The End of the Road
The End of the Road
By Phil Winfield
Bible Text: Hebrews 9:27; Revelation 20:11-22
Preached on: Sunday, May 23, 2004
Grace Church of Des Moines, IA
4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317
Website: http://www.gracehome.com
Online Sermons: http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com
Take your Bibles if you would, please, and turn to the book of Hebrews chapter nine. We are going to read this brief verse of Scripture, Hebrews chapter nine and verse number 27. It says:Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.Key in on that verse 27. “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” The King James Version says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”We are going to talk about that tonight, the end of the road.Now how many of you remember your first days at school when you were a kid, you remember something about it? If I were to come to you, you could tell me some details of your first days at school. Just raise them up there.Boy, I can’t. I didn’t go to school till the first grade. No kindergarten for me. I was too interested in bugs and mosquitoes and frogs and jumping off car bumpers. I just... I don’t think my mother could have gotten me to school when I was five or now I guess they go when they are as young as four or even younger than that sometimes. But I went in the first grade.It was quite an amiable situation. I enjoyed it way back in September of 1963 was my incursion into the world of education. That’s when I got started. My mother took me to school for the first day. That was the last time she took me to school.It was curious that she also showed me that this is the walking path home. And that’s how you get there and here is how you get home. Use those two legs and you will be walking.I used to think it was so far that I walked to school. I thought I would never get home. I thought I would never get there every day.I went back not long ago with my family to show them where I lived and how far I had to walk to school. It as two tenths of a mile. I thought it was around the world when I was a little kid, but anyway I remember going to school. And it was something. I don’t know how my mother knew everything and everyone, but she introduced me to Lurlene Martin who was the... She was the principal of the little West Haven Elementary School where I went to school and then she went right in and introduced me to Mrs. Lane.I knew things were going... I was going to have problems when she knew everybody there. She knew all the teachers, everybody. I knew there was going to be a problem.So, but anyway, when she introduced me to Mrs. Lane I fell in love. That was the first time I ever fell in love outside my own family in my life. This woman was just something. She was so beautiful and so pretty and so nice. She had two feet of hair piled up on top of her head. You remember those hairdos, I mean one of the beehive deals. It was way... I thought that was the greatest thing. And she was so nice.I went to school that day. I had three fat pencils. How many of you remember the fat pencils? Three fat pencils, crayons, jumbo pad and a pair of blunt study scissors, you know, the little blunt nosed scissors? I had those. I was ready.Things were great. Lunch was great. Recess was great. Using all my new school stuff was great and I was ready for a great experience at West Haven Elementary School in Whitehaven, Tennessee.What a dirty trick it was for my teacher, Mrs. Lane, to actually start taking notes on everything that I did. Apparently she was doing that with everybody in the class because one day she gave us a big tan envelope and told us to go home and give it to our mothers. I didn’t know the problems and pain in the posterior that that little envelope was going to cause for me and literally did cause for me.You know when I got back to school after taking that little envelope home I never looked at Mrs. Lane again. In fact, I didn’t even like her big tall hairdo anymore. I couldn’t stand that lady. She was in cahoots with my parents and they were working together on getting me to sit still in class and to actually learn all those little squigglies that she was putting up on the chalkboard.Do you remember chalk boards? I mean we actually used to have those things. And she was keeping a systematic record of all of my doings at West Haven School from 7:30 AM to 2:30 PM. That was when we went to school when I was going to school, 7:30 to... Did anybody go to school early like that besides me? I mean 7:30 to 2:30, that’s when you went to school and five days a week and little Philip Winfield (that was me) could rack up lots of offenses in a short time and it was amazing the swift justice that took place at home once my mother would converse... Whenever... Somehow she found out. The phone would ring and somebody would talk and the next thing you know I had been caught misbehaving again and my mom would talk to my dad and the next thing you know I was getting the board of education applied to the seat of learning. No diplomacy, no excuses, no recourse. And, boy, it worked. They got my attention and all of the sudden I understood that those report cards were very important and whatever was on them I really needed to work hard to make whatever was on them make my mother happy so that I wouldn’t get those problems when I got home.Somebody would say, “Well, how cruel.”Well, I want you to know it was a wonderful day in our nation when teachers and parents were honorable and both had the interest of child at heart. That was a wonderful day. And it can be a wonderful day today and I don’t mean to throw light against teachers today because there are many wonderful teachers. We have many in our church here that are doing everything within their power to instill character and good morals into the children that they teach. But we have a system that has become rotten at the roots.And I learned to respect those little report cards. They can be a tremendous source of blessing or cursing, especially on that one little line that was at the bottom of that report card every year, every six weeks. We had six week reporting periods. Every six weeks a little line at the bottom, a word that I didn’t know until I got to first grade. It was that little word “conduct.” That was only thing on there important to me. As long as my conduct... My mother would look there first. She didn’t care about anything else. She said, “You may not be a genius, but you can behave.” And she would look right down at the bottom of that thing and she said, “You can sit still in class. You can do what that teacher says. And if nothing else you can behave.”And, boy, I learned to appreciate that word “conduct, behavior, deportment.” I looked up synonyms. Man, I knew all kinds of words. I got to get this right.Well, I want you to know that many people are living their lives today as if there was no one to answer to, there were no God and that they are just going to go out of existence when they come to the end of their life and they are never going to have to be held accountable. I want you to know, you and I, all of us, everyone, all mankind is on a road to the end of history of human life and human habitation of this world. When we get to that point we will—now you listen to me—we will stand before God. There is a person who is God. He has a Son. His name is Jesus. His Spirit lives in the lives of those people who have given themselves to him. You know it. I know it. The world knows it, but they are willingly ignorant of the facts.One of the greatest motivations for fit free living, unbridled personal freedom in the world is this idea—or at least hope or aspiration—that there is no judgment, no one to answer to, no accountability.And, by the way, I want to just throw this in because I am not going to be able to include it in the sermon that I get to on evolution, but I want to mention this. That is the reason that so many push so hard to affirm a now defunct, unscientific idea called evolution.You say, “Why is that, pastor? Why is it so appealing to so many people?”Because if I am the product of chance then I have no judgment to fear.But I want to tell you that we are not the product of chance. We are the product of a person that said, “Let there be life and there was life,” and light and everything else.Hebrews 9:27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.”I have been talking to you for several weeks about the road ahead, sharing what the Bible predicts about the future. If you are just checking in on some of these sermons—they are available on CD and on cassette also—I can actually give you print outs of the entire sermon if you would like them to study. You can certainly do that.But I have been talking about this and we have looked at the sign posts along the road to the end. We have talked about the millions that will vanish from the road at the rapture. We have talked about the king of the road or the antichrist or the beast, if you will, that will be around during that seven year period of trouble and trial in this world called the tribulation. We spent time talking about what life will be like on the road living under the rule of the antichrist and later that reincarnated antichrist when his deadly wound to his head kills him. And I believe that he will be in a mock resurrection and have it that a dead man inhabited by Satan himself. And we talked about that.Last week we talked about peace on the road, the millennium and what it is going to be like when Jesus rules in this world.And now we come to the fact of all human history, that all of human history has been pointing to, toward a day of reckoning, a day of judgment of all men.And someone will no doubt is going to say here tonight—and if you are our guest and if someone invited you to come—you maybe say, “Well, you know what, pastor? I don’t like the idea of a God of judgment.”Well, I want you to know, then, that there can be no God of love then. If you do not like the God that judges evil there cannot be a God of love who loves what is good. You can’t love life if you don’t loathe death. You can’t love flowers if you don’t despise the weeds. And you can’t love health if you don’t look at disease as an enemy.There is an up and there is a down. There is an in and there is an out. There is a forward, there is a backward. There is a right and there is a wrong. Opposites prove. Opposites tell us in common sense that God is going to judge and that he is a God of judgment as a God of love, not to mention how many hundreds of times in the Scriptures he has declared that he is going to judge this world and judge all of its inhabitants.“And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.”The Hindus and many of its spin off eastern cults will say that judgment is continual. Yes, there is judgment, but it is called reincarnation. And we need many lives to get it right. In fact, many are living lives and are suffering so much in the life that they are living because of a previous life and they just couldn’t get it right. Why, these poor children that are on the streets there of Calcutta and other places of the world that the rich and the upper class and the caste system can walk by, are only carrying out their karma. They are only carrying out what they should carry out because of what they did in the past lives. They are being punished. They may have been an animal, an elephant. They may have been a crocodile, a flea. They may have been who knows what? And because of that this judgment is continual.They think we need many lives to get it right. We live a while as a man, then an animal, then a flea, then a woman. Let me just stop and say one other thought. As I studied for these sermons that are coming up in the month of June I am not going to use this either, but I will throw it in here tonight. Reincarnation handles homosexuality in a very unique and interesting way. Lesbianism, homosexuality, you know how reincarnation answers that?Well, that’s easy to understand. In your past life if you are a woman, if you are a woman in your past life you were probably a man and the transition between the two, you are having hauntings from your past life and you can’t really decide what you are and how you should function. If you are a man in some life in the past you were probably a woman and as a woman and a man transitioning between the two, the hauntings and the echo of what your life was before is causing you trouble and you just can’t come to grips with what you are today. It is a punishment, they say, and you are going through it. Interesting.Then we go around again as an eagle and so on. We keep suffering for past mistakes until we finally get it right or at the end we end up being in the upper caste system in India and finally go to go on to what is called nirvana or, really, divine nothingness as they are absorbed into the great it, the great existence, the great source. And you just are absorbed and you cease to be. There is a great goal in life, just to really go toward nothingness. They believe this.It makes a nice fairy tale, has nothing to do with the truth. “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, once to die...” There is your answer to reincarnation. What does the Bible say? [?] how many times to die? Once to die and after this the judgment.Mankind is inextricably headed toward two things in that verse, death. It is an appointment that we all keep. Judgment, all will be judged.Now, lest you fear, those of you that known Jesus, there will be a judgment of believers and later a judgment of unbelievers. Believers to be judged about how they will be rewarded or how they will suffer loss for lives wasted, but not according to their position in the family of God or whether they are going to go to heaven. But unbelievers, not to see whether they are going to heaven or hell, but to understand and find out what their punishment will be like.Turn in your Bibles if you would to Revelation chapter 20. I am going to read one of the most awesome and most unbelievable and the most earth shaking passages of Scripture in the entire Bible as it describes the end of the road, Revelation chapter 20 and verse number 11. We read from chapter 20 down through verse number 10 last week and we talked about the thousand years. And this week we are going to talk about something else beginning at verse number 11. We are going to talk about the road ahead.Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades [or hell] were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.If you would like to underline that in your Bible it is very important.The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.Jump to chapter 21, if you would, and verse number 27. “[No] impure [thing] will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”These are some of the most awesome verses in the entire Bible. The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come and we have covered this. He is going to come for his children according to the Bible in the rapture. There will be a period of time on earth known as the great tribulation. The Lord Jesus will return once again to this earth with his own. There will be a great battle followed by a time of peace like the world has never seen, 1000 years.At the end of those 1000 years Satan is released for a short time. There is a, once again, the revelation of the evil heart of man as we talked about last week, men who have lived 1000 years under the righteous rule of Christ with hardly any disease, any sickness, no rationing, no lack of food, no lack of water, no lack of righteousness, no need for policemen in the streets, no need. I mean it is 1000 years of the most unbelievable peace that the world could ever imagine. But at the end of that time there will be those who during that time have decided they don’t like this strict ruler down in Jerusalem. They don’t like the way he handles things. Their freedom of expression has been totally curtailed. They can’t say what they think, do what they think. They have to just follow in line, follow after this righteous ruler. He is ruling with a rod of iron, you know. And so we have to do what he says.And at that time there will be one last battle. Because of the evil heart of man a usurper comes back up out of the abyss and says, “Hey, I know you don’t want to be told what to do. Follow me.” And great hordes of people, once again, turn to Satan. And then they gather for a quick and final battle where they are destroyed by the brightness of his coming. The sword goes out of his mouth.Then we find something else here. We find the end of the road. We find a judgment. We find this in Revelation chapter 20 verses 11 to 15.The first thing I want you to see tonight is I want to talk about these people that are going to be there as rejecters. Just write that word down. The rejecters’ reunion. I want you to see the rejecters’ reunion, the get together. Who are these rejecters?In Revelation chapter 20 there I am struck as I look at the verses and I see the repetition of death. Underline the words “dead” and “death” as we read.Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead [underline that], great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death [underline that] and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.No less than seven times: dead, dead, dead, death, dead, death and death. It sounds kind of morbid. It sounds kind of terminal. It is.Who are these rejecters? Who are these? Well, these are the dead. They are all the dead.“Now, be careful, pastor,” I am sure somebody is saying, “You know that you church people, you believers in all of this stuff, you die as well.”Well, yes we do die, but the death march of the believer is totally different than the death march of an unbeliever. We are all marching toward death. We were born on the road to death. Now we experience life. We get stronger. We look like we are going to make a stand, but as time goes by each and every one of us gets old because of sin that started in garden and we begin this death march. We all head toward death.But the death of a believer, the death of one that knows the Lord, the death of one that has Jesus Christ in his own heart as his personal Savior is totally different.Let me give you a few instances of why we know it is different. First of all his death is like sleep. Now you are not going to be able to keep up with me by turning in your Bibles, but you can write the references down. 1 Thessalonians chapter four and verse 13.Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.“Pastor Phil, do you believe in soul sleep?”No. I just believe that death is like sleep to when a believer goes off into the Lord’s presence. It is not some tragic... it is not some horror.I had a Christian not long ago said they just didn’t know what they were going to do and they didn’t know that they were going to handle it that God had been so cruel to them in taking their mother.“How old was your mother?”“Ninety-two.”Well, we are all headed toward death. And I want everybody to get it straight. God is not punishing anyone by allowing all of the natural things of life to happen and death is an appointment that we will keep, some younger, some older, but we will keep that appointment. But for a Christian, for those that truly know the Lord death is like sleep.His death, as well, is precious to God. The Bible says, write this passage, Psalm 116:15. It says, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”God looks down on the death of those saints as precious. He thinks of their life. He thinks of their pain. He thinks of what suffering their family might be going through. You remember what Jesus did. Jesus couldn’t even attend a funeral. You couldn’t have a funeral with Jesus present. If Jesus attended a funeral they had to break the thing up because he would just raise the dead person. He didn’t like death and he eliminates.And so death is that way. Death is just like a shuttle bus to go to glory for a believer.You see, Lazarus was taken by the angels to heaven and the shuttle bus drivers were angels. That’s the way it is.A believer never really dies, in fact. Listen to John 11:25. Write the reference down. “Jesus said too her,” speaking to Martha when her brother Lazarus had died. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”Get that. You are going to live even though you die.Now I want to say something to you tonight. Those of you that you feel the aches and pains of life. Things are getting more difficult. You are getting older. You know that you are nearer the gate than you were a few years ago. You have gone over the hump. You know that you have less time before you than you have behind you. I want to say something to you. “He that believes in me,” Jesus said, “will live even if he dies.”You are facing life. You are not facing death. You are facing eternity with him. You are not facing eternity without him. These are the great hopes of the faith. This is what we believe. This is what God’s Word says “And this is what he promised us—even eternal life.” 1 John 2:25. This is our hope is that as we near death, death is but a doorway. It is a shuttle bus to heaven and it is different for the believer and the believer never really dies. “And whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”He asked her. “Do you believe this?” You see that was the key. Martha, do you believe? Not: Martha, are you strong? Not: Martha, are you faithful? Not: Martha, do you attend church? Not: Martha, have you been baptized? Not: Martha, have you given to the church? Not: Martha, have you helped old people across the street?No, no, no. He said, “Martha, do you believe?”And I want to tell you tonight that the most important thing, the most important message that I could tell you or you could tell anyone. You should tell them that you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved. You must put your faith and trust in him. You must not come with works. You must not come with human efforts. You must not come with your own deeds. You come to the Lord and say, “Just as I am, worthless as I am. I believe that you died for me and that you are going to raise me from the dead because I put my faith in you. I believe.”And whoever believes on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. It is so clear. Luke 16:22. When Lazarus died he was carried by angels into Abraham’s side. Jesus said when he was contending with the Sadducees that he was not the God of the dead, but of the living. He is a living God of living people. He talked about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He said, “I am not a God over a grave yard. I am a God over living people.” And Jesus said, “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, those who have gone on centuries before. They are alive.”And I want you to know that that is what death is like for a believer. So belief in Jesus is a key to a life that never runs out. How precious.But the dead, oh, these are the ones standing here in this place. These are the dead. So the death march for the believer can indeed be a blessing, but the horrible experience of a person who dies outside the Lord Jesus, oh it cannot be described with words.I read the story of Voltaire who declared in his lifetime that he would stamp out the use of the Bible in Europe and he was going to start it in France. Today they print Bibles in the house where he lived. Voltaire, the infidel when he came to die, he died with such shrieks and blasphemies that the nurses who attended him ran in horror from his room and he died screeching and screaming. He went out into eternity. That doesn’t sound like falling on sleep. It doesn’t sound like taking the shuttle bus to heaven. This is what happened when Voltaire... And I could go on with so many stories. The dead.These are the dead. They end up here. These are the dead, small and great.You say, “What does that mean, pastor? I see that in the verse.”We know from other verses in the Bible that this will be the unsaved dead. There is going to be a resurrection of unsaved people. All of the unsaved people are going to be resurrected. Naked bodies will be reunited with naked souls. The unsaved small are going to be, the hard hearted, the world pleasers. When it says the small and great I don’t know exactly what that means, but I have many, many things that I could share. The hard hearted people, those whose hearts were hard and they didn’t want to receive the Word of God, the world pleasers, those that were more interested in pleasing the crowd than listening to the Lord. The materialists, those more in love with the things around them than the things that are above, those that were just going on about their business of living on the road of life as if it would go on forever.Who are these small people? 2 Peter talks about them. It says that there is a group that said, “Where is the promise of his coming? Everything continues as it always has.” They said a bird in the hand is much better than two in the bush. They said they thought they had had their pie here on the ground while they are still around and not wait for the pie in the sky for when they die. They just said, “We’ll just take it now.” And these are the people who were living in the world.They may not be mean people. They may not be hateful people. They may not be murderous people or thieves or God haters. They are just unconcerned and they are hooked by this world. They are the small.Then there are the unsaved great. Who are these people? These are those who sinned in horrible, grotesque ways. These are those that made a profession of it and led others to do so like Ahab who led Israel for the first time into Baal worship, like Jeroboam I who caused Israel to sin and he set up calves to represent God and he got their hearts away from the true and living God, like Manasseh who led all of Israel there outside of Jerusalem especially in the valley of Hinnom there as he led them to set up a great god called Molech, the despicable god of Ammon that this great molten God that was a great round figure and sat on hinges and they would heat him up to an unbelievable temperature and bring their little children and throw their children. And the drums would beat and their screams would go up and they would throw their children and pray back that great god Molech and they would fall down into the fire. These are the great sinners like Hitler that killed 50 million people, like Stalin who did away with half of an entire nation, the men of his nation, like 1000 rock stars that sell their souls to the devil to get rich in return for leading a parade of young people to hell, like the world wide affliction of drug producers and dealers and rat slingers that glorify the whole drug culture.You say, “Pastor, you are coming down.”I am telling you that the sinners small and great are going to be there and the books are going to be opened. It is going to happen like that. The great will be there. They will always be there. There will be no blasphemy in that day. There is not going to be any unbelief. They will all know who Jesus is. There will be no doubters. Everyone will be a believer that day. There won’t be any bragging about the fact that there is no God. You won’t hear any of them say that there is not going to be any judgment. You are not going to hear any one of them say that there is no hell. You are not going to hear any of them sing and imagine if there is no heaven, imagine if there is no hell. No, they are not going to be singing that at that time.And all through the millennium the heavenly Father has been holding back his wrath and now he is holding forth his mercy even in the moment that we are living, living in a day of grace where he extends forth his mercy. But the day of wrath and judgment will come and this is that day.“So where is this judgment, pastor?”Well, it is before a great white throne. Verse 11. What a chilling scene. Let me read it to you. “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.” What a chilling scene.A great white throne. It is great because it is world wide in scope. It envelopes all sinners. It is called because it represents the awesome purity and holiness of the one that sits there and of the judgment that is going to go forth. And it is a place of judgment.And somebody is going to ask, “Well, pastor, is that God the Father that is sitting on the throne that is meting out judgment?”Absolutely not. It is Jesus Christ.