Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #14 of Revelation, chapter 10, and we are going to read Revelation 10:7-9:
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.
I will stop reading there. We have been spending some time in the last few Bible studies to take a long look at verses 5 through 7 and, especially verse 7: “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” We have seen several verses where the word “mystery” is used and it points to the hidden teaching or hidden truths of the Bible. Sometimes, it is in a plainly stated parable and other times it is in statements like Romans 11, where God speaks of the Gentiles coming in “and so all Israel shall be saved.” This is a verse in the Epistle to the Romans which people do not normally associate with parabolic language, yet, God forewarned us not to be “ignorant of this mystery.” This is because the fullness of the Gentiles (or non-Jews) are equal to the house of Israel; all Israel is gathered and saved and once God saved the fullness of the Gentiles by saving His elect from every nation, tongue and tribe, He completed His salvation plan to find and redeem each one He predestinated to save from the foundation of the world. Then, “in that manner,” all (spiritual) Israel shall be saved.
So we are very confident concerning how God uses this word translated as “mystery” in the New Testament. It has to do with hidden truth. Now He is saying that “the mystery of God should be (or shall be) finished, in the sounding of the seventh trumpet. The seventh trumpet began to sound on May 21, 2011, because that began the Day of the Lord – that began Judgment Day, the prolonged period of time that we have been in since then and it is all considered by God as a single day, Judgment Day. If we are correct in our understanding regarding the 1,600 days, the Day of Judgment began on May 21, 2011, and 1,600 days later, on October 7, 2015, Judgment Day concludes.
This is confounding and this is just troubling to people that maybe have been maintaining a previous understanding of what God is doing and they can not grab hold of this idea that it is all likened by God to a single day. Now I do not know why they cannot grab hold of that idea, as God speaks of the “day of salvation” (singular) and, of course, the day of salvation covered a very long period of time – hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years. At any point, it could have been said, “It is the day of salvation.” God also speaks of the “day of temptation in the wilderness” and, yet, in the very next verse He says it was forty years and, yet, He called it the “day of temptation.”
So we should recognize that God does this sort of thing in the Bible; He will identify a time period of a time or a season and He could speak of it as a single day. We understand that the Great Tribulation is identified by “one hour.” In “one hour” the judgment came. The last hour, or the 11th to 12th hour, typifies the Great Tribulation and the Great Tribulation, of course, was much longer than an hour. It lasted 23 years and, yet, God represents that 23-year period by “one hour,” so it is just God’s prerogative if He wants to do that and He has. Yet, it confounds individuals. They do not understand and they say, “May 21, 2011, could not have been Judgment Day because the rapture did not occur and because the resurrection of the dead did not occur; and those things occur the last day. Is not the last day Judgment Day?” Yes, yes, it is, but if it is a prolonged period of judgment, you can have a spiritual judgment that begins with God shutting the door to heaven and ending His salvation program on May 21, 2011. And then when you get to the very last day or end day (that 1,600th day we expect and hope for), then on that day God brings about the resurrection of the dead and on that day God brings about the rapture. Did that happen on the last day? Yes, as a matter of fact, it did. Did it happen on Judgment Day? Yes, it did, because it is all part of Judgment Day. This gives God the ability to “hide things” and to bring to pass a “snare upon the inhabitants of the earth,” because they are thinking of language like, “When the trumpet sounds, the dead shall rise,” and, here, in Revelation 10:7, it speaks of the seventh trumpet beginning to sound. Is that not the (time of) the resurrection? Yes, at the completion of this time period and the completion of the “sounding.” It is still sounding. It is as if a trumpeter puts the trumpet to his lips and begins a very long, drawn out trumpet blast that extends this entire time period. So God can say these things are happening “in the last trump.” These things are happening when He begins to sound, and so forth, and it is like saying that something is happening in the (prolonged) Day of Judgment.
Let us go back to our verse in Revelation 10:7:
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished…
That would be the hidden truth that God has hidden in the Bible has been unsealed, opened and revealed to His people and, therefore, the “mystery” has been completed.
