DO 1912 1/85

1. (SINGS:) "'TIS SO SWEET TO TRUST IN JESUS, JUST TO TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD! Just to rest upon His promise, just to know, Thus saith the Lord! Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Thee‚ how I've proved Thee o'er & o'er! Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh for faith to trust Thee more!" PTL! Amen! Hallelujah! TYJ! Can't you praise the Lord? Come into His gates with thanksgiving & into His courts with praise! (Psa.100:4) PTL! Hallelujah! TYJ! Who would like to lead us in praise & prayer? (Family prays) Amen! PTL! Hallelujah! TYJ!

2. WELL, I'M FINDING THAT YOU FOLKS DON'T KNOW BIBLE PROPHECY AS WELL AS I THOUGHT YOU DID! You must have just read those GNs & the BOF & you never really studied them & you didn't really get it clear in your head, so here we go again! We're having to go back to the beginnings again & do it all over & review it all over again. I keep saying, "Well‚ you know what this is about & you know what that's about"—& you just sit there & look blank! So since you seem so unfamiliar with the Book of Revelation, perhaps it would be good for us to have a quick review of the whole Book, just real quick, to see if you know the general outline of the Book. Amen?

3. WHO CAN RECITE TO ME WHAT EACH CHAPTER OF THE 22 CHAPTERS OF THE BOOK OF REVELATION IS ABOUT? I didn't expect anybody to volunteer & consider yourselves that familiar with it. I'm surprised, Son, you are really sticking your neck out! At least he's trying, give him "E" for Effort! But just by way of very rapid review I'm going to go over these real fast & see if you can tell me what they're about. I'm just going to remind you first of all. There's no use asking you now, we're trying to get these classes packed into fairly decent lessons, & if I ask you now, then you're going to hem-haw & stumble around & the microphone can't hardly pick you up anyhow!

4. OKAY, BOOK OF REVELATION, CHAPTER ONE! I hope you have all these down, & if you haven't, they're being put down right now on tape. But you should have had the little "Revelation Made Simple" Chart somewhere, & the best place is to have each chapter marked the way they should be, right in your Bible across the top of the page. This is an open-Bible review so you're welcome to look at your Bibles. You're not really having to take notes because the notes are being taken right here on tape & you'll get it in black-&-white later, but you may want to mark your Bible as you go along.

5. YOUR BIBLE IS YOUR BEST NOTEBOOK, THOSE ARE THE NOTES YOU NEVER LOSE! I have packed away & stored away many a notebook & all those college notebooks & Bible College notebooks, I don't even know where they are today, probably long-gone, but I've still got my Bibles! I've even got my first old original Bible that I bought back when I was about 14, but it's all falling apart. I had it bound three times. Okay, now look at the chapters! Looking at me is not going to tell you anything, it's not written on my face. Just keep going through'm & see if you remember what the chapters are about.

6. REVELATION 1—INTRODUCTION! Revelation 2 & 3—I'm pausing deliberately to make you think before I give you the briefest‚ best answer! Revelation 2 & 3—Letters to the Churches. Revelation 4 & 5—Heavenly Throne Scene! By the way, there are some things in this about Heaven—where we get some of our ideas about Heaven—that aren't mentioned in those last two Chapters, 21 & 22.

7. REVELATION 6—THE SIX SEALS OF WORLD HISTORY! By the way, this goes right up to the very End of the Wrath of God. You have the great earthquake & all that stuff happening there that even happens after the Battle of Armageddon. So the 6th Chapter goes from the time of Jesus right to the End!

8. REVELATION 7—SEALING OF THE SAINTS! The major emphasis here, of course‚ was put on the 12 Tribes of Israel, but that doesn't mean they were the only saints. That's obvious, right? He'd already seen a number of saints that no man could number—that God could number but no man could number. Man still doesn't even know what the total population of the World is. So the first seven chapters are very nicely nearly all introductory, actually, including a review of history.

