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Post Falls SDA Church

Willard Santee

Classical Prophecy - The Seven Churches of Revelation

You'll notice that our topic is going to be Classical Prophecy.

This type of prophecy is given directly by the Prophet to the people.

It deals with current events and has personal meaning to those to whom it is given.

Symbols and prophetic time periods are not often a part of this kind of prophecy that we're going to be talking about tonight.

Even though classical prophecy is given by God through His prophet to a specific person or people.

It can also have spiritual significance and applications for generations to come.

Okay, that kind of gives you an idea of where we're going tonight.

We're going to take a look at a classical prophecy and it's found in the book of Revelation and we're going to take a look at 2 chapters tonight, chapter 2 and also chapter 3 of Revelation.

Before I do that I'm going to invite you to pray with me right now.

Father as we open your Word please open our hearts with understanding in Jesus name, Amen.

I'd like for you to take your Bible if you would first and turn with me to the book of Acts.

This is New Testament, right after the 4 Gospels we have a book called Acts.

In the book of Acts chapter 2 verse 17 Peter quotes from Joel 2 verses 28 through 32.

And he says, in the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, old men will dream dreams, and so on.

Now what Peter is doing, he is using a prophecy of the Old Testament to apply to a present experience.

Now what we look at today and we look back at this experience in Acts 2 and we can actually say what he was doing was making an application which we would call a secondary application of biblical prophecy.

You might want to just write it down on your little paper somewhere there on the backside Maybe because we are gonna fill in that front side This is a secondary application of Joel chapter 2 I'm gonna share with you real quickly what the primary fulfillment will be.

Joel 2 tells us that there's 2 types of rain that will fall upon man before Jesus comes.

1 type of rain will be what is called the early rain, and then comes the final latter rain.

And let me say this, the latter rain is the most important of the 2 rains because it's the 1 that prepares the wheat for the final harvest and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Are we together so far on what I've said?

Now it's interesting that Peter, he's got it kind of backwards.

He's got the secondary application instead of the primary application and he uses the secondary first and the primary is coming.

Tonight we're going to be talking about a primary and followed by a possible secondary.

Okay, just the reverse, just the reverse.

And The reason I'm sharing this even with you is not to confuse you, but just simply to give you kind of a heads up that sometimes the men of God's Word in the New Testament will take an Old Testament prophecy and make an application to it in their day.

And you need to ask yourself, is this a primary application Or is this a secondary application?

Okay, primary means that is the heart of it.

That is the main reason that that prophecy was given in the Old Testament.

Acts chapter 2, in summary, when Peter said, this is a fulfillment of Joel 2, he was fulfilling a secondary application of that prophecy.

A primary fulfillment of that same Joel 2 is yet future, folks, because the latter reign has not yet fallen upon this earth.

And when it does, it'll usher in the great second coming of Jesus Christ.

That's how I know it hasn't happened yet.

Now tonight we want to take a look at Revelation chapters 2 & 3 and we're going to take a look at a primary application that's already been fulfilled in this text.

But there may be a possibility of a secondary application which does involve some of us.

All right let's take a look if you would back in Revelation and you have it there chapter 2 right in front of you.

John you'll recall is on the Isle of Patmos which was a little rock quarry.

All the other disciples by now had died, been killed, and now John was the last.

He was the 1 that the church was so appreciative of anything that could come from John, and they knew that he had been banished to the island.

They knew that the Romans did not like what he had to say, and God met him there, and God gave him the revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ, an incredible book that we've been studying.

And so it is that John gets this message off, and I've often thought, and perhaps some of you have too, the reason John wrote the great majority of the book of Revelation in such weird, is that a fair word, Strange, peculiar fashion with all these beasts and horns.

You wonder why in the world would he do all of that?

Why is God trying to confuse his churches?

Why wouldn't he give them a message that would make it simple and straight and direct.

I have a hunch, folks, that John wrote that entire book of Revelation, the majority of it was written in code.

Christianity, as we're coming to the end of the first hundred years of that first century, Christianity was moving from a great time of excitement and joy and great days of growth to persecution.

Like I said, the other disciples had already been killed for their faith.

John, history tells us, at least secular history would indicate that John at 1 time was actually thrown into a vat of boiling oil to kill him, to do away with him.

And he came out of that unscathed and the people were evidently a little bit paranoid about trying to do him in after that.

And so they decided maybe we better just put him over there at Alcatraz.

And so they shoved him over there at Alcatraz and left him on the little island.

Now I'll tell you something about Alcatraz.

If you have some friends over on the mainland in San Francisco and you want to get a message to them, You have to write from Alcatraz in such a way that when the guards read your letter They haven't got a clue what you're talking about Because if they understand what you're talking about and they don't like what you're talking about Your letter will never get over to the mainland.

And so I really believe that God in His providence, His divine providence, gave John insights into things that perhaps even he himself didn't fully grasp or understand.

And he saw these beasts and he saw funny things that he wrote about just as he saw them in the best language he knew how to describe.

And he sent those by courier or by boat under guard, who when they read his letter, I have a hunch they said, you know what?

He's an old man and his gears are greased.

So I think the best thing we can do is leave this letter in the hands of the churches untouched so they'll know that he is touched but little do they realize how he was touched by the power of God himself.

We've discovered that the Word of God actually translates itself if we'll give it that opportunity to do it.

And so as you've come to our school you have been learning some keys, some ideas and understanding on how to get into the book, how to make it make sense and let it make sense for you.

And tonight we're going to take a look at this fascinating study called classical prophecy in chapters 2 & 3, 7 letters to 7 churches.

Now remember there's no codes here to decipher, Just straight messages right straight to those 7 churches.

So this is a classical prophecy by God sending it to His prophet, His prophet giving it directly to the people of that generation, and those messages were extremely important.

Now as we open, the very first thing we want to take a look at is the beginning of sevens.

Now just to kind of give you an idea of the sevens that are in the book of Revelation we have 7 churches.

There are also 7 spirits, There are 7 candlesticks, there are 7 stars, there are 7 lamps of fire.

There's a book with 7 seals, there's 7 horns and 7 eyes of a lamb.

There's 7 angels with 7 trumpets, there's 7 thunders, There's a dragon with 7 heads and 7 crowns.

There's 7 angels having 7 vials containing the 7 last plagues.

And the beast with 7 heads, which also is said to be on 7 mountains and 7 kings.

Now symbolically I find it interesting too that 7 symbolically is also a number that represents completeness, fullness.

God sends a special message to His special servant who sends this message via the Roman guard back over to the mainland to 7 specific churches.

Complete 7 messages to 7 churches of old Asia Minor.

Let's see if we can make sense out of this.

It's rather direct, just straight message to 7 churches.

His first message goes to the angel of the church.

The angel simply means, in Greek it means messenger, 1 sent forth.

Who would be the messenger of your church?

You have a messenger in your church that Every Sunday gets up to give a message, or every Saturday in our case, gets up to give a message.

Classical Prophecy - The Seven Churches of Revelation

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