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All Things New - Part 1
Revelation 21:1-3
Skip Heitzig

Revelation 21 (NKJV™)
1 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.
2 Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.

New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

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66 Revelation - History's Last Chapter - 1996

The book of Revelation exalts Jesus Christ as the soon-coming Lord over the earth. Skip Heitzig explains the amazing and mysterious prophecies that form God's final word to mankind.

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Revelation 21 and we're in verses 1 through 3 as we talk about what's ahead in heaven. Let's read verses 1 through 8: "Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful." And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murders, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

You remember how Star Trek opens? Space---the final frontier. Ah, but it's not. This is the final frontier. Heaven is the final frontier. It's the eternal state. It's the final phase and culmination of everything. And how about that beer commercial where the two buddies are at the bar and each holding a mug and one turns to the other and says it doesn't get any better than this. Wrong again! It can get a whole lot better than sitting in a pub with a beer. It's heaven! Heaven has been the preoccupations of God's people since there have been God's people. It's the expected end of all Christians. We expect Christians, when they die, to go to heaven because of what the Bible says. There were once two men who lived in the same neighborhood, the same subdivision in fact, and it was a minister and a salesman. The minister died at the same time the salesman went off to Florida for a business trip. When he came to Florida, he wanted to telegram his wife to tell her that he had arrived safely so he sent the telegram, but the telegram, instead of going to his wife, went to the wife of the pastor who had died in that same subdivision and you can imagine her astonishment when she opened up the telegram and it read: arrived safely---the heat here is terrible. That's not what she expected.

The hope of heaven is so built into the fabric of the Christian that our thoughts are on it, they should be. It fills our songs, doesn't it? So many songs have been written about heaven, that eternal destiny of all believers. And it seems that the lighter the touch a person has with the things of the earth, the greater the anticipation of heaven. The more immersed we are and gripped by the things of this world, we don't think about heaven all that much. In parts of the world, where Christians have it a lot worse than we have it and a lot less comfortable than we have it here, the anticipation of heaven is bright. But ours is a culture of self-gratification, indulgence, the church becomes, it seems, more worldly and nothing demonstrates that as dramatically as our disinterest in heaven. Listen to this: here's a theologian from Gordon Conwell Seminary. His name is David Wells. He said, "We would expect to hear about heaven in evangelical churches but I don't hear it at all. I don't think heaven is even a blip on the Christian screen from one end of the denominational spectrum to the other. Isn't it interesting how everybody's interested in angels? Books on angels, statues of angels. But nobody thinks about where the angels hang out. Not much emphasis about that. Why? Why don't we talk about heaven much? Why is it absent from the pulpits in churches? Because there's just not much interest in it. We are consumed with passing things, temporary things. Sadly, most are like the cynical Mark Twain, who when he was told about heaven, replied, 'You take heaven. I'd rather go to Bermuda.' Sad, isn't it? I can get heaven here on earth. Forget about that stuff. What is heaven like, really like? Is it that sticky, sentimental place where we sprout wings and have little golden haloes and sit on clouds, bored, thinking of something else to do after playing the harp for a thousand years? Played that tune---what's another tune I can play? It's a definite place. In fact, it is home. In the truest sense, it is your home. Paul said our citizenship is in heaven. Home sweet home, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, there's no place like home. It's your home because your Father is there, your Savior is there, your Comforter is there. All departed believers are there. Angels are there. Your reward is there.

Your home is in heaven. That's why the Apostle Paul again said for me to live is Christ, to die is? Gain. It's going to be so much better than it has been here. Heaven is mentioned 55 times in the book of Revelation alone. I want you to look at the first use of it. Let's go back to Revelation 3. I'm not gonna through all 55---we've already done that. But I want to draw your attention to the first use of heaven because it ties in so perfectly with the verse that we're reading. To the church of Philadelphia in Revelation 3, verse 11: "Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name." Let's look at the second use of it. Chapter 4 verse 1: "After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, "Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this."