“You mean Jesus the kind, the lowly, the meek, the one who is the friend of sinners, the one who for sinners was slain? You mean he is going to judge? Why I thought Jesus was so full of love.”You know he came meek like a lamb the first time. He is coming powerful like a lion the second time. Make sure that you understand that he is the lion of the tribe of Judah and he is going to come back in power and great splendor. Praise God that Jesus is the one that is going to be judged.You say, “Pastor, how do you know that?”Listen to John five and verse 21. Listen of you would.For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no-one.Listen to God’s Word. “The Father judges no-one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son.”You see, the one that took the whippings, the one that took the nailings, the one that took all of the mockery and blasphemy, the one that took all of the hatred of mankind, the one who became sin so that we could become the righteousness of God. He is the one that is going to judge. He is the one. Jesus will judge the world.One of the great passages of Scripture that you may have never thought of that talks about this Acts 17 and verse 30. It says:In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.And who is this man he has appointed? He who he has appointed is Jesus Christ his own Son and the assurance of justice, the assurance of judgment in this world is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You can’t have a dead judge sitting on the throne. No. He is alive. God raised his Son Jesus from the dead and Jesus himself, the Bible says, will judge this world in righteousness. And those who stand at the great white throne judgment will recognize him immediately.In fact, when Jesus comes back at the end of the tribulation period, before they begin the millennium, when he comes back with the clouds with great splendor, the Bible says every eye is going to see him right then. It says that everyone is going to see him and they are going to know who he is. They are going to recognize him whom they have pierced.Well, it is going to even be more obvious at this great white throne as they stand before him. They will recognize him. They will immediately know that he is the Lord Jesus. What a wonderful sight for believers to see the face of the Lord. How glorious it will be when you and I look at him.How many of you saw the passion? I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to bow before his face and thank him. I can’t wait to kiss those feet that were driven with the nails. I can’t wait to touch his side. I cant’ wait to tell him I love him. I can’t wait to look in those eyes of mercy.But I want you to know that is not the face that you are going to see. What a glorious thing to look in the face of Jesus for a believer. But it is going to be an altogether different thing on this day when the unsaved stand before him. They will be terrified by that face. They will stand there and see the face, the awesome face of Jesus Christ with eyes like flames of fire. His entire being is burning as a fire inapproacble and they are going stand before him.The wicked dead will know Jesus because of the Calvary cuts on his body. I think they will think about all the times they blasphemed his name. Maybe they will think about those times that they laughed and scorned and mocked the name of Jesus by using his name as a byword or to emphasize a thought.Have you ever seen a time when they took Jesus Christ as a byword or a curse word like they do today? They use his name as if it were some sort of curse word.They are going to think about those things. They will no doubt remember every gospel tract that they ignored. They will remember every witness that they scorned and they will think about every Christian that they belittled and they will think about every opportunity to come to Christ that they spurned.Look at that passage of Scripture in verse 11. It says the earth and sky fled from his presence, no place for them to turn, no place for them to hide, nothing to get behind.Take your Bibles and turn back to Revelation chapter six if you would, Revelation chapter six verse 15. We read this last week. This is at his coming. This is when he is coming to judge this world and this world’s system. It says, “Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave...”You say, “Wait a minute. How many judgments are there?”Well, this is a judgment on the entire world itself, the cosmos, the way things are, the way things work, the way people are, the way this system of hate and rape. This is the judgment on this world.“And every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains.”Man may not have come out of a cave, but he is going back to a cave and everybody is going to become religious. They wouldn’t worship Jesus, but they will worship and pray to the rocks to fall on them.They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"Well, they will be standing in Revelation chapter 20 verse 11. Oh, yes. They are going to be suspended there some kind of way between who knows what out in the middle of nowhere where God sets his judgment. There is nowhere to hide. There is no sky. There is no cloud to get behind. There is no bush. There is no cave. There is not anywhere to hide, nothing but to stand before this awesome sight of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords sitting on the throne and sitting in justice, sitting in judgment.There, face to face with the Lord what a day that will be.Who are these rejecters? Who are these people? 2 Thessalonians chapter two and verse 10 says they perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. They just simply reject it, the truth.Now I want you to look at something else in here. I want you to look at the rejecter’s record. What is his record? You remember I started by talking about how they were keeping records on me when I was in the first grade. Well, I want you to know God is keeping records and he has been keeping records all the way through time. There is this idea of books that we see here. The passage says the books were opened. Later it says the dead were judged out of the books. God is keeping books.You say, “Pastor, what kind of books is God keeping?”Well, for everyone he is keeping the book of your life. Psalm 139 verse 15 and 16:My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.Why there is the book of your life. God knows all about you. He has been writing all the time. Proverbs says the hand of the Lord writeth all the time. Proverbs 15:3 says, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro in the whole earth.” God is everywhere. He sees everything we do.There is the book of your life and then there is the book of remembrance. Oh, Christian. Believer here tonight, I want you to know that those hours of difficulty and hardship and heartache that you have had, when you have gone through long nights at hospitals, where you have stood by graves, God is watching.A book of remembrance, Malachi chapter three and verse 16. “Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard.” Oh, listen. You want to get a smile. You want to get God’s attention? Have a small group in your home and talk with each other about the Lord. He loves that. You want to get God’s attention? Then go to work and when it is break time find yourself a table. Get out a New Testament and read it and talk about God’s Word and share your love for the Lord with one another because God loves it when his people talk about him. He loves that.Look at what it says.Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honoured his name. "They will be mine," says the LORD Almighty, "in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.His precious possession. God loves it and he writes a book of remembrance about you. Psalm 56:8 says, “Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll— are they not in your record?”And all of the tears and all of the heartache and all of the difficulty and all of the problems and everything you have been through have not been gone through alone in the first place and, second, they have not gone through without notice. They have not gone through without God watching. Whatever trial, whatever temptation, whatever struggle, he has written it down in his book.In another translation it says, “Are not all of your tears in a bottle or [?]” which is a flask. It was a flask for perfume. A [?] was a perfume flask. And so all of his tears that fell out, he captured them in a bottle and he thought they were your... He... For him they were perfume.Whenever you were weeping, whenever you were calling out to him your prayers are that way. The Bible says in Revelation that your prayers are like incense when you call out to him in anguish of heart. And the Bible says he is near to that person who is contrite. He is near to that person who is of a broken heart.And so when we weep and when we cry and we go through the gristmill of life he is there. He writes it down. There is a book of remembrance.Then there is something else. And, oh, this is so heavy. There is a book of your works. For the Christian Romans 14:12 and 2 Corinthians 5:10 tell us that every one of us will give an account of himself to God for the deeds done in the body whether good or evil. That is going to happen for the Christian.But then it goes on. We will have to understand that in the passage here in verse 12 it is no longer talking about Christians. “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.” Drop down. “The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”Every idle word and every idle thought and every idle deed. And here we are told that that day books are going to be open and everyone is going to be judged according to their works. Salvation is according to faith, but judgment is according to works. You understand that. No one in this auditorium tonight that claims the name of Jesus, that has put their faith and trust in Jesus, none of you are going to be judged according to your works for salvation. But these people are going to be judged according to their works for punishment.Judgment will be according to works. Everything a person has ever done will come up on the day of judgment. Memories will come alive in those days. Long forgotten sins you will remember in that day. Things you did in school will come up in memory in that day. Things you did on the job that were wrong will come up in that day. Things you did at home, things you did that no one knew, all the secret things are going to come up.Ecclesiastes 12 says, “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”The Bible says in Romans 2:16 that, “This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ,” Paul speaking, “as my gospel declares.”Think about it. Things that went on in the back seat of cars, things that went on at drive ins. They are going to be revealed at that day.You say, “Nobody saw me do that.”Oh, you have got to be kidding. God saw everything. And he recorded it in his books, things you did on a business trip your wife never knew about it. It is going to be revealed on that day. The Bible says all things are naked and open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do. It will all come out in those days. God is keeping a record. It is all in the books. And you know how much can be stored on one little three and a half inch floppy disk, the amount of information, how many one liners of your life can be stored there.You say, “Has God got some big computer?”Yes, it is called your brain. And God is going to push the buttons on your brain and on your life and on your memory that you never even knew that you had and all the sudden every single thought, every idle word, every deed is going to play before you as if you were seeing it on a DVD large screen down at some theater.Imagine when God taps your mind for the memories.You say, “Oh, pastor. Is that going to happen to me?”Are you a believer in Jesus Christ? Isn’t it a wonderful thing to know that if you put your faith and trust in Jesus he just turn that part of the mechanism off. He is never going to bring that up for accusation for you. He is never going to say to those things that you have confessed and he has forgiven, for those of us that know the Lord Jesus as our Lord and Savior we are not even going to be standing here in this judgment, much less be up to have the whole world see all those things that we have done.Oh praise God for his forgiveness.And then there is another book. Well, this book is called the book of life. This is the one. This is the big book, the book of life. It says in verse 15, “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”“Pastor, do you believe in a literal hell?”Yes. I do.You say, “Pastor, why do you believe in a literal hell?”Because I believe in a literal heaven and I believe in literal water and literal sand and literal earth and literal food and literal words. And I believe in literal life and literal everlasting life. I believe when God speaks in common sense we ought not to seek any other sense. Anything else is nonsense and God says there is a lake that is made of fire.“Well, that just doesn’t enter into our 21st century thinking.”It doesn’t matter. God was along before the centuries... was here before the centuries began and what he says is true and all of what science says, falsely so called, is going to fall like so much ash on a windy day whenever God sets the record straight.The Bible says they are going to be thrown into the lake of fire.21:27. This book is called the Lamb’s book of life. It is the record of every person who has received the Lord Jesus as their personal Savior. If you have received the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior then your name is in this book. That is why we know that at the great white throne judgment there will be no saved people there because no one who is at the great white throne judgment has their name in the book. It will be all lost people.It says their name is not going to be written in that book until all the evidence is in, every work that they have ever done to determine what degree or how horrible the punishment, but I want to tell you that I wouldn’t make reservations in any portion of hell. I wouldn’t make reservations in any portion of the desert. And I certainly would make no reservations in any portion of hell.The evidence is in.You say, “Pastor, how do you get your name in this Lamb’s book of life? And how can you get rid of all that evidence against you?”The Bible says in 1 John 1:7, very simple that the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.You say, “You guys preach about death. You preach about hell or about heaven and love. You preach about a bloody gospel. You preach about blood and about crucifixion and about all the... and about how somebody had to die for my sin. Well, I just don’t like that bloody gospel. We need something that is just a little more palatable for the 21st century mind.”What the 21st century mind needs is a bended knee and a humble heart to fall down before the Lord and recognize that we are sinners and nothing but the blood of Jesus washes away our sins. Jesus can wash our sins away.Then I want you to see, finally, the rejection of these rejecters. Jews and Gentiles made sport of rejecting Christ while he was here on earth and now 20 centuries of rejecters have lived and died. It is sentence time. It is time for a verdict to come in. It is time for the day of judgment to come to its climax.What is the verdict going to be? The dead of the past and the present, they have resurrected.You say, “Pastor, you mean all of those that have already died and gone off into suffering are actually going to be brought...?”Oh, yes. How horrible will that be? They have been in this place of suffering who knows how long. Some for centuries, some for decades, some for moments. But they are drawn right back up out and put in some sort of a body, stood before the Lord there to hear him say, “Your name is not in the book. That was just a taste of what is to come. Depart from me. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”How horrible.The dead of the past, present, the recent dead are present. They appear to hear the sentence. And the Bible says that the Lord Jesus says in that day, “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity into fire prepared for devil and his angels.”You know, we are living in a day of grace today. The great word of our day, this word of grace is wrapped up in these little words where Jesus says, “Come to me.”But in that day the three little words are going to be, “Depart from me.”Now he is saying, “Come to me.” But people get so excited about the world we are living in and thinking, “If I come to Jesus I may lose out. I may lose a little popularity in this world. If I come to him I may not be able to climb the corporate ladder as quickly because I will have to be honest and upright in all of my dealings. If I come to him and I am going to be just as Joe religious, I will be down at that church all the time. If I come to him they are going to want some of my money.”And we start thinking about what it is going to cost us, but we are missing the whole point.If we don’t come to him now we are going to hear him say, “Depart from me,” then. “Come to me,” or “Depart from me.” Those are the only two options that there are. Right now he is not saying, “Depart from me,” to anyone. He is saying, “Come.”