The end of The End

December 29th 2024

Revelation 19:11-21

We have finally reached the end of our three Month long Sermon on Eschatology. Today is the end of the End. As such, we are going to talk about the Parousia, and the Eternal State. We can consider each of these the Main Points of our Sermon. Before we get there however, I want to pay a little extra attention to where we have been. We normally start each Sermon with a “Lead In” by giving a quick recap of the Week before, and seeing that today is the last Sermon in this Series, we're going to spend a little bit longer than normal in recapping everything, not just last week.  However, let's stand and read the Word of the Lord together before we go any further.

Where have we been:

With this Series being given as one entire Sermon, we need to take a step back and view it that way. As we do, I want to remind you of an illustration I used to describe my approach. We have been “skipping a stone” across the surface of Eschatology, in that, we are touching down at certain key points, discussing them, and then moving forward. Meaning, that each of the Key Points we've discussed have beneath them an entire Ocean’s worth of teaching. There is a depth to Scripture that no Preacher has ever fully plumbed, and this includes Eschatology as well. Throughout these three Months, I'm sure that we have discussed something you've always wondered about, and have equally not talked about each of them as much as possible. This was by design. I wanted to “wet your appetite”, give you something to think about, something to pray about, and instill a hunger to know more about what God says about the End of the World.

October (point #1):

In October our Sermons were designed to be an Introduction. They were a foundation that was necessary to even begin to talk about the End of the World. We asked why should we even study the End of the World to begin with? We looked at Prov 25:2 & Rom. 12:1&2 and learned that God has hidden certain things, not to be secretive and hold us down, but to cause us to renew our minds. To give us something to look for, study, and grow. Moving forward in October, we heard from a Guest Speaker (Mason Pell) about the Bible being our standard for this journey, and then finished Point #1 by understanding that how each Christian understands Eschatology, is Adiaphora. It is neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture, to land in one eschatological School over the others. Being “Premil”, “Amil”, or “Postmil” (we’ll recap these), is unessential to being a Christian. We talked about how we are to interact with other Christians who disagree, and concluded by saying that the only essential aspect of Eschatology is that we make an effort to read, understand, and thereby transform our thinking to better align with what we believe Scripture teaches.

Point #1 teaches that:

Caring about what God says about anything, including the End of the World,

is essential to being a Christian.

November (point #2):

In November we moved into more of the details of Eschatology, in that we talked about each of the different “Schools” of Eschatology. The “Premillennial” School teaches that Jesus is going to return before the Millennial Reign of Christ spoken of in Revelation 20. The “Amillennial” School teaches that Jesus will return after the Millennium Reign, and in fact, that we are in The Millennium right now, and it is a spiritual Millennium. The “Postmillennial” School teaches that, yes, Jesus returns after the Millennium, and yes, it is a spiritual Millennium, but that it is also a physical Millennium, with tangible manifestations in our life here and now. 

We then talked about the different ways to understand the Book of Revelation, some aligning with different Millennial Schools. The Idealist says that Revelation is symbolic of the timeless battle between good and evil. The Preterist says that Revelation is all allegory about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70ad by the Romans. The Historicist says (this one is barely held by any Christians) that Revelation is a point for point telling of specific events in human history. The Futurist says that Revelation has yet to happen, and will take place in our future. 

We talked about Jesus’s “Olivet Discourse” in Matthew 24 and Daniel’s prophecy in Daniel 7. Through these we learned that, no matter what “School” you land in, God wove together prophecies that were already fulfilled in our past (the destruction of the temple, the ascension of Jesus) with prophecies about the end of time.

And we concluded Point #2 by understanding that our Eschatology influences how we live, in good and bad ways. This is where we learned that there are no “Eschatology specific” instructions in Scripture, we are simply to live like Christians all the time.

Point #2 teaches:

That though we can disagree with other Christians, none of us are infallible,

and we are to be the “Salt & Light” of this World regardless of our different understandings of The End.