After this, he is caught up and, from the perspective of heaven; he talks about the tribulation period all the way through to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Now we come to chapter 21. This is after the Second Coming, after the millennial reign of Christ on the earth for a thousand years. It's a whole new episode in Revelation. In fact, it's important to realize that we shift dimensions in chapter 21. This is a whole different dimension. We're leaving time and we're getting into the eternal state. This is now eternity. You might say this chapter is out of this world because everything we know up to this point in terms of heaven, earth, atmosphere, stratosphere, is removed. It's something brand new in the eternal state.

In school, you may remember the timelines that your teacher drew or had you draw. The idea is you start on the left and you go all the way to the right and you have little dots along this timeline. The first dot represents birth, the second dot perhaps marriage or kids or a battle that happened, and then the last dot on the line is death. And so here's your lifespan, from this dot to this dot on the line. So we have tended to think of time as something that is linear and we would describe then eternity as a line going indefinitely in both directions. But we know from Albert Einstein that time is relative. It varies. It has physical properties. It varies with mass, with acceleration, and with gravity. And God is not under the constraint of time. He is outside of the time and space continuum. So rather than thinking of a line that goes on and on and on, or thinking of God as someone who twiddles His thumbs and just has lots of time on His hands, you have to remove the line altogether. He's in the other dimension of eternity. That's the eternal state and really that is what we are dealing with because the heavens and the earth are wiped out at this point and God creates all over again. In Isaiah, it describes God as high and lofty and the One who inhabits eternity. So you're entering into the twilight zone, so to speak, right now.

It opens up by saying, "Now I saw". How many times have we read that phrase? That's been the whole book. And I saw, and I saw, and I saw, which means he's been a spectator. He has received a vision, it says from Jesus Christ, who gets it from the Father, and it's unfolded in a series of things that he sees and he writes down what he sees. The reason I bring that to your attention is that rather than trying to squeeze into these verses some symbolic non-literal interpretation, I think it's best to say this is what he saw, this is what he meant by what he saw, this is what is going to happen. I would much rather follow what John sees based on what Jesus tells him what to write than I would to believe all the dumb jokes and stories about Peter standing at a gate with a clipboard telling all the dumb jokes or about life after death experiences that people write about, most of them that contradict each other. Better to listen to what John wrote, what Jesus said. After all, Jesus died, rose from the dead, and still lives. I would say that is authoritative. Heaven is mentioned in the Bible 532 times. It's mentioned also here in chapter 21. The word that is used here, we get the term Uranus, the planet, in our solar system. It means the heights or the elevated place. One day you're gonna get a promotion. You're gonna really get elevated. In this sense you'll be in heaven. The Bible speaks of heaven three ways. It speaks of it and we have gone through this once before, but by way of review, the Bible speaks of the atmosphere around the earth as heaven. Jesus spoke about the birds of the heaven. In Isaiah, we read about the rain that comes from heaven. That's the atmospheric heavens or the terrestrial heavens. Secondly, the celestial heavens. That's the stratosphere. The place where the moon, the stars, the heavenly bodies reside. Psalm says the heavens declare the glory of God. That's space, that's Captain Kirk's final frontier. But then there is, third, what is called the third heaven by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12. I was caught up into the third heaven. That's the heaven of heavens---the abode of God. And though the rabbis and others spoke about the seventh heaven, there's nothing in the Bible to indicate that. Just the atmosphere, the stratosphere, and then this third heaven.

Now where is heaven? Well, it's up. In some sense at least. We read in Revelation 4, and I heard a voice saying come up here and I'll show you things which must take place after this. Paul was caught up into the third heaven. How far up? That's a good question. If you thought about it in terms of time and space, let's start with the moon. The moon is a little over 200,000 miles from the earth. You could walk to the moon if there was a bridge. It would take you 27 years. That's going 24 miles a day. You could walk there. But if you could somehow go the speed of light, if they had a vehicle that you could go 186,000 miles per second, you could get from earth to the moon in 1 ½ seconds. If you were traveling 186,000 miles per second and you would go further, you could reach Venus in 2 minutes and 11 seconds. If you kept going on to Mercury, it would take you 4 ½ minutes. If you go further, again traveling at 186,000 miles per second, you could reach Jupiter in 35 minutes and 11 seconds. It's only 367 million miles away. If you kept going out toward Saturn, you could reach it in 1 hour and 11 seconds. That's 790 million miles away. And if you kept scooting out into space, you'd reach Pluto in 4 hours because it's a little longer. It's 2.7 billion miles from the earth. Ok, you're really out there. You want to see more. You're traveling already at 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light, you've gone a few hours but you want to get to the nearest neighbor star which is Alpha Centarii. Now it's gonna take you 4.3 light years. You're gonna have to be in that spaceship 4.3 years traveling the speed of light because it's 25 trillion miles away.

