Three Angels
The Conquering Lamb • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
When the Kingdom of man burns up in judgment, the kingdom of God will descend in glory.
When the Kingdom of man is brought low in destruction, the kingdom of God will stretch out in dominion.
When the Kingdom of man is humbled in defeat, the Kingdom of God will by glorying in the reality of resurrection.
And these eternal realities, which are being put on display for us in Revelation in all of these different symbols and moving pictures, are what motivates Christians to endure.
The Gospel is eternal
Man’s kingdom is not eternal
God’s Wrath is eternal
Heaven’s rest is eternal
And that changes how you and I view the here and now.
Ultimately that is what this passage is about tonight.
In the beginning of chapter 14, John sees heaven.
In the beginning of chapter 15, he will see heaven again.
But in between, there is this warning of the judgment that is to come.
And the weight of that judgment is to be considered.
Certainly by the unbeliever, but remember that Revelation was not written to the world, but to the church.
The three angels have something to say to the suffering church.
They put the eternal nature of God’s Word, God’s wrath and the saints rest on display so that the church will be compelled once again to conquer by enduring to the end.
To overcome tribulation by holding fast to the Lamb who saved them
Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”
Another angel, a second, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.”
And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”
Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”
THE GOSPEL IS ETERNAL (v. 6-7)
THE GOSPEL IS ETERNAL (v. 6-7)
We have three angels in this passage tonight. Angels often serve as messengers in Revelation, so we should not be surprised to see them flying over the earth with messages here.
The angels come with a message for those who dwell on the earth.
They are not separate messages.
We can deal with them separately just so we can move through the text in an organized way, but they are not separate.
The angels are speaking one collective message of warning to the earth, but the message is meant to have a motivating effect on the church.
We will get there.
But to start, we look at the first angel who flies directly overhead.
This is John’s way of saying that he is in the sky.
John was looking to heaven when he saw Christ standing on Zion, but now he is looking lower to sky as you know it and that is where this angel is located.
The angel is proclaiming an eternal gospel to the rebellious people dwell on the earth.
Here, John is of course referring to the only Gospel, for what other Gospel is there? What other Gospel is eternal in its nature, stretching from everlasting to everlasting?
He is talking about the full counsel of God’s goodness, man’s sin, Christ’s death and resurrection and the response of repentance and faith.
1. The Gospel is eternal (v. 6-7).
1. The Gospel is eternal (v. 6-7).
This is what sets the Word of God apart from the word of everyone else who has spoken.
The message that we preach is not something that we believe came to us from the word of man, but from the Word of God.
It is truth given to us by God from eternity past and it will be true for endless ages in eternity future.
There has never been a time in which the Gospel was not true and there will never be a time in which it is not true.
It is not just an “old, old story,” but a story that ageless. It is eternal.
And you can see that this eternal Gospel is preached globally by the angel. This reflects the manner in which the church preaches the Gospel during the church age.
We do not preach the Gospel to select people, but to all of the nations.
We issue the warning of God’s wrath and the good news of His Son’s salvation to all of the unrepentant people of the world in every nation and tribe.
We take the Gospel to every people group, breaking down language and cultural barriers because we know that we are proclaiming eternal truth that demands a response from every soul.
And the way those souls must respond to the eternal Gospel are shown in the angel’s words.
Fear God
Give Him glory
The hour of judgment is coming
Worship the Creator
This is a very broad overview of the way that we must respond to the reality of our sin and the gift of God’s Son.
We must repent of sin and become faithful worshippers.
It is a reversal of that horrible scene in Romans 1:19-22
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
They exchange the glory of God for creeping things. Created things.
They traded in the worship of the Creator for the worship of creation.
And that is exactly what the angel is calling on the nations to repent of in Revelation 14:7...
“Worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”
Stop worshipping the creation and worship the Creator!
Stop attributing the weight of glory to things that are not glorious! Give your Creator the glory He deserves, for anything that has true glory in this world has derived it from Him.
But in order to worship the Creator, we must first turn to Him.
And that is what the call to “Fear God,” is all about.
It is a call to repent from a life of sin in which there is no fear of God.
For if we live a life of unrepentant sin, we are showing a fearlessness of God.
We are showing that we disregard His rules. That we feel we are above them and we don’t have to obey.
God has made his invisible attributes of His power and divinity evident in nature. They are clearly perceived from the time He said, “Let there be light.”
