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Fear of the Wrath to Come, Part 2 (Revelation 615–17) John MacArthur (1) · THE BELIEVER'S CHURCH | Let’s Build Our Faith Together

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  Speaker 1: Tonight we return to our study of the book of Revelation. Again,
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  Speaker 1: chapter 6, and looking at verses 12 through 17.
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  Speaker 2: Let me read this text of Scripture to you.
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  Speaker 1: Revelation 6, beginning in verse 12. And I looked when
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  Speaker 1: he broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake.
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  Speaker 1: And the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair.
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  Speaker 1: and the whole moon became like blood. And the stars
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  Speaker 1: of the sky fell to the earth as a fig
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  Speaker 1: tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.
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  Speaker 1: And the sky was split apart like a scroll when
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  Speaker 1: it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were
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  Speaker 1: moved out of their places. And the kings of the
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  Speaker 1: earth and the great men and the commanders and the
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  Speaker 1: rich and the strong and every slave and free man
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  Speaker 1: hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of
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  Speaker 1: the mountains. And they said to the mountains and to
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  Speaker 1: the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the
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  Speaker 1: presence of him who sits on the throne and from
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  Speaker 1: the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of
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  Speaker 1: their wrath has come and who is able to stand?
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  Speaker 1: Right now, man is having his day, but soon it
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  Speaker 1: will be the Lord's day, the day of the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: One of the central prophetic themes in Scripture is the
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  Speaker 1: coming of the great day of God's wrath, also known
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  Speaker 1: as the day of the Lord.
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  Speaker 2: It is a frightening, inevitable day in the future of
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  Speaker 2: the world.
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  Speaker 1: We are reading about it right here in this particular
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  Speaker 1: section of Revelation. And for us to fully comprehend the
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  Speaker 1: sixth seal, we need to expand our understanding a little
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  Speaker 1: bit and find out what the Bible teaches about this very,
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  Speaker 1: very important event called the.
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  Speaker 2: Day of the Lord. It goes far beyond what is
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  Speaker 2: said right here.
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  Speaker 1: It covers texts of Old Testament and New Testament Scripture.
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  Speaker 1: And I don't want to belabor the point, but I
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  Speaker 1: think it's essential for you to have a larger context
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  Speaker 1: in which to fit this description of the sixth seal.
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  Speaker 1: As I said last time, the sixth seal really initiates
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  Speaker 1: the day of the Lord. There have been already judgments
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  Speaker 1: that could be called the wrath of God, but this
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  Speaker 1: is the great day of wrath.
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  Speaker 2: This is the culminating day of the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: To which All those things that have happened by way
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  Speaker 1: of judgment prior have been precursors, preliminary warnings. Now, an
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  Speaker 1: excellent text for us to look at if we're going
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  Speaker 1: to get a grip on this event called the Day
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  Speaker 1: of the Lord is 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. And some
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  Speaker 1: of you will remember when we studied this some many
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  Speaker 1: months ago now. But let me take you back to it,
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  Speaker 1: 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. And just to look at the
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  Speaker 1: first three verses as a starting point to get a
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  Speaker 1: grip on the teaching of Scripture with regard to the
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  Speaker 1: day of the Lord. Verse 1 says, Now as to
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  Speaker 1: the times and the epics, brethren, you have no need
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  Speaker 1: of anything to be written to you. Now that phrase,
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  Speaker 1: the times and the epics, in verse 1 is a
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  Speaker 1: technical term for the time period around the Lord's return.
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  Speaker 1: The term times is chronos. It has to do with
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  Speaker 1: time itself. The term epics is kairos. That has to
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  Speaker 1: do with the events that take place during that time
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  Speaker 1: or those times. So he is saying as to the
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  Speaker 1: various times and events around the coming of Christ, you
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  Speaker 1: have no need of anything.
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  Speaker 2: To be written to you.
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  Speaker 1: One thing that comes immediately to mind is that there
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  Speaker 1: will be many different times and many different events that
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  Speaker 1: make up the time of the return of Christ. The Thessalonians, frankly,
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  Speaker 1: wanted to know all the details. How long until the
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  Speaker 1: day of the Lord? When will the rapture of the
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  Speaker 1: church take place? When will the kingdom be established? They
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  Speaker 1: wanted all the details to be filled in.
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  Speaker 2: Give us the timing. Give us the events. Give us
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  Speaker 2: the sequence.
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  Speaker 1: And Paul's response is that spiritual preparedness does not involve
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  Speaker 1: date setting. It does not involve clocks and calendar watching.
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  Speaker 1: It does not involve sign seeking as such. He says, frankly,
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  Speaker 1: you have no need of anything to be written to you.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, you don't need to know.
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  Speaker 2: Any more than you already know. It isn't to your advantage.
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  Speaker 2: More details are not available.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus had given many an answer to the disciples' question
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  Speaker 1: in Matthew chapter 24. You'll remember that the disciples said
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  Speaker 1: to Jesus, which really triggered this sermon that we call
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  Speaker 1: the Olivet Discourse, they said, tell us when will these
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  Speaker 1: things be and what will be the.
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  Speaker 2: Sign of your coming and the end of the age?
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  Speaker 1: Give us the chronology, the clock, the calendar, and describe
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  Speaker 1: the events. They really wanted to know the same thing
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  Speaker 1: that the Thessalonians wanted to know.
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  Speaker 2: And you remember Jesus went on to.
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  Speaker 1: Give them certain signs, certain things that they could look for,
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  Speaker 1: but never gave them the specific time as.
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  Speaker 2: To when it would happen. And again in the book
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  Speaker 2: of Acts in.