This word “finished” is “teleo” and it is Strong’s #5055. Let us look at a few places it is found to see how it is used. It says in Luke 2:39:
And when they had performed…
The word “performed” is that same Greek word, “teleo.”
And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.
So, it is saying they had “performed” (or finished) all things according to the law of the Lord. This had to do with the child Jesus. Remember, he had to be circumcised a certain day and there were laws that God gave concerning the birth of a child, for both the child and the mother, and so forth. When they had “performed” or “finished” everything according to the law, then they returned to Galilee.
Also, Jesus is speaking in this verse, in Luke 12:50:
But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!
The word “accomplished” is “teleo.” It means until it is “performed” or until it is “finished,” or until He has “fulfilled” His Father’s will; that is, God had given prophecy and declared many things in His Word concerning the Messiah who would come and Christ had to “fulfill all righteousness.” He had to fulfill the Law concerning Himself and, especially, He had to complete the tableau or demonstration – He had to “make manifest” what He had done from the foundation of the world in offering up Himself as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of His elect. That is the “baptism he was baptized with,” as baptism points to the washing away of sin and this washing was through the wrath of God. Christ was not bearing those sins when He went to the cross, but He was demonstrating what He had done from the foundation of the world; at that point, He had born the sins of His people and, at that point, He suffered the wrath of God which washed those sins away. That is what baptism He is referring to in this verse and He had to go and “show” that He had done these things and, therefore, He had to be “baptized” once again. The wrath of God was poured out upon Him beginning in the Garden of Gethsemane and Christ was suffering in the garden and from that point on, so we can see why he was “straitened till it be accomplished.” It was nothing pleasant at all – He was truly suffering at the hand of God’s wrath.
There is one more verse in John 19:28:
After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.
Here is a good explanation of what it means that all things were “now accomplished.” The Scriptures had to be fulfilled, from the statement that not a bone of His would be broken, or the statement that He would be given “vinegar,” and even to the words themselves which Christ would say, in John 19:30:
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
And this word “finished” is, again, the word “teleo.” Now it was prophesied in Psalm 22 that He would say those very words and, yet, they had to be “finished.” They had to be “accomplished.” So we can see what this word (teleo) is really getting at; it has to do with the fulfilling of the Word of God and the performance of the things which God has spoken in His Word.
And God has spoken a great many things and He has fulfilled a great many things in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has fulfilled the establishment of the church age and of bringing in the firstfruits. He has fulfilled the end of the church age and bringing judgment upon the house of God. He has fulfilled the latter rain period and the second Jubilee. He has fulfilled a great many Scriptures and He has fulfilled many of the things the Bible speaks of. He has revealed a great amount of truth at the time of the end when He opened up His Word and “knowledge increased,” and He began to show forth the things that were hidden in His Word.
This is what Revelation 10:7 is referring to when it says, “When he shall begin to sound, the mystery” (the hidden truth of God’s Word) “should be finished,” (or should be accomplished). It shall be “performed” and it shall be “completed.” God will bring everything to pass in the sounding of the last trumpet. Again, remember, the phrase “in the last trump,” at the end of the sounding of the last trumpet, is the resurrection, the rapture, the final destruction of this world and the annihilation of all the unsaved. There will be “time no longer” at that point and God will have completed everything He has spoken. He will not leave a single Word (jot or tittle) that will not have been fulfilled. So we are living at the threshold and we are living at the point where God will finally accomplish everything He said He would do, as it says in the last part of our verse, in Revelation 10:7:
…as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.
As God moved Holy men of old to write and record the Scriptures, it is in the Scriptures where God has written numerous promises which He has said He will do; He has promised, with an oath, to complete them. Remember that this goes back to verse 6, where Christ is swearing by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that there will be “time no longer.” Everything promised will be brought to pass and that is when “time no longer” takes effect, when God has “fulfilled all things.”