The Revelation Of Jesus Christ

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So before John comes up, the text is going to be from Revelations chapter 1 and Psalms chapter 2, which I'll read to you now. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near. John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood, and made us a kingdom, priest to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him even so. Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to come. The Almighty. Psalms Chapter 2 Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the LORD and against his anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heaven laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, As for me, I have set my king, my Zion, my holy hill. We're starting this new series called Revelation Hope that Outlasts Empires. And thanks, A.J., for reading these texts today. We're going to be journeying for the next few weeks through the Book of Revelation. You might ask why. For one purpose, one purpose is the fact that it is kind of the culmination of all of the Old Testament and New Testament in one book. It's layer upon layer upon layer, metaphor upon metaphor, story upon story that comes together there. And I think it's an important perspective that we could use right now. For another reason, I just am finishing teaching a course on Revelation at the university, and I've got a lot of material, okay? So I'm not, let's be honest, I'm double dipping, okay? So there are a couple students here who have been taking that course, and we'll probably see a couple of those quotes that came up in class in one form or another from different scholars as we go along, okay? For y'all, it's probably good because I bet you forgot some of the material already, right? It's a lot. That's probably right. Okay. Have you ever heard the saying, It's been attributed as a Chinese curse, which when I studied, you find out it isn't that. We don't know where it came from. Someone said it in 1936. Isn't that a fascinating year to say this? May you live in interesting times. Have you ever heard that phrase before? May you live in interesting times. And 1936 would have been interesting times, right? With the just approaching World War II, with all that was going on in Europe. in Germany in particular and all. Well, 90 years later, 2026, may you live in interesting times. Do you notice how just, oh, the world's a mess. And maybe you haven't felt that way. Maybe you don't feel that way. Maybe it's just 'cause I'm getting older. I'm feeling that way. Maybe it's just I didn't realize I was oblivious to the 1960s. Yes, I was born in the '60s and oblivious to what was going on 'cause I was a little kid, you know? Maybe I was oblivious to the 1970s 'cause I was still in high school and then college in the '80s, you know? Maybe. But boy, now maybe I know too much and not enough at the same time. I don't know what you think. May you live in interesting times. Hans Schwartz said that the interesting times we are currently living in, he called, We live in an apocalyptic age. Now that word's been used in a lot of ways, like a million different ways, from Snowmageddon kind of ideas to apocalypse this and apocalypse that. The word apocalyptic is very particular. We'll get into that. But he goes on to explain in his book on all of this that most of our civilization, Western civilization in general, but I'd say around the world, a lot of people feel like we're like on the edge of the end. We're coming towards some end, but, he said, it's a secular ending to the story these days. Most people don't know-- well, they don't know what to expect, but they also don't think anything good is going to come out of all of this. It's just going to be some disaster, OK? And as a result, they have very little hope. Okay? And it could be from the doomsday clock ticking closer to midnight than ever before. Did you realize that? Right now it's closer to midnight than ever before that it'...