“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.“All that the Father has given to me will come to me and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” I won’t put them away.“Verily, verily, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, will have everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation.”And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.He says, “Come.” He wraps up the Bible saying, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’” and “And whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely.”You see, this I the day of, “Come.” But when we get to the end of the road it is going to be the day of, “Depart.” Come or depart. It makes you want to wonder whether you have been playing church, doesn’t it? It makes you wonder whether this whole church experience is about a refuge from the storm for you. It is a nice place for you to rear your children. It is a good place to get away from all those evil people out there. But coming to Jesus? I mean giving him total care and control of your life and saying, “Lord, here am I. Save me, Use me, fill me, make me... Oh, I don’t want that kind of salvation.”It makes you wonder, doesn’t it.How about your Christian—quote, unquote—experience? How about it? Are you going to stand before him and here him say, “His name is written or his name is not written”? Are you going to hear him say, “Depart”?Everyone that is at this place is going to depart.Now there is going to be some people absent on that day.“Pastor, will all the murderers be there at the great white throne?”Oh, no. They won’t all be there. The apostle Paul was a murderer. He murdered and he consented to the death of Stephen, this great deacon.You say, “Pastor, why won’t Paul be there since he was a murderer?”He settled his case out of court. Think about it.“Pastor, will all the adulterers be there, the whoremongers and the prostitutes? Will all the pornographers be there? Will all the liars be there? Will all the people who have lived their despicable lives, are they going to be there?”Oh, no. No. They are not all going to be there. Remember the woman that was taken in adultery and Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are your accusers? Has no man condemned thee?”And she said, “No man, Lord.”And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.”She settled her case out of court.You see, that is what we have here in Revelation chapter 20 verse 11 to 15. You have got the final court with the final judge and the final judgment coming now. You have got people standing. Nobody sits. Stand there.Do you think people are going to answer back, make excuses? Oh, no. The Bible says they will be without excuse. It will not open. In fact, they are going to agree with the verdict and say, “Your verdict is right. Your verdict is just.”In their heart they will know that they have received justice and will say, “Amen,” to the verdict.There are going to be people left.You know, I really deserve, personally, to go to the great white throne judgment and to hear him say, “Depart.” But I am not going to be there.”You say, “Why, pastor?”Because I settled my case out of court when I was 12 years old. I came to the Lord Jesus and I said, “Jesus, I am a sinner. Oh, I am a good little sinner. I am a church going sinner. I am a memory verse winning sinner. I am a Bible toting sinner. I am a church member sinner, but I am a proud sinner and I am on my road to hell and I know that I don’t deserve the minimal part of your grace and your mercy. Save me.”I was just 12. And he saved me.Do you know what I did? I settled my case out of court.Who settled it for me? Jesus. That old account was settled long ago on a cross called Calvary. Jesus died for me.You know, the Bible says in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation, no judgment, to them that are in Christ Jesus.” And I want to say to you tonight that I do not want a fair trial. What I want is what I got, a free pardon. If you are here tonight and you don’t want a fair trial before God in heaven because a fair trial is going to send you to that lake of fire, that eternal place of judgment where you will never get out, what you want is a free pardon.You say, “How do I get it?”Come. Jesus says, “Come to me. Come to me and I will never turn you away.”Today he says come. But, my friend, if you wait, he will say, “Depart.”What are you going to say if you stand before God at the great white throne? Nothing. The Bible says every mouth will be stopped and all the world will be guilty before God. You will say, “Amen” to your own condemnation. You will have to say that God is just. God is right and that I deserve everything I am given.I have heard this in my life. Some who boast and think that it is just not all true say, “Heaven is for climbing and hell is for company.” Some might say that, but think about the company that will be there.In chapter 20 and verse 10 the Bible says, “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” There is some of the compadres. There’s some of the fellow sufferers: the devil, the beast, the false prophet.Look at chapter 21 and verse number eight if you would, please, to find out about the company in hell. The Bible says there in chapter 21 and verse eight, “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.”But tonight and the message you can carry to anyone that will listen is you can receive 100% free pardon from the Lord Jesus Christ if you come to him, a sinner in humility and say, “I am a sinner. I don’t deserve any of your forgiveness or grace, but I come on the basis of your invitation to come, I come and I receive you as my personal Lord and Savior.”“All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”Acts 16:31. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”You say, “Pastor, what are you trying to do tonight? Who are you? What is this all about?”I want to personalize this verse, 2 Corinthians chapter five and verse 20. And I want to say, “I am therefore Christ’s ambassador as though God were making his appeal through me. I implore you on Christ’s behalf. Be reconciled to God. God made him, Jesus, who had no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?I want to make two appeals tonight. There are two appeals that I want to make. I want to appeal to you to search your heart and examine yourself to see if you be in the faith, to examine your own heart and find out whether this is churchianity or whether you know Christ, whether it is a game you have played or whether you have put your faith and trust in him. And honestly said, “I am coming to you Jesus, complete, lock, stock and barrel.”Are you here tonight and if your life were to be snuffed out by a tornado, a car wreck, some ailment, heart failure and you were to go off into eternity to only await this day of judgment, are you positive that your name is in the book of life?If it is not in the book of life you are going to hear three dreadful words. “Depart from me.” And angels will carry you bound and throw you into a lake of fire that burns forever.You say, “Pastor, are you trying to scare me into salvation?”If I thought I could, I would. But I implore you. I beg you. I come up to you now and I plead with you as an ambassador for Christ carrying the message of hope to tell you tonight, “Put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior because there is judgment at the end of the road.”If you are here and you are like that tonight and you say, “Pastor, I need just what you said, I am going to put pride aside, I am going to put all of that stuff aside. I am going to put pride of face, race, place or grace, I am going to put all that aside and I am going to say right now, I need to have Jesus save me and give me eternal life and forgiveness of sins. Pastor, pray for me that I would have the courage to do that now.” If you are here and like that, just raise your hand up. Are you here and like that? “I need to be saved.”I am not going to embarrass you. I am not going to come back to you. All right. You need to pray this prayer. And here is the prayer you pray.Dear Jesus, I am a sinner. I come to you. You have invited me to come and I have come. I believe I am condemned for my sins. I ask you to forgive me for my sin and come into my heart. Wash my sins away. Make me part of your family. Take me to heaven when I die. I believe you died and that you were buried and that you rose again. Today I give you total care and control of my life. Amen.With your heads bowed and eyes closed if you prayed that prayer I want to encourage you to not dare leave this place until you go by where pastor Dan is going to be standing by a table back there that says, “Getting Started with God.” Pick up a package. Leave your name there so that we can rejoice with you and pray with you.Now there is another group I want to address. You are a Christian. And no matter how interesting and exciting all of this study is about things to come, I want to say to you as a Christian these things... We may not see the rapture in our lifetime. I believe we will. We may not see all of these other things. But I will tell you one thing that is absolutely certain for every person in this room. We are going to give an account of ourselves to God for the deeds done in our body good and evil. We are going to give an account of our time, talent, treasure. We are going to give an account of the way we expended what God put in us in time, talent and treasure. He made us witnesses of his grace because he saved us.My question for you is: Is it important to you that your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors and family, is it important to you that they miss this lake of eternal burning? Is it important to you?You know, we get lulled to sleep, my fellow Christians, we get lulled into cars and houses and lands and golf courses and ball games and ballet recitals and church work. We just get lulled to sleep.But you were made for a mission. Are you listening? You and I were made for a mission. Part of that mission with tears in our eyes and compassion in our heart is to share with those we know.You say, “Well, I am not a missionary. I don’t live in Africa.”No, but he is certainly watching where you do live and the people that you do know. I am going to pray for holy boldness from God in your heart. I am going to pray now that God would give you holy boldness, encouraging boldness so that you would without shame of face would begin even more—many of you do—but even more to share the good news of the gospel to those that are around us.The time is short. John said that when the book was written. Time is short.Are you a Christian? You know in your heart, you know in your heart that you begin to living at ease in Zion, living at ease in this nation of plenty while our friends and neighbors, our loved ones, coworkers and schoolmates are headed on the broad road of destruction. Will you share with them? Will you tell them? We can preach the truth to them. Will you give a witness? Stand and say to them, “Here is what Jesus is to me.”Will you do it?You say, “Pastor, are you church building right now?”No. I’m kingdom building right now. I am talking to you about getting the good news of the gospel out so that your friend, loved one does not have to go to hell.If you are here tonight and you say, “Pastor, oh, you are preaching to me tonight. It hits me home. It hits home with me. You threw the stone and I am yelping because I know that I need to use my opportunities better. Pastor, pray for me. Pray for me tonight.”Would you raise your hand? Just raise it. Pray for me. Pray tonight.Oh Father, help us to be faithful. Help us to be faithful in giving out your Word. Jesus, we look forward so much to seeing your face, to kissing your hands and feet, to hearing you tell of how you purchased salvation for all of men, for all of time, for those that believe. Father, thank you for sending your Son. Thank you for loving us in spite of our unloveliness. Bless us now tonight and let us go forth from this place like an entire army to spread the good news of the gospel. With heads bowed and eyes closed before we go if you said, “Pastor, I prayed that earlier prayer, I asked Jesus into my heart and I am so happy that I did that. I just want you to pray for me that I will begin to know him better, to grow. Pastor, pray for me,” just put your hand up. I won’t embarrass you or come to you. Just put your hand up. Is there one? Is there one?Our Father, thank you for this time together. Bless us as we go out now like an entire army of believers. Oh, what 300 or 400 people can do in the city of Des Moines if we went out with our hearts on fire with the truth of the gospel, full of your love and full of the truth. Help us, now. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.Hebrews 9:27-28Hebrews 9:27Hebrews 9:27 (KJV)See Hebrews 9:27Hebrews 9:27See Hebrews 9:27Revelation 20:11-14Revelation 20:14-15Revelation 21:27Revelation 20:11-141 Thessalonians 4:13-14Psalm 116:15John 11:25Ibid.See John 11:251 John 2:25See John 11:25John 11:26See 2 Peter 3:4Revelation 20:11John 5:21-22John 5:22Acts 17:30-31Revelation 6:15Ibid.Revelation 6:16-17Psalm 139:15-16See Proverbs 15:3Malachi 3:16Malachi 3:16-18Psalm 56:8Revelation 20:12Ibid.Ecclesiastes 12:14Romans 2:16Ibid.Revelation 20:15See 1 John 1:7See Matthew 7:23Matthew 11:28See John 6:37See John 5:241 John 5:11-12Revelation 22:17See Revelation 22:17See John 8:10See John 8:11John 8:11See Romans 8:1Revelation 20:10Revelation 21:8John 6:37Acts 16:31See 2 Corinthians 5:20-21Page PAGE 1 of NUMPAGES 26
Peace on the Road
Peace on the Road
By Phil Winfield
Bible Text: Revelation 3:10, Isaiah 9:6-7
Preached on: Sunday, May 9, 2004
Grace Church of Des Moines, IA
4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317
Website: http://www.gracehome.com
Online Sermons: http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com
