Thank you for selecting this message by Dr. James Hoffman. Dr. Hoffman preaches verse by verse through the entire book of the Bible. From all of us at Living Water of Lapine here in Central Oregon, we hope that it will encourage you and feed you spiritually. And if you would like to leave a message after the sermon, our contact information is found on the sermon page where you found this sermon. Now may God richly bless you as you listen. It is easily the most recognized audible in any football game. It's a throaty grunt that may be the sport's most distinguishing sound. It starts almost every play. Often, one is not enough. I am, of course, talking about the sound Football is increasingly a complex game. And its signal calling has evolved into a cacophony of secretive code words. They communicate something to the other team members on the field. Black dirt, big belly, X wiggle. endures as the signal to move. But why? Most football players have no idea why. A pro ball center said, I guess it's because it's better than yelling now or go. A former quarterback reckons he shouted, more than 10,000 times during games and during practices. I've been hutting my way through football for 55 years, but I have no clue why. You know, this reminds me of the way many people understand Bible prophecy. especially in times prophecy. A trusted Bible teacher has told them what to believe without any reason why or the rational behind that belief or doctrine. Bible teachers and pastors will often have you look at a verse and tell you what that verse means. However, a different teacher comes along and shows you the same verse, but they present a completely separate meaning. Now, just between you and me, I think that a vast number of pastors and teachers were taught by their teachers what the passage means, without any instruction about the interpretation. They accept it and they proclaim it to others, but they don't know why. Hut, hut, hut. In light of this, I thought it would be important for me to first go over some interpretation rules for how we should understand the book of Revelation before I have you turn there with me to go through it verse by verse. The theological term for these rules that I'm gonna give you is hermeneutics. Everyone listening to me applies a hermeneutic whenever you read anything, even if you have never recognized the rules of what you automatically apply. Furthermore, you automatically change your hermeneutic to interpret what you are reading according to the type of literature that it is. Let me repeat something that I just briefly said last week concerning this. When you read the comic section of the newspaper, you apply an appropriate hermeneutic to that specific type of literature so that you can interpret cartoons. Now, I hope you change that hermeneutic when you move to a different type of literature. You might turn to the obituary section of the newspaper and read the summary of somebody's life and without even thinking about it, you apply a different hermeneutic. As you glance at it and you see how they contributed to society around them. And then an advertisement on that same page of the newspaper might catch your eye. And you change your hermeneutic again. And you look at that and you think, well, you know, they're just trying to sell me something here. Can I really take this as fact or are they kind of stretching the truth in this ad here? And so you kind of take some of the claims with a grain of salt. You know, the Bible contains a lot of different forms of literature. The problem is when we only take one hermeneutic for one type of literature, and we apply it to all the different forms that are there, and that's when we can get in a lot of trouble. Psalms, that is poetry. when we come to the book of Psalms in our Bibles. And I hope nobody would read a Psalm with the same hermeneutic, and people do. I hope you don't read a Psalm with the same hermeneutic that you would read one of Paul's letters to the New Testament churches. Can you imagine reading Psalm 91 without the hermeneutic of poetry? Poetry uses symbolic imagery to stir up certain emotions in the reader. So imagine using your hermeneutic of how you would read Paul's letters to Psalm 91. Verse four says, He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. Using the hermeneutic that is appropriate for Paul's letters, you could ignorantly conclude that God has wings and claws like a chicken. without switching to an appropriate hermeneutic, Psalm 91 can offer us some pretty strong proof that God is a mother hen. Now, the type of hermeneutic that we need to apply to revelation is specific to apocalyptic literature. There are rules that will help us understand all of these strange symbols, colors, numbers, and images. I believe that the reason why we have so many different interpretations all through the book of Revelation is that a lot of the proposed meanings either paid little attention to apocalyptic hermeneutics, or they just didn't consistently apply them. Now, it would take several weeks to do a full study on hermeneutics. But today, I want to cover five of the most basic but inconsistently applied hermeneutical rules for apocalyptic literature. Again, this is why I believe we have so many various understandings about this book. Now for me, these are safeguards to minimize the risk of distortion and misunderstanding. Because we are fallible as human beings, knowing and consistently applying hermeneutics will not 100% foolproof anyone from misunderstandings, but they can certainly help minimize all of our human potential for getting things wrong. We're taking our own thoughts and trying to impose them on scripture. We're human. Now, one of the principles that I'm not going to mention, I said I'm going to give you five. There is a sixth I am going to mention right now, and that is we've got to go before the Lord and humble ourselves and pray that we don't do that. I've already prayed before we started the sermon, but I want to pray again and just ask that God would give us a humble mindset and lead us to the intended meaning of the scriptures. So let's pray that right now. Would you join me? Lord, as we continue now in this study, would you keep us humble, not thinking, well, we have the key, we have the understanding that others don't have. Keep us from any sense of pride, God, and please allow the meaning of your word to rise up and keep us from imposing our thoughts upon it. