This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
The nations were angry, and your wrath has come, and the time of
the dead, that they should be judged, and that you should
reward your servants, the prophets and the Saints, and
those who fear your name small and great, and should destroy
those who destroy the earth. Then the temple of God was open
in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple,
and there was lightning noises, thunderings and earthquakes and
great hail. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Amen. In our culture today, sin is
celebrated as if it's no big deal.
Those who follow God openly are mocked for doing so.
It's much like Noah, who is mocked for building the ark when
there had been no rain and no ocean before.
Yet his faith in God did not disappoint.
In today's message, Pastor Clark encourages you not to lose heart
as you trust in God, even when the world looks at you as if
you're out of your mind. God will do as He has said in
His Word, and judgment will one day come upon the world for sin.
Now here's Pastor Clark in Revelation Chapter 15 with
today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
We're to be lovingly and humbly aggressive about righteousness
in this land. Verse 2, it talks about those
who had the victory over the beast.
And this is again the the tribulation martyrs and they
were also described in Revelation Chapter 7, nine
through 17. You can check that out later.
These we're reading about now though, the completion of those
who survive the tribulation because that that tribulation
isn't over yet until after the bulls of wrath are poured out
and the battle of Armageddon is over and then the second coming
of Christ occurs. But this period is we're reading
about right now is within the time parameters of the
tribulation. And as I said that the bowl
judgments are still waiting to be poured out.
Now, even though the Antichrist has killed these people in the
in the natural and the body physically, they have victory
over him. And it's a glorious thing that I
love what Jesus says in Matthew 1028.
Do not fear those who kill the body that cannot kill the soul,
but fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body.
And hell. Now I don't know what my and
demise will be, nor do you know what yours will be.
If things get more difficult and our rights are being taken away,
will there come a time where they'll begin to make examples
of Christians? They've done it in past
centuries. Nero did it, you know, and Titus
did it back in 8070. We know it's happened throughout
the history of the church in the the first several thousand
years. And there's more martyrs believe
it the occurring, more martyrdom occurring today than ever before
in countries such as Sudan and Iraq and Afghanistan, you know,
and Iran. It's just horrible what's going
on in Indonesia and other countries that are led and ruled
by Islam. And you don't have the ability
in these countries to stand up as a Christian and proclaim the
gospel of Jesus Christ because if you do, you're threatened
with losing your life. And so many people do lose their
life in these countries. And the wonderful thing is that
they the more the persecution gets heavier and more intense,
the more the church comes alive. I mean, we need some heat.
All of us need heat to wake us up out of our lethargy and our
complacency and our indifference of Oh well, this another Sunday.
One day, if we don't watch it, life will not continually be
like we got used to it being in the good old USA because our
rights and our freedoms are being taken daily.
They are. And if you don't see that
occurring, I don't care. Republican or Democrat, it's not
a, it's not a, a party issue, it's a heart issue.
And so we have people leading our countries, leading our
school systems, leading our local governments that have No
Fear of God before their eyes. And persecution is what brings
life. It brings the gospel out.
It brings many, many people coming to the Kingdom.
And that's what happens in the in the revelation, in spite of
the horror that goes on and all the difficulty, many, many, many
people become Christian. So if it's your your day and
they're taking you to the firing squad or they're taking you to
the gas chamber, they're taking you to the fire pit, you know,
when you're in your mind, you think of, boy, that would be
horrible. I don't want that.
And none of us wanted it and no one in their right mind would
want that. But if they do, we can be
encouraged. What Jesus says do not fear
those who can kill the body. A few moments of discomfort,
right? And we're with the Lord.
You read about those who were martyred in, in, in the fire.
They put him in the fire and, and they're still in there
praising God and, and they, they would cut off their hands and
their arms and they cut out their tongue and, and, and, and,
and they had people in the fire. The last thing they would do
would put their hands up to heaven.
Just showing they only have allegiance.
The martyrs to the King of kings and Lord of Lords.
Verse three and four they sing the song of praise, 2 songs, one
song of Moses and one the song of the Lamb.
And I love what Jesus says in Matthew 517.
Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets.
I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.
Jesus and Moses are like this, the old covenant and the new
covenant. They come together and the
person of Christ Jesus doesn't say that the law is
inconsequential. It's critical.
It's absolutely a necessity, but we don't get our justification
by keeping the law. We could never keep it.
We all broke it. We still break it.
Christ kept the law. He's a fulfillment of the law.
Law was brought by Moses, and grace and truth was bought by
Jesus Christ. Jesus is very close to Moses.
He anointed Moses in the Old Testament.
