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In this podcast we come to the very end of Revelation – the final chapter – in more ways than one, and at the beginning of that chapter, we read about a river in the New Jerusalem. Here is described the life of the eternal city of Jerusalem, and it is a picture of abundant fertility, full of life. There is a river of life, and a tree of life. The tree, although also literal, is a symbol of Jesus Himself. He is the way, the truth and the life – the tree of life. When believers obey the Word of God, they are eating and feeding on Jesus and drawing life from that nourishment. That is what this signifies. It brings spiritual health. We flourish when we follow his word and obey and live by it.

Remember that God chooses to use literal things that are symbols. The cross we see behind many pulpits is literal, but it is also a symbol of the death of Jesus. It is both literal and symbolic at the same time. So, all through Revelation, we find the blending of the literal and symbolic. Personally, I do believe there will be an actual city of incredible brilliance and glory, located somewhere above or within the atmosphere of the earth, but at the same time the city symbolizes activities and relationships that are going on within the community of the redeemed. So we need to look a little more deeply into the symbolism to interpret these verses correctly...

Chapters 21 and 22 of Revelation contain almost everything that the Scriptures say about eternity. Most of the prophetic passages of the Old Testament, that picture a time of great blessing on earth, refer to the thousand-year reign of our Lord which precedes this last great event. Not much is said in the Old Testament about heaven. But Chapters 21 and 22 of Revelation describe heaven in detail.

Even in the most perfect moral culture that this earth will ever know, man will still love sin. Just cast your mind back to the perfect environment of the garden of Eden. At that time, there were only two people and they both chose to sin. And they did it from a state of innocence. So if Adam and Eve chose to sin from a state of innocence, what would humanity do from a state of depravity? It does not matter what kind of world they live in, depraved human beings love sin. And whether Satan is present or absent, it has nothing to do with depravity. People continue to say, “The devil made me do it!” but that is denying the truth and is a shallow excuse. It is not the devil that makes us sin, it is the devil that creates the system that tempts us. So even if Satan is removed out of this world there will still be depravity. Man is still going to love sin because it is in his nature.

God’s promise of the earthly Kingdom of the Messiah is found throughout the Old Testament. You can find references in Second Samuel, Psalm 2, and a large number of references in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel and Zechariah. When you read through the New Testament, Matthew 24 focuses on the time when the sign of the Son of man appears in heaven, and Jesus comes with the angels to gather the elect from the four corners of the earth. That heralds the beginning of the glorious Millennial Kingdom. So both Old and New Testament are just loaded with promises with regard to the Kingdom. In Revelation 20, we are shown the earthly Kingdom of the Messiah. We are actually looking at a restored earth, almost restored to its original glory. It is ruled by the Lord Jesus Christ and the saints of all the ages. Up until Revelation 20, everything has been pre-millennial. Everything has been pre-Kingdom.

Chapter 20 is one of the most important chapters in the whole of the Bible. In every way it is a climactic chapter, bringing us to the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ on earth in His coming glory in His Kingdom. His Kingdom is the climax, it is the completion of God’s plan of redemption as it unfolds in this world, and therefore it is also the completion of all of human history.

Many believers like to visualize Christ as a very gentle, meek, lowly Savior, regarding Him rather as the suffering Messiah of the Cross, or the baby in a crib. They never think of Him as a coming judge. We should not be surprised that He will come as a judge, but we should marvel that He ever came as Savior to sinful men.

We are embarking on a new section of the book of Revelation that starts with the return of Jesus Christ, and the establishment of His millennial Kingdom, and then the coming of the new heaven and the new earth, which will be for eternity. This is the final section in the book of Revelation, and we will have to go through it carefully and thoughtfully and look at every part of it as we have done all the way through this wonderful book. The Second Coming of Jesus is the great climax of all history. All human events, since the beginning of time, have been moving towards this is the single divine event.

Even though judgement fills up the Book of Revelation from Chapter 6 through to Chapter 18 it is important to understand that judgement is not the theme of Revelation. The book is about the revelation of Jesus Christ. The theme is the coming of Jesus Christ in glory. All the scenes of judgement, even though they are so comprehensive and detailed, are simply a backdrop for the glory of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are all affected and dependent on the economics of our world. We are affected by the current state of the world economically. We’re all anxious to hear about the condition of world trade, global commerce, the value of our currency against the US dollar, the British Pound and the European Euro. We are all aware of economics, and more than ever before in history, we live in a world where we are all tied together very closely in what amounts to a giant global economy. There are fewer and fewer isolated national economies – and we have become part of the global village, and we have a global economy. That is very fitting, because that is precisely what Revelation chapter 18 tell us what the world will be like, just before the return of Jesus Christ.

