Thank you, Lord. Father, we do thank you for your word, Lord. It's such a precious commodity. Lord, in these times where there's a famine of the true word of God, where people abuse your word and use it for their own benefits, Lord, we thank you that your word is so pure, so whole.
holy, so righteous. And Lord, we want it to remain untainted tonight, Lord, as we look at your word. So, Father, I ask that you will flow your word through me, Lord, and let your word come to our hearts so that we can see your truth and your truth can set us free.
Set us free. Thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.
Praise the Lord. Okay, well, we're looking at the book of Revelation, and we're looking at part two. We did part one in November, so we're now doing part two. So if you remember, we got to verse 10 of chapter one, so let's go straight back into where we were.
So can we put up the scriptures, please? Let's go to Revelation chapter one. And we will start reading at verse 10. What we will do is we'll read right down to the end of the chapter, okay? And then we'll go through it that way, I think, this time. Okay, so I'm going to read from verse 10 right through to the end.
On the Lord's day, I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet. which said, write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. I turned round to see the voice that was speaking to me, and when I turned, I saw seven golded lampstands. And among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe, reaching down to his feet.
with a golden sash round his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.
In his right hand he held seven stars, And coming out of his mouth was a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun, shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. And then he placed his right hand on me and said, Do not be afraid.
I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I was dead.
And now look, I am alive forever and ever. and I hold the keys of death and Hades. Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place later.
The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. So there we've read to the end of chapter 1, there's an awful lot of information there.
And if you remember what we looked at last time, we looked at the first half of chapter 1 and we looked at various aspects of the book. Now what I want us to do is look at the preparation of what he's going to tell us about the next age. Okay, there in verse 19, John said something, Write what you have seen, write what...
now is, and then write what is yet to come, or hereafter, the Greek word metatauta, what is going to come after this, okay? So, Revelation is split into three parts. The first part is what you have seen.
John is told to write what he has seen, okay? Now, if you think he wrote the Gospel of John as well, okay, he wrote what he had seen, his life with Jesus, what Jesus said to him. Now he's going to write what is.
What now is. What is, what he's seeing now, is the churches. Can you see that? So there was the previous age that he had seen. There is the age that now is, the age of the church.
And then he is to write meta-tauta, what will happen afterwards. Now the afterwards will not happen until chapter 4. He's actually writing about what now is. The church age. It's important that you see that, otherwise you can get confused.
You'll see this when we get to chapter 4, because then we move into the metatauta, what's going to happen after this. After what? After the church age.
The church age is a seven-fold dispensation, just as every other dispensation has been. You can split the Bible up into stages, from the beginning of creation, right through to the end of time. And you can see clearly that God splits things up according to a very clear cycle.
We're going to look at that tonight. What God is doing. Now, first of all, what I just want us to call attention to is that what happens before John sees anything? He has an encounter with Jesus Christ. Okay?
He hears a voice. He turns around, he has a supernatural encounter with the living God, and that encounter kills him. It totally slays everything that he is. He falls at his feet as a dead man.
It's important that we see this and that we don't just rush into obtaining knowledge. There's an unhealthy tradition amongst Christians where they just think they almost become, prophecy becomes like their hobby. It's almost like, I just love finding out about future events. I just love studying end times.
Well, that was not John's motive. John's motive was not to try and find out what was happening at the end of time. John loved Jesus. John was totally in love with Jesus. He was the beloved disciple.
All John ever wanted to do was be with Jesus. The fact that God gave John this great revelation, this apocalypto, the apocalypsis, is because he loved Jesus, not the other way around. Studying end-time events won't make you love Jesus.
If you love Jesus, he will give you understanding of end-time events, because he always does. He always gives his beloved understanding. And so John loved Jesus. And he loved him so much that he had this encounter that totally destroyed his old life and gave him a new life. Now, when John had this encounter, he was already a better Christian than any of us.
Would anyone like to disagree? He was already the beloved apostle. He was already the one whom Jesus loved. He was an amazing man of God.
He was very elderly at this point. He'd already suffered for the gospel. He'd planted churches. He'd evangelized all over the world. He was a model Christian, but yet he was still to have the greatest encounter with Jesus that he'd ever had.
Think about that. He was on the Mount of Transfiguration where John saw Jesus. transfigured, metamorphosized into the Son of God, where his face changed, where God the Father spoke from heaven, where the Holy Spirit literally came down and enveloped them in a crowd, where Elijah and Moses appeared at his side.
That's a pretty good meeting. He'd had amazing encounters with God, but he was still going to have his greatest. So let's just be encouraged that before John writes what we call the Revelation, he actually...
had his greatest encounter with God and he met Jesus again and this man who knew Jesus better than any man on the planet fell at his feet as dead. It was such a glorious manifestation. So let's bear that in mind. The main thing in your life is to encounter Jesus, not try and understand things. If you have an encounter with Jesus, you will understand things.
But the main thing is Jesus, not the building up of our knowledge. That can actually be a counterfeit. That's what Adam and Eve did in the garden, remember? They didn't want the tree of life, they just wanted the knowledge. Don't ever go just for the knowledge.
Go for the life in Jesus. He'll give you the knowledge. He'll give you understanding. But make sure it's that way around. So true revelation will only come to you if you encounter Jesus.
Okay? Coming to a Bible study but not loving Jesus won't really give you very much. It's knowing Jesus.
That is the source, the beginning, the present, and the end. It's having Jesus with us that is our most precious commodity, not our head full of knowledge, okay? So then he tells us very clearly to write what he has seen, what he is seeing, and what is going to be here after, after these things, it tells us.
So what we're going to be looking at now, probably for the next few months, actually, is the present age. Now, In Revelation, the most important aspects for every single Christian here is chapters 1, 2 and 3. Now what happens after this is important to know, so that we understand God keeps his promises, so we can be aware of what's happening, but actually it's what Jesus says to the church that is the most important thing. For the rest of the world, it'll be good if they know that as well, that everything that comes afterwards, but ultimately it's what God is saying to the church. Jesus shares his greatest secrets with his bride, just as any true man shares his greatest secrets with his bride.
Jesus says, wants the church to know. So we looked last time how we briefly looked at the sevens, and we looked at how God tells John, Jesus tells John, to write to seven churches. Okay, now even in that passage we've read, you'll have seen a handful of sevens mentioned.
Yeah? Seven lampstands, seven churches, seven angels, or seven stars, which are the angels. He's sending to the churches.
So what I want us to do, what I'm going to try and do in this next hour, is cram in an understanding of the cyclical patterns of God so that we can grasp the truth of what's happening through Revelation. So taking this as our premise, as our introduction, let's try and understand why God does everything in sevens, why everything is going to now happen in sevens, even in the church age. and why everything even after the church age is going to pull together the completion of God's sevens from the beginning of creation. You see, John would have understood what all these sevens meant because he was Jewish, and he understood the patterns. To understand the patterns, even before we read Revelation, you have to have an understanding of definitely Daniel's prophetic timeline.