He walked with Moses in the midst of his ministry.
Jesus spoke with Moses. If you remember, in Mark Chapter
9 on Mont Tabor and the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and
Elijah were there in the midst with Jesus and Jesus in his
transfigured state, along with Moses and Elijah.
Moses is alive, Elijah is alive, and the Kingdom.
One day we'll see them. It talks about Moses in the book
of Hebrews Chapter 11 verse 23 through 29.
Verse 27 says by faith he forsook Egypt, and like Moses,
you and I, by faith we forsake this world, not fearing the
wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is
invisible. And I trust every day you and me
are enduring this world and its heartache and its insanity by
trusting him who we can't yet see, who the Bible says not
seeing we believe. So there's this perfect union
between the law of God and between the grace of God Christ
fulfilled what we have been unable to fulfill and the song
is beautiful. The song gives praise to God.
It gives praise to God for his works.
It says great and marvelous are your works.
This would be a good worship song to learn worship team and
put the music, wouldn't it the lyrics here we got great
musicians, you know and and pray that you can put this song to to
to some worship. We can we can sing this song
here at Calvary. God's works great and marvelous
are his works his ways just and true are your ways his
worthiness. You shall not fear you, O Lord,
who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify a name, your name,
for you alone, our holy, for all nations come and worship before
you. The song magnifies God's works,
His ways, His worthiness, and His worship.
All nations shall come and worship before you, for your
judgments have been revealed. So the verse 5 and 6, the angels
are coming now after these things.
I looked and behold, the temple, the Tabernacle, the testimony in
heaven was open. This, this blows my mind.
I mean, I don't know how you guys think about having what it
looks like. And some people have.
You're going to be on clouds with harps and that's all you're
going to do forever. Believe me, that is the farthest
from the truth. I mean, heaven is a physical
realm. It's a dimension that transcends
this space and time, but it's actually more real and tangible
than this world that we're passing through that's going to
one day be destroyed and the new heaven and the new earth is
going to be revealed. Not any.
Will there be a new Jerusalem that will descend out of heaven?
But there'll be a new heaven and a new earth.
So the real estate, the territory that we're going to
have access to in our new bodies, our glorified states,
it's going to be incredible. I mean, the, the beauty and the
things to do and the things to wonder and the things to
experience, You know, we're going to go to heaven and it
isn't going to be like, oh, it's boring.
This is all there is. And I, you know, I'm perfect now
and I, you know, and no, we're going to the Bible says in the
ages to come, he's going to show us his exceeding riches and his
grace toward us in Christ Jesus. I mean, eons upon eons upon
eons. And we're never going to once
say, isn't there anything new here?
Because his mercies will be new just as they are now.
Morning by morning, day by day, every every day, there's going
to be some new cool thing that one of us, Wow, you should see
what I saw the other day. I was 1,000,000 miles from
Pluto. And, and God, he showed me this
thing that I never, you know, and we're all going to be like
that all the time. We're going to be so excited and
so stoked and so in love with God and so in love with Christ
and the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of heaven that none of
us are ever going to ever long for anything that's on the face
of this earth. Matter of fact, it says later on
he's going to wipe away all tears.
There will be no more remembrance of the former things
for the former things that passed away.
The temple of the Tabernacle of his testimony in heaven, this
literal temple and the Kingdom of heaven.
We study about this in Exodus and Hebrews.
It reminds us of the Tabernacle of meeting with God.
When God told Moses to build this temple, this Tabernacle, it
was based on a pattern of heaven.
If you ever read the specific details of everything that was
design about how that temple was built, the, the, the, the
structure, the parameters, the height, the width, the depth,
the, the different instruments in there that were used to, to
magnify and and glorify God in the midst of the sacrificial
worship system. The, the, the, the color of the
material and the length and the, and I mean, it's a spectacular,
the attention to detail. And when we get to heaven
someday, the Tabernacle that we're going to see is going to
be mind blowing because the beauty of it will exceed
anything that man could have ever made on earth.
The, the, the temple, the Tabernacle that was built on
earth by man with man's hands was only a pattern, a a slight
facsimile of the reality of what was existing in the Kingdom of
heaven. And out of this temple the seven
angels come with the seven plagues.
They bring God's judgment, and these judgments are sent out by
God and by Him alone before His throne.
It talks about their clothing, bright linen, having their chest
girded with golden bands. The bright, pure linen
represents the purity and the holiness of our Savior Jesus
Christ. The gold band represents God's
judgments that are pure and righteous.
And verse 7 and 8, it talks about the four living creatures.
