THE SPIRIT-LIFE COACH

Our present study is an attempt to bring to my readers an understanding of the final preparation of the Bride of Christ which are the hidden truth in the book of Revelation. 

                                                       SEALED WITH SEVEN SEALS 4

Some examples of the symbols representations of the Book of Revelation

For example we see the Lord Jesus Christ represented or SIGNIFIED or SYMBOLISED by a Lamb slain having seven eyes. Another example of the symbolic nature of the book is the appearance of the Lord Himself walking in the midst of the seven Golden Candlesticks. This is Christ in the Holy Place of the Tabernacle of Moses. The Holy Place is the residence of the Church for it refers to Pentecost when the Church was born. The seven Golden Candlesticks represent the Church and its light giving ministry.

These are some of the details we shall be examining as we go on in the study.

The book of revelation details the journey of the Bride from salvation to perfection. It also details the events that will take place in the saints and in the world and in the earth as we go through the final stages of Adam’s lease before the Lord comes to establish His Kingdom in the earth and take full residence in His saints.

In our studies we shall divide the book into some 2 major places. These two major divisions are

1. Revelation chapters 1 to 12 and

2. Revelation chapters 13 to 22.

Furthermore we shall divide the first 12 chapters into four places.

1.       the appearance of the Lord in chapter 1

2.       the message to the Seven Churches chapters 2-5

3.       the Seven Seals and the Seven Trumpets  chapters 6-11

4.       the Manchild chapter 12

BLESSED IS HE THAT READETH!

Rev 1:3  Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand

The Lord surely wants His people to read the book and He thus sets forth the blessedness of him/her that ‘readeth’.

The Church in the most part has thought that the places where God’s promises are written in the bible are the only avenues of blessings. So a believer would rather read the Psalms than read the book of revelation for example. But contrary to what we think the Lord is has reserved blessings for all those who read the book and do the instructions in the book. And in any case ALL scripture has been given to us that we may be complete, thoroughly furnished and prepared unto every good work. 2Tim3:16

THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF JOHN

PETER

In the beginning of the history of the Church we see the mantle of leadership falling on Peter. Some part of the gospel like the Gospel of Mark was said to be dictated by Peter. It was Peter that led the Church in the very trying times of the great contentions of Church with established Judaism. They were beaten, imprisoned and even killed for their witness to the Messiaship of the Lord Jesus and as witnesses of Hs resurrection.

The church however grew in power and in great grace despite these persecutions. From the day of Pentecost through the revival in Samaria even unto the spread to Antioch when the gospel was preached only to the Jews in the Gentile city, Peter’s ministry and leadership held sway.

It was under his leadership that the first witness of the power and the life of Christ were shown forth to the world through the disciples.

Peter apostleship oversaw the beginnings of the planting of the Kingdom of God in the earth.

PAUL

In the latter part of the Church ministry in the book of Acts of the Apostles we see the mantle of leadership falling on Paul. This Paul was first introduced to us as Saul the great persecutor of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. He personally supervised the execution of Stephen the disciple. But then the Lord took a hold of him and He became the great apostle of the faith which he once destroyed.

It was through the ministry of Paul that the gospel spread to the Gentiles with great surges of the waves of power and glory. Right from Antioch even to Illyricum, to Spain and to Rome this man labored through the grace of God more than any man else since the Lord Himself 1Cor 15:10. He spent and was spent in the labors to bringing the kingdom of God into the hearts of men.

All the great landmark doctrines of Christianity were taught, written and established by Paul. From our confessions of the Jesus as Lord whereby we become citizens of the kingdom, to the doctrine of justification by faith even unto the demonstrations of the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit even up to the end-time reconciliation re-gathering of the Jews unto faith in the Lord we see Paul’s pen dipping with his understanding of the great mysteries of Christ.

Paul takes us within the veil to unveil before us the great ministry which Jesus carried on as He ascended to the Temple of God in heaven (Heb 1-13). He wrote 23 chapters of the bible.

Paul grew so much in the grace of God to the place where he could not be killed until he offered up his life to be poured out for the cause of Christ. He died empty, the last place he lived being in a rented apartment in Rome.

Paul’s apostleship oversaw the adolescent season of the Church

JOHN

John was the closest to the Lord as it is shown in the gospels. He was the disciple that rested his head upon Jesus chest. John showed forth for a number of years in Jerusalem. We see Him in the upper room and at the gate called beautiful where the lame was gloriously healed. However John soon drops out of the scene. It was obvious that the next man of prominence after Peter was Paul.

After the deaths of both Peter and Paul the ministry of John came into prominence. By A.D 63 Paul had been beheaded in Rome and Peter was crucified downward on a cross a short time afterwards.

By this time certain satanic doctrines had crept into the Church and some parts of the Church had lost their focus and the boisterous faith-life of the former years. Worldliness and earthly mindedness had taken over in a great many churches.  The adolescent Church losing direction had become lukewarm.