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  Speaker 1: Chapter 1, familiar words of Jesus, it is not for
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  Speaker 1: you to know the times or the epics which the
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  Speaker 1: Father has fixed by His own authority. You don't need
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  Speaker 1: to know all the events. You don't need to know
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  Speaker 1: the exact timing. You know as much as you need
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  Speaker 1: to know. To understand what He's really saying is to
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  Speaker 1: understand this. God has chosen not to disclose the timing
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  Speaker 1: of the return of Christ.
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  Speaker 2: He has not disclosed to us.
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  Speaker 1: When the day of the Lord will come, when the
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  Speaker 1: events associated with the day of the Lord will come,
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  Speaker 1: when the seals will be opened, when the trumpets will
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  Speaker 1: be blown, when the bowls will be poured out. We
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  Speaker 1: don't know specifically what time, at what age, in what year,
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  Speaker 1: at what date the rapture of the church will take place.
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  Speaker 2: We don't know when the tribulation.
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  Speaker 1: Time is going to come, followed by the setting up
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  Speaker 1: of the glorious millennial kingdom of Christ. The reason we
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  Speaker 1: don't know is because the Lord has not revealed it.
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  Speaker 1: And I heard the other day, just last week, that
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  Speaker 1: another man, well-known on the radio, was teaching the Bible,
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  Speaker 1: has now let us all know that it's going to
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  Speaker 1: happen in 1994.
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  Speaker 2: People continue to do this.
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  Speaker 1: We just passed one major milestone where literally millions of
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  Speaker 1: people have been engulfed in a Korean ministry that believed
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  Speaker 1: that the event was going to happen on a certain
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  Speaker 1: date in October. Of course, it wasn't November, one of
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  Speaker 1: the two, and it didn't happen, and this date setting
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  Speaker 1: goes on. Our Lord says, and the Apostle Paul says,
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  Speaker 1: and it's recited to us Again, obviously, through all the
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  Speaker 1: prophetic literature, we don't know when. We know some general events.
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  Speaker 1: We know some sequence of things. We don't know when
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  Speaker 1: this is going to happen. Therefore, all generations live in
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  Speaker 1: a certain amount of anticipation and a certain amount of expectation.
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  Speaker 1: In verse 2, he says, you yourselves know full well
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  Speaker 1: that the day of the Lord will come just like
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  Speaker 1: a thief in the night. And there he introduces us
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  Speaker 1: to the term the day of the Lord. It'll come
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  Speaker 1: like a thief. How does a thief come? Unannounced, unexpectedly, suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: and harmfully. You can't put into your calendar book the
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  Speaker 1: day and the hour in which the thief is going
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  Speaker 1: to come.
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  Speaker 2: He doesn't give you that information.
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  Speaker 1: And that's how the Lord's going to come, unexpectedly, suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: and harmfully, but every generation therefore needs to be alert.
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  Speaker 1: In the sermon that we mentioned earlier in Matthew 24,
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  Speaker 1: Jesus said in verse 42, therefore be on the alert,
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  Speaker 1: for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.
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  Speaker 1: That is not something that the Lord has chosen to reveal.
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  Speaker 1: Verse 50 of the same chapter, the master of that
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  Speaker 1: slave will come on a day when he doesn't expect him,
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  Speaker 1: and in an hour which he does not know. In
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  Speaker 1: chapter 25 verse 13, be on the alert then, you
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  Speaker 1: do not know the day nor the hour. And Luke
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  Speaker 1: chapter 12 verses 35 to 40 basically say the same thing.
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  Speaker 1: We don't know the specific moment which will trigger.
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  Speaker 2: The events of the day of the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: We don't know the specific moment when the first seal
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  Speaker 1: will be opened and the following seals as well. those
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  Speaker 1: things are not revealed to us. Even in Revelation 16, 15,
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  Speaker 1: it says, Behold, I am coming like a thief. Again, suddenly, unexpectedly,
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  Speaker 1: and harmfully. We don't know when the rapture will happen.
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  Speaker 1: We don't know when the wrath of God will be
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  Speaker 1: released in the beginning of the birth pangs Jesus talked about. Therefore,
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  Speaker 1: we don't know exactly the timing of the great tribulation,
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  Speaker 1: so we don't know in what age, what century, what millennium,
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  Speaker 1: the sixth seal will be broken, and the day of
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  Speaker 1: the Lord will strike. We don't know when that seven-year
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  Speaker 1: period of divine wrath is coming.
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  Speaker 2: Therefore, in a sense, it's imminent.
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  Speaker 1: It could come at any time, and all generations live
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  Speaker 1: to some degree in expectation of it. Every generation is
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  Speaker 1: warned that the wrath of God is coming, and they
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  Speaker 1: should be ready for it, and we do not know
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  Speaker 1: the exact time. Let me take that a step further.
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  Speaker 1: Even people who will be alive during the seven tribulation,
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  Speaker 1: after the church has been taken out, people being redeemed,
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  Speaker 1: and then, of course, there's a vast population of unredeemed people.
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  Speaker 1: Even the people living during that time who can see
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  Speaker 1: the first seal and the second seal and the third
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  Speaker 1: and the fourth and the fifth will not know the
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  Speaker 1: exact time. They will not know the exact time when
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  Speaker 1: the sixth seal will be opened. They will not know
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  Speaker 1: the day. They will not know the hour. They will
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  Speaker 1: not know the specifics of that judgment. It is not
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  Speaker 1: given unto us to know precisely when that is going
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  Speaker 1: to happen. In fact, in verse 36 of Matthew 24,
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  Speaker 1: Jesus says, of that day and hour, no one knows,
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  Speaker 1: not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but
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  Speaker 1: the Father alone. That is a secret event known only
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  Speaker 1: to God. We don't know the exact moment. So even
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  Speaker 1: if people are living in the tribulation and seeing these
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  Speaker 1: events going along, they're not going to know exactly when
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  Speaker 1: the sixth seal is going to come.
