The Revelation 20:4 | Episode # 1172

April 14, 2026

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

The Revelation 20:4

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.

The reading of God's Word. The studying of God's word does bring about a mindset or an understanding of God's Word. It allows you to begin to think as God thinks. And really the way that happens is through life experiences. So if I'm going through a life experience, something going on in my life, and I have a base of knowledge that's God's Word, well then he's got a whole lot of resources in my mind to call upon. And sometimes you'll remember it exactly, and sometimes you'll remember where you heard it and then you'll go look for it. And especially nowadays. Used to be I had, when I was, you know, on up into my 20s, from 8 years old, well, my grandparents gave me a Bible when I was 13 that had a, had a mini concordance in the back. And so um, during my, I think I got it when I was 12 and I used it to preach until I was about 32 or 33 and it was so worn out that I just put it aside because I didn't want to tear. I'd had it re rebound a couple of times and so sometimes I'd go to that concordance. Now you can just, you can, you know, just Google, you can say, you know what you remember the Bible saying and then you just put that down and say Bible passage. And it'll find it. It'll find it pretty quick. So, you know, things have gotten a whole lot easier, but they're not easy if you don't know it. If you're not spent time studying it. And they're not. And it's not easy to recognize that. It's not easy to recognize that she's giving him a kiss. If it's not easy to recognize, I wouldn't kiss that thing now if my brother Brett, if y' all don't know anyway, they, they, it's, it's easy to. It's easy to recognize and for God to speak to your heart if you know it. If you don't know it. Well, there's nothing. There's nothing for God to point to in your heart. And oftentimes that's why your emotions or your own intellect make decisions, because you're not making it from God's perspective, because you don't have a knowledge of God in your heart. You don't have what he said, what he says in His Word. And I say that because, you know, I get. For me, I get to see God moving a lot. A lot of times I just get to see him move right out there in the open. But I wouldn't even recognize it if I didn't. Didn't see it. And think about. Think about Ray over there. I got to spend this morning with my granddaughter. She's got rsv. So I just. I kept her for about two or three hours this morning. And about a week ago we got to see her. And then I got to see her today. And she's got some eczema on her back, too. And so we, we. We. When. When we had her before and Catholic thing, it was just me and Kathleen in there. You know, we. I prayed over her while she was there, and, you know, she's eight months old, so she can crawl, she can climb up you. But, you know, she's not. She's not. Well, she's about to be mobile and hostile, but, you know, that's. That's when they really. When they start walking, then they. You know, there's no. There's no limit to where they. But, you know, when I began to pray over her back, she don't know. I mean, and she's moving all the time, you know, eight months old. I mean, if they're either dead in the bed or they're moving. Well, I prayed over and she just got dead still. Dead still. And we're talking about for, you know, 30, 45 seconds, maybe even a minute, just dead still. And. And last weekend, you know, she. When I got through praying, she turned around and climbed up and then just looked at me in the face and I. When I say that this is what she did. Yeah. What'd you just do, Papa? Yeah, she. I mean, and she looked at me for like 10 seconds, just dead in the face. Well, this morning she had croup. And so I just praying over. And when I started doing it, she got dead still again. Now the whole time I was messing with her, she's trying to climb Out. She's trying to climb up all over the place, dead still again. When I got through, she turned around, climbed up and looked me in the face again. Now, now we talk about 8 month old. So what I'm saying to you is, is, you know, some obedience to what God says. Believing what God says allows you to see what God does. Without that, you can't do it. Okay? You just can't do it. I'm just going to tell you. People say, well, you know, you got superstition. That ain't really. Well, okay, that's fine with you. That's fine. You're never going to, you're never going to experience it. I always tell people all the time, well, I don't believe that in the Bible. Okay, that's fine. Listen, I want you to hear me. That doesn't mean you're going to hell either. There are certain things in the Bible people just don't believe. This means that that part you ain't getting. You don't get any of that. Okay? All right. If you don't believe God does certain things that he clearly says he does in the Bible, I can promise you this, you will, you will languish in your unbelief because at no point in time will you experience it so that you actually do believe it. You're not going to. That's not going to happen. Okay? And so, so studying God's word is, is sometimes like, you know, Psalm 91, Pastor Jimmy was talking about. And, and you'll have passages that really are timely and really touch, or maybe even are really timely and powerful in the season of a church or a group of people. And you'll remember those times and the Spirit will draw you back to what you learned during those times. But if you spend your life not knowing or spend your life in unbelief, well, there's just a time where you're just not going to know. You ain't gonna see God move. You're not. You're gonna miss him because you're, you don't have eyes to see. You. You, you don't have eyes that are tuned into the light. You're not, you're not, you're not, you're. You're not acting as a son of light. So you're not, you're not emanating light. So when light happens around you, you in many ways are inoculated to it, even though you're born again. And so I say that because the studying of God's word is super, super important. And there's times when you read it and you realize what you thought, either one of two things is not true, or use it was like going to somebody's house and stopping in the foyer and saying, man, here's a guy. They got a nice house. And never ever really seeing what the house is because you stopped in the foyer and you think it's nice. And it was really. That part you were in was really nice. You don't really know. You don't know. And so sometimes God reveals something about His Word to you, but there's time to spend learning more and diving deep. And sometimes you'll come across a passage that meant this to you and this to you. And then all of a sudden that means something that you didn't even imagine it has meaning that you never imagined it had. Now, I say that because. Because oftentimes we as Christians get all concerned about, you know, in fact, we're going to do first and Second Thessalonians next. And so that church Paul talks about, you know, the coming of Christ in. In the first letter. And then somebody came in and said, he's already come back. Y' all got