Heavenly Father, we ask you to be with us this day, beginning now, this morning, as we look into your word. We pray that you would help us, Lord, to look to you for all the wisdom that we need. We pray, Lord, that you would be with us this day by your Holy Spirit to help us to receive what you would have to give us to stay through your word, and especially in the worship of you this morning and this evening. We pray, Lord, that you would just give us what we cannot get ourselves, and that is more of your Holy Spirit, Lord, that we would live lives that are worthy of our calling. Help us, Lord, we pray, and give us the joy that we need today to worship you aright. So we thank you, Lord, for all your goodness. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, our all in all. We pray now you be with us, and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Okay, so we're covering the book of Ezekiel, right? Oh, no, no, no, no. Sorry, Revelation. Okay, sounds right? Okay. All right, so we know from our previous studies looking at chapter one that Pastor Dan went over in verse three, we know that we're supposed to be able to read this, we're supposed to be able to understand it, hear it, and do what it says. That's what verse three of chapter one basically says, right? And we know that the book is written mostly in symbolic visual imagery. book as we would a book of prose, a book that is straightforward, literal writings. Now there are, there is literal writing here in this book, especially in the beginning, in chapter 1 and chapters 2 and 3. 1 to 9 in chapter 1 and verses 2 and 3 are all fairly literal. We can understand them pretty clearly. But the imagery represents literal realities. And there's no one correlation between the image and the literal meaning. In other words, we can't take the symbolic language and literalize it. And I want to explain that. Let's go to Revelation 1. Someone want to read verses 13 through 16 of Revelation 1? Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted. No, Revelation 1. Oh, I'm in jail. You said 13 to 16? 13 to 16. Take your time. You can read it. Verse 13 in chapter 1 through 16. Go ahead. And in the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest, the hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze. refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. Yeah, so we read that, and we think rather than actual descriptions, right, these indicate truths that are actually there. This is similar to the symbolic language used by Jesus in his parables, right? He used word pictures. For example, who is this about? Jesus. Does Jesus have eyes like a flame of fire? No. Does he have a sword in his mouth? No. So we can't say the sword means a sword, right? We can't do that. We have to understand that we can't interpret these things literally, right? So it's pretty clear. Remember in chapters two and three where he deals with all the seven churches, he says, but he goes from literal language in the beginning, and here he's still there, and he says, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. That's what he says to every one of the seven churches. In other words, he's speaking to all the churches of all time. right, that we are to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. And then beginning in chapter four, the style changes from a verbal message to a visual message. Beginning in chapter four, 52 times John says, I saw, I looked, and I beheld. Right? So he's describing now a vision. He's describing the things that he sees. And these pictures are meant to convey the reality of the conflict between Jesus Christ and his saints on one side, and Satan and his, those are under his control, including non-Christians, the world. So rather than get wrapped up in the details of the pictures, we need to focus and understand the message given to us, and it's one of encouragement and blessing to the church, right? That's the whole concept of the book. All right, so just go with me for a bit and review each section of the book for encouragement and comfort that it's intended to bring to us, the church. So look at number one, chapters one to three, Jesus loves his church. We see his affection, his focus on his bride. He is in the midst of his church, in these seven churches, guiding, protecting her in the midst of persecution. And his true church, all his dear saints will persevere and overcome to the end. And this is what the message of chapters one and three are. And you go to chapters four and five. Yet he sees God the Father on the throne, and we should be comforted that he is ruling and reigning. All our enemies are his enemies, and he is in control of them all. And then we go to chapters six and seven. Christians overcome and are worshiping and rejoicing around God's throne. His enemies are powering in fear and cry out for the rocks to fall on them, thinking that it will save them from God's wrath. Now, I took some of this from the book from Max Donner. I put a lot of this in my own words, but looked at how he was looking at this. I also looked at a couple other men who were looking at this similarly. This is what these chapters represent. So chapters eight through 11, we have the seven trumpets are sounded and God pours his wrath upon the persecutors of his church. They have God's wrath upon them in this life and God is against them and they will be punished severely and eternally in the next life. In chapters 12 through 20, Jesus is victorious over the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet. He destroys Satan and all his servants who persecuted