The Revelation 16:2 | Episode # 1117

January 27, 2025

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

The Revelation 16:2

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.

He said,

so the first went and poured out. And it says, so the first. And then it's going to say, so the second angel. So I think it's really, really interest that it doesn't use the word angelos in this verse, okay?

Because these things are happening rapidly. He's coming there.

It's not something that happened. Pour it out. And we see its effect. I believe it's telling us that he's doing these things all at once. All right? It says, so the first went out and poured his bowl upon the earth.

And the word here is foul.

It means.

Well, the word that is used that most of, if you really kind of study. This is not a word that even I have ever heard in the English language. It's an English word,

but it means terrible from your own.

From yourself.

Yeah, but it's more than foul. It means,

you know, you know, there can be a foul odor, and then there's your foul odor.

You know what I'm talking about? My granddaddy used to say, son,

people been smelling if. People. If, if, if, if you can smell yourself, people been smelling you for a week. Okay? So that's what he said. He also had the little dabble do you line, but we won't get into that, okay?

And, and, and papa, I mean, granddaddy was heavily into not stinking.

And so he said. He said that it's foul,

but it's not foul in the sense of somebody else's foul. It's foul in the sense of your own foul,

okay? So these,

they're loathsome in that they're hated, but they're hated because it's them.

Now, that's the whole purpose of him saying that these sores are loathsome sores, but they're loathsome, they're hated,

they're detestable.

Not because of something else or somebody else. They're Detestable because they're loathsome sores from them.

This judgment is a very personal judgment,

okay?

It says, the first went out and poured his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men.

And the word there is anthropos. So it is people,

all right, for the men or the people who had the mark of the beast and those who had worshiped the image.

Now, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, telling you so many times, so many. There's a false teaching that's come from this. I've heard it since I was a child.

If you get that mark on you, you're going to hell.

Hadn't you heard that?

If you got the mark of the beast on you, you're going to hell?

And I'm telling you, that ain't what it says.

It says, those who had the mark and worshiped the beast. And by the way, this ain't the first time it said it. It's already said it two other times,

okay?

So if you were. Let's say you were somebody in Zimbabwe,

and in order to get food,

they said, listen, we got to put this tattoo on you or whatever it is, however it operates,

we got to shoot this thing in your head so we know how much food you get,

okay?

And you got the food from getting the thing put on your head,

all right?

Now, just from all that you know of the character of God,

do you think God's going to send people to hell based off of a trick that they had no clue about?

By the way, that's not even scriptural,

okay? You don't go to hell prior to the Ten Commandments.

Based off of the Ten Commandments. Did you know that Romans, Hebrews teaches us this?

You go to hell for what you knew about your rejection of who you knew God to be.

That's a scriptural teaching.

Your. Your rejection of God is based off of his revelation to you.

Okay,

so my rejection of God could be.

Could be a whole lot of stuff.

Yes, ma'. Am.

Oh, you definitely are in the beast system.

Well, we don't know that for sure. That's not in scripture. Nobody, no where in scripture does it say, because the beast is using the mark as an economic system in order to control the world.

It doesn't tell us that because you've taken the mark that you by definition, worship the beast. It just says those who. Every time it pronounces judgment, it always says for those who took the mark and worship the beast.

And this is the third time it said it.

Okay? It's the third time that it's been said.

All right?

And. And I think it.

Like I've told you, but like I've been telling you the whole time,

it's an important.

If God says something in his word,

make sure that you're reading what he said. You know, I'll be honest with you. In my line of work,

that's what we're taught to do.

In fact, the whole test that they make you take before you go to law school is a determinative test whether you can logically follow through a series of things and figure.

Put all the. Put all the things together and figure it out.

Kathleen and I were watching a show last night, and it was competition, and one of the competitors was an attorney. It was a black lady attorney, okay? And the competition was to take all this information and order it up in such a way that you figure out who did what.

Does that make sense?

Now,

if it had been any other competition,

that woman would have lost.

She was slow. If it had been a physical competition, she'd have lost.

But when I found out what the competition was, I said, she gonna win.

You know how I know? Because she'd been doing it her whole life,

okay? What has she been doing? Taking information and logically and orderly. Put it in a way that. That you get to the exact end that was intended,

okay?

So when I read Scripture,

a lot of people say,

I believe in the King James Version. And whenever they say that to me, I say, what edition?

Okay? Because what you read when you read the King James is 26th edition,

all right?

That's not the first edition. It's the 26th edition, okay? If you read the first edition, you can't read it,

okay? Because it's not in English. Is.

Well, I was already over there back a couple of weeks ago, and let me tell you something. They mess up every word.

