On a White Horse - Revelation 19:11-21
Revelation 19:11-21 · Vern Peterman · Nov 8, 2009
Revelation (2009), No. 45
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926147121227

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, we've got, this is actually compared to a lot of what we have, a short handout. It's only five and a half pages. So, because usually we were doing, you know, seven to nine or something like that. On the other hand, there's a lot in it. And the lot in it is this is about the second coming. Second coming of Christ. I sat down with an orthodox rabbi about this time of year, a few years back. And he said, when Messiah comes, we'll ask him, is this your first time or your second time? And well, I hope the rabbi is around to ask him. Asking him at that time is, I believe, a little late.

But, anyway, this is the second coming. The truth is, the second coming of Christ is told about all the way back in Genesis and is Christ speaks of it in the Gospels, and even at his ascension, what did the angels tell the disciples as Jesus ascended? The same way in which you saw him go up, he will come back. And by the way, the coming back is recorded in Zechariah chapter 14, which says that the Messiah, who is God, will come back again, and his feet will touch the Mount of Olives. And so that part of the detail is given there. It is something spread from Genesis to Revelation, and we're looking at the part of Revelation that talks about it. We've had some earlier indications of it.

And so we have here, this is an artist's depiction of what that might look like. I think, you know, I'm not, how do I say, my heart is a little bit twisted. I'm not skilled as an artist, but I would think it would be difficult to put the Lord's second coming in a picture. a challenge at any rate. But so anyway, this is Pat Marvenko Smith's interpretation in artwork. Let's look at verses 11 through 13 here. It's on the top of the first page of your handout.

And I saw heaven open, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it was called Faithful and True. he judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written on him which no one knows except himself. His clothes with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. Let's ask this question.

And I saw heaven open. Can you think of times in what scripture reveals when heaven was opened. This was the lower heavens opened up. The ascension of Christ was an opening into heaven. Other ideas? I don't remember if it opened, but when Okay, and there was transfiguration? Okay. That was a heaven opening kind of appearance. Yeah? Okay. Alright. How about Stephen? Yes. Okay, Stephen. What happened with Stephen? Remember Stephen? What happened with Stephen? What did Stephen see? He saw Christ and what was Christ doing?

Sitting on the throne. You're close. Standing. And that was extraordinary. Standing for, in essence, Stephen's homecoming. So these are exciting moments. We can look back, for example, remember Jacob at Bethel had a dream. And there was these angels ascending and descending. So there are glimpses in time when heaven was open. And so this has some similarity to that, but also some uniqueness. This is a coming of Christ that never happened quite before. And it won't happen quite this way again. So there's a uniqueness to it.

One of the other things to keep in mind, remember at the very beginning of this study, one of the things we said, is that John writes with Jewish symbolism. What he writes, he writes with Jewish symbolism. What do we mean by Jewish symbolism? Anybody tell us? The signs and wonders. The Jews are looking for signs and wonders. tend to see them.

When John describes something, our tendency, and one of the reasons why a lot of people get so bewildered trying to look at Revelation, our tendency is to put the various images together and to try to say, what does that look like? That is kind of a Greek way of looking at things, in that the Greeks were very concerned with aesthetics. How does it look? And they made great statues and things of that sort, reflecting that viewpoint.

As the Jews would write things like this, and the Jews were not inclined to make statues because against what God had said in the law, but as the Jews would describe things, they were not interested particularly in how does it look, even when they wrote poetry, they weren't interested in how does it sound, they were interested in what does it mean. What does it mean? Their poetry, I mean, we're concerned with rhyming words, you know, Their poetry doesn't rhyme words with sounds, it rhymes with meanings. Their description here, as John writes, is Jewish symbolism looking at what does it mean, not what does it look like when you put the composite together.

We saw that in the very first chapter of Revelation. Here is Christ in the very first chapter of Revelation, and he's got eyes like a flame of fire and hair like snow and a big five foot long sword coming out of his mouth, and his legs are like molten bronze.

You put it together, I mean, it's freaky. It looks weird as we look at it from kind of a Greek cultural perspective, but if we understand Then we get the picture, ah, it's not what it looks like, it's what does it mean? What does that symbol mean? And that's exactly what we see here.

He starts off with something that's a little bit easier for us to absorb here, and he says, the faithful and true witness. That was something we saw in the very first chapter and chapters. And why was it important that he is a faithful and true witness? Why is it important that Jesus is a faithful and true witness?

