of the mountains to
hide themselves.
What I find amazing about that is that
the Bible's been around for a long time,
a long time, long before there was such
a thing as deep within the earth, concrete
bunkers.
Yet, now, in our world, across our country
and around the world, there are within the
mountains huge places of protection designed to protect
you from nuclear blasts, right?
We have them in America.
You see them in the movies all the
time.
And they come out with some new movie.
Everybody's running.
They're all on the freeways and the highways.
They're crowding.
They're running toward the mountains to get to
these places.
We've seen them in the movies.
That's what it's talking about.
They're going to be hiding in those places.
And who are the people that are in
charge of those places?
They're listed here.
The kings of the earth, the great men.
Notice the commanders.
The commanders of the armies of the world
will be in charge of getting the people
into the caves and into the rocks, into
the places of safety that man has built
to protect himself.
Notice against other men and nuclear blasts.
But what was built to protect you against
what man can do cannot protect you against
what God can do.
So they will be in these places and
they will be led by those, follow this,
who were the very people that led the
world in the persecution of God's people and
killed so many believers.
And now deep within those caverns and deep
within those places of protections in the mountains,
the caves, they're going to begin to believe
everything that was preached to them by the
people that they killed.
And there within the caves, they begin to
cry out, realizing what they said was true.
And here we are being assaulted by the
very forces of nature.
Why?
Because God is on his throne.
God is on his throne and he's shaking
this place.
And so they begin to cry out to
the rocks to deliver them to the mountains
and the rocks to deliver them.
How?
By killing them.
In other words, the wrath of the lamb
is so real to them as the wrath
of God against their sin that they are
begging the rocks and the mountains to follow
them and hide us from the face of
him who sits on the throne and crush
us.
We would prefer death to facing the wrath
of Jesus Christ because we've rejected his wondrous
love.
But they're so deceived they don't understand that
death without belief in him is banishment from
his presence forever.
That is the horror of the twisted mind
that has worked here.
The deceived mind, the mind that decides once
and forever and for all to reject Jesus
Christ, is left without truth.
There is no truth in you.
So you would pray to the rocks to
kill you when you don't even realize it's
going to send you into exile forever with
no way back.
It's irrational.
So that there's this worldwide upheaval that leads
to this worldwide wrath poured out.
And they say, for the great day of
his wrath has come.
Who is able to stand for 17?
The answer to that is without Jesus Christ,
there is no escaping God's wrath.
There's no way to stand against God's wrath
and nobody here will stand against it.
And the Bible is so clear on this,
so clear on this in John.
I'll read it to you.
The Gospel of John, chapter three, verse 36.
It says he who believes in the sun
has everlasting life.
He who does not believe the sun shall
not see life, but the wrath of God
abides on him.
Literally, the wrath of God is already abiding
on him.
Already.
You're just waiting to see it unleashed upon
you already.
So you either believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ or you don't.
Matthew Henry put it so well when he
said those who will not observe the judgments
of God's mouth shall not escape the judgments
of his hand.
Those who will not observe the judgments of
God's mouth shall not escape the judgments of
his hand.
So these big shots of the earth who
thought they could persecute the people of God,
kill them, get rid of them, get rid
of the word of God, find themselves believing
the word of God and hiding in the
caves to hide themselves from the falling asteroids,
the shaking earth and everything else.
And it isn't going to save them either
from the destruction physically or eternally.
The amazing thing here is that the only
way to escape Jesus Christ is to believe
upon him.
Notice I didn't say believe about him because
these people believe about him.
You know what they are like?
They're not alone in the Bible.
They are like the demons that James talks
about.
He says the devils believe and tremble.
The demons, the devils believe and tremble.
In other words, they believe in Jesus Christ
because they know he's true.
They live in that other dimension.
They know that he's true.
They know that he exists when Jesus was
on the earth and he cast out demons,
they would come to him and say, I
believe in you and I believe in you
and I believe in you and I believe
in you and I believe in you and
I believe in you and I believe in
you and I believe in you and I
believe in you and I believe in you
and I believe in you and I believe
in you and I believe in you and
I believe in you and I believe in
you and I believe in you and I
believe in you and I believe in you
and I believe in you and I believe
in you and I believe in you and
I believe in you and I believe in
you and I believe in you and I
believe in you and I believe in you
and I believe in you and he threw
them out casting them the individual.
He was casting them out of and saying,
we know who you are.
You're the son of God.
We know who you are.
The devils believe and tremble.
So do these people.
They are trembling in the caves in the
rocks.
And they believe that they don't believe in
a saving way.
There's such a thing as a faith that
does not save.
Do you know what it's called?
Devil faith.
The devils believe and tremble, but they will
never be saved and go to heaven.
It is an intellectual assent to the facts
about Jesus Christ, with no surrender of the
heart to Him.
So, it's more than just knowing about Christ
that saves you.
We live in a time period where there
are many people that want to say that,
OK, you just have to believe about Him.
No, you believe upon Him.
You rest your whole eternity on Him.
