December 28th

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

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Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is the 365 Bible Reading Plan. Today is December the 28th, and our chapter for today is Revelation chapter 19. Revelation 19, 20, 21, and 22 contain some of the most dynamic verses in all of God's revelation, in the entire Word of God. It is the capstone of God's commentary to us. It is God's revelation of who He is, what He has done, what He is going to do, and the beginning of eternity. Eternity as we will know it. But let's go back and take a quick review from Revelation chapter one, where we get that great revelation and uncovering, the unveiling of who Jesus is in all of his glory, what he looks like and what he says, what he's doing and what he's going to do. Revelation 119 gives us the outline for the entire book. John is instructed to write down the things that were happening on the island of Patmos as he witnessed them with his own eyes, when he heard with his own ears, when he sensed with his own spirit, and then what was going on in Asia Minor in the primary churches of that day, and there were seven letters written to seven churches. And then we come to the third part of the outline of the book of Revelation, which begins in chapter four and goes all the way through chapter twenty-two. After we have been taken to heaven to see the great worship service that's going on there, that has been going on from eternity past, will go on in eternity future. And for me to say eternity past, eternity present, eternity future is oxymoronic because you see there is no time element in eternity. It is the eternal present. You cannot describe it without time because that's all that we know. Our finite minds cannot grab hold of this kind of transcendent language and concept. And so we just talk about the eternal, about eternity, about time as it never ends and never begins. And we just cannot grasp that. But when we look at what the Bible says about Revelation 4 through 22, it blows our minds. We just have a hard time dealing with it. But as the future unfolds, we have in Revelation 4 and 5 the great worship scene in heaven, very much like the worship scene that was going on 750 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, as Isaiah saw a vision of heaven itself as it opened up and the great temple of God was revealed. And the Lord was high and lifted up, and his train was filling the temple, and these seraphim, the burning ones, were ceasing not day and night to cry out, holy, holy, holy, the great attribute of God. And the whole earth was filled with his glory as Isaiah saw it. We see that same thing in Revelation chapter 4 and Revelation chapter 5, when God is praised as the creator of heaven and earth, of all the universe, of everything that there is, and then as the great Redeemer, as the one who has saved us by his own blood. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive honor and glory and power and dominion. All of that we see in Revelation 4 and 5. And then the great seals are open. And from Revelation chapter 6 through Revelation chapter 19, we see that there are three sets of great plagues and disasters and catastrophes that are going to come upon the earth. Unparalleled, unprecedented. Those words are used a lot and thrown around today flippantly. But I'm telling you, there's never been a time like this upon the earth, and that's not my words. Those are not my words. Those are the words of the Lord Jesus on the Mount of Olives, the same week that he was betrayed and gave his life for our sins, rose from the dead, all of that on the Mount of Olives during the days of his earthly ministry at his first coming. And there is going to be a great crushing of the earth. And everything is going to center around the nation of Israel and the Jewish people. And all of that is contained in chapters 6 through 19. And you have these seven seals. When the seventh seal is open, seven trumpets are revealed, trumpeting the great judgments of God that are coming. When the last trumpet is blown, there's going to be seven bowls or vials of judgment that are going to be poured out upon the earth, the seven last plagues. There's going to be during the time between Revelation 6 and Revelation 19, seven and a half years, three and a half years, when the personification of Satan will make a treaty and false peace throughout all the earth. He'll be consolidating his power worldwide. The nations will come to him. He will be a phenom. He will be a shooting star. And he will have great power of deception that will deceive all of the nations. You think that the deception of COVID was something? That will be like a drop in the ocean to the deceptive power that's going to come about during the days of the Great Tribulation. Satan himself is going to enter into a man, not demons, but Satan himself. And he will, with all of his lying wonders and power, the Bible says he will be so deceptive that if it were not for the days being shortened just to seven years, even the very elect of God, those who will be followers of Jesus, would be deceived. And having the Spirit of God living in their hearts, they would be deceived. And it's during this time that an entire third of the world's population is going to be destroyed at one time. If right now the estimates are true, there's over nine billion with a bee people living on the earth. If a third of the population were to be destroyed at one time, that is over three billion with a bee that would be destroyed at one time. That's entire continents being destroyed. And a third of the oceans will be polluted. A third of the fresh water will be destroyed and polluted. A third of all the fish and the amphibious creatures will be destroyed. A third of the green forest will be destroyed and the herbs on the earth. You see, all of this is God's word, and it's going to happen. We don't know what it's going to be. We don't know whether it's going to be a meteor. We don't know whether it's going to be some kind of atomic blast. We don't know what's going to happen. It just says that there is going to be a great catastrophe. And it gives some details, but it doesn't give all that many would want to know. But he gives us all we need to know. And then after that time, there's going to be days of great persecution. Thousands upon thousands will be beheaded because they will not bow to the great Antichrist