Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #7 of Revelation 2, and we will read Revelation 2:7:

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

In our last study, we discussed why so many cannot “hear” the truth of God’s Word, and we saw that it was due to their spiritually dead condition.  But what about those who do hear, the true believer?  How is it that we have the ability to hear and understand the Word of God?  Let us look at a couple places in the Bible that will help us understand this.

First, let us turn to John 10:2-4:

But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.

Also, it says in John 10:16:

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

Hearing the voice of Christ is basically a synonym for “knowing” His voice, and the true believers are given that ability as God equips His elect people, the people that were predestinated to salvation before the world began.  They were the chosen ones that God chose according to His good pleasure, but not due to anything in them.  There is nothing better about the elect than other people.  We were just as sinful as anyone else.  Based upon our own merits, we would be condemned and under the wrath of God just like every other person.  But because of God’s grace and unmerited favour, in His plan of salvation He determined to save a people for Himself, and He selected certain individuals that would be born throughout the generations, according to His good pleasure.  He chose Jacob, but He did not choose Esau.  Before they had done “good or evil,” He chose, and it was all according to God’s predetermined plan.  He determined to save these individuals, and He also obligated Himself to make sure that these elect would understand the Word of God, the true Gospel of the Bible.

But how could they understand?  God would make sure they did.  He would cause them to understand, even though for a time they may not have understood the things of God.  But He would draw them without ceasing until they experienced that redemption, and the blood of the Lord Jesus was applied to them, and their sins were covered.  They received new born again souls, and the Lord would give them ears to hear.  He would open their understanding.

During the church age, a pastor could have been teaching a verse faithfully and truthfully, and the child of God would be rejoicing, understanding what God is saying in that passage, whereas many others in the congregation just “did not get it.”  They did not understand why God is teaching that particular thing, and that is because within the congregations there were both wheat and tares.  The wheat would understand to a high degree, but the tares would not understand.  They would not hear the voice of Christ in the same way as one of God’s elect.

Or to update it to the time that the Gospel went out through Family Radio in the days before May 21, 2011, blanketing the earth, many people heard the message.  But certain people heard, and their “ears perked up” because God was drawing them through the message, and they responded, and they came ever closer to the Lord and His Word.  At the same time, others who heard the same message were repulsed.  They dismissed it.  They ignored it.  They wrote it off.   They were angry about it, and there was every angry reaction you can think of, both in the churches and out in the world.

Why is it that certain ones are irresistibly drawn to the Word of God, but the exact same message can generate no interest in other persons?  It is only because of the working of God in the lives of those elect individuals.  God gives grace.  Even before we are saved, God was extending His grace through the “drawing” before we even had ears to hear, and we began to develop an interest in these things because God was leading us in that direction, and He would not let us get away, even if we wanted to flee into the world, or go back to a false teaching.  God would not allow it.  He would hold us fast and draw us another step closer until the point of salvation.  Of course God only draws His elect like that, but He does not draw individuals that are not elect in that way, so if those people go back to the world, it would be evidence that they are not a child of God.

Let us also go to the Gospel of Mark, and we will read a passage in Mark 7:31-35:

And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.

This is a historical example that took place in history when the Lord found a deaf person and healed him of his deafness, and He also gave him the ability to speak plainly.  Oftentimes, when a person is deaf, it affects the speech.  In telling us that his ears were opened, the Lord is revealing to us what is required for a sinner to hear the voice of the Lord, or to hear spiritually, as it says in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, where it says over and over, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”  The Lord has done this for a person if he opens our spiritual ears, and we will hear things that others will not hear.  Certain information from the Bible will impact us, while many others could hear the same thing but it would have no consequence in their lives.

For instance, when a believer learns that Sunday is the Sabbath, and God opens our understanding and we realize, “That is the Lord’s day.  It is not a day for my own pleasure.  We are not to work on that day, as that day is for God and spiritual things, so that is what I need to do.”  The believer will be moved in that direction.  It is evidence that we “heard” the Word of God.

We learned about the end of the church age (and this is already past) when the Lord opened up the Scriptures to reveal that the church age was over and it was time for His people to flee out of the congregations, we hearkened.  And the Lord did this through “types and figures,” using Israel or Judah as a figure of the churches.  The believers checked it out in the Scriptures, and we realized, “Yes, this is exactly what God is saying.  The Bible is literally dripping with information about the end of the church age, and God has even given us the biblical calendar of history to know when it was the proper time to flee.  We have to obey.  We have to respond.  We hear the voice of Christ calling us out of the congregations, and we must leave.”

But again, there were about two billion professing Christians at that time, and how many came out?  Just a handful, a remnant, came out of the churches, and hundreds of millions remained.  Did they hear?  Many of them heard, but they did not hearken because they heard it with their physical ears, but they had no spiritual ears to hear.  They did not understand the mystery of these Scriptures because God spoke it in a parable in order that they would not hear.  It was God’s plan to leave them there as “tares,” and He did not open their understanding by opening their spiritual ears, and they did not recognize the danger, and they remained, “bundled for the burning,” which took place on May 21, 2011.  And God has sealed the fate of all those professed Christians that remained in the churches in disobedience and rebellion against Him.  They were responsible to obey.  They were responsible to hearken, even though much of this information was in parabolic form and was hidden truth.  God holds man accountable, and we are responsible to understand and obey the Word of God.

