Before the Curtain Rises, Part 1

It's easy for us humans to think much higher of ourselves that we and to think that planet Earth belongs to us here in this period of time they will discover that all along. This was the creators. This is his planet. This is his air. His see his world and he alone has the right to judge God will use the idols of mankind to crush mankind. Often people seem to act like it's ours. Many people in our day esteem planet Earth so highly that knowingly or not. Instead of worshiping the creator they worship the creation but friend a day is coming when that will change. God will make his ownership of the universe clear the way that he'll do that is by using his creation to bring forth his judgment. Stephen Devi is going to examine this today in a lesson he's calling before the curtain rises.

This is wisdom for the heart here Stephen with today's message as I prepare to reengage with you in this study, it occurred to me that we really ought to do is set the stage for the next event in prophetic Scripture following the tribulation, the most magnificent and glorious scenes ever seen on planet Earth.

We just some of them with emerald courts and the sapphire sky that will be true in order to set the stage for that. What I want to do is look at where we've been briefly at our session today. I know you have it all down pack by now.

Of course, but let's take this study and review specially for those new friends. We want the same page with us that you've ever been to a play and maybe you've had a homespun play in your living room whenever a holidays little house of the beach. We brought our home videos with us and we laughed until we cried our twin sons in our daughter a year and 1/2 younger than them were performing plays and they do that Mary and Joseph every Christmas and baby Jesus and they come out of the bathrobes in the towels and then they disappeared our hallway was sort of backstage and we could hear them back there and okay arguing and talking about who goes out next and Mary and Joseph are having a fight over baby Jesus laughed and laughed and laughed but even a something a little more sophisticated maybe middle school play with your kids, or high school play or maybe even the Broadway I you you how it works in between scenes. The curtain drops you can hear movement maybe a bumper to it. If there's a gap between the curtain and the floor. The stage floor. You can see, feet moving around the stage, you can hear the sliding of furniture and other set pieces that are being put in the place you can't see him but you know the stage manager is back there somewhere in control of all the moving parts, directing the stage crew and in readying the actors to make sure that every prop and every person is in place and then the curtain rises and the audience is swept into another scene as the drama moves forward that saw us right now we are the audience we are watching and listening while the stage is being set for the next dramatic scene in the prophetic calendar. The curtain is closed so we can see all the details but there are glimpses of movement. There are spaces here and there we catch we we can interpret all of the sounds perfectly that we hear we we do know that the director is in control and all the set pieces and players are under his sovereign direction as the stage is being set before the curtain goes up the next event which is the rapture of the church takes place. And that leads me to say quickly if you've never given your hard life, body, soul, mind to Jesus Christ.

Do it now. Do it now before the curtain goes up. Maybe even before the sermon is over accept Christ as your sovereign Lord. Now you don't have to join this church not to sign a card you don't have to go through baptismal waters you want to turn over newly those will be evidences that you really did come to Jesus Christ, for they come after the fact. You can settle it with God right now where you sit and I exhort you to do that the curtain could go up today when you attend the play more sophisticated kind, you typically get a program. Don't you and it tells you the scenes that are rolling out those that will occur next. In fact, you get a brief synopsis of each scene and you can look ahead. The body of Christ has been given that kind of program it's this book of Revelation along the prophetic Scripture throughout the Old Testament and course, much of it in the news. Well, we can read a brief synopsis of each scene that will occur as well as a list of scenes yet to unfold. So by studying our program taking it at face value. We know that that were right now in the first few chapters of Revelation. In chapters 1 through three. This period of time known as the church age and we also know that when the curtain rises on the next scene, the rapture of the church that will will follow closely.

After that, then, is the tribulation. And then after that the kingdom of Christ on earth. And after that, the eternal state that I'm sure you have all that down pat, right. Let's slow it down a little.