9. THEN BEGINS THE NEXT SEVEN CHAPTERS WHICH HAVE MOSTLY TO DO WITH WHAT PERIOD? (FAM: THE LAST SEVEN YEARS.) The Last Seven Years, or generally speaking you could say mostly the Great Tribulation. Actually, it does include the whole Last Seven Years. The 8th Chapter & the 9th Chapter both have to do with the blowing of these Trumpets, & these two chapters we call the Tribulation Trumpets. I don't say when I'm specifying these two chapters the Seven Trumpets of the Tribulation, because within these two chapters only six are blown.

10. THEN, LIKE IN ALMOST EVERY SERMON, SOONER OR LATER THE PREACHER HAS TO STOP TO MAKE ANNOUNCEMENTS, & several big announcements are made now by one of the preachers, by the angel in the 10th Chapter! Mostly he's announcing what? (Fam: The 7th Trump.) That's one. You might just say simply that he's announcing the End!—The End of all these things.

11. THEN THE 11TH CHAPTER, STILL IN CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENTIAL ORDER‚ GIVES THE DETAILS OF THE END, OF BOTH THE END OF THE TRIBULATION & THE WRATH OF GOD. It goes right up to the End. Just like that 6th Chapter back there goes right up to the very End with the Wrath of God & the great earthquake‚ so does the 11th chapter. It gives a few more details of the end of the Tribulation & also right quick a summary again of the Wrath of God.

12. THE BOOK OF REVELATION REACHES THE END SEVERAL TIMES, SO DON'T GET CONFUSED! It's not all in exact chronological order. It's in a very nice order, but just like you've seen in many movies, He gives a general overall view, then He comes in closer for a closer look at this & that period‚ & then He comes in for a closer look at this End period, & keeps giving flashbacks. I call'm flashbacks, that's what they call'm in the movies. It's a very common literary & movie method of telling a story‚ to give you the whole story in a nutshell in a way, or a preview of it, & then to go back over the details, & that's exactly what Revelation does. So in the 11th Chapter we have the end of the Tribulation & the Wrath of God again, then in the 12th Chapter we start much more detailed flashbacks.

13. THE 12TH CHAPTER IS ABOUT THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE GREAT RED DRAGON & THE CHURCH, & mostly about the Church in the Tribulation & her battle with Satan. Who's the Great Red Dragon? The 13th Chapter gives even greater & the greatest of details, at least in this book, the first time in this book that it gives great details about the Beast.—But is this the same Red Dragon? (Fam: No.) They have a Red Dragon in this story & a Red Beast, both of them have seven heads & ten crowns, oddly enough. But the Great Red Dragon is what? (Fam: The Devil.)—Satan.

14. LET'S USE HIS OFFICIAL TITLE‚ SHALL WE? Saying the Devil is fine, but a lot of people confuse that with other devils. Satan, "the hairy one", is the Old Testament word for his name. He must have been very hairy to be called the hairy one. So the Red Dragon is whom in the 12th Chapter? (Fam: Satan.) And the Red Beast is whom in the 13th Chapter? (Fam: The Antichrist.)—Showing they're very similar & in a sense, one & the same, because the Antichrist is eventually possessed by the Red Dragon.

15. IN THE 14TH CHAPTER WE AGAIN HAVE THE END. We have the fall of Babylon, we have the Rapture & we have the Wrath of God, all those major events in the 14th Chapter‚ the Gospel preached to all the World as well. See, the Lord keeps going over it & over it & over it, just like I do, review review review, to try to remind you & get the things straight in your head!

16. WITHIN THE CHAPTERS YOU WILL FIND THAT THE ORDER OF EVENTS IS VERY CLEAR & THEY ARE CHRONOLOGICAL & THEY ARE SEQUENTIAL, but then He'll go back in another vision & go over it again in some other way or from some other angle, stressing or emphasising some other phase or some other point or some other personality. But it's very important that you understand, that just like those movies with flashbacks, Revelation is constructed the same way, usually the flashbacks going each time into greater detail about an event which has already been described briefly or mentioned briefly.

