Welcome to the live stream portion of what we do here on Saturdays on Household of Faith in Christ. I'm going to adjust this camera because I just noticed it's a little crooked and a little bit low. See if that makes it a little bit better. for you on the streaming side. If you're watching this live, welcome. If you're watching this later, well, thank you for participating via podcast, I guess. If you wanna learn more about us, you can go online, HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com is the website, HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. We're gonna be in Revelation chapter 19 today. So if you wanna get your Bibles ready, you're encouraged to open them there. We'll be looking specifically, most specifically anyway, at verses 16 to 21, as we are putting a wrap on chapter 19. And to help provide the full context in a moment, I'm going to read through the entire chapter to help frame the fullness of this message. And therefore I have quite simply titled this sermon, 19, which I think I've been told, I think it was in a song that the average age in Vietnam was 19. of the soldiers who were fighting in Vietnam. Gotta say, from my perspective, that sounds so young. Anyway, Revelation chapter 19, beginning with verse one. After this, I heard something like the loud voice of a vast multitude, and I gotta pause for a half a second to make sure that's still running, because my phone just got interrupted. And I think we're okay. I think we're okay. I think I left off with the end of verse two, correct? I was? Oh, so I guess we're at verse six now? Thank you. Then I heard something like the voice of a vast multitude, like the sound of cascading waters and like the rumbling of loud thunder saying, hallelujah. because our Lord God the Almighty has begun to reign. Let us be glad, rejoice, and give him glory because the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has prepared herself. She was given fine linen to wear, bright and pure, for the fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, write, those invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb are fortunate. He also said to me, these words of God are true. Then I fell at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, don't do that. I am a fellow slave with you and your brothers who have the testimony about Jesus. Worship God because the testimony about Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Then I saw heaven opened and there was a white horse. Its rider is called Faithful and True. And he judges and makes war in righteousness. His eyes were like a fiery flame and many crowns were on his head. He had a name written that no one knows except Himself. He wore a robe stained with blood, and His name is the Word of God. The armies that were in heaven followed Him on white horses wearing pure white linen. A sharp sword came from His mouth so that He might strike the nations with it. He will shepherd them with an iron scepter. He will also trample the winepress of the fierce anger of God the Almighty. And he has a name written on his robe and on his thigh, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Then I saw an angel standing on the sun and he cried out in a loud voice saying to all the birds flying high overhead, come gather together for the great supper of God so that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of commanders, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of their riders and the flesh of everyone. both free and slave, small and great. Then I saw the beast, the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and against his army. But the beast was taken prisoner and along with him, the false prophet who had performed the signs in his presence. He deceived those who accepted the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image with these signs. Both of them were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword that came from the mouth of the rider on the horse. And all the birds were filled with their flesh." This chapter is part of the Holy Canon, God's Word. inspired, inerrant, infallible. It is sufficient. The entirety of the canon is. It is fully sufficient as the rule and guide for what we believe and for what we do. So I encourage you to receive it as such. Those with ears, let them hear. Hallelujah. God's judgments are true and righteous. Hallelujah. The smoke of the defeated prostitute ascends forever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah. Praise our God, all his slaves. Hallelujah. Our Lord God now reigns. Be glad, rejoice, and give him glory because the marriage of the Lamb has come. And his wife has prepared herself. The wife is all of God's elect, the bride of Christ, the Messiah who is faithful and true. He judges in holiness. He makes war in righteousness. He sees all. He conquers all. He rules all. He has a name that no one knows except himself. The hiddenness of the warrior king's name is somewhat puzzling. The best understanding might be to say that it means that no creature can exhaustively understand exactly, precisely everything there is to know about God. And no opponent can overthrow him. We have talked about this once or twice in the past. There's power in a name. There is a way in which it could be said that one person might be able to leverage some control over another person by getting a handle on their name. To whom am I speaking? Well, who wants to know? What's your name? Well, that information is on a need to know basis. Thank you very much. Please let me see your identification papers. Yes, officer. Will this