I would push the rewind button before we get to the next scene I have outlined the book of Revelation effect before we ever started in the four main sections the first section is chapters 1 through five which I've outlined as the sovereignty of Christ and his church. The church appears in the first five chapters of Revelation. In the first three chapters of Revelation, the church is on earth in chapters 4 and five. The church is in heaven. Not surprisingly then, after chapter 5 there are no more appearances of the church on earth until after chapter 18 why because from chapter 6 to chapter 18 through chapter 18 the time of tribulation occurs on planet Earth and the church has been promised to be removed out of chapter 3 verse 10 away from ack. Apart from the language says the presence of God's wrath on earth during the tribulation.

So chapters 1 through five have as their focus the sovereignty of Christ and his relationship to his bride, the church first seen on earth and then scene worshiping in heaven. The second major division of our program is the severity of Christ in his chastisement and this is the bulk of the body of this revelation. This is the tribulation period where God pours out his wrath on humanity and in planet Earth to set the stage for the next event of God's calendar.

What exactly review is this period of time of the period of time on this timeline that takes place between these two yellow arrows one arrow refers to the church going up in the rapture being caught away as the Latin which gives us our word rep tour is over rapture from Paul's writing to the Thessalonian Church of the arrow coming down represents the return of Christ with the church to set up his kingdom between those two arrows are seven years of on paralleled human suffering demonic activity, cosmic disturbance, Jewish awakening gospel preaching and global crises that the world has never seen before. The four Horsemen representing the four opening seals before writers of the Apocalypse unleash those initial plagues of God's wrath and human suffering through one act of judgment after another.

What will follow our cosmic disturbances. The moon turns the blood son in the clips and then flaring to strike the earth with great heat, natural disasters are going to come one after another striking the earth over and over again as the Angels sound trumpet signifying new fresh disclosures of God's wrath and then the final blows of God's judgment depicted as bowls tipping over pouring out as as if the wrath of God was water being poured out upon the earth. We have spent quite a lot of time studying that progression of time revealed to us in Revelation chapter 6 through 18 no one knows we've study will be worshiping this tortured earth anymore God will bring more damage to the planet he created than mankind could ever conceive of. No one will be worshiping mother Earth anymore.

As we said there will be no more birthdays during the tribulation. Mother nature will no longer be a cute little title for the politically correct she will effectively as it were, become a monster of great torment. Why because the created order, which by this time in Revelation is reached, the status of divinity and the universe considered Almighty which bio is interesting where they are now creation will by the command of the creator. Turn on mankind in nature will become the agent in God's punishing hand, the world will discover their error and their false idols. Matthew Henry wrote more than a century ago. This pastor commentator that the unbelieving world thinks that everything in creation belongs to them hero. They believe this is their planet. There are worth their error. There see their rivers, their world and that they alone have the right to judge will hear in this period of time they will discover that all along.

This was the creators earth. This is his planet.

This is his air his rivers, his world and he alone has the right to judge God will use the idols of mankind to crush mankind.

Nature will run riot as natural disasters, along with following diseases and unparalleled crime and starvation. They will reach such devastating levels that by the end of the tribulation.

Coffins will not be able to be crafted fast enough and corpses will lie out in the open that Revelation informs us that by the end of the tribulation half the world's population will be dead during the seven-year period between those arrow, primarily the last half of that period of time the Christ adds the word great to the word tribulation.

This will be the time when the Antichrist declares himself to be God, he will put up an image of his own claim to deity. He will demand that the world worship him demonic activity will run rampant as Satan and his Antichrist have their way in ruling the world that why does all of this unfold.

What is the purpose again of the tribulation will first and foremost for Israel, and you need to know that in fact if you miss Israel in all of this being reconstituted.

You miss so much of what God has in store. I remember reading one critic in my last double years of study critic of Revelation who said the book of Revelation is so Jewish.

