What Happens When the Lamb Opens the Seals — Revelation 6

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, and ready to go for another half hour, and we'll just pick right up where we left off back there in Revelation chapter 5. Again, for those of you joining us on television, we haven't mentioned it for a few weeks, but in case you've just tuned in to our programs recently and you missed everything from Genesis up until where we are today, remember every program is available on videotapes. We have 12 half-hour programs on a six-hour tape. 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I ran short of time last half hour, of course, as usual, and we left Christ as ready to take the scroll out of the hand of God the Father because of His finished work of the cross, because of who He is, the Eternal, the Creator God of the universe, and He is the One who, you might say, instituted that mortgage in the first place, and we're going to point that out in just a little bit. But He alone is fulfilling all the requirements to pay off the mortgage. In other words, He has the wherewithal to do it, He is the next of kin, and He is going to show Himself willing. Now as we, again, like to tie the old and the new together as often as we can, I'd like to have you hold your hand in Revelation chapter 5, and we'll come back shortly and go all the way back to Daniel now for a moment, and back to chapter 7. As I mentioned last week, we covered this, sort of, not in real detail, several weeks ago when we were going through the book of Daniel. But now in Daniel chapter 7, and two verses here that speak almost the identically same language as John used in Revelation, verse 13 and 14. Daniel chapter 7, verse 13 and 14. Are you all with me? Verse 13, "...I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man." Now do you see that word, Son, is capitalized? You know, I sometimes shock people when I tell them that the Son is mentioned in the Old Testament. Here's one of them, Psalms 2, twice in that one little chapter He's referred to as the Son, and various other places. And so, we don't call Him Jesus in the Old Testament, that's His name of His body of humiliation. But nevertheless, as a personage, He is certainly referred to as the Son, back here in the Old Testament. "...So I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days," which is no doubt a reference to the Father now, the other person of the Godhead. And "...they brought Him," that is the Son, "...near before Him." And now then, verse 14, "...again, as a result of all that took place in Revelation chapter 5, there was given Him," God the Son. What's the next word? Dominion. Now who had dominion way back in Genesis 1, and then in verse 3 lost it? Adam, didn't he? He had dominion, and he was to have taken care of all of God's creation. But he lost it when he sinned, when he was disobedient. And now remember, who picked it up when Adam dropped it? Satan did. And so Satan is the mortgage holder, you might say, or is the one who has placed the whole planet under his control, and that's the mortgage that we're dealing with. And that's the mortgage that God is going to pay off in full by virtue of the judgments and the events of the seven years of the tribulation. And the end of it, of course, is going to bring the world to a delivery from the curse. And that's why Jesus in 24, Matthew, and we'll be going back to that shortly, He refers to as the beginning of travail. We're talking about a delivery from the curse. But alright, back to Daniel 7. Now verse 14 again, "...so there was given Him the Son, dominion, and glory, and a..." what? "...kingdom." Isn't that amazing how that word just keeps popping up all the time? The Kingdom. The Kingdom. And it's a visible, viable, political, governmental kingdom on the earth that we're referring to. Granted, it's a spiritual kingdom. As I pointed out to my class last night in Colossians 1, for you and I as Grace Age believers, our citizenship is where? It's in Heaven. And so we have been translated into the Kingdom of His dear Son, which is tonight located in Heaven. But when God the Son leaves Heaven and brings the Heavenly Kingdom with Him to set up the earthly Kingdom, we'll be with Him. It just naturally follows that we're part and parcel of that Kingdom, which will become a visible, viable, governmental, political kingdom when He becomes King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Alright, verse 14 reading on, "...and all people, nations, and languages should serve Him the King of Kings." His dominion, and when He picks it up now again as He enters the Kingdom, it's not going to be just for a thousand years, as we know Revelation teaches it, but it's going to go on into eternity. It's an eternal Kingdom, everlasting, see, and which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed. Alright, now then if you'll come back to Revelation, we find now that in verse 8, that when He had taken the scroll out of the hand of Him as Daniel depicted it, who sat on the throne, He takes the scroll, "...and the four living creatures and the four and twenty elders fell down before Him," that is before the Lamb, before the Son, "...having every one of them harps and golden vials, full of odors," in other words, sweet perfumes, "...which are the," what? "...the prayers of the saints." Whenever you pray, never think for a minute that that's lost. The prayers of the saints, I feel, are accumulating up in glory as sweet smelling odors, as fragrances before the God of Heaven, and they are the prayers of the saints. In verse 9, "...and they sung a new song, saying, Thou, the Son, the Lamb, art worthy to take the scroll, and to open the seals thereof," now here's the qualifications that He has filled, "...for Thou wast slain," see, in reference to the cross, "...Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us," see, His power of redemption now has been brought out into the open, "...Thou hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood." Now, we're living in a day and age, I know, where a lot of people just don't like the blood aspect of the Gospel, but we can't compromise that. We can't turn our back on it, because it's one of the absolutes of the program of God from day one. I always take my classes from time to time back to those two verses in Hebrews. I think we looked at it again the other night. The two absolutes that you can never compromise. You can't detour around them, you can't go over them or under them. You have to face them head on, and number one is, without the shedding of blood there is no remission. And the second one is, it's in the very next chapter in Hebrews chapter 11, "...without faith it is impossible to please Him." Those are the two absolutes that you just cannot avoid. And so, it was by His blood that He was able to redeem us out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nations. Then verse 10, "...and has made us under our God kings and priests." Now of course, this is the future of the believer. We will indeed rule and reign under the King of kings and Lord of lords, and we will have a kingly priesthood. And we shall reign where? On the earth. See, now a lot of people don't like to believe that, but yes we are. We're going to rule and reign with Him in an earthly kingdom, promised all the way back to the book of Genesis. Now then verse 11, "...and I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand." Now it's this angelic host that I believe are the clouds so often referred to in Scripture. You remember at the Ascension, a cloud received Him out of their sight. You remember that? I don't think it was a moisture cloud. It wasn't a cumulus cloud, but it was the very heavenly host that escorted Him into glory. And other times when you speak of the clouds of heaven, unless the text is definitive that it is weather clouds, you can just about rest on the fact that it's the very multitudes of the heavenly host, and that certainly is depicted here. That they're by the millions of the angelic hosts, thousands upon thousands, and they all say with verse 12 with a loud voice, "...worthy is the Lamb who was slain, who was crucified, and has received power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing, and every creature which is in heaven and on earth." Now look what the book says. Not just humans, but what? Every creature. Now I wasn't planning to do this. We'll have to go back to Romans 8. I'll run out of time again, but can't help it. Romans 8, because it is such a perfect parallel, that every creature is aware of the Creator. You drive along the road and you see a little cottontail rabbit, or you might see birds flying, or you see a coon cross the road, or something like that, and we think of them as just another wild animal. But they're all God's creatures, and they're all aware of Him. Romans 8. Let's begin with verse 18, where Paul says, "...I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in or to us." That's our future. "...for the earnest expectation of the creation..." If you have a marginal for the manifestation of the sons or the children of God. Now I've explained the word manifestation over and over the last 20 years, and the other night I saw some book written by a great famous man, and boy if I hadn't been using the same illustration. He said, "...manifestation means to be brought into the spotlight." And how many times haven't I used the illustration to manifest? It's like when you take that little glass slide with a drop of pond water, you slip it under the microscope, and you turn on that powerful light, yeah, all of a sudden that slide just begins to move. You see that? But it wasn't manifested until you put them in the spotlight, in this case under a microscope. So whenever you see that word manifested in Scripture, that's what it really means. When you're just brought under the bright light of a magnifying situation, and things that aren't ordinarily seen, there they are. See? All right? And so all this will be manifested when we come into our place of glory. Now verse 20, "...for the creation was made subject to vanity, to the curse, not willingly." In other words, it wasn't the creation's fault that the curse fell, it was Adam's. It was man's fault, and so the curse came in. "...and by reason of him who hath subjected that same creation in..." What? "...in hope." Now just as soon as Adam sinned back there in Genesis chapter 3, what did God come right back and promise in Genesis 3, verse 15? "...a Redeemer, who would be the seed of the woman, who of course is the Christ." Now this all is pictured right