17. HE COMES RIGHT DOWN & GIVES YOU THE HORRORS OF THE END OF THE WRATH OF GOD RIGHT THERE IN THE 14TH CHAPTER, BUT NOW IN THE 15TH & 16TH CHAPTERS HE'S GOING TO GIVE YOU THE WRATH OF GOD IN DETAIL. The Six Vials of Wrath are poured out here, also the 7th Vial in the 16th Chapter. You'll notice how you come down to the End again in the Wrath of God, all the same description of the events. Time & again it speaks of the End as being a very great earthquake, great hail from Heaven, a great shaking of the Earth etc., men howling & crying for fear & running for the caves of the Earth & crying to the rocks & the mountains to fall on'm to hide them from the face of the Lamb & the Wrath of God etc. Every time, it all ends the same way, so it's very consistent.

18. SOME PREACHERS HAVE SAID, "OH, REVELATION IS JUST A JIBBER–JABBER‚ IT DOESN'T SEEM TO MEAN ANYTHING! It's just a bunch of wild tales of dragons & monsters & women & all kinds of crazy things, nobody can understand it!" Bible College theologians say, "It's just sort of allegorical, it's a mystery, we don't understand it." About the best they can say about it is, "It's just something put in there to kind of show you the final victory of good over evil, but you're not supposed to understand the details." I wonder what they think God put it there for & gave all these infinite details & intricate details? He gives detail after detail after detail, & tale after tale, with exact tales from the very beginning & following the exact order of history to the very End, with the exact measurements of the Heavenly City etc. Don't tell me God just threw in all that as a bunch of stuff to mystify you & confuse you!

19. SOME HAVE COMPARED REVELATION TO THE WILD TALES OF GREEK & ROMAN MYTHOLOGY & BLAH BLAH! Well‚ I'll admit some of it sounds pretty wild, but the difference between our mythology‚ if you want to call it that‚ & theirs, is that ours is true & is really going to happen! I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of theirs is true too & did happen, because it's tales of devils & demons & evil kings of the spirit etc., Satan & all that sort of thing. But it's so polluted & so contorted & twisted by this time, you don't know what's true & what isn't as far as mythology of Rome & Greece is concerned. But ours has a beautiful order, deep meaning, genuine significance & an exact prediction of exact events exactly the way they're going to happen. So you can count on it, amen? If all the rest of this Book has happened as it has already happened‚ & hundreds & hundreds of prophecies have already been fulfilled exactly the way they were predicted, then certainly we can trust this last book to mean exactly what it says!

20. SO HERE WE'VE GOT THE END AGAIN AT THE END OF THE 16TH CHAPTER, THE WRATH OF GOD. Isn't that the End? You've got Armageddon mentioned here in the 16th Chapter & the final great Wrath, the earthquake & hail & all that kind of stuff, the fall of the cities including Babylon. But now He wants to give it to you in exact detail‚ because this picture of Babylon is very significant. It's definitely‚ obviously one of the Endtime events of the Tribulation according to God's Word, because in several places it pictures it as having occurred before the Rapture, at the end of the Tribulation.

21. BUT WE'RE STILL INCLINED TO GET THOSE TWO PERIODS OF THE TRIBULATION & WRATH CONFUSED. They're very similar & they both have a lot of Wrath & a lot of curses & a lot of horrors & woes, but the Wrath is even worse than the Tribulation because it's strictly on these people who are left behind, the very wicked & even the not-so-wicked, but those who didn't receive Jesus. I'm sometimes inclined to call'm the "good" people‚ but nobody's really good. We could at least call'm the Unsaved. We have this going on right up to the very End‚ the Wrath of God. We have Armageddon & the destruction of Babylon, which is already said to have fallen.

22. BUT NOW HE GOES BACK & IN THE 17TH CHAPTER HE DESCRIBES BABYLON & AS GOOD AS TELLS YOU WHO SHE IS. Even the word Babylon means Confusion, taken from the name of the Tower of Babel which resulted in the great confusion of languages. That's where Babylon gets its name. That's even where the Babylonian Empire got its name, from the Tower of Babel. And the original Babylonian Empire was a type of Babylon—great, rich, powerful, cruel, grinding down the poor, making itself rich over the bodies of the poor. Ancient Babylon was a type of modern Babylon today, & it was utterly destroyed.