There arose the need in heaven for the man to take the church into perfection. This man would remove the dross from the silver, to purify the gold in the fire and take the Bride of Christ into the Holiest.

The burden of the work fell on John.

To John there was no dividing line. You either stand with Christ or fall to Satan. John says, “little children, let no man deceive you, he that DOETH righteousness is righteous and he that sins is of the devil for the devil sins from the beginning” 1John 3:8.

He also says “he that sins has not known Him”. John goes further to say “he that is born of God does not sin, he CANNOT SIN because the seed of God abides in Him”

The ministry of John takes the Church to the Seventh Trumpet…”and in the days of the voice of the Seventh Angel when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished as He has revealed to His servants the prophets”. This ends the age-long quest for the coming of the Kingdom and God’s total indwelling of us.

John, the beloved apostle hands the Bride (the Church) to the Groom (the Lord Jesus). For this reason his letters are of the utmost importance to the Church today.

This is because the same conditions that pervaded the Church in the days of John are here again. 

THE SPIRIT-LIFE COACH IS A " NOW WORD" from the Spirit of God sent to believers to facilitate our coming into the present glory.

For more information about past messages in the series, counsel or prayer requests, you may e-mail: Pastor Dele Matthews, christcollege07@yahoo.co.uk or call 2348028783451, or 2347066668066

Pastor Dele Matthews is Senior Minister, Restoration Ministries and Dean of Studies, Christ College- a Word School set up for the Spiritual Growth of ALL Christians, focussing on bringing the believer into the fullness of Christ.

Spirit-Life Coach

Spirit-Life Coach

THE SPIRIT-LIFE COACH

Our present study is an attempt to bring to my readers an understanding of the final preparation of the Bride of Christ which are the hidden truth in the book of Revelation. 

                                            SEALED WITH SEVEN SEALS 3

I think it would do us a whole world of good if we could just get back to the beginning of the book. That is to go back to the very first chapter.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ

Although we may not be entirely wrong to name John the apostle as the author of the book, but then based on context it would be better to call this book the revelation of Jesus Christ.

“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:”

                                                                                    Rev 1:1 

You know that sometimes we do not consider some aspects of the word of God as important and worthy of note. However the truth is that every part of the word is important. For example you will see in the writings of Paul that he started some of his letters with greetings such as …”to them that be in Rome, called to be saints” Rom 1:7. Within the first three verses he makes a lot of profound statements even touching on the resurrection of our Lord. If we hurry and are harried to the body of the letters we may not be able to make the most of the intent of the Lord in giving us the document. Some of the things we regard as mere preambles may hold secrets of unlocking the body we are in such a hurry to get into. You remember the Lord is called the alpha and omega, He is as interested in the beginning as much as He is in the end.

Having said that, we can see the preambles of the book of Revelation also holds some secrets which would unlock the entire book to us.

Let us consider these secrets based on the first three verses of the book as quoted above.

1.       It is the REVELATION OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

2.       God, the Father gave it to Him

3.       The purpose of this revelation is so that the servants or DISCIPLES of the Lord would be able to understand certain important things that are important to God and that He wants to let them in on.

4.       The Lord Jesus Christ SENT and SIGNIFIED it through the HANDS OF AN ANGEL: this means He sent an angel to communicate His words THROUGH THE SPIRITUAL LANGUAGE OF SIGNS AND SYMBOLS

5.       The angel was sent to SIGNIFY it to HIS SERVANT John. This angel did that by using the spiritual language of signs

We can make certain deductions from these truths outlined above. They are:

1.       This book is so important to the Father that He had to personally commit the message in it to the hands of the Son.

2.       This book is also of such importance that it was given to the servant of the Lord with the stature of John the apostle. This is not because John was an apostle but because of the place that he occupied in the heart of the master. He was certainly the closest to the Lord among the twelve

3.       The book unravels the plans of God in the future as this age closes and would also help us to accurately interpret the things that had gone on before our time.

4.       The book is a book of SIGNS. The word sign here is not in relation to signs and wonders of the miraculous but of SIGNS that ENCODE or rather EXPLAIN a succession of events or activities without the use of words. For example when you beckon to someone to ‘come over here!’, there is a way you could wave your hands to make the person understand that you want him or her to come over to you without breathing a syllable.

GOD’S LANGUAGE OF SIGNS

The greatest difficulty of genuine children of God relating to the understanding of the book is with decoding the SIGN and SYMBOLS nature of the revelation. But then we must know that those symbols are easy to understand when one is well acquainted with one’s bible.

THE MEANINGS OF THOSE SIGNS AND SYMBOLS ARE SCATTERED ALL OVER THE BIBLE

Albert Einstein says God doesn’t play dice with the universe. God’s ways are orderly. He is also consistent in His interpretations of themes issues and events. One thing will hardly be ‘this’ at this time and ‘another thing’ at another time.  We must also follow His patterns. We cannot just say this means ‘that’ just because we feel so. We can’t just say this refers to ‘that’ just because we think, ‘logically that’s the way it should be’. We have to be guided by God’s principles of what those signs and symbols represent.