Now, I hope most of you have read Daniel. Now, you will know from the book of Daniel, Daniel is a very apocalyptic. prophetic book. Daniel gave lots of prophecies, but he gave one very specific prophecy that we can find in Daniel chapter 9. So if we can look at this, just a few verses here that will help us understand the timeline of Revelation. Daniel 9 and verse 24. This is one of the most famous prophecies in the world, not just in the Bible.
You remember Daniel knew that the Israelites who were captive in Babylon would be there for 70 years. And after 70 years, they will be released back to the land of Israel to rebuild the temple to go back to Jerusalem. And that was fulfilled.
But God gave Daniel another prophecy and he says, you need to understand, you need to write down, you need to tell people what's going to happen afterwards. God wasn't just fulfilling the prophecy of the 70 years. He was giving Daniel...
Daniel a prophetic outline of what was going to happen to the end of time. But he said it in a very strange way. Actually, it's a very good way if you understand biblical patterns.
And here's what he said to him. Seventy-sevens are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place. Daniel is given a prophecy of 77s, but remember seven means week, okay? It's the same word, Shabbat.
It means 70 weeks. In fact, some of your Bible translations will say 70 weeks. And a week doesn't mean seven days.
It can mean seven days. It can also mean seven years, yeah? God works in the patterns of seven, seven day week.
A seven-year week, and then you get to a special year. So he said at the end of this time period, at the end of 77 year periods, which is a lot of years, hundreds of years, everything is going to be finished. Prophets is going to come to a climax. Prophets is going to come to a conclusion.
Now, if you read the rest of Daniel, he has a vision of the end of time, the ancient of days, taking his seat. the people being resurrected, he sees everything, not as clear as John did in Revelation, but he sees everything being fulfilled. And you can work out exactly to the day, if you add up the years, you can work out very specific things that have happened through history. Let's read on and you'll see this.
Next verse. Know and understand this. From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.
Some Bible translations say it from the issuing of the decree. the decree from the persians no one understand this from the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild jerusalem until the mashiach the christ the anointed one the ruler comes there will be seven sevens and 62 sevens it will be rebuilt jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and a trench but in times of trouble now let me just stop there i can't go into too much detail here because we could be here all night just interpreting that you Basically, you can work out there from the seven sevens and the 62 sevens, that is 69 weeks, 69 sets of seven years. Yeah?
You're all following me so far. I'm not going to break it down any more than that because we'll get confused. Remember, these are lunar cycle years, not our cycle years. We know the very day the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem was given.
It's in the Bible, but it's also in secular archaeology. If you add up those days, if you add up those years from the issuing of the decree, at the end of the 69 weeks, it comes out to the very day Jesus entered Jerusalem and presented himself as king, the Messiah, the anointed one, comes. Okay? So Daniel prophesied to the day when Jesus would come. That's why the Jews knew Messiah was coming.
They could work it out from Daniel's prophecy. Jerusalem would be rebuilt. Let's read down.
After the 62 sevens, the anointed one will be put to death and will have nothing. Remember that's 62 after a previous seven, but we can't go into the details of that. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Now let's just stop there.
Okay, at the end of this 69 weeks... The Messiah is going to be cut off. The Messiah is going to be put to death and we'll have nothing. Is that what happened?
Yes, that's exactly what happened. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Who destroyed the temple in 70 AD?
The Roman Empire. But it doesn't say that. It says the people of the ruler who will come.
There is a ruler who will come. Out of the ancient Roman Empire. Just remember that.
Because all the way through the Bible, this ruler is going to come. He always comes out of the Antichrist Empire. He's the Antichrist.
Sometimes he's called the prince that will come. He's the end time ruler who will rule the world. He will come out of the Roman Empire.
He's the beast. He's the man of sin. He's the son of perdition.
He's promised all the way through the Bible. We will look at him when we get to Revelation 13. But he's always hinted at there. He's going to come. And we're told there where he's coming. The end will come like a flood.
Wars will continue to the end. Desolations have been decreed. Okay, just go one more verse.
He will confirm a covenant with many for one seven. Okay, what's Daniel said? Daniel said there are 69 sevens, and then Messiah's cut off. Hold on.
The original promise was there are 77s. So where's the last seven? Where's the final week? Where's the last seven years?
Well, we don't know. The last seven years are the last seven years of this age. Often, Bible scholars call it Daniel's final week.
It's the last seven-year period on earth, prophesied in Daniel way back 400 years before Jesus was born. Now, the amazing thing about these prophecies is that even atheistic secularists cannot deny that these prophecies were in place hundreds of years before Jesus was born. You can't deny that because we've got the manuscripts, right?
They were written down hundreds of years before. Jesus was born, they were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they were written in something called the Septuagint, which was an Egyptian, a place in Alexandria, 300 years before Jesus was born, the Jews wrote this prophecy down from Daniel. So we know it was in place at least 300 years before Jesus. I think it was in place 400 years before Jesus, 500 years, no longer than that, because that's when Daniel lived. Okay, so it can't be denied that this prophecy was fulfilled to the day.
You can work it out to the day. There's lots of people gone through this. You can read entire books about it.
But that's not the point. The point is, there's still a final seven. Can you see that? Daniel's final seven.
The last seven. Is still to come. That seven is going to come.
When? He will come. Who's he?
The prince that will come. The evil ruler. The end time man of sin. That people will worship as God.
He will come at the final seven. And in the middle of the seven. In the middle of that final week, for the first half, everyone will think he is God on earth. He will bring the peace that everyone wanted there to be.
But in the middle of that seven, he will put an end to the sacrifice and the offering, so there has to be a temple. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation until the end that is decreed is poured out on him. So way back then, Daniel was prophesying this final seven-year period that we're going to look at in Revelation, often called the Great Tribulation, the final seven-year period. It's talked about all the way through the Bible.
We're going to look at some of that tonight. But can you see, there has to be a temple in place. Because he's going to set up his own image in that temple. People are going to think he's the Messiah.
He's the promised deliverer. But actually, he's Satan incarnate. And he's going to set up an abomination that causes desolation.
All the way through history, on the Temple Mount, people have erected an abomination that causes desolation. The Babylonians did it. Antiochus Epiphanes of the Greeks did it.
The Romans did it. At the minute, there's another one there, bang in the middle of the Temple Mount. There's a mosque there.
It's not a mosque. It's called the Mosque of Omar. It's actually a... a shrine, and on the top of that shrine, right over the holy place, it says, God has no son, inscribed on that mosque. In John's epistle, it says, anyone who denies the son of God is the antichrist.
So there's an abomination of causes of desolation right there now, but there's going to be another one. There's going to be the final one. Remember, prophecy is always pattern.