blood stained robe suffice? So there's a sense in which Christ's name is unknown. We only know what he reveals. And he reveals that at least one of his names is word of God. And his word, it is pure and sharp. And he smites nations with it as a sword. And he shepherds his flock with it as an iron scepter. This is the mighty and fierce God Almighty, the Lord who wins the war. It's not merely a war, but the war. And on his blood spattered robe, there's another name, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And these words, they spread across his garment and fall across his thigh. Words that have captured the imagination of many, many people over the years. Some, they decide to just draw a very simple conclusion here and say that thigh here is simply meant to be the sheath that would be used to hold the sword. It's an interesting idea, maybe so. But also the thigh, it is an important part of the body in Jewish lore. You might remember Abraham's servant. He placed his hand on Abraham's thigh when he vowed to go find for Abraham a son, a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac. And speaking of Isaac, his son, Jacob, he had his thigh touched by God. We might remember in a rather famous story when he wrestled with the angel of the Lord in Genesis chapter 32. Now, some English Bibles, they use the word hip there instead of thigh in that Genesis story. But the Hebrew word there, it has a rather broad semantic domain, meaning it could be translated as thigh or loin or flank, even side or hip. You know, this is why Israelites, by the way, they avoided eating the thigh of the slaughtered animals. They did this out of respect for what had happened when God changed Jacob's name to Israel. Although, if you're a careful reader of scripture, you might have noted that the right thigh of the fellowship offering, it was designated for the priests to eat as food. So that's a little bit perplexing, except it's a different Hebrew word there used for thigh. So I know it's an interesting question. I think it'd be worthy of a study all its own someday. Maybe you want to press into your own independent word study on that one at some point during the days and weeks ahead. In the Genesis narrative that we're talking about though, there's a picture here of God's people grappling with their maker. wrestling with him, clinging to him, refusing to let go and being blessed. God's people being blessed as their representative, Jacob, could be said to, in a sense, have conquered the Lord in the encounter. The Lord in human form, only able to conquer him, if we want to even think about it in those terms, because of Yahweh's condescending mercy and love. And so one wonders if there's a reminder of this when John is, he's describing seeing this great name that's written on the thigh of Christ. Christ, again, it's God in human form. The one who allowed himself to, in a sense, be conquered or so it seemed by his own people who murdered him on a tree. But now here in the revelation, he returns as the real conqueror. and this image of strength. This is another way in which the word thigh was understood in biblical times. Just a moment ago, I mentioned that Hebrew word, it could be translated as loin. Well, speaking of a man's loins, it is therefore sometimes a euphemism for his sex organ. And this then is spoken of euphemistically as representing the man's Manhood. It's a symbol of his leadership as the father, patriarch of future generations. The armies that would arise from his loins over the intervening years. In the Bible, sometimes when the English translation is talking about the leader's loins, or his staff, or his ruling rod, What it's talking about is his masculinity in a somewhat circumspect manner, if you will. Anyway, the revelation, it's showing us a bridegroom here with his immense strength, who has a name that's beyond our comprehension, and a name called Word of God, and the names King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We should marinate on this for a moment or two. Our Savior appears as a divine warrior, coming in strength. He wages war against all evil enemies. Now, some people, they interpret this imagery as symbolically illustrating Christ's kingdom ever expanding through individual conversions to Christianity. And there's truth in this idea in an overarching way. But the passage in Revelation 19, I think it places the ultimate final battle in view. It's not just the overarching history of the church and the growth of the church and the kingdom. So the imagery here more intensively concentrates on the second coming. That's what I think we're mostly to understand here, most specifically. This is not just the expansion of the kingdom over the years. In this chapter, we have God's presence. It's revealed to all of humanity, the entire universe even. And he is a God who bears names that are worthy of worship and are full of wonderful surprises, wonderful mystery. so unlike the blasphemous names that belong to the beast. The dragon's limited, but Bridegroom sees all as legitimate king. And so the angelic messenger of verse 17 reflects the piercing brightness of God's glory by standing on the sun or in the sun, depending on your translation. As the reader, you are to understand that this angel is speaking in the majesty of the Lord Christ. When he announces that the total final destruction of the dragon's beastly bodies has arrived, it is a complete victory. as was earlier announced in chapter 18, verse 1, and illustrated by the millstone thrown into the sea, you might remember, from chapter 18, verse 21. And