You have your Bibles open to Revelation chapter three and verse 10. Let me just read that verse we kicked off with last week. “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth.”We began this lesson last Sunday night and was not able to finish it and we are going to pick up where we left off, but we told you to underline that little phrase where it says, “Those who live on the earth” or the earth dwellers, those people who live in this world.And just this week talking about sign posts on the road, talking about the road ahead it was interesting. I don’t know how many of you either saw it on the internet or read it in the newspaper about those 10 new nations that joined the European Union, all of those 10 real small, Lithuania and all those nations. How many of you read that article in the paper? Did you see that? Did you? That is very interesting.Somebody is going to say, “Well, pastor, if 10 nations joined, how many are in there?”Well, there’s a lot of nations that are in there and those 10 nations that joined were all one block nation at the time of the writing of the book of the Revelation. And when we talk about those 10 horns or those 10 powers that are going to be present during the time of tribulation or during the time of the antichrist, when we talk about those 10 we are talking about the 10 nations that will be the revived Roman Empire, those 10 that were in existence at the time of this writing. There may be 20, 30, 40. It doesn’t make any difference at our time because when we get to that time it is going to refer to the same areas, the same ancient nations that were alive and well at the time of the Roman Empire.And so I thought that was very interesting that they were meeting in Belfast, Northern Ireland and that there was a president of the European Union, the nations that make up the European Union that was... He was taking care of and he was the moderator for all that was going on and they called him the president. Well, I really zeroed in on that and read it very carefully.Evidently they already have a president of the European Union or the European Common Market. They already have a president, but he only serves for one year. And so in order to just spread around this dignified position of being president of the European Market they change it every year and so this year it happens to be Belfast and the person is someone from Ireland. Next year it could be from Holland. The next year it could be from who knows, who knows where, France, some other place. And they keep moving it around.But they already have the apparatus in place for there to be a one world government, for there to be a government there in that area of the world and the person will be called, I’m sure, he is going to be elected as president of that European Union and then from that position he will launch is world domination.We talked about the fact that on the road ahead there is living on the road ahead is going to be very, very difficult. There is something other than an earth only option for people. We have already talked about vanishing from the road, being raptured by the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ or the voice of the archangel, the trumpet of God, the shout of Jesus, those that know the Lord rising up to meet him in the air. We saw that in 1 Thessalonians chapter four, 2 Thessalonians chapter two. We talked about that and other places that we talked about.Last week we talked about the fact that the world was going to be in tremendous desperation and terrible tribulation and under total condemnation and I want to pick up where we left off. We talked about the tremendous desperation and now, then, I want to talk about the fact that we are going... that the world... that everyone is going to find themselves in terrible tribulation. We talked about the one world ruler, the one world government and its ruler the antichrist that takes all sorts of steps to fill the void of leadership in the world that is going to be created by the absence of so many Christians whenever the rapture and that he is going to be a diplomat. He is going to be charismatic, an autocrat, a despotic and finally psychotically demonic leader that is going to lead the world.The world... the people that are living on the road, they were happy that all of the Christians exited the world. They are going to be excited about it. We have finally thrown off all their rules, all their regulations. We have gotten rid of them and now we are going to do what we want to do.Well, the traded the rule of God and the rule of reason for the rule of a tyrant and they thought they were going to throw off restraint, but now they are under the authority of a satanically controlled maniac.Matthew 24:21. “For then there will be great distress [or tribulation], unequalled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.”The Bible predicts there are going to be a period of time on earth, brief, but intense. It will be a time of tribulation and it is going to be an awful existence for those that have chosen this world. We have already talked about the fact that the antichrist will rule politically. He is going to rule economically. He is going to rule religiously. I emphasized that with these verses in Revelation 13:4. “Men worshipped the dragon.” Revelation 13:9. They worshipped the beast. Revelation 13:11. They worshipped the beast whose fatal wound was healed. Revelation 13:15. They worshipped the image of the beast. If they didn’t they were killed. And it is all about the devil’s insatiable desire to be worshipped as God.And this does not start in the period of the tribulation. This doesn’t just begin. This has been Satan’s desire ever since day one when he wasn’t called Satan. He was called Lucifer. He was the bright one, the shining one. He was the prince of the morning. He was the chief musician of heaven and Lucifer means luminary. He was the light of that place and he became so desirous, he became so enamored with himself that he desired the very position of God and he tried to take it over.He said, “I am going to take God’s place.”And God said, “No, you won’t.”Now in chapter... In verse nine of chapter 14 which is where we left off last week. I want you to jump over there and I want you to see something very, very important, Revelation chapter 14 and verse nine. This is very, very important.A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name." This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.Notice that it says in chapter 13 it went on and on about the demand to worship. If you are going to live in this world you are going to have to worship the beast. If you are going to remain on this road you are going to keep following this path, if you put all your eggs in this world, if Jesus comes and takes away his children and if they go off into eternity for a period where there is going to be a period of judgment called the bema seat and also the marriage supper of the lamb and while they are gone if a person chooses to be in this world, then they are going to be forced to take the economic program, the political program and the religious program of the beast. And the beast or the antichrist is going to desire worship. Worship me. Worship me politically, worship me economically and worship me religiously. I am your God.Make no mistake about it. Any religion will be fine as long as you give ultimate authority to the beast, to this one.But the Bible says here in chapter 14 there at verse number nine that that is the fatal mistake, that anyone that receives this mark, if they receive it, then they have just condemned themselves.Since I have started this series, I have had conversations with many of you. And many of you have said, “Well, what if somebody took that thing unwillingly? What if somebody... What if they do come up with this microchip thing that you are talking about or some other away and they just start injecting people with these microchips and they just do it indiscriminately whether you want...how about when they are born? A child is born.No. That is very important that you understand that word “receive” there in verse number nine. You just key in on that word. The word “receive” speaks of an attitude. It means to rush forward and take the mark. It means to be the first to be in line. It means to be desirous of taking the mark.Well, somebody would say, “Well, man, when this thing all starts unfolding and it becomes obvious that you have got a person that wants to be the single ruler of the world, why in the world would they ever line up to take the mark? Why would they want to do that? Why wouldn’t they rebel when they understand that?”Well, it is very simple. It is because of the money. I said this at the end last week, that it is all about the economy just like a former president said, “It is the economy, stupid.” And at that period of time that is exactly the reason that people are going to make this choice. It is about the money. Many of the people, many of those that are alive at that time are going to be into money just like people that are alive right now. The true God, the true worship is toward money itself and the power and the prosperity and the acquiring power that one gets if he is able to wield great amounts of money.The day and age of which we live in there are many, many people that are willing to sacrifice anything in order to acquire, in order to get more, in order to just be able to have more at their disposal. Well, it is going to be exactly the same way during the tribulation.People are going to say, “Well, if that is the economy, if that is the way things work, just show me the ground rules and if that is the ground rules, then just tell me where to sign. Where do I get that mark? Show me where to get it?”And they are going to line up because their real god is money. It is no mistake that Jesus said in the New Testament that you cannot serve God and what? Money, because I want to tell you that the greatest god in the world today, the greatest god—unknowingly they are worshipping Satan—but the greatest god in this world is the god of acquisition. It is the ability to buy. It is reduced to money.And I said this at the end. Maybe you weren’t here last week. Woe be unto the Christian that makes all of his decisions, whether they are political, whether they are locational, whether they are relational, you make your decisions on the basis of money. If you make your decisions on the basis of a raise or able to continue to climb some corporate ladder, you are falling into the exact same thing that is going to motivate people to follow the beast during the time of the tribulation.There are more important things in this world than how much money a person can make and the ability to acquire.You say, “Do you hate money?”No. I don’t hate money, but I tell you one thing. I don’t want to worship money and let money become what motivates me more than anything else.Now I want you to know that in the United States of America today the number one political... the number one political consideration in our country is not the issue of abortion, it is not the issue of same sex marriage, it is not the issue of external influences on America, internal corruption. Those are not the issues that are motivating people to vote in this day and age. Coming up this November when we are going to be voting for president, people... the majority, not all, but the majority of Americans are going to vote themselves, they are going to vote according to their pocketbook. They are going to vote according to what looks like it is going to come out best for them.Why? Because money is everything.“Amen, pastor Phil. You are telling the truth.”Are you listening tonight? I am talking to Christians tonight who make decisions based on increase.You say, “Should I never take a raise? Should I never move from one...”I am never going to say that. But I am going to say if you take... If you do what you do based only and solely on increase, you take your family away from a good place, a good church, good schools, good neighborhoods, good... You take them away. Move... You know, Lot made the same kind of decision.Do you remember Lot? Do you remember Lot? What did Lot do? Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom. He moved closer and closer and before you knew it he was living right in Sodom. He wanted influence in Sodom. He wanted power in Sodom. He wanted money in Sodom and he sacrificed his wife and his children. In order to have influence in Sodom, he gave up influence in his own family.Be careful. Be very, very careful as a Christian not to fall into the same mentality, even before the tribulation period and I am afraid that it has infected Christianity just like it has infected the rest of the world. These things we are... As we look at this we are only scratching the surface of all the things that are going to go on during the tribulation period. This is the time of Jacob’s trouble. It is the 70th week of Daniel’s prophecy.And, but I want to give you a further glimpse tonight of what it will be like to live on the road and I mentioned it just as we got... Just all I did was just mention the phrase, the fact that there are going to be horses on the road down the road ahead for those that decide to stay in this world and I want us to look at that, so turn in your Bibles to Revelation chapter six. I have heard so many sermons on this passage and I have read so many books. There is so much allegory out there and people try to say, “Well, you know, we don’t know exactly what is going to happen, but it does look bad. Maybe it has already happened. Maybe it is in the past. Maybe it is in the future.”I want to tell you that Revelation chapter one says that he was revealing to John the things that had to come shortly. They were in the future, things that had to happen. They have not happened as of that time. And as we look at the world and we look at history we know that not all of these things have happened yet.I want you to look at chapter six of Revelation. Let me read for you verses one and two. It says, “I watched as the Lamb...” talking about Jesus, “...opened the first of the seven seals.”I had better describe and better explain that word seven seals. You see, there was a scroll that was in the hand of one that stood before he that was sitting on the throne. This is back in chapters four and five. There was a scroll that was sealed with seven seals or it was tied up seven times. And these seals were on the scroll and inside the scroll were the final judgments, the judgments of God on this world. And so this angel stood there and cried with a loud voice and said, “Who is worthy to open the book or to loose the seals of this scroll and to loose the judgments that are inside?”And John said, “I wept much because no one was found worthy to open the seals.” He cried. He wept about it. Nobody was there. Nobody was there in heaven. The rapture had happened. There were believers everywhere. They were all around the throne. They had been worshipping, they had been worshipping people from every nation, from every tongue. They are there, but the cry goes out. “Who is worthy to open the seals and to pour out the judgment on the world? Who is worthy to do that?”And John wept much.Why would he weep about that? Well, maybe the emotion of the moment. Maybe it is because he felt that God’s will was being thwarted, that God wanted to judge, but there was nobody that could do it. I think he was weeping for two reasons. I think he was weeping because he knew that he was in the presence of such awesome power that when judgment started no one was going to be able to detain it. And the very fact that God was going to judge the world shocked him to the bottom of his soul.The second thing is, is perhaps he was thinking about his own situation. You know, first century tradition tells us that John had already been boiled in oil by this time and somehow had lived through it. And maybe he was thinking about his persecutors. Maybe hew as thinking about how all of the other apostles had been killed, crucified, maimed, thrown to the lions. Maybe he was thinking