So can we see that? To get the context, before we're looking at Revelation, now you need to read the whole of Daniel, because everything in Daniel is a prophetic pattern of the sevens. So when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fire, the fire was heated up seven times. It's a picture of the final tribulation that the Jewish people will go through when Babylon tries to kill them all. One of the saddest things.
that we understand from the prophecies that as bad as the holocaust was in world war ii the antichrist is going to persecute the jews even more and according to zachariah's prophecies two out of every three jews on the planet will die in the final holocaust in the world war ii holocaust one out of every three jews were taken but satan's evil and he hates the jews He hates the Jews. Antisemitism is evil. And so he's going to come.
He's going to do all that. We'll look at that in more detail as we go through the book of Revelation. But at least we've got there the context of everything Daniel prophesied. Okay? Have we all got that?
As a background, prophetic understanding, just from three, we've only looked at three verses. The whole of Daniel is a prophetic picture. You remember when he has to bow down, they have to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's statue? It's 60 cubits high, it's 60 cubits, it's all sixes bowing down to 666. The king of Babylon was a picture of Antichrist and the Jews refused to do it.
And that's why they're thrown into the fire, they go through the tribulation. It's all a prophetic pattern. We'll look at that over the coming months.
So we've got this prophetic pattern that Daniel gives us of these sevens. The 70 weeks, the 70 years of captivity, the final week that is coming. All these pictures of the seven. Now, the church age, as we're told in Revelation, is pictured in sevens.
There are seven churches. The church age is going to be a period of seven periods. A seven-part dispensation. Can we go to the first overhead, please, Ruth? So we've already seen John's scene.
It's seven stars, seven candlesticks, seven churches. So we've already got a pattern of sevens. But what we need to understand is God works according to this principle.
of what we could call his Shabbat. Shabbat means seven a week. God always works along that principle. That's why the Jews honor the Sabbath so much, because they recognize that everything of the Sabbath is God's.
God always works through this principle. We lose that, which is sad. I'm not saying we should be legalistic, but we lose the importance of the Shabbat, the sabbatical.
the seventh, the week, because God always works in these sevens. You can even split the whole dispensation of time according to this principle. With the day, with the Lord, a day is as of a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day. Okay, now that verse is repeated three times in the scriptures.
God says a day is a thousand years, and God says a thousand years is as a day. Can we put up the PowerPoint again, please? Now, if we take that literally, according to God's Word, we can see that the whole history of the Bible splits into seven days. Can you see that?
Day one, Adam to Enoch. Day two, Enoch to Noah. Day three, what we call the patriarchs or the Hebrews. Day four, what we call the kingdom of Israel. Then you've got Jesus, three and a half years.
Then you have the church age. Then you have the final day, seven, what does God do on the Shabbat? He finishes everything. Can you see that? Now these are rough approximations, but they are They are still there.
Okay, so day one, what happened? Adam to Enoch. Enoch was the seventh from Adam.
So after a seven-fold period of time, rapture happened. Yeah? First day. Second day, Enoch to Noah. Another thousand-year period.
You remember Enoch's son Methuselah lived almost a thousand years. Then there was Noah and the flood. What happened? Judgment. Yeah?
Then the next thousand years, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God starts again with the new dispensation. He starts there with the new dispensation. And then they go into Egypt for 400 years. Then that dispensation comes to a close through the time of the judges. Thousand year period.
Then what happens? The kingdom is established. David establishes the kingdom. Actually, about almost exactly 1000 BC.
900 and something overlapping 1000 BC. A thousand years before Jesus, you have the kingdom of Israel. Okay, for a thousand years, day four. Then the Messiah comes in fulfillment of all the prophecies. And then he inaugurates the church age.
Seven periods of time of the church age, represented by the seven churches, which we'll look at next time. But so far, that's lasted two days. Almost exactly.
by the way, almost exactly 2,000 years. Not quite, but almost exactly. Now, according to God's preordained pattern, there's going to be a final thousand year, a final day, the final seven, the Shabbat, which Revelation calls the millennium, the millennial rule of Christ, the seventh, the completion, the end.
Can you see that? It's important that we can see that so we can just understand the patterns. Okay? So having seen that, we can see we're coming towards the end of the church age.
If the church age is going to last in the seven periods, two days as Jesus said it would. Jesus makes some interesting observations sometimes that we tend to miss. He says things like, today and tomorrow I will keep going and on the third day I will reach my goal.
Have you noticed that? What? Two days and on the third day I'll reach my goal. The church age has been two days long.
Yeah? After two days, God will raise us on the third day. Do you know we're just about to enter the third day of that age? Could that be the millennium?
Jesus rose on the third day, yeah? But he actually rose before the dawn. Yeah?
So very early on in the third day. In fact, before most people knew the third day had happened. Okay? Through some time in the night, before the dawn.
In the third day. So we're given hints there about God's patterns. You can't work out the days and the years.
But you can look at the patterns. Daniel's final week is coming. There is the final period of time coming, this final week, this final age, this final dispensation.
Okay, let's go to the next overhead. Let's just look at some of these days. And as we look at some of these days, as outlined there, through the dispensation of the Bible, which you can clearly split up into seven different epochs or seven different dispensations, we can look at the first two days.
Now, while the first two days were 2,000 years long, actually, they don't take up much space in the Bible. It's just the first few chapters. By the time you've got to chapter 11, even before that...
you're already into the third day because it's a different dispensation, a different way that God worked during day one and day two. So even at the beginning, God shows that he's going to work according to this sevenfold principle. Genesis chapter one, we looked at it last time, so we'll not go through that again. Genesis chapter one has got seven words in it.
It's got seven words in Hebrew. God is showing just in that first statement, he's working along a principle is seven. There's not just seven words, there's 28 letters, which is four times seven. Four is the number of creation, seven is the number of perfection. There are some people have done entire studies just on the first verse of the Bible and broken it down into numerical values because every letter of every Hebrew Every Hebrew letter is also a number.
They didn't have numerical numbers, they used letters. And they've worked out some amazing patterns just in the first verse of numbers. And when you change the letters to numbers, you can find all kinds of mathematical codes all the way through the Bible.
You find that precision there all the way through. For example, Jesus' genealogy in Luke, if you add the number of names there, there's 77 people. You know, it could just be a pure coincidence, but I don't think so. I think God... Hides his signature all the way through the Bible.
So we find this prophetic pattern happening all the way through the Bible. Even there in Genesis 1 verse 1. Now, even when you get into the pattern of the Bible, we all know that the earth was created in seven days, yeah? Well, six days, and then God rested on the seventh.
Can we just put up Genesis 2 verse 1? Genesis 2 verse 1. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing.
So on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Remember, right back at the beginning, God is giving us the pattern of how creation operates. This is not just the same for the old creation.
This is the same pattern for the new creation. Can you see that? We're in the church age, but we're coming to the end of the sixth day.
God doesn't change his patterns just because it's a new creation. He's still working according to the same pattern. We're still coming to the end of the week. And on the seventh day, God is going to put an end to everything and rest.
He's going to have finished his new creation. Now, as you go through Genesis, you'll find days one and two are always at each stage of everything in the life of God's people, or even just in the scriptures generally. God is... constantly emphasizing this sevenfold pattern all the time, so that we can understand that this sevenfold pattern is important for our final time dispensation. Because if we don't get that, we're going to miss everything.