December (point #3):

In this Month, we tried to take all of the information we had been learning, and then apply it to our lives. To do so, we asked a lot of big questions. We asked “Who is ruling the World?” and learned from John 12:31 that the previous ruler was cast out, and now Jesus is ruling the World. We also asked if God will ever abandon His children, and learned from John 6 that no, He won't. These answers, then, brought up other questions. If God never abandons His people, then what are we to understand about the Jews? Because the different “Schools” all teach something different about them, we took a step backwards and learned from Rom. 11 & Rev. 7 that someone's ethnicity plays no role in their salvation, neither confirming nor denying it. Well then, we asked, if Jesus is ruling this World, what does that mean about how Nations are formed and operate? So we talked about Christian Nationalism, and concluded that every Christian is a Christian Nationalist, because human societies can’t govern themselves without reference to God, unless they actually do want the land to vomit them out (Lev. 18). To help us see this, we defined a Christian Nation as one whose laws, and the processes by which they are codified, are loved and approved of by God.

Moving closer to the end, last week, we talked about how Christianity is essentially eschatological, in that the End of the World has been the plan all along. Jesus wasn’t “Plan B”, and in fact, His birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return, were the plan since before the World was formed. The End of the World is always where God has been leading us.

Point #3 teaches:

Jesus Christ is the current and eternal ruler of the physical World, regardless of your ethnicity, 

and has been arranging reality for His inevitable return, since the foundations of the World.

For today:

The Parousia:

My goal this morning, with all of that information (I know it's a lot! Listen to the past Sermons, read the Handouts, ask questions!) is to bring us to a more thorough understanding of the Parousia and the Eternal State. 

A quick recap, however, before we get into it. The word Parousia is a Greek word that means “Presence”. It was used by the Romans to describe when a King or Emperor, who, after a long journey away, finally returned to His Kingdom. We can easily call to mind an image of a Conquering King, clad in Armor and Garlands, parading through the city streets. His people cheering, crying, singing and rejoicing because their leader, their protector, the one whom their entire life has been dedicated to, is finally back with them. And that is the exact “word image” that we ought to have when trying to understand the Parousia of Jesus Christ. To reference J.R.R Tolkien, it is the Return of the King.

The Verses that we read together at the beginning of our Message today (Rev. 19:11-21) detail for us the return of the cosmic King of Eternity, Jesus Christ, to our World. He went into Heaven, where, as we discussed last week, He has been praying for us, sanctifying us, and putting His enemies under His feet, and when His Father looks to His right hand and says: “Now”, He will stand up off of His throne, climb atop a battle-clad stallion, and return to Earth. 

This event is spoken of numerous times, not only in Revelation (1:7; 3:11; 19; 22:7; 22:12) but all throughout Scripture. There are around 1,500 different Verses in the Old Testament that prophecy, references, or allude to the second coming of Christ; with one out of every 25 New Testament Verses mentioning it as well. To say that God has been preparing us for it, is an understatement. This is right in line with the Main Thesis of our entire Series, which is this: “How you understand the End of the World, is nothing less than how you understand God.” We can make this claim, because (as I’ve said before) the character and nature of God isn't going to change when He brings about the conclusion of human history. Him telling us about the End of the World, fits perfectly with His words in Amos 3:7: “Surely the Lord God does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.” I hope you can feel the weight of that, brothers and sisters. God tells us what He is going to do. He hasn't blindfolded His children in regards to what He is doing in this World, but instead has told us all along what His plan is.

On the small scale, in our personal lives, He is changing us more and more into the image of His Son by the means of everything that has ever come to pass in our life. He doesn't leave us wondering or guessing, instead He tells us that, though what you may be going through is confusing, there is an unchanging path before us that He is carrying us down, every step of the way. 

I would be remiss to not mention that a lot could be said here. The “what” that God is going to use to make us more like His Son, is for Him to know, yes, but when you trust God with every beat of your heart, and every breath of your lungs, it will create in you a golden star of guidance that will never flicker or fade. This is how Daniel stood amongst Lions; Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego stood amongst the flames of Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; how Paul was imprisoned, Peter was crucified upside down; and how the Saints of old stood before the Lions of Rome and the Gulags of Soviet Russia. This is how Saints that currently walk among us can survive the betrayal of a spouse or child, the death of a family member, and the rainbow stained wave of infanticide that is sweeping across our Nation. We can trust Him through everything we are personally going through, because He has promised us that it is for our good and His glory (Rom. 8:28; Is. 49:3).

