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Revelation (Part 23)

Revelation 19:1–10

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the End Times from Revelation 19:1–10


The New Testament pulsates with the hope of Christ’s soon return. “Look up, redemption draws nigh. Prepare for the coming of the Lord.” The parables that warn against being lazy or thinking that he’s not going to come or 2 Peter: “Don’t be like the people in Noah’s day who say judgment won’t come. For just as such an hour as you think not, the fire will come, as the flood came and took them all away when they weren’t ready for it.”

There are all kinds of passages that speak of being ready for the Lord’s return. So from my point of view, despite the people who hold the fourth line on my chart, postmillennialism, all of those passages rule out postmillennialism. In other words, the anticipation of something when you’re not ready for it is a very strong theme in the New Testament. The question I would want to raise is.… Is it tied down necessarily to an “any second” kind of thing with nothing that is allowed before it?

Now let’s ask some questions of specific texts. Do you remember what Jesus says to Peter in John 21? After the exchange, “Do you love me? Feed my sheep,” and all that, Jesus says to Peter, “When you are an old man, someone will lead you where you do not want to go.” John the Evangelist, writing after the event, comments, “By this Jesus was saying by what death Peter would glorify God.”

You must either conclude that that was a prophecy that had to be fulfilled and, therefore, Jesus couldn’t have come back until it was fulfilled, or you have to conclude that it was a conditional prophecy and Christ could have come back before it was fulfilled. I’ve asked some friends at Trinity who hold to an “any second” return of Christ, “What do you do with John 21 and the prediction about Peter?”

Doesn’t it say, “This is the death by which he would glorify God”? Moreover, it couldn’t take place instantaneously. It was going to be when he was an old man, written in a context that clearly shows he wasn’t an old man yet. He’s still a spry fisherman, just barely converted. You’re right after the resurrection. What do you do with that?

Paul Feinberg smiles. “Well, I guess I’d have to say that implicitly it’s a contingent promise.” Paul is such a good and reasonable thinker that at least he sees the problem. It is the only way out for a dispensationalist. You have to say that all of the prophecies of all of the things that are going to take place within the first 40 years all have to be contingent promises.

“Well, Paul, what are you going to say about the promises that speak of the fall of Jerusalem?” “Well, they must be contingent promises too.” I want to say, “They don’t sound like contingent promises.” It doesn’t say, “Well, Peter, you’re going to die as an old man and glorify my death, provided, of course, I don’t come first.” It doesn’t say that. The fall of Jerusalem doesn’t say that. When it says the gospel must be preached in the whole world before the end comes, it doesn’t say, “Unless, of course, I come first.”

Even if whole world does not mean what we mean by whole world, even if it’s something more general, like not just Jewish circles but also Gentiles, in that sense the whole world.… After all, even in the book of Acts, halfway through Acts people are starting to say, “These Christians are contaminating the whole world with their gospel.” Obviously it wasn’t the whole world. They hadn’t gotten to China yet, but it was the whole Roman world. They were contaminating everything.

Even if the whole world only means that, it didn’t take place one day after Pentecost. It took at least a couple of decades. So during that period, could Christ have come or not? It’s during that period as well that you have many of these texts written telling you to be ready for the Lord’s return because he could come soon. His coming is near. It’s impending, which drives me to this conclusion.

In my view, part of the problem is that our definitions of imminency being of an “any second” sort are indefensible. I think they’re right up the spout. I think the New Testament exhortation to be ready at any time is always of the sort that Christ could come in any generation. Yes, he could come in your time. He could come in my time.

All of the things the Bible speaks of as things that must take place are all the sorts of things that either can or do happen in generation after generation after generation. Within Peter’s lifetime. Well, then be ready. I mean, Peter is not going to live that long. The gospel is already circulating around the whole Roman Empire, which was judged to be the whole world in the common parlance of the day, within two and a half decades. We’re to be ready.

Part of our problem is that we think of time at such a snapped-up pace that when we say “any time” we mean any second. When we have machines that measure things in nanometers and in billionths of a second.… Have you heard the latest created element on the periodic table? A half-life of a billionth of a billionth of a second. When we live in a culture that talks like that, and then you say, “Be ready at any time,” well, you mean be ready at any time.