And the Word of God is spiritual, and it is only because of sin that man does not understand.  It is only because of man’s rebellious nature, so it is man’s fault that some did not understand that the Jews represented the churches, and that God’s command to “flee Judea” was a command to flee the congregations.  Man cannot blame anyone but himself if he did not “hear” that command. 

Likewise with the news of Judgment Day, May 21, 2011, which was spiritually discerned, God’s people heard the voice of the Lord.  We heard it clearly.  Remember that God said, “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”  God made sure that the warning of Judgment Day taking place on the date of May 21, 2011 was “crystal clear,” so there would be no mistaking it.  And the people of God heard this information, and they recognized it as the voice of Christ, just as we recognized other truths that the Bible teaches.  It was confirmed by the Word of God.  It was thoroughly checked out and confirmed, again, and again.  No fault could be found with it.

The problem today is that there are some saying that it was a mistake.  It was an error and a failure.  Yet the true believers do not agree with that at all.  We do not say it was a mistake.  Why?  Is it because we are stubborn and proud, and we will not admit we were wrong?  No.  It has nothing to do with that.  It was simply a matter that we “heard” the voice of Christ, and we heard it powerfully and clearly, and we could not just say, “It was an error.”  If it were an error, it would mean it was not the voice of Christ.  So what can we say?  All we can do is to humbly acknowledge that we hear our Shepherd’s voice.  We know the voice of the Lord, and we heard it.

We did not know for a time how to explain why May 21, 2011 came, and then it, seemingly, passed without event.  We were confused for a time, and we were troubled because we were certain that we heard His voice.  Some quickly said, “Oh, we were all wrong, and it was sin!”  And we wonder, “Did they not truly hear the voice of Christ?  Did they not know His voice?  How could they so quickly cast it aside if they did hear His voice?”

The true believers waited patiently on the Lord, praying for wisdom, and continuing to study the Bible.  And as we did, we came to realize, “It was the voice of the Lord because it was the Day of Judgment just as the Bible taught.”  We did need some correction in some areas of how Judgment Day would transpire, but the major teaching of Judgment Day was fulfilled.  God did bring about the Day of Judgment, and He did shut the door of heaven.  He did put out the Gospel light to this world, spiritually.  Then we began to realize why it was that the Lord allowed it all in order to set up a perfect testing program for all who professed to be Christians, especially for those that claimed they were true believers, and they claimed they had heard His voice.  They were involved in “blowing the trumpet” and sharing this information with the world.  God put us all into a fiery trial to see if we are really true born again believers.  Are we “gold, silver, precious stones,” or are we “wood, hay, stubble” that will be burned up in these days of testing?

 One of the immediate tests was that initial test regarding whether you did (or did not) hear the voice of Christ.  And the true child of God can only witness and testify, “Yes, I heard the voice of Christ.  That is why I was so sure.  That is why we declared that the Bible guarantees it because God had locked it into place.”  God locked this particular doctrine into place with many proofs.  We were tested immediately concerning whether (or not) we heard His voice, and that really comes down to the question: “Do we have ears to hear, or not?  Has the Lord opened our ears and given us the ability to understand spiritual truth?”  For the child of God, this is true.  God has done this for His people.

Let us look at just one other place in the Gospel of Luke where this idea of “spiritual ears” is in view, but it is stated in a different way.  This was after the Lord had risen from the dead and showed Himself to the two men on the way to the village of Emmaus, and then it says in Luke 24:44-45:

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,

Basically, that is just another way of saying that He opened up their ears.  We “hear” the Bible, we hear the truth of the Word of God, and we understand the things that God has hidden in His Word, the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and that is what it means to have “ears to hear.”

So the Lord is asking that question, and He is reminding the readers in our verse in Revelation 2:7:

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches…

God is saying, “In other words, I am going to speak in parables.  I am going to hide truth, and you must be diligent in seeking it out, and you must carefully check every word, comparing Scripture with Scripture, and making sure all your conclusions harmonize.  Following this methodology, pray for wisdom that I might open your understanding, and then you may learn some of these things.”

This is a “catch phrase,” and it is a key to help us understand that we cannot look at Revelation literally.  Theologians use the term hyperbolic language, but it is really just parabolic, just like the other books of the Bible, where God is using figures of speech, word pictures, types and figure, and many other things to hide what He is saying.  And the people of God will search it out, and God will open our understanding, for the most part.  Of course He kept somewhat of a “lid” on what He would reveal during the church age, and He had sealed up many of the things we are reading in the book of Revelation until the time of the end.  But now we are blessed and greatly privileged to be living at the time of the end when the Bible has been unsealed.  In this Day of Judgment, God is making known the revelation of His righteous judgment, so we can expect to learn and understand many more things that we are going to find in the book of Revelation and in the Bible as a whole.