You repent of your sins and follow Christ.
That was His gospel.
So many today want to have a faith
more like Lot's wife.
They want to just take their great privilege
and their knowledge and say, that's going to
save me.
But it isn't enough to know about Christ.
Knowing about Christ doesn't save you.
Having great privilege and knowledge of God doesn't
save you.
Joab was David's captain.
Gehazi was Elisha's servant.
Demas was Paul's assistant.
Judas Iscariot was Christ's disciple.
And Lot had an unbelieving wife.
And they all died in their sins.
All of them.
They all teach us on the pages of
the Bible.
They stand and teach us that it is
not privilege alone that saves men.
It is the quickening of the Holy Spirit
as you surrender your life to Jesus Christ
in saving faith.
The faith that saves is the faith that
bows before Him as Lord.
If you believe in your heart and you
confess with your mouth, Jesus Christ is Lord.
The Bible says you will be saved.
You take Him as your Lord and your
Savior.
Otherwise, you could say the same sun that
melts the wax hardens the clay.
Would let all those people to repentance and
saving faith in Jesus Christ and cause them
to be persecuted by these individuals and die
and go to heaven.
That same grace, that same sun that melted
their hearts only causes the hearts of these
individuals to become even harder.
May God grant us each one a soft
heart that bows before Him and just loves
Him and clings to Him.
Salvation, don't ever forget it, is a rescue
operation from God.
And when He's rescued you because you truly
believe on Him to save you, He takes
you away to keep you safe through your
journey here and all the way to heaven.
Listen to this.
I came across this and I found it
to be very good.
That's pretty heavy, isn't it?
That's a heavy lineup.
And they were all lost because without Jesus
Christ, there is no escaping God's wrath.
By the blood of Christ, you can.
Let me take you to another thought.
Let's ask the question.
These people are saying to the rocks, save
us from the wrath of God.
What is the wrath of God?
It is, in the simplest sense, one of
His attributes issuing forth from His infinitude.
God is love, right?
Yes.
God is holy, right?
Yes.
Holy, holy, holy.
God is also wrath.
It is one of His characteristics, one of
His attributes issuing forth from His infinitude.
The wrath of God.
The love of God.
The joy of God.
The peace of God.
It's one of His attributes.
Now, the wrath of God, you could define
it this way.
It is God's infinitely holy, sustained aversion to
sin and its resulting evil.
God's infinitely holy, sustained aversion to sin and
its resulting evil.
I use the word aversion instead of hatred
there.
I didn't want to spin you out.
Aversion is clean, so that God's infinite recoil
to sin and resulting evil, so that where
sin remains without repentance, where life remains without
the covering of the blood of Christ, God's
wrath will be manifested.
It is a holy anger.
It has no self-serving malice.
That's why I use the term aversion before
I use the term anger.
Because our anger is so shot through with
sin, it's hard to even use the word
without polluting it.
It's almost polluted before we use it in
our thoughts.
But you see, God is holy.
So His anger against sin has no self
-serving malice like ours does.
One of my favorite definitions of the wrath
of God, I think it is my favorite.
I've decided right now it's my favorite right
now.
My favorite definition of the wrath of God
is that it's the guardian of His holiness
and of the holy heaven He has waiting
for His holy people who have been made
holy by His blood.
The guardian of His holiness and His holy
heaven to come.
Without Jesus Christ, there's no escaping God's wrath.
The wrath of God is the guardian of
His holiness.
Now, how much wrath will be manifested toward
an individual?
Here are these people shouting, save us from
the wrath of the Lamb.
How much wrath will be manifested toward an
individual?
The answer is, first of all, if you
are in Jesus Christ today, none.
If you are in Jesus Christ today, you
will never see the wrath of God.
When Jesus cried out on the cross, my
God, why have you forsaken me?
My God, all through His life, it's Father.
In the garden, it's Father.
On the cross, it's my God.
Where's that intimacy of Father?
It's buried beneath the pile of the sin
of the human race put upon Him.
And then the wrath of God poured out
upon that pile of sin.
The dams of God's, of the flood of
God's wrath breaks and comes upon Christ.
And He bears the punishment and the wrath
of God for me.
And He says, my God, why have you
forsaken me?
And the answer is, so I will never
have to forsake Danny Bond.
I like that.
And you can put your name in there.
Why have you forsaken me?
So that I will never have to forsake.
Just put your name in there.
If you know Christ today, if you're in
Christ today, you will never see the wrath
of God because He already took it for
you and it killed Him.
But He rose again and we have our
new life in Him.
If you are a Christ rejecter, on the
other hand, the wrath of God, how much
is going to be poured out on you?
Well, it will suit your sin.
It's tailor-made.
It's scary.
Very scary for anybody who is willing to
admit they're a sinner and contemplates their sin
and doesn't have a shallow view of sin
or of Christ.
J.C. Ryle made it so succinct.
He said, we will have to render to
God an account of every privilege that was
granted to us and every ray of light
that we enjoyed.