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  Speaker 2: In fact.
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  Speaker 1: The believers may be trying to guess because they may
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  Speaker 1: be able to see what's going on, and they may say, well,
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  Speaker 1: it has to be soon. It has to be near.
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  Speaker 1: The unbelievers, on the other hand, are going to be
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  Speaker 1: so deceived, they don't even recognize that it's coming at all.
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  Speaker 1: That's when verse 3 tells us, while they are saying,
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  Speaker 1: and they means false prophets, peace and safety, then destruction
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  Speaker 1: will come upon them.
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  Speaker 2: What's the next word?
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  Speaker 1: Suddenly, like birth pangs upon a woman with child and
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  Speaker 1: they shall not escape. The unbelieving world is going to
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  Speaker 1: be listening to the false prophets and the false teachers.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus talks about them in Matthew 24. He says, while
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  Speaker 1: all these judgments are unfolding, there's going to be false
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  Speaker 1: teachers and false prophets and false Christs, and they will
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  Speaker 1: effectively deceive people.
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  Speaker 2: They will be saying, peace and safety, all is well.
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  Speaker 2: It's getting better.
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  Speaker 1: Remember I told you last time, they will be killing
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  Speaker 1: Christians and killing Jews and telling the world, if we
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  Speaker 1: can get rid of these people, we'll enter.
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  Speaker 2: Into utopia and peace will be ours.
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  Speaker 1: They're much like the false teachers of Jeremiah's prophecy who
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  Speaker 1: keep saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. The
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  Speaker 1: same ones Ezekiel 13 talks about saying, peace, peace, and
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  Speaker 1: there is no peace. The same ones of Micah chapter
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  Speaker 1: 3 verse 5, peace, peace, and there is no peace.
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  Speaker 1: The same ones of 2 Peter 3, 3, the scoffers
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  Speaker 1: who say, where is this coming?
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  Speaker 2: Where is this coming? Everything is going on like it's
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  Speaker 2: always gone on.
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  Speaker 1: And they will effectively deceive the whole world. So the
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  Speaker 1: whole world, even though they have seen the five seals
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  Speaker 1: open and someone can show them a Bible and describe
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  Speaker 1: it to them, will be so deceived by Satan and
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  Speaker 1: the Antichrist and false teachers who are in accord with
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  Speaker 1: them that they will not expect the day of the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: And even believers who know it's coming won't know the
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  Speaker 1: exact moment of its arrival. He says in verse 3,
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  Speaker 1: when they are saying peace and safety, then ole thras, disaster, ruin,
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  Speaker 1: hopeless ruin, and the loss of everything will hit. It
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  Speaker 1: doesn't mean necessarily the destruction of their being, but the
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  Speaker 1: destruction of their well-being. It is not the end of
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  Speaker 1: their existence. It is not annihilation. It is the ruin
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  Speaker 1: of the purpose of their existence. And he says it'll
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  Speaker 1: come suddenly. It's going to come unexpectedly. It's going to
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  Speaker 1: come One verse to keep in mind, Matthew 24, 27.
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  Speaker 1: For just as the lightning comes from the east and
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  Speaker 1: flashes to the west, so shall the sign of the
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  Speaker 1: Son of Man be. When the moment comes to inaugurate
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  Speaker 1: this great day of the Lord and the fury of
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  Speaker 1: God's wrath and the wrath of the Lamb, it will
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  Speaker 1: come suddenly and shockingly, even to believers who will not
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  Speaker 1: know its moment.
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  Speaker 2: And then comes judgment.
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  Speaker 1: Now this that comes is what the Bible calls the
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  Speaker 1: day of the Lord. It is mentioned 19 times in
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  Speaker 1: the Old Testament and specifically four times in the New Testament.
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  Speaker 1: Just a very brief and rapid consideration of it. Listen
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  Speaker 1: to what the Old Testament prophets said about the day
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  Speaker 1: of the Lord. Isaiah 2.12,' For the day of the
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  Speaker 1: Lord of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty,
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  Speaker 1: upon everything lifted up, and it shall be brought low.' Wail,
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  Speaker 1: for the day of the Lord is at hand, Isaiah 13, 6.
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  Speaker 1: In verse 9, behold, the day of the Lord comes,
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  Speaker 1: here's a definition of it, cruel with both wrath and
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  Speaker 1: fierce anger to lay the land desolate. The prophet Jeremiah,
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  Speaker 1: chapter 46, verse 10 said, this is the day of
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  Speaker 1: the Lord, God of hosts, a day of vengeance that
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  Speaker 1: He may avenge Himself on His adversaries. The prophet Joel
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  Speaker 1: wrote in chapter 1 verse 15, for the day of
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  Speaker 1: the Lord is at hand.
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  Speaker 2: It shall come as destruction from the Almighty.
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  Speaker 1: In chapter 2 verse 11, he said, for the day
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  Speaker 1: of the Lord is great and very terrible. In the
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  Speaker 1: same chapter verse 31, he said, the sun will be
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  Speaker 1: turned into darkness, the moon into blood before the coming
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  Speaker 1: of the great and terrible day of the Lord.
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  Speaker 2: The prophet Amos wrote in.
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  Speaker 1: Verse 18 of chapter 5, Woe to you who desire
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  Speaker 1: the day of the Lord, for what good is the
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  Speaker 1: day of the Lord to you?
