Unmasking Revelation (Paperback)

….As the Church did their first read through of the new letter, they were excited about the “letter directly from Jesus” part. They loved the “blessing when you read it” part, but there was one key piece they were all looking for – Was this the book that was going to answer all their questions about Jesus’ expected return! They didn’t have to read far:

Revelation 1:7, 8: “Look! He comes with the clouds of heaven. And everyone will see him— even those who pierced him. And all the nations of the world will mourn for him. Yes! Amen! ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,’ says the Lord God. ‘I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.’”

As they read and read, and reread through their new letter, it didn’t take long for them to understand that there was more to Jesus’ “Second Coming” than just the “pre-signs” Jesus had mentioned that would happen BEFORE his return – they were now getting their first prophetic look at what was going to happen AFTER Jesus’ return!

•  The final veil was ripped off their minds – they now knew how it was all going to end and they were electrified! They now had the final key to the “Gospel” message; they caught something huge that they hadn’t caught before
• Satan wasn’t going to win his battle against God! Jesus was going to victoriously clean satan’s clock, destroy the chokehold of death, and even the curse of sin itself would be purged off this planet (Revelation 22:3)! Jesus would set up an eternal reign and all the redeemed Believers would be reigning with him!

Nobody in the Early Church let their “Revelation letter” collect dust. Nobody said, “It is just too hard to understand.” They were pouring over it every day, making sure they understood it. The message of the letter was intense (it still is): Jesus victoriously wins… satan miserably loses!

Ethan and the Early Church did not see the coming traumatic End Times in the book of Revelation as if they were somehow directed at them, the Church, the followers of Jesus. They read that once “the Scroll” is opened, God makes all-out, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners war on sin and satan. That’s the part the Church had not yet heard. For all they had known Jesus was going to be returning to a sin-soaked planet. They might be lifted off, but satan would forever be wrecking this planet, and it’s future inhabitants, their grandchildren.

Once they read through their final letter of Revelation they realized that the returning Jesus was going to deal a death blow to “the evil one”! Inside that scroll with seven seals was packaged God’s final judgment on sin and hell and death!

Jesus/John “unveiled” that satan and the antichrist use every single weapon at  heir disposal to defeat God and HIS MESSIAH, and they completely, and  ramatically, lose the war against the Creator of the universe (Revelation 6-20)!

• The excitement in the Churches reached a level never known before! Their worship services could be heard to the edges of town. The first time the Elders publicly read the account of Jesus’ actual return, the Church came unglued (Revelation 19)! “The King of all kings and Lord of all lords returns to this earth with millions of His Saints.”
• In spite of all of satan’s efforts to stop them, the Saints have been redeemed from their sins and have received their eternal reward! On the other hand satan, the antichrist, and those who have refused Jesus’ salvation are eternally destroyed with a single sentence from Jesus’ mouth!
• JESUS triumphantly WINS…satan miserably loses!

Revelation is a book that many Christians dislike and ignore!

The Early Church saw this letter 180 degrees opposite. They were being persecuted, their possessions and families ripped away. Satan seemed to be winning! When those “hunted” people got this letter, they were electrified. They now had the final key to the “Gospel” message – they caught something they hadn’t caught before! Satan wasn’t going to win his battle against God! Jesus was coming back, and when he did, all evil would be defeated!

Nobody in the Early Church let their “Revelation letter” collect dust. Nobody said “it is just too hard to understand.” They studied deeply – because those words were the keys to their future! They now knew the end of the story! When Jesus returned, he would reward his Saints and crush satan! He would purge the “curse” off the planet! (22:3) The message of the letter was intense – it still is: Jesus victoriously wins…satan miserably loses!

Jesus didn’t intend the End Times to scare us! He didn’t intend for his “unveiling” to sit unread! What if – the 63-year-old carpenter, the 42-year-old salesperson, the 30-year-old nurse, and the 16-year-old student could all finally say: “It’s not scary mumbo-jumbo to me any more! What if instead of sparking confusion and fear, Jesus’ “Revelation” could ignite awe and worship?

Sam Chess has intentionally written to make the difficult understandable – to “unmask” the weird and scary, to simply unfold the chronological storyline of Jesus’ final triumphant victory!

Jesus’ disciples are shocked! Their world had turned upside-down. For three years they had witnessed leprous stubs grow into fresh new feet, thousands of shekels of food appear out of nothing, and dead people brought back to life! Six months ago the momentum in their already insane new life had taken a startling shift, and now for the last six weeks they were, literally, living every moment of their lives in mouth-hanging shock!

The gears shifted last fall when their long-awaited, miracle-working Messiah had announced that he was going to die! He had slipped it in at the end of a bizarre moment up in Caesarea Philippi standing in front of the pagan “gates of hell” grotto where human beings were daily being sacrificed. “I will build my church,” he had shouted. “The very gates of hell will not stand against it! The ‘Church,’ my Church,” he had said, “will bind and loose on earth what has already been bound and loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:18-19). What in the world could that possibly all mean they wondered?

