Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #18 of Revelation, chapter 10, and we are continuing to look at Revelation 10:10-11:

And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.

This concludes the chapter in Revelation 10.  We were discussing verse 10 in our last study and we know the “little book having been open” is a figure of the Bible.  We know the context of Revelation 10 is within the sixth trumpet or “second woe” that began in Revelation 9.  We know the Lord Jesus is the mighty angel that had this “little book having been open” in His hand and He cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth, in verse 3.  Then we saw in Amos 3, verses 7, that God “revealeth his secrets to his servants the prophets.”  That is a Biblical principal and then it said in verse 8: “JEHOVAH God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?”  And, there, God is likened to a lion.  You know, it is actually better to read the actual Scriptures than to try to recap them.  It says in Amos 3:7-8:

Surely the Lord JEHOVAH will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord JEHOVAH hath spoken, who can but prophesy?

Here God is linking together the lion’s roar with His Word and those that will, necessarily, have to prophesy.  So it is not surprising that we read, in Revelation 10, that the mighty angel, who is Christ, cries with a lion’s roar and, in the same chapter, God brings the subject around to prophesying – this is what God’s people do when God speaks.  And the Bible is the record of God speaking; it is the recorded Word that comes out of the mouth of God.  These Words are “sweet” like honey and, yet, in the time of judgment, they can be “bitter” when they reach our belly.  We were also looking at this in our last study; as soon as John had eaten the “little book,” his belly was made bitter. 

Just to remind us, once again, the word “bitter” in Revelation 8 spoke of the rivers and fountains of waters within the churches.  Once God’s judgment came upon the “third part” of the rivers and fountains of waters, they were made “bitter” with wormwood and men died of the waters.  There is no life – there is no salvation – in “bitter” waters. 

But John is a true believer and what He is eating is the true Word of God.  It is the truth.  Christ is the One commanding him to eat.  Obediently, he does eat and it is “sweet” to his taste and “sweet” in his mouth, but it makes his belly “bitter” because of the principal that “out of thy belly shall flow rivers of living water.”  I am going to read this, again, in John 7:37-39:

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.  (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive…

The ones that believe, by the grace of God, receive the Spirit of God and the Spirit of God within them moves them to “will and to do of his good pleasure,” and to share the truths of the Bible.  It is as though rivers of water come flowing forth from the true believers. 

But, in John’s case (as he represents God’s elect living on the earth in the Day of Judgment), the information God is giving to him from the Bible in this period of Judgment Day is “bitter,” because there is no more salvation.  If there were salvation, it would still be “rivers of living waters,” and wherever those waters would go, according to the will of God, they could bring life to the “dead” sinner that is one of God’s elect.  But when there are no more lost sheep to be found and recovered, all the people in the world are established in their spiritual conditions: the righteous are righteous still and the filthy are filthy still.   Never again will someone who is spiritually filthy be translated out of that condition and become righteous.  Therefore, the waters are “bitter.”  They can bring no life.  They can bring no salvation to the peoples of the world, so this is, of course, very tragic. 

It is extremely sorrowful, but this is the teaching of the Bible and it is true.  This is what is “sweet” to the child of God  and it is what we always acknowledge as wonderful – every part of the Bible is as honey to our taste because it is true and the child of God loves the truth.  We simply want to follow the truth, no matter what the truth may declare, according to God’s timetable and where we find ourselves in history.  If the Word of God declares the church age is over and God’s judgment is on all the churches, then very well.   It is tragic information and this also is extremely sorrowful, especially for those poor people that remained in the churches and did not hearken to God’s command to come out.  So we acknowledge that sometimes the truth of the Word of God can be very grievous sometimes.  It can be difficult and hard, but it is truth, so the child of God eats it; we live by it; we live by every Word of God and we live by the truth of the Bible, no matter what it says and no matter what kind of reaction it brings. 

There was much negative reaction from people in the churches when they heard that the Holy Spirit had come out of the midst and when they heard the true believers say that Satan had entered in and there was no salvation there.  Basically, their waters had been made “bitter” and there was no blessing of God.  Oh, that provoked an angry response in many cases and, yet, what can a child of God do?  This is what the Bible says and we stand by what the Bible says.  The truth is the truth and the truth oftentimes is not pleasant.  The truth oftentimes can be very grievous and that is how it is today. 

It is certainly not pleasant that there is no more salvation and that God is no longer saving sinners.  We have family members we love and we have friends and neighbors and we see the poor peoples of the world and we would desire to come, like Lazarus was requested to do, with as much of the Gospel as possible, but we cannot, because God determines these things.  God shut the door.  We are just the doorkeepers.  God tells us when to run and carry forth His Word as a messenger of the Gospel (and when not to run).  God tells us when to be a servant carrying the waters to satisfy the thirsts of the congregation and God determines when the waters will be made “bitter.”  God has determined that the waters in all the churches are now “bitter” in every church all over the world – no “sweetness” and no salvation. 

God determined on May 21, 2011, that judgment would begin on all the world.  The waters of the Gospel that had been so abundant as the knowledge of the Lord covered the earth as the water covers the sea – all the water that fell during the latter rain – is now “bitter” water, inside and outside of the congregations.  The true believers carried that message and the waters of life flowed forth from them as they shared tracts and talked about these things with their friends and neighbors and strangers and as they went on mission trips to the other side of the world.  Suddenly the water of life that flowed forth from the Spirit of God through His Word and out of their belly is now “bitter” water.  God did that, not the child of God.  The true believer does not have that kind of power or authority.  It is God’s doing and we can only acknowledge and speak what God tells us to speak, and this is what is going to occur next, in Revelation 10:11:

And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.