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  Speaker 2: Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light?
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  Speaker 1: Malachi 4, 5, I will send you Elijah the prophet
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  Speaker 1: before the coming of the great and dreadful day of
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  Speaker 1: the Lord. In Zephaniah 1.14, it says, The great day
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  Speaker 1: of the Lord is near. It is near and hastens quickly.
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  Speaker 1: The noise of the day of the Lord is bitter.
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  Speaker 1: It will be noisy. The day is a day of wrath,
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  Speaker 1: a day of trouble, distress, a day of devastation and desolation,
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  Speaker 1: a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds
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  Speaker 1: and thick darkness. Six times it is referred to as
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  Speaker 1: the day of doom. Four times it is called the
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  Speaker 1: day of vengeance. Always it is identified as a time
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  Speaker 1: when God unleashes His final fury.
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  Speaker 2: And there's always a sense that it is near.
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  Speaker 1: In every generation, Ezekiel 30 verse 3, the day is near,
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  Speaker 1: even the day of the Lord is near. Joel 2.1,
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  Speaker 1: the day of the Lord is coming, it is at hand.
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  Speaker 1: Joel 3.14, the day of the Lord is near. Obadiah 15,
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  Speaker 1: the day of the Lord is upon all the nations
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  Speaker 1: and it is near. Zephaniah 1.7, the day of the
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  Speaker 1: Lord is at hand. Chapter 14, verse 1 of Zechariah,
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  Speaker 1: the day of the Lord is coming. Every generation has
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  Speaker 1: lived with the reality that it could come at any time.
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  Speaker 1: And so the prophets have warned us And the New
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  Speaker 1: Testament writers have warned.
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  Speaker 2: That the day of the Lord is coming. It is
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  Speaker 2: a day of fury. It is a day of judgment.
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  Speaker 2: It is a day of wrath.
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  Speaker 1: Now with all of that in mind, as you come
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  Speaker 1: to Revelation chapter 6 and you read the statement in
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  Speaker 1: verse 17, the great day of their wrath has come,
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  Speaker 1: it is only reasonable to assume that this is describing
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  Speaker 1: the day of the Lord. The sixth seal then opens
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  Speaker 1: the day of the Lord, the final fury of God's wrath.
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  Speaker 1: Though all that has happened prior has been the wrath
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  Speaker 1: of God preceding it. This is the final day of
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  Speaker 1: God's wrath. And by the way, in the Old Testament,
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  Speaker 1: there were some historical days of the Lord. That is
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  Speaker 1: when God intervened in powerful vengeance. And they too had
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  Speaker 1: preliminary indications and warnings as God gave certain judgments which
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  Speaker 1: led up to His final fury. So there are historical
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  Speaker 1: precedents for the same pattern here where you have a
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  Speaker 1: series of judgments leading up to the final fury called
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  Speaker 1: the day of the Lord. This day of the Lord,
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  Speaker 1: I want to add as a footnote, starts toward the
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  Speaker 1: end of the seven-year tribulation time, and it really comes
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  Speaker 1: in two waves. The first part of it comes to
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  Speaker 1: the end of the seven-year tribulation, and the second part
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  Speaker 1: of it comes at the end of the 1,000-year millennial kingdom.
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  Speaker 1: So it comes in two phases with 1,000 years in between.
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  Speaker 1: In Peter's second epistle, I think this is abundantly clear,
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  Speaker 1: because in verse 10 of chapter 3, Peter says, the
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  Speaker 1: day of the Lord will come like a thief, same terminology.
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  Speaker 1: And he says, when the day of the Lord comes,
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  Speaker 1: the heavens will pass away with a roar, the elements
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  Speaker 1: will be destroyed with intense heat, the earth and its
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  Speaker 1: works will be burned up. And then he says down
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  Speaker 1: in verse 13, ultimately there will come a new heavens
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and a new earth. So the day of the Lord
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: stretches all the way from the end of the seven
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: year period where it starts to.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: The coming of the new heaven and the new earth which.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Is after the thousand year millennium. So what I'm saying,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: follow the thought, is that the day of the Lord
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: comes in two phases, one at the end of the
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: seven years and then a final phase at the end
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: of the millennial kingdom as He consumes what is existing
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: then as the millennial earth and heavens and inaugurates the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: new heaven and the new earth, which is the eternal state.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: You say, well, how is it then one great day
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: if it's separated by a thousand years? And Peter gives
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: you the answer very, very clearly in that same text
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: when he says in verse 8, familiar words to us,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: you know them well. Do not let this one fact
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: as one day. When the day of the Lord comes,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the fact that there's a thousand-year interval in between.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Is not difficult for God to deal with. He is
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: above and beyond.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Time, and with Him, a day is as a thousand
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: years and a thousand years as a day. So that
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: is the larger context, biblically, in which you have to
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: see the sixth seal. Now let's return to the sixth
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: seal in our study. The force here, if we can
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: identify a force, we said the first seal, the force
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: was peace The second seal.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: The fourth was war. The third was famine. And the
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: fourth was pestilence.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And the fifth basically was vengeance. If we identify a
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: force here, the force is fear. What really comes through
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: here is fear. Like no fear the world has ever known.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: It will lead to the world's largest prayer meeting, only
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: they're not talking to God. They're praying to the mountains
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: and the rocks, as verse 16 says, and asking them
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to crush them. Luke 21, 26, I remind you, says
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that some will faint from fear. The word faint means
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to die. People will be literally scared to death. Fear
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: is the essence of the sixth seal. The world will
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: fear and they will now know that what they've been
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: experiencing has been the work of God and all the
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: warnings that they had from all the believers who were
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: opening the Bible and showing them the truth, all the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: warnings that they tried to silence, even the gospel preached
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: by the everlasting angel, the 144,000 converted Jews, 12,000 from
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: every tribe, the two witnesses, all of the messages they've
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: heard from everybody giving them the truth will now all
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: of a sudden take meaning, and they'll know that what
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: was being said was in fact true. God was sending
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: them warning signs about the coming day of the Lord.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: And so we come then to the sixth seal.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: The lamb taking the title deed to the earth and
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: unrolling it one more.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Time breaks the sixth seal.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: This is the title deed that describes his takeover of
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: what is rightfully his as the heir of God to
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the whole universe, which is in the hands of the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: usurper Satan and his minions and men. And he unrolls
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: it another time and the sixth seal brings the day