Why does that matter? Yeah? That can't be anything else. First of all, it is his character, is it not? It's not just he happens at this moment to be faithful and true, or for this period of time. It is eternally his character that he is faithful and true.

The other thing is, in order to carry out judgment in the ancient court of law, particularly the Jewish context, Remember, you needed a faithful and true witness. If you have witnesses that come up, for example, two or three witnesses and they don't jive in their story, somebody's not telling the truth, right? But Christ is the faithful and true witness. Therefore, judgment can be made because you have a faithful and true witness. Which fits in with the next Why is it important that Christ judges and wages war in righteousness? Why does that matter?

His actions are not based on any animosity or anger. It's rather just, this is what is deserved. what I want, when I want it, and I'm having a military temper tantrum. Okay? Yeah. Well, any kind of conflict has to do with motive. Yes. And so, if you, you know, the scripture talks about winking at sin. Yeah. Okay, so that may cause conflict. Yeah. Well, that's a conflict in, you know, having a righteous purpose.

If Paul said not to What's that comment that he made? I can't even remember. Something about don't do something. If you think of some of the major wars that people have had to deal with, frequently on at least one side has involved some tremendous corruption of motive. We battled in World War II, and I think both on the European and on the Pacific fronts, we were dealing with some pretty sick motives. There was unrighteousness that we were having to battle. Here, it's very clear, he says he's not coming here with some poor motive or poorly founded reason. for carrying this out.

It's out of righteousness. And that's the problem with the Middle East today. You can't say the Jews are right. You really can't say that the Arabic people are right. Neither one of them are right. Because they have false motives. Even in Isaiah it talks about the Jewish people practicing idolatry. They don't worship the one and true God. So the motive is wrong.

And really, I think you could probably look at a great deal of the wars of human beings and look at it and say, at least on one side, maybe sometimes even both, at least on one side there's some really evil motivations, at very least suspect motivations.

Here, when Christ comes, there will be none of that. He will come in absolute and complete righteousness. Period. Totally. Okay, let's look there at page 2. It says that his eyes were like a flame of fire, and we saw that in Revelation chapter 1 and chapter 2.

And Revelation 1.14, his head and his hair were white like wool, again, like snow. Jewish symbolism, right? And his eyes were like a flame of fire.

And Revelation 2.18, and this is the messages to the seven churches. A similar thing, unto the angel of the church in Thadara write, the Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet are like burnished bronze. That's this. Again, Jewish symbolism. Back when we studied these passages, we saw that the eyes like flames of fire was a figure of speech indicating the penetrating judgment.

When Christ comes, it's not that people will be looking and saying, wow, What they will see is that guy looks right through me and he looks deep. He's not just coming, you know, you're the enemy and I'm going to slaughter you. But he is looking deep, understanding every single thought of the heart. One of the things that takes place in modern warfare, and it took place in ancient and medieval warfare is sometimes there were innocents that were hurt. Imagine, here's Christ coming and he doesn't come to say, well that's the general area where the enemy is and so I'll just blast out that general area and whatever happens, happens. He knows the heart of every single one. Every single one, no exceptions. This is amazing. He comes with righteousness. He comes with power, but also incomparable insight into the heart of each one. Then he describes the Lord Jesus Christ as having many diadems on his head. At first we might ask, you know, how is he going to have a lot of diadems on one hip?

You know, that just sounds kind of awkward. Almost like, well, you don't want to move because the crowns are going to fall. Here again, what is important here? Understanding Jewish symbolism. If we look at it with Greek symbolism, what does it look like? And we think practically heaven is going to try to balance all these crowns, which is kind of strange. That's the Greek approach which we culturally tend to inherit. But if we just step back for just a little bit and say, what does it mean for him to have many crowns on his head? What does it mean to have many crowns on his head? What's that telling you?

Deity, yes. One is deity. And what else? And victorious in many ways. Okay. In other words, the crowns are also pictures of victory. So he is deity who has not just been deity as pure being, but also in doing, he has been victorious. Yes. Isn't that probably also connected to the fact that he's worthy? I mean, when we go back to the first part of Revelations and it looks at And this is cool, this is cool, because we can look back through time and you think, just kind of picture in your mind various people of royalty who, you know, they really shouldn't have been... that person shouldn't have been king and that person shouldn't have been queen and, you know, it's like that shouldn't have happened. With Christ, you're right on target, because He is deity, He is victorious, and He is worthy.