his church. And in chapters 21 and 22, we see where we will be. We'll be in the new heavens and the new earth where God dwells with us and blesses us. So the persecuted church is victorious in the end. And that is to spur us on in our battles against principalities and powers of this age. That's why the book begins with blessing for those who hear and obey. And that is the whole message of the book. So Revelation then conveys the same message as the Gospels, but in picture form. The Gospel present the message in verbal form. What is the message of the Gospels at the end Christ is victorious. Nothing can stop the church. Nothing can stop God's kingdom. It will continue and Satan and all those who are under his power who are enslaved to him will be taken care of. So Revelation is apocalyptic literature. Revelation means apocalypse. Why is it an apocalypse? Because it contains a lot of symbolic language, right? The word revelation means what? Unveiling of something hidden. That's what it means. It's unveiling of something that's been hidden. What does it unveil? What does the whole revelation unveil? N times. N times, but it unveils the truth. At the end, it does reveal that, yeah, but it also reveals the plan of God through all history, beginning with Christ, coming in the flesh, all the way until the end, when all things are put under his feet, right? And what other books of the Bible are considered apocalyptic? How about Ezekiel? All the ones that have these symbolic languages. And it's important for us to know that because those of you who are Old Testament experts will know that you're going to need the Old Testament a lot to interpret this book. You can't do it simply by the New Testament. So we're forced to interpret this language symbolically, not literally, unless the language is literal. will take, you know, some who interpret this book will take things symbolically sometimes and then they'll literalize it sometimes. They're not consistent with looking at the symbolic language and treating it as such that it is. It's symbols. So the meaning of the symbols should be interpreted how? How should the meaning of these symbols be interpreted? By what? Scripture, right? So we don't interpret this book by anything other than Scripture, right? Not by other sources or events, not by what happens to Israel. As the dispensationalists think, whatever happened to Israel, this is how we interpret things, that's not how we do that. We need to look at the Bible to see what other passages clarify and shed more light on difficult passages. We don't go to the difficult passages and interpret that. We go to the clear passages, we interpret that and we use that to interpret the difficult passages. Isn't that right? Even in the New Testament we do that. We have to do the same thing here. In our chapter one of our confession says the infallible rule for interpreting scripture is scripture itself. Therefore, when there is a question about the true and full meaning or sense of any part of scripture, and each passage only has one meaning, not many, it must be understood in light of the passages that speak more clearly. And that's where you run into heresies and other things where people start to interpret these difficult passages without reference to the clear, much clearer passages. In other words, scripture interpreting scripture. So how do we interpret the symbolic language that we're gonna read here? There's three points about interpreting this language. So we look and say what passages of scripture are literal? and shed light on the meaning of the symbols, right? That's how we do it. There are clear prose passages of scripture that can help. What New Testament passages will shed light on the book of Revelation, especially the end times? Ephesians, Hebrews. No. How about Matthew 24? The big one, the big behemoth, Matthew 24. First Thessalonians 4 and 5 talk about what the end time will look like. Second Thessalonians 1 and 2 2 Peter 3, all speak to what things are gonna look like, right, in English, in language, not in symbols. And we'll go through those as we go through the book. So we start with the non-symbolic scriptures to interpret the scriptures, not the reverse. So that's number one. Number two, we must interpret the language of Revelation in light of the analogy of faith. What is the analogy of faith? in reference to the Scriptures. That means no interpretation of Scripture, including Revelation, can contradict the rest of Scripture. There is no contradiction in Scripture. So whatever interpretation we come up with, It must be what the other parts of the Scriptures teach. It cannot contradict another section of Scripture. So the principle of non-contradiction is the presupposition that we must use to interpreting any part of Scripture, especially Revelation. All Scripture is God-breathed, so it must be true, must be unified, must be harmonious, and not contradict any part. So when we study eschatology, all the teaching of Scriptures on eschatology must conform to each other and not contradict each other, so that's number two. Number three, the symbolic language of revelation must be interpreted in light of how it is used elsewhere. There are symbols being used elsewhere in scripture, correct? Especially in those books that we talked about, in Daniel and in Ezekiel. So we interpret Revelation's symbols based on those symbols as well. So since Revelation was the last book written chronologically, it should be understood in light of everything that was written before it. And that includes the Old Testament particularly. G.K. Beal