Three years ago (2012), with tsunamis, earthquakes and financial concerns dominating the headlines, the National Geographic Channel partnered with Kelton Research to conduct a survey gauging what Americans thought about a potential “Doomsday” scenario. They found that…
Nearly three out of every four people (71%) envision a major disaster in their lifetime as an act of God, not man.
More than 62 percent of Americans think the world will experience a major catastrophe in less than 20 years.
And nearly half (49%) of Americans would forgo new high-end appliances in a new home if it had a safe room or bomb shelter instead. (Meghan Gleason, Nat Geo TV Blogs, "The Results Are In: Is It the End of the World as We Know It? Survey Says!", February 7, 2012; http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2012/02/07/the-results-are-in-is-it-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-survey-says)
A lot of people are running scared these days, expecting imminent disaster of some kind. But we who know Jesus don’t have to be afraid like the rest of the world. We don’t have to fret no matter how bad the news gets.
All we need is the right perspective, and that’s what the book of Revelation is all about. It helps us see our tribulations on this earth from a heavenly perspective by looking at THE Great Tribulation to come.
Revelation tells us about the reign of a coming world tyrant and the fires of hell (Revelation 13 & 14). Revelation describes God’s judgment which will be unleashed on this earth, the last seven of which are described as “bowls of wrath” (Revelation 16). And yet, in the middle of it all, Revelation invites us to look at our trials from heaven’s perspective. See the future from God’s standpoint. Understand world events from a divine point of view. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Revelation 15, Revelation 15, where we get that divine point of view.
Revelation 15:1 Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. (ESV)
In the midst of tribulation, we are invited to…
SEE SEVEN ANGELS AND THE END OF PAIN.
See seven heavenly beings and the end of God’s wrath.
You see, by this time in the book of Revelation, we are coming to the end of the Tribulation Judgments. There were seven seal judgments in chapter 6. There were seven trumpet judgments in chapter 8 & 9. And now, we come to the last seven judgments of the tribulation – Seven angels will pour out their seven plagues on the earth in the next chapter.
They are terrible plagues, but with them God’s wrath will be spent. God’s anger will be finished, and God’s blessing will finally come as Jesus returns to this earth to reign for a thousand years.
I remind you: Believers today will not go through these Tribulation judgments. We who have trusted Christ will be taken out of this world before God judges it (1 Thessalonians 4:13 – 5:11). But after we are taken out of this world, some will trust Christ as their Savior. They will go through the Tribulation and experience its horrors. And for them, this truth will be of great comfort: God’s anger will not last forever. His judgments will come to an end.
In other words, the pain is only temporary. The praise will last forever! That’s the perspective of heaven, not only for the Tribulation saints, but for us, as well, who go through lesser tribulations in this life.
Psalm 30:5 puts it this way: His anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
In the 1976 Montreal Olympics, a Japanese gymnast, Shun Fujimoto, broke his right knee during the floor exercises. Most expected him to withdraw from the competition, so you can imagine their surprise when they saw him the next day competing on the rings.
He was performing well, but everyone wondered how he would handle the dismount. Fujimoto came to the end of his routine, and without hesitation flew off the rings with a twisting, triple somersault. There was a moment of intense quiet as he landed hard on his wounded knee. Then the audience gave him a thundering applause, as he stood his ground.
Later, reporters asked him about that moment, and he replied, “The pain shot through me like a knife. It brought tears to my eyes. But now I have a gold medal and the pain is gone.” (Gary Inrig, A Call to Excellence, Discovery House, 1992, p.152)
That’s the way it is for every believer in Jesus Christ. The pain is only temporary; the praise will last forever. So in the midst of your tribulations, in the midst of your sorrow and pain, get heaven’s perspective on things. See seven angels, and see the end of pain. Then…
SEE A SEA OF GLASS AND THE PEACE THAT IS OURS EVEN IN THE PAIN.
Be calm and secure in the sovereignty of God.
Revelation 15:2 And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. (ESV)
These are the tribulation saints. They trusted Christ during the Tribulation, and they refused to worship the antichrist; they refused to bow down to his image; they refused to accept his mark – i.e., the mark of the beast described in chapter 13.
As a result, the beast kills them; and from earth’s perspective, it looks like Satan has won. But from heaven’s perspective, they are described as “those who had conquered the beast.”
Even when God’s fiery judgment is flashing all around us, like these tribulation saints, we can be secure on a sea of glass. We can be at peace. We can be calm and unafraid.
It reminds me of a park we used to visit in Michigan when our kids were small. In that park was a big, stone lion, standing with its mouth wide open. Every time we went to that park, our three-year-old girl (Elizabeth) and our one-year-old boy (Peter) would stick their heads in that lion’s mouth and laugh and giggle like it was the funniest thing on earth.