He is the one who has the worthiness, but none of those crowns are bogus. None of those crowns are like, well, okay, that one and that one are right, but this other one, I'm not so sure. There is no question about any of these crowns. they are founded in what he has done and who he is and his being absolutely worthy of every single one of them.

What is one of the titles that we're going to see in this chapter of Christ? Especially as he steps into this time of judgment and into the millennium, into the millennial kingdom. What's one of the titles that we have? King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That also fits with the many crowns. Does that also show the duality of who he is? Because King of Kings means that he's the greatest king that's ever been in the earthly kingdom. And if he's Lord of Lords, it also means that he's God.

So his purpose Yeah, here again it's Jewish, but here's where the importance of the Jewish, understanding the Jewish symbolism, if we look at it, just what does it look like? It's a little awkward, I hope he doesn't stumble and lose some of the crowns or something. If we look at understanding the Jewish symbolism, always ask, what does it mean? Not what does it look like?

And so we start to understand, yes he is deity, yes he is the one who is victorious, yes he is the one who is worthy. And let's look at this victorious. In what ways can you say Jesus was victorious already, even up to this point? Okay, he overcame death. And we saw that, of course, in the Gospels. We see that repeated in the letters from the Apostles. And we see it in the early chapters of Revelation. The first chapter, he says, I was dead and now I'm alive.

So he overcame death. In what other ways was he victorious? Yeah? He did the absolute will of God. And it wasn't a matter of him going back up to heaven and say, well, I tried. I gave it my best. We'll give you an A for effort. He didn't pull it off, but he gave it a little college try, he gave it the best shot, all those things. No, he actually did it. He accomplished it. Good. What else?

Perhaps a temptation when he was approached by Satan. When he was approached by Satan, He didn't go, well, yeah, I guess so. He was absolutely victorious over Satan in the temptation and in every other regard. He couldn't be tricked by the Pharisees.

The Pharisees wanted to come up with, hey, what's the magic question that he can't answer? And so they would come up with various theological puzzles. Remember the Sadducees coming up, and because the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, and so, you know, they come up with this question in the week before Christ was crucified, they come up with this question, I think it's recorded in Matthew 22. And in the question they give him this, okay, according to the Law of Moses, A man's brother dies, then the next brother in line has to marry the wife. And this happens seven times.

Whose wife is she in heaven? So Jesus comes around and says, you guys don't understand the scriptures, ignore the power of God. First of all, people aren't going to be married in heaven based on their marriages here on planet Earth. They're like the angels. They're neither married nor given in marriage. in heaven. And in heaven there's a different marriage going on, and we studied it last week.

He says, that's first. Second thing is, you don't understand what you Sadducees don't teach the resurrection. The very first five books of Moses, which you say are the only books that are valid, say that there is a resurrection. Why? The present tense I am, present tense, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, you are wrong.

And that answer totally stumped the Sadducees. They never tried to come up with a question again. He was victorious. He was never outrangled in any of these questionings. You've got a good point. Yes? That's what made them sad, you see. Yes, it definitely made them sad, you see.

They had not one bit of an answer for Jesus' response. And matter of fact, everybody was quite stunned at the thoroughness of Jesus' response. Not only did he answer their question with the fact that they didn't understand, no, marriage does not continue on into heaven, but also proved from the very books that were the only ones that they accepted that yes, there is indeed a resurrection.

Also, I would say that he's the only one that had reason to boast but never did. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Everybody else boasts when they shouldn't. Jesus had all the reason to boast. And he said, yeah, boasting is not what it's about. And he always gave credit to God. Yeah. He says, I'm here sent by the Father. By the way, we're going to be addressing that in the main service. Looking at that. Real interesting.

Then it talks about a name written on himself which nobody knows but himself. Isn't that interesting? There are places where the Bible describes things but stops at giving us a full revelation. We, earlier in this book, saw where John was told, do not write about the seven thunders. You got to see it, but don't write about it. Real interesting. It stops there.

How about the timing of this whole sequence of events of the rapture and the second coming and all that? Who calls the timing of that? Pardon? The Father. The Father, yes. God, you're correct, but most specifically the Father, and Jesus himself says the Father knows the time of death.

