Welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the book of Revelation. This will be study #5 in chapter 1. We are reading, presently, Revelation 1, verse 1:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:

We have been looking at the Greek word "apokalupsis" that is translated as "revelation," and following that word in the New Testament, as God has used it in other places, to see that this word has to do with the word of God, the Bible. The whole Bible is the "revelation" of Jesus Christ and, especially, in this case, the book of Revelation, which is part of the Bible.

We saw that it was God's plan to first give the word, the complete communication from Himself to mankind, to "seal up" information in that word, and then to "reveal the mystery of the revelation," as God reached certain points in His overall time plan.

So He gave His word in the Old Testament and "revealed" some things, and He completed the giving of Revelation, the written word, in the first century and "revealed" more things. But He also kept hidden a great deal of information, sealed up until the time of the End. And, at the time of the End, which began with the Great Tribulation period, God took the seals off of the book, the Bible, and began a process of "revealing" the final "mysteries," and this went on over the period of several years of the Great Tribulation.

But we have now seen, and we are learning now, that God has a plan in the "day of wrath," to complete the "revelation of the mystery." It is the "revelation of the righteous judgment of God," and Romans 2:5 tells us that. So this is why, in Revelation chapter 10, right before the seventh and last trumpet sounds (and once that trumpet sounds, the indication would be that the world comes to a final close and it is the End, and then God turns His attention to eternity future), but right before, at the point of, the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the "mystery" of God should be finished, and that can only be the "mystery of the revelation," the "mystery" concerning the hidden truths that God has placed in His word.

So we are finding that we are learning more things about the "revelation" of God that have been hidden. No one knew, before May 21, 2011 - it took the "Day of Judgment" to actually come, and to pass, for us to learn that Judgment Day for the world would be spiritual in nature, until the completion of a period of judgment upon them and then, finally, they would be physically and literally destroyed with this whole world and the universe. No one knew that before, but now we have learned it, that God is maintaining a consistent pattern of judgment that He started in the Garden of Eden, which was a spiritual judgment, where man's soul died in the day he disobeyed God.

And that pattern was continued with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, drinking the wrath of God from a spiritual cup, not a literal cup; no one could see Him suffering; no fire bolts were falling from Heaven.

That pattern continued when God judged the churches and congregations in a spiritual way, completely; there was no literal "not one stone left upon another," but spiritually this took place.

And so, on the Day of Judgment, God shut an invisible door to Heaven, that no man could see when it was open, and now no man can see with his physical eyes that it is closed, that it is a spiritual judgment. We recently learned this, that Judgment Day on the world is spiritual.

We also learned that it is God's plan to leave His people in the world to experience a trying of their faith, a final test, a "fiery trial," the Bible calls it, to see if they are true men, as God proves us to find out if we are "gold, silver and precious stones" that will endure the fire, or if we are "wood, hay and stubble" that will be burned up. In other words, God is testing us - those who carried His word to the world in the days leading up to May 21, 2011 - and if we fail the test, well, that is evidence we were never truly children of God.

Actually, since May 21, 2011, we have been under His wrath as all the rest of the world experiencing judgment and, if we pass the test and if we endure, and we can only do that if God qualifies us by having saved us, and He brings us through the fire, then we have been experiencing a severe testing. So it really depends on if we are truly saved, or not, whether we are presently facing the wrath of God in punishment, or if we are being "tried and tested." But we have learned this, also, since entering into the period of the Day of Judgment, as God has "revealed" the "righteous judgment," the "revelation of the mystery," and the "mystery" will soon be finished, as the day of this world finally comes to a close, but we will be here.

Well, let us continue on in Revelation 1, verse 1:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him...

Now that might sound surprising to some people, that God gave the "revelation" to Jesus Christ. Someone might think, "Why is that? Is not Jesus God?" And the answer is, "Yes, He is God," and the Father is God, and the Spirit is God: God reveals Himself as one God, but three Persons. Actually, this language is typical of God's salvation program, as He speaks, for instance, of the Father sending the Son: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Or, it is typical when we read things like we do in John, chapter 5, verses 26-27:

For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.