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Now, last week, I initiated our first principle that I want to expand upon today in our understanding revelation. I said a little bit about it before time ran out, and I want to say a little bit more about it today, and also mention four more absolute critical principles. Principle number one is that we must keep in the forefront of our minds the message of the entire book. And the way that we know what the main message is, is we need to read it and reread it and reread it several times. It also helps to have the input from others who have done the same. You see, we can stand on the shoulders of centuries now of godly men and women who have given their lifetimes to studying the book of Revelation. All of the individual parts, all those symbols, images, numbers, colors, they all need to be understood in light of what the main message is. Jesus' coming is the main message. It's brought up at key points throughout the book from beginning to end. Right after John introduces himself in the first three verses in the book of Revelation, he gets right to it. He tells us what the main point is. In the first chapter of Revelation, verse seven here, he says this, 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. All through the book, we keep seeing He is coming. He is coming. He is coming. Now at the very climax of the book, after all of the events of the tribulational period of judgment have been described for us, Jesus does come in chapter 19. And then the remaining three chapters after that show us what the result of his coming will have. It's all about his coming. Jesus will return after he seizes control of the earth from Satan and takes his rightful ownership. When he puts evil down forever, Everything in this book relates to the coming of Jesus, when God's name will be hallowed here on earth just as perfectly as it is in heaven. The curse, when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, which we read about at the very beginning of the Bible, will be reversed completely. at the end of the Bible. That is the perfect conclusion. Hermeneutic principle number one, everything, every understanding that we have about the parts in Revelation must somehow relate to the main message, Jesus is coming. Hermeneutic principle number two is called the golden rule of interpretation. This is how Dr. David Cooper, the founder of Biblical Research Society, describes the golden rule of interpretation. It is described this way. Whenever the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no further sense. Therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning, unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages, and axiomatic and fundamental truths indicate clearly otherwise. In other words, here is what he's saying by that. Understand what you read in any given verse or any part of that verse or passage exactly as it seems unless it doesn't make sense. Or there is something within, or the immediate vicinity of that verse, that indicates it should be understood some other way, like figuratively, non-literal understanding. But unless you see those things, take it literally. Don't jump. to a figurative understanding of it. See, this is where a lot of people, when they read the book of Revelation, they have their ideas preset of what it's all about, the end times, and they'll see something in a passage that should be taken literal, but oh no, that goes against my pre-thinking. So they'll jump to a figurative understanding. This must be figurative. That's where we get in trouble. So we need to look, see if it makes sense to the common sense. If it does, leave it at that. If it doesn't, then look for an obvious pointer, a marker, a gauge, a strong hint that it is to be taken figuratively. And you know what? We do not have to suppose that such a marker is going to be hidden from plain view. It's right there. Let me show you an example of what it is I'm talking about here. I call your attention to Revelation chapter one, verse four, which says this. John to the the seven, 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. Now you and I might not notice right away, but I can pretty much guarantee you that a first century reader to a first century reader, that would not make any sense. they would immediately notice that it says the seven churches in Asia, and that would stand out like a sore thumb. And then in chapters two and three, there are only seven letters that John wrote that we're going to see there. There were only seven of them. However, and here is what the first century reader would catch right away. there were more than seven churches in Asia at the time. Colossae, you ever hear that? Book of Colossians. Where was that? In Asia. It was not included in the letters that he wrote. So here we see that a literal