Well, it is all the prophecies of Israel's regathering and awakening come to pass in Revelation as Israel is not only regathered but converted Isaiah Amos Zachariah Danielle and more of these prophets spoke with certainty of Israel's national conversion as an athletic elect people returning to the land of their fathers, and maybe we in our lifetime begun to see that happening that you need to understand that one of the ongoing evidences and I've said this before but I will say it again, the evidences that we know God will keep his covenant promises ethnic people of Israel is that Israel not only exists today, but they they still after thousands of years have a national conscience and a a national heritage and a national vision from father Abraham thousands of years ago today. The Hebrew people exist when the Olympics were held not too long ago you watch the opening ceremonies amazing in all the nations represented in their athletes marching into the stadium during the opening ceremonies. You did not see one athlete from the Hittite nation did know you didn't see any of that Ninevites perform either.

Did you or the Gurkhas shied to the Jebusites of the Amorites, or what I like. Still, the other mosquito bites.

Even see any of them. You did not see one Philistine competing in the long jump. Why were long gone, absorbed into the peoples of the world but not the Israelite tribulation will be that period of time and ethnic Israel. This select nation. Paul speaks of in Romans 11 will experience national conversion and they will see Christ ascending as he sets up his kingdom. They will look upon him.

They have peers tribulation is not a time for the church to suffer the wrath of God then or at any time, for that matter. I will say to me, Stephen.

The only reason you believe in the rapture is because you want to go through the tribulation.to an ancient Hebrew word you speak, when in the presence of brilliance. They no kidding, but I usually ask them will why do you think the church should suffer through the tribulation and I'll invariably get answered back.

This is something I because the church needs to be purified for some of its terrible theology, both practically and biblically terrible practical theology because when somebody says the church really needs to be purified first before it enjoys the kingdom of God. I want to rest in which church are you reading the news watching the church in Sudan. Thousands of believers been martyred in the last decade for the faith in Christ are you talking at the church in Iran or Saudi Arabia were to accept Christ is to lose your life right on the church in China where that nation is still imprisoning and torturing those who believe you have a problem with a person who said something that is there interpreting prophecy through American lives through Western eyes, the blood of the martyr's flowing around this globe in our lifetime more than ever before.

So when I hear some well-meaning believers in the church needs to go to the tribulation because it needs to be purified. I think I'll utterly embarrassing. Wake up read Dick because the Western media shuts it down, but it's out there.

It's also poor biblical theology not just for practical theology is released to the doctrines of of truth revealed to us about the Christian's position in Christ.

The Christian does not have to be further purified in order to enter God's presence. The Christian is purified segment is 521. We are not earning the righteousness of Christ.

We have the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ. Paul wrote to the Philippians in chapter 3 verse nine.

You don't have a righteousness of your own derived from the law or keeping the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith is earning its evidence for the more the church does not merit the grace of God that's on biblical theology more than a billion people on the planet believe that there is not a list of things to do to earn the grace of God we have been given the grace of God through the merit of Jesus Christ alone. By the way grace is defined biblically as unmerited or undeserved favor from God.

In other words, if you earned it.

It would not be grace. Paul wrote to the Ephesian church in Christ we have is now we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us. Ephesians 1. We watch the scene unfold as the church was ruptured singing to their gracious Redeemer.

The church symbolized by the 24 elders wearing white garments as Christ promised the church wearing crowns upon their heads.

As Christ promised the church seated upon.

Thrones, as promised by Christ to the church. In fact, reinforced by the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians. These words that are startling. If you want to sit out and meditate on them.