So, here, the Father is giving to the Son "life" and the "authority to execute judgment." A little further along in the Gospel of John, it says in John 17, verse 8:

For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

Jesus the Son is speaking to the Father: "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me." We cannot understand this. All we know is that within the Godhead, all being equal, all are Eternal God - we cannot say one is God and another is not. Christ is Eternal God. He has "all the fulness of the Godhead" in His bodily form. Yet, within the Godhead, we read of the Father acting, at times, upon the Son: the Father giving Him the Cup of wrath, the Son drinking it, and we read of the Father giving words to the Son. And then the Son, the Lord Jesus, turns around and gives those words to His followers, the body of believers.

And that is what John 17:8 is saying: "For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me." This would mean that the Bible, which is the "revelation" of Jesus Christ, was given to Christ by the Father. That does not exclude Jesus; remember that the Son that was to be born, according to Isaiah, chapter 9, is the "everlasting Father." We cannot separate Jesus from the Father. They are one.

So we just realize this is part of the mysterious nature of the Bible, that we can only understand to a certain degree. We can know these things that God is one God, yet three persons, but we cannot really comprehend them, due to our finite nature, due to our limited capability, our limited intellect. We can only understand the truth of it, and not how it can actually be. And that is due to God's infinite mind and Person. He is above us and beyond us, as the Heavens are above the Earth, and we just realize it is so.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass...

Now this reminds us a little bit of the Amos 3:7 verse, where God says:

Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.

God is always concerned with "revealing" Himself, "revealing" truth (and that is the Lord Jesus) to His people. And the Bible is the "revelation" of Jesus Christ, or the "revelation" of God. It "reveals" who He is: His person, His nature, His attributes.

Whenever we learn some truth, we are learning something about Jesus, and this is what God gave the word for, to communicate, to "reveal" personal and intimate things about Himself to His people, that we might know God - that we might have a better understanding of Him, other than simply realizing, "Well, there is a God because we can look up and see the sun in the day, and the moon at night, and the stars, and we can see that there had to be a creator and, by the creation, we can know there is a God."

But we cannot know too much about Him. It is only by the divine "revealed" will of God, the "revelation" of Himself that we find in the Bible, that we learn much more information about the Person of God. And, here, this is the reason for the book of Revelation and the whole Bible, "to show unto His servants the things which must shortly come to pass."

And God also has a concern that as He reveals information to His Elect people, to His children, that we understand some things about the future. Now this, seemingly, is contrary to what the churches are telling people, and they would say to the believers, "Oh, you have no need to know things about the coming of Christ. No, you should not be looking into those kinds of things. You ought not be too concerned with eschatology." (Note: This means the study of the End times.) "These things are mysterious, and, yes, we agree that they are secret and they belong to God, and God will not reveal them, and no man knows the day or the hour."

Well, then why is God bothering to write the book of Revelation which concerns primarily, and overwhelmingly so, the Great Tribulation and the End of the world? Why did God give us Matthew 24 and Mark 13 and Luke 21 and 2^nd Thessalonians, chapter 2? Why did God bother moving the prophet Daniel to write down all that information about the End and to "seal it up" until the time of the End, with the implication being that at the End it would be uncovered and "revealed?" Why did God move Ezekiel to write about these things? And Jeremiah? And Isaiah? Why is there so much information in the Bible, so much Scripture, that speaks of the End of the world and the coming of Christ, and of a new Heaven and a new Earth?

Really, I cannot imagine why God would give us all this information, and then hold back the "knowing" of it, the actual knowledge of these things. We are just supposed to, according to the church, acknowledge that they are written herein: "Oh, yes, we read them, but let us not get too close to them. Let us not approach them, and touch these things. Stand back!"