says that there are 404 verses in Revelation 278 of them contain one or more references to the Old Testament. Out of the 404, 278 refer to the Old Testament. That's two-thirds. There are over 500 allusions to Old Testament passages in Revelation compared to 200 in the rest of the New Testament. So there's a lot of reference to the Old Testament, though there's no formal quotes of the Old Testament in the Book of Revelation, it continually alludes to the Old Testament with its imagery and its symbolism. So this confirms the divine inspiration of the whole of scripture, that one single narrative runs through both Old and New Testament and begins with the first prophecy. What is that? Seed of the woman shall rule the serpent. Yes, Genesis 3.15, that's where the battle between the seed of the serpent, the seed of woman, was declared by God, right? And the rest of Scripture is the outworking of that battle between Christ and Satan and Christ's people and Satan's people. All the rest of Scripture points to Christ and his victory over Satan. So why do we think people in the first century imagery of revelation. They were a bit more studied in these, right, in the Old Testament. A lot of Christians, including myself, are not as studied in the Old Testament as I am in the New Testament, right? And so they were very studied. They didn't have the New Testament. The scriptures were the Old Testament, so that's how they interpreted everything. So how do we, again, just to review, how do we interpret the imagery and symbolism? Look to clear passages of scripture that shed light. Interpret scripture by the analogy of faith, no contradictions. The symbol language of Revelation must be interpreted by looking how such imagery and symbols are used in the Old Testament. So the structure of Revelation, we take the idealist view of the structure of Revelation that Pastor Dan spoke about, and that is a non-consecutive, cyclical view of Revelation. In other words, the book doesn't start at chapter one, like a history book, and go to the end in chapter 22, and then it's done, so it's consecutive all along. We don't view it that way. We believe the book structure, one that looks at the time period beginning with the coming of Christ into the world, his death, his resurrection, then ending with the second coming and establishing his kingdom forever with the saints. but it's from different perspectives. It's actually from seven different perspectives. Seven looks at this one book and taking a look at each of the seven, and we'll go over them in a minute. It's like looking at a certain object and kind of checking out from all different sides, like a diamond, right? A diamond, you look at the what? The four Cs. Anybody know what the four Cs of a diamond is? The cut. Clarity. Clarity. Color. Color. and carrot, right? So the four C's. You look at a diamond from those four perspectives to understand the value of the whole diamond, right? So that's how you do it. By the way, the cut is its shape and quality, the color is its, is it tainted, is it yellow, is it pure white? Clarity, is it brilliant, is it clear, right? And it's carrot. It's not necessarily the weight, the carrot. It's the overall size, not the overall size, but the weight of it. So Revelation's like a diamond. It's like one time period, and there's warfare going on, and we're gonna look at that warfare from seven different perspectives, seven different views of that same warfare going on, and we'll talk about it. It shows us what the church will experience in the continual warfare of every generation, from the first coming to the second. Examples of the various perspectives with the different imagery, we have seven seals, we have seven trumpets, we have seven bowls, are all about spiritual warfare that is happening concurrently with one another. They're not separate time frames, they're happening And they're about what we, the people of God, experience in this spiritual warfare, what the wicked will experience as time unfolds. So these battles are what every generation of believers experience when Christ returns. There will be struggles for the church to overcome, and Revelation tells us that we must remain faithful in the face of these trials and these persecutions that come against the church, Again, knowing the end, knowing that, as he said to the seven churches, if you overcome you will remain faithful and overcome, this is what I will give you, right? And so we are to persevere and overcome by God's grace against all that comes against us. There are passages that deal with prophecy that will be fulfilled. These include the Antichrist, the second coming of Jesus, the final judgment, the damning of the lost into the lake of fire. All these realities are repeated and become more and more clear as we get to the end of the book. And so what does this mean? Every generation will deal with all of these things that are in, even those seven churches, all the things that Jesus brings up, those are all the churches, we have some of that here in our church, and every church has some of what Jesus brings, both commendation as well as negative things that the church needs to deal with. Every church is dealing with that. And every generation will experience the seven seals, the trumpets, the bowls. Everyone will battle against the dragon. The beast and the false prophet. All will be seduced by the great whore, Babylon. It's where I live. So you know they're coming against me, so I need prayer. And all must refuse the mark of the beast. And all must obtain the seal of God on their forehead. Are these