But moving forward, this truth that God always communicates to us what He is doing, is also seen in Jesus’ own words in John 15:15, when He says this: “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.”

Every single piece of information that the Father gave to Jesus,

Jesus gave to us.

This is huge. Life changing. This has ramifications in so many different areas of life. In regards to our Salvation, in regards to how we are to live, in regards to Morality, Governments, Marriage, Love, Church, and everything else. Jesus didn't keep anything from you that is essential to living a Godly, productive, thriving, and flourishing life that is able to transcend your current circumstances. Everything we will ever need to know about life on each side of eternity, is in black and white, in your hands, here and now. This is why I am always encouraging you to read your Bibles.

To draw an illustration here, without getting too far off track…a good parent tells their child everything they need to know about how to ride their bike, without ever explaining Newton’s Second Law of Motion and how the momentum of an object is directly related to its mass and the force applied to it. You don't need to know any of that in order to ride a bike. You just need to pedal.

___

God has told us, literally thousands of times, about the inevitable return of Jesus Christ; given us new hearts able to understand it (1st. Cor. 2:14); and has empowered Teachers & Preachers of His Word to communicate it (Rom. 10:14 & 15) since the beginning of time. This can be seen when Jesus said, in Matt. 24:35: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” The words that God speaks, will outlast this World. Now, this could very easily cause us to “jump forward” in our thinking to the Eternal State (the World to come), but let's stay on track and we’ll get there momentarily.

The return of Jesus Christ is spoken of all through Scripture, because God always communicates to us not only what He is going to be doing in our life (Sanctification) but in the World as a whole. The Parousia, like I said earlier, is mentioned thousands of times in Scripture. To look at a slightly larger section, let’s look at 2nd Thessalonians 2:1-9, where it says this:

“Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, [2] not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. [3] Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, [4] who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. [5] Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? [6] And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. [7] For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. [8] And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.

When Jesus returns to this World, He is going to consume and destroy all works of lawlessness. It is alluded to in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 63:3-6 in this way, which will help us see a truth about the Parousia that might be uncomfortable:

“I have trodden the winepress alone, And from the peoples no one was with Me. For I have trodden them in My anger, And trampled them in My fury; Their blood is sprinkled upon My garments, And I have stained all My robes. [4] For the day of vengeance is in My heart, And the year of My redeemed has come. [5] I looked, but there was no one to help, And I wondered That there was no one to uphold; Therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me; And My own fury, it sustained Me. [6] I have trodden down the peoples in My anger, Made them drunk in My fury, And brought down their strength to the earth.”

A quick explanation of this, for those of us who may be a little younger. A winepress was a giant tub filled with Grapes, that people would stand in as they crushed the fruit beneath their feet, causing the juice to drip down through a hole in the bottom. Their clothes would splattered and stained with the juice, and if you're old enough to remember I Love Lucy, there was an episode where she did just that.

God is going to tread the winepress of Humanity

and stain His clothes with the blood of His enemies

as He crushes them beneath His feet. 

When Jesus returns to Earth, it is going to be a glorious, triumphant and exuberant day of glee and exaltation for those who know and love Him. Those of us still alive will be the citizens flanking the parade, throwing flowers and wreaths into His path, just like the Saints of old laid their Palm Fronds before Him while He was still here (Mt. 21:7-9). And, just like those Saints, we will sing the same song they sang that day of His triumphal entry: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mt. 21:9; Ps. 118:26).

But for those who do not know Him, it will be everything but a day of celebration. For the mother who paid an assassin to kill her child and the cowardly father who stood idly by, there is nothing in store for them but eternal damnation. Every “Pro-Choice” person is going to Hell (Prov. 6:17). For the men and women who ignored what God has said about sexuality, and instead committed with their bodies what God has called immoral, nothing but the righteous flickering flames of unending suffering await them. Homosexuals are going to Hell. (Rev. 22:15).  The False Teachers will be joining them in their burning, alongside every member of every fictitious religion. Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copleand will be burning for all eternity alongside everyone who practices Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And they will be flanked by the killers who shed blood both inside and outside of abortion clinics, whose cries of anger and fear will create an undying choir of anguish with the voices of those who love to lie (Rev. 22:15).