that will rise up and demand worship as God. He's going to declare he is the Messiah, and he is going to be the counterfeit Messiah. He's going to be the counterfeit Jesus. And the Bible says that there will be 144,000 at the beginning of the great tribulation that will be sealed, 12,000 from 12 of the tribes of Israel. That's right. God has always had Israel as the apple of his eyes since the days of Abraham, since the days of the miraculous birth of Isaac, when God created Israel and supernaturally brought them into existence. Down through the centuries, he has supernaturally, supernaturally sustained them, even as he's doing today, with the millions upon millions of Arabs in the nations surrounding Israel and around the world that want to destroy Israel. Oh, sure, he's used the church for the last 2,000 years, and it all started for the first decade. It was only Jews that were saved, and they passed on the good news of Jesus as the Messiah and his redemptive message, the good news, the gospel, the Evangelion to the Gentiles, starting with Cornelius, a Roman centurion in the capital city of Caesarea Maritime, Caesarea by the Sea. You remember it well from the New Testament book of Acts. All to say that as soon as the Gentiles gained control of the church and began to dominate the church, they began to separate and to villainize the Jewish people. By the great first council of Nicaea, there was a formal separation that was created. Yes, there were many things that were done well and good in the name of Jesus at the Council of Nicaea. But one of the horrible things that happened, that the Jews were villainized, and all of the great holy days were separated from the Gentile Church of Jesus, and the great anti-Semitism began to be codified, to be put down in writing. Those were horrible days in many ways. Many in the Western Church look at those as the greatest days of the church, and they were in many ways, but in many ways it was the beginning of the end. Because you see, God has not finished with the Jews. God is still using the Jews today, and he will in the days ahead. Without the Jews, we would not have our Bible. Without the Jews, Jesus would not have been here. You say, wait just a minute, wait just a minute. No, you wait just a minute. This is what the Bible teaches. You might not like it, but you see, God doesn't write the Bible for you and I to like it. What he writes the Bible for us to do is to reveal who he is and what we are to do. And we are to love the Jewish people. And the church in many ways has led in anti-Semitism, especially during the days from 325 on, even through the Great Reformation. We turned away more and more from the Jews and still today around the world. The Jews are being vilified by many that claim to be followers of Jesus. What a shame and disgrace that is. We need to honor the Jewish people. Yes, they are in unbelief. Yes, they are not followers of Jesus, but one day they will be. And God, in his great mercy and grace, has brought us through the Jewish people the message of salvation, and we always need to honor that. You say, Well, I don't like the Jewish people. God didn't ask you to like them, he asks you to love them. And that's what we need to do. We don't even like one another. We don't like ourselves, but that doesn't have anything to do with our responsibility to ourselves, to others, and to the Jewish people. And so all of that is taking place during the days of the Great Tribulation. And people will be seen for who they are. And I believe the Church of Jesus will not be here. You say, wait now, the Bible doesn't say that we'll be spared from tribulation. Why, of course it doesn't. It does not. But it does talk about God saving us from the Great Tribulation. Not tribulation, not crushing, not hardship. It always has been that when the church has been strong. However, the Great Tribulation is not just pressure and tribulation and persecution. It is unprecedented, unparalleled in human history. It is a time the Bible calls of Jacob's trouble. And all of the world began and all of creation began in Israel, in Jerusalem, and it will all end there. You see, God has had a plan all along, and He made us a part of it. But that is not our land. That belongs to the Jews exclusively. That is the physical DNA of Abraham and his seed, his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob and all of the tribes of Israel. And God is going to keep every promise that he made to the Jewish people. At the end of the tribulation period, Satan will be bound for a thousand years. The Antichrist and all of his cohorts will be cast into the lake of fire, where Satan at the end of his thousand years in the abyss in the bottomless pit will be loose for a season, and then he will be cast as well into the lake of fire. But what I'm telling you is that Revelation 19 gives the day of victory when Jesus and those of us who follow him will come from heaven to earth, and his feet will touch down on the Mount of Olives, and he will judge the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. That is, when Jesus comes, he's not coming to take sides with anybody. And he will somehow, I don't know and don't understand all of the how tos, but I do know this, that during the days of the great millennial kingdom and the Messianic era, the scripture says that the wolf will lie down with the lamb, that the lion will eat straw like an oxen. As it was before the days of the flood in the Antediluvian world, yes, there will be peace and prosperity and longevity so amazing that the lion will no longer be carnivorous, and the fear of man will not be upon animals. And the child will play upon the hole of a cobra. All of these things are going to happen when Jesus comes again, and that all starts at Revelation 19. Read it again. Hallelujah, it says, not hallelujah. Hallelujah is a misspelling of hallelujah, which is a Hebrew word. As a matter of fact, if you open your Greek New Testament and read the Koine Greek, there's a rough breather with hallelujah, which means it should be pronounced hallelujah, because halel is the word for praise. Yah is the name of God. And so praise God. And you read that in Revelation 19, chapter 19, over and over again. Why? Because God is to be praised because He wins. That's right. Jesus wins. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

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Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.