Now if you were really into this trip and you wanted to traverse the Milky Way galaxy, from one end of the Milky Way galaxy to the other, if you traveled at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, you'd have to stay in that spaceship for 100,000 years to get from one end of our galaxy to the other. When you do that, you haven't even left the front yard. There are billions, they tell us, of other galaxies besides our galaxy. Now with that in mind, Isaiah said our God measures and marks out the universe with the span of His hand. You say wow this universe is big! God says yeah, it's about that big in My measurement. So when we say heaven is up, it's really up. How long does it take to get there? Just like that. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, in 100 billion light years, you'll be with Me in paradise. He said what? Today. Isn't that amazing? Today! Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Just like that. And it is a little bit erroneous to speak of the third heaven in terms of mileage, because it's probably a whole other dimension instead of just way up out there. Because, though it is where God dwells, it can be gotten to so instantly. In fact, at the rapture of the church it says in the twinkling of an eye. That's quick. Not the blink of an eye, which is 1/11 of a second or 1/30 of a second. The twinkling of an eye. The time it takes for light to hit the eye and bounce back for you to see it. A twinkle. That quick.

What do we know about heaven? Well we actually only get glimpses of it, don't we? I hear some people say well we can never know at all what heaven is like. That's baloney. And they'll usually quote the Scripture, eye has not seen, ear has not heard, it is not entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for them that love Him. Well read the next verse. It says but God has revealed them to us by His Spirit. We do know a little bit, a few glimpses, of heaven. Revelation 4, Revelation 5 tells us activities, a sort of a set up of the throne room of heaven. And here we get another glimpse of heaven. It is not extensive, however. We don't have a full description of it. Even Paul the apostle said I was caught up into the third heaven. Now you think Paul, you should've written about that. What did he say, though? It was so awesome? It was just unlawful for a man to utter. I won't even try. You want to wring his neck, don't you, kind of? Tell me what it was like! He said it was unlawful for a man to utter it. This then is a noteworthy Scripture because it is describing your future home. Jesus said I am going to prepare a place for you. This is the place that He goes to prepare for us. This ought to make us then very, very interested in this particular part of the Bible---what heaven is like. Let's look at it and we want to look at verses 1, 2, and 3. 1, the new heaven and earth. 2, the New Jerusalem, the capital city of eternity. And 3, the new presence of God. There are more new things we'll cover next time.

Verse 1: "Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea." We love new things, don't we? Everybody does. That's what commercials are all about. Here's the new thing that you don't have! Ooh, I better get that one---it's new! I have the old one! The old isn't as good as the new. Kids want the new toy. Adults want the new clothes, the new car. We want new opportunities, new experiences. Here's the problem: things that are new here don't stay new for long. The shine fades. Things get scratched and beat-up and you look at it and you go that was the new thing I just got? It doesn't look new anymore. It's that law of entropy. Things are just decaying all around us. There was a period of my life, a month or two months, where every new thing I got, almost the day or week that I got it, got messed up. I saved up for this new camera. I took it home, I opened the car door, and it had been on my lap, it tumbled out on the driveway and put a big dent in the prism. Sigh. I was so frustrated. Same month I got a brand new surfboard. First day I took it out it got a big old hole through it. Then I saved up for a new guitar to lead worship. First time I took it out to play it, it fell over and got a big scratch on the front of it. It was as if God was reminding me, it's all gonna burn anyway. Use it but it's not gonna be there forever. This is a new heaven and a new earth.

