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.
All those scoffers, all those who are arrogant, all those who
don't believe what you and I believe will one day give an
account and be on their face before God that they cursed and
refused to believe in. And they'll have to give an
account, and they'll have to confess when it's too late that
truly you are the Christ. They won't want to, but they'll
be forced to do that out of the authority and the sovereignty of
a holy God. Watching the news or opening up
any social media app is one of the single most discouraging
things you can do these days. The headlines are littered with
anti God sentiment. It hurts.
It hurts to see the Holy name of Jesus dragged through the mud.
Pastor Clark said a few moments ago that there's coming a time
when that won't be the case. All the anti God talk will stop
in an instant. Every knee will bow and every
tongue will declare that Jesus is God.
The goal is for as many people as possible to make that
declaration before they're forced to do so.
Now here's Pastor Clark in the Book of Revelation Chapter 7
with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
OK, I'm going to continue a little bit right near the end of
Chapter 6 before we go into Chapter 7.
In chapter 6, we will finish up there on verse 12 it says I look
when he opened the 6th seal. And behold, there was a great
earthquake. And the sun became black as
sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood.
And the stars of heaven fell to the earth as a fig tree drops
its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.
Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up.
And every mountain an island was moved out of its place.
And the kings of the earth are great men, the rich men, the
commanders, the mighty men, every slave, every freeman hid
themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and
said to the mountains. And the rocks fall on us, and
hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne, and from the
wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath
has come, and who is able to stand as you live your life, and
I live mine every day. We are confronted, all of us
with our own lives and the people that we come in contact
with. And it says in the last days
there will be No Fear of God in the land.
And it isn't only the world that we live in that lacks the fear
of God. It is the very Church of Jesus
Christ. It seems to has lost its bearing
in regard to understanding of what it means to fear the Lord.
The Bible says the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord,
and they depart from evil. God's wrath is about to be
poured out upon this world, and those of us who know Christ will
be taken on in the rapture prior to this cataclysmic event that
we're reading about in chapter 6.
What would be the strongest influence in this world today in
regard to people understanding that we are moving to God's
judgment? And I was thinking that as I was
sitting there, that it's our very lives, isn't it?
As we walk with the Lord, as we fear the Lord, as we are living
in repentance, as we're living as though we could meet the Lord
any moment. People sense that spirit in us,
a spirit of sobriety and a spirit of joy at the same time
that they see your character and they see your walk, and they
know without you saying a word, there's something different
about your presence, your countenance when you're in the
midst of other people. They just know you're different
and they begin to find out that you fear God, that you walk with
him. As we said in Corinthians last
week, that the fragrance of God in your life and mine.
When we're walking with the Lord, there's a fragrance of
life unto life unto those who are being saved, and there's a
fragrance of death and judgment unto those who are lost.
And so this, your very life, as you walk with the Lord, your
life is having a spiritual influence on people.
And many times you don't have the opportunity to give them the
Full disclosure of everything that we're studying about in
Revelation. But it's enough just to
encourage you today as you walk with the Lord and seek Him with
all your heart and love Him with all your heart, soul, and mind.
Love your neighbors, yourself. That has a very, very powerful
influence on people and it draws them to the one who lives within
you. Remember, it's the goodness of
God that leads us to repentance. Sometimes people think we go out
with signs and you talk about God's wrath and his anger and
Hellfire. That's all true, obviously.
But you know, for me, and I'm sure if you think about your own
life, what drew me to Christ was His love and His mercy and His
goodness. It was clear the way I lived for
a period of time. I was on my way to hell, but I
wasn't focusing on hell, that I needed to get saved, to leave
hell. I needed someone who loved me,
someone who could forgive me and be merciful to me, and that's
what brought me to Christ personally.
So as we read about this situation at the end of chapter
6, it's a very, very difficult time.
And God's wrath will come upon all these great people, the
kings of the earth, the great men.
I think of all the famous people in sports, in Hollywood that
live arrogantly, independent of God and don't acknowledge him
for their gifts and talents. The rich men, the commanders,
the mighty men, every slave, every freeman, will at that
point in time hide themselves and ask for protection, not for
mercy, but for protection from the wrath of God.