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: of the Lord. The world refused to believe the warnings
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: of Christians. The world has tried to, under the leadership
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: of Antichrist, destroy Christians, kill them all, martyr them, kill
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the Jews as.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Well to wipe out the people of God.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: They have been deceived by Antichrist to believe that what
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: is happening is caused by Christians and Jews, and if
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: they can massacre all of them and remove them all,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: they can go into utopia. And now all of a
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: sudden they know that isn't true because of what starts
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: to happen in the sixth seal. Suddenly, as Jesus said,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: like lightning, six things take place. We went over them
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: last time. I'll just remind you.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Seismos. See the word earthquake? It's actually the word seismos.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: It means shaking.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: The whole universe begins to shake. Then He says, the
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: sun became black as sackcloth made of hair. But because
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: of the breakup of the planet earth and the breakup
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: of other bodies in space, the exploding earth sends fire
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: and smoke into the atmosphere which breaks obscures the sun.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: It may be that the sun itself starts to smoke
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: as somehow it starts to disintegrate.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: The moon becomes like blood.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: It is eclipsed in blackness and perhaps the red fringes
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: of the fire of volcanic action on the earth. And
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: then it says most fascinating things in verse 13.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: The stars of.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: The sky, remember that's the word steres, it can mean
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: any body in the sky, not just stars as we
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: know them, fell to the earth. Obviously, it can't mean
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: just a star, because if a star hit the earth,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: they are so massive, they are, for the most part,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: thousands of times, if not millions of times larger than
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: our own sun.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: It would consume us before it ever landed here.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: So it's fair to assume that this has in mind asteroids, meteorites,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: whatever other objects are flying around in space that begin
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: to pummel the earth. And it is also possible that
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: even the stars begin to fall out of the But
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: all these things coming out of the sky are like
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: a fig tree casting its unripe figs when it's shaken
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: by a great wind. The sky starts to fall. The
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: earth is bombed by careening bodies in the disintegrating heavens.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Then in verse 14, the sky was split apart. That's
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the fifth component. Like a scroll, if you took a
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: scroll and stretched it all the way to its limit...
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: It would be like a canopy, and having stretched it,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: it split in the middle and just rolled up on
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: two sides. The sky as we know it disappears. Then
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: every mountain and island moved out of their place as
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the earth begins to tremble. The shifting crustal layers of
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: earth begin to move. Now this is what is described
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: as the sixth seal. These are, I think, what Jesus
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: meant when He said in Luke 21, 11, there will
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: be terrors and signs in heaven. The stable sky, the
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: sky from which we can navigate, the sky that's always
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the same, that is absolutely predictable hundreds and thousands of
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: years into the future, men can tell you what is
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: going to orbit where and where it'll be then because
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it is so predictable, will instantaneously become unpredictable. And the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: world now knows... who's doing it. Because in verse 16,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: they recognize the wrath of the Lamb, the wrath of
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the Lamb and the presence of the one who sits
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: on the throne, who is God. When you preach a
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: message like this, you assume people are going to say, oh,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: that's ridiculous.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: That's absolutely ridiculous.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: The scoffers have always said everything continues as it has
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: from the beginning. Nothing ever changes. The sky is always
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the same. The planets always move in the same orbit.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Everything is fine. Well, if you've been thinking that, the
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: latest issue of Newsweek magazine might rattle your cage a
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: little bit. Newsweek, November 23, 1992, has a cover story.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: The cover says, Doomsday Science, New Theories About Comets.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Asteroids, and How the World Might End. That's the title.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: And the cover has a rendering, a depiction of the earth.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: And plummeting toward the earth is a flaming fireball, such
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: as we have just read being described. The article inside
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: is absolutely amazing. The teaser in the table of contents
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: says this, Doomsday Science, How Will the World End? On
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: March 23, 1989, an asteroid a half mile across missed
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the earth by just 700,000 miles.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: No one saw it coming.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: If it had arrived a mere six hours later, it
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: might have wiped out civilization. Astronomers are scurrying to start
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: a census of just what threats lurk in the solar system,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: and as the pace of discovery picks up, so should
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the pace of any earthling's heart. Earth runs its course
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: about the sun in a swarm of asteroids, says astronomer
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Donald Yeomans of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Sooner
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: or later, our planet will be struck by one of them.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: If you turn to the article, you'll find a copy
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: under the picture that they give. The copy says this,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: a deadly collision could suck out the atmosphere, scorch the earth,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: and shroud the planet in dust.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: And then the article.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Says this, it comes screaming out of the sky like
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: a scud from hell, bigger than a mountain and packed
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: with more energy than the world's entire nuclear arsenal. It
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: hits the atmosphere at a hundred times the velocity of
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a speeding bullet and less than a second later smacks
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: into the ground with an explosive force.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Of 100 million megatons of TNT.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: The shock waves from the crash landing, traveling 20,000 miles
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: an hour, levels everything within 150 miles. Simultaneously, a plume
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: of vaporized stone shoots up from the impact site, blasting
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: a hole through the atmosphere and venting hot debris. The
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: vaporized rock cools, condensing back into hundreds of millions of
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: tiny stones. As they streak back to the ground over
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the next hour, they heat up and soon the very
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: air glows hot pink. Steam hisses from green leaves. Buildings
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and even trees burst into flame. Nitrogen and oxygen in
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere combine into nitric acid. Any surviving life crawling
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: out of a burrow or cave gets pelted with a
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: rain as caustic as the acid in a car battery.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: That's what astronomer Henry Melosh of the University of Arizona
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: calculates would happen if something six miles across fell.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: From space and smacked into Earth.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: An estimated 20 tons of particles, most no bigger than
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: grains of sand, fall on the ground each day. Of course,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: sometimes the missiles are bigger than sand grains. Thousands of
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: meteorites as big as a lump of coal fall every year,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: usually harmlessly. One smashed through a garage in Illinois. Another