In other words, everything we know, everything we see on this earth, everything in the stratosphere, atmosphere, the heaven and the earth, are gone at this point. Look over at chapter 20 verse 11: "Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them." It's all gone. Starting from scratch. The old is gone, the new has come. And it's all summed up in Revelation 21 verse 5 where God says behold, or loose paraphrase, check it out, check it out, I make all things new. This is brand new heaven and brand new earth. A whole entirely different universe. The word new means different, fresh, new in quality, new in existence. See God made the earth for us to live on, inhabit, dwell in, enjoy, but the earth has been under a curse. We have destroyed it. Sin has covered the face of the earth and one day it will be destroyed and even Isaiah predicted this. Isaiah 65, he said, behold, I create new heavens and new earth, the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. In Psalm 102, the psalmist says, of old You laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish but You will endure. Even Jesus said heaven and earth will pass away but My words will not pass away. So this piece of dirt called the earth, this dirt clod in this huge universe, is a disposable planet, not that we should dispose of it, not that we should indiscriminately trash it, but let me say if you're in the mode to preserve the environment, it's not gonna last. God designed it for temporary use. It is temporary, it will one day be disposed, it was never meant to endure.

I'd like you to turn to another passage in the New Testament. Just turn left a couple books to 2 Peter 3:10: "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, the elements will melt with fervent heat, nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells." That's a good question, isn't it, back in verse 11? Seeing that all these things are gonna be dissolved, how should we live? What manner of persons ought we to be? If this is all temporary, should we be focused upon that which is temporary above that which is eternal? The word, by the way, in that verse, what manner of persons, literally means exotic or foreign. What different, foreign, exotic life should we be living? In other words, our life should be different from the life of the inhabitants of this globe who don't know Christ. Our citizenship is in heaven. This is all very temporary.

Now what is the cry of people who want to justify their behavior right now on this earth? If they want to do something and they want to justify what they're doing, usually they say, hey, everybody's doing it. The Christian's response ought to be, yeah, but it's all temporary. It's not gonna last. It's one day gonna be burned up so we should live differently. A couple biologists did an interesting experiment where they took a bunch of caterpillars and they put these caterpillars with the lead caterpillar, the leader, on the rim of a clay pot. The pot had a plant inside. The caterpillars live off of green things like that but the lead caterpillar was put head-to-tail with the last one and it was just one circle of caterpillars on the rim of that clay pot. And they went around and around and around and around and around and around and around for a week. In a week they died of exhaustion and starvation. Not one of them broke away from the rest to get into that plant and eat and live. Isn't that so much like our world? Whatever the new trend, whatever they're doing, I've got to stay in step. What manner of person should we be if there's gonna be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness and all of this stuff is passing away? Break away from the crowd and get life! Live spiritual life.

Now back in Revelation comes the question what is this eternal state gonna be like? Not many details are given---only one clue. And I don't like the clue but I'll go through it because it's written. It says also there was no more sea. Do you know how troubling this has been to me over the years? I have wrestled and struggled and agonized over that phrase in the Bible. I love the ocean. I came from the ocean. I love the sea. There will be no more sea. I don't know if you've ever gotten it, but I get people who will say, you know, things like but I love my cat, certainly my cat will be in heaven. It couldn't be heaven without my cat! That person isn't there! I don't want to be there---it couldn't be heaven without that person. Those are the infantile things that we talk about heaven. And I've seen that about the sea. It couldn't be heaven without the sea! I've even tried to reinterpret this verse a little bit, bring in a few metaphors here. It says, for instance, in the Bible that the Gentile nations apart from the covenant of God are like the restless sea. Yeah, that's what it means. There won't be any of those kinds of people. Or the Antichrist that comes out of the sea---that's probably it. The sea of unbelievers. I think, however, I take a more literal approach. There won't be any sea. And actually I want to say that there's a lot of information in that little sentence. Perhaps more than meets the eye. It simply means the earth will be different. Right now, we live in a very watery world. Two-thirds of the earth is water. Most of our bodies are water. Most of plant and animal life is water. It's the only planet in the universe that we know of that has the amount of water needed to sustain the biosphere that we have that is dependent on water. If you don't drink water, you'll die. They say you need 8 glasses a day so that you're not dehydrated. So we are dependent upon the use of water. There's water on our earth now, in the millennium, we're told in many places, there will be an abundance of water, but we're told here there is no sea. So the new heaven and the new earth will not operate on the principal of water. There will not be the demand in our celestial bodies for water as there is in the bodies that we have now. You say, yeah but will there be any water at all? Well Revelation 22 says there is a pure river of the water of life.