symbols literal? Are we gonna receive seals of God on our forehead? Are we gonna have a mark of beast on our hands? No. There'll be no visible mark of the beast. There'll be no seal on our foreheads. These marks and seals have been in existence since Christ came to this earth. The beast has been in existence since Christ came and will continue to exist until he returns. So the structure of Revelation is repeated and recapitulated and we see this clearly in chapters eight through 11. Turn to chapter 11. And we'll go to verses 15 Who has the NASB? Okay, can you read, Sheila, can you read verses 15 through 18? The reason I say that is because the New King James has plurals when it says kingdoms here, and the newest versions have the singular, which is the newer manuscripts, the oldest manuscripts, by the way. Anyway, you can read that. Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. And the twenty-four elders, who stood on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshipped God, saying, We give you thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who are and who were, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. And the nations were enriched, and your wrath came. And the time came for the dead to be judged, and the time to reward your born servants, the prophets and the saints, and those who fear your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth. A couple of things which, as I said, are important. One is that the kingdom refers to one kingdom, whereas kingdoms, if you have that, would refer to many. but it should be singular, the kingdom. And notice in verse 17 where it says, we give you thanks, O Lord God Almighty. This is the New King James I'm reading. The one who is and who was, and then it says, and who is to come. That is not in the New American Standard. There is no who is to come. It's just who was, who is, and who was. It's not referring to someone coming yet. It's referring to what is. And it's also, because you have taken your great power, which means you have, this is at verse 10 to 17, because you have taken your great power, that's a completed action. It's not a future action. It's a completed action. Power is completed. And it says, and reigned. And it should have begun to reign. In other words, Jesus began his reigning, and all these things are current, We have the seventh angel sounding the seventh trumpet, right? And we have the second coming, Christ's reign and the final judgment. Now the dispensational view of this is different. Paul wrote right in 1 Corinthians 5, 1552, he wrote that the last trumpet will blow at the return of Christ when the dead are raised for the final judgment. So that's the last trumpet. Revelation's seventh trumpet does not include the details of these events, which are given later in Revelation, but simply announces Christ's return to judge. Dispensationalists teach that the trumpet heralds only a thousand year reign of Christ on the earth, after which another rebellion will occur, failing to note that the trumpet proclaims an eternal reign. In verse 15 of chapter 11 here, he shall reign forever and ever. That's one. The Preterus Cetus trumpet is beginning the gospel age in which Christ spiritually reigns, yet verse 18 defines it as the time of the dead to be judged. The seventh trumpet, therefore, announces the glorious return of the king of kings to reign forever on the earth. And then what happens? Look at chapter 12. Let's look at verses one through six, chapter 12. So right after we have this end, Christ comes, reigns forever and ever, and then we go to chapter 12. And why don't somebody read verses one through six. Go ahead. And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon on her stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and on his head seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 years. And Satan wanted to attack the child, right? So we go from chapter 11, the end, where Jesus judges, back to the beginning again, where Jesus is born. Just an example of this, the way the revelation works. It doesn't go one way. It goes back like this. Just continues to go back. And we'll see that as we go forward. And there's no question that these describe the birth, most everyone would agree that this is talking about the birth of Christ. And we see that each chapter that follows will continually work on that. In this case, we're brought back to the beginning. So we have the literary style of the book is symbolism, not literalism. So the symbols give us the message of the book. And how do we interpret the symbols? We do it by other scriptures. And the structure of the book, non-consecutive and cyclical, describes the spiritual warfare that takes place since the birth of Christ until he returns, all from different perspectives. How many different parallel perspectives are in this book? It's a number that indicates the complete message of Revelation. What number of parallels would indicate that it would be a complete picture of Revelation? Yes! Yes! You get 100 points! And so it's divided into seven parallel times, right? And then it's divided into a couple different sections. These sections are to be complementary and interdependent. If that is the case, how many sections would that be? If they're complementary and independent, the number must be, Two. There must be two. And eventually we'll go over the numbers, right? But there's two. So it's divided. Division one is chapter one through 11. The first half of the book is about the physical conflict between believers and unbelievers. It describes the visible human