As if that hadn’t been startling enough for fishermen and tax collector brains to absorb, Jesus began to enlarge on the fact that once they got back down to  Jerusalem, he was going to suffer terrible things at the hands of the religious leaders, and then be brutally murdered. “I will be killed,” Jesus had said, “but on the third day I would rise from the dead” (Matthew 16:21). That last phrase went right over their heads. It didn’t sink in at all. They were still so absorbed and confused by the “I will be killed” phrase! Peter tried to challenge Jesus: “No way, Lord,” he had said. “That’s never going to happen to you!” Jesus gave him one of his deep-into-your-soul stares and said, “Get away from me, satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things purely from a human point of view, not from God’s” (Matthew 16:22-23). Everybody else shut their mouths and tried to make sense out of what seemed senseless.

• Then he died! Jesus died, just as he had predicted! Hundreds of people watched his pale, bloodless, lifeless body being hauled down from the cross and carefully packed into Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb. Lots of people commented on how accurate Jesus’ prophecies about himself had been. Nobody dared mention Jesus’ final “rising” line in Caesarea Philippi. To even repeat the line would require faith, and their faith was shattered.
• Then the sun rose Sunday morning! When the disciples arrived at the tomb, they were greeted by two men, obviously angels, in dazzling robes asking them, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He has risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee that the Son of Man will be betrayed into the hands of sinful men? He will be crucified, but he would rise again on the third day” (Luke 24:5-7)!
• And then, there he was alive! They saw Jesus with their own eyes, they talked to him, and they touched him. His words reached deep into their hearts! The religious leaders had rushed around injecting “spin” about his body being stolen from an obviously empty tomb over the next five weeks. But everybody knew it was a lie. Every person who lived in and around Jerusalem had some friend or relative who had literally seen, and heard, and touched the resurrected Jesus!

Luke 8:28: “As soon as he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down in front of him. Then he screamed, ‘Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Please, I beg you, don’t torture me!’”

Say it with me: “What I see and hear when demons meet Jesus and scream out in terror in Scripture should make me never live in fear of them again in my life because the actual truth is demons are scared to death of my God!” “They are scared out of their mind of my Savior!!”                                 

• • Your Savior, the One who declared and still declares He loves you so much that he would allow himself to be crucified to pay the penalty for your sins.
• • The One who loves you so much that after dying and then rising from the dead to forgive you and cleanse you, he would then send his own Holy Spirit to indwell you to transform us from the inside out!
• • That One who loves you so much that he longs to spend all of eternity communing with you.

That Savior’s very presence caused the minions of satan to quiver in terror – every single time!

And here’s why! Listen to the tortured screams coming out of the demoniac:

Luke 8:28: “As soon as he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down in front of him. Then he screamed, ‘Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Please, I beg you, don’t torture me!’”

• • There are people sitting in churches all over the world who (even though they are occupying a church seat) will deny that Jesus is divine!
• • They will swear (on a stack of Bibles) that Jesus was just a good man with some particularly wise things to say about loving everybody, being tolerant of everybody, and treating others the way you want to be treated.
• • “But let’s not go all nuts,” they will say, “and make Jesus out to be incarnate God, here on earth in a human body.”

In direct contrast, the demons clearly believed Jesus was Sovereign! They believed, without question, that he had complete authority and that authority extended over them!

So, for those who don’t believe the Bible means exactly what it seems to be saying, I can assure you that satan and his demons do!

Even the demons End-Times view thoroughly assumes a returning Christ and a coming judgment over sin and satan. Watch this:

Matthew 8:29:  “‘What do you want with us, Son of God?’ they shouted. ‘Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?’”

Luke 8:31: “And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.”

Again, what “theology” are these God-hating demons pointing to that eventually arrives through the pen of the Apostle John in inspired Scripture?

Revelation 20:1-2,10: “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain.  He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him             for a thousand years.” (Revelation 20:10 then says satan gets out briefly to gather those who still reject Jesus during the 1000 year Millenium.) ^“And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

Based on what the demons are saying, they already know that they will also be in the lake of fire with satan forever. Notice, the demons believe their total destruction is still a “future event.” They obviously believe Revelation 20 more firmly than many Christians do!

• • Demons apparently know, and believe, that the Bible says Jesus’ coming would bring an eternal kingdom which would forever wipe out their kingdom. But they had the same problem as the first century Jews: They didn’t understand that Jesus was going to come twice!
• • In Jesus’ First Coming he would pay our sin debt, but in His Second Coming he would set up an Everlasting Kingdom, and all the Redeemed Saints (us) will forever reign with Him!

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The point is; the evil one, the one we often see as an almost insurmountable adversary,

• • one single word from our Savior’s mouth,
• • the same Savior who satan knows that John 1 says was the Creator of the Universe,
• • the same Savior who one of these days is going to become the Sovereign Judge of the Universe!
• • One word from that Savior’s mouth, and our “powerful” adversary turns into a quivering ball of terror!

God needs to change the picture in the minds of his Church, from us cowering in front of satan, to seeing satan cowering in front of our Savior!