And it reminds me of what it says in Philippians regarding
our Savior. It says, Therefore God also hath
highly exalted Him, and given them the name which is above
every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow of
those in heaven, and those on earth, and to those under the
earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Amen. Every knee, every tongue will
confess the truth. So all the scoffers, all those
who are arrogant, all those who don't believe what you and I
believe, will one day give an account and be on their face
before God that they cursed and refused to believe in.
And they'll have to give an account and they'll have to
confess when it's too late that truly you are the Christ.
They won't want to, but they'll be forced to do that out of the
authority and the sovereignty of a holy God.
So don't get too enamored by those who've become successful
in this world apart from Christ. Don't be idol worshippers of
people with fame and fortune and sports and celebrity.
You can enjoy them and appreciate their skills, but
realize what they're facing. What should a profit a person if
they gain the whole world right and lose their own soul?
What would a profit a person if they win the Grammy or the
Academy Award or the Super Bowl team or to win the the Pennant,
you know, or the Stanley Cup? All those great athletes will
have to face this holy God. It's a sobering thing to think
about. South John's having this
revelation and he's got this impression on his heart of the
things that the Holy Spirit has given him the right.
In Chapter 7, he says after these things, now we're going to
have a little window here between the bowls of of God's
trumpet judgments being poured out and the last seal, the 7th
seal, which will be the prelude to the trumpet judgments.
We'll pick that up in Chapter 8 next week.
So this is sort of a interim situation here we're going to be
discussing today. And he says, after these things,
I saw 4 angels standing at the four corners of the earth,
holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not
blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree.
This is his next vision. After you read chapter 6, you
wonder how in the world can anybody have even survived what
we just read about in chapter 6. Yet there'll be many, many
people still alive in the face of the earth.
And yet, as we study this chapter, there's two multitudes
during the tribulation that are going to have an opportunity to
be saved. It'll be the elect 144,000 Jews
that will come to know Christ during this tribulation period.
And then nine through 17, it refers to those out of all the
nations, that's the Gentiles, people from every tongue, tribe,
kindred, a nation will have an opportunity to be saved.
And how will they be saved? How will this occur as we think
about the time that Christ will eventually gather everyone at
the end of this tribulation period, at the second coming
prior before His millennial Kingdom, this is how this will
occur. This is how people will come to
know Christ during this time. Flip over to Matthew chapter 25,
Matthew 25 and 31 and 32. The Son of Man comes in glory,
and all the holy angels with him.
Then He will sit on the throne of His glory, and all the
nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them
one from another as a shepherd divides his sheep from the
goats, so that the time of the tribulation period is an
opportunity for many people to still come to Christ.
It will be a very difficult time because of those who decide to
stand for the truth during that time and refuse to take the mark
of the beast, which is the mark that those who are unbelievers
will receive in order to do commerce, to buy and sell, and
to be able to do business and live like everybody lives right
now. It'll be a special code that
they'll have to have, and if they don't have it, it means
they're injecting the Antichrist and there will be many, many
people that would be martyred during that time.
We'll pick that up in a minute. But what's interesting, in verse
one of Revelation Chapter 7, it talks about this issue of wind.
And you know, as I study these things, it's easy just to pass
through this stuff and say, OK, well, that's interesting.
What does that mean? But when you look at wind, can
anybody actually see wind itself?
We see the results of wind when there's a storm.
You see the trees blowing or we had that microburst a couple
weeks ago. There's a bunch of branches and
debris laying everywhere. It was obvious that there was a
powerful windstorm that came through this particular part of
the country at the time. But you you can't personally see
the wind in itself. And it's a independent entity of
the the manifestation of what it causes after it blows.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, Nicodemus in John chapter 3, can
anybody tell which direction the wind's coming from?
He says so is the work of God's Spirit.
That which is born of flesh is flesh, that which is born of
spirit is spirit. And he says you must be born
again to enter into the Kingdom of heaven.
I was talking to my boss this week about an individual that
has come to work in our company as a sales manager.
I'm just thanking God. I'm not under the authority of
this person because they are totally, totally lost.
They have no love for people. It's all bottom line.
It's all focused on results. It's all focused on adding
value, perceived value, but not having any value for the
individual that works in the company.
And the several people who are under the authority of this
person, their lives are really, really in, in difficult turmoil
right now. And I pray for them every day.
So I was confronting my boss. He's a Christian about, you
know, are we just going to do what the corporate world says or
are we going to stand up for what's right?
Are we going to quench a spirit in our company?