Every word. They don't say exactly the way they spell it. And that angered me as a child, okay? So I know where it came from. But if you read. If you read the English language from the 16th century,

it's not even the same language. It's not the same language, okay? And why am I telling you that? Because what people want to do is they want to tell you, okay, well, we're going to study it from this language, but I'm going to make you study it from a language that you don't understand,

okay? And then I'm going to tell you what I think you ought to Think about it,

okay? Let me tell you how it works.

The original Bible is not the King James.

It's Greek and Hebrew with a little bit of Aramaic sprinkled in Aramaic,

okay? There's a couple of quotes in the Old Testament, and one, the New Testament, that's a quote of Aramaic, okay?

And now I'm telling you that for a reason, because I'm gonna help you. For those of you who've never heard this before,

there is a computer program. There's an app called blueletterbible.com,

okay?

That blueletterbible.com if you'll start working with it,

you can study the Greek, too,

or the Hebrew or anything else.

And I know when God says certain things in his Word,

I know what it means not in English first. I know what it means in the Greek or Hebrew before I ever even get to the English,

okay?

And I know whether it's a general or specific word,

and I know what context it's used in. And by the way, I know all the other passages of scripture that that word's used in.

And you're sitting there going, well, why does that matter? Well, I'm going to tell you on Sunday morning that matters to me.

Because when I get up here, I'm not telling you what I think you know, the new King James Version says many times, you'll see that I'm not even really even going by that in the sense I read it to you.

But then I start explaining every word to you. Why? I have a high view of Scripture,

all right?

And I know when God says something over and over and over and over again, and he says it exactly the same way, I better get get busy looking at it that way.

And then when he says something over and over and over and over again and there's something different about every way he says it, then I also know something else that whatever he's saying different is speaking to that person about that situation.

But the answer to the question is the one thing that is the same in everything.

Take, for instance,

when God is asked, or somebody's asked, how do I go to heaven? How am I saved? How do I have a relationship? How am I born again? What? Whenever those questions are asked in scripture,

usually you'll get a list of things,

okay?

You'll get a list of things.

And if you'll go in and I'm telling you this, I'm teaching you this for a reason,

okay? When I get that list of things,

I go, all right, Can I find the primary thing that is in all of Them. And there's one primary thing that's in all of them.

Faith.

Faith's the primary thing.

Some action or direct directly says faith.

Okay?

Like if he. If you said. If you said,

if you. One of. One of. One of the.

One of the passages says, repent and be baptized.

Okay?

All right. Repentance is an action that is result of you acting upon the faith God's given you so that you turn from your own will and you turn to his will face there.

Okay? Repentance is the. Is the description of the activity of acting in faith.

Okay?

Jesus said,

when he was asked how to. How to. How to get in the kingdom,

he says, believe on the one he sent.

Okay? Why didn't he say, be baptized?

Why didn't he say, and sin no more?

Are you following me? Because all the extra things he's saying to that person is the thing that person needs to know to begin their walk with him.

The woman caught in adultery, she need to be told,

don't do that no more.

Right?

All right.

The New Testament Church, they needed to hear when they were telling them this. Repent and be baptized. They needed to hear,

turn to God and then begin to act upon it in baptism.

Are y' all following me?

And when we study God's word, that is super important.

When I say it's super important, it's super important.

Don't look for what you want it to say.

Don't look for what you know. Oh, Uncle Versie told you, it said,

are you following me?

Look for what it says.

Look for what it says.

And if it says something,

let's figure it out. And if God keeps saying the same exact thing and it keeps ringing in your ears, you better listen to it.

And so he says here,

those who took the mark and worship the beast,

okay? Now I'm going to tell you, a lot of people made a whole lot of money scaring folks about this mark,

okay?

And I'm telling you,

if you're here, which you ain't going to be,

are you following me?

But if somebody's listening to this when this is going on on a podcast,

are you following me?

And you got the. You got the mark,

but you know that that ain't right.

And don't worship the beast.

And if you've been gotten this far, you know who the beast is,

okay?

I'm saying that openly.

Don't worship the beast.

If you took the mark and you're in, you know, Guatemala and you see this guy on TV or on the Internet or on your phone, and everybody's worshiping. Don't worship him,

okay?

Don't worship him.

Now, for our time,

there's been a lot of money made off of trying to figure out what that mark is,

okay?

There,

you know, it's the mark. Don't take the mark.

Okay?

But if you're hearing this and you didn't know it was a mark and you took the mark,

don't worship the beast,

Clear?

Don't worship the beast. And I'm saying that for a whole boy, I'm not even for us, I'm not even saying that because none of us are going to deal with it.

I'm almost 99% sure nobody in this room is going to deal with that,

okay? I'm almost completely sure.

But I want you to hear me. I want you to hear me because it's super important when you study God's word. And I'm telling you to study God's word.