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: totaled a car in a New York City suburb last month. Ironically,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the misses are more worrisome than the hits. On March 23, 1989,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: an asteroid a half mile across missed Earth by just 700,000 miles.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: No one saw it coming. If it had arrived a
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: mere six hours later, it would have wiped out civilization.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: So much for the friendly skies. It says in another
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: part of the article, some counting of asteroids that orbit
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: close enough to Earth to pose a threat is going on.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: In the late 1980s, they were finding 15 asteroids a
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: year of the size that could eliminate human society. Now
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: they're up to 35 a year and gunning for 100
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: a year by 1994. On just four summer nights in 1990,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: one scientist found three One asteroid that crosses directly Earth's
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: orbit is 20 miles wide. Large enough, large enough to
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: do immeasurable, incalculable damage. There are a half dozen bigger
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: than five miles across. The article goes on to describe
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: these kinds of things that are floating around up there.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Some are truck size, it says. that is, smaller than
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: 30 feet across. They pack a wallop of 50,000 tons
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: of TNT. Such an asteroid or comet may produce a
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: meteoric fireball, a burst of light and heat, but is
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: usually too high in the atmosphere to cause significant damage.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Then there are some the size of a building, a
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: diameter between 30 and 300 feet. They come into our
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: space and they explode five miles up with a force
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: of 12 megatons. They annihilate reindeer 30 miles away, ignite
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: the clothes of a man 60 miles away, and level
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: more than 700 square miles of a Siberian forest.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: You say, how do you know that? Because one did
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: it in 1908.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: A sturdier asteroid, one made of nickel and iron rather
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: than stone, would plunge to the ground without exploding. If
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: one the size of that Tungusta rock hit the rural
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: United States, calculates John Pike, director of space policy for
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the Federation of American Scientists, It could kill 70,000 people,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: cause $ 4 billion in property damage, could also flatten buildings
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: 12 miles away, according to the NASA panel. If it
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: hit an urban area, there would be upwards of 300,000 deaths.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: If it hit in a seismic zone, it could trigger
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: earthquakes topping 7.5 on the Richter scale.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Those aren't bad. Those aren't bad. The next one is
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: the size of a mountain, of a mountain.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: If an asteroid 600 feet across fell in the mid-Atlantic Ocean,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: calculates astrophysicist Jack Hills of Los Alamos National Laboratory, it
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: would produce a massive tidal wave 600 feet.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: High on both the European and North American coasts.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Larger asteroids half a mile across would surely hit the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: earth and rank as the greatest catastrophe in human.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: if.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: They hit the earth, would rank as the greatest catastrophe
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: in human history. Thanks to the cloud of dust thrown
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: up by this kind of million-megaton explosion, there would be
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: no crops anywhere for a year. In contrast, a comet
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: of this size, since its ice and frozen gases fragment easily,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: would probably break up in the atmosphere and explode like
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the Tungusta hit. Then there are city-size ones, they say,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: asteroids or comets larger than three miles across, like Swift-Tuttle.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: If one of them hit the Gulf of Mexico, it
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: would create a wave three miles high. 900 miles away,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the mammoth wall of water would still be 1,500 feet high.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Such an asteroid landing in the Gulf of Mexico would
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: flood Kansas City. The impact would make entire continents burst
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: into flame, block sunlight, and make agriculture impossible. Humans would
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: go the way of trilobites. And then the article, as
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: if that isn't bad enough, went on to say, our
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Milky Way and its closest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, are
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: hurtling toward each other at about 125 kilometers a second.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: At that rate, they will close the two million light
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: years that separate them and collide in five billion to
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: ten billion years.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: I love it when they say that.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: The reason they say that is because the things they
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: always assume those things have gone and will go at.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: The same speed.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Since Andromeda is two to three times bigger than the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Milky Way, the collision will be analogous to a hostile takeover,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: says astronomer Lars Hernquist at the University of California. Our
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: galaxy will be consumed and destroyed. Even if Earth managed
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: to survive somehow, given all the empty space in the galaxy,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the collision could send more comets, asteroids, and other debris
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: pounding into.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Our solar system.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: In other words, they now know that there is a
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: collision course all through space in a small level the
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: size of a little rock all the way to colliding galaxies.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: And all God has to do is say the Word
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: and it all happens. By then, it says, the earth
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: may well be cooked anyway by our own evolving star.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: The sun is gradually getting bigger and more luminous. When
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the sun is twice its current diameter, the earth's oceans
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: will boil. When the sun is 15 times brighter, Earth's
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: surface temperatures will reach 600 degrees Kelvin and its crust
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: will melt. Then the article says, all this will take
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: billions of years because the universe is already billions of
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: years old. The truth is the universe is young and
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: and what they think took a long time to arrange itself,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: God arranged instantaneously, just like He'll disarrange it instantaneously. The
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: article then grasps for some hope against this inevitable holocaust
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: and closes with this paragraph. During a human lifetime, there's
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: roughly a 1 in 10,000 chance that earth will be
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: hit by something big enough to wipe out crops worldwide
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: and possibly force survivors to return to the ways of
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Those are the odds of dying from
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: anesthesia during surgery, dying in a car crash in any
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: six-month period, or dying of cancer from breathing the automobile
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: exhaust on the Los Angeles freeway. Killer asteroids and comets
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: are out there, and someday one will be on a
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: collision course with Earth of all the species that ever crawled, walked, flew,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: or swam on Earth. An estimated two-thirds became extinct because
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: of an impact from space in the past. Mankind may
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: yet meet that fate too, but we're the only species
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: that can even contemplate it and just maybe do something
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: to prevent it.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: They know that this is a threatening universe. They can't
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: prevent it. It's going to come. If they read the
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: book of Revelation, they can know it's going to come.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: The only thing they can't know is when it's going
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: to come. But it's going to come. And when it comes...