I’m not sure that’s the way the ancient world thought of time. “It could happen in your lifetime. You’re building your whole life. Be ready.” In that sense, I think the urgency of the New Testament forbids the kind of approach seen in the fourth line, postmillennialism. I’m not sure it rules out anything like historic premillennialism or amillennialism. I do not think that the words demand that it be the “any second” variety of dispensationalism.

So that’s how I would approach these sorts of questions. You work through them one by one, looking up passage after passage after passage, until you see where you try and fit into a system. If you hold some other system, that’s fine, but I want you to understand where I’m coming from so that I’m not trying to pull the wool over your eyes by deceit.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don Carson: Oh no. Forty years ago in evangelical circles, when dispensationalism in America was strong (it wasn’t so all around the world in evangelical circles, but it was strong here), then there were relatively few who did hold the view I’m expounding, but I would want to argue that this view was dominant in the church until the 1830s. It has always been dominant in the evangelical church outside of America and a few other Anglo areas, and it is now amongst Christian writers and thinkers probably the dominant view again.

So I don’t want to suggest for a moment that this is creative or innovative. Anything that’s too creative or innovative in theology is probably wrong. I don’t want to give the impression at all that I’ve thought this one up all by myself. It is a very common view in the history of the church, and I think that it does work out when you work through the verbs and the tenses and so on.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: That’s one of the standard arguments in amillennialism, and it’s a powerful argument. If the book of Revelation, chapter 20, were the only place where this sort of interpretation could be supported, in my view that argument would be conclusive, because one must never build a doctrine on just one text that could be interpreted in different ways.

Let me draw an analogy. One argues exactly that way with respect to 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, and the brief reference to the baptism for the dead. What on earth does the baptism for the dead mean? Well, if you ask your friendly neighborhood Mormon, he knows exactly what it means, but it’s the only place where the expression is used in all of Holy Writ.

There were three articles in Catholic Biblical Quarterly in 1950 and 1951 that surveyed the various interpretations of that little expression, the baptism for the dead, in the whole history of the church. There were 42 of them. In my mind, it’s nailed down to a choice of two, and I can’t quite decide between those two. On the other hand, I’m not eager to lay that on the conscience of anybody just because the expression only shows up once.

“Ah,” someone says. “How often must God say something for it to be true?” The answer is that strictly speaking God doesn’t have to say it at all. It either is true or it isn’t. Moreover, if God says it just once, it’s true. But God may have to say the same thing many times in different ways for us to know what he means, because we’re dumb and sinful and don’t have a very good grasp of things.

The question is not that we’re doubting that “baptism for the dead” means something and that it’s true. It’s that we’re not quite sure what it means. So here, if the only place in the whole Bible it speaks of 1,000 years is Revelation 20, and it’s disputed in its meaning because it’s apocalyptic and difficult anyway, at the very least we should say, “Let’s not mandate it on anybody. Let’s drop any sort of millennial statement in our statements of faith.”

My response to that, having come out of an amillennial camp that has argued that many times, would be, first, on the analogy of the 1 Corinthians 15 passage about the baptism for the dead, we’re not saying it doesn’t mean anything. We’re arguing what it does mean and simply saying we don’t want to lay it on the conscience of believers. So we’re not saying the millennium doesn’t mean anything. The question is still.… What does it mean?

You may then legitimately ask the question, “Should we put it into our statements of faith?” On the basis of your question, answer: no, we should not. I might happily agree with that. But that’s a little different from saying it doesn’t mean anything. Within that kind of framework, then, I would want to say you still have to give a judgment on balance as to what it does mean. If you’re expounding 1 Corinthians 15, you still have to give a judgment on balance about what baptism for the dead means.

The second thing I’d want to say is that although it’s the only passage that speaks of 1,000 years, and the 1,000 years may be taken figuratively for a lengthy period of time, judging by the kind of usage that numbers have in Revelation, there are other passages that do seem, in my view, to refer to the kind of splendor that is mentioned there that is still short of the splendor of the new heaven and the new earth.

That’s why I brought up the Isaiah 65 passage, and there are a handful of Old Testament texts like that. Not many, but it’s more than one. The question is.… What do you do with all of them? Do you begin to worry about an E.J. Young’s insistence that the young man who dies at 100 signals eternal longevity? Is that just a bit of a forced interpretation to fit the schema of amillennialism when, in fact, there might be another one?