make no mistake about it. There is no hiding from this judgment. You might run. You cannot hide. The angel is standing in the sun, where all eyes can see. Where are you going to go? This is similar to the other messengers we saw earlier in the Revelation, where they're flying in mid-air. Do you remember that image? And speaking of flying high overhead, verses 17 and 18, we run here, run right into a very ironic and twisted scene. With the indignity of birds eating the flesh of the dead. I mean, what John has written here, it's an echo of numerous places in the Old Testament. Of course it is, John is so deeply steeped in the Old Testament. He is pulling from places like Genesis chapter 40, and Deuteronomy 28, and 2 Samuel chapter 21, and 1 Kings 14, and Jeremiah 16, and Jeremiah 19, and Jeremiah 34. Lots of places in Jeremiah. You should probably read at least one of these Jeremiah references. So here's Jeremiah chapter 7, verse 33. The corpses of these people will become food for the birds of the sky. And for the wild animals of the land, with no one to scare them away. Probably should read a few other references from other books in the Hebrew scriptures as well. So here's Psalm 79, verse 2. They gave the corpses of your servants to the birds of the sky for food. The flesh of your godly ones are the beasts of the earth. Here's Isaiah chapter 18, verse 6. They will all be left for the birds of prey on the hills and for the wild animals of the land. The birds will spend their summer on them and the animals, the winter on them. In Ezekiel chapter 29, verse five, I will leave you in the desert, you and all the fish of your streams. You will fall on the open ground. It will not be taken away or gathered for burial. I have given you to the beasts of the earth and the birds of the sky as food. when the Revelation mentions the eating of flesh here, given the context and the grammar and the word choice, what's really being communicated here, what he really is attempting and trying to get you to understand is the idea that this is masses of flesh. Flesh upon flesh. This is an all-you-can-eat buffet of flesh. Sounds pretty gross. But remember, it's God who planned this shocking banquet, and He brings it about by His righteous judgment, lovingly avenging His bride. This is all very much like what we find in Ezekiel in chapter 39, where it says, picking up with verse 17, son of man, this is what the Lord God says. Tell every kind of bird and all the wild animals, assemble and come, gather from all around to my sacrificial feast that I am slaughtering for you. A great feast on the mountains of Israel. You will eat flesh and drink blood. You will eat the flesh of mighty men and drink the blood of the earth's princes, rams, lambs, male goats, and all the fat and bulls of Bashan. You will eat fat until you are satisfied. and drink blood until you are drunk at my sacrificial feast that I have prepared for you. At my table, you will eat your fill of horses and riders, of mighty men and all the warriors. This is the declaration of the Lord God." What we have here toward the end of the revelation is the end of the Antichrist, the end of the manipulative, maniacal megalomaniacs, the end of Gog and Magog, the end of Satan, which we will see with more detail in chapter 20. It is the end anticipated for many, many years, including the days of Roman Emperor Nero, You know Nero, the one who infamously had for himself made a 100 foot statue, a 10 story statue of himself to be placed in the temple of Mars. Remember him, the man with the demands to be worshiped as savior and as God almighty. The man who had a young castrated boy toy named Sporus. Do you know that Nero quote unquote married this young man in a huge public spectacle? You think the things going on today are new? Do you know that he delighted in sodomy and even worse, homosexual rape? He kicked his pregnant wife, Papilla, to death, kicked her to death while she was pregnant with his child. This is a man who tortured your brothers and sisters to death, covering them in animal skins so they would be torn to shreds by dogs. And then he nailed them to crosses. Why'd he do that? Because he wanted to provide some evening lighting. A little lighting for the evening, used these bodies as human torches. You know, one person, a man named Apollonius of Tyena, he said of this grotesque government official, quote, of wild beasts, you cannot say that there were ever any known to eat their own mother. But Nero has gorged himself on this diet. Another man named Suetonius, he reported that Nero, quote, so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling himself, every part of his body, He at last devised a kind of game in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women who were bound to stakes. Reading these reports and knowing how they actually apply to so many other things we see in the world even today, It almost seems as though God's judgment isn't harsh enough. Nero was an antichrist. And there have been so, so many additional types of antichrist. And the people following after the antichrist marked by 666, that number with such tremendous mathematical meaning and linguistic ugliness. And then suddenly, it ends. When Christ returns. When he arrives as judge. Nero committed suicide, by the way. And the Roman dynasty that he represented, it came to an end. In a mere moment of history, really. The twinkling of an eye, an eye like a fiery flame, you might say. Once seemingly invincible, Rome fell. So many mighty empires seem to be invincible, and then they fall. Dictators, they come and they