Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #17 of Revelation, chapter 16, and we are going to be reading Revelation 16:15:
Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.
This is in the context of the continuing language of Judgment Day as it is laid out in Revelation, chapter 16. The six vials have already been poured out, and before the pouring out of the seventh vial, God has taken us back to the beginning of the Great Tribulation, to the formation of the enemy army under Satan and his emissaries within the churches and congregations of the world. God is bringing us up to the point of Judgment Day, once again.
In the time of the final judgment of mankind we know the Bible teaches that Christ does come as a thief. For instance, it says in 2Peter 3:8-12:
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?
I will stop reading there. Now, some people think that because it says, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat,” and because they did not see this happen on May 21, 2011, they think it could not have been “the day of the Lord” when Christ comes “as a thief in the night.” But they are missing a very important little phrase in 2Peter 3:10, which says, “in the which,” meaning in the day of the Lord; and we have learned that the “day of the Lord” is a prolonged Day of Judgment. There is a strong likelihood it continues for 1,600 days, which is 4 years, 4 months and 16 days. God brought to pass Judgment Day on May 21, 2011 and that was the beginning of the final judgment of the world, “in the which” there is a prolonged period of judgment upon all the inhabitants of the earth. And on the very last day of that judgment, which will be October 7, 2015, (if we are correct) God will destroy the earth, as it says here: “The heavens shall pass away and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” All the unsaved people will be annihilated and destroyed along with this earth. This is also happening in “the day of the Lord,” but it is at the end of the spiritual judgment God has brought to pass, but it is just as much a part of “the day of the Lord” as May 21, 2011 was a part of “the day of the Lord.”
Here, the Bible says, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.” In Matthew 24, the chapter in which the Lord answers the disciples’ question, “What shall be the sign of they coming, and of the end of the world?” it says in Matthew 24:42-44:
Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
Again, the idea of Christ coming as a thief is mentioned in verse 43 and God warns people to watch. If you would watch, then the thief would not have broken his house up, but there is also an interesting statement in verse 44: “for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” What is interesting about this is that it is saying there is a particular time that people will think the Lord Jesus Christ did not come: “for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” And, of course, what meets the criteria this verse lays out is the time of May 21, 2011. The world was watching. They had heard that it would be the Day of Judgment and people were certainly uncomfortable, at the very least, and they were troubled about the whole thing. Never before in the history of the world had the message of the Bible and Judgment Day been put right in front of their eyes, where they could not escape it. It was everywhere. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and nowhere to get away from it and this made people very troubled and disturbed in mind.
Yet, the time came. The day came and apparently “nothing” happened and there was rejoicing and celebration and mocking and ridicule from the world and the churches. The churches felt vindicated because of their claim that, “No man can know the day or the hour.” If you ask a great many people what happened on May 21, 2011, they would say, “That is the day the Lord did not come. That is the time that Christ came not.” That agrees with this verse, where it says: “for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” That is exactly what happened at the time when the world was on the lookout with their physical eyes and, in a sense, looking into the sky, wondering, “Is Christ coming today?” It really revealed the deep-down sense of dread that mankind has toward God and His Word, the Bible. They know the Bible is the Word of God. They know the Bible is true. They know they are in trouble with God and that there is a Judgment Day and that is why it is so disturbing to people to hear about it. But they were looking on a physical level and when nothing outward happened that they could not detect with their senses, they determined that Christ came not. Yet, at that very time, the Bible indicates that Christ did come in judgment – He came as a thief in the night.
Let us also go to 1Thessalonians, chapter 5, which brings up this idea of the Lord coming as a thief in the night. It says in 1Thessalonians 5:1-3:
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
I want to stop here and comment before we continue. It says, “When they shall say, Peace and safety,” and that is when someone thinks something is “certain” or “definite.” When we check out that Greek word, it indicates that they “know” they will not be judged or, in other words, that Christ did not come, but when they say, “Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.”
The word “sudden” is only found one other place in the New Testament and that is in the Gospel of Luke. It says in Luke 21:34:
And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
The word “unawares” is the same word that is translated as “sudden” in 1Thessalonians, chapter 5. If you would look at the Greek word that is translated as “unawares” or “sudden,” you would see it is made up of a compound word – it is two words in the Greek and they literally mean “not seen.” That is why the translators translated it as “unawares,” because if you cannot see something, you are unaware of it. The translation as the word “sudden” is really a result of the reference to a woman with child and how a woman “suddenly” is in travail, but it is not a good translation of the word. The word is better translated as “unaware,” or the best translation would be “not seen,” so if we read our verse that way, it would say, “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then unseen (unaware) destruction cometh upon them.” You can understand why the translators would not translate it that way because they are thinking, “What kind of a judgment would that be?” They are thinking of the Bible verses (like 2Peter 3:10) where Christ comes as a thief and the heavens pass away and the earth is melted and that is certainly not an “unaware” or “unseen” destruction. How could that fit? So they were led by the later reference to the woman in travail to translate this word as “sudden” destruction. They thought it was just “sudden,” like when a woman suddenly feels the baby coming to birth, but the proper translation would have been “unaware” or “not seen” destruction because on May 21, 2011 God came in judgment like a “thief in the night.” You do not see a thief come if you are not watching, spiritually, in the way that God would have you to watch in His Word, the Bible. So the thief comes and steals your treasure and robs your home and you do not even know it. And the Lord Jesus Christ is an excellent thief in the way God means the term in regard to His coming in judgment in the “day of the Lord.”