What Paul is arguing in Romans 1 is that when we sin, we cast off that clear perception so that we can sin.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
To repent of sin is to stop living in this way.
It is to say, “God, I will not keep disagreeing with you about sin and acting like your opinion doesn’t matter. I will agree that Your standard is the standard for the world. I turn away from fearlessly sinning against You. I turn to You, fearing You and wanting to sin against You no more because I recognize You are holy and right.”
Jesus will never be Lord until you fear Him.
Until you have reverence for Him that drives you to count Him to be right about everything.
The true and reverent fear of God in the human heart will always lead to repentance. It will always lead you to say with David:
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
And if we truly repent of our sin, we will spend our days worshipping God and giving Him glory.
Repentance leads to a life of praise.
ILLUSTRATION: I think about the Puritan Thomas Goodwin.
He was a preacher just so he could get applause and use the pulpit to show how smart he was.
But then he heard a funeral sermon one day and he realized he did not have the fear of God that he should.
For seven years he searched his own heart, looking for some sign of salvation so that he could feel he had peace with God.
Not long after, Dr. Richard Sibbes, another Puritan powerhouse, told him, “Young man, if ever you would do good, you must preach the gospel and the free grace of God in Christ Jesus.”
Sibbes was telling the young preacher that he had to stop looking inward. He needed to look outwardly to Jesus and preach that the grace of Christ is the only thing that can save.
And so Thomas Goodwin became consumed and obsessed with the idea of looking reverently to Jesus in worship.
He wrote two classic works on the matter:
Christ Set Forth—a book about how looking to Christ in heaven fills the sails of faith with wind
The Heart of Christ in Heaven Toward Sinners
His whole life became a mission to get people to look at Jesus. To join him in the praise of Christ in heaven.
And then one day, when Goodwin died, he said:
Christ cannot love me better than he doth. I think I cannot love Christ better than I do.
Thomas Goodwin
That is the end result of a life that believes the eternal gospel, turns from sin and dedicates itself to looking to Christ in worship.
It is similar to the words we see from old Solomon in Ecclesiastes 12. The words of a wise man who tried to run from the Lord at various times in his story, and yet at the end, here is what he learned:
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
There is no other peace that truly matters on the day of your death.
You can be at peace with your family. The vocation you chose. The manner of death that has come upon you.
But if you do not have a peace that you love God and He loves you, you have nothing.
Your soul is in peril and it knows it. There is no peace for that soul.
And so the angel—warning that judgment and death are near—calls on the earth to repent.
BABYLON IS NOT ETERNAL (v. 8)
BABYLON IS NOT ETERNAL (v. 8)
Let’s move to the second warning. This one regards Babylon.
Another angel, a second, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.”
Babylon is a new character that has emerged here in the midst of the 4th Cycle, but she won’t be a stranger. We will see her again, for as the bowl judgments are poured out on the earth, Babylon will come tumbling down.
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.”
That is Babylon. We know that because in 14:8, the 2nd angel says that Babylon is the one who made the nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.
The same thing the great prostitute is doing in 17:2
And what will become of this prostitute?
After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory. And he called out with a mighty voice,
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
She has become a dwelling place for demons,
a haunt for every unclean spirit,
a haunt for every unclean bird,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.
Babylon falls in chapters 17-19 as she is judged, but here in chapter 14, the angel already cries out “Fallen, fallen...”
This is a warning of judgment.
God will judge Babylon, which means she is as good as judged.
Get out from its walls before they collapse on you!
The angel’s message echoes that of Isaiah in Isaiah 21:9
And behold, here come riders,
horsemen in pairs!”
And he answered,
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon;
and all the carved images of her gods
he has shattered to the ground.”
In John’s revelation, Babylon is not a literal city.
Instead, it is representative of the world system that is opposed to God and it is the foil to Zion.
Zion—the New Jersualem—is the capital city of God, coming down out of heaven, a Bride adorned for her husband.
Babylon is the capital city of the kingdom of man—the antichrist stronghold opposing everything the Lord says is good.
It is not any one city or institution or person or movement in history.
It is representative of any sort of acute, fierce and intense opposition to God in this world.
Babylon is the right choice for the symbol because it has long been an enemy to the design of God.
In Genesis 11, we see Babel for the first time.
After the flood, God re-issues that image-bearer command to multiply and fill the earth
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
But the people of the earth disobey God.
And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
I remember hearing this story as an unregenerate child and thinking, “What’s the big deal? They built a tower.”