So why does John even bring this up? Did he do it just to tick me off? I think he did it just to say it's gonna be different and that's as profound a way as you can say it's different. A new heaven and a new earth and there's no sea. It's gonna be a very different environment. Also, we know that seas separate people, right? They separate us from one another. There will be no separation. Just that new earth, whatever size, whatever look, no sea, no great divisions, all of God's people living under the authority of Christ. Next we come to the New Jerusalem in verse 2: "Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven," this is a different kind of a city, "from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." This then is the capital city of eternity. This is headquarters. This is command central---the New Jerusalem. Now this isn't all there is to heaven. There's a new heaven, a new earth, and coming out of heaven somewhere, perhaps even orbiting around the earth, is this city called New Jerusalem. We even know its dimensions later on. We're told it's 1500 miles cubed, just a little smaller than the moon. So it could be, and some think, that it will just sort of orbit around this new earth. Whatever it is, architecturally, dimensionally, it's more modern and different than anything we've ever known. Again, this sort of begs the question, are you sure this is literal? Well let me put it this way. If this isn't literal, then I have no idea what this means. And you can look and say well, you know, he said this but he didn't mean that. Well then I would ask you, who's gonna unravel the mystery of what he means if he doesn't say what he means? Somebody says, I think it means this, I think it means that. I think it means what he said. That's what he saw. That's what he wrote. Oh but it's so hard for me to picture. Of course---you're in this dimension! All you know is what you have seen and experienced. It's as hard for you to believe this as it would be for God parting the Red Sea or creating the heavens and the earth the first time. That's a big feat in and of itself. It's a New Jerusalem.

How many of you taken a tour with us to Israel? It's awesome to go and visit Jerusalem. I've walked around its walls many times. I've scoped it out. I've studied its archeology. But let me say this: if you've never gone on a tour to Israel, you've never seen Jerusalem; you will take an awesome tour one day. It's gonna be very different, however. It is kind of nice to compare the old with the new, to have a frame of reference. But this is a new city. God has desired such a city. There has never been a holy city like this. Abraham looked for it, right? It says that Abraham, in Hebrews 11, looked for a city that had foundations whose Builder and Maker is God. That's the New Jerusalem. We know that in the millennium, Jesus Christ will rule from Jerusalem. But there will be a rebellion at the end of the thousand years. Here now is a New Jerusalem, not an earthly city. Notice what it's called here: the holy city, New Jerusalem. It's just as new as this earth is new when it's created---the new earth. There's a new heaven, a new earth, and a new city coming out of heaven, descending. Same phraseology is used down in verse 10. It's hard to imagine a holy city, isn't it? Usually people think the country is holy. The boondocks are holy. But the city---there's no such thing as a holy city. Would Albuquerque qualify? A holy city? Los Angeles? San Francisco? Rio? Stockholm? Tokyo? Not at all! Why will it be holy? Because all, get this, all of the occupants in it will be holy. Every single inhabitant will be holy. That's marked out in verse 8: "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." It's a holy place.