23. SO HERE IN THE 17TH CHAPTER YOU HAVE BABYLON PICTURED AS A GREAT WHORE, VERY RICH, PROMOTED BY THE BEAST. She's always been promoted by the Devil. In all of his empires, in all of his kingdoms, he has promoted Babylon. And in the broadest sense of the term we have said Babylon really represents the materialism of the World, the worship of Mammon‚ the worship of things‚ money.

24. THEN IN THE 18TH CHAPTER YOU HAVE ANOTHER FLASHBACK, YOU'RE GIVEN EXACTLY HOW SHE'S DESTROYED, IN ONE HOUR OF ONE DAY! What does that sound like? It would just about have to be an atomic bomb or an atomic war! In the 19th Chapter you've got the Judgements of God being poured out, particularly describing two things: The Marriage Supper of the Lamb & the Battle of Armageddon!—Party Upstairs, Hell Downstairs!

25. THEN IN THE 20TH CHAPTER, YOU'VE GOT THREE MAJOR THINGS: THE MILLENNIUM, BATTLE OF GOG & MAGOG & THE FINAL JUDGEMENT. You can call it the Great White Throne Judgement if you want to, technically‚ but you could just call it Millennium‚ Gog & Magog & Judgement—in case I ask you to write these down tomorrow!

26. CHAPTERS 21 & 22 ARE A PICTURE OF HEAVEN & THE HEAVENLY EARTH, LITERALLY WE COULD JUST SAY HEAVEN ON EARTH! I like to emphasise that Heaven on Earth, because most Christians think that Heaven is going to be somewhere way out there in Space away from this World. But God's not going to be defeated, He's going to remake the Earth back into the Garden of Eden again & regenerate man again & make man what he should have been. We're going to have Heaven, all right, but it's going to be Heaven on Earth! PTL?

27. WELL NOW, HOMEWORK! STUDY THOSE CHAPTERS & SOMEONE BE ABLE TO RECITE THE CONTENTS!—Don't recite the whole chapter, just give me the titles. All the way through school as a teacher I loved one-word tests. They were easier on me & easier on the students. So if you can sum up what the chapter's about in one word, fine! Chapter 1, Introduction. Chapter 2 & 3, Letters to the Churches‚ Chapter 4 & 5, the Throne Scene in Heaven! Simple! Make it as simple as you can. Look back over your little "Revelation Made Simple" & I think you'll find there that it's just about that simple! If you don't know where it is, it's on the back of the Prophecy Chart. But to make it simple for you, we'll list them here:

Chapt.1. INTRODUCTION to things shortly to come to pass.

Chapts.2-3. LETTERS TO THE CHURCHES in Asia.

Chapt.4–5. HEAVENLY THRONE SCENE

Chapt.6. 6 SEALS of World History

Chapt.7. SEALING OF THE SAINTS

Chapts.8-9. TRIBULATION TRUMPETS

Chapt.10. ANNOUNCEMENT of the End.

Chapt.11. THE TWO WITNESSES;Rapture & Wrath.

Chapt.12. SATAN CAST OUT & THE CHURCH IN TRIBULATION

Chapt.13. ANTICHRIST, FALSE PROPHET, IMAGE, & MARK

Chapt.14. RAPTURE & WRATH AFTER GOSPEL & BABYLON

Chapt.15. WRATH OF GOD, Angels of.

Chapt.16. WRATH OF GOD, Vials of.

Chapt.17. BABYLON & BEAST explained.

Chapt.18. BABYLON DESTROYED

Chapt.19. MARRIAGE SUPPER & ARMAGEDDON

Chapt.20. MILLENNIUM; GOG & MAGOG, WHITE THRONE JUDGEMENT

Chapts.21-22. NEW HEAVEN & NEW EARTH

—Can you list'm?

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family