Very interesting. And now here is a name, and we're told of it, told about it, but We don't know. It's very interesting. One of the things that that should help us conclude is that while scripture reveals substantially, and scripture reveals with absolute truth, it is not exhaustive in this revelation. Two very important things about what has been revealed to us, and one is scripture is not exhaustive, and the other is we're not going to be able to understand everything. Very important. His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

People make a mistake when they think that, oh, I'm going to get this all down and understand everything and I can comprehend it all. Good luck. Not going to happen. It is, I think, a serious mistake. In fact, the source of a lot of theological debate when people begin making assumptions like, I can understand this whole thing. Oh, I've got it all figured out. Not so much. And finally it talks about, he is the one who has a robe dipped in blood. Well, I guess she got that. From the picture. That's kind of amazing. Why dipped in blood? Wait a minute, it says right here. He is the one who shed blood for all of us.

And as we're going to see shortly, there is a real interesting contrast. All the saints who come, the army that comes with him, are described as having robes that are white. But he has the one that's dipped in blood for his own shed blood. Our robes are white because his robe is red. We have purity as believers. We have purity because he was bloodied.

He paid the price, took the sins of the world upon himself. He shed his own blood so that we could have those white robes. And again, it's not what it looks like. What does the white robe mean? Righteousness. We have righteousness because of Christ and what He did. It is part of His victory. Part of His victory.

The very first chapter of Isaiah, it says, Will your sins be as scarlet? He shall make them white as snow. White as snow. And so this is an amazing contrast. We see in the rod of Isaiah 1 that contrast of sins of scarlet and white as snow carried out right here in what Christ wears as he has the second coming and what we wear as we come with him. Though our sins be as scarlet. He took the scarlet. We shall be white as snow. He is finally the Word of God, the Logos. The Logos means the message. He is the full expression of who God is. He is not just a pile of words, but He is the living Word. He is the full expression of who God is.

Okay, let's look at page 3 at the top and read verses 14 through 16. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword, so that he may strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, and he treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God the Almighty. And on his robe and on his thigh he has the name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. By the way, we're going to sing a song at the main service at the end that has exactly that.

He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Well, real interesting, that set of words is first used in the book of Daniel, I believe it was chapter 2, as describing Nebuchadnezzar, the head of the empire. Think of this, that title, King of Kings, plural, and Lord of Lords, plural, is specifically a title that puts him over the Gentiles. specifically puts them over the Gentiles.

Why do I say that? Because these are plurals. Pardon? It's plurals. That's right, it's plurals. And it's over the nations. And it's over the nations who have kings. Because one of the other phrases that we see throughout the Bible is kings, plural, of the earth. So it's not specifically the nation of Israel, but it's the whole earth and the Gentiles and of the nations. And so that title specifically gives him lordship over the Gentiles. King of kings and lord of lords. What that says is he has all authority. Is there a difference between the king of kings you're saying and the entire nations?

Lord of lords basically is a Jewish rhyming Again, we're talking Jewish symbolism, right? And so, for the Jews, what they do is they don't look at rhyming the sounds, they rhyme the meanings. So, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. is another Jewish poetry pattern. It's a rhyming. And why do you write things more than once? One of the reasons that the Jews would repeat things by rhyming is for emphasis.

It basically is still, he has all authority. That's what the statement is. But you could have just said he's king over all. But that would have been a Gentile way to say it. or is Lord over all. The Jewish way of saying it is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and they're used as a repetition for emphasis.

Yeah. But doesn't that, Lord is capitalized, isn't that Yahweh? Lord Almighty, the one in charge of all the hosts, isn't that the same? Okay, what's clear is the Greek is kurios, in the singular, and Yeah, even though it's capitalized. Yeah, it's just capitalized for the sake of title. Just capitalized for the sake of title.

If I were to make some comparison, I would have to look at the Hebrew in Daniel and see if by chance it gets put there. But the main thing is all authority. all authority. We're going to see, for example, further in Revelation, in the new heavens and new earth, the Gentiles are still described as being represented by the kings, plural, of the earth. On into the new heavens and new earth. Yes? That's in contrast to the time of the crucifixions.

The Romans of him as king of the Jews. Well, and you're off to a good point, and as you look at the Gospels, what did the wise men ask about the birth of Christ? What was their question? Where is he who was born king, singular, of the Jews, plural, okay? So the Jews were to have one king, and one of the reasons for this use of the title King of Kings is that that's not his title specific to his being the King of the Jews.

But it's his title specific as King of Kings over the Gentiles. It encompasses everything. Yes, everyone. And it's specifically pointed at the Gentiles. Is he King of the Jews? Yes, but that's singular. More specifically, since you're going on that I am Daniel and also Revelations.