Well, that is the church's doctrine! That is the church's teachings! They do not want to know these things. They are afraid of these things. It is very similar to when the Lord Jesus came the first time. When the Messiah was finally come to Jerusalem, we read in the Gospel of Matthew, a very interesting account in Matthew, chapter 2, verse 1:

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

Now this is incredible news! This is the most amazing news that the Jews could ever receive! They had been looking for the Messiah for thousands of years. Actually, by this point, the history of the world since creation had passed 11,000 years, and now came wise men from the East concerning the One to be born King of the Jews, and Herod was troubled.

Well, that is not surprising because he was such an evil man. Information about the coming King would certainly, rightly, trouble him. We are not surprised by that at all. But notice that it says that he was troubled, at the end of verse 3, and "all Jerusalem with him." That is, the authorities, the scribes, the Pharisees, the leaders, and the priests were troubled. Why would they be troubled? Well, because the Old Testament church of Israel is very similar, in that way, to the New Testament church of our day!

The Old Testament church gave much "lip service" to the coming Messiah, and they would publicly proclaim how they longed for Him to come: "Oh, we are looking for the Messiah!" And, yet, when news of His coming reached them, they were troubled, and later when Jesus walked amongst them and ministers before them, and teaches, we see their hostility! We see more troubled minds at the things that Christ has said.

Why are they so troubled? Because as long as the coming Messiah is just some sort of expectation, these leaders of Israel (who were not really God's people at all, but natural men who just found themselves in positions of authority and rule in religious things), they could conduct themselves the way they wanted to run things, in a very traditional way. They could operate things like a business, as they sold doves and other animals in the temple. They could operate things where they received honor and respect from the people. They could give long prayers in public places, and everyone looked up to them. They feared these men because they had power to cast out of the synagogue.

These men only gave "lip service" to the idea of the coming Messiah. They did not really want Him to come, because then all of the honor and glory and authority would switch; it would remove from them and go to the Messiah. All the people would run after Him, and they would cease to follow the religious leaders of Israel, so they were troubled, troubled people!

And, likewise, the church today will tell you, "Oh, we want Jesus to come! Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! We are looking for Christ to come. Oh, how we long for Him!" And then what does God do? Just as He sent the wise men from the East long ago to bring report of the coming Messiah, God opened the Scriptures to "reveal" the date of the coming judgment of God which would be the precursor, the beginning stages of the coming of Christ.

And was the church excited? Were they thrilled to find that we had finally reached the End times, that the day of Christ was nigh? Oh, no, they did not want to hear these things! They were greatly troubled by this information that, supposedly, from their perspective, was sealed to the time of the End and now opened up.

They wanted nothing to do with the idea of Christ coming in Judgment: "No man knows the day or hour," they claimed. It is very much along the same lines as Israel of old; they give "lip service" to the coming of Christ, but, in reality, when "the rubber meets the road," they want nothing to do with His actual coming.

After all, that would interfere with their plans for a new church addition. It would interfere with their plans for adding to this program and that program, and all the 'religious business' that they are involved in. In actuality, they like things just as they are, thank you! Let us just continue with this "idea of the coming of Christ," and let us keep it in the realm of 'the possible,' and, after all, He could come at any day, although they live like He will never come. He will never return. They are living as though there is no God, there is no Christ, none that can "see" them. After all, how could they do the things they do with the Bible, and teach the things they are teaching, if they thought that God was coming?

No, they are very much behaving themselves as Israel of old. And, so, we find that it is only the true believers who are thrilled, and longing, and hoping for the fulfillment of all things. So, Revelation 1:1 declares:

"The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass..."

Now we want to look at this phrase "shortly come to pass," because this, in itself, is mysterious. Was not this written in the first century A.D.? And are we not living in the twenty-first century? And, certainly, when this word was given, it had in view the things that are written in the book of Revelation and in the Bible concerning the End, concerning the coming of Christ. How could it be, after nearly 2,000 years, that these things are said to "shortly come to pass?"

Well, when we get together next time, we are going to look into this idea. And I think we will be able to understand why it is that God makes this kind of a statement, or when it reads in a few places, "Behold, I come quickly." And, in fact, it is so, that Jesus comes quickly, and next time, Lord willing, we will look at this a little longer.