about... This is late in the first century now. Maybe he had seen the thousands and thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of martyrs that had been killed. They had been used as torches to light Nero’s garden. He had seen all kinds of things. They had been thrown to the lions. They had been painted with pitch and thrown out on fire in front of the lions. They had been put in sheets. They had taken sheep’s clothing and wrapped it around those little children and pushed them out into the Coliseum so that the lions would rip them to pieces. He is seeing all these things.Maybe the very thought of the fact that no one was found worthy to open the seals of judgment disturbed him the other way. “God, when are you going to judge? When are you going to finally put an end to all of these things that are happening to your children in the world?”Who knows he was crying? But he was crying because no one was found worthy.Well, then one step forward like a lamb slain before the foundation of the world. He was King of Kings and Lord of Lords and he took the roll out of his hand. And what you see here in chapter six is the only person in all of the world that has the right to judge this world. Think about that for a moment. Who was found worthy to judge?You know, sometimes I think that we are going to bring a political solution because we think we are going to bring a political solution. We are going to vote in the right political party or the right person and they are going to put things in order and that is going to be the end of it. Or it is going to judge evil and evil is just going to go away or we are just going to... We are going to rise up at the grass roots level in America. We are going to change this nation, change the future. We should get involved in every single way that we can, but do not put your hopes in political change, in revolution in this world changing the essence of what this world is. It is not going to happen.And I want you to know that there is not a human being on planet earth that is worthy to judge this world.How many of you would like to play God for a day?Well, I think sometimes we get in our head, boy, if I were God I would, but do you know what? If we were God we would mess it up because we would start judging immediately and we would judge the wrong people because we cannot see people’s hearts. We do not know the motives. We do not know what is inside of people. We do not know why they do what they do. We do not have a clue as to what their paradigm has been, what their life has been. We don’t know everything.But I will tell you who does know how to judge and who can judge with righteousness, with mercy and compassion all at the same time. Do you know who can judge? God can judge and he has chosen to give that judgment to his pure Son Jesus Christ who came and suffered all that heaven and hell both could throw at him on the cross. He died. He was buried and he rose again triumphant over death, hell and the grave and he is the judge.Do you understand that Jesus is going to judge this world? He is going to take that scroll out of his hand and here is what is going to happen.“I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures...” That’s a future study “...say in a voice like thunder, ‘Come!’ I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.”You say, “Pastor, what is this white horse and who is the rider?”Well, this white horse always speaks of victory. A white horse back in the time of Napoleon every time he showed up on the battle field he would show up with a horse of victory riding it. It speaks of peace. When an army wanted terms of peace in the Roman days they would ride out on a white horse and seek the terms of that peace. It speaks of the conqueror as I mentioned, the custom of the conquerors like Napoleon which would ride through the battle field with their banners flying on either side on a white horse announcing that they were the conqueror.It has a rider. Notice that this rider has a crown on his head. The word is a stefanov (stef’-an-os) and that word is the victor’s crown, the winner, the one who has conquered. He gets to wear that crown.And then I want you to notice something else about it that is a little bit disturbing. Let me read it to you. “I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.”So you have this white horse representing victory. You have a conqueror wearing a conqueror’s crown and he is riding out speaking of peace, carrying a bow. He carries a bow, but it is interesting that this is a bow without any arrows. Immediately... the immediate problem after the rapture of the church will be a need for world leadership. A lot of people think that this rider on here, this white horse, why that’s Jesus we think. Why he is riding out...No. If you want to read about the white horse that Jesus is going to be riding and the true victor’s crown and of the thousands and myriads of millions that are going to ride with him, you have got to flip over to chapter 19 and read about that. This is another person. This is the instead of Christ. This is the supplanter. This is the one that is taking his place. He is not the Christ. He is the antichrist. That is who the rider is on this white horse.Notice this. After the rapture, after the rapture of the Church the world is going to be in need for leadership. We talked about this. The rider is not Jesus bringing peace, but the antichrist bringing false peace.“And how will anyone believe in him?” you might ask.Just like they believe in what we call peace in our time before World War II. And in 1938 Adolf Hitler was promising peace the whole time that he was making war. Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minster of England assured his people that there was nothing to worry about. “We can trust this man,” talking about Hitler.And when Poland fell it was too late. Even Winston Churchill was shouted down in parliament when he suggested that Hitler was a fraud.You say, “How can people follow the antichrist?”How did they follow Hitler? They followed him.The antichrist will conquer with peace.Daniel chapter nine and verse 27 says he is going to make a... he is going to make a pact of peace. The most marvellous peace, the most marvelous accomplishment of this antichrist will be that in short order he is going to settle the problems in the Middle East. Somehow he is going to convince the Arabs to step back, tear down the mosque of Omar, or better yet that building that is there where the mosque of Omar used to be, take that thing down and they are going to rebuild the temple and all of the sudden the daily sacrifices are going to start again and all of this is going to happen in a short time. The antichrist is going to make a peace pact with Israel. He is going to back away all the other nations and all of the sudden there is going to be peace in the Middle East.And he is on a white horse. He shows military strength. He promises that he has military strength, but he has no arrows. He is promising not to use it. He is a liar.That leads to a second horse. Now listen to me. There are horses on the road ahead. The first horse is a liar. The first horse promises peace, but he is getting ready to make war. The first horse is a false peace, a false ruler, a false Christ and that is who comes, the first one on the scene on the road ahead.Then notice something else. He is followed in verse number there and four by a red horse.Verse three.When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come!" Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.A red horse. This read horse typifies war and fighting and the color red is the color of fire and blood. Notice that this guy, this rider has a large sword or a macaira (makh’-ahee-rah). It is a stabbing sword. It is a large, but short, strong sword of the Roman army that they were able to get inside of all other defenses and while the Turks and others were swinging the long sword with this short, large, wide blade sword that could cut both ways and get inside and stab them. And he is going to take peace from the earth. Who is? This rider on the red horse. He is coming. He is going to destroy the world.Is it actually that the antichrist turns red? I don’t know. Did the first horse become the second horse? No. I believe that his promises are broken and when he breaks his promise at the three and a half year point all that he had been trying to keep his hands on top of beaks loose and this world becomes chaotic to the degree that it has never seen before. This rider is going to take peace from the earth. Men are going to slay one another. One can only imagine the slaughter that will occur when we think in terms of the machines of war available today.You know, we are very good at inventing things. We are unbelievable at making the machines of war. If we...it is often said and rightly so that if we could put the same effort at saving life as we do at destroying life we might could do something in this world. But, you see, you don’t gain power in the world by saving lives. You gain power in the world by eliminating your enemy. And so we have made all kinds of machines of war, weapons of mass destruction are available to the highest bidder.Somebody said, I was reading not long ago that we are able at this point to destroy the world, destroy this world 50 times over with what we have in store in the weapons of mass destruction even at this place.Chemical warfare is not a question, but it is a probability in today’s world.We had an anthrax scare back in the first Gulf War. It was mentioned again now in this recent war. There are all kinds of chemical agents that people are talking about and biological agents that people are talking about that could cause these problems.Notice that this is originated in the heart of men.Look, if you would, please, verse three again.When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come!" Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.Men slaying each other.You say, “What is the problem here?”Well, the salt is gone. The light is gone. The restraining hand of the Holy Spirit is gone. A false peace has arrived. Unlimited, unfettered freedom has been announced. Do what you want, when you want, how you want, where you want. It is all up to you. You just do it as long you just follow our economic system and as long as you give final allegiance to the beast. Do what you will.Did you ever think that we were now living in the days, once again, of the judges just like they were in the book of Judges in the Old Testament where every man did that which was right in his own eyes? Do you get the idea that that is pretty much where we are headed right now in the United States where people want to live and just do what is right according to them? A person has got to make his own destiny, got to make his own life. He has got to decide what is right and wrong.Well, if that is happening right now before the Christians of the world are taken out, the Holy Spirit is absent in his restraining power, the salt, the light goes out. If that is happening right now, what is going to happen in the heart of men when it is every man for himself, every woman for herself, when it is everyone against everyone else. Men will slay each other. It is horrible.But there is something else. There is another horse on the road and I want you to look at this one. This is a black horse. So we have seen a white horse, a red horse and now a black horse.Look, if you would, at verse five.When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"So we have got another rider now and he is on a black horse. He has got scales in his hand and he is talking about the rationing of food.What is the natural result of world wide war? What is going to be the natural result of... I mean you have got bombs blowing up. Is there going to be any sowing and reaping?You know, right now here we are in Iowa. This is the... one of the most productive if not the most productive spots on planet earth with all of the... the... the fertile land that we have around. You see the tractors going back and forth. What if bombs were dropping right now around Iowa? What if they were... What if men were slaying each other? What... Do you think there would be a... Would there be time for planting and for harvest and for taking care of the weeds? Is there going to be time for that?No. In those kinds of... In those kinds of times people starve. As many people die from starvation and from disease as they do from anything else. The natural result of world wide war will be the problem of sowing and reaping. There will be so little time for regular labor because so many will be watching out from their lives.A voice went from heaven. It said something very interesting. “A days wags for a man’s meal. One meal, a full day’s wages.” Famine, hunger and devastation begin to run rampant all over the world. Can we not see the horror? Can you not see that everyone will be weeping in starvation during the war?You say, “Well, we are having those kind of things right now in North Korea, Somalia.”Yes, we are. People are dying even as I stand here tonight of hunger around the world, not because there is not food to feed them, but because the political situations that won’t allow it happen. There are people in Hindu countries, in India, for instance, that are starving to death because of the wrong religion. It happens... People are starving today, but it doesn’t have to be that way. But in that day there will be no choice. Famine, hunger, devastation.But it says something interesting. “Don’t damage the oil and the wine.” Oil and wine have always been a reprehensive in the Bible of prosperity, of the blessing of God on people. Don’t damage the oil and the wine. Well, there is going to... The lifestyles of the rich and famous during that time are going to be safeguarded for a time because there is a little bit of refuge in money. And oil and wine were symbols of this blessing and abundance in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament.The strong will guard their own and will insulate themselves as much as they can. We found and I read recently that Hitler would... used to demand chocolates every day and the elite would go to the opera as the bombs were falling in London during some of the most severe times during World War II because the...don’t damage the oil and the wine. And so these... During this period of time there is going to be starvation. There is going to be hunger. There is going to be people that are just dropping in the streets because they can’t make it. But because there is no compassion and there is no mercy and there is no one with a light and there is no salt in the world because the Christians are gone and there is not anybody speaking out with a voice of reason, those who have will say to those who have not, “It is just not your day and you are just not going to be able to get anything. Stay away from me.” And they will hire those people to protect their goods. That is only going to last for a while.I want you to know there is another horse on the road. Look at it. It is a pale horse. Look, if you would, please, there and let’s read the following.In verse number seven:When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.Now just think what your Bible says in front of you right now. We have seen the progression. First is a false peace. Then when that peace is broken all out war all over the world of every sort and of every kind. Men slaying each other break out. No time for planting. No time for harvesting. No time for regular, nominal, normal labor from day to day. No time for that.And so men are at each other’s throat. People are... The food is rationed and people who have... even people who have the food have to put soldiers out around their home to make sure that nobody comes to take what they have. But that is only going to last for a while. And it is going to be followed by the pale horse, an ashen or sickly yellow, green in color signifying the decomposition of the dead. He has a ghastly rider, death. And death sounds so final.The combination of war, famine, sickness and the attack of the beasts of the earth take a horrendous toll. It says that one fourth of the world’s population will die as a result of these four horses.