Notice it's described as a bride prepared for her husband. Why is it described that way? It's a city. It's a place. It's given dimension in verses after this but it's seen as a bride adorned because, though it's a place, it is described in terms of its populace. It's a bride city. The bride inhabits it. The people of God inhabit it. And it's adorned. It's beautiful. Just like a bride on her wedding day. This is then the bride city. And we're gonna get more to the New Jerusalem because it's given in detail in verses after this. Let's look now finally in verse 3 at the new presence of God. This is, to me, the best part. "And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God." Now that is monumental. It has always been God's heart to hang out intimately with His people, to have fellowship with His people. There's always been something in the way, though. Sin. And it's marked all of creation. So in the Old Testament, God set up a tabernacle. Remember God's presence dwelt in the tabernacle, in the Holy of Holies, in the ark of the covenant, in this pillar of fire and smoke guiding them through the wilderness? Then there was the temple and it says the Shekinah glory or the glory of God dwelt within that place, inhabited that place. But there were still courts and you couldn't go into the inner court. Nobody could except the priest. There were separations. There were ritual sacrifices. So there was a distance between God and man. So ultimately in speaking to man, God sent His Son into the world. Immanuel---God with us. And it says and the Word became flesh and literally, in Greek, and tabernacled among us and we saw His glory.

But this is in an entirely different sense. No more veils. No more ritual. No more cloth tent in the wilderness. No more, even, veiled God in flesh. God dealing directly with His people in intimate fellowship with His people. Now He's with us today whenever two or three gather in His name. He said He'll be with us. He's also with us individually. Lo, I am with you always to the end of the age. But in the future, it will be different. He is with us now but He'll dwell directly with us. Remember what John wrote? Beloved, we are the sons of God and it doesn't yet appear what we shall be, but we know this, when He appears, we'll be like Him for we will see Him as He is. That is absolutely unfathomable to a Jewish person in the New Testament. God will be directly with His people. Jesus said blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God. There will be no distance, no long-distance communication. It will be one-on-One, it will be face-to-Face. You know, I've discovered that no matter how sophisticated you are or spiritually theologically well-informed you may be, you have a basic desire to see God. You do. You're not satisfied with anything less. David said I will be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness. You remember H.G. Wells' story of The Invisible Man? It's sort of an interesting idea. Who hasn't wanted to be invisible at one point or the other and walk in the room and hear what people are saying? But as the story unfolds, people have found it very uncomfortable to relate to somebody who is invisible. People have always had trouble with the invisible God. Your kids have asked you questions like this: what does God look like? How big is God? And I bet you've answered it with something like, well we don't ask those questions. We don't know. Deep in your heart, you ask the same questions! You want to know. Even Moses did. Moses saw miracle after miracle after miracle and basically, at Sinai, he said: time out, God. I want to see You! Show me Your glory. God said Moses, if you see My glory, you'll die. You can't see Me as long as you're in this body of flesh. You will just fizzle up. Then there was Philip when Jesus was talking about the Father said, look, just show us the Father! That'll be enough. Then there was Peter, James, and John who saw the glory of Jesus as He was transfigured with Moses and Elijah in bright radiant light. And of course, he wanted to build a museum right there. He wanted to just keep it just like it was. What did he see? He saw a preview of coming attractions. A commercial for heaven. He saw it and he went, wow! That's what I want! He wanted to see, really, the face of God more and more.

Like Moses, like Philip, like those disciples, you will never be totally satisfied until you see the face of God. So you ought to yearn for your home. And, knowing that you have a new heaven and a new earth, this eternal state, in the future, after the kingdom age, ought to whet your appetite. You know when I travel I like to take a picture or two of my family because they're gonna ask me when I travel, are you married? Do you have children? Yes. Here they are. And at night I'll pull them out when I'm lonely. I'm reminded of them. But I'm not satisfied looking at the picture. I don't pull them out and go, ok; I can stay a few more weeks. Right? It just whets my appetite to be closer. I may call them on the telephone and they'll hear my voice and I'll hear their voice. It doesn't satisfy me. It accentuates the loss even more. It's only when I embrace them and I am face-to-face that I am satisfied. All of that to say this: every single experience you have now as a Christian, every great worship experience you have, every time you say I felt so close to God at that time, was never meant to satisfy you---only to whet your appetite for heaven. If it satisfies you, you could say I don't need any more. I have that one experience. No, you want to get closer to the Lord. And worship does that---it whets our appetite. Are you a Christian this morning? I pray that the grip of this world would be loosened in your life and that you would see this temporal stuff in the light of eternal stuff. And if you're not a Christian this morning, I would pray that you would have your appetite whet for heaven. What better place is there? I would finally say to Mark Twain: you keep Bermuda, I'll take heaven.