So when Cain sins, can we go to Genesis 4, verse 15? When Cain sins, Genesis 4, verse 15. He says, well, I may as well just, you know, die. I'm just going to get killed because I'm so sinful.
But the Lord said to him, not so. Anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over. But then if we jump to Cain's great, great, great, great grandson, if we jump to Lamech, can you just put back up the PowerPoint again, please, Ruth? If we go further on in chapter 4 to Lamech, that was seven generations after Cain.
If we go to Genesis 4, verse 24, Genesis 4, verse 24, verse 24, Lamech sins in quite a bad way. And he says, if Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech 77 times. It basically pushes God's grace to a 70-fold repetition of the seven. In other words, I'm going to push it as far as I can and God will still have to forgive me. But he won't.
What's so important about this? Well, you remember when Peter came to Jesus. and said, how many times do I have to forgive my brother? Up to seven times.
He's actually repeating the pattern that was given to Cain. Cain can be forgiven seven times. What did Jesus say?
No, not seven times. Seventy-seven times. Jesus says there will be sufficient forgiveness and grace for the amount of sevens that there were in the first dispensation of time. In the first dispensation of time, sin was so bad, God had to destroy everything in a flood.
Everything had to be destroyed and God would start again. And the final man, Lamech, remember, who brought in the greatest sin at that epoch, said, Oh, I can be forgiven seventy. times seven, 77 times.
And Jesus says, yeah, that is how much you can be forgiven. But then judgment at the end of that sevenfold dispensation, judgment came. So even taking into consideration the grace of God, 70 times seven, there is still going to be an accounting and a judgment at the end of that dispensation. You cannot use the grace of God as an excuse for license to sin. He's basically saying God's infinitely graceful.
God will have to let me off. He let Cain off seven times. He'll have to let me off. Well, there comes a point where God doesn't let anybody off. His judgment has to come.
And so we see here, even in prehistory, can we go back to the PowerPoint? There is a pattern shown of what will unfold in the first dispensation. It will follow in the end dispensation.
Can we see that? The pattern's there. And then we saw Enoch, the seventh generation.
Enoch, the seventh from Adam. What happened at the seventh dispensation? Rapture. What happens at the end of the sevenfold church age?
Rapture. Then judgment. You will see that following the pattern of Genesis and the pattern throughout the Bible. So at the end of the sevenfold age, Rapture happened.
At the end of the sevenfold church age, rapture happens. Was everyone raptured? No, only those who walked with God.
In the original dispensation, only one person was raptured. In the church age, only one person will be raptured. The bride.
Yeah? It's a pattern. But it doesn't just end there.
Even going into the time of judgment, there is still a very clear pattern. The same sevenfold pattern happens even in the time of Noah. If you go to Genesis chapter 7, verse 1, how many kinds did Noah take into the ark?
Why does everyone think two? The Lord then said to Noah, go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Just keep going down. Take with you seven pairs. Okay, so when you buy a Noah's ark for the kids.
Don't just put a male lion and a female lion and all that. Don't just put a male rabbit and a female rabbit. No, they've got to be 14 rabbits. You'll have a load of rabbits after a year in the ark. Okay, can you see that?
Because that's the one bit that everyone missing. Oh, he just took two of every. No, he didn't. Of unclean animals, that was different. But of the clean animals, he took seven pairs.
Can you see that? Who does he rapture in the church age? The seven churches, or those that belong to him who are genuine Christians.
Can you see that? He's showing the practice. Who's taken into safety? Seven different couples. Noah is righteous.
He's a representative of Christ. How many people did he take in the ark with him? Seven.
Can you see, when we come into the church age, and we're looking at the seven churches, we've got a very clear pattern throughout the whole Bible of what happens to the seven. The seven are taken into the ark. It's Enoch the seventh who is raptured.
Can you see that? It's a very clear pattern. So when, by the time you come to Revelation and you read about the seven churches, you know exactly what the seven means. Yeah, the seventh from Adam, Enoch, rapture.
Yeah, the protection. When was Noah taken into the ark? Seven days before it rained.
We looked at that the other week when we looked there. Seven days a week before the judgment. When is God's church taken to safety?
A full week before the judgment, Daniel's final week, the final seven-year tribulation period, the final week. Can you see it's a pattern? God's not going to break the pattern, is He?
He's not going to suddenly just say, all that stuff I told you all through the Bible, I changed my mind and I'm just now going to work on the... principle of four and a half. He's not going to do that. He works on the principle of seven.
He's given us that pattern to follow. Noah's week, he was in the ark for a whole week. Not just that, when he released the dove, how many days did he wait? Seven.
it's the pattern all the way through you can't deny it so when we come in to these seven churches we know full well that it's going to be according to the same sevenfold pattern as was through the rest of the bible can we see that so that's genesis that's the first two thousand years to the time of noah day one day two do we find the same pattern in day three what do you think do you think we might see the same pattern now god starts another dispensation yes that is exactly what we find can we put up the next slide please ruth So we go on to day three. So day three, I've called it the Hebrews or the Israelites. It's basically the time after Noah, but before the kingdom of Israel is established.
Yeah? Which is a very clear dispensation in the Bible. So Genesis 12, 1, it starts with the new dispensation. God is now going to do a new thing in the earth.
He's going to work through the children of Israel, but he starts with one man called Abraham, and he gives him a promise. Do you want to turn to that promise? Let's turn to the promise.
Genesis chapter 12 verse 1. God's going to do a new thing now. He's going to work through one family. He's going to work through this one family till the end of time.
The Lord has said to Abraham, go from your country, from your people, from your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you. and whoever curses you, I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Was anyone counting how many different blessings there are there? How many clauses there are in the covenant?
Any guesses? No, there's eight. No, there is seven. The seven.
So God starts His covenantal promise with seven. He makes a treaty to cut a covenant. It's a legally binding contract that God makes with Abraham. What will Antichrist do? He'll make the similar contract.
He will make a treaty for the seven. But in the midst of the seven, he will break the treaty. What is the treaty that God makes with Abraham? A land covenant.
He promises him the land and the blessing. Can you see that? That's what Antichrist is going to do. But he's a liar and he's going to break it halfway through.
So go back to the slide please. So the new thing starts with the sevenfold promise. Okay, a seven-fold covenant. Now, Genesis 21, verse 27, if we can go to that, please.
Genesis 21 and verse 7, you see God has promised Abraham, but there's still people there. Have you learned that God can promise you something, but men can do the opposite? Have you noticed that in life?
Are you alive? Have you noticed that just because God says something doesn't mean everyone else will agree with you? So he's in the land, but he can't have any of the land.
He's in the land of promise, but no one's letting him keep the land. Does it sound familiar? So Abraham is now going to make a treaty with the people of Israel. the ruler of the Philistines. Okay?
So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, who's the ruler of the Philistines, and the two men made a treaty. Abraham set apart seven eulams from the flock. Let's just read down.