“How many people is that, pastor?”1.4 billion roughly. That’s a lot of people, 1.4 billion. Or how about tonight if one out of every four persons that are in this auditorium died before they left? What if one fourth of everyone that lived in the city of Des Moines died tomorrow? Or what if one fourth of the population of the state, one fourth of America, 280 million, 285 million people, what if a fourth of them just died because of these horrible diseases, famine, war, sword? That’s a lot of people.They died there because of this pale horse.You see, the world will get exactly what it wants. It is going to get a world without rules, one without restraints, but what they envisioned as utopia soon turns to sheer horror.You see, man without God is a vicious murderer. Man without God is a vicious murderer.Jeremiah 16:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”Matthew 15:19. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” And these are horses that are on the road ahead.I hear the talk of peace for the world and Europe they are talking for that... I said before this European president. I read there about those 10... mentioned those 10 new countries that are beginning to... that have joined the European Union. They are clamoring for these things. And I want you to know that these are sign posts on the road, but there are horses on the road ahead.We see the wars and we see that they are ever on the increase. I don’t know about you, but I have been totally disgusted by the photos that have been shown of what good old American soldiers and service men have done over there in that country. And I don’t care who is responsible for it.Well, they are higher up.I don’t care who did it whether higher ups or the lower downs. It doesn’t make any difference. It is absolute... It is an absolute pathetic commentary on the United States of America that they could go over and have something sexual going on with prisoners in a camp like that. Do you know what that tells me about us? It tells me that all of the pornography that is being pumped into our society and all of Hollywood films that are being pumped into our minds, that are continually bombarding us with sexual innuendo and sex this and free sex that, it is penetrated, infiltrated the minds of so many people that after a short period of time they are not content just to watch over these people that are in this jails or in these jails over there. They have to do those things like sodomize them, strip them down, take pictures of them, make fun of them. I don’t care who is responsible. It is a horrible, horrible, commentary on the United States of America.“That’s right, pastor Phil, Amen. You are right. You are telling the truth.”Do you know what? We have allowed... We have allowed freedom to put us in bondage all over our nation, unfettered, unbridled, freedom, the right to do just as one pleases. And they are actually throwing their hands up as if they don’t know who to blame for these kinds of things.I hear horses today, dear Christian. I hear the hoof beats of approaching hunger and famine like the world has never seen. We are being warned now that unless something happens hundreds of thousands in Africa will die of starvation. North Korea is on the brink of starvation right now. India [?] our missionary tells of daily starvation among the soon to be most population nation on planet earth. They are dying now. This is before the tribulation.There are horses on the road. Death is certain. It is unavoidable, not only for those that will be alive, during this horrible time of tribulation, it is unavoidable for us, too. We have to remember that Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment.”What does... How does that make you feel? Put that in your pipe and smoke it?“It is appointed unto man once to die and after this what? The judgment.”You see, we love to declaw and detooth the Word of God.Why is it? It is no wonder that the Bible is called powerful and sharper than any two edged sword that can pierce into our souls, dividing asunder, bone and marrow and just cutting us to pieces and laying our whole souls bare.You see, that Bible right there says, “It is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment.”Oh, it is going to be terrible for those on the road ahead, but it is going to be terrible for that person, that’s your neighbor, your friend, your coworker, your family member that dies without Christ and still faces the judgment.Death is certain. It is unavoidable, not only for those who are alive in this tribulation, but for us. Some don’t believe in life after death. As a dog dies, so dies a man they say. Well, that’s what they say. But that is not what God says.I failed to tell you what followed the rider on the pale horse. Look at verse number eight, if you would. “I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.” Did you notice that? Death and Hades.You say, “What is Hades?”It is another word for hell. Hell was right behind. Death was the rider and hell did follow. Death for the body and hell for the soul. Terrible.The third thing I want to say to you tonight—and I want to finish with this—is after we have looked at these horses on the road I want you to know that the people who stay on the road after the rapture find themselves under total condemnation, great tribulation and now total condemnation.I want you to notice something. Is there anything very conspicuous about what we have read for this point? When you read about these seals that are being opened and about the judgments that are falling, are you noticing something, that all of the things that are happening are happening without the direct intervention of God himself?You say, “What?”Well, these first four horses are the simple result of man left to himself without rules, regulations or without a king, without a God.“What?”I am saying that the first four horses, these first four judgments, the first four seals is what is going to happen in this world when man is left to himself, when he gets that total freedom that he wants. First war, after war there is going to be famine and then plagues and then death and that is the natural result.You say, “Wow, that’s terrible. That’s horrible. What a great judgment from God.”God didn’t have to do anything up to this point. He just let things go.Do you know what the greatest... Do you know what the greatest danger in America is? It is that God would just finally just say, “Ok, have it your own way,” and just back his hands off totally.Did you ever have children that you had to let them mess up long enough to figure out that they really did need you to show them how to do something? You just let them go until they really got themselves in so deep they couldn’t straighten out whatever it was they were working on. Then they asked you to come back and help them.Do you know what the worst thing that could happen to this country would be, that happened to this world would be for God to just say, “All right. You want it your way? You got it your way. Go ahead. Figure it out yourself. I am done with you”?Oh, boy. That is exactly what happens in these first four seals in the book of Revelation.Revelation 6:9-10, listen to God’s Word.When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?"You see, no judgment by God has taken place yet. This is the natural result of man left to himself. These guys have been killed, they have been martyred. They have been... They are crying out, “Oh, God, when are you going to judge?” In other words, “We recognize you haven’t judged them yet, but when are you going to judge them?”Everything up to this point is what is happening among the earth dwellers because of the earth dwellers themselves and because they wanted to follow the instead of Christ, the antichrist, the supplanter Christ, the one who came and promised the world, but delivered nothing. He was full of hot air and there was no substance to him.And I want to say to you as a Christian, look for substance in your Christianity. Look for it. Look for the truth of God’s Word in your life. Go down these.“Ah, I don’t want to go down deep and come up dry.”That’s a cute cliché, but I have never known anyone getting deep in God’s Word and getting to know him intimately that came up dry. They came up knowing God and loving him more than the person who ignores God’s Word, ignores God’s presence and ignores time in prayer. Those people that do that, they don’t come up dry, they come up loving God and loving him and wanting to serve him with all of their life.We are talking about the judgment of the earth dwellers, those that choose this world. It is not a pretty picture.Now, I am going to read some things here out of God’s Word that are shocking. “I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake.” Now, man didn’t do that.The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig-tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.Something happens when this next seal is opened, this sixth seal. The sixth seal is opened up and when it does there is an enormous earthquake, a tremendous earthquake. Let me read 15.Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"Everybody recognizes in the sixth seal. They all understand, “Uh, oh, this isn’t our own doing anymore. It is true. He is coming. He is judging now.”I lived in Peru for 13 years and we experienced several earthquakes. The last of which was one of the most scary moments of my life. I am not a person that is fearful by nature, but I was sitting in a chair and watching a World Series game, I think. I don’t remember what I was doing, but I was sitting in a chair and watching television. It was late one Saturday afternoon and we were sitting there and we were talking and all of the sudden I didn’t hear any boom. I didn’t hear any noise. I didn’t hear anything whatsoever going. I just heard this... And I looked over at the big plate glass window was going back and forth like that and all of the sudden under my chair where I was sitting there was this sensation of rolls like I was on a... like I was in a boat and I was sitting on the ocean out there just off the coast of Peru and it was just that up and down motion like that and I was sitting there and my chair was going back and forth and I think one of the kids said, “Is that an earthquake?”We got up and went outside and the phone lines were going back and forth. And I want to tell you something. When what has been the most stable thing in your life, your entire life, that is what you are standing on and what you build your houses on, when that starts shaking you get scared.Well, I want to tell you when the whole earth shakes and every mountain, every mountain is leveled and every island flees away, you know that something is happening very devastating and very powerful.And it goes on to talk about what is going to go on during that time. The sixth seal opened.There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig-tree when shaken by a strong wind.And look at verse 14. “The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.”I am going to go on a trek here in just a couple of weeks or a couple of months and we are going to go—as we do every summer—and walk through the Andes Mountains and I cannot describe to you... I have never been to the Himalayas, but I have been to the Rockies and the Rockies are big. They are magnificent, but I have never seen anything that is so mammoth and so awe strickening and so giant as those mountains and valleys that we walked through there.We will... Our guide will say to us, “Listen. We are just going to walk around that little... We are going to walk down this valley and around... Just around the other side. It won’t take too long. That’s where we are going to camp tonight.” Seven hours later we get there. I mean it is... The immensity of those mountains is something that I cannot describe to you.[?] is the second highest point in the western hemisphere. It is the mount... It is the one that a big piece broke off in 1970 and killed 80,000 people. It is an enormous mountain. And we look at that thing and I read this verse that says every mountain disappeared. Think about that. Every mountain disappeared. Every island fled away.Well, Honolulu is an island. Cuba is an island. Think about that. Just what is going to happen right here is something cataclysmic, something that we cannot even comprehend, but the whole world, the earth dwellers, people on the road, they understand it. Do you know why? Because the sky rolls back. This is not the rapture, ladies and gentlemen. This is the revelation. This is the moment when Jesus comes and said, “Ok, here I am. All you earth dwellers who doubted, who didn’t believe, you didn’t want to see me by faith. You don’t need faith anymore. Here I am.”Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us.What? What? Why? Why fall on us and hide us? “Hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!”