That’s not what amillennialism does. Postmillennialism does that. Amillennialism sees things either holding their own or going from bad to worse. I’ll say more about the millennium next week when we get to Revelation 20. I’ll just say this much now. I find the view that the first resurrection there refers to salvation a doubtful one, and especially do I find it difficult to believe that the millennium there refers to the whole period between the first coming and the second coming of Christ with Satan bound during all this period.

I find that so out of step with the book of Revelation that I find it an unlikely interpretation of the book of Revelation, let alone of your whole schema. Since I’m text-based first, since I want to work out of texts into the structure, I find that an unbelievable interpretation of Revelation 12–13. That’s my biggest objection to amillennialism. I don’t think it’ll square with enough texts.

We now come to chapter 19. I will skim through it in the last half hour, and then next week we’ll look briefly at chapter 20 and then spend most of our time on 21 and the first half of 22 so we can enjoy heaven together before we go our separate ways. All right, let me read the first section, Revelation 19:1–10.

“After this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting: ‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments. He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants.’

And again they shouted: ‘Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever.’ The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God, who was seated on the throne. And they cried: ‘Amen, Hallelujah!’ Then a voice came from the throne, saying: ‘Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, both small and great!’

Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: ‘Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)

Then the angel said to me, ‘Write: “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” ’ And he added, ‘These are the true words of God.’ At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.’ ”

This chapter follows hard on chapters 17–18, which, as we saw last week, announce the destruction of mighty Babylon. Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes, picks up the symbolism from the Old Testament, in which Babylon is the archetype of society in rebellion against the sovereign God, and applies it in the first instance to the Rome of the first century.

Rome becomes the Babylon, then, that is against God, and by its claims to divinity and power and allegiance becomes in opposition to all of the people of God and the source of the persecution of God’s people. But we’ve seen earlier in the book that, at the same time, that becomes a kind of one step along a succession of opponents to God. The first beast comes back again and again and again, we saw in chapters 13–17.

Now finally, in chapter 18, Babylon is destroyed. Gone. Hence, verse 10: “Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!” Verse 23: “The light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The voice of bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you again.” Now you have the final destruction of Babylon. After all the persecution, finally at the end it’s destroyed. This, then, on the other hand, signals the triumph of the Lamb.

In the first three verses, what you hear is a great multitude shouting in heaven about the destruction of chapter 18. “Salvation and glory and power belong to our God.” That is to say, the power is no longer contested. The salvation and glory shine undimmed. There is no sin. The condemnation of the great whore, the great prostitute, Babylon the Great (chapter 17, verse 5), is now complete.

God has taken his power triumphantly to reign. “He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants.” Notice these two sins of the whore again and again and again. On the one hand, her adulteries. It’s part of the whore imagery, and what it means, as we’ve seen already, is she’s completely apostate. She’s spiritually defenseless.

That reminds us again of the imagery that we saw back in chapter 14, verse 5, where we saw that the 144,000 are those who have never slept with a woman. It has nothing to do with celibacy or the corruptions of women. It has to do with this Old Testament imagery in which fornication becomes a kind of model of spiritual fornication. So Babylon is the great prostitute. She has corrupted the earth. That’s the first sin.

The second sin is her attack on believers, and that now is avenged, and it’s avenged in the most horrible, horrific language. “The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever.” That too is drawn from chapter 14. Once you start working through this book, you start discovering that one part refers back and forth to another, and the parts become mutually clarifying.

This goes back to chapter 14, verses 10–11. “Those who worship the beast and its image will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.” You will recall we spent time on this passage. “They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever.” Very strong language.

Notice carefully this scene of the triumph of God in the condemnation of the whore is surrounded by praise. It begins with “Hallelujah” and it ends (verse 4) with “Hallelujah.” “The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down.” These are the highest angelic orders we’ve seen around the throne from chapter 4. And they cry, “Amen! So let it be. Hallelujah!”

It’s important, therefore, in this connection to think of judgment (this is something I mentioned two weeks ago when we considered hell together) and its horrific finality not primarily in terms of the suffering it inflicts but in terms of the just retribution it represents. We saw how many contemporary objections to hell have their basis in this. We don’t like to hear people suffer.