And Abimelech asked Abraham, what is the meaning of these seven eulams you have set apart by themselves? Can you notice here? the treaty of the seven. He replied, accept these seven lambs from my hand as a witness that I have dug this well. In other words, accept that this is my land.
Can you see that? Let's read now. So the place was called Beersheba or Beersheba. Beersheba, Beersheba literally translates oath or treaty of the seven. Or it can mean well as well, well of the seven.
Because be-a can mean well, it can mean oath. So the place was called the Oath of the Seven, the Contract of the Seven, the Covenant of the Seven, the Treaty of the Seven, because the two men swore an oath there. After the treaty had been made at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phechol, the commander of the forces, returned to the land of the Philistines.
What's this got to do with anything? Abraham has been promised the land according to a sevenfold blessing from God. He now makes a treaty with the Philistinians. The Jews, the father of the Jews, makes a land covenant with the Palestinians. Do you think they're going to keep that treaty?
Or do you think they're going to break it? Does he have a right to the land? Yes, because they've made a covenant, they've made a contract, they've made a treaty, the Palestinians. By the way, Palestinian and Philistine is the same word. Palastinos is just the Latinized word for the word Philistine.
Can you see a pattern here? Even at the beginning of the Jewish nation, even as the Jewish nation is about to be birthed, can you see that there is a pattern, that there is a land covenant? God is going to give Abraham the land of Israel.
and the Palestinians are going to say he can have it upon the condition of a treaty that's marked by seven, but they're going to break it. Can you see that? There is a covenant there made between the forefather of the Jews and the forefather of the Philistines. Let's go back to the overhead, please.
So even at the beginning of the Jewish nation, God is giving us a prophetic picture of what's going to happen at the end of the Jewish nation. Okay? a land covenant.
Now, it goes through each of the children of Abraham's, and you find the repetition of the seven following the same pattern. By the way, these sevenfold patterns in Scripture, there's about 700 explicit ones. There's thousands of implicit ones.
So, we're not going to look at them all. I'm just going to look at seven in each epoch, okay? So, we're already on day three. We're not going to look at the final three days.
So, we've only got one more day to go. But can you see the pattern in each period? God is showing us there's going to be a pattern of the sevens.
So by the time it gets to Jacob, if we go to Genesis 29 and verse 18, now it's passed on to Jacob who will be called Israel, change his name to Israel. And what does Jacob do? Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, I'll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter.
Rachel. So Jacob works seven years to obtain his bride. How long does Jesus wait for his bride? The seven-fold period of the church.
And then Jesus, just like his ancestor Jacob, is going to get his bride. Jacob actually was duped, and so he had to serve another seven years. So he didn't get the bride he wanted when he... served the first time, but did you know neither did Jesus?
Jesus came for a Jewish bride, and he got a Gentile one, because the Jews didn't accept him, but he loves his Gentile bride. Actually, the church is a mixture of Jew and Gentile, but in the typology, he had to serve another seven years to get the bride he came for in the first place. At the end of the final seven years, Jesus is going to return to get the original. The original Jews. He's going to come to save the Jews.
But that's at the end of the seven year period. Jacob had to have his bridal week, his seven fold week with Leah. And then after he'd served that week, then he could come and take Rachel. When Jesus takes us, the church, to himself, when he catches us up to himself, the church, he's then going to come back and save the remnant of the Jews. Can you see the pattern?
Can you see the patterns there in Scripture? Very clear, very well outlined. Let's go back to the PowerPoint then.
So, we see the pattern of the sevenfold promise. We see the pattern of the land covenant in a contract of seven. We see the pattern of the bride being taken for a sevenfold period of service. And then when we go to Jacob's children, the next generation down, Genesis 41 verse 26, if we can just go to that please.
Genesis. 41 verse 26. Can you remember Pharaoh's dreams? You've all seen Joseph and the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Even if you've not read the Bible, you've seen Joseph, Prince of Dreams, is it? Or whatever Disney version they have these days.
What was Joseph's dream? There'll be seven good years, and then seven really bad years. Yeah? In Revelation, what's going to happen?
There's going to be the sevenfold period of the church, the good years, and then there's going to be seven really bad years. And it depends what you've done in the sevenfold period of the church as to whether you survive the seven bad years. Can you see that? Joseph's dreams are a direct pattern of the end times.
Very clearly, Pharaoh is a picture of Antichrist. Pharaoh's always a picture of Antichrist. What did he do?
Killed Jewish babies. He was anti-Semitic. He destroyed the Jews, persecuted the Jews.
Seven good cows are seven years. The seven good ears of corn are seven years. It is one and the same dream. Joseph is a picture of Jesus.
We're going to go through seven years of the church age where Jesus is going to store up his people, save people. restore people heal people do all the good things store up the treasure in heaven what did joseph do he stored up all the treasures of egypt all the flower but he also took all the money because people had to pay for things and he stored it up and he stored up mass wealth so that he literally owned all of egypt but then the seven bad years came and only those who recognized joseph survived the final seven years and what happened the jewish brethren who had rejected him in the middle of the seven and a half year famine, turned back to him and accepted him. That is exactly what's going to happen in the final seven years of the tribulation period. The Jews who rejected Jesus, because the famine will be so severe, their only hope will be to recognize Jesus as Messiah, and they will turn back to Jesus.
And when they cry for him, he comes. But that will be at the end of the seven year period. What did Joseph do?
He looked after his brothers, despite what they'd done to him, he looked after his brothers for the whole of the famine period. What about Joseph's bride? She was safe with him. The Gentile bride, Asenath, the Egyptian, she was safe with Joseph. But the Jewish believers had to go through the famine until they returned back to the Messiah.
Can you see the pattern? The bride will be taken. to the Savior.
Bride was taken to Joseph, bride will be taken to Jesus, but the Jews will have to go through the famine until they finally admit what they did and acknowledge who their genuine Savior is. So we see the pattern there, even through the time of the patriarchs. Let's go back to the PowerPoint.
So they're in Egypt, but even when they come out of Egypt, God gives them the law on Mount Sinai. He sends them a deliverer. with Moses. By the way, before Moses comes to deliver Egypt, he goes to a well and he finds seven brides. Yeah?
Before Jesus comes to save Israel, he takes his brides. The sevenfold pattern of the church. Moses takes his bride before he even comes to deliver Israel.
But then he comes to deliver Israel and the law is given on Mount Sinai for seven days. They hear the trumpet blast. And then they come to Mount Sinai there.
You can read it in Exodus chapter 24. And the law is given. And if you read the Levitical law, you will find all the way through the Levitical law, everything's in sevens. You have to sprinkle things seven times.
You have to do things seven times. All the way through the law of Moses, God is emphasizing the cleansing of a seven. If you want a house to be clean, you have to get it empty for seven days.
When Jesus comes to cleanse this earth, he's going to take the bride out of the house for seven days. He's not going to let her suffer any impurity. Slaves have to be freed after seven years. The debts have to be cancelled after seven years. Seven times seven, the jubilee.