left. You know, it was left behind first century A.D. okay? The series came out and, you know, they all gone, all right? And so Paul had to write a. Let write the second letter explaining to them how they did it and explain to them how it's going to happen and that it's not happened, okay? And so that's why Second Thessalonians is very prophetic, because it deals with what's going to happen. Now, I'm saying that also because our preconceived notions of how the end times works is sometimes wrong. All right? Scripturally, there are only two Advents. And I'm using that word because it's a Christmas word that you hear all the time. There's two Advents of Christ, meaning there's two times Christ comes, okay? The first time he came was in Mary's womb. Now, listen, I'm qualifying that first time he came. I'm going to use the word. It's a theological term incarnate, okay? Which means he came as a human being. Now, Jesus shows up all through the Old Testament. He shows up as the angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord. He shows up as the commander of the Lord's host, okay? He'll show up. He'll show up in times you don't even realize it. There's almost a dozen times that I identify in the Old Testament where it is Jesus showing up he's the Lord God who walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. All right? That is the pre incarnate Christ. All right? His first incarnation was when he was born of Mary. Okay? All right, his second incarnation or his second coming, his second Advent, it's really his. He's still incarnate. So it's not his second incarnation. His second coming is going to be when he rides the white horse that we read about last Bible study, okay? When he leads the army of heaven on a white horse and he comes back, all right? That is the second coming of Christ. All right? Now, scripturally speaking, and people argue about when that happened, you know, what's going on. And one of the things they'll say to you is, Jesus, don't come back before the tribulation. And what they're saying is, is there can't be a rapture because Jesus don't come back till the end of the tribulation. Okay? Now the problem is that those who believe in the rapture, and I'm one of them, but like I've said, this is not a hill to dawn. Those who believe in the rapture don't believe that Jesus comes back. They believe that we're called up. Okay? All right? And so the belief is that that is, that is one time where there is a resurrection. Okay? Now, scripturally speaking, we're going to see that there's at least three, well, at least two, but as many as four resurrections. Okay? That means people who are dead come back to life. But really there's more than that because Jesus resurrected several people and there was a resurrection that took place at his. At his crucifixion because people came out of the tombs. So I'm just saying to you that resurrection happens a whole lot, but in this passage, it deals with that and you've got to kind of read through it. And we're going to go to a passage that, that, that really makes it a little easier to understand, but it's still going to be muddy as it's. It's just, you're not. You just go. It's going. I'm going to just teach it. That makes sense to you, all right? He says, and I saw thrones. Now this is after Satan has been thrown into the, into the, into the bottomless pit. We already dealt with that, okay? He says, I see. I saw thrones. Now that's, that's more than one because it's plural. And they sat on them and judgment was committed to them. Okay? Now we, we know that we know that Jesus has come back on the white horse. In the last chapter, there's been what we call Armageddon, or he has subjugated the earth and the armies of the earth. And now that takes place on the plain of Megiddo, which is in northern Israel. Okay? It's a plane that's several dozen miles long and about half of that wide. It's a beautiful plain that you can see from the mountains around it. It's big enough to easily have all the armies of the earth there. In fact, I don't know if you know it or not, but the population of the earth, if you stood three feet away from everybody, meaning nobody was in three feet of you, put your arms out and unless you're Rod or somebody like that, you couldn't touch them. Rod's got like four foot arms. Have y' all ever noticed that, huh? Makes him a great defensive lineman. When you push somebody out and they're on the goal line and they were on the 20 then, I mean, you're doing. I mean, you can play some football that way anyway. He's got big old hands, too, if y' all noticed that. Glad I didn't play him. He'd have grabbed me. All right. But, but, but you can fit every human being on the earth alive today within the. The city limits of Jacksonville, Florida, which is, by the way, that county is the whole city. But within the county of Jacksonville, Florida, you can fit 8, 9 billion people. All right? You can. All right? Now, when you think about that, when you really consider that, that makes you question a whole lot of other things that you get told. You know, that we're overpopulated and things like that. Does that make sense? Some of the lies that if. If every person. Listen to me, let's say I'm wrong. Let's say it's just two counties in Florida or three counties in Florida, or let's just say the whole panhandle. If everybody could have their own spot in the whole panhandle of Florida, that would be not a lot of people. Compared to the whole Earth. To the. Compared to the whole population of the Earth, there's not a lot of people there. Okay? So, so understanding. Understanding that, you know, that's one of those things that you go. That one of the things makes you go home. Things aren't quite the way certain people tell me that they are. He says here that these people were committed to judge them. Now, who are they judging? He says, I saw the souls of them who had been beheaded first. Who are they then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God who had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hand. It says, and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. So we've already had what I believe to be the first. The first resurrection of the dead, which is at the rapture. Okay. Those who are alive will meet. Those who are dead are raised, and those who are alive meet them in the air. I believe in that, in the rapture. Okay. All right. This. This one is a second resurrection because it's the martyrs who. Who are after the rapture up until Jesus comes back. And they're the ones who've lost their heads. They've been killed for the gospel of Jesus Christ. So they're going to go back to beheading. Okay. Now, some of the things I taught maybe three or four months ago about who might be involved in this, this one world government. There's only one group of people that still into beheading. Okay. Just letting you know. All right. They still doing it today? Okay. All right. He said so they were beheaded. And what do they do? They judge the people that are left. The people that are left alive when Jesus comes back, they judge them. And not only do they do that, they literally reign with Christ as rulers for a thousand years.

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.