The world comes down to ten kings. So the one world order of where there's ten ruling kings, when he comes back, he's actually going to be. And that includes Israel, by the way. I assume that's going to be one of of all of them. Yeah, you can look at all the kings of all the Gentile nations and Lord of Lords, every authority that is there.

He's over it all. Right now, see right now, the way the world works is we have some places are kingdoms and some places are democracies and heavens, I suppose there are other political structures. But, we have this mixture, and in a great many situations we have lots of bureaucracies. And most people have a certain disdain for the bureaucracies. But, here will be Christ who will know everything. Here will be Christ who will have all authority. No passing the buck.

Ever get in a situation where you call on the phone and they keep passing you around? Ever been through that? And I'm glad your people chuckle. Sometimes it's something that's hard to chuckle about because it gets to be so exasperating. But this is talking about Lord Jesus Christ and it won't be a matter of passing the buck. And you won't say, oh, I'm not in charge of that. You've got this guy over there. Go ask him. Oh, I've got that detail and it goes back over here. I've even had situations where each of them go like this. None of that. Here is one who is overall no passing the buck and no answers of I don't know about that. That's not my bailiwick. None of that.

He will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Every authority that might be assigned, He will be on top of it all. And all the things that we disdain about the passing the buck and bureaucracies and everything else, none of those will characterize Him and His coming to rule and coming to reign.

But what's interesting, these are armies, and it will include you and me, these are armies that don't do any fighting. Isn't that interesting? We have this picture up here of these armies following the Lord. And they will be vast armies. Impressive. But only Christ will do the fighting. See, in earthly measure, how many people do you have in your army ends up being a big question about how powerful is your army. What equipment have you got? Well, here is Christ coming with an army, and He's the only one that doesn't need fighting, and He has all the equipment. That's kind of an interesting contrast, isn't it? Real different from the earthly sense of what is an army and how powerful is it. But they are clothed in fine white linen and it stays white.

Why? One of the reasons it stays white is how about our righteousness as believers? Why are you and I righteous as believers? Is it because I do everything right? No. It's because Christ is righteous and what's our relationship to Him? What's that? We will be like Him for we will see Him as He is. That's one. And what else? What is our position regarding Christ? Pardon?

We are in Christ. And as Paul writes it, Christ is our righteousness. So this This coming with white robes is not something temporary, but it is something instead that is permanent and enduring and continuing. It is a characteristic of who we are as believers, having been placed into Christ. It's not something we have to work at maintaining, being in Christ.

As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 1.30, by God's doing, you're in Christ Jesus.

By God's doing, you're in Christ Jesus, and John 10.28, there is no undoing it, either by yourself or anybody else's action. Not going to happen.

So they also ride on white horses like himself. Now that's interesting because the armies in John's day Only those who were the very top officers rode white horses. Why is it that this army is all on white horses? It's assembly. Pardon? It's assembly. Yeah, it is, again, Jewish symbolism.

What does it mean that everybody in Christ's army is on a white horse? Not just the select few in the front. of non-victorious. So a white horse, if they would have accepted him as king, supposedly he would have come through Jerusalem on a white horse, right? Because we'll be co-reigning. Yes, we will be co-reigning.

And more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. We are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. And is there any believer here this morning that's any exception to that? No. Every single believer has the exact same phenomenal position in Christ. If you're a believer here this morning, you're included in this picture. And that's why it isn't just a select few. It isn't just, here's Christ and the apostles and they're on white horses and everybody else has got some other color. But we all as believers have that place. All of us have the white robe and all of us are on the white horse. Okay? All of us are on the white horse.

So the armies didn't have a separate branch that were heavenly residents that were army residents and non-army. They weren't there. So you're saying armies is every creature that's in heaven? What you see described here, and what this describes is just the army. It doesn't give you the descriptions.

In fact, we have to go to other passages to end up getting the fullest picture of what this includes. Every believer in the church is included in this army, but it is not only believers who are in the church. There will also be angels. The other passages reveal that.

So, this is amazing stuff. Here is this vast, phenomenally impressive, can you imagine, and think of what this, you know, we've talked about what does this mean, what does this mean. Think about what this looks like to the people who are here on planet Earth. Remember the description at the end of the tribulation period is things are turning real dark. What you're going to see is what isn't dark.