Do you not know that the saints will one day rule the world was the church in heaven during the tribulation will return with Christ as the tribulation comes to a close and his Christ sets up his kingdom. We, the bride of Christ will serve as co-regents with him, ruling and reigning during this dazzling glorious kingdom on earth for a thousand years, with its economies and its businesses and its exploration and its developments and we will be in the administration of the Emperor. While we do not know when the rapture will occur. We do know that after the rapture occurs sometime after the tribulation will begin when not sure how long it will be before the tribulation begins. But we do know that it begins with the signing of some kind of peace treaty that brings peace to Israel as prophesied and delivered to us in Revelation Matthew chapter 24 in Revelation chapter 6 provided for us a complimentary commentary on one another and we learned that the tribulation began with the presence of a leader who is able to bring peace to the Middle East, particularly with Israel in mind, the peacemaker will soon be revealed as the antichrist is able to broker this piece, which seems to settle things down for the first half of the tribulation but at that midpoint. He begins his bloodbath as he seeks to exterminate the Jewish people. That's one of the reasons the Jews fleeing from the antichrist who seeks to wipe them out along with those who believe in, and the Messiah of the Lord Jesus Christ, that this is more than anti-Semitism. This is Satan's attempt to keep the prophecies of a reconstituted nation of Israel from their land, which if he can do that if you wipe them off. He can then what he can make not all and void any further prophecies from being fulfilled of Christ ruling from Jerusalem from David's throne, so we studied at length the flight of the Jews worn by Jesus in Matthew 24 you see these things happening, you better run. Don't worry about packing clothing or storing food, you just run because of all these horrors that will be unleashed on the planet and the most evangelical scholars are many that are red and suggested that they flee. Many of them who can who can get away to a place called Petra to wonderful hiding place and I'll review that quickly we look at that concept together. Most of the buildings in this ancient city were literally carved into the sandstone Hills about a thousand years before Jesus Christ was born around A.D. 551, the sixth century and earthquake occurred, and it caused the people to abandon these built-in homes. These literally the city, fearing for their lives. Should the mountains collapse. Some of the buildings they're not just a rough hewn some of them are beautifully carved into the mountains. Excavations are revealed in the end. Through these openings, major highways and and boulevards and shops send an homes Petra was rediscovered in earnest in 1812. It's been a point of fascination and excavation ever since. One of the reasons Petra would make such a great place to retreat and hide during the tribulation is the fact that it would be easy to defend should they be found. Most of the buildings can only be reached on foot or dunking or camel. In fact, enemy soldiers would have a difficult time sending a large army into this area without having to march in single file.

Since much of Petra is surrounded by sheer cliffs. This would certainly be a wonderful area to protect an area in which the high we also learned that the antichrist's agenda is not only the extermination of the Jewish people, but the exaltation of his own divinity he will forge together one world government, a one world political body a one world economy, and he will rule not the concept of a one world government and a one world economy.

In fact, they one world religion are not new.

They been around a long time. What history the world of mankind is thought for world domination that I just read the record of Alexander the great who hoped one day to rule the world from Nimrod's rebuild Babylon read of Napoleon who attempted also to unify the world under his control and he also Becky had plans drawn up for the rebuilding of Babylon. There, in modern-day Iraq, which he wanted to rule the world. Where did you get that idea when none of the attempts at a unified world system under the rule of one man is yet see, which is look around. Just listen at the rising volume of the rising rhetoric of nations clambering at 404 a one world political government all one world economy effective you look at all the many I should say of the major religious bodies sort of shucking over board convictions relative to whatever they believe in their hope to somehow forge a unified religion.

You can't help but wonder if the current gun arrives soon. There's only one wise option to submit to the King of the universe today one day every person will submit to his authority. We have the opportunity to do it joyfully. Now you're listening to wisdom for the hearts the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey Stephen pastors the shepherd's church in Cary, North Carolina.

Today's lesson begins a series from Revelation entitled thy kingdom come, this message is called before the curtain rises there is more to this message.

It was too long to fit in one broadcast sobering to come back to it and bring you the conclusion next time between now and then we'd love to hear from you.

One of the joys of our ministry is hearing from listeners and learning how God is using this ministry to help you grow in your faith you can send us a message through our website wisdom online.org you can also call us her number is 86 648 Bible once again, 86 648 Bible I'm Scott Wiley and I thank you for joining us today. Stephen will be back next time. To conclude this lesson so please join us right here on wisdom