All the sevens have to be fulfilled, and that's what the law is doing. It is establishing the principles of the law. And when you read through the book of Moses, you will find there is an emphasis on the seven feasts. The seven feasts in the law of the Torah.
The seven feasts, the word for feast is moed, or plural moedim. It doesn't really mean feast. Sometimes it's translated solemn assembly or in an older version, holy convocation. But actually, it just means the appointed times. The times, the appointed times.
Some people even translate it dress rehearsal. The seven feasts are a picture of the sevenfold pattern that's going to happen throughout history and at the end. How does the pattern start?
The seven feasts. First feast is Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, and then Tabernacles. Each of those seven feasts are a picture of the life of Christ.
He came, he was the Passover lamb, first feast. Then he was the Unleavened Bread. We remember him when we break the bread, the bread without yeast, the sinless bread.
Then is the firstfruits, the one who rises from the grave. Then it's Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. But it is second return.
It's the blowing of trumpets. It's the solemn assembly, the Yom Kippur, where sin is atoned for. And then it's tabernacles, the dwelling of God with man.
The Jews celebrate these feasts every year. By the way, it's a 70-week process from the beginning of one feast to another one. And because of that, they should know God's timetable of what's going to happen. Because they practice them in the feasts.
Do we know what God's going to do? Do we know fully well what God's timetable is? They celebrate it every year. They will have Passover every year, knowing the lamb has to be slain. They know then that there's a seven-day period of unleavened bread.
They then know there is resurrection. They then know the Holy Spirit comes. There's the blowing of trumpets. Then there's a seven-week period after Yom Kippur of Tabernacles.
Sorry, a seven-day period. Seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven. Because that's what's going to happen.
There's going to be this final seven after the seven-year period. Jesus will return. There's a seven-fold period of the church before his return. Okay then, so even after they've learned all the feasts, Joshua, Yahashua, Jesus, Joshua, that's what his name means, comes. And the book of...
Joshua is all about the patterns of seven. How does he come when he conquers the world? When he conquers Jericho in the same picture that Jesus will come to take this world. There'll be seven trumpets, seven ram's horns with seven priests for seven days and the final day will be a subset of seven. They'll walk around it seven times on the seventh day.
This is the same pattern you find in Revelation. Trumpets, priests, ram's horns, seven and then a subset of seven. So even in the seventh week, there's going to be seven things.
Okay? So day three comes to an end, and then we enter what we can call the period of the kingdom, which we could call day four, because it's the 4,000th year from the beginning of creation, as the Bible explains it to us. And I've just got seven different things here that should also explain to us what's going to come in the sevenfold period at the end of time. First thing to notice that when the kingdom starts to be established is that the ark is captured. Can we go to 1 Samuel?
2 verse 5. When the ark of the Lord had been in the Philistine territory for seven months. What happens is the ark is captured by the Philistines at the beginning of the kingdom period. The ark is captured by the Philistines and it goes into the land of the Philistines for seven months.
Why is that important? Because remember, this is the period. Exactly before the kingdom is established, before Samuel appoints the king. Before the king comes, there will be a seven-fold period where the temple or the ark or the presence of God is captured by the Philistinians. Can you see that?
Who controls the holy things of God? In the seven-fold period before the king is anointed, the Philistines. Can you see the pattern?
As I mentioned this morning, can you see that even last week, the United Nations gave the Temple Mount to the Palestinians and said the Jews have no legal right to it? That happened last week. Can you see that? In a direct fulfillment of the biblical pattern of what will happen before the kingdom comes.
Now, you don't need to worry. The ark can look after itself. They soon gave it back when they realized what God would do to them for touching it.
But then what happened is we get the climax of God's fulfillment, the reign of David. Okay, let's go to 1 Kings 2 verse 10. 1 Kings chapter 2 verse 10. So David comes to be king. Now, this is the end of David's reign.
David rested with his ancestors, was buried in the city of David. Some of us have been to the city of David. David's tomb, they claim, is there, although I don't actually think it's David's tomb.
Well, it isn't David's tomb. It's a replica. He had reigned 40 years over Israel. Now, notice this.
Seven years in Hebron, 33 in Jerusalem. Before David came to reign in Jerusalem, he'd already been king with his bride for seven years somewhere else. Can you see that? I mean, why does it even tell us that?
Because it's prophesying the prophetic pattern of the son of David. When Jesus comes to reign in Jerusalem, he will already have been king for seven years with his bride in another place, in heaven. When Jesus comes with his bride, remember David was with Abigail, his bride, in Hebron for seven years before he came to Jerusalem. So even though he was king, he didn't inaugurate the kingdom till after seven years as king in another place with his bride. When Jesus comes to be king in Jerusalem, he will have already been with his bride for seven years in heaven.
So the kingdom starts. Let's go back to the overhead. The kingdom starts and David comes to be the king.
Can we go back to the PowerPoint? There we go. And so David's reign comes to an end. The kingdom is inaugurated. Day four is well on the way.
The kingdom of Israel is now established as a nation in its own right. And they have to build a temple. So if we go to 1 Kings chapter 6 and verse 38. 1 Kings chapter 6 and verse 38. In the eleventh year of the month of Bul, the eighth month, the temple was finished in all its details according to its specifications. He had spent seven years. Building it.
It will take seven years to build the temple. Why does it take seven years? Because that's how long the final seven year period is. You know when you get to the final New Jerusalem, there is no temple there.
But it's the same principle. Jesus builds his bride for seven years in heaven. And his bride is the temple of God. The church is the temple of God.
Did you know that? Do you know how many times in the New Testament it says the church is the temple of God? It's not a trick question.
Seven. Okay. Very specific. It takes seven years to build the temple.
Why? Because that's how long the bride's with Christ in heaven. He's building his bride up to be his holy temple.
When it's finished, he comes back and reigns with her. Okay. But I think it will literally take seven years to build the temple as well.
During that seven year tribulation period. To be finished. Remember when Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem, the temple wasn't finished. It was operational. The temple will be operational after three and a half years.
But it won't be fully finished, I don't think, because it took seven years to build it, and I think it will take seven years to complete it, but it will be operational. Do you know the temple actually wasn't finished until just before it was destroyed in the time of Jesus? So there we've got prophetic patterns again. Talking about the temple, go back to the PowerPoint, okay? So the temple's completed, the kingdom carries on, it passes down to David's children and grandchildren, but then something strange happens.
In 2 Chronicles 22, verse 11, 2 Chronicles 22 and verse 11, something weird happens. A woman called Athleia kills all the kings of Judah and seizes the kingdom for herself. And for seven years A wicked woman rules the nation of Israel. Does that sound familiar?
Because that is exactly what's going to happen in the final seven years in the book of Revelation. A woman called Babylon the Great, the harlot of Babylon, is going to rule. and is going to influence the leaders of the world. A wicked religious system is going to control things for a seven-year period, and they're going to kill everyone who is the line of the genuine king. This is what Athaliah did.