interpretation doesn't work. Hmm, the seven churches in Asia? There were more than that, John. Furthermore, John used the Greek definite article, the, indicating totality. John is definitely pointing us to something here. So now we do have license to start looking for a non-literal interpretation, because when we read it as a first century reader would have read it, the literal reading doesn't make sense. And something else occurs twice in this very verse that we should take notice of. A number is given that Scripture often uses symbolically. The number seven has many references elsewhere in Scripture to the idea of completeness, finality, as well as perfection. So when we get to this verse in a week or two, You're gonna hear me preach that I believe John is saying, John, to the whole completed church throughout history. I believe what he is saying is, John, to every period of church history until this church age which began at Pentecost and will end at the return of Christ, until this church age is finished and the new era of God's kingdom is established by Christ's return. So what we have just seen, I'm using it as an example here, is this principle of our hermeneutic that I want us to be consistent with in applying. If it makes sense, literally, go no further. Don't try to find a symbolic meaning for it. If it makes sense, standing on its own. This one didn't. And so we look for a marker. We saw a marker in it, number seven that's often used and so forth there. And so now we can see, oh, it's the whole, it's the complete, he's not talking about that there are only seven churches in Asia. No, he meant something more than that. Here's another example. It builds off of what we just saw here in verse one. I call your attention now to Revelation 3.10. This says, because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from, from, the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to try those who dwell on the earth. Okay, now here we have a little bit of symbolism, but we also have some literalness that we need to understand. We've already seen that the churches represent all of church history, the completion of it. And this is part that I just read to you, Revelation 3.10 here, is part of the letter to the church at Philadelphia. So it's a message to the churches down through history, not just to one local church. Many believe it's only to a local church of John's day. But we get in a lot of trouble, I'll show you in just a moment, if we take that understanding. Now this message is for believers living until Christ returns. And what is that message? I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to try those who dwell on the earth. The hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to try those who are on the earth can only mean one thing. The tribulation that John then proceeds to discuss. Now, if we didn't already establish that the church at Philadelphia references the whole history of the church until Christ returns, we would have trouble understanding this verse. Now, like I said, there are many who think that the church at Philadelphia only refers to the literal church that existed during John's day. That church no longer exists, by the way. So without seeing it as a reference to the church throughout the centuries, it would be saying that this local first century church is gonna be spared, it's gonna be kept from the hour of trouble that is coming on the whole world to try those who dwell on the earth. But this could never be its meaning because nothing even close to this ever happened. Notice that it is called the coming trouble on the whole world. Well, there has never been a worldwide catastrophic event to try those who dwell on the earth since the day of Noah and his flood. The most literal understanding of that, that it is a local church in Philadelphia to the first century, renders it senseless. It doesn't make any sense then. It's a worthless statement. The church at Philadelphia, as I've already spoken, must be seen figuratively as the church throughout the ages until Christ comes back. Now, what is this first declaring about? The church era. Now, once we understand that part is to be taken figuratively, what about the second part? Do we have license to go non-literal here? No. It makes perfect sense on its own to stand alone. The hour of trouble that is coming on the whole world to try those who dwell on the earth makes perfect sense, especially in light of what John goes on to detail for us. It is clearly seen as the future tribulation event. So what this verse is saying, I will keep you. church that exists until Christ returns from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world. Whenever and wherever the plain sense of scripture makes common sense here in Revelation, in our study of it together. We will seek no further sense. But when the most literal meaning doesn't make sense and we find a marker for taking it figuratively, then that is what we're going to do. Notice something about the literal meaning of this verse. It doesn't say that the church will be protected or that it's going to be safe, held safe in God's protection during the tribulation. Grammatically, the way it's constructed in the Greek, it can only mean from the hour of trial, not in. the hour of trial, or during the hour of trial. I find great comfort in this verse, and I hope you do too. And there's many other passages that do show us that the church will be delivered from the tribulation by the rapture. Now, here is our third rule. hermeneutic principle number three. It's called the law of double reference. We're going to see it occur in the book of