But with spiritual eyes, we can see what the big deal is. They disobeyed God’s direct command with the end goal of making a name for themselves.
It is a direct act of prideful opposition to God.
And then, in 586 BC, the Babylonians are the nation that comes and carries Judah off into captivity. Psalm 137 captures the sadness of the Israelites living in Babylon:
By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
The Babylonians came into the Promised Land and carried God’s people away.
This was the Lord’s doing. He was disciplining His children:
“Look among the nations, and see;
wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days
that you would not believe if told.
For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,
that bitter and hasty nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth,
to seize dwellings not their own.
But that doesn’t mean the Babylonians were not still rebelling against God. And God will judge them for it at the hands of other violent nations:
Because you have plundered many nations,
all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you,
for the blood of man and violence to the earth,
to cities and all who dwell in them.
Babylon rages on against the purposes of God in the world today. You ask where it is? It is anywhere you see rabid opposition to Him.
Babylon speaks to us through podcasts and television sets
Babylon speaks to us through politicians and professors
Babylon speaks through movies and media
And what is the consistent message? Same thing was it was in Genesis 11…make a name for yourself.
That is the sermon of Babylon. That is the ethic of Babylon.
Oppose God that your name may be great.
In James’ epistle, he captures the spirit of Babylon:
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
To make a friendship with the world is to make friendship with Babylon.
It is the oppose God for the sake of your name, along with all of the other rebels that are doing the same.
And at the end of the day, this is spiritual adultery.
That is why the language is sexual in verse 8.
It is likely that the angel is not referring to literal sexual immorality, but that he is referring to a more broad spiritual infidelity.
Because the sexual immorality that you see in physical adultery is a picture of what we do to God in our spiritual adultery.
To make friendship with the world is to step out on God like a wife stepping out on her husband.
And so Babylon has opened up the mouths the world and poured her idolatrous wine of spiritual adultery down the throats of the world and we see the results all around us.
People are casting off God’s restraints in the name of SELF.
The basic institution of the family has been torn down to the point that it is considered oppressive to even say that the ideal is for a home to have a biological man and a biological woman rearing children together.
Babylon says the entire idea of a nuclear family is a human construct and it is wrong for you to say it is the design of God.
The institution of the church is laughed at now. We come saying we have the authority to preach the Gospel in every sphere of the earth because the Bible gives it to us and they just laugh at the Bible.
They mock the very Word of God and say that it is not a standard to be taken seriously.
And they ignore the witness of the Church that speaks to the truth of the Word and calls on people to repent
Even the institution of the civil magistrate is under threat. In the last few years, we have seen a growing lack of honor for authority in the Western world with efforts to defund the police and take violent action against the state.
The sermon of the second angel is one that says, “Do not fall for the message of Babylon, which calls on you to cast off restraint, for Babylon itself is fallen.”
And that is certainly a message for the church to hear.
Don’t listen to the prophets of Babylon.
The fate of Babylon is sealed. It is the fallen capital city of a fallen Kingdom.
But its prophets speak as if it will never fall. As if Babylon is eternal.
But it isn’t. And that is our second point:
2. Babylon is not eternal (v. 8).
2. Babylon is not eternal (v. 8).
Do not put your hope in the world.
Its sermons and songs.
Its politicians and their promises.
Its ethics and morality
All of it is a house of cards.
All of it will come tumbling down.
And frankly, the sealed fate of Babylon is exposed in the faultiness of its messaging.
When Babylon says, “The nuclear family is a social construct and it is evil,” our question is, “By what standard?”
When Babylon says, “The church is meaningless and organized religion is evil,” our response is, “By what standard?”
When Babylon says, “Do not submit to the government. The government is evil,” our response is, “By what standard?”
And of course, the only standard they have is “Do what makes you feel good.”
That is not a standard. That is a desire.
Our worldview and our belief system is built on the ultimate, objective standard of God’s Word.
Babylon’s is built on the subjective changing standard of human opinion, which is driven by human pleasure.
This is not an eternal gospel.
This is not eternal truth.
And Babylon is not an eternal city.
Babylon’s future is as tenuous as its morality. It will all come tumbling down.
Get OUT if you are not OUT already.
HELL IS ETERNAL (v. 9-11)
HELL IS ETERNAL (v. 9-11)
Because if you do not get out—the results are devastating. That is what we see in verses 9-11. It is a vivid and grave description of the internal and external suffering that awaits all who refuse to heed the angel’s warnings regarding the Gospel and Babylon.