This is fascinating to me and I, I never thought about this when
I read this. You know, the four living
creatures that I read about in Isaiah prior to the Lord's
Supper. What are they doing continually?
They're saying, holy, holy, holy are you, O God, who was and is
and is to come. They do that 24/7, day in and
day out, day in and day out, day in and out, for all eternity.
But they stop here for a moment. One of the four living creatures
give to the seven angels the 7 golden bowls of the wrath of God
who lives forever and ever. It's almost like everything
stops in heaven, this constant sound of holy, holy, holy are
you. O God.
They take and give to the angels what now will bring the ultimate
glory to God, this outpouring of His final just wrath and anger
upon the face of an ungodly world.
I don't know about you guys, but I used to watch like New Year's
Eve thing on TV and I'd have my few drinks at one time and all
that goofy stuff. And you know, I mean party,
whatever it is that we would do. And, and, and, and that's like
Sodom and Gomorrah. When you look at what goes on on
New Year's Eve in Times Square, people are drunk beyond
recognition, having sex in the street, urinating in the street.
This drugs everywhere. I mean everybody all there.
It's like the what it is, guys and gals.
It's the picture of the real cesspool of what this earth
represents to a holy God. It's the masses of humanity.
You give them an opportunity to gather, to basically flaunt
before a holy God, immoral lifestyles.
And they want to know what, when's the next event I can show
up at? When's the next party I can go
to? And God has to look at this and
and then this is what his wrath is going to come out upon.
I mean, it isn't like those people down there.
Many of them have heard the truth of the gospel.
Many of them have family members that are praying for them and
tell them you need a savior. You need to turn from your sin.
You need to repent, you need to get saved.
Oh, I don't want to hear that. I'm tired of hearing that.
Leave me alone. And they just keep running from
it. They're, you know, the the
prodigal. We just want to go out and do
our own thing. And some of us, by the grace of
God, come to our senses and say, there's got to be more to life
than this. Living in this cesspool of sin,
I start to feel so dirty and so filthy and so messed up.
And, and I'm looking up into the heavens at night and the stars
and the skies. And I say there has to be more
to life than what I'm living, that there has to be a reason
why I was created. And then the Holy Spirit begins
to work and begins to draw us to truth.
And we begin to like the next drink or the next sexual
encounter, or the next thing I steal, or the next thing I am
jealous over, the next thing I'm lustful over, the next thing my
greed or my selfishness, it doesn't fulfill me anymore.
It's empty the the next drug. It just doesn't do it for me
anymore. I am so burnt out and so over
this world. And that's why some people sit
in the end of the bed with a gun, thinking there's nothing
else. I'm going to kill myself.
I'm going to take my life, but thank God for the gospel of
Jesus Christ. Thank God for the Gideon Bibles
that are in the hotel rooms when the when the man or the woman's
in there not knowing what to do. And then they're looking and
they open the drawer and they see a Bible and they open it for
the first time. And in the front, it gives them
the plan of salvation. And they read the gospel and
they get saved and they put their gun down or someone who's
sitting in the hotel room and they're scanning the TV, this
looking. And all the sudden they catch an
old Billy Graham evangelistic gospel message or someone else
who's faithful to preach the word in the middle of the night
to some lost soul, and they get saved.
This temple represents the holiness of God.
And the bulls are now given in the midst of the cloud of God's
glory that's filling the temple. There's an old worship song.
I see the Lord and his glory fills the temple.
Holy, holy is the Lord. And so these 7 golden bowls,
they're not a big like a round concave bowl, they're flat like
saucers. And they're used in the Old
Testament for the ritual drinking or the pouring out of
sacrifices upon the altar. Their their contents are quickly
and easily poured out, such as were used in a temple to hold
the fire when the incense was burned.
So it isn't like these huge bowls that they're going to need
5000 angels to get in the bottom and finally pour it out.
They're they're just waiting just to be tipped.
And as they're tipped, God's judgment flows everywhere.
The temple's filled with the glory of God.
It says in verse 8, as we begin to conclude, the temple was
filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power.
The glory fills the temple. It says no one can enter.
Why can't anyone enter into the temple?
It's no more time of intercession.
There's no one that can go in behind, behind in front of the
the throne of God and say, wait, there's more.
It's over. There's no more time for
intercession. The judgement of God is going to
be poured out. The cloud covers the Tabernacle
of meeting. In the Old Testament, the glory
of the Lord fills the temple. It says Moses in Exodus chapter
40 was not able to enter the Tabernacle of meeting because
the cloud rested above it and the glory of the Lord filled the
Tabernacle. It's referred to the Chicana
glory. It was a coin phrase used by the
Hebrew rabbis that meant that He came to dwell in our midst, the
divine visitation of the presence or dwelling of Jehovah
God on the earth, the visible manifestation of God's glory.