in here. Now verse 21, "...because the creation itself..." See, not just the human race, but all of creation "...shall also be..." And what's the word? "...delivered." Now keep that in your brain up here. Delivered. A delivery. "...and it shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption," which is the curse, "...it'll be delivered from the curse into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, and not only they..." In other words, not only all the other aspects of creation, but yes, we humans as well. We as those who believe. "...and not only the whole creation, but ourselves also," verse 23, "...who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption or that great transaction, that is to say, the redemption of our body." And what's that? Oh, and we'll be ushered into that glorious rule and reign. And all of creation is waiting for that day. In other words, I like to always put it this way. When you see that little old cottontail hop across your lawn and he stops for a second, does he ever relax? There's always an enemy that he's aware of. He can't relax because of the curse. But you see, when the curse is lifted, all the animals, as we see in Isaiah chapter 11, are going to cohabit peacefully. The wolf will lie down with the bear, and the lion and the ox are going to feed. Do you remember those verses? That's because the curse is lifted. And so all of the animal kingdom, now they're living under pain and suffering, and they have to just fight for their existence, many times starve for lack of food. That isn't the way God intended it. Oh, we like to think that that's the normal realm of nature in our ecology, and well, it is. But that's not the way God first created it. The curse brought all that on. But it's going to be lifted. And all of creation, all of creation is looking forward to the day. How sad that multitudes of people, it's the last thing they think of. When you watch the masses of people, do you ever stop and ask yourself how many of them are aware that one day this is all going to end? Most of them never let it enter their mind. Totally unconcerned, totally indifferent, but listen, it's coming. It's coming just as sure as we're sitting here. All right, now let's go back to Revelation. I probably goofed my time, but when I think of verses like that, I just have to go back and cover them. So every creature, verse 13, that's in heaven and under the earth, and such in the sea are in them, they heard say, Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him who sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever. And the four living creatures said, Amen, or so be it. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshiped him who liveth forever and ever. All right, now the stage is set. God the Son has taken the mortgage with the seven seals on it, remember, and now He's going to open it and begin the process of paying it off. Now we come into chapter 6, and the first thing we're introduced to are the four horsemen of the apocalypse, as most of us have heard it. And they're interesting. Verse 1, now John sees that the scroll has been taken, and when the Lamb opened one of the seals. Now you see who's opening the seals? God the Son, the Christ, the Lamb of God, opens the first of those seven seals that are sealing this mortgage on the outside. And we're going to take them off one at a time. And these seven seals are going to take us up to the midpoint of the tribulation. Now the best way to understand the book of Revelation is to realize that there are a whole series of sevens throughout the book. The part we skipped, of course, were the seven letters to the seven churches. Now we're going to see the seven seals, the seven seal judgments. They will introduce the seven trumpet judgments. The seventh trumpet judgment will introduce the final seven bowl judgments. Interspersed between, there are seven distinct persons. There are seven woes. And so the whole book of Revelation is a breakdown of sevens. And of course, seven is God's number. And so the whole book is not just a book of myths and legends, and like I called it in the words of unbelievers, gobbledygook, but it is a perfectly tuned book that is definitely part of the Word of God. And so what we have now then, is the beginning of this final seven years. Now several weeks ago we showed from the book of Daniel, that this seven year period of time, which we call Daniel's 70th week, or we call it the time of wrath and vexation, or we call it primarily the Tribulation, will be opening when the Antichrist signs that seven year treaty with Israel. Remember back there in Daniel chapter 9? And when he signs that seven year treaty, then this is the beginning of the opening of the seals. And the first three and a half years of course, are not so much the wrath and the vexation as the last three and a half. The first three are going to be bad enough, no doubt, but they'll be nothing like the last three and a half. And remember as you study Revelation, that all through Scripture this seven years is always divided three and a half, and three and a half. Forty-two months, forty-two months. Keep that in mind. And as we come through the book of Revelation, I suppose I should go and put my line up on the board for a minute now. We've come all the way back