The Revelation 4 Introduction | Episode # 1027

September 16, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 4 Introduction

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

Especially when you're studying the Book of the Revelation, it is good to go back and reread it and go through some of the notes, especially go through the passages that we're studying through.

This passage is in many ways it is the passage in the Book of the Revelation that has the most controversy involved in it. And that is because there's three camps as to how to interpret the Book of the Revelation.

And I say that because those three camps are fairly important.

The three camps are pre Millennials,

Amillennials or mid Trib and then post millennials.

I mean post tribulation.

And what I mean by that? Well,

there's a question as to during the Tribulation,

whether or not the church is here during that time period.

And this passage is the passage that is used by those who believe in and the pre Trib or the pre millennial position, the position basically that the church is called away before any of the Tribulation takes place or anything that goes on in the Book of the Revelation takes place.

Now if you asked me where I kind of stand, and I'll always tell you where I stand on something unless I'm not really firm on it, especially in the Book of the Revelation because it's about things that to come.

And some of that's just not very easy to sit down and go, okay, this is for sure what it is.

A lot of times I'll give you several examples, but if you ask me, I am pre.

I believe that the church is raptured before the Tribulation begins. Now, I don't believe that we're raptured before the Antichrist is revealed because 2 Thessalonians tends to indicate not.

But I do believe that the church is raptured mainly based off of this passage of Scripture.

And there are a lot of arguments for that. And I'm going to make those arguments tonight. But I'm also say to you that if you believe in mid,

meaning that in all actuality, the tribulation is in two parts, the first three and a half years and the second three and a half years.

The first three and a half years are not.

They are the birth pangs of the tribulation.

The last three and a half years is literally what scripture calls the Great Tribulation or the Great shaking. And so that time period in the last three and a half years is the time period.

And we'll go through this as we're going through the book, is the time period of the great wrath of God poured out on the earth.

Now,

why do you believe in pre? Well, I've told you, it's because of this passage. I believe in pre.

But if you believed in mid.

Or even if you believed in no rapture at all, if you didn't believe in a rapture at all, I'm gonna tell you that that's not a hill to die on.

Now, some people who maybe wanna sell a book or they fancy themselves as the great prophecy people,

they will make sure that this is controversial so that you'll listen to them. I'm gonna tell you that it is of some difference of opinion, but I don't see scripturally where this is a hill to down.

And you go, well, what do you mean by hill to down?

Well, a hill to down is a fundamental principle of the faith that if it's not true or you don't believe in it,

then the faith is undermined such that it's not what we originally believe it to be. Okay, you are undermining Scripture and you're undermining the fundamental principles of the Bible and the fundamental principles of God's plan of revelation through his son, Jesus Christ, to the point where it's no longer the gospel.

Does that make sense?

And so when we're studying this,

I want you to understand that the Book of the Revelation doesn't have a lot of hills to die on,

okay?

It has a lot in it that have principles that are hills to die on. But it doesn't teach us things that I would say are hills to die on.

Scripturally,

it will definitely draw from all the things that God has set up in the Gospels, in the Old Testament,

in the Epistles. It will set those things up and talk about them,

but it doesn't present well. And the best way for me to say it, it doesn't present a new theological perspective on God's plan for the universe. Okay? God's plan for his creation.

So it's not a hill. There's not a lot of hills to down.

And so you shouldn't be arguing about the Revelation,

okay? And I'm just telling you that if you're in the. If you're in some chat room somewhere arguing about the Revelation,

you're arguing about something that you know. You know, you're basically in a chat room arguing about who's going to win the SEC championship this year. I mean, you might have some good ideas about it, you might can talk about it, but you don't have a clue.

You don't really know. You. You don't really know. And so.

But we'll find out. That's the cool thing about the SEC championship and the Tribulation is we'll find out, okay? We'll all know at the end what happened. And you're going to know that here.

And so you really shouldn't. When you study the book of the Revelation, especially from this moment on,

you should really, really study it as just kind of a love letter from God telling you how he's going to deal with all the things that are you and all the things that are the earth.

And he is really functioning in. And I'm going to use this phrase a lot as we move forward. He is functioning in an office in the Old Testament called the goel, okay?

And you need to hear that word over and over and over again. He is the Goel, which has two functions.

He is the kinsman Redeemer, as he's presented in the Book of Ruth. Meaning if you've lost your connection to God,

which a woman whose husband would die had lost her connection to the promises of God,

you were redeemed by the kinsman Redeemer. He would redeem you back into.

So that's a picture of the church being redeemed into the family of God. And obviously, we've lost our connection with God when we were born because we were cut off due to sin.

And the Job of Jesus in the Book of Ruth and in the Revelation and in Daniel, and is to be the kinsman Redeemer. He is also,

and this is important for the book of the Revelation, because it is about the wrath and judgment of God.

He is.

The avenger of blood,

okay? And he is going to avenge his holiness and how the world has treated his children.

And that is how he's presented.

Jesus himself is presented in the book of the Revelation. He is the Redeemer and He is the avenger,

okay?

And we're talking about, like a real Avenger. Not like, you know, Incredible Hulk we're talking about. He's better than Incredible Hulk. Okay. Just letting y' all know, okay? He's not a puny God.

Okay? He is,

well, the Lord God. All right? Not that the Incredible Hulk is real or anything,

but I love him anyway.

As you go today, I pray that.

The Lord will bless you and keep you. That he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.