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: And the earth starts being pummeled by asteroids and meteorites
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: and comets and whatever else of bits and fragments of
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: stars and suns come plummeting into our space. And when
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: the colliding galaxies do what God intends for them to
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: do in the moment of His wrath, the world is
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: going to know that it is God.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: So there is reason for fear. That's our first point.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Plenty of reason for fear.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: And now the scientists, from a non-biblical perspective, are beginning
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: to awaken to it.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Let's look at a second point just briefly, the range
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: of fear. The range of fear. That's in verse 15.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: How widespread is it?
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: The kings of the earth and the great men and
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: the commanders and the rich and the strong.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: Now, in those five categories, you have the elite of
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: The kings and the great men and the commanders and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: the rich and the strong all describe the upper class,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the elite. Everybody all over the world is going to
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: be involved in this fear. And he starts with the elite.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: They're going to see it. They can't avoid it. It's
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: going to come. It's going to be visible. It's going
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: to leave its tremendous impact, even as the Chernobyl thing
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: left its impact on the world in a small way
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: or as the explosion of the volcano in Alaska or
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: any other.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Of those kinds of things did.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: This is going to be way beyond anything ever imagined
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: by men, and the whole world of elite people will
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: have absolutely no way to deal with it. The last
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: two classes, every slave and free man, just divide the
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: common people into the two categories that common people in
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: ancient times were divided into, either slaves or free men.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Whether you're the elite or the common man, you're going
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: to know it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: It's going to come. Nobody's going to be left out.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Everybody is going to see it. Everybody is going to
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: feel it. Everybody is going to experience it. Isaiah writes
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: in chapter 2, enter the rock and hide in the
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: dust from the terror of the Lord and from the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: splendor of His majesty. The proud look of man will
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: be abased, and the loftiness of man will be humbled,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: and the Lord alone will be exalted.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: In that day.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: In verse 19, he says, men will go into caves
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: of the rocks and holes of the ground before the
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: terror of the Lord and before the splendor of His
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: majesty when He arises to make the earth tremble. In
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: that day, men will cast away to the moles and
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: the bats, their idols of silver and their idols of gold,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: which they made for themselves to worship, in order to
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: go into the caverns of the rocks and the clefts
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: of the cliffs, before the terror of the Lord and
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the splendor of His.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Majesty, when He arises to make the earth tremble.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: But to the redeemed, Jesus said in Luke 21, 28,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: when these things begin to take place, straighten up. up
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing nigh.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: When the redeemed see this, they know the kingdom is coming.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: The king is coming. The kingdom is following.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: But the rest of the unredeemed of the world, all
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: of them, the range of it, everybody is going to
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: be in fear. and some will be scared to death.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Those who don't die from fear are noted in verse
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: 16 and 17 in the reaction. We saw the reason
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: for their fear, the range of fear, now finally the reaction.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: It says they hid themselves in the caves and among
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the rocks of the mountains, just as Isaiah said.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: We wish we could have read they repented, don't we?
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: We wish we had read that they saw their sins
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: and they cried out to God for mercy. They certainly
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: have been warned over and over and over again. They
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: have heard the gospel. They have tried to stamp out
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: its preachers. We wish they had cried for mercy. But
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: if you read their reaction in chapter 9, verse 21,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: they didn't repent of their murders, of their sorceries, of
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: their immorality, of their thefts. They didn't repent even though
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: the trumpet judgments were on them. And in chapter 16,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: in line with the bold judgments, verse 11, they blasphemed
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and they didn't repent of their deeds. They should cry
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: for mercy, but like the demons of which James wrote,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: they believe and tremble, but they don't repent. Why don't
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: they repent? Because they have followed the path of Satan,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: and they are deceived. They believed the lies. They identified
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: with the Antichrist. And God has left them in that delusion.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: He has left them in that deception. He has turned
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: them over to wrath. Verse 11 of 2 Thessalonians 2,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: God will send upon them a deluding influence. so that
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: they might believe what is false in order that they
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: all may be judged who didn't believe the truth but
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: took pleasure in wickedness. Like Pharaoh who hardened his heart
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and had his heart hardened by God finally, they who
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: hardened their hearts will have their hearts hardened by God.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: And in that moment they will not, yes, they cannot believe.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: And in their terror, it says, they hid themselves in
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: the caves and the rocks of the mountains. That's a
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: pretty silly place to go because all that stuff's coming apart,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: but it really doesn't matter, does it? Where are they
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: going to go?