Additional Messages in this Series

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6/9/1996
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Good News from a Bad Place
Revelation 1:1-8
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6/16/1996
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Catapulted into the Future
Revelation 1:9-20
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6/23/1996
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When Love Grows Cold
Revelation 2:1-7
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6/30/1996
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Postcard to Those in Pain
Revelation 2:8-11
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7/7/1996
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The Curse of Compromise
Revelation 2:12-17
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7/14/1996
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Corruption without Discernment
Revelation 2:18-29
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7/21/1996
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Church of the Living Dead
Revelation 3:1-6
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7/28/1996
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Body Building - God's Way
Revelation 3:7-13
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The human body has become the obsession of our modern culture. Much like the ancient Greeks, people are madly trying to fit the contemporary ideal of what is an acceptable shape and size. The church is metaphorically called the "Body of Christ" and His desire is to see it built up spiritually. The church of Philadelphia is a good model of a healthy, faithful church. Their example provides for us a template to follow in building up the Body - God's Way!
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8/19/1996
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Taking Your Spiritual Temperature
Revelation 3:14-22
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Ever since we were kids our moms stuck thermometers in our mouths whenever she suspected that we were sick. If our body temperature of 98.6 had climbed up just a few notches, it was always a good indication that an unhealthy condition was present. There is also a spiritual temperature that reveals the condition of our souls, and when the thermometer reads Lukewarm it indicates that something is wrong; it indicates the presence of danger. Let's see how Jesus, the Great Physician, treats his patient with this malady.
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8/25/1996
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Peeking into the Portals of Heaven
Revelation 4
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9/1/1996
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History's Greatest Real Estate Deal
Revelation 5:1-7
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9/8/1996
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Worship His Majesty - Part 1
Revelation 5:8-10
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In heaven there won’t be just three services in the morning and one at night with a midweek tacked on. There will be no need to be sensitive to time so we can go to lunch. Words will not have to be printed nor projected. Worship leaders will have no need prompting people to sing. It will be an all-consuming experience that will involve our total cooperation and enthusiasm.
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9/15/1996
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Worship His Majesty - Part 2
Revelation 5:11-14
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9/29/1996
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Four Riders with Bad News
Revelation 6:1-8
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10/6/1996
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The Cries of Heaven and Earth
Revelation 6:9-17
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10/13/1996
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A Blessed Interruption in a Tough Time
Revelation 7
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10/20/1996
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Trumpets of Doom
Revelation 8
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10/27/1996
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When All Hell Breaks Loose
Revelation 9:1-12
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11/3/1996
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Angels of Mass Destruction
Revelation 9:13-21
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11/10/1996
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A Big Angel with a Little Book
Revelation 10
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11/17/1996
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Two Powerful Preachers
Revelation 11:1-14
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11/24/1996
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Light at the End of the Tunnel
Revelation 11:15-19
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12/1/1996
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The Panorama of Spiritual Warfare - Part 1
Revelation 12:1-6
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12/8/1996
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The Panorama of Spiritual Warfare - Part 2
Revelation 12:7-17
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There aren't many people who like to fight. Confrontation is something most would like to avoid. But in the spiritual realm it's unavoidable. The question isn't, "Will I engage in spiritual warfare?" Rather, the question is, "How well will I fight?" As we saw last week, the war in the heavens makes its way to the theater of the earth. Let's see what else it entails.
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12/15/1996
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The Coming Global Leader
Revelation 13:1-10
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12/22/1996
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Evil's Right-Hand-Man
Revelation 13:11-18
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12/29/1996
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The Lamb Who Shepherds His People
Revelation 14:1-5
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After all that john has seen in his apocalyptic vision, seeing the docility of a lamb standing with his overcoming sheep is a welcomed sight. Although the dragon pursues god's people relentlessly, although the beasts are bent on ruling the earth, the ultimate winner will be the lamb and his followers.
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1/5/1997
