The Revelation 16:18 | Episode # 1132

February 17, 1016

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

The Revelation 16:18

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.

And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings on,

okay,

which is a picture of judgment,

okay? And by the way, we see that multiple times in Scripture. We see it on top of the mountain.

The mountain,

his character, his law in comparison to man's law. So there's judgment, okay? We know there was judgment in Egypt. We know that there was a storm of fire in Egypt,

a hail of fire. We also know that God made Egypt go totally dark.

So dark that you couldn't see yourself.

But it wasn't all of Egypt because where the Jews lived, it didn't get dark.

There was no darkness.

So it's not like it was a solar eclipse, okay, or a lunar eclipse.

It was a darkness that came over Egypt.

So we've got this picture of judgment and, and, and the judgment is from heaven itself. He says it says here called tectonic plates,

okay?

And they float on something.

Now, it can be magma, but it could not be magma. It could be some other. It could, it could be a, a, a, a Other things that are that. That are on our tectonic plates,

all right?

And what they'll tell you and you'll hear this term used a lot is that at some point in time,

all the land was together in a one land mass. And they call it Pangea. Have you all ever heard of pangea?

Okay?

And that they were all together. And by the way,

if you took all the continents like puzzle pieces and pushed them together,

that kind of makes sense a little bit. Okay? I'm not saying that that's definitely true, okay? Because if I took my car and smashed it into your car and said that they naturally were together, they were originally together.

That doesn't mean that they were together, okay? That just means that I slammed my car into yours. I can't get out and say, listen, no need for insurance.

Our cars were naturally supposed to be.

My car was Naturally supposed to be T boned into your car. In fact, that's originally how it was.

We just didn't get them t.

After they moved them apart. That wouldn't work, right? That doesn't make any sense. But, but, but the idea that all the continents were together is true. And let me say this.

Let me say this.

Something happened.

Cataclysmic. We know that historically from all the cultures that believe in a flood,

okay?

The Bible's description of a flood was. Would require a heavy seismic phenomenon to have taken place,

okay?

Because the Bible says that the waters of the deep exploded up and penetrated what is called the firmament around the Earth, which some people believe is a water shield. There'll be people who will tell you that that's scientifically impossible.

And I would say to you that that's not scientifically impossible. It's very possible. Because if you'll get.

If you get something going at the right speed above the Earth in the right direction,

it will orbit the Earth for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years if it's going at the right speed.

So if there was a water shield above the Earth, if there was water,

a giant area of water above the Earth, and it was moving, it was spinning around the Earth at the right speed, it would never come down unless something broke its orbit, okay?

The Bible says that the waters of the deep exploded forth.

They went up and they penetrated the. The. The waters above. Now, I want you to hear me.

I don't. I don't treat the Old Testament and I don't treat Genesis like it's fables,

okay?

And I have not only good reason not to do that because I believe in an aspect of God's character, nature that it's necessary for him to have to be God.

I talked about this a little bit in my morning Bible study.

In order for God to be God, he must be all good,

all knowing,

all powerful,

and all present or omnipresent.

Are you following me? If he's not any of those things,

then he by definition is not God.

Okay? You must be those things to be God,

all right? And so if he is those things,

then he lives in all time and all space,

which means he knows what happened and he has control over all things, right? Which means he's sovereign over that which he created. He didn't create something that could act beyond his nature.

Are you following me?

God cannot create something that acts beyond his ability to control it or he's not God,

okay?

All those. Whenever somebody throws out an idea about, well, I Don't believe God because of this. I always go back to the fundamentals. I'm not talking about the fundamentals of what the Bible creates as God,

a superior being that created, that could have the capability of creating all things, has certain aspects to his nature that cannot be broken,

okay?

He's got to be perfectly good.

He's got to be all those things.

If that's the case,

then he knows what happened to cause the flood.

And his description of that to you is adequate enough for you to understand what happened in the flood.

Okay?

And by the way,

we know that at some point in time these tectonic plates moved. And we know when they move,

it opens up deep crevices in the earth.

Why? How do we know that?

We've mapped the bottom of the ocean.

We know how it works.

Okay? So when I read this and it says a great earthquake happened,

and then, then I go on to read it and it says that earthquake was one that hadn't occurred,

was greater than any had occurred since. Since man was on the earth.

Okay? God. Listen, God is. How does. Does John know is greater than any earthquake that ever happened?

John doesn't know that.

So who told him that?

God did.

Okay?

God told him that that occurrence was greater than any occurrence that ever happened on the Earth.

Well, we know that there was great seismic activity that had to take place in order for those continents to be.

To move apart.

Now what, what people will say about that is they'll say to you,

that,

they'll say to you, well, that could have happened over millions of years,

right?

Okay,

now here's the problem with that.

The problem with that is this,

that we have direct ties to civilizations that are doing the same thing all over the world.

Civilizations that didn't exist millions of years ago,

civilizations that didn't exist hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Civilizations that only could have existed over the last,

at the most, 10, 20,000 years.

And what they do, and their practices are almost exactly the same.

One of their practices is to build these.

These.

Well, I'm going to just use the phrase, the word ziggurats,

okay?

They build these fortresses that look kind of like pyramids,

okay?

They build them and they are built such that they can study the stars or so that they can not study them, so that they can worship them.

Now, I want you to listen to me.

Those ziggurats are all over the Earth.

They're in South America,

they're in Africa,

they're in Asia.

They're in the northern parts of the Earth. In the Southern parts of the Earth, in the central parts of the Earth. They're all over the world.

Now, do they all look exactly the same?

No.

But are they very, very similar?

Yeah,

they were.

In fact,

the Bible mentions a ziggurat,

okay? And we call it the Tower of Babel,

all right?

That was a ziggurat built.

Now, I want you to listen to me when you hear about it in Sunday school. They say he was building it so that they could reach God.

That is not what the Bible says.

And you can go back to my Bible study through Genesis to get this in detail. What the Bible says is,

is that.

Is that those ziggurats that were.

That ziggurat that was made there,

it was built to the sky so that they would have a name that would be great in the Earth,

okay? It doesn't say that they were building it,

building it to reach Google Ziggurat.

And you'll see different types of ziggurats. Some of them would be.

Some of them, you think about,

you might say that looks like a pyramid. The ziggurats that we find in Incas and Aztec civilizations are much like the ones that you'll find in the Middle east,

okay? And they are. They're built as a fortress.

They're very difficult to attack because you got to attack up the, up the ziggurat, up the hill.

They, they are built and oriented so that you could. I want, you hear me, not study the stars,

but worship the stars,

okay? Yeah. And they map all over. They're mapped all over the Earth,

okay?

And, and, and I want you to hear me.

The first ziggurat that was ever made is the Tower of Babel.

And it was created. And we're going to get to this in the next chapter.

It was created by Nimrod,

who is a son, who is a grandson of Kush,

okay? Who is one of the children of the children of Noah,

okay? One of his three sons,

Cush.

His grandson was Nimrod. And Nimrod, the Bible says he was a great owner. When you read your translation,

it says he was a great hunter before God. What it doesn't tell,

what you don't get, is of man.

He was a great killer of human beings on the Earth, okay? Which meant he was the first great emperor or dictator on the Earth.

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.