But there was another woman. Jehoshabah, the daughter of King Jehoram, took Joash, the true king, he was only a baby, son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the royal princes who were about to be murdered and put him... and his nurse in a bedroom because Jehoshabah, the daughter of the king, Jehoramah, and wife of the priest Jehoiada, this woman is also married to the high priest as well as the king.
She's a picture of the church. She hid the child from Athaliah so that she could not kill him. So for seven years, the king and the bride are hidden away.
No one knows where they are. While absolute genocidal anarchy reigns throughout Israel. And this murderous woman is killing everybody who won't worship her gods.
Does it sound familiar? Because that's exactly what's going to happen in the final seven years. Next verse. He remained hidden with them at the temple of God for six years. The true king and his woman are hidden away and no one knows where they are in the temple of God.
It's a direct picture of the church being with Christ for the final end time period. While Athaliah ruled the land. Basically a genocidal maniac.
She killed everyone who wouldn't disagree with her. Next verse. Who disagreed with her. But in the seventh year, Jehoiada, the high priest. Showed his strength.
And without reading the whole chapter, at the end of the seven years, the king came back. And it was the evil woman who was killed. And the king was reestablished as the king in Jerusalem.
But only after the seven years. For seven years, he was away hidden. It's a direct parallel of the end time tribulation period. The bride will be hidden away with the king.
No one will know where they are. They're in the temple of God. But at the end of that seven-year period, the king returns, and the woman is destroyed. The harlot of Babylon is destroyed.
The evil religious system that lies to the world is destroyed. Okay, go back to the PowerPoint then. So we're getting towards the end of this period then.
There's also lots of signs in this time by prophets. You'll remember Elisha goes to a widow. The Shunammite tells her to hide away for seven years because there's going to be absolute devastation in the land of Israel for seven years.
And she goes and hides away, but she comes back at the end of seven years and everything is restored to her. Just as the church will go away during the seven-year period, but at the end of the seven-year period, she will return and everything will be restored to her. Elijah and Elisha are very prophetic when it comes to the sevens. Elijah prayed seven times for the blessing to come on the land.
It was being ruled by Jezebel, another homicidal maniac, who killed everyone who wouldn't agree with her. It's another picture of the sevenfold period at the end of time. And when Naaman came to Elisha, what did he make him do? Dip seven times in the Jordan. A sevenfold period of purification before this Gentile would be fit in God's eyes.
That's what's going to happen to the world. It's going to go through that sevenfold period. purification. A righteous man may fall seven times, yet he will rise.
Gold will be refined seven times before it's pure enough to belong to God. God will always take us through this sevenfold process. It's there through all the prophetic signs. I think one of the greatest prophetic signs is said there in Isaiah chapter 4. Isaiah 4 and verse 1. Isaiah gives this very strange prophecy.
Isaiah 4 and verse 1. In that day, remember the day of the Lord, the final day of God's dispensation. In that day, seven women will take hold of one man. How many churches are there? I mean, that's a very strange thing, isn't it? He's prophesying in that day, in that final day, the woman, who is always a picture of the church, seven women.
will lay hold of one man. The seven churches will lay hold of Jesus Christ. So we belong to him in that day, in the final day. Isaiah goes on to describe, by the way, verse 2, if you look at it there, in that day the branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious.
The Hebrew word for branch is nitzah. Which you might think, well, so what? Well, you would translate, if someone was the branch, you would call them a Nitzirin, a Nazirin, yeah? The branch. That's what it means, Nitzir.
Nitzir, the Nazirin. In that day, the Nazirin of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious. In that day. So these women, who are these women laying hold of?
The Nazirin. Can you see that? It's all there.
in the prophetic language. In fact, Matthew interprets it that way. He shall be called a Nazarene.
And if you actually look in the Old Testament, nowhere in the Old Testament does it say he will be called a Nazarene. But it does say he will be called the branch. And that's what the branch means. Nitzir, the Nazarene. So that's what Isaiah's getting at.
Okay, let's go to the end of day four then. Then we'll look at one final day. Ezekiel 39 describes a final war.
Often referred to as the battle of Gog and Magog. This crops up in Revelation. We will look at this. Some people call it the battle of Armageddon. It's the final battle, a battle at the end of time.
Ezekiel prophesies it in two whole chapters. So we can't look at that. But notice something he says in Ezekiel 39 and verse 8. Ezekiel 39 and verse 8. It is coming, it will surely take place, this is the great end time battle, what we would call the battle of Armageddon, what actually Revelation calls the battle of Har Megiddo.
There's more than one battle here, but it's the same principle. It will surely take place, declares the Sovereign Lord, this is the day I have spoken of. Then those who live in the towns of Israel go out, this is actually the end of the battle, and use the weapons and fuel and burn them up, the small and the large shields, the bows and the arrows, the war clubs and spears, for seven years. They will use them as fuel. At the end of this end time battle, or one of the final battles at the end of time, there's going to be a seven year period.
So that means this great battle, this one, there might be another one afterwards as well, this great battle happens before the start of the seven year period. Can you see that? Without going into detail, because there's two whole chapters on this.
And I can see you're already full, some of you. The Battle of Gog and Magog is a battle between certain nations that are amassing in Syria right now. Meshach and Tubal, the Prince of Rosh, Gog, Magog, Persia, Iran, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Syria, Iraq.
Now this battle... which some people call World War III. The nations involved in this battle are amassing at the same place, and it's the same nations right now.
In fact, this week, Turkey sent its tanks into Syria for the first time. Very sobering, because this battle happens before the final seven years. So possibly even before the rapture. Although I think it might be at the same time, but that's just conjecture. Final seven years is coming straight after that battle, because it takes them seven years to clear up from the battle afterwards.
And if you read the rest of the chapter, there's a contamination issue, where you can't touch dead bodies for fear of contamination. So there's a battle involving weapons that contaminate things, so people can't even go into that area. You can read that in your own time.
Ezekiel 38 and 39. Okay, so let's go on to the final day we'll look at then. Is that okay? Are you still okay?
Are you still with me? Okay, so that's... Then we come to what the end of the kingdom, as we know it. And as we know, when Jesus was born, the kingdom didn't exist.
And that's why the disciples always say, are you going to restore the kingdom? They knew there was a kingdom coming, but they didn't understand the vastness of this kingdom. It still includes Israel.
Jesus is going to rule from Jerusalem, but it's a kingdom that has no end. I think the kingdom goes through the whole universe, Christ's kingdom, but it still includes. It still includes earth as well as heaven.
And so we get on to the next stage, which you could say the end of that kingdom, and it's the time of Jesus, which is only three and a half years, an exact half of a week. And Jesus, you will notice, confirmed this pattern of the seven throughout his ministry. He always kept confirming to people that the kingdom is going to be in the patterns of seven.
So you know what's happening, you know what's coming, you know how to work things out, because it's not going to be any different to the pattern of seven that God instigated at the beginning of creation. So we've already mentioned that one. when Peter said to Matthew, the first one, when he says, do I forgive my brother seven times?