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Angels Set The Record Straight
Revelation 14:6-13
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1/12/1997
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It's Harvest Time!
Revelation 14:14-20
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One of the most common ways to make a living in ancient times was to "work the land." The early rains of October/November and the soft latter rains produced the wheat and barley harvest later on. Also, when vintage season began, almost the whole village could be found in the fields harvesting the crop. Such images would also provide a poignant way of depicting the final judgment of the earth, as in this section.
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1/17/1997
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Getting Ready for the Grand Finale
Revelation 15:1-8
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1/26/1997
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What's in the Bowl? - Part 1
Revelation 16:1-11
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We now come to the "seven last plagues" of God in the Great Tribulation that is coming upon planet earth. These judgments come in the form of "bowls" being poured out swiftly and completely-the judgment will be swift and thorough. Yet through all the mercy as Well as wrath of this awesome era, people will persist in having a hardened heart. Open your heart 'right now to these truths.
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2/2/1997
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What's in the Bowl? - Part 2
Revelation 16:12-21
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What will the end of the world be like? What are the final events just before Jesus returns and takes over to set up His millennial reign? That's what this section tells us. There will be increased warfare activity in the Middle East, massive deception, and unheard of destructive cataclysms on earth. In the midst of foretelling these events, Jesus has a word of encouragement.
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2/9/1997
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The Coming World Religion
Revelation 17
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It was Karl Marx who stated, no doubt cynically, that religion was the opiate of the masses. The fact is, he was right-it is! People are driven to worship something or someone. This desire will be exploited to the hilt in the Tribulation period and will be under the umbrella of the world dictator-the Antichrist. What are its roots and how does it end?
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2/16/1997
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Get out of Babylon!
Revelation 18
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Someone once said, "Money can't buy you friends but your enemies treat you a little better." Though meant to be tongue-in­cheek, that won't happen when the entire world economy collapses. God's shakedown of the earth will include everything that the Antichrist's kingdom will embody, from the sacred to the secular.
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3/2/1997
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Marriage Made in Heaven
Revelation 19:1-10
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3/9/1997
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The Return of Jesus Christ - Part 1
Revelation 19
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Even in the dome of our capitol in Washington there is an inscription which seems to point to the return of Jesus Christ. It says: "One far-off divine event toward which the whole creation moves." It is that event which we will be studying in the next two weeks. This is what all Christians of all ages have looked forward to - His return and reign of His creation.
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3/16/1997
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The Return of Jesus Christ - Part 2
Revelation 19
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Even in the dome of the capitol in Washington there is an inscription which seems to point to the return of Jesus Christ. It says: "one far-off divine event toward which the whole creation moves." it is that event, that Christians of all ages have looked forward to-his return and reign of his creation. We will conclude our study of the return of Jesus Christ, today.
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4/6/1997
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Paradise Regained
Revelation 20:1-3
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4/13/1997
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The Devil's Last Stand
Revelation 20:1-10
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A typical question is, "Will evil ever get its reward?" What ever happened to ethics and justice? Well, we see here that God will not turn His back on this issue. He will deal with the source of all evil (the devil himself) and then judge those who revel in it. This section gives tremendous hope to anyone concerned about injustice in our world.
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4/20/1997
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Life, Death, and Resurrection
Revelation 20:5-6; 20:11-15
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5/11/1997
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All Things New - Part 2
Revelation 21:4-8
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"It's like nothing you've ever seen or experienced before." That's how John describes the emotional experience of heaven. So that we can relate, he tells us that all of the pain, sorrow, and moaning we've endured here won't be there. By the way, only those who want to go there will go there. Heaven is not a destination by default, reservations are made here and now!
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5/18/1997
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The City of the Future
Revelation 21:9-22:5
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There is no architect or builder like God himself. Even the patriarch Abraham "was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God." (Heb. 11:10) he didn't find it in his lifetime. "You won't find you're "happily ever after" here either, but the New Jerusalem will be God's answer for man's longing to live in a perpetually peaceful stare.
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5/25/1997
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He's Coming - Now What!?
Revelation 22:6-21
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There are 43 additional messages in this series.
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