Satan wages a constant war against God, to get people lured into and trapped within false systems that do not worship the true God, but some abomination claiming to be God. All false religions are essentially identical at their core. They just have different names and different rites and ceremonies, but at their core, they are systems that focus on imagined deities, and teach that man can save himself by his own efforts, his own achievements, and his own self-righteousness, and that the way to god, is through ceremony, ritual and rites.

When dealing with the book of Revelation, we have to, whether we like it or not, talk about the wrath of God. In the global church in this age of post-modernism, the wrath of God not a particularly common or a popular subject among preachers, and it is not a common subject of discussion for believers in general today. Nevertheless it should be something that is preached, if we are to be faithful to the Word of God. In John 3:36 we read that Jesus said: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” Yet only a few verses earlier, in the most well-known part of the entire New Testament, Jesus told Nicodemus that: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” So here in John 3:36, Jesus speaks of the “wrath of God” remaining on those who reject Him.

The Bible is filled with hope, but it is also a book of full of judgement. Jesus Christ preached often about judgement. He spoke more about hell than any other preacher or prophet before Him. Many Christians today would insist that the Old Testament was written by a God of judgement, and the New Testament was written by a God of grace, but this could not be further from the truth.

The book of Revelation is a record of God's solution to the crisis of creation that is under the dominion of sin. It is also a record of how He will bring about the long promised world of peace and blessing. After thousands of years of patient waiting and putting up with mankind’s arrogance, hate, greed and the bloodshed that has plagued our earth so long, God has declared that there comes a time when He will say “enough is enough” and bring an end to the whole problem!

Everybody would like to see the end of the pandemic, and to have our society return to normal and for there to be better times. Everyone would like to eliminate poverty and disease and crime, and all of those things that plague our culture. But I have to be a prophet of doom, and speak the truth. There is not going to be a better day but a worse one. A better day is not coming. What is coming is a terrible, eternal tragedy. The world of the future will not be a utopia, but the inhabitants of the earth will feel the fury of God’s judgement like no one else has ever felt it. Things are not going to get better. They are going to get infinitely worse. In Revelation Chapter 14, it will become clear to us that these passages record the judgement of God to come. Starting at verse 6, we encounter three angels. While their messages are messages of judgement, they do contain elements of grace, hope and salvation. But the doom of the world is clear.

Human beings love the image of a winner, or a conqueror. We do not like losers. If they are rugby coaches, we fire them. If they are politicians, we vote them out of office. We want winners. We want people who can face the greatest danger and be triumphant in the end. I came across a wonderful inspiring quote from John Wesley when I was preparing for this podcast. He said: “Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergyman or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon the earth.” In Revelation 14:1-5, we will be reading about the 144 000 men that Jesus will use to shake the world in the closing days of this age.

God’s plan to redeem men and to establish the kingdom of Christ has never been easy. It has always been a battle. It is a battle, because Satan and his demons have fought God, every step of the way. The most effective and potent weapon in Satan’s arsenal against God, and God’s purpose, can be summed up in one word. This is the word “deception.” Satan is a liar and is the father of lies. He is a deceiver. He is disguised as an angel of light, and his messengers and servants are also disguised as angels of light though they are the agents of darkness. Satan has always tried to confuse people by covering up the truth of the saving gospel. To obscure the truth of the Word of God with lies that are masquerading as if they are the truth.

I would like to introduce you to the most infamous character in the whole of Scripture – the false Christ of the Great Tribulation – the coming world leader known as AntiChrist. Our Lord Jesus Christ said many false Christs would come and we should to expect that, and we have been warned that these false Christs would lead many people astray. Jesus said that there will be many false Christs. There will be many who will attempt to take the place of Christ but there will be the final Antichrist, the final false Christ, the final individual who attempts to take the place of Christ and he will be more devastating than any other before him.

Currently, Satan has access to heaven. He does not reside there, but often he appears before God to accuse believers, The book of Job tells a story of Satan appearing before the throne of God to accuse Job, and to seek permission to attack his body. However in the midst of the tribulation, Satan will lose his access to heaven. Bible scholars differ on whether this is a reference to Satan's work of corrupting one third of the angels of heaven, or if it points to his immense earthly power at this time. Either way, Satan and all rebelling demons will be cast down and barred from their normal access and communication with God. So there is a sudden change of scene. We are no longer looking at the events on Earth but looking into heaven, and seeing a scene of conflict, invisible to earth but taking place in heaven.

There is a lot of rich and powerful symbolism in Revelation 12:1-6, and we have to interpret the symbols correctly, to understand the reality behind them. Two of the three symbols that appear here in these verses, are quite easy to identify, but the identity of the woman who appears clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and twelve stars in a crown around her head, is not easy to interpret, unless you see the symbolism and where else in scripture these symbols appear.