We will have to render to God an
account of every privilege of the gospel given
to us and every ray of light from
heaven that we enjoyed as a human being.
We're going to have to account for it.
Albert Barnes took it even farther when he
said, Condemnation will always be in exact proportion
to guilt.
And guilt is in proportion to abused light
and privileges of the gospel.
I look at that and I'm so thankful
I know Jesus Christ.
Because I believe what the Bible says about
the condemnation of the unsaved and the wrath
of God.
I believe it.
And I believe it because it's in the
Bible.
And it's going to be in exact proportion
to your guilt.
So how much wrath will a Christ rejector
receive?
It will be in proportion to their guilt
before God.
And the Bible says that he's going to
bring out books in which were written every
sin of your life.
So you have a choice.
You can either come to Jesus Christ today.
Ask for full forgiveness in him of every
sin you have ever committed or will commit.
Receive as a free gift justification by faith
in him, which will give you a standing
before God as though you had never ever
sinned.
Justification.
It will give you a standing before God
as though he had lived the life that
his son Jesus Christ lived when he was
a human being on this earth.
Think of that.
Jesus died for the life you live on
this earth.
And he gives it to you in a
moment.
If you know Christ, you'll never have to
see that wrath of God.
If you don't, you will.
And it will take forever and banishment from
God to pay the penalty.
Come to Christ now or forever.
You'll regret it.
You'll regret it forever.
And know this.
Hell is real.
It's created for Satan and his angels, not
human beings.
And there will be no unbelievers in hell.
Every person in hell will believe in Jesus
Christ and know that everything that was ever
said to them before they went there was
true.
Worldwide fear, worldwide upheaval, worldwide wrath because of
worldwide reprobation, rejection of Christ.
So we sum up, we come to the
end here in Revelation 6.16 with a
global prayer day.
You know, we have national prayer day.
That's become very popular.
It's almost getting to the point where it's
stretching toward global prayer day when it happens.
You turn on the TV and everybody's arm
and arm and buddy, buddy.
And you've got every faith on earth embracing
one another.
Global prayer day.
Here is a global prayer day and it
is a prayer meeting and they are praying
to nature, nature.
We believe in the lamb.
We believe in God on the throne, but
we'll pray to nature.
That's really smart.
I see how you got there in the
first place.
We will pray to nature, to the rocks,
mountains, rocks.
Fall on us and hide us.
Brilliant.
Fabulous.
You lived your whole life with all the
technology, with all the books, with all the
knowledge of the entire human race.
You live in the last three years of
man on earth and you come to the
conclusion that when you're going to pray, you're
going to pray to nature and ask nature
to kill you.
What a wondrous ending to the history of
the human race from the Garden of Eden
to here.
What a sad indictment of man and how
sad it is that that's where living without
God leaves you.
A global prayer day that is held by
global Christ rejecters.
Know this.
There have always been followers of God and
rejecters of God.
We see them across the pages of the
Bible.
Cain was angry and hateful because God accepted
Abel's sacrifice.
Esau despised his birthright and hated to the
end the people of God.
His birthright was the plan of redemption through
Jesus Christ.
That's what he sold for a bowl of
soup.
Pharaoh said to Moses, who is Jehovah that
I should hearken to his voice?
Saul despised the word of Jehovah and he
sought to destroy his elect king David.
Jehoiakim, the apostate king of Judah, cut with
a penknife and burned the prophecies of Jeremiah.
Scribes and the Pharisees rejected John's baptism of
repentance and rejected the Lamb of God.
And the Sadducees obeyed not the truth and
ridiculed it, just like people today.
All about us today.
We have people who perceive the Lord and
listen to the gospel and truth about the
Lord.
And then they come to oppose the Bible,
the word of God and the gospel of
Jesus Christ with their notions, their opinions, their
arguments.
And they continue on to obey unrighteousness rather
than God.
The world is filled with them.
But in the future, one by one, they
will fill up hell itself.
I don't know about you, but I have
every intention of going to heaven because today
I believe on Jesus Christ and I have
every intention of taking as many people with
me as I can.
And I would encourage you to do the
same thing.
Study these things so you know them.
That's why we're studying them.
So when we talk to people, we give
them the full gospel of the word of
God and the true God and Jesus Christ
and bring them to true salvation.
And if they're stuck anywhere else, we know
enough to dislodge them and bring them all
the way to Jesus.
Let's pray, shall we?
Father, thank you that you love us.
Thank you that you so love the world
that you sent your only begotten son, that
whoever believes in him would not perish, but
have everlasting life.
Oh God, forgive us for our sins and
thank you, Lord, for saving us.
Thank you, Lord, that we will never see
your wrath.
Lord, fill us with the life of these
truths, that we would not be silent about
them, but that we would be filled with
your love in such a way that we
would long to bring others to you and
to share these truths with them.
And Lord, we pray that you would work
your saving grace in every heart today.
We ask these things, looking for the blessing
that you promised when we began to study
this great book that is such a great
revelation of Jesus Christ.
We pray all these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.