So Christ came on May 21, 2011 and it was “unawares” destruction and an “unseen” destruction because the door to heaven is an invisible door. The door to heaven was wide open during the second part of the Great Tribulation when God saved a great multitude from the foundation of the world, but no one could see it. You just cannot see a spiritual thing with physical eyes – you can look up to the heavens and you can see no door to heaven. When God shut the door to heaven, as He said He would, you also cannot see that with your physical eyes. Also, the light of the Gospel (the spiritual sun, moon and stars) is unfolded through the Scriptures. You can picture it as a scroll that is rolled up and when you unfurl the scroll and lay it out, that is the Word of God, the Bible, putting the lights in the heaven as God’s Word spiritually lights the darkness of this world. But God speaks of Judgment Day as a time when the sun is darkened and the moon does not give her light and the stars fall from heaven. He also uses the illustration of the heavens being “rolled up as a scroll,” and that is the Bible closing the Gospel light to the world. It is an “unseen” thing that cannot be discerned with the physical eyes. It can only be discerned through the eyes of faith, as God grants it to those He saves. It is only the elect that will “see” and that is why the Bible says, “A wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.” It is a discernment of God’s timetable of “times and seasons” and a discernment of the nature of judgment – it is a spiritual judgment that God has brought to pass on the world.
We have this phrase in Revelation 16:15 where Christ says He comes as a thief and the Bible also tells us that the Lord comes as a thief in the night at the time of the day of the Lord, Judgment Day. In this case we are greatly helped in understanding what that means because the Lord also said the very same thing to the churches, in Revelation 3:1:
And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write…
At the end of this address and at the end of every address to the seven churches, Christ makes this same statement, as it says in Revelation 3:6:
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
It is not just an address to the church in Sardis, but it is to all the churches. The Word God is speaking to the New Testament churches and congregations established among the nations of the world. It is meant for all churches at all times, so Christ is speaking to the corporate body when he says, in Revelation 3:3:
Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
Here, God is answering (in a big way) the people that say, “No man can know the day or hour,” and they insist that no one can know anything about the timing of the Great Tribulation and Judgment Day. They have their response down pat: “No man knows the day or the hour.” When the topic comes up, they quickly respond with that, but throughout the New Testament era, the Lord said to “watch.” He would bring up subject matter concerning the end and He would say, “Watch.” We saw this in some of the verses we read earlier in this study. Here, he adds, “If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief,” and then he also adds what it means when He does come as a thief: “and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”If we dissect this verse and carefully look at it, we find a couple of very important things:
This helps us to understand that if we fail to keep “watch” in the Word of God, the Bible, then Christ comes as a thief in the night and that man will not know the day or hour. This is exactly how He came upon the churches when He judged the churches and congregations of the world when judgment began at the house of God. And now it is how He has come upon the unsaved people of the world.
The true believers have understanding, as it said in 1Thessalonians 5:4-5:
But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
The Lord does not overtake the true believers as a thief because they are watching. He gives them discernment regarding “time and judgment.” A wise man’s heart is able to discern those things. It says in Daniel 12:10: “and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.” This statement was made in relationship to the time of the end, as the Word of God was sealed until the time of the end.
The first thing we can know from Revelation 3:3 is that if you are “watching,” Christ will not come upon you as a thief and this would apply to the true believers that will have understanding. But if you fail to watch, then you are ignorant and you lack understanding, which means He will come upon you as a thief. The second important thing we can know is that Christ had said to the churches that if they did not repent, He would come upon them as a thief and judge them. Just as He speaks of coming upon the world as a thief in the night, He had forewarned the churches that He would come upon them as a thief if they failed to repent; we know that they did fail to repent and God did bring judgment upon the house of God, beginning on May 21, 1988.
I keep saying that “we know,” because it is the true believers that know this. Do the churches know this? No, they do not know this; they will not admit to it or recognize it. They have heard it. They heard they were under judgment, but they do not “know,” in that they lack understanding. Christ came as a thief and the judgment was that the Holy Spirit came out of the midst and left the churches and Satan entered in. In that act of abandoning the churches and turning them over to Satan, God judged the entire corporate body. He ended the church age and He ended His relationship with every church in the entire world and He removed their spiritual blessings – there would be no more salvation. No one was saved in any church body since May 21, 1988. No one in any of the churches anywhere in the world would become saved. They were robbed; the Lord came as a thief and stole their most important possession, which was the blessing of the Gospel of salvation. He stole it from them and they had no understanding of it, even to this very day. If you would speak to pastors, priests and any in authority, they would say, “God is with us. God is blessing us.” They have no idea that God has judged them.
That is our example. God has given that example of Christ coming as a thief in the night in judgment in an “unaware” destruction. He brought an “unseen” destruction upon the churches of the world – it was a spiritual judgment that they could not see with their physical eyes. They see the Bible is still in the pulpit and the congregation is still sitting in the pews and they see the nice “trappings” of their church building and they think the blessing of God is still upon them, but, spiritually, God is not even there. This is the nature of a spiritual judgment. This is the Biblical definition, because we can look at the example of judgment upon the churches and we can apply it to the judgment upon the world. And we can see precisely what happened on May 21, 2011 because it matches the judgment that God first brought upon the house of God.