The Revelation 4:1 | Episode # 1028

September 17, 2025

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

The Revelation 4:1

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. 

If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. 

Please follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church

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.

It says after these things, I looked. And this is important because it starts out giving you something that you really need to consider. He says, after this.

Well, after what?

After the seven churches.

And it's interesting that he says after this.

And there are some things that happen.

First of all,

after this,

the church is mentioned in chapter one,

chapter two,

chapter three,

and then the word church is not mentioned again until chapter 19.

So after this,

quite clearly, if he's not going to talk about it, and the only reason the church is mentioned in chapter 19 is when Jesus gets on his horse and gets ready to come back with the church.

So,

so there is an indication if. If not by inference, but by leaving it out,

there's an indication that the church is not involved in anything past this.

Because the church isn't mentioned as the church. The word church is not used.

It. The. The church. The. The church's name for God is Father.

Okay,

Father's found in the first three chapters of the book of the Revelation.

It's not found after that.

After chapter four, the word Father, as far as reference to God is not found till chapter 19.

Okay,

so the word that we use in our relationship to God, the word that Jesus taught us to use, right.

When he taught us how we should pray. Not what we should pray, but how we should pray. He said, how do we start it?

Our Father.

All right,

Our Father.

Well, Father is not mentioned in chapter four verses through 19. By the way,

the Spirit of God,

who, which. Which was among the churches,

moves to in front of the throne. Okay, so the Holy Spirit,

the revelation of God moves from the earth and the churches to before the throne. And it doesn't go back until chapter 19,

second Thessalonians 2, 6, 8.

In chapter two, the Holy Spirit is on the earth speaking to the churches. But after that,

he's caught up.

It says after this,

which can only mean the church after these things,

I looked and behold a door standing open in heaven, which means God had made a way.

There's a. Remember, doors in Scripture are either an opening to the will of God or God closing the door and saying, that's not his will.

Okay?

In fact, Jesus describes himself as the door. He says, I am the door, which means I'm the way in and the way out.

Now,

if you take that in its pure figurative form,

you could easily say that, behold,

what is the door in heaven? Who is the door in heaven? Well, Jesus is. And he said, I saw a door which would be Jesus open in heaven,

which would indicate that that's God giving you a invitation to come to heaven. Because he said, I saw the door opened in heaven. Not only does he say that,

and the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me saying,

come up.

All right, now there. There are. Come up here. Now, that's important for. For a lot of reasons, because in the.

In the book of the Revelation and in most of the prophecies of the Old Testament and also in the writings of Moses, the Pentateuch, Matthew,

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,

Numbers, and Deuteronomy that God has,

generally speaking,

almost exclusively speaking,

when we hear his voice, it sounds like three things.

The first one's a trumpet.

The second one's the sound of many waters.

And the third one is the. Is the sound of thunder.

Okay? It's the roll of thunder. All right? Now, you need to understand that obviously, if God's going to describe his voice in three separate ways, it's. It has three separate meanings, right?

It would have three separate contexts. The first context is that of a trumpet. Now, that is as clear as it possibly can be in Scripture, because the trumpet was used to tell the people of Israel to move.

Okay?

The trumpet would sound, and there would be certain blasts, and it's time to get up and go, okay? It's time to go where God wants you to be. So when you hear the sound of a trumpet, and it's always associated in Scripture, remember, as something is presented the first time in Scripture,

you need to lock that in and use that to understand the rest of Scripture. So when you have the first time you have a boat mentioned, it's dealing with salvation and the judgment of God, right?

God saves humanity in the boat, and he judges the world with the flood.

So from then on, if you run into a boat, you ought to always think, what salvation from judgment, all right?

You ought to always think that Jesus,

one of his first major sermons, was taught from a boat. You ought to always think, salvation, all right? Salvation's in the boat,

and he's preaching from the boat.

You need to hear that.

When you think through scripture and you see the pictures,

you need to always say, okay, tie it off. Because as you tie it off, you begin to thread together the fine garment that is the word of God, okay? It becomes clearer and clearer as you tie it off.

The second one is the voice of many waters. Now you go, well, how do I know what that is?

Well, remember,

waters is generally a picture of peoples,

okay?

Especially gentile people, okay?

The ocean, the sea is a picture of the Gentiles. The land is. Is a picture of the Jews, the promises of God. So when you have the voice of many waters,

it would be a voice of many nations or many people, okay? Now you go. What does that mean? Well, I'm going to tell you that this is just me. I'm teaching you, giving you kind of my own insight into this.

And by the way, I don't know if y' all know it or not, but I'm heavy into. I love me some Star Trek and Star Wars. I don't know if y' all know that, okay?

I mean, I like me some Star Trek and Star Wars. I like. I don't even know why, but I do. All right? And they've got these things which, by the way, they've come up with a lot of things on that show that we got now.

You know,

they even had the flip phone we got better than the flip phone from Star Trek. Okay? But one of the things they had was a universal translator.

Do y' all know what that is?

That means any being they run into, no matter where they are,

no matter how far they fly out, they can put the universal translator into effect and they can translate what that being is saying to them.

All right? You go, what in the world are you talking about? Well, I believe when God speaks, we hear him in our own language.

And that's what the sound of many waters is, that when God speaks, he can be heard by every heart in their own language, in their own context, in the places where they are.

And so every time I see the.

I see it says it's the voice of many waters. I always think, well, that's the revelation of God by his spirit to humankind,

okay? And so. And if you'll notice, if you're studying through scripture and you come across the voice of many waters, it's always in the context of something new happening, God giving you some kind of new understanding, new revelation,

a new work that's going on.

It's a beautiful picture of. Of God's ability to speak to all of humanity throughout the nations and throughout time.

Okay? And then the final one is thunder, all right? And obviously, we hear the voice of God and it sounds like thunder. And that is seen in the Pentateuch also.

And it's a picture of God's holiness and his judgment.

Okay? And so when you hear the voice of God that is like thunder, it is to give you fear. You ought to fear a holy God, right?

We ought to know and realize and recognize his preeminence and our nothingness before him. And so when we have the voice of many waters, you've got God revealing himself when you got the voice of thunder.

Well, it's God. He is revealing himself, but he's revealing his holiness.

Okay? And he's letting you know that what he's going to be talking about is God's stuff,

the way he does things,

who he is.

And that's what he did on the mountain, right?

He gave them his law,

which is a revelation of his character,

which is a revelation of his holiness, which was also a revelation of our inability to live up to that character, that nature and that holiness. And so understanding, that's important.

And so when we see the voice,

we immediately think, now remember, in this passage,

the voice sounds like what?

A trumpet.

Which means probably God's moving something.

Something's got to be moving. In fact, that's what he says here. He says, and I'm in between pages. He says, I heard what I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me,

saying,

come up here.

So I got an open door, which would be Jesus, open the door.

I've got a trumpet telling me to move and come up.

And he says, I will show you the things which must take place after this metatalta again. So he starts the verse with metatalta. He ends the verse with metatalta. After these things are after this.

So what is he saying? I'm going to show you the things that happen after the churches.

And we know that's the church age.

So it quite clearly indicates that what's going to happen after this is not going to be the church age.

Now, that's not definitive.

It's not logically definitive to say that if you go through the if then statements like we talked about last week, it's not logically definitive to say that if God says it's after this, and we don't hear from them again that they're definitely gone.

But it's a pretty good indicator.

All right.

There's some really logical reasons why the church probably is no longer on the earth, but it's been called up and John being the ambassador, John being the figure of the church being called up to God.

All right. Now, there's some other things that are important about that.

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.