I'll tell you what, my daddy, you know, my granddaddy, my daddy, they were some unique individuals, okay? So is my pawpaw, all right? They, I grew up with some very unique, well, my whole family's unique individuals, all right?

That's a nice way for, of saying, you know, they kind of, yeah, they out there, they special. I, I,

my daddy used to say this, and he was dead on.

You're going to hear a whole lot of good preaching. You're going to hear a whole lot of good teaching.

But just because a preacher said it, don't mean it's true.

He said the devil hide a whole lot of lie and a little bit of truth.

You make sure you know what it says.

You make sure you know what it says. And as your pastor, I'm telling you, I done told you before, if you get out there in the community, say, well, Pastor Chad says this,

I'm going to leave you out there hanging out.

Are you following me? Because you have been told not to do that.

All right? That's not your testimony. You try and testify to my testimony.

Makes sense.

It's not yours until you've taken it.

Boy, I'm on this hot and heavy. I'm just going to stay on it, okay?

It ain't yours until you took it.

And what I mean by that, just cause somebody told you something don't mean it's yours.

You gotta go and make it yours yourself.

Which means you gotta deal with it and deal with God yourself with that truth.

And when you do, it becomes yours.

Because all truth from God is available to us.

And any,

anybody who is trying to help people understand God's word. Anybody who's trying to do that is trying to speak truth from the Holy Spirit.

And if it's a truth from the Holy Spirit that comes from God's word, it ain't mine,

it's God's.

And so if it's a truth from the Holy Spirit,

from God's word,

then how do you make it? But now it is mine for me.

It's all mine for me.

But it ain't all mine for you,

okay?

It's all mine for you.

When you take it,

when you struggle with it, when you deal with it, when you come to that truth yourself, then it's yours.

But until then, it ain't.

It's. Well, you know, I heard my preacher say,

you know, my granny always said nothing wrong with that. But I don't know you, granny.

I ain't heard you, preacher.

So you saying that doesn't add any weight to it.

Okay,

what does God say?

Yeah. Seek it out yourself.

Find it yourself.

Make sure that he.

I told you, really, my life verse is, anyone who lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously without finding fault,

and truly, or surely he will give it unto you.

But when you ask,

you gotta believe.

You can't ask for the truth. Get the truth, not believe the truth. Why? Because it ain't yours yet.

It's not your truth.

Until you live it out, it ain't yours.

And that's super important.

So these loathsome sores and, and, and, and, and, and even in the context of this passage, it's very helpful.

These people have these,

these loathsome sores that are terrible to them. And the reason it's terrible to them is because they know it's their fault.

Are you following me?

Nobody. No, you can't blame somebody else.

Okay?

So when I read this, even the context of this passage lets me know that these are willful acts.

Willful activity. It's not something you got tricked into.

You willfully rejected God. You willfully took the mark. You willfully willfully worship the beast.

And by the way,

most crimes require a willful act. It's called mens re.

Okay?

And by the way,

this is just straight up first class criminal law.

Almost all crimes have to have mens, ray,

mean you willfully did it.

The second thing you got to have is actus, Ray,

meaning you did it.

Are you following me?

If I said.

Diane, I'm telling you. What? That woman just aggravated me to death. I wanted her dead,

but I didn't kill Her.

I don't have actis, Ray.

I wanted her dead, but I didn't do it. How many times you ever watched that on one of them shows, right?

Hey, bring him in. There he goes. Yeah,

I want him dead.

I didn't do it, though, but I wanted him. What he's saying is I had the men's raid. I didn't have an actress, Ray. If you don't have the actress raid, ain't no crime that doesn't happen.

Ain't no crime.

Okay,

now you go, well, what about what. What crimes are.

Don't have men's raid? Well, there's some.

They're called strict liability crimes. They're crimes that if you do it, you're guilty. It doesn't matter.

So be careful about not doing it, okay? One of them statutory rape,

okay? If you have relations with a. With somebody under the age of 16 in the state of Alabama and you're more than two years older than them,

it's a crime. Period in the story. Don't matter.

Okay? Didn't matter. Whether you knew, didn't know, should have known, wouldn't own that don't matter. You get it? That's been a problem for a lot of people for a lot of time.

There's a lot of people have. That, have. That have. Have that conviction on them when they were 18 and they had. Had relations with somebody when they're 15 and they didn't know they were 15.

Okay?

So there's a little bit of problem with that, but it's. It's. It's a crime which put places the onus on you to make sure you know what you're doing,

okay?

It does, and it's. It's right.

All right?

These people who do this and who have these store sores are not.

They're not just innocent victims of the problem.

They're actively involved in the acts, and God is.

God is punishing their willfulness.

All right? And you go, well, what about people?

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.