history between the first and second coming of Christ. The church has preached the gospel to the world since Christ came, right? Satan has been bound. Church now is able to preach the gospel throughout the world. The gospel will continue to go out through the world. And the world has persecuted the church since the beginning, right? Since the beginning when Christ preached the gospel. This is what's symbolized in the first division. The second division is from chapters 12 to 22. This group of visions show the spiritual struggle behind the physical. between Christ and Satan. In this division, we see the spiritual battles take place behind the physical battles we see in chapters one through 11. In chapter 12, as we saw, we see Satan attacking Christ, and since that is unsuccessful, he turns to attacking the church. In subsequent chapters, we have Satan, we have the dragon, and he employs four accomplices to help him in this war in the second part of Revelation. Who are these accomplices? Who is the Satan, the dragon, who does he employ to help him with all of this work he's going to do? The false prophet, yes, that's one. Dragon? No, the dragon is Satan. The beast from the land is the false prophet. Is there another beast? From the sea, yes, there's another beast. And there's a I live there. There's a harlot in Babylon, right? And then there are those who have the mark of the beast. But in the latter half of this section, all these accomplices are destroyed. Who destroys them? You get bonus points for this. Jesus, right? Who is destroyed? Satan is destroyed, right? So that's the divisions. So what we see is not all that's happening, right? There's a spiritual dimension that's going on. And when we bring the gospel to the world, we know that the rejection that we receive or the persecution that we receive is not just from that individual, right? They're enslaved to Satan. And that's part of his kingdom. Now, unless God has elected him from the foundation of the world, they won't repent. We'd call him to repent. That's why Paul goes in. God said to Paul, go into that city. Many of my people are there. Not all of those people are mine. Just go in and preach the gospel, and my people will come. And so, that's what happens when we preach the gospel. But the church will be successful, regardless, because it's not about our power, right? It's about God's power. Okay. Let's see what we got here. All right. So we're going to go into the seven parallel sections of Revelation. Sorry, you're not here. I would turn it, but I can't. We have the seven parallel sections, and we'll see the physical conflict, again, it's chapters one through 11, is that physical conflict that happens between believers and unbelievers, the persecution of the church. And then we have, you'll see the first, it says 1B, the first parallel section of the book. And that's, again, each parallel section begins Christ is born or comes onto the earth, and it ends with Christ coming at the end. Each of these parallel sections do that. So we have the first parallel section in chapter 1 through chapter 3, verse 22. And all those who take the idealist point of view have these break-ups as well. other authors who have written commentaries on Revelation that have this idealist view will have these breakdowns. So the first parallel section is chapter 1 to 3, 22, where we have the introduction of the book and We have the source of the revelation is God, the father, the messenger is John, the recipients are the seven churches, and the focus is the glorified Christ. That's chapter one. And then we go chapter two to three, you have the seven letters to each of the churches, right? And then that's the first parallel section. The second parallel section starts with chapter four and goes to chapter eight, verse five, where we have the vision of the throne and we have the vision of the seven seals. six trumpets, the vision of the little book, the vision of the two witnesses, and the seventh trumpet. That is the third parallel section. Then we go into the second division of it, starting in chapter 12, 222. We have the fourth parallel section in chapter 12, all the way through chapter 14. Then we have the third parallel section of the book, And then we go to chapter 16 for the fifth. We have the sixth parallel. Did you pass that along? I got another one. You're making me nervous. I gotta go All right, so we have this sixth parallel section, and then the seventh parallel section, starting in chapter 20 through 22. And we have the vision of the binding and loosing of Satan in chapter 20, we have the great white throne judgment, and then we have the new heaven and the new earth in chapter 21, and then we have the conclusion. So, and then here, Each of these seven parallel sections begins with the first coming and ends with the second. Each describes, from various perspective, the warfare that will take place during that time period. While all these sections are parallel at coming, happening, they also progressively reveal, with increasing clarity, the nature of the second coming. So it becomes clearer and clearer about the second coming of Christ. The theme of the book is that Christ will triumph over Satan and will bring deliverance and victory to his suffering saints in his second coming and establishment of his new kingdom in heaven. All right, so that's the key verse is Revelation 17, 14. