THE BOOK OF REVELATION

INTRODUCTION - As we have seen already in Matthew's Gospel, Christ rejects the Jews of His day, condemning their rebellion and rejection, and telling them that as a result, the kingdom will be taken from them. The sign that Christ had ascended to the throne of heaven and that the new covenant had begun would be Christ's overthrow of Jerusalem in 70 AD. With the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, old dispensation worship would come to an end. This is what Christ is predicting in the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24. In this passage, the Lord gives His disciples some very precise signs of what would happen just prior to His coming to destroy Jerusalem. False messiahs would rise up, claiming to be Christ. There would be wars, rumors of wars, famines, pestilence, and earthquakes. As we showed last week, all of these things did in fact take place in the first century, prior to Jerusalem's fall. Today we shall look at two more signs which will take place which the disciples were told to look for. One will be a great persecution against the Christian church, and the second will be a great turning away from Christ from within the Christian church.

C) CHRISTIANS WILL BE MARTYRED, OTHERS WILL DENY THE FAITH - We will begin with the first of these signs -

1. CHRISTIANS WILL BE MARTYRED - (Matthew 24:9; Mark 13:9-11; Luke 21:12-15; Revelation 6:9-11) - In the passages of the Olivet Discourse, Christ tells His disciples that they will go through great tribulation. Christians of the first century will be hated by all nations, beaten and killed for their faith, and brought before kings and rulers to testify about Christ. This warning would be a needed message for these Christians. Had they not been warned, the great persecution of the first century would have been a shock to them. They would have wondered if Christ had really triumphed. Since Christ predicts this persecution for the first century, we must somehow prove that such an event did take place. This is not difficult to do, for the New Testament, especially the book of Acts, provides abundant evidence that such a persecution did in fact take place.

The persecution begins when Peter and John are arrested by the Jewish leaders for preaching the Gospel. Though they are not physically abused, they are given a stern warning not to preach in the name of Christ (Acts 4:18-21). After this, the persecution intensifies as the Apostles are imprisoned for preaching and are physically beaten before being released (Acts 5:17, 18, 40, 41). Finally, the Jewish leaders resort to murder as Stephen becomes the first martyr of the church (Acts 7:59,60). This unleashes a furious persecution upon God's people, causing Christians to flee for their lives. Saul (later to become the Apostle Paul) will head up this tribulation, chasing down Christians and imprisoning them for their faith (Acts 8:1,3,4; Acts 9:1,2). Herod Agrippa, the representative of Rome, will join the oppression of Christians by killing James and imprisoning Peter (Acts 12:1-4). Then, when Paul and Barnabas go on their missionary journeys, they will find that not only the Jews are against them, but Gentiles will join in the onslaught against Christianity (Acts14:5,6). Paul will be imprisoned in Philippi, he will cause a riot in Thessalonica, and will have the wrath of Gentile god makers against him in Ephesus. When Paul is finally arrested, he will preach before Felix, Festus and King Agrippa, all officials of the Roman state. He will eventually go and preach to members of Nero's household, bringing several of them to Christ. Thus, Christ's prediction that the disciples will be brought before rulers and kings is fulfilled. If we remember the state of the churches in Revelation, we can also see there that they were under great persecution. Both the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia were persecuted by the Jews, and there were martyrs from the church at Pergamos. Certainly the New Testament validates a great persecution before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

Yet our second source of reference, the historians of the first century, also confirm a great persecution against the church. Here we see that it was not just the Jews who persecuted the Christians, but that the Romans also joined in the affliction of God's people. From AD 64 to 68, there was an empire wide persecution against Christianity. Nero was the instigator of this, as he searched for a scapegoat to blame the burning of Rome on. The Christians were chosen, and Nero took extreme pleasure in killing them, to the point that even the Romans grew sick of his acts. (For historical reference to the Neronian persecution, see Tacitus, Suetonius, Clement, Josephus, Tertullian, and Eusebius)

We have been drawing parallels to Revelation 6 and what we are reading in the Olivet Discourse. Already we have seen wars and famine echoed in Revelation 6, now, as we go further into that passage, we hear the cries of those who were martyred for their faith (Revelation 6:9-11). They are told to wait, for the persecution is not yet over, yet when it ends, destruction will fall. This is the first century persecution of the church which Christ spoke of in the Olivet Discourse. The second part of the troubles which take place in the first century church and which Christ warns about is that -

2. OTHERS WILL DENY THE FAITH - (Matthew 24:10-13; Mark 13:12,13; Luke 21:16-19) - Christ warns His disciples that in the first century church false prophets will come forth, the love of many will grow cold, and there will be betrayal within the church. Once again, the New Testament bears this prediction out. Though we often think of the first century as a period of great missionary growth and church planting, it should also be characterized as a time of great apostasy and turning away from the faith. Heresy rises up in Acts 15 where false teachers demand that the Gentiles be circumcised in order to be saved (Acts 15:1). The Jerusalem Council rejects this heresy (Acts 15:24-27), yet it still prevails in the churches and becomes a major point of dispute between Paul and the Galatians (see his letter to the Galatians written for the purpose of denouncing that heresy). In Acts 20, Paul warns the Ephesian elders that false teachers will rise up from their own church, trying to draw away the first century disciples (Acts 20:28-30). When we look at the churches of Revelation, we see how far the heresies has spread. The churches in Ephesus, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, and Laodicea all had major problems, resulting in their churches being reprimanded by Christ. Yet again, the New Testament writers were not surprised by these events, for they had been warned by Christ, and they, in turn, warned the first century churches (II Peter 2:1; Jude 3,4,17,18; I John 4:1). What were some of the heresies which existed in the early church? Here is a list which the New Testament confirms: salvation by works, salvation which led to a life of immorality, salvation which led to a life of legalism, worshipping angels, the heresy that there is no resurrection, or that the resurrection had already taken place, the denial of Jesus as the Christ, the denial that Jesus was a man. All of these heresies were being dealt with in the first century church.

It is the Apostle John who deals specifically with the heresies surrounding the person of Christ, and he gives a name to the apostasy which Christ spoke about, calling it "Antichrist." It is here that we must realize that our understanding of the doctrine of "antichrist" should not be derived from farfetched movies or bizarre books, but from what the Word of God says. The word "antichrist" is only found in I and II John, therefore, we should limit ourselves to these sources in order to understand the meaning of the word. In I John 2:18,19, John tells us that the Christians of his day knew that antichrist was coming and it would be a signal of the last hour. He tells us that antichrist has come and that many antichrists were rising out of the churches. Therefore, there is not just one antichrist, but many, as the spirit of antichrist pervades many people. Nor are we to think that the antichrist is a political ruler, for John tells us that he came out of the church, had once embraced Christianity, but was now intent on destroying the church and leading disciples away into false doctrine. The "last hour" which John speaks of is in reference to what the church was waiting for - the destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Old Testament dispensation. The sign that the "last hour" was upon them was the great apostasy and the rise of antichrists from the church. In I John 2:22 and 4:3, the Apostle defines the theology of an antichrist, saying that he is a person who denies that Jesus is the Christ, denies the incarnation of Christ, and denies both the Father and the Son. In I John 4:3 John also tells us that antichrist is already in the world. It was specifically a first century phenomenon. Finally in II John 1:7 an antichrist is one who is a deceiver and denier of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is who the antichrist is and this is what he does. Are there antichrists in our own day? Yes, however we must realize that John's verses have particular application to the first century apostasy. His words have particular application for his own day as they fulfill what Christ has said in the Olivet Discourse - before Jerusalem fell, there would be a great turning away from the faith.