God also has not hidden the meanings in the air. He hasn’t left the meanings to human imaginations to try fathom out. He has put them in the bible. The amazing thing we will discover is that John wrote all those things using the words already revealed in the books of the Law, those revealed to other prophets in the bible and those contained in the section of the Old Testament known as the writings. Those are books such as the Psalms, Ecclesiastes and the Songs of Solomon. It is also good to know that some of the symbols of the book represent the literal words of Jesus that were contained in the gospels.

You know why? Because the God that revealed those things to the ancients was the one that revealed the contents of the book of Revelation to the apostle. The language of the Old Testament remains His language still. So we can’t just jump into the book and begin to make deductions when we have not first understood and known and in fact acquainted ourselves with how the signs and symbols that were used to pass the message across were used in the first place in the Old Testament.

Now the book was written to the disciple. The disciple is one who follows the DISCIPLINE of Christ. A disciple is one whose life and total pursuits are contained in Christ. So for the disciple it’s not too much of a grievous work to familiarize his or herself with the total counsel of God in the entire scripture.

I shall state some of the examples in the next article.

THE SPIRIT-LIFE COACH IS A " NOW WORD" from the Spirit of God sent to believers to facilitate our coming into the present glory.

For more information about past messages in the series, counsel or prayer requests, you may e-mail: Pastor Dele Matthews, christcollege07@yahoo.co.uk or call 2348028783451, or 2347066668066

Pastor Dele Matthews is Senior Minister, Restoration Ministries and Dean of Studies, Christ College- a Word School set up for the Spiritual Growth of ALL Christians, focussing on bringing the believer into the fullness of Christ.

THE SPIRIT-LIFE COACH

Our present study is an attempt to bring to my readers an understanding of the final preparation of the Bride of Christ which are the hidden truth in the book of Revelation. 

                                                                        SEALED WITH SEVEN SEALS 2

WHY WAS IT CALLED THE REVELATION 2?

It was called the revelation because it was the dramatic but full demonstration of the answer of Jesus in what today is famously known as the 'Olivet discourse'. So for you to know about this book you had to know about the Olivet Discourse.

What happened at the Mount of Olives?

Mat 24:1  And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

Mat 24:2  And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

Mat 24:3  And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

 Did you read the above scripture?

Yes. Jesus was at Jerusalem in the final week before His death burial and resurrection. There were great thoughts in the Lord’s heart already about the Grand Plan of the ages. The Lord meditated on this but His disciples’ heart were far from his. They were admiring their place of worship, the great Temple of Solomon as reconstructed by Herod. And they made Jesus know some history about the Temple. You should know that the Lord was only about thirty-three years of age as at the time. So he had some learning to do from them! They took Him on a tour of the Temple. It’s like you would take a friend who was visiting on some tour around the major iconic buildings of your city or town. The temple of course was the highest Jewish pride.

It was said that when Herod did a reconstruction of that Temple, he ensured that they put a block down and a sheet of gold over it before they mounted the next block or stone. So in-between each set of two stones was a sheet of gold from bottom up! That made some glitter when the sun shinned on it in the day. It was pure beauty.

Jesus shocked them “…guys I tell you, this temple is already marked up for destruction. It’s coming down. And when it did, not one stone would be left on the other! By the time the destroyers would finish with it the average person would not even know that this (Temple) has been here”.

They were very alarmed at this. They knew Jesus was a prophet. If He said it, it was going to surely come to pass. The issue would now be when?

So they asked the question and something even deeper that surely had been in their hearts before this time…when is the Temple destruction going to happen? Sir what shall be the sign of your coming…when exactly is this world as we know it going to end and your kingdom come?

You know they asked three major questions. Can you remember them?...1. when will the destruction of the Temple as prophesied by the Lord take place? What will be the sign that they may look upon to know that His coming the second time was near? And when will the world end.

The answers that the Lord gave to them were the basis for the revelation of John. This is a major key in understanding the book of revelation. If you don’t get this you will keep groping in the dark.

A careful consideration of Matthew twenty four reveals that those are what's contained and further explained in the Book of Revelation.

THE SPIRIT-LIFE COACH IS A " NOW WORD" from the Spirit of God sent to believers to facilitate our coming into the present glory.

For more information about past messages in the series, counsel or prayer requests, you may e-mail: Pastor Dele Matthews, christcollege07@yahoo.co.uk or call 2348028783451, or 2347066668066

Pastor Dele Matthews is Senior Minister, Restoration Ministries and Dean of Studies, Christ College- a Word School set up for the Spiritual Growth of ALL Christians, focussing on bringing the believer into the fullness of Christ.