The Revelation 4:4-5| Episode # 1030

September 19, 2025

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

The Revelation 4:4-5

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.

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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.

Now, here we are, which is, I think,

one of the most important pictures that you're going to see in the book of the Revelation.

Okay. It says around the throne were 24 thrones.

And on the thrones I saw 24 elders sitting.

Now, what's interesting about that is that Daniel sees 24 Thrones,

but when he sees the thrones, they're empty.

Daniel, when Daniel sees the throne of heaven, sees the throne room of heaven, the thrones that sit around that main throne,

they're empty.

But when John gets to heaven,

after the open door,

after the message to come up,

he sees 24 field seats. Now, this is an important picture for a lot of reasons. You go, well, what does 24 mean? Well,

24, interestingly, is a number of priests that served in the temple during the times after Moses. Obviously, you would have a lot of Levites being born, a lot of priests.

And if you were a priest, obviously one of the places you wanted to really work would be in the tabernacle. And then once the temple was built, you would want to work at the temple.

You don't want to serve at the temple.

Well,

when you got thousands of them,

you can't do that.

And they needed priests out in the communities. They needed Levites to live among the tribes and among the people. And so when that was going on,

they couldn't afford to have the whole priesthood to be in Jerusalem.

So what they did was they worked on a rotation,

and every two weeks,

24 priests were. Would come and serve in the temple.

Now we see that picture,

the picture of that happening best in the story of the Good Samaritan, where the priest sees the man beaten on the side of the road. And because if he helped him, he would be unclean and he wouldn't be able to minister before the altar.

He wouldn't be able to minister for seven days. He'd have to Stay outside the camp. He passes him by and you go, well, that seems really mean.

Well,

it is, and it's wrong. And Jesus obviously said that he didn't love him like the Samaritan did.

But there was a legitimate reason for that. And the legitimate reason was that priest probably only get to serve one time in his whole life.

Okay?

If you got 24 times, 26, little over 500,

only 500 could serve every year. And if there were 10,000 of them, you would only get to serve once every 20 years.

And so your opportunity to serve in the temple might only come along once every 20 years.

And so he was on his way to do something that he'd been waiting to do for 20 years.

Now, he didn't have the love of God because he ought to loved his neighbor as himself,

but he also wanted to serve in the temple.

Okay?

And remember, the Levites are the priesthood and we are the priesthood. In fact, after this, you're going to see that three times. Well, I think it's said in chapter one, but three times it's going to say,

has he not made them a kingdom of priests or kings and priests before him?

All right?

And so the 24 elders or the 24 priests or those who minister before his throne represent the whole priesthood,

which means the complete church.

Jesus is the high priest.

We are a royal priesthood.

Every one of us have access to the Father.

You have a right to be before the Father's throne. That's why we have altars up here. That's why we give people a chance to, in the physical practice what goes on in the spiritual.

That's why we have altars here. That's why when we build our church,

there'll be 10 to 20 times this number of altars at the front of the church. It might look a little different, but there'll be a place for you to come,

place for you to bow down before God, a place for you to deal with those things in the flesh. And.

But acting it out in the spiritual,

okay, that's the whole purpose of the altars.

All right?

The priesthood is us.

And if you said Chad,

what is the number one thing in the book of the Revelation that makes you think that the rapture happens right at the end of the church age and before the seven years begins, I would tell you that those 24.

Those 24 thrones is the best evidence of it because it represents the whole priesthood.

And when he looks,

Daniel saw them empty.

Now they're full,

okay?

And for me, that is the best evidence that we are raptured. The whole church is raptured. Because every week in the temple,

the whole priesthood was represented by those 24 elders.

All right? It's a picture of the complete priesthood, and that's what the number stands for, and that's what this picture is of.

And so he says around the throne were 24 thrones.

And on the thrones, I saw 24 elders sitting clothed in white robes, which means they're holy.

The white robes are complete and full.

They covered all their sin. It also is a picture of a covering of sin.

It says they were sitting clothed in white robes and they had crowns of gold on their head. Now, that's royalty,

okay? So that means they're a part of a royal line. And remember, he's gonna say,

has he not made them kings or a kingdom of priests, or kings and priests before him? You can translate both ways.

And both ways I actually think is correct. We are a kingdom of priests, and he has made us kings and priests before him. Now, the interesting part about these crowns is this,

and I think it's really cool. The word used here is not diadem,

okay? Which is an ornate crown.

All right? The word here used here is the word for.

And I am missing it right here on my sheet. But anyway,

the word for it is stephanos, which means victor. Okay? It means victor.

So the crowns they wear are not crowns based off of their royal nature in and of themselves,

okay?

All right?

They're not born of the Holy Spirit in the sense of physically born of the Holy Spirit, just like Jesus was. Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit. He's conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb,

born by the work of the Holy Spirit, born again.

And they lived that life,

that spiritual life out.

And they were victorious because of their faith.

Okay? And so the crowns that the elders wear around the throne are not a picture of heavenly beings. They're a picture of earthly beings who have been. Been victorious.

They've overcome.