The assumption is that it’s the suffering of the innocent or it’s not fair, but the assumption throughout in these passages is God is to be praised even in this, precisely because it will be seen to be just. We saw an echo of that already in chapter 14. It is strong here again. It gets stronger yet in chapters 21–22, as we’ll see next week.

I said two weeks ago that some people have said that this book could be retitled, “A Tale of Two Cities: The Prostitute and the Bride.” (Babylon and Jerusalem.) Now you get the prostitute and the bride coming together. We’ve seen them hinted at. Now for the first time they come together, and then finally, in verse 21, the bride takes over. Here they come together.

Over against the condemnation of the great prostitute, you then have, in verses 6 and following, “Hallelujah! Our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.” Now you are anticipating the climactic chapters, 21 and 22, which we’ll look at next week. That raises some fundamental questions about what you do with chapter 20, but clearly you’re getting the announcement of what must now take place at the end, the marriage of the Lamb.

So in chapter 21, verse 9, one of the seven angels says, “Come, and I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” Then you have this long passage on the Holy City, Jerusalem. Do you see the two titles again? The bride and Jerusalem, just as on the other hand you have Babylon the whore. What that symbolizes we’ll come to next week.

We’ve seen again and again in this book that you get a whole string of symbolic usage, and then suddenly one bit is taken out and explained for you. You saw that already in chapter 1. “The candlesticks are such and such,” and so forth. You get these small asides, and sometimes you get explanations coming later in the book. Here’s another one of those asides put in our text in parentheses.

What’s this linen they’re wearing? Why isn’t it silk or cotton or wool or something? It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you understand what it symbolizes, and there John carefully tells you. “Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.” What is meant by that must be understood precisely as in contrast to the whore. She’s full of fornication and rebellion and sin and malice against the people of God. By contrast, the bride is full of righteous deeds, of righteous acts.

This is entirely in line with the kinds of things you get in the letters to the seven churches in chapters 2–3. “The one who overcomes does this. The one who overcomes does that.” It is not over against some Pauline doctrine of justification by grace through faith, as if this is to suggest that now, “Well, maybe you’re saved by works after all.” No, that’s not the point. The point is that the people of God are characterized by changed lives. Justification is bound up with a faith that works.

It is not secured by works, but it is certainly bound up with a faith that works, so that phenomenologically Christians do look different from other people, and usually you can spot it right off. Once in a while you can’t. Sometimes it takes a little longer, but usually you can spot it right off. Now before I mention briefly verses 9–10, are there any questions about that passage?

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: In this book on pluralism that I’ve finished now, we’re going to have a whole chapter on hell. It’s one of the questions I briefly refer to. I want to say yes but in a very careful way. Not for a moment would I want to support some of those medieval frescoes, where you get the saints almost laughing at the damned. “Ha, ha, ha! Our side wins. Sucker!” It’s grotesque, appalling Elmer Gantry stuff.

All you have to do is start remembering that some of your own relatives may be among them. It’s grotesque. On the other hand, when we are most uncomfortable with any reflection that my aunt or my wife’s mother may be among them and start saying, “Is this fair? Is this right?” it’s because we are thinking of the thing entirely in terms of suffering for someone we love.

Suppose, for argument’s sake, that from God’s point of view it is just and that hell is somewhat, as we looked at it a couple of weeks ago, a place where there is ongoing sin, no repentance, still rebellion, still punishment, in various degrees as we’ve seen. From God’s point of view, wouldn’t it be just? He sees the thing not primarily as a place of “Your pain and I am right” but as penal retribution that upholds his justice, without which there is no justice.

In that sense, hell itself in the new heaven and the new earth is not somehow outside the sphere of God’s glory but, likewise, contributes to it by maintaining his justice. I think that’s what the book of Revelation is saying. Then what of us? May it not be that in the new heaven and the new earth we will be in character so much like God that we will see things that way too? I think that’s where I would want to come out. I want to word it carefully, but I think that’s what I would say. You won’t hear it preached very often, but I think it’s what the book of Revelation says.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: Did you hear the question? Is this very much like what you find in Revelation, chapter 6, where we saw after the fourth seal the saints in heaven are already there saying, “How long, O Lord? How long until you do such-and-such?” It is almost as if they are already in heaven and are now looking at things already from God’s perspective, and still there’s delay. In fact, at that point, it’s God who’s the more forbearing.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: Do you mean you think there are more Christians today who are sort of divorced from love of righteousness and discipline and that sort of thing? Okay, did you hear what the question was? Would I say something about the profile of Christians today? He says he remembers Christians from an earlier generation, where you really could spot Christians as being different, but it’s so hard today to find people who really are different.