We see eternal hell.
3. Hell is eternal (v. 9-11)
3. Hell is eternal (v. 9-11)
The third angel warns that anyone who ignores the warnings of his predecessors, and takes the mark of the beast, will suffer eternal punishment.
And inside out suffering that can be hard to comprehend with out finite minds.
You see the internal nature of the suffering of hell in v. 10.
The sinner will “also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger.”
This is the second cup that we have seen in the passage.
The first was the cup of the wine of the passion of Babylon’s sexual immorality that she made all the nations drink.
This is a reminder to us of what Jesus did for us at Calvary.
I deserve to drink the wine of God’s wrath down to the dregs. Every drop for all of eternity.
I broke the eternal law of an eternal God and my crimes demand eternal punishment.
Hell is fair. And if God will remain good a Judge of sin, it is necessary. That is why He created it.
But for the church, we understand that Jesus died in our place and received our punishment.
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him (Isaiah 53:5)
We understand that Jesus took the cup of the wine of God’s wrath and He drank it for you and me.
This is what He did at the rugged table of the Cross as He poured out His covenant-sealing blood.
But for anyone who rejects the gift of God’s sacrificial Son, will drink that cup on their own. Forever.
They will do it alone. They will bear the full brunt of their sins.
And the drinking of the wrath tells us that God’s punishment of sin will not just be external, but internal.
It will rush down into our thoughts and emotions.
Hell will not just be a place physical suffering, but a place of emotional terror.
Guilt, shame, disappointment, bitterness, unforgiveness, hate, fury…all of it just boiling and festering in the soul for eternity.
But that is not all. We see from the text that the suffering will also be physical.
Verse 10 describes the physical torment of fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy and angels and the Lamb
Jesus’ presence shows that He has the authority to judge.
He is presiding over the justice that comes down upon the souls who rebel against Him and take the mark.
Verse 11 says the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, showing the eternal nature of the suffering again.
And then the angels says that they have no rest day or night.
So again—it is physical. No rest. Eternally exhausted from the work of suffering for rebellion against God.
And it is eternal because the smoke goes up forever and ever.
Hell will be seen to be hell all the way through.
A. W. Tozer
These descriptions are in line with the words of the Lord regarding Hell:
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’
The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
CS Lewis said that there is no doctrine he would like to remove from Christianity as much as hell.
But he admitted he couldn’t because Scripture taught and specifically, Jesus taught about it.
I think we react to the concept of Hell in this way because it seems unfair to us.
Forever seems like a long time and maybe sin doesn’t seem that bad to us.
But that would only expose that we really do not understand how good God is, how holy He is and how horrible our sin is before Him.
If we really and truly understood God’s goodness and holiness and the depths of our offense against Him, we would not question the severity of hell or the eternal nature of Hell.
No—if we could really see His goodness and the extremes of our depravity, we would might even think Hell was merciful.
See—the punishment of Hell is actually commentary on the significance of God. The stature of God. The prominence of God.
The first angel was clear on what repentance needs to look like from the people who dwell on the earth.
“Fear God and give Him glory.”
Hell is the punishment for the refusal to heed those words.
Hell is the end of the road that is marked with a constant rebellion against God’s will and way.
The reason people think Hell is unfair is because they don’t think God is important enough.
If they did, they would understand that when you attempt to steal His glory, you are actually committing the greatest act of treason you could commit
For this is the One who has made you.
He has given you life and breath
He has been merciful not to physically kill you for your sin
He is so loving that He gave His only Son to die for you, so that you could glorify Him
But ultimately, you look at Him and say, “Not good enough. I’m more important. I get the glory. I call the shots.”
Some tell Him he can have the leftovers. Some tell Him to shut His mouth and never speak again. They give Him nothing.
But at the end of the day, anything less than full surrender is full treason
And you must repent of your sin and trust in His Son, who died for your treason, or you will be confronted with the significance of God in eternal Hell.
We are going to close up with our final point, but before I do, just see in this passage how following the Dragon and the Beasts and Babylon doesn’t pay!
In the here and now, it might gain some advantages for you.
Buying and selling in the marketplace will be easy.
Walk on the broad road with everyone else and you won’t find a lot of resistance.
But this life is a mist. It’s a vapor.
Here the collective message of these angels:
Reject Babylon. It’s fallen.
Reject the Dragon and his beasts. Otherwise, you will end up in Hell with them.