Jesus says, no, 70 times seven. We've got to give the perfect amount of grace sufficient for people for the perfect amount of vengeance that is coming. God will always give sufficient grace to the end. But there does come a point where grace ends and judgment starts at the end of the sevenfold period.
at the end of the church age. Jesus also said something else very interesting. If we go to Matthew 16, verse 19. When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.
When Jesus brought a woman called Mary Magdalene, he was very specific in saying, He drove out seven demons from her. If you ever wondered, that's a little bit weird. It's a bit strange, isn't it? Emphasizing how many demons actually came out of a person.
But remember that the woman, when Jesus came to the woman, a woman was always a picture of the church. Can you remember that? A woman is always a picture of the church.
Mary had seven impurities taken out of her before she was acceptable to Jesus. By the way, Mary Magdalene is always an exemplary woman in the Gospel. She's always shown as someone who really loved Jesus.
She was there right at the end. She was the woman that Jesus appeared to first after the resurrection. So she's a good woman. But he still said, I got rid of seven spirits from her.
I cast seven impurities out of her. Remember throughout the Bible, you know, gold is purified seven times. God. uses number seven of total purification. He purified this woman until she was perfect, just like he purifies his church until she's perfect.
But if we go to Matthew chapter 12, remember Jesus already said this, if we go to Matthew chapter 12 and verse 43, when an impure spirit comes out of a person, Remember, this is still Matthew, Jesus talking in the same gospel. When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places, seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, I will return to the house I left.
When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. When Jesus cast the seven spirits out of Mary Magdalene, she was a house that was now clean. Can you see that? Clean, pure, swept, and put in order.
Jesus just said that's what happens. When I get rid of an unpure spirit from a person, it is now a clean house. The Holy Spirit then comes and dwells in his temple with us.
Okay? However, if the house is left empty, then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits. more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. This is how it will be with this wicked generation.
Although Jesus brings a seven-fold purification process to his house, if they just ignore Jesus, if they don't allow the Holy Spirit, remember when Jesus came to the temple, he swept it clean and cast everything out. What did they do? They ignored him. They just put everything back.
So what happened? The Romans came and destroyed it all. The sevenfold process. Jesus purifies seven times, but Satan will come back and contaminate seven times. And throughout the Gospels, Jesus gives us these illustrations of the sevens.
It's a picture of the church. Mary Magdalene is a picture of the church. He purifies us seven times.
There were seven churches. Jesus had to purify every one of the churches. Jesus cleanses us, but Satan wants to contaminate us.
In the final sevenfold period of time, in that final sevenfold period of tribulation, the state of religious observance, or if you like, the false religious system on earth, will be seven times worse than it used to be. Because those demons will be released back. Jesus gets them out, but when the Holy Spirit's gone, the house of Israel is left desolate. That's what Jesus said. Your house will be left to you desolate.
Where the birds of the air, the vultures, they will come back. The unclean spirits will return. In that seven year period, although Jesus purifies the church, actually what happens is the abyss is opened up and the demons from hell come back and they take control of the world.
We'll look at that as we go through the book of Revelation. Go back to the PowerPoint then and we'll draw this to a close. So Jesus said these things.
In John's Gospel, he gave seven specific signs. The first sign was turning water into wine. Every sign was a picture of a purification process of the church, which is what he takes the church through in seven stages. Even the signs of the bread. You remember when Jesus said to the disciples, how many loaves did you have?
Seven. How many basketfuls did you have left? Seven.
For every piece of bread, an entire basket was given. Jesus brings multiplication to every one of the seven full churches. You start with a piece of bread, which is the body of Christ, the church. And you end up with a basket full, if you're a good church.
Okay? In Luke, you get the sevenfold sign of the prophetess. Anna was a prophetess who lived with her husband seven years. How long do we live with him?
Seven years in heaven. And then what? Anna then came and lived in the temple for another 70 years.
The sevenfold 70 of perfection after she lived with her husband for seven years. Do you know how many prophetesses there are in the Bible? Seven.
And then Matthew 13, we have the parable of the kingdom. Seven parables in Matthew 13. Each one of those parables is a direct reference to the seven types of churches that exist. Okay, so let's pull this together then.
I think I've given you enough for this evening. Can we just go down to the next slide, please? When John turned...
and saw Jesus, where was he? He was stood. He was stood in the midst of the seven candlesticks or the seven lampstands. And Jesus says the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
You see, during the church age, can you just go down to the next one? During the church age, Jesus is right in our midst. He's here with us. You see, John knew there was only one person who stood there in front of that lampstand. That was the high priest.
The one anointed to be in the holy place. So when John turned at the end of chapter 1, he saw Jesus stood in the middle of the church. All seven churches.
And Jesus was right there in the middle of them during the church age. This final part of the dispensation of God that we're in, Jesus is here with us by his spirit. He's right in the middle of us. He's right in the midst. And this is the last thing Jesus saw.
This is the last thing that John saw before he wrote his letters. And so before we go on to the next chapters in the coming months, let's remember this one thing. Hopefully we've got the principle of the pattern of the seven so that we know what's coming.
that we're approaching the end of the church age, which has been a sevenfold period. We'll look at this next time. And then it's going to lead into another sevenfold period, Daniel's final week, the time of Jacob's trouble, the time of tribulation, that Jesus says during that time there will be great tribulation, that even the churches were warned about, as we'll see in chapters two and three. Some of the churches would be cast into that tribulation, by the way. Not all of them will be saved out of it.
Some would be promised salvation. Some would be told they'd be cast into it because of their lifestyles. But at this moment, tonight, he stood in the midst of the seven.
He's here with us. And we must never cease to lose sight of that one simple fact. He holds the things in his hand. He holds the stars in his hand. The stars are representatives of the messengers of God.
The angels, the angelos in Greek, it means a messenger. Tonight, Jesus is stood here with us, and tonight he holds us in his hands. And so whatever we see about the things that are going to come, and they are going to come, let's remember this one thing. He's never going to leave us, and he's never going to forsake us, whilst we adhere to him, and whilst we hold fast to him.
So let's remember that tonight as we close. Don't get worried or fearful about the prophecies that are going to come to pass. Jesus says you'll hear of wars and rumors of wars. Don't be distressed by these things.
Such things must happen. But the end is not yet. Let's be very clear. Jesus is here with us.
We are in his hand. And we'll be with him forever. Whilst ever we choose to belong to him. He'll never leave us.
Amen. Amen. Let's bow our heads.
Father we thank you for the things you've shown us that are going to come. The things throughout your scriptures that you've revealed to us. And so, Lord, may we be found ready and awake for when you come for us. Now, Lord, thank you that you're here in our midst, that you hold us in your hands, and that we belong to you.
Father, I ask that you bless these things to our hearts. We treasure them and store them up in our hearts so that we will know what is going to happen and that we will put our trust in you and have an encounter with you so we can serve you. To the glory of God the Father.
Amen. Amen. God bless you all.