And as soon as I say quench a spirit, I got his attention.
Just So what do you, what do you mean by that man?
You know, I said, well, that's what I sense we're doing right
now. Light and darkness can't walk
together. And that's a real tough
situation when you're in the business world, isn't it?
Because many of us have to do commerce and business and many
times trying to be pushed to do things that we know aren't
ethical or aren't Christ like. And we have to decide whether
we're going to stand on the truth or we're going to stand on
our potential promotion and looking good in the eyes of of
man. But this person was saying,
well, she's a she's a good Catholic woman.
I said, well, she's not born again.
You got to be born again to enter into the Kingdom of
heaven. It's not about being a good
Protestant or a good Catholic person.
It's about are you in Christ and do you have a spirit in you?
And if you have the spirit of Christ in you, how you treat
people in your business is going to be completely different than
someone who's in the world that knows nothing about Christ.
It's like the picture of a David and Goliath.
You know, you look and say, how in the world can anything be
done? But David was a man of faith and
he was able to see by the Spirit of God the mighty power of this
great giant fall to the ground, be humbled.
But when we look at this wind and no one can actually see the
wind, but we see its effects, it's interesting.
Some science here for you guys, and I'm just going to read this.
I wouldn't attempt to try to impress you thinking I
understand all this stuff. But the sun has very, very
intense heat. We're all aware of that.
The laws of heat transfer and the shape and the rotation of
the Earth are the chief cause of the winds.
I never knew that. I looked out the window during
science, you know, thinking when I could play baseball later or
something if I were to listen. Maybe maybe some of the younger
people say, oh, Clark, that's that's obvious and what's wrong
with you. But but the wind is caused by
the uneven heating of the atmosphere, meaning the air
around the Earth by the sun. Now science has unchangeable
laws and scientists understand this that I'm talking about
here. But we see it as miracle of God
and how he's orchestrated the universe and how every little
thing happens, how everything flows is from His creative hand.
Now when you get near the equator, the heat or the air
rises to about 60,000 feet straight up.
Yet there's no prevailing winds near the equator and up to about
700 miles on either side of the equator.
What happens is there because the air rises vertically, there
is instead of moving horizontally across the Earth,
there's this calming effect which is called the doldrums.
So we look here, this this miracle in in the verse 1 of
Chapter 7 as a this is prior to God's judgment.
There's going to be an awesome silence, a deadly calm before
this huge storm that's going to be poured out when the trumpet
judgments begin to occur. Isn't that fascinating?
I mean, we just take it for granted.
You know, the wind comes and God knows how to cool the earth and
how to make the wind happen at the right time to keep
everything in balance. But with his hand and his
authority, he will stop the wind.
The angels will be holding the four corners of the earth, and
there won't be any wind blowing any earth on the sea or on any
tree. Everything will be dead silent.
The calm before the storm. I guess that's sort of what it's
like in the midst. I've never been in a tornado,
the eye of the tornado. But they say that's what it's
like prior to the what happens in the beginning.
And at the end of that, everything is just an eerie
calmness. And so he says, I see another
Angel in verse 2 ascending from the east, having the seal the
living God. And he cry with a loud voice to
the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and
the sea, saying, do not harm the earth, the sea or the trees till
we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.
So again, God's authority in control, this judgment, it's
going to come out. It's not out of control, it's
just not occurring as it wants to.
But God has complete control when the time of these things
will come to pass. But there's something that has
to occur prior to this going on. And he's talking about sealing
these 144,000 believers with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now whenever we come to Christ and we have faith in Christ, we
are born by God into the body of Christ.
The Bible says in Romans 8-9. For any man have not the spirit
of Christ, he is none of his. So you can't be a believer
without the Holy Spirit. Some people teach that you
receive the Holy Spirit after you get saved.
What's impossible to get saved without the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit comes in dwell us at the moment of our
conversion or our faith in Christ.
OK, now there's different manifestations of the Spirit
that can occur and will occur and many of our lives
subsequently to our conversion. But what happens when we
believe? You can see this in Ephesians
chapter 1 if you flip over there for a minute, Ephesians chapter
1 verse 13 and 14 it says in him you also trusted.