“Oh, we see him.”They see into heaven itself and there is the Father sitting on the throne. And here comes the Lamb, Jesus coming to earth.You read God’s word carefully, chapter 19, you find out that he is accompanied by thousands and thousands and ten thousands times ten thousands of his saints robed in white. Are they coming to fight? No. Just coming to watch. They are going to watch as the Lord destroys all of them with the brightness of his coming and with the sword, the double edged sword that goes out of his mouth.We looked at 2 Peter chapter three and we found out that the earth is going to melt with fervent heat and all of those guns and armaments and all of those missiles that they are going to get together to fight against Jerusalem and then turn to fight against God, how are you going to fight against the one who is holding those elements together? As you point those missiles up, they melt. They are going to be shared. There is physical disintegration, an earthquake, alterations in the heavens. Things that were unshakable before simply disappear, islands and mountains.The Bible says there is coming a day when this old world will go into a tail spin. Nuclear explosion? I don’t know. Or is it just the hand of God’s restraint is finally moved. Colossians chapter 1:17.Notice the spiritual desperation. Verse 15. People say that man came from a cave. Well, man may have come from a cave or he may not have come from a cave, but there are going to be cave men in the end because they are going to go seek caves to try to find a way to hide.Somebody said that this world started with a big bang. Well, it may have started with a big bang—at least in their own imaginations—but I will tell you one thing. It is going to end with a big bank. The Lord is coming back and he is going to change enverything.This world that rejected the Rock of Ages will call upon the rocks to fall upon them. It will be the world’s greatest prayer meeting in history. The whole world is going to take up religion at that time whether they were religious or not. But what is sad is instead of believing in and accepting the one that is coming down—which it will be too late for them anyway—they are going to call on the... they are going to pray to the rocks, “Kill us, smash us, eliminate us, but do not let us suffer the wrath, anything except suffering the wrath of the Lamb.”Can you imagine what the wrath of a Lamb would be like?You say, “Well, lambs are meek.”Yeah, that’s right. Jesus came the first time and he was meek. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and before his accusers he just kept his mouth shut. He didn’t say anything.Listen. Imagine all of the sheep that have humbly come before those that were going to slit their neck and literally licked the hands of those that were going to kill them in the slaughter houses of the world, imagine what the wrath of threat lamb would be if that lamb never resisted. Jesus, the Lamb of God never resisted the hand of the Roman soldier, never resisted what those priests did to him, never resisted. Our sin he never resisted.But the time of meekness is going to be over when he comes back at this point. He is not coming back meek and mild and riding on the foal of a donkey. No, he is coming back as King of Kings and Lord of Lords and riding on a white horse and he is going to have his entourage with him and he is going to come back. This time he is going to come back in power.Look at Revelation 12 and verse 12, if you would. “Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”He has two things here. The earth dwellers and you have another group of people who are rejoicing because they have made a better choice. Look at that verse again. “Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury.”You say, “What about these earth dwellers? What is the deal? What is going on? Who are these that have gone to heaven?The heaven dwellers are those that have already gone on before either by death or by way of the rapture. They are in his presence and they are going to come back with him. Those that are on the earth are the ones.You know, on the road ahead the ones that choose to stay here, even if they are of that group that never heard the gospel that do believe during the time of the tribulation, they will suffer during that time. Woe to the earth and to the sea.Everyone has a choice today. Everyone can pick your own world. If you give your life to the Lord Jesus Christ and become a citizen of another world or you can choose this world. And, sadly, many have chosen the world.The Bible says that he will keep that believe from the hour that is to try the entire earth. 1 Thessalonians 1:8. It says there:The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven.That is what we are doing. I am not standing here tonight waiting on the antichrist to come. I am standing here waiting on the sound of a trumpet, the voice of an archangel and the shout of Jesus Christ to take me into heaven because listen to what this says. “And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath [to come].”I trust and I am sure that the majority of you that are here tonight have already decided what road you want to be on. You want to be on the heavenly road. You want to be on the road that leads you into an eternity in his presence and to live with him throughout all of eternity. But there are those that just simply ignore it or they put it off or they say, “Well, that’s all interesting. Maybe when I am old and I am ready to die I will make that choice.”Do not take that chance. Isaiah chapter 55, today is when we have to decide. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Seek the Lord while he is near because there is no promise that he may be found tomorrow and there is no promise that will be near tomorrow. So we have to receive him.“Pastor, what does it all mean? What... What do I need to do about this?”Well, here is what it means. It means we had better make the right choice. It means we had better live for the right world. And it means we had better tell others of what is coming.You see, God didn’t put the book of Revelation in there just to be curious. You know, I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me about different things in the book of Revelation. They have wanted to study it. They get all excited about oh how all this symbolism and all these different things that are happening, horses on the road ahead and great earthquakes that are going to happen and these trumpets that are going to blow. And, by the way, the sixth seal is the... The sixth seal contains all of the other judgments of God. They just flow out of that sixth seal. There is a series of trumpets. There is a series of plagues. There is a series of thunders and voices. There is a series of vials that are poured out. All of these are judgments and final judgments on the earth. And that goes from chapter number seven all the way to the first part of chapter number 19. It goes all the way through there explaining what is happening in this sixth seal.And there is a lot of people, there’s, “Oh, man, that is just so exciting.”But, you know what? Revelation was not put in there to satisfy our curiosity. It is not a book that we read and we say, “Oh, how interesting that all is and oh, boy, how poetic and how interesting and how prophetic and, boy, I just love to find out all this symbolis and understand all of these kinds of things and put it all together and we get these maps and we figure it out and we get charts and I have done that. I have put up big charts as I have taught before about these kinds of things. People get all excited.There is a passage in here, chapter 10, where John was told by an angle to take this book with all of these writings and all of these judgments and everything, just take this, take it and eat it. And so he took that book according to the word of the angel and he ate the book. And it was like honey in his mouth.Oh, who doesn’t like honey? It was exciting to him. He, “Oh, man, this is sweet. I love this. I love... This is unbelievable what I am reading.”But once he swallowed it in his mouth and it got down into his belly the Bible said it was like worm wood. That is, it was so bitter to him that it made him sick for many days. He couldn’t stand what he had... Because what had happened is once he had got past the initial curiosity of what is in the book of Revelation and he had begun to think about the reality of one fourth of the world’s population dying, later one third of the world’s population dying, later another third of the world’s population dying and then later on the entire world being destroyed all at one time in the city of Bozra at the north end of what is the gulf leading to the Red Sea where for 200 miles, 50 miles wide to the horse’s bridle, the blood is going to flow of all men, rich, poor, old, young. When he thought about that it wasn’t so sweet.The book of Revelation is not to satisfy our curiosity. Oh, there is a blessing because when we understand that we have been redeemed and bought by the blood of the Lamb we don’t have to worry. We don’t have to fret. We know that we can be saved from that hour of trial, that hour of wrath that is to come on this world. We can be saved from that. But at the same time we rejoice because it is not our lot in life or in the future. We can also be concerned because many of those that are around us are headed down this road.You say, “Pastor, are you positive that everybody that doesn’t get saved is going to go down this road?”Of course not. Some are going to die before this happens. That won’t lessen... that will not lessen the punishment of hell, but there are those and there is that chance that Jesus could come today, tomorrow. It is imminent. There is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when he does the saints go up. The non saints stay here. They stay on the road. And they head into this period known as the tribulation when the antichrist in charge, where men will slay each other and where, finally, God in the person of Jesus Christ makes his appearance to reveal himself and shows his right arm of strength and the sword goes out of his mouth, Revelation 19, and destroys all of them that are gathered.Let’s bow our heads for a word of prayer.Next week I am going to talk to you about peace down the road.You say, “Wow, we are going to need that after listening to this tonight.”Well, yes we are. There is peace ahead. There is hope. There is salvation for everyone that believes and I want you to know that Romans 1:16 and 17 is still in the Word of God.Some of you are fearful about sharing your testimony or sharing the gospel with other people. You say, “Well, I’ll just mess that whole thing up. I get to talking to somebody. I am going to get it wrong and get it backwards and I am not going to say the right thing and I am going to make it worse. I had just better shut up and hope somebody else tells them.”I want to tell you tonight that just like Bill Faye tells us all the time, God can use any kind of witness, but he cannot use your silence. God cannot use your silence. And I want you to know that Romans chapter one verse 16 and 17 says that the power of God is in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It says that we should not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first and also to the Greek.We get it mixed up in our head that we have to be crafty, we have to have ability with words, we have got to remember and learn some kind of preparation in order to be used by God. But I want you to know that a person with compassion in their heart, a person who loves his neighbor, who loves his friend, who loves his family member and wants them to know the truth and good news of the gospel, I want you to know with right motive God can use any kind of a witness and here is why, because the power of the gospel is not in the messenger. It is in the message. What changes men’s hearts is the gospel and love of God himself. It is not how crafty we are as we present him. You are not going to convince or twist somebody’s arm or get into a mental wrestling match with somebody and debate them into the kingdom of God. But if you share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ with people you may not reap what you sow, but God can take what you sow and work in somebody’s heart and someone else may be able to bring them to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.“What are you saying?”I am saying that Jesus is coming. I am saying that when he comes and all of this starts there will be no detaining it. I am saying that we won’t be able to back up and move the hourglass backwards, roll time back and say, “Oh, wait a minute. I have got some people to witness to, somebody to share Christ with.” We are not going to be able to do that.I am saying to you that the power of God is in the message, not the messenger. I want to say that we need to go out with the good news of the gospel and share with those people that are around us with a smile on our... perhaps with a tear in your eye, but a smile on your face, with joy in your heart as you tell them, “I love you. I care about you and I want you to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.”Heads are bowed and eyes are closed. Let me ask. Is there somebody here tonight and you say, “I am on the road. I am living in the world and I am just carrying on. I don’t know anything about all this stuff, but I know this. If Jesus were to come back tonight as you talk about it, if the trumpet were to blow and he would call us into his presence, I am afraid that I am not saved. I don’t know Jesus. He is not my Lord and Savior. I wouldn’t go with him.”Well, if you are here and you are like that tonight I have got great news for you. Here is the great news. He is as near as your next breath. The word that you need to say is, “Nigh unto thee. It is even in your mouth, the word of faith which does save you.” Because the Bible says, “That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” And, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation.” That is the Word of God.What do you say? You say, “What do I need to do with it?”You just need to believe. You need to say, “Jesus, come into my heart and save me. Put me on the road to heaven. Get me off the road to destruction. I am calling on you now. For whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”If you are here tonight and you say, “That is me. I want to call on Jesus right now.” Nobody is looking, just raise your hand. I’ll pray for you. I won’t embarrass you. “I want to ask Jesus to be my Lord and Savior. I want to know him.”Are you here and you are like that tonight? Just raise your hand up. I’ll pray for you. Anyone?My dear Father, I thank you for your Word. Thank you that you don’t leave us in the world without knowing what is going on, knowing what you are doing. We can’t understand it all, but you certainly have given us a good outline and a good glimpse of what is to come. You certainly let us know that it is worthwhile to go out and shed around your love and to tell the good news of the gospel. Lord, help me as a pastor to always be willing to ask that question even if it is embarrassing, even... even, Lord, if it is uncomfortable. Help me to just love you and care for that person more than I care for how they look at me. Help me to ask them if they know you. I asked so many this morning as they came and told me it was their first time to grace. Lord, help us to care about the lost. Help us to love our families and our children, our neighbors. Help us to want to say something about the fact that Jesus loved them and died for them. Lord, we know you are coming. Awe know you are coming soon. Help us. Help us, Lord, to recognize it and do something with what we know. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen. Revelation 3:10Ibid.Matthew 24:21Revelation 13:4Revelation 14:9-12Revelation 6:1Ibid.Revelation 6:1Revelation 6:1-2Revelation 6:1Revelation 6:3-4Revelation 6:3-4Revelation 6:5-6Revelation 6:7-8Jeremiah 16:9Matthew 15:19Hebrews 9:27Ibid.Revelation 6:8Revelation 6:9-10Revelation 6:12Revelation 6:12-14Revelation 6:15-17Revelation 6:12-13Revelation 6:14Revelation 6:15-16Revelation 6:16Revelation 12:12Ibid.1 Thessalonians 1:8-101 Thessalonians 1:10Romans 10:9Romans 10:13Revelation 3:20John 5:24Romans 10:13Page PAGE 25 of NUMPAGES 25