from Genesis, and the creation of Adam, and mankind as we know it, and of course 1,400 thereabout years later we had the flood. And shortly after the flood we came to the Tower of Babel, you remember. And then at 2,000 B.C., God does something totally different, still out of the mainstream of Adam of course, but now He pulls off one separate nation by promising Abram, or we'll call him Abraham, that out of him will come a nation of people, the nation of Israel, who would come by virtue of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, becoming the nation of Israel, who we normally refer to now as the Jews. And all through that Old Testament economy, how many times I've put it on the board, it's predominantly Jew only with exceptions. And I say with exceptions because God is sovereign and He can make His exceptions. But other than the exceptions, it's God dealing with the nation of Israel, bringing them to the place as we've been showing for the last several weeks according to the Old Testament program, where the Messiah would come, they would of course crucify Him, and then the tribulation was to have come on the scene this 70, the seven years of Daniel's 70th week, and then Christ would return and set up His Kingdom. But, what did Israel do with it? They rejected it. Like Dorothy always says, they blew it. Tremendous opportunity, but they rejected it. And so what we have to do now, as we've shown over the last several weeks, is that all the Old Testament prophecies refer to this as a steady flow, with no interruption. But we know that it was interrupted because the tribulation did not come in after the crucifixion. You come into the book of Acts, none of this happens. And so in essence, God doesn't give up on the nation of Israel. Paul says so plainly in Romans chapter 11, that they have not fallen out of God's program. They have merely gone into a period when God is going to set them aside and turn to the Gentiles. And so Paul says in that verse in Romans 11, so clearly that by their fall salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now I like to picture it as a parenthesis. Here we've got the book of Acts of course, 40 years, which takes us up to 70 A.D. 70 A.D. Titus destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and the city, and Israel was sent into her dispersion. As we saw last week or a week ago in Ezekiel 37, where they were dispersed and they became just like corpses out in the Gentile world. Now after Israel is dispersed then, we have come to that period of time that is totally out of a time frame. Remember as I taught all the last several months, that prophecy as you come out of the Old Testament is prophetic statements concerning God and the nation of Israel, but always in a time frame. 490 years are determined upon the people of Israel, 40 years here and 40 years there. It's always in a time frame. But as soon as Israel loses her temple, loses her national state and her sovereign government, and she is dispersed, God's time clock utterly stops and we enter into what we call the church age, or the age of grace, or the age wherein Christ is calling out the Body of Christ. And there is no time frame. No one knows when Christ will return. We call it imminent, He may come before the day is over. It may be years down the road the way things are going, we don't see how it can be, but it may be. And so never, never subscribe to someone who says, well on such and such a day the Lord's going to return. We don't know that. It is only imminent. And I've told my class over the years, when someone sets a date, you just cast him off as a false teacher, because there is nothing in Scripture that gives us the ability to set a date. So now the church age has been coming down the pipe these 1900 and some years, ever since 70 A.D., and of course it began before that. But as we've come in now with Israel in dispersion, and Christ has been presenting the Gospel based on His death, burial and resurrection, and we hold to the fact that before God can pick up and begin that tribulation with the nation of Israel, the church has to be removed. Now the reason I put at that emphasis, I know there is so much teaching coming in lately, and I know you're hearing it, that the church will not be raptured, that we will go into the tribulation, and so on and so forth. Now always remember, the church is predominantly Gentile. The church is totally insulated from all of the dealings that God did with the nation of Israel. The covenant promises are not ours, and so on and so forth. And so God cannot pick up where He left off with Israel, until the church is out of the way. And so that's why we put it in a parenthesis. And when the church is removed, then God can come back and deal fully, and completely, and finish everything that was prophesied concerning His covenant people. Now you see that? That's the best statement that I can make for believing the way I do. And always remember too, that all the things concerning the outcalling of the church come from the writings of Paul. And when those are over, then God can pick up where He left off with the nation of Israel. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, OK 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, OK 74552. 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