This is regarding him, Jesus Christ and him you also trusted
after you heard the word of truth, the gospel, your
salvation, whom also having believed says you were sealed
with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is a guarantee of our
inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to
the praise of his glory. So the Holy Spirit comes to
dwell in us. We're sealed by the power of God
through the person of the Holy Spirit, and it's the evidence
that we belong to God without the Holy Spirit.
You aren't a Christian, and you should know if you have the Holy
Spirit because whenever you have the Holy Spirit, your life has
changed, your desires have changed, your interests, your
motivation. You have conviction now about
sin in a way that you didn't have it whenever you didn't have
the Holy Spirit and it says in first Corinthians 12/13 for by 1
Spirit are we all baptized into the body of Christ.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit placing us from one place
outside of the Kingdom of God and then doing a work by his
Spirit and placing us into a new family by his Spirit and Spirit
baptism. And if you study the ancient
foundational documents like the Nicene Creed or some of these
things that fought out the truths of historic Christianity
in the beginning, because of all the heresies, says there's one
Lord. And Ephesians says there's one
Lord, 1 faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who's
above all and in all and through us all.
And so we're sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.
And it tells us in chapter 4, verse 30 of Ephesians, it says,
and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were
sealed for the day of redemption.
How do you grieve the Holy Spirit?
It says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and
evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind
to one one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another,
even as God and grace forgave you.
If we hold bitterness and anger and any kind of attitude in our
heart toward anybody, toward God, toward any kind of
situation, it says we grieve the Holy Spirit, we hurt the Holy
Spirit, we wound the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit can't just say I'm out of here.
I don't like dealing with Clark right now.
He's just like making me miser, you know, He just makes me feel
like I don't want to be in him anymore.
With the beauty of the Holy Spirit is he doesn't depart in
the new covenant. He dwells in US forever.
We're in the Old Testament, remember, David prayed in Psalm
51. Take not your Holy Spirit from
me. That was his biggest fear
because the indwelling, the permanent of the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit didn't occur until Pentecost.
And so these things are important.
But in Revelation 7, this is what he's going to do for these
144,000. He's going to mark them with the
seal, the Holy Spirit and the ceiling is something it's done
and seen by God. I don't see a physical mark on
you or you don't see one on me. But it's evident by how we live
and how we treat each other if we are in Christ.
But Jesus says by this shall people know you're my disciples
by the love you have for one another.
And so in this sense of what God is doing in verse 2, he is
making this mark visible though to the spirit world and all the
demons of hell and the person, the Antichrist.
They're going to know for sure that these people have been set
apart by God and there will be a certain protection given to them
in the midst of all these cataclysmic events during this
time in order for them to do what it is God's called them to
do during this tribulation. All those from the ends of the
earth, the other nations, the other people groups will be
directly impacted by the evangelistic methodology of
these 144,000 during this time of tribulation.
And so in in verse 3, it says do not harm the earth and the sea
or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on our
forehead. So this command is given to the
angels and these angels are the very ones that will sound the
trumpet judgments as we get into chapter 8 next week.
This won't start again until these servants of God are sealed
and protected by the Lord God. So how are people going to get
saved during this time? When you think about it, I mean,
with the Antichrist ruling and hassling people and persecuting
Christians, how are people going to be saved?
Well, we'll study later on about the two witnesses that were
eventually martyred that God will raise up.
But there's going to be such powerful testimony during this
time of tribulation, in the midst of the chaos, in the midst
of the trials and the tribulations that are going to
come upon the world. It's going to cause people to do
one of two things. They're going to move away
farther and farther from God and curse him, or they're going to
move closer to him and say, there's got to be an answer to
this. I don't want to have to deal
with this. I need mercy.
I need grace. And many of those people will
remember the things that you and I had told them while we were
alive, prior to us being caught up in the air.
I don't know about you, but as a unbeliever prior to coming to
Christ, what drew me to Christ was trials and tribulation.
It was the lifestyle I was living.
It was the condemnation and the guilt and the darkness.
It was all about me from my drug induced hippie stage.
And I, I just, I cried out to God I didn't know existed and I
asked for His help and I asked him if he was real that he would
reveal himself to me and show me who He was.
And he did. And it put me on the beginning
path of my salvation. I look at people in life and I
know that God uses trials for both groups.
He uses trials and believers lives to cause us to get on our
face and say Lord I want to move towards you, not away from you.
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
judgments 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. They can stream worldwide at
Grace Radio dot FM. This has been Living Waters of
Grace.