They wear Stefano crowns, not diadem crowns.

Does that make sense?

All right, so they're victorious.

Now it says,

and from the throne proceeded lightning,

thundering,

and voices,

which means God is speaking to the church,

and he has to be speaking in voices.

Does that make sense?

Now, a lot of people think that during Pentecost that people were.

When the tongues of fire came upon them, that they began to speak.

And when they spoke,

it was kind of like God gave the people a universal translator and they translated this heavenly language. Okay? Now I'm going to tell you that's really not the indication I get from that.

Okay. I think that when the 120 were there speaking,

that they were speaking an unknown tongue, and that's the way scripture describes it. They were speaking in a language that they didn't know,

but they were speaking a language that someone else there did know.

Okay,

now you go, well, why would that be important? Well, if you've ever been to Disney World and been around a group of people and they're speaking just all the other languages,

I'm going to tell you, you can't understand them. It sounds like they're talking gibberish to you. Okay? I've been there. I've looked at them in the face and they've said,

I just have no idea what they're saying.

And then I speak back to them, and strangely enough, they look at me like they don't know what I'm saying.

And I'm just telling you I know what I'm talking about.

All right? And, and, and so. But when you're there and you're in a group of people that are speaking all different languages,

you hear your language.

You hear. It's distinct to you. It's obvious.

It, it, it carries to your ear. Okay? So I believe when they began to speak in unknown tongues and knowing that these people were common people, knowing that they weren't educated people,

when those who heard their language being spoken, they were drawn to them and they realized that they were not speaking from themselves, they were speaking from God and that they heard their own language in their own tongue.

All right, now you go, well, why does this matter here? Well, you've got a mixture that's going on here. First of all,

you've got God himself in judgment,

all right? This throne is not a throne of mercy anymore. It's a throne of judgment. Okay? The church is called up. The church age is over.

That's done with.

Are you following me now? God's going to redeem some people in the tribulation,

but he's going to redeem them Old Testament, not New Testament. Are you following me? He's going to redeem them. He's going to redeem them as they were redeemed in the Old Testament,

as they became Old Testament saints.

Church age is done. Now,

when we get to that point,

you got to think and go, okay, so we've got judgment, but we've also got God speaking to the elders.

Now you saying we're not going to have a universal translator. We're not going to be able to speak in all the languages I Don't know.

But I do know this. When God speaks, you're going to understand what he's saying in your own language.

And so when God's speaking, he's just not speaking for no reason. He's speaking for a reason.

And who's he speaking to?

Well, he's speaking to us. And he's going to be speaking to some cherubs too, by the way. And those are not fat babies with wings. Okay? We're going to find that out in just a little bit, okay?

And they don't have bow and arrows with hearts on them. Just letting you know that that's not in the Bible. All right,

so when we get to that, I want you to see that. That'll be next week. But I want you to understand that we have a purpose there. We're ministering before the throne of God.

We're glorifying God by our presence. And when God speaks, he's going to speak judgment, but we're going to hear it as the Church.

Remember many languages.

He's speaking to humanity,

people.

So we know that these elders,

we know that they're not spiritual or heavenly beings. They're not angels because they have Victor's crowns,

because they have robes of white.

You're going to see that the angels are not always in robes of white.

Okay?

The angels,

well, they're pretty cool animal beings.

And you're going to see, and you see here that when God speaks, even when he's speaking judgment,

he speaks in the language of men or many languages.

He speaks to the church right there around his throne.

And so that's why this is,

in my opinion, the best evidence that we're up there.

Because nobody fits that except for us.

We fulfill that.

It says,

before the throne there was a sea of glass,

like crystal. But I jumped past five,

back up to five.

It says, and from the throne proceeded lightning, thundering voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne. Which is the seven or the complete or the Holy Spirit of God?

Now notice the Holy Spirit, which was among the churches,

is now in heaven,

there with the elders before the throne. And you go, well, does the Holy Spirit cease to exist on the earth in this sense? It's very important.

What was the Holy Spirit doing on the earth? Well, he's fulfilling the role that Jesus told him to fulfill,

told us that he was going to fulfill. It's necessary that Jesus go so that the Holy Spirit could come.

The Holy Spirit could be everywhere.

The Holy Spirit could be all knowing and the Holy Spirit could work the power of God among his people in every location.

And quite clearly,

somebody can't do that anymore.

And that's Jesus. He wields the power of God, but he can't be everywhere.

He knows all things,

but he couldn't tell us all because he can only be in one place.

And so it was necessary that he go so that the Holy Spirit could come and fulfill a very special role. And that very special role was with the church. And the Holy Spirit was right there in every one of the churches.

Right?

The sevenfold Spirit of God's there amongst the lampstand. And what is he doing? He's revealing God to them.

He's revealing Jesus to them. He's revealing the Word to them.

All right.

He's unveiling the plan of God in Jesus Christ to the church.

But he ain't doing that anymore because the church isn't there anymore.

He's moved from being on the earth with the churches to the throne room of heaven.

Another reason why God raptures his church at the end of the church age.

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.