Most of us who come from an older generation, Christians were people who.… Well, my mother used to say, “Never drink, smoke, swear, or chew, and never go with girls that do.” It wasn’t the sum of all righteousness, but it was pretty defining. Depending on the group.… If you’re a Lutheran, you’re allowed to drink. If you’re a Calvinist from the Dutch extraction, you’re allowed to smoke. If you’re a good fundamentalist, you’re not allowed to do either, and throw in not playing cards as well, unless it’s Rook. You’re allowed to play Rook.

There are all of these kinds of rules about what you’re allowed to do. Then along comes a new generation that doesn’t give a rip about any of these things and so rejoices in the freedom we have in Christ that somewhere along the line somebody forgot to stop and we’re sleeping around too and saying it’s all right. Is that the kind of problem you’re worried about?

One has to distinguish issue from issue. There is no doubt that quite a number of Christians in a bygone era sometimes focused on external differences, which in the eternal scheme of things didn’t matter all that much, and that can breed something of pharisaic righteousness about how long the tassels of your phylacteries are and whether you’re praying loudly in the corners. Yes, it can breed a certain kind of …

Especially when you try and pass it on to the next generation that observes the rules but knows nothing of the power. If you get people trying to be different because they love the Lord passionately and they’re sold out to the cause and they don’t want to be hampered by other things so they adopt a whole lot of rules for themselves, and then they pass it on to the next generation, all they can pass on is the rules because they can’t pass on the power. Then you have the makings of a whole legalistic system.

Then the generation after that comes along and says, “Hey, it’s only rules; we want real life,” and suddenly you don’t have rules at all, and you wonder where everything has gone. So I don’t trouble myself in some sense about many of the externals that were not fundamental moral issues. I see no value in being different just for the sake of being different. None. I see value in being different only when spiritual realities, moral values, are at stake. Then there must be fundamental difference.

At that point, then, what worries me about the present generation is not how long its hair is, unless it’s a statement about how rebellious I am. If it’s merely a question of personal choice, I don’t give a rip. There have been different cultures that have done different things. George Washington had long hair. It’s just not something I want to fight over.

On the other hand, what does worry me about the present generation is the rising tendency in evangelicalism to think of religion as something that serves me, so that God exists primarily to meet my needs. It’s not that I exist to serve and honor him. Then everything you think about in religion.… Joshua could say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The modern re-writing would be, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord so long as it seems to pay. Otherwise we’ll try something else.” That worries me far more.

Let me give an illustration. This is only one example of many that could be given in this area, but it’s a telling one. One-third of the time, as some of you know, I live in England, and our church there is a church called Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge. My wife and I were married there 20 years ago, and it has been our home church spiritually for many, many years. My wife is English, and I’m Canadian. I did all my work either in Canada or Europe, so there are a lot of cultural connections there for us, but we really do love that church.

A number of years ago, the pastors and elders appointed to the elders board a medical doctor who had been a missionary in North Africa with the Red Sea Mission in a Muslim country in a leprosarium. He was a gentle quiet man, married, been through the British equivalent of InterVarsity, been a chapter president. Then he came back to Britain and eventually came and settled in Cambridge and was doing further medical research.

He was asked onto our elders board because he was known for his quiet godliness and his wisdom in counseling and especially good on the sort of counseling front that required something of an interface between analysis of medical problems and moral spiritual problems as well. He was a good addition, and he helped a lot of people.

Suddenly, out of the blue, he quit his wife, shacked up with his nurse, and said he wasn’t coming back anymore. None of us had seen it coming. Well, the turmoil as you start working through all of this stuff. “Why this? Why didn’t I see it coming? Was there any warning in advance? Where is this coming from?” He was counseled. He was warned. Eventually he was excommunicated. A very painful sort of thing.