And what is that? What we see described right here. The white army. The white robes from this army and the white horses coming. Imagine here are people and the earth is turning and they're looking up and this army is getting bigger and bigger as the closer it gets. And they've never seen anything like this. And let me guarantee you, they're not going to see anything like this again. And some of them may feel threatened by it.

Yeah, just try shooting a missile, right? This is a phenomenal sight. So John's describing it, but his descriptions are intended to convey meaning, not just what does it look like. You know, giving some allowance for the fact that this is, what does it mean, and answering that question, not just what does it look like, just a minute trying to conceive of what's this going to look like, people have to be stunned. People have to be in shock as to what this will look like.

If you're not a believer, I think you'd be terrified. Yeah, exactly, yes. And more so. of guilt and anger, internal hostilities because of the wrong decision that they made and the fact that they denied when they actually Demonstrate anger toward God even when they say yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just all they are really ticked Really ticked live it Turn in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 1 verse 7 and This is one of those passages that describe this event from an earthly perspective In chapter 1 verse 7 it reads like this, Behold, he is coming with clouds, and every eye will see him, and they also who pierced him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him, even so, amen.

Now how many people are on the soldier duty who pierced Christ? Yeah, they typically had a squad of four, but not all four took part in the whole thing. Usually a couple of them would be assigned each crucifixion, and then they would have at least four soldiers stationed who, by the way, couldn't leave until the bodies were dead. And so what does he mean by even those who pierced him? Does that mean he's going to resurrect the guys who pierced him, or what's meant by this? even those who pierced him?

All the non-believers. Pardon? All the non-believers. Okay, you say all the non-believers. Any other thoughts? All those who rejected him. Okay, all those who rejected him. Any other thoughts on that? He died for all of our transgressions. So, in a sense, metaphorically, it would be everything. If you look at it, how many of us put him there? All of us. So in the widest sense, it would include all of those.

As I read this, I don't see the intent being that those specific men who did the nailing, and the one who shoved, because there's only one, who shoved a spear in his side, who may or may not have been one of the same who did the piercing, I don't think that those men specifically were intended. One reason is because those men were almost certainly all dead by the time John wrote this. So that's likely not intended. But it would, in the narrowest sense, be those descended from the area of the Roman Empire. And by the way, Did the Jews have some responsibility? They were the ones who insisted on it, right? And ultimately, we're all the ones. But notice how it, behold, he is coming with the clouds, every eye will see him. and they also who pierced him. The every eye who will see him statement fits in with what Christ said.

If someone tells you, this is Matthew 24, you know, he's out in the desert, don't believe it. If someone says, you know, he's here back in this little private room, no. When Christ comes again, every eye will see him. He'll be plain and out in the open. Not any, you know, he's over here, he's over there. That's how it'll be. Every eye will see him.

And their response? All the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him. Wait, by the way, what do you think they're going to mourn about? What will they be mourning about? Themselves. Yeah, think about it one of the things we saw in the book of Revelation if someone takes the mark of the beast Can they then be saved? No, so those who have taken the mark of the beast Here's the one who's going to be their judge and There will be no second chances That's something to mourn about isn't it?

Also What have they been doing but blaspheming God? And one of the ways that people do that, you hear it all the time. What do they do? They yell out, Jesus Christ, right? And variations on that. And it's like, oh! Oh! I know a fellow who was raised in a Bible church and knew about these kinds of verses. And there is one, of course, passages we would talk about where the moon turns to blood.

And I was with him one night when there was an eclipse. and the moon turned quite red. And he went inside, because he couldn't stand to look at it, and just shuddered and sunk down on the wall. Because he thought, oh no, now's the time. And the problem was, though aware of it, he had not been a believer. And I think it'll be that kind of a realization sort of moment, a lot of mourning.

A lot of shaking of knees. A lot of fumbling. Oh my, what have I done? Oh my, what have I not done? It will be a moment of great tragic realization for a great many. For a great many. I'll let you read the rest of it. We've run way out of time. There's people pressing their faces up against the door, and impatient that we're running past our time. But I think this is a cool passage, don't you?

Yeah, let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for the spiritual food that you put before us, and we thank you that We don't have to, while this is an exciting moment in the future and in reality, that we don't have to wait for that time, but we instead look for the time when you will come to take us to be with you and we shall be like you because we will see you face to face. Thank you for the blessed hope that we have because of your marvelous and victorious son. Pray in Jesus' name. Amen.