Revelation, and it happens very frequently in other prophetic passages of scripture. Now this takes place when a passage or a block of scripture is speaking of two different persons or two different events that are separated by a long period of time. It's usually a long period. The two things that are being described look like, as we read it, and I believe the prophets didn't understand it clearly, it looked like it was one and the same picture of the same event. An example of this would be how the Old Testament prophets would write about Jesus's coming. They would write about his first and his second coming, which you and I now know is separated by a gap of time and they are separate events. But until Christ came at his first coming and began talking about his coming again, everyone understood the Old Testament prophecies to be about only one coming of the Messiah. Let me show you an example of this in Zechariah. Zechariah 9 verses 9 and 10 say this, and verse 9 speaks of his first coming. Verse 10 speaks of his second coming. We know that now. All right, verse nine. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. Humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. His first coming. And then we continue on. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem and the battle bow shall be cut off and he shall speak peace to the nations. His rule shall be from sea to sea and from river to the ends of the earth. What's that about? His second coming. The point that I want you to see is sometimes prophecy is presented as the same event. It looks like. But upon further examination or in time, we're enabled to see that it's actually two. Now, this is called the law of double reference. It's important for us to know about it. I don't want you to be surprised. if we see it in Revelation. Hermeneutic principle number four, the law of reoccurrence. Some prophecies record an event and then immediately say more about the same event, just giving greater details. But see, it looks like and is often interpreted as two separate occurrences. And if we're not careful, we might be confused into thinking that two blocks of scripture are describing one event. That here is this event, and then here is this event. First, this will happen, and then this will happen. We gotta be real careful about this in Revelation. You see, in reality, the second may be describing the first, just giving us, filling in greater details about it. Now in Genesis chapter one, beginning with verse one and going all the way through Genesis chapter two, verse 25, the first section of this, Genesis 1.1 through Genesis 2.3, record the seven days of creation in chronological order, day one, day two, day three. But then starting in Genesis 2, four, it goes back to day six and provides further details about Adam and Eve's creation. You see, in chapter one, we already saw that God created man and woman. And then he comes into chapter two, and starting with verse four, he goes back to that part and gives us greater detail. Now, Western thinkers who are Bible critics, who do not have any regard for the Hebrew culture and Hebrew literature, and don't recognize the law of reoccurrence, they say, ha! Found a flaw in your Bible? God already created mankind on the sixth day. We saw that in chapter one. And now look at this, in chapter two, he's describing the creation of Adam and Eve. Flaw in your Bible? No, no. Hebrew literature often employs this law of reoccurrence where it's not always written in sequential order. You know, our Western way of thinking, when we read something, we think sequence. The Hebrew mind didn't always think that way. In Hebrew literature, often is more circular. We Westerners want to look at it as linear. Whereas the Hebrew mind, and you'll see this in the Old Testament over and over and over again, where they'll start on something, they'll describe it, and then they'll come back and fill in the details. They don't go on to another event. The Old Testament prophets did this. We see this in Ezekiel 38 and 39. We see it in Isaiah 30 and 31, where the second part just goes back and gives greater details. It's not another event. Now, we will see this in Revelation. We have to be aware of it. When we come to Revelation chapters six through 16, we're gonna see chronological details about the tribulation. All right, we're gonna be tracking along, this is gonna happen, then this is gonna happen, then this is gonna happen, and then suddenly we come to chapter 17, and our tendency, since we've gotten in this pattern of looking at it like this, we're gonna come to 17 and say, and then this is gonna happen. No. Be careful. Be careful because chapter 17 is going to go back and fill in the details of the first half of the tribulation. And then when we come to chapter 18, it goes back and it fills in the details of the second half of the tribulation. So be ready for it. Hermeneutic principle number five. I may not need to give you this one. Many of you know it, but I'm going to bring it up anyway so that it's going to be fresh on our minds when we study Revelation. This one is the law of context. A phrase that I heard all the time when I was in seminary was, a text apart from context is pretext. In other words, a verse can only mean what it means in its context. If it's removed and if it's isolated from the message of its surrounding verses, it can take on a meaning that its author never intended. Now, there is more to this concept of context than just the surrounding verses. There's also historical context, cultural context, literature context, and grammatical context, just to name a few more. Trying to understand a passage of scripture from our comfortable 21st century mindset, this middle American class perspective, Boy, if we get so locked into that, and that's how we read everything out of God's word, it could lead to a lot of misunderstanding. And just to think the best of that, for the very least, it could obscure some scripture's intended meaning. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses ignore all of these contexts. They pay no attention to cultural context. historical context. And they're hoping that their audience, when they go door to door and coming in and they give their arguments and they'll say something like, they hope you don't know what the other contexts are. And they'll come in and they'll say, you know, Jesus always called himself the son of God. So how can you call him God when he himself only said he was the son of man? and they're hoping you know nothing of Hebrew cultural context or historical context. They count on the ignorance of people who are gonna stay locked into their 21st American middle-class perspective. They don't know that the historical and Jewish cultural context of that term, which we're gonna see in the book of Revelation, is actually a messianic title. and that every time Jesus said that of himself, he's saying, I am the Messiah, who was prophesied all through the Older Testament. Okay, so we're gonna need all of these contexts. in order for us to understand the symbols and the numbers and the colors and the images and the titles that we're going to encounter in this book that would otherwise be totally baffling. We're going to need all of the hermeneutical principles that I've been spelling out here this morning to minimize the possibility of our misunderstanding. Let me just summarize them real briefly for you. Here they are again. Number one, keep the main message of Revelation in view at all times. Revelation is about the coming of Jesus, and everything in this book must relate to that message. Number two, the golden rule. When the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. Take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual meaning, unless the facts or immediate context studying in light of related passages and fundamental truths clearly indicate otherwise. Number three, the law of double reference. A passage may speak of two different persons or events which are separated by long periods of time. The fact that a gap exists, though, is going to be made known by other scriptures. Number four, the law of reoccurrence. Two blocks of scripture may record the same event. The second block provides additional information and details to the first. Number five, the law of context, a text apart from context. is pretext. Queen Elizabeth II passed away on September 8, 2022. She was 96 years old. But it turns out that Britain's longest reigning monarch still has something to say. We just won't know what it is for another 60 years or so. That's because a letter that she wrote to the people of Sydney, Australia is sealed in a vault with instructions not to be opened until 2085, about a hundred years after it was written. The queen wrote the letter in November of 1986 on one of her 16 visits to Australia. She addressed the letter to the just and honorable Lord Mayor of Sydney, Australia, with specific instructions. On a suitable day to be selected by you in the year 2085 AD, would you please open this envelope and convey to the citizens of Sydney my message to them? then she signed it this very mysterious message, Elizabeth R. Here's the reason why I'm closing with this illustration about Queen Elizabeth II. You know, Bible prophecy is sometimes kept as a secret message that can only be known in the future. And there are some things that God has sealed up until the proper time. For example, God told Daniel to seal up the vision for it concerns the distant future. That's Daniel 8.26. There is a portion of prophecy that God did not want to be understood until the distant future arrived. But God said something quite different, I don't know if you're aware of this, about the book of Revelation. Revelation was to be left unsealed for all to read. Revelation 22.10. Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this scroll because the time is near. Christ is coming, and the time is near. We are not going to treat this book as a book that should remain sealed. I have heard, and maybe you have too, a lot of our fellow believers, evangelical believers, believe that's a book we have no business going into. and looking at, trying to understand. We're just not gonna understand it. God says don't keep it sealed. Open it up, read it, and there's a blessing for those who do. We're gonna try to understand it with as little distortion as possible and try to be very consistent with these hermeneutical rules that I have just spelled out for you. Would you pray with me now that God would bless us in our endeavor to do so? Hi, this is Dr. Hoffman. It is our hope at Living Water that this message has encouraged and deepened your faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Our sermons are intended to be a free gift to any listener. But at the same time, I thought that I would let our need be known. Living Water, La Pine, is a church that is located in a rural area of central Oregon, ministering to a poverty-stricken community. If God has blessed you through this message, and you have already given to your own local church, if you sense that God would have you help our ministry with a financial gift, You can find out how to do that at our website. It is www.livingwateroflupine.com. Thank you for listening.