Instead, Fear God. Give Him the glory. Worship Him. The hour of judgment draws near.
Because once this vapor disappears into the atmosphere of time, your soul will carry on in eternal life or eternal death.
And what you do with the eternal Gospel will determine that.
THE SAINTS’ REST IS ETERNAL (v. 12-13)
THE SAINTS’ REST IS ETERNAL (v. 12-13)
And that leads us to our final point.
We have seen that the Gospel is eternal.
Babylon is not.
Hell is eternal.
And now we end with the promises of verses 12-13, where we see that, praise God, the rest of the saints will go on forever.
4. The saints’ rest is eternal (v. 12-13).
4. The saints’ rest is eternal (v. 12-13).
The call that we see in verse 12 in just like the one that we saw back in chapter 13 after the vision of the first beast:
If anyone is to be taken captive,
to captivity he goes;
if anyone is to be slain with the sword,
with the sword must he be slain.
Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
If you go to prison, you go to prison.
If you die, you die.
Endure to the end. Conquer in Christ.
Hold on in the face of this beast to Jesus who is greater.
Now we get another call to endure. This time it comes on the heels of the messages of the angels.
And what that shows us is that while the warnings of the angels might compel the people of the earth to repent, the warnings regarding Hell and judgment are also to be motivation for believers to endure.
To not give up.
To not give in.
To not take the mark, but demonstrate love for Christ in obedience to Him. All the way to the end.
Because that is what believers do.
They show that they are truly the Lamb’s by holding on to the end. After all,
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
And the end of the endurance of the saints is the opposite of the end of rebellion for the people of the earth.
Rebellion ends in eternal hell, but endurance ends in eternal rest.
This is why the voice from heaven, which is presumably the Lord’s, is commissioning John to write these words of promise:
Blessed are the dead who died in the Lord from now on.
And then, the Spirit of God responds to what seems to be the voice of the Father, by saying:
Blessed indeed, that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.
Blessed are the dead in Christ.
The deeds they have done for Christ in this life have followed them into glory and those deeds are their reward.
And while it is their deeds that follow them, it is rest that waits for them.
No more labor. No more failing of the law. No more confession of sin. No more holding on in a sin-sick world. No more pain. No more tears.
All of that is wiped away in the new heaven and new earth—the place where the Church Triumphant will live our her eternity under the ruling gaze of Christ.
And what will remain is love. God’s love for us. Our love for Him.
In fact, Jonathan Edwards taught that heaven itself is a rest of love:
And this renders heaven a world of love; for God is the fountain of love, as the sun is the fountain of light. And therefore the glorious presence of God in heaven fills heaven with love, as the sun placed in the midst of the hemisphere in a clear day fills the world with light.
Jonathan Edwards
Edwards sees heaven as a world that is just love. God is the fountain of love in heaven like the sun pours out light on earth.
His presence will spread out over all of the new earth and the light of love will come with it, as far as the eye can see and beyond.
Edwards goes on to say that in heaven, we will be like flowers of love whose seeds were planted by the Spirit when He regenerated us, and we will take full bloom in heaven.
All shall stand about the glory of God, the fountain of love, as it were opening their bosoms to be filled with those effusions of love which are poured forth from thence, as the flowers on the earth in a pleasant spring day open their bosoms to the sun to be filled with his warmth and light, and to flourish in beauty and fragrancy by his rays. Every saint is a flower in the garden of God, and holy love is the fragrancy ans sweet odor which they all send forth, and with which they fill that paradise.
Jonathan Edwards
An eternity of growing in love. Our resurrection hearts blossoming in the charity of God day after day and never ending.
Just growing and growing in a love for Him that has no boundaries and never stops.
This is a far cry from the smoke and torment of eternal hell.
That is a loveless place with no rest.
Heaven will be the opposite.
A country of glory with nothing but rest.
Even as we work and serve the Lord, it will be a labor of loving rest for the saints of God.
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
Next week, we will see judgment come. The sickle will swing. The grapes will be harvested and thrown into the winepress of the wrath of God.
It is deadly stuff.
And it is all the more reason to listen to the message of the angels and the call for endurance.
Judgment is near.
Babylon is fallen.
Hell is eternal.
Repent. Fear God. Give Him glory.
And if you have already done that—well hold on to Him and keep doing it to the end.
For this is who we will be if we truly belong to the Lamb and we have believed His eternal gospel.
By His grace, we will not turn back.