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is the Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with Him are called and chosen and faithful. That's Revelation 17, 14. So those are the, and we'll go through all of that as we move forward in this. Is it possible to get a copy of that? Hmm? Is it possible to get a copy of that? I can, yeah, this comes from the book, so I didn't want to hand it, I'm not familiar with copyright law, so I didn't want to do that. So I'm assuming we can send, I can send copies by email. This is Max Donner. One of them is Max Donner. There's also a similar... Yeah, Joel Beeky has a commentary as well that's very similar to the way Max Donner lays it out in terms of these seven different aspects of the book of Revelation. So they're very very similar. Okay, so just wanted to go through a few things here. So the fact that each of these go through the same time period and they tell us what's going on spiritually and then It continues, each section does that, and that's why we say it's not a linear prophecy. The narrative is to continue, John has to go back to the first coming, he has to retrace that same journey to the second coming again, and this is what he does seven times. And if we want to, we can go to, let's go to Revelation chapter one, So the first parallel section is chapters one to three, as we said, right? And it opens with the mentioning of Christ. Let's read verses four to six. Who wants to read chapter one? John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful, And continue. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever, amen. So when did Jesus do that? When did he become the faithful witness? When was he the firstborn from the dead? When did he love us and wash us with his blood? Resurrection. He lived, he died, and he washed us in his blood, right? And he made us kings and priests unto our God, that's it. That's his first coming, right, when he came, that's what he did. And so verse five describes the first coming of Christ and the work he achieved on the cross, right? And it speaks about him washing us in his blood. And then notice verse, read 17 and 18. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore. And I have the keys of death and pain. OK, so we have his coming, and we have his death. those things that have happened. So it's a vision of Christ and his first coming. What he achieved by his death is burial's resurrection and the cleansing power of his blood on the cross. He then dictates seven letters to the churches, right, in chapters two and three, and these portray the virtues, the challenges, the deficiencies and blessings that all churches experience to some degree or another. So we see Jesus as the head of the church, standing in the midst of his church in chapters two and three, right? He warns them, he challenges them, he gives them tremendous promises which we'll go through. It's all a great blessing, right, because that's what the book is supposed to do. It's supposed to be a blessing to the church, and so this is what Jesus is doing. Okay, so then let's go to the end of chapter three, and let's read verses 20 and 21 of chapter three. To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me all day. as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear. That's 21, right? Start at 20. 20. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. Okay, so what does that verse remind you of when it says that he will come into him and sup with him? What does sup mean? Have a meal with him, right? When will we have a meal with Jesus? Marriage Feast of the Lamb. Yes. Verse 21 says, to him that overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also came and sat down with my Father in heaven. When will we sit on the throne with Jesus? When he comes, right? When he comes and takes us with him at the end, we'll all be surrounding the throne of God. So that's when Jesus comes back. So we have the beginning in chapter one, and we have the what he's going to do at the end in chapter three. So it's just an example of, so this first section opens with his first coming and closes with an allusion, perhaps, to the marriage supper of the Lamb, right? We will sup with Christ. Anyway, so that's just an example of the first parallel section of the book. We'll continue to go through the book, through chapter one and continue on. But I wanted to give a complete kind of overview of what it all looks like and how we treat the book of Revelation and how idealists treat it generally. And so that's how we're going to look at the book. Any thoughts? Any questions regarding that? Good, because I don't have the answers. We're all studying together. We're all looking at the book together and seeing what we see there. But it's good to have different perspectives. Using both Max Donner, Richard Phillips, Joel Beeke, all these different sources to study out the book. Also taking into account some of the other perspectives, the preterist perspective, certainly not the dispensational perspective on the book. So that's what we'll be doing going forward. So why don't we pray and we'll get ready to worship this morning. Let's pray. Lord, we just thank you for your word. Pray that you would help us, Lord, to continue to look into your word see it from the perspective that you would have us to see it, Lord, that we would see that all that's happening in this book is a revelation of what is actually going on even now. As we battle, we are in a battle, Lord God, but we have you on the throne. So we thank you, Lord, that your church will prosper you by your grace. We thank you for that. We pray now that you would help us as we look to worshiping you, preparing our hearts to worship you this morning in spirit and truth. We pray your blessing on the whole day now.