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: They can't escape. They can't get away.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: It's not possible because God is breaking up everything. Furthermore,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: you can't go anywhere where the Lord can't find you.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Read Psalm 139 verses 7 to 13. And it certainly
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: isn't very smart because that's exactly the place you're going
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: to be crushed because the mountains and the rocks and
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: the caves are collapsing under the judgment of God. And
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: I think that is their intent. Destroy us. First of all,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: hide us and crush us. Don't let us live to
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: face God. They would rather be dead than to face God,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: not knowing what that death will mean is that they
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: will face God. Verse 16, they said to the mountains
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: and the rocks, fall on us and hide us from
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the presence of Him who sits on the throne and
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: from the wrath of the Lamb. They're praying to Mother Nature.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Hosea 10.8 says, they will say to the mountains, cover
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: us and the hills, fall on us. It's a death wish.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: It isn't rational, but they would rather die than face God.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: They know He's angry and the Lamb is angry. and
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: they know what has come. Verse 17, the great day
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: of their wrath has come. It's here, the day of
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: the Lord. And then the question, who is able to stand?
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: What's the answer? No one.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: 1 Thessalonians 5, 3 says, the destruction will come and
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: they shall not escape. Prophet Nahum wrote in verse 6
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: of chapter 1, who can stand before his indignation?
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Who can endure the burning of his anger?
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: are broken up by him. Nobody will survive. Nobody will survive.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: So the fear, it is a terrifying, terrifying scene. Look
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: at Hebrews 10 for just a brief moment. Hebrews 10.26 says,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: of the truth, there's no longer a sacrifice for sins.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: If you know the gospel, if people hear the gospel
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: today or even in that time, And they go on
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: sinning willfully after knowing the truth. There no longer remains
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: a sacrifice for sins. What does remain, verse 27, is
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: a certain terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: a fire.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Which will consume the adversaries.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: If you reject the gospel, this is what you have
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: to look forward to should you be alive in the
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: day of the Lord. And should you miss the day
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: of the Lord on earth, you will still experience eternal damnation.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: And it'll be severe.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: As verse 31 says, it's a terrifying thing to fall
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: into the hands of the living God. They think if
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: the mountains will crush them, And if the rocks will
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: crush their lives, they won't have to face God.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Boy, are they wrong.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: You say, John, are you saying that nobody is going
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: to repent? No, during this period of time, there will
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: be innumerable Gentiles converted. As chapter 7, verse 9 says,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: so many they can't even be numbered. No man could
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: even count them from every nation and tribe and people
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: and time. Also, the Jews will be converted. Romans says
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: all Israel will be saved. Zechariah says the Jews will
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: look up, and they will look on the one whom
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him as
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: an only Son, and a fountain of blessing and salvation
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: will be opened to Israel. There will be salvation during
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: this period of time among Gentiles and among the Jews
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: as the Jews finally see their Messiah, believe in Him,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: and receive the kingdom. But the vast people of the
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: world will be crushed and their own wish coming true,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: but they won't escape, for they'll meet their Maker after
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: death to be sent forever into eternal hell.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: What is the importance of all of this for us?
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: It should be obvious. If you're an unbeliever, be warned.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: You are, according to Romans 2, 5, treasuring up wrath
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: against the day of wrath.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: You're accumulating a debt which God will pay.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: You back for with His wrath in the day of wrath.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: You need to be warned.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: If you know the truth of the saving gospel and
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: you go on sinning willfully and rejected, the only thing
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: you can look forward to is a terrifying expectation of judgment.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: If you're a Christian, first of all, you can be
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: thankful for what you're going to escape.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Amen?
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: That we're going to be caught up together to meet
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: the Lord in the air and we're going to be
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: with Him, coming back with Him in glory to reign.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: Amen?
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Secondly, as a believer, I'm not only to be thankful,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: but I need to be faithful to evangelize, right? When
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: I understand what is coming, I have to warn men.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, I'm thankful that I'm going to
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: be rescued from wrath, that I am not destined for
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: the wrath to come. But on the other hand, there's
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: a world of people that are, and I have the
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: saving message of Jesus Christ to bring to them that
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: they might be delivered from that. Father, I pray for
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: each of us here who have heard this word, that
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: a right response might come forth from us. For those
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: who do not know Christ, may the fear grip their
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: hearts now so that they won't experience it in the future.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: And may they come to Christ, who in this day
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: of grace is offering full forgiveness and pardon for all
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: our sins, if we will but acknowledge His death and resurrection.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: embrace Him as Savior and Lord. For us who are Christians,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: may we be thankful for the gift of grace which
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: has taken us out of those who are the children
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: of wrath and made us children of God, which has
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: given us the promise that there is a place in
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the Father's house of which Jesus spoke when He said,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: I go to prepare a place for you, and if
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: I go and prepare a place for you, I will
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: come again and receive you to myself, that where I am,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: there you may be also. That we're not headed for wrath.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: We're not destined for wrath. We're not the children of wrath.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: We're not of the darkness. We're not of the night.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: We're children of the day.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: And we will escape that. We thank you for that.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: At the same time, we are responsible to preach the
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: saving truth that can deliver others, even as we have
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: been delivered. Make us faithful to do that as well.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: In Christ's name, Amen.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to John MacArthur, Bible teacher with Grace
• 49:23
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• 49:27
  Speaker 2: and a listing of study Bibles and books available for sale,
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: visit Grace To You's website at gty.org. John MacArthur and
• 49:36
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• 49:41
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• 49:46
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