The water in John’s belly has become “bitter” and, yet, he must prophesy, and we wonder why is that, because there is no living water going forth.   Why would the Lord Jesus Christ require John to prophesy when the water that would come forth from his belly is the information from the Bible?  Remember, the reason his belly was “bitter” was because he ate the “little book having been open,” the Word of God, and which had been sweet to his taste.  It was a result of that Word of God that His belly was “bitter,” and that is what he would speak – that is what he would prophesy.  You prophesy the Word of God.

The word “prophecy” is actually a reference to the Bible.  In 2 Peter, chapter 1, God gives us a wonderful passage that tells us a great deal about the formation of the Scriptures and the entire Bible.  He says in 2 Peter 1:19:

We have also a more sure word of prophecy…

This is speaking of the Bible.

…whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

Here, again, God is using the word “prophecy” and He is relating it to the Scripture.  Every verse in the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation, is prophecy.  They are the prophecy of the Scriptures and no prophecy of the Scriptures is “of any private interpretation.”  As we share what the Bible says, we are not permitted by God to say, “Well, this is what I think it means,” because no prophesy is of any “private” interpretation. 

The Greek word for “private” is “idios.”   It is the word from which we get our English word “idiom” and it means “one’s own.”  Each language and people group develop “idioms” that are specific to that language.  That is why people from other nations often have a difficult time with the English language.  Even though they can learn the words and the grammar, it is the “idioms” that they struggle with, and that is what our verse is speaking of: no prophecy of the Scriptures is of anyone’s own interpretation; it is not our “thinking” concerning it or what we decide it should be. 

Sadly, that is how it is in so many churches and with so many professed Christians, both in and out of the churches.  It is what they think the prophecy is and their understanding of the Scriptures and that is the danger when someone says, “No teachers – just the Bible.  I am not going to listen to anyone else.  It is only going to be the Bible and me.”  It is fine, of course, to have the Bible, but the problem is not the Bible – the problem is the individual.  Just as there is danger of a teacher erring when he teaches, there is the same danger when an individual reads the Bible and it goes through the “filter” of his mind and of his own thinking; he can pervert it just as easily with his own thoughts, just as a teacher can do with his mouth.  So what it comes down to is that there is to be “no private interpretation,” whether it is a teacher or the individual reader. 

How do we get around that problem?  The answer is we need to follow God’s methodology for coming to truth by comparing Scripture with Scripture, spiritual with spiritual.  If we do that thoroughly and we make sure your conclusion harmonizes with the entire Bible, the “Holy Ghost teacheth,” and the Holy Ghost is the author of the Bible, so it is his interpretation we receive and not our own.  This is a vital principal and it is absolutely necessary (in order to come to truth) that God the Holy Spirit teach.  Any other approach to teaching is wrong, whether it be based upon a church’s confessions or creeds or whether the guidelines are the teachings of the Reformers of the past: Calvin, Luther, Knox or others.  If people follow the teachings of these men from hundreds of years ago or if they follow their favorite theologian, their favorite commentary teachings, their seminary’s teachings, their pastor’s teachings, or their own teachings – it is all wrong.  Yes, they might get some things right, but they will err and they will go astray.  There is no doubt, because the Bible is of “no private” (one’s own) interpretation. 

It must be God’s interpretation and God has told us how that works.  Of course, that is disdained and looked down upon by the seminary professors and the pastors.  After all, when you are sitting in seminary class, they make such a big deal of understanding the Bible through theology.  They give you a huge volume of books of these writers of the past and they make it sound so mysterious.  You must read these men’s writings and glean information in order to properly be a preacher of the Gospel; you have to learn all the doctrine and the way these men approached the Bible in order to properly teach your congregation.  They make an entire course of it – hermeneutics and theology – and all of these classes that they teach throughout the entire seminary year.  This is my assumption, but I think it is a very good assumption, but I do not believe you will find a seminary professor that will tell you: “Here is what you need to come to truth.  Here is what you need to do to come to right theology.  Look at 1 Corinthians 2:13:

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

I am sure you will not find a seminary professor who says, “Now when you go back to your dorm room or your home, I want you to read this verse and think about it and pray about it and follow it.  Get a Strong’s Concordance and when you are studying a verse in the Bible, look up each word and see where it leads.  Look up everything instance of that word in the Bible and read each place and jot down what you learned about that word in each instance.”

Do you know what happens when you do that?  Let us say that you look up a word and it is used in 25 verses and one thing you would gain is knowledge of many other parts of the Bible, because you are reading all over the place.  Secondly, you may find out several things about that word you did not know before, as God adds more “definition” to it.  Then you are going to find there are two or three verses, in particular, that especially relate to the verse you are studying and you are going to have a fuller and more complete understanding of the verse you want to learn about.  This is how the “Holy Ghost teacheth.”  Then you go to the next word in the verse and, again, it is taking you everywhere in the Bible.  You are jumping around; you are in Exodus, then the Psalms, then the Proverbs, then Matthew and then Revelation, etc.  Slowly, you are building knowledge of the whole Word of God.  You are being constantly reminded of the exodus, of the wilderness sojourn, of King David, and it is all becoming clearer in your mind, as you begin to develop knowledge through “reason of use.”  Remember, God tells us this in Hebrews, where He is referring to “strong meat,” and this would mean coming to doctrinal understanding of the deeper teachings of the Bible.  It says in Hebrews 5:11-14:

Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

When you come to a right doctrinal conclusion, it is good.  When you come to a wrong doctrinal conclusion, it is evil.  So “by reason of use,” our senses are exercised to discern what is good and what is evil.  Of course, it gets to the point where God even says that “knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth.”