go, as civil wars rage. Powers that be, they ascend the world's stage, only to then exit it again and become forgotten. except occasionally when they might be mentioned randomly as the answer to some trivia question on a television game show like Jeopardy. Bespacian, gone. Titus, gone. I mean, all the Flavians, gone. Stalin, gone. Even today's big powerful names, Gates, Zuckerberg, Soros, Schwab, they will also one day soon be gone. And if there should be new names as of yet unknown to us, if they oppose God, well, then they too will be gone. And their bodies will be fed to the wild birds. All of this is pointing to and referencing what happens at the end, at the battle of Armageddon. Evil will be wiped out in such a way as to leave not a trace. The evil people, the evil institutions, the evil systems, the evil hearts, They're all gone. Forever. In a flash. At Christ's glorious return. John has shown us various facets and perspectives on this final battle. He's going to give us one more angle in chapter 20. And there's this book that I've been part of what I've been reading and looking at as I prepare these messages in the sermon series for Revelation. It's an excellent book. It's called Triumph of the Lamb. And it was a rare instance where as I was doing some of this additional study, I ran into an author who provided me with an interesting insight that wasn't something that had occurred to me personally on my own as I was doing my own study and meditation on the passage. And so here I'm gonna give Dennis Johnson, the author of that book, all the credit or all the blame, as the case might be, reading a paragraph of his words. He writes, the fact that the beast and the false prophet are thrown alive into the fiery lake, whereas their followers are slain by the sword, confirms that the beast and false prophet, like the harlot Babylon, symbolize not particular human individuals, for example, the Antichrist, understood as a single eschatological ruler, but rather institutional structures by which human civilizations and cultures oppose God, his truth, and his church. If the beast and the false prophet portrayed mere human beings, there would be no reason for Christ to spare them the first death, physical death, before casting them into the second death, a lake of fire. Their followers will experience both. So when we think of the beast, the harlot, the false prophet. It's talking about systems, world systems, beastly systems. And the followers of the beastly system, they will die an eternal physical and spiritual death because they accepted the mark of the beast. Now that's how the translation I'm using today puts it, accepted the mark of the beast. There are other English Bibles, they say received the mark of the beast. Now, literally here, it's best translated as had received. The Mark of the Beast had received, as in received once and for all. That's the point. They're totally given over for all time. And so they worshiped the Beast's image. Now, interestingly, this might be best translated as worshiping. Capturing an idea, again, in other words, that worship that's ongoing. does not end, it is not done once and for all. It goes on and on and on because never is there repentance from them. And so they end up tossed into the lake of fire. Now, some translations here, they opt for a lake, but that's not technically as good as it could be, because technically it should be translated the lake. See, this is the one at the end, the big one, the final one. The one that's not to be confused with any other. This is hell. With fire signifying the all-consuming, everlasting judgment of God. And the only way to avoid this fate is to be a soldier marching in Christ's army. How fortuitous is it that we're sharing this message today on Veterans Day. The army mentioned in verse 19, it probably includes the heavenly armies, right? I'm pretty sure about that. But I think also the army of saints, followers of Christ and the saints, they were enlisted in the kingdom of heaven's army. Oh, when the saints go marching in. Oh, when the saints go marching in. Oh Lord, I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in. Oh, when they crown him Lord of all. Oh, when they crown him Lord of all. Oh Lord, I want to be in that number. When they crown him Lord of all. This is written in Zechariah chapter 14 in verse five specifically, then the Lord, my God will come and all the Holy ones with him. Father, you are more glorious than our imaginations can conjure up. You are so strong, so in control, so sovereign. You are so gracious and merciful towards your people, providing for and protecting us by the power of your spirit, helping us to navigate this world in a way that keeps us loyal to you. so that at the end we will be counted among your people. We'll be members, soldiers in your army that will be the saints, the holy ones who are with you. We don't deserve it. It's only by your personal providence and care that we don't fall sway to the tactics of the beastly system around us. We praise you and thank you that we do not take the mark of the beast because you have marked us with the name of Christ. It's in his name we pray. Amen. All right, so I'm going to wrap up the stream. If you'd like to leave a comment, we can comment later. And if you have any other questions that might not even be related to this message, you're welcome to share that or reach out to me. All my contact information is HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. Again, you can connect with me through HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. God bless.