He never did want to go back to his wife. There was no hope of reconciliation. He has married this other nurse. They’ve gone to a liberal church that denies just about everything and lets him get away with whatever he wants to morally. This is four or five years ago now. His wife is bringing up the girls on her own. Tough.

During all of that time, the senior pastor of the church, who is a very good friend, Roy Clements.… He went through agonies, partly because of all the damage it was doing, but partly because he was questioning everything about his own ability to distinguish people, who should be doing this or that. He was the one who had pushed for this appointment in the first place.

A year after it was resolved, two years after it happened, I was back in England, and he and I were going to preach at the same conference. He was driving. We were driving down to London. I said to him, “Okay, Roy, two years have gone by. Hindsight is wonderful. What do you think about that whole business now?” He said, “I have come to the conclusion that never in his life did …” Let’s call him John. “… never in his life did John ever make a fundamental decision that cost him anything.”

I said, “I beg your pardon. The guy was a missionary in a Muslim country in a leprosarium, and you’re telling me he never made that kind of …?” He said, “Hear me out. He was brought up in a Christian home, a late addition to the family with three older sisters, all of whom doted on him. He had wonderful parents who spoiled him rotten. He was the kind of nice kid who tried to please his parents every time he turned around, and every time he did anything wonderful his sisters always thought he was wonderful. He was the only brother.

He went off to university, and lo and behold, he got into the InterVarsity group, which was a nice thing to do. He was chair of the InterVarsity group. Everybody thought how wonderful and spiritual he was. Then he went out as a missionary, yes, but he was pursuing his own research. He was a medical doctor. He was doing stuff he wanted to do. He wrote papers in consequence of it and was considered a hero by his family and his church and his circle of friends and acquaintances. All on the line, doing the approved thing.

Then he comes here, and again he’s approved in the church. Everybody says how wonderful he is, and he seems wonderful. He thinks he’s wonderful. Everybody thinks he’s wonderful. Then along comes a pretty skirt, and for the first time in his life he has to make a choice between what he wants to do and what’s right, and he does what he has always done. He does what he wants to do, only this time it’s not right.” He said, “In my heart of hearts, I do not believe he’s a believer.”

Now don’t misunderstand me. I am not for a moment saying that only unbelievers commit adultery. I’m not saying either that it’s the unforgivable sin. I am saying that where you do have adultery amongst believers, sooner or later there is shame. There is contrition. There’s a sense of ownership and repentance amongst genuine believers sooner or later.

This guy had gone through life and had fooled everybody because he came out of a certain matrix and subculture, but, in fact, had never, ever, ever learned what it was to take up your cross daily and follow Christ. So the reality of his professed faith was always on the line precisely because he was still always doing what he wanted to do, and you couldn’t tell which way his heart was until he got to a place where he had to make a choice between doing what he really would have wanted to do and doing what was right for Jesus’ sake.

That, to me, is a good illustration of the fundamental issue. The real issue is.… Is the salvation you purport so real, so vital … Yes, you’re saved by grace through faith. Yes, your faith comes by the work of the Spirit within you, but.… Is the whole regenerative process so triumphant in your life that it turns you around in terms of your basic orientation?

Sin you may. Sin you will, but there is such a basic orientation that there is an attraction toward holiness. You do wrestle with selfishness. You might fall into it again, but you turn away from it. You recognize that it’s wrong. When you hear another sermon on it, you see it for what it is, and you recognize the sin principle, and you learn.

In terms of orientation toward life, you learn for Christ’s sake to take up your cross daily and follow Christ. That’s what I want to see. Everything else in terms of the form of expression of it, I don’t worry about it too much, but that central thing I want to see, and if I don’t see it anywhere, I have every reason to doubt whether it’s there at all, because Jesus says, “By their fruit you will know them.”

In apocalyptic terms, that’s what this passage is saying as well. “The whore does this and this and this. The people of God act like this and this and this. They are clothed with fine linen. Fine linen is the righteous works of the saints.” That culminates, then, in the last chapter, where it says, “Those who are filthy, let them be filthy still, and those who are righteous, let them be righteous still.” Does that scratch at all where you itch? Now we didn’t get all that far in chapter 19, but I’ll see you next week.