It’s like Daniel resting in the Lion’s den all night while King Darius was unable to sleep on satin sheets in his luxurious palace (Daniel 6:18). That’s the way it is with those who have put their trust in Christ! We can laugh while the lion is roaring. We can be at peace and secure, even with the fire of judgment all around us.
More than that, we can sing praises to our King.
Revelation 15:3-4 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.” (ESV)
Even though they have been through the Great Tribulation, they are praising God; they are exalting Him; and they are announcing that His ways are right!
There is no hint of any complaints at all! “God, why did you allow all this to happen?” “Why did I have to suffer so much?” And “why did you allow so many of Your people to be tortured?” They have no questions for God, because their questions have been answered in heaven. From Heaven’s perspective the see that God’s ways have been right all along, and they are singing God’s praise! My dear friends, that’s what we will do when we get to heaven, as well.
We will sing His praises, because we will see that His works are remarkable. Verse 3 says, “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty.” God’s deeds are amazing! They are beyond human comprehension.
Augustine, the great 5th century theologian, was strolling the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea one morning, engaged in deep thought. He was trying to understand the nature of God.
Then his thoughts were interrupted when he saw a little boy running towards the ocean with a bucket. He watched as the boy filled his bucket with water and ran back up the peach to pour it into a little hole he had dug in the sand. Within seconds, the water was gone, soaked into the dry, sunbaked sand.
Again the little boy went down to the ocean, filled his bucket with water, ran back to the hole and poured the water in. And again the sand swallowed the water right up.
Augustine approached the boy with a smile and asked him, “What are you trying to do?”
The boy, a little annoyed at the interruption, replied, “I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole.”
Then it struck Augustine that he was behaving a lot like this little boy. He was trying to pour the ocean of the truth about God into his little head, and he was having no more success than this little boy with his bucket.
So it is when we try to figure God out. We don’t understand all that He is and all that He does. We don’t understand why He allows suffering and pain. We don’t understand why He allows Satan to steal and kill and destroy for a while.
But even so, we will sing with the tribulation saints, because we will see that His works are remarkable.
And we will see that His ways are righteous. Even though His ways are beyond human comprehension, we know that his ways are right. Verse 3 says, “Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!” We may not see it on earth, but in heaven we’ll know it for certain.
Somebody once wrote:
He writes in characters too grand
For our short sight to understand;
We catch but broken strokes, and try
To fathom all the mystery
Of withered hopes, of death, of life,
The endless war, the useless strife –
But there, with larger, clearer sight,
We shall see this – His way was right. (God’s Handwriting)
If the Tribulation Saints will be able to sing God’s praise, if those who will experience unspeakable pain will be able to praise God, then certainly we will too. We will sing with the tribulation saints, because “God’s works are remarkable;” “God’s ways are righteous.”
And God’s world will revere Him. Verse 4 says, “All nations will come and worship you.” Literally, they will bow down before our Lord, Jesus Christ. Philippians 2 says, “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow.” You see, there is coming a day when not only the believers, but the entire world will recognize that Jesus is God, and that God has done what is right in every case.
John White, a Christian psychiatrist, talks about the time his one-year-old son Scott fell on a cement driveway and split the area below his chin. The cut was so deep that the floor of his mouth was exposed. Hospitals and doctors were 250 kilometers away over tortuous mountain roads. Dr. White had no surgical instruments with him, and all he could find was one darning needle, some coarse thread, one pair of rather blunt scissors, and a pair of eyebrow tweezers. Dr. White knew that infection in children develops rapidly and infection in the floor of the mouth can have fatal complications. They also had a little sulfonamide powder, but there was no local anesthetic. Even so, he said, “I decided to trim and stitch the wound with what we had.”
Dr. White sterilized “the instruments”, but he could not help but look at the affair from his son Scott's point of view. Dr. White did his best to explain, but what can a one-year-old understand? Then Scott was placed on the dining room table and “judgment descended on him.” Cruel adults seized his limbs and his head so that movement was impossible. Then the father he had trusted became a fearful monster inflicting unbelievable pain on him. John said, “How I wished that he could understand that I feared for his life.”
“Mercifully,” Dr. White said, “he still seemed to trust me when it was over.” (John White, Eros Redeemed, InterVarsity Press, 1993 p. 49; www.PreachingToday.com)
Sometimes, our Heavenly Father allows us to experience “unbelievable pain,” something far beyond our ability to comprehend; but someday, we’ll look back and see that everything He did was right. In the meantime, we just need to trust Him.