And I sense that sometime I hope you do too, when I come here and
I worship before the Lord. And these worship people,
they're, they're excellent musicians, but that's not what
they're about. These people love Jesus Christ.
Their heart is to truly honor him and to worship him and to
have their eyes on him and to glorify him.
And as they do that, they bring us in with them.
And we're caught up in this sense of the Kabat of God, the
manifest presence of God. And I see many of you, you, you
raise your hand or your, your heads are down or you're about
or some of you are about about on the face of on your face or
wanting to be on your knees because you're so aware of God's
presence in the worship. And that's what God wants us to
experience more and more because as we as we experience his
presence, I don't want to be in sin.
I don't want to be unforgiving. I don't want to be bitter.
I don't want to be jealous. I don't want to be greedy.
I don't want to be vengeful. I want my heart to be made right
with God and experience God's love and heaven.
After these judgments are poured out, we will have access to this
temple always and forever. I love what it says.
IN2013 of Revelation I heard a loud voice from heaven saying,
behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with
them, and they shall be His people.
God himself will be with them and be their God.
So the bowls are poured out. They come from His glory and
from His power, and there's no intercession that can avail at
this point in time because the world is now doomed.
All sinful people on the earth, the Pagan empires will be
brought to their knees and destroyed.
These bowls of wrath are the third woe.
And we've studied that throughout the Book of
Revelation, which is associated with the 7th trumpet and the
end, second coming of Jesus Christ.
And I like to just conclude in Revelation Chapter 11, verse 14,
it says the second woe is passed.
And again, this is the chronological aspect.
You can't just go from verse to verse, chapter to chapter and
Revelation. You have to flip back to keep
the things in continuity and flow and context.
The second woe is passed. Behold, the third woe is coming
quickly. And that's what we study today,
this third woe that is about to be poured out.
The 7th Angel sounded the the 7th trumpet at the at the end of
this period, beginning into the period of the bowls being poured
out, it says there were loud voices in heaven saying the
kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord
and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.
And the 24 elders who sat before God on the Thrones fell on their
faces and worshiped God, saying, we give you thanks, O Lord God
Almighty, the one who is and who was and who is to come, because
you've taken your great power and reign.
The nations were angry and your wrath has come.
And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that
you should reward your servants, the prophets and the Saints, and
those who fear your name small and great, and should destroy
those who destroy the earth. Then the temple of God was open
in heaven, and the ark of his covenant was seen in his temple,
and there was lightning noises, thunderings and earthquakes and
great hail. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Amen. If you're here today and you
don't have a Savior, I can't make you get saved.
I can't save you, but His Spirit can, and I know His Spirit is
present here today. The Holy Spirit convicts you.
It gives you that gnaw. He gives you that gnaw.
Hey, this stuff's true. You got to deal with it.
This is real. You can leave here and try to
forget about it, but you can't. You can run, but you can't hide.
God is coming after you today because He loves you and He
wants to spare you from all these things that are going to
come upon the earth one day, and they could be sooner than later.
As we look at what's happening in the world, we have a sense
that these days are closer than ever.
Thanks for being with us today here on Living Waters of Grace.
We're in the Book of Revelation, and we find it fascinating how
influential and involved the angels are in this book.
They bring about whatever it is that God has instructed them to
do, but it's through their actions that much of the
judgements come on the earth. The angels are in submission to
God as their authority, but He utilizes them in unique ways
throughout this book. Like angels have a specific
purpose from God, you have a unique purpose and plan too.
God wants to use you in your life as a testimony to others
and to bring others who are currently lost into the fold of
God. God would love more than
anything for all who are willing to come to Him for salvation,
but he wants it to be their choice, not a forced situation.
This is the way God works, not forcing himself on anyone, but
giving each person free will. If you're interested in learning
about this choice that's free and that it's a gift, go to
calvarychapelonline.com and click on the About Us tab and
then find the link for what we believe.
We'd love to be a help and a resource for you as you walk
through what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
If you find the contact tab on our website, you can get in
touch with us or submit a prayer request.
We'd love to hear from you. That's all for today's edition
in Revelation, but there's much more that Pastor Clark plans to
share with us from this culminating book of the Bible.
Stay tuned for that and make sure to mention this radio
program to others. Invite them to tune into Grace
FM 91.7 FM and they can stream worldwide at Grace Radio dot FM.
This has been living waters of grace.