That’s the heavenly perspective during the Great Tribulation, and that’s the perspective we need in our own trials and tribulations. So in the midst of your sorrow and pain, see the seven angels, and the end of pain; see the sea of glass, and the peace that is ours in the midst of pain. And finally…
SEE A SANCTUARY AND GOD’S PUNISHMENT FOR SIN.
See the temple in heaven, and know that God will make everything right in the end.
Revelation 15:5 After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened… (ESV)
The “tent of witness” is the Holy of holies in heaven. It is the most holy place in heaven, where God’s Law is kept and where God Himself dwells.
Revelation 15:6 …and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. (ESV)
Even the angels themselves dare not have any spot or blemish in the presence of a holy God.
Revelation 15:7-8 And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. (ESV)
The seven angels come from the presence of a Holy God ready to judge the earth, and no one can stop them. No one can come into God’s presence and beg Him to hold them back. No one can enter the temple, because it is filled with the smoke of God’s glory and power.
God’s holiness demands justice. His righteousness requires that sin be punished. His integrity insists that all the wrongs be made right in the end, and that’s exactly what will happen.
Bible scholar Christopher Wright tells a moving story about a friend from India who came to faith in Christ by reading the Old Testament. At the time he taught engineering at the local university. But he had grown up among the despised Dalit (outcast) community in his village, and his whole family had suffered greatly at the hands of the high-caste Hindus in the village—all kinds of harassment, violence and injustice. He had a great thirst for revenge against his oppressors, and so he worked very hard at school, to get to university, so that he could get a job with some influence and power, and then turn the tables on his enemies.
The day he arrived at the university, he found a Bible translated into Telugu (his state language) in his room. He had never read the Bible, though he knew that it was the Christians' holy book. He opened it at random and started reading the story of Naboth and Ahab in 1 Kings 21. It's the story of the unjust King Ahab who uses his power to steal the land from Naboth, an ordinary farmer. The story had so many familiar elements. "This was my story," he said. His family had also experienced theft of land, false accusations, murders, the brutality of the powerful against the ordinary people.
But then he read on and was amazed to read about another man called Elijah, who, in the name of some God of the Bible, denounced King Ahab, and said that he would be judged and punished by this God. This was astounding to this student from India. He had millions of gods within Hinduism to choose from, but he had never heard of such a god as he was reading about in this Bible. Here was a god who took the side of the suffering ones and condemned the government and the powerful for their wicked deeds.
He said, "I never knew such a god existed”, and as he continued to read the Bible, he learned about Jesus, his life and death and resurrection. He also learned about the need to forgive, but his road to conversion started by meeting the God who is just and who takes the side of the oppressed. (Christopher J.H. Wright, Salvation Belongs to Our God, IVP Academic, 2008, pp. 48-49; www.PreachingToday.com)
Sometimes, the idea of God’s just judgment scares us. But if we have been mistreated, it is the very thing that draws us closer to Him. Oh my dear friends, rejoice in the fact that there is a God who WILL right the wrongs; there is a God who WILL judge sin; there is a God who WILL meet out justice in the end.
This will be of great comfort to the tribulation saints, who will be persecuted and killed during the Great Tribulation. And this can be of comfort to you and me, who are sometimes unjustly treated today.
So in the midst of your trials and tribulations, get God’s perspective on things. See seven angels and the end to your pain. See a sea of glass and the peace that is ours even in the pain. And finally, see a sanctuary and God’s punishment for sin. God will indeed right all wrongs someday.
Of course that means He will punish YOUR sins as well, unless you accept the punishment already meted out for your sins on the cross. You see, Jesus was punished for your sin and mine on the cross. He died for us and rose again, and those of us who choose to accept it never have to fear being punished for sin ever again.
Oh my dear friend, if you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, I urge you to trust Him today. Call upon the name of the Lord and you will be saved. Don’t put it off any longer. Do it today. Then you too will be able to rejoice with the saints in heaven, even if you go through hell on earth.
In 1902, Adelaide Pollard was going through what she described as “a distress of soul.” She felt God had called her to missionary service in Africa, but she was unable to raise the necessary funds. In her state of discouragement, she attended a little prayer meeting one night where an elderly woman prayed, “It really doesn’t matter what you do with us, Lord – just have your way with our lives.” That night Adelaide Pollard put her thoughts on paper. Five years later, in 1907, George Stebbins put those words to music, and they have become one of our favorite hymns today.
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay:
Mold me and make me After Thy will,
While I am waiting, Yielded and still.
Maybe life has not gone as you planned, and you’re discouraged. Perhaps, you’re experiencing that “distress of soul” that Adelaide Pollard described. I urge you: make her song the prayer of your heart today as we sing it together.