For everyone who has refused to repent of their sins and believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His return to our World is going to be a day of horrific violence. A day of blood. Chapter 4 of Malachi, only 6 Verses, describes it this way:

“For behold, the day is coming, Burning like an oven, And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up,” Says the Lord of hosts, “That will leave them neither root nor branch. [2] But to you who fear My name The Sun of Righteousness shall arise With healing in His wings; And you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves. [3] You shall trample the wicked, For they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet On the day that I do this,” Says the Lord of hosts. [4] “Remember the Law of Moses, My servant, Which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, With the statutes and judgments. [5] Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. [6] And he will turn The hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”

There is a day in our collective future, when the clouds will collapse in on themselves, folding into a kaleidoscope of incandescent terrifying beauty, as the King of kings and Lord of lords interrupts History for a second time. At His first interruption He rode a humble donkey (Jn. 12:14), brought peace to the World and goodwill towards men (Lu. 2:14) and burst wide open the doors to eternity for all who come to Him (Mt. 11:28-30). His second interruption will be everything but. It will be a time of peace for all who know Him, yes, but for those who rejected His donkey, He will appear atop a warhorse (Rev. 19:11). For those who rejected His tears and forced upon Him a crown of thorns, they will be met with flames instead of tears and many Diadems in place of the thorns (Rev. 19:12). Those who stripped His clothes and mocked His naked body at Golgotha, will see him wearing a robe stained in the blood of His enemies. (Rev. 19:13), and those who rejected His peace, will be met by His sword. (Rev. 19:15). “He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Rev. 19:15), and all alive that day, both friend and foe, will see “King of kings, and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16) etched into His blood-dipped robe and on His thigh. Nothing but the neon wrath of God awaits those who reject Jesus Christ. Nothing but fire. Nothing but flame. Nothing but death and death eternal.

You see brothers and sisters, when Jesus Christ returns to Earth, He is returning as a Conquering King to save His Bride from all of her enemies, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. He will be fulfilling a thousand promises to rule and reign over the work of His hands, to provide unending peace and happiness to His people, to right every wrong and to destroy all evil, for all eternity. It will be the day when “...at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, [11] and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 4:10 & 11) When Jesus Christ returns to claim His bride, we will see cemeteries emptied, because “all who are in the graves will hear His voice [29] and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” (Jn. 5:28 & 29).

The day of the Lord will be a day when the enemies of God run in fear,

and the children of God sing for joy. 

The Parousia will be the consummation of History. The end of History. The end of time. The end of sorrow, the end of sin and the end of shame. Until that day, we will feel pains of a fallen World, but what we need to understand is that they are nothing but the labor pains  (Rom. 8:22) of which God has promised will give way to a bright and glorious birth.

The Eternal State:

And that neon future, which Scripture gives sparse information of, will be one of such glory that the likes of which human words fall short of giving justice to. As such, we must look to words of non-human origin. At the end of time, God is going to roll up all of physical reality like a Scroll, causing the very stars in the sky to collapse in on themselves and burst into a billion black holes (Is. 34:4). Every element on the Periodic Table, both here on Earth and in every corner of the depths of outer space, will melt under the heat of His “de-creation” (1 Pe. 3:10).

After destroying all of His enemies,

God is going to take apart the Universe until nothing is left.

Then He will create a new heavens, and a new Earth, replacing the old Creation for a new Creation, like one would change an article of clothing (Heb. 1:11; Rev. 21:1; Ps. 102:26). And it is here, in the New Creation, where we will have face to face communion with our God. Upon streets of gold so pure they look like transparent glass (Rev. 21:21), we will join our King in a phosphorescent future of a thousand unending centuries of love and light. Where, in the many mansions He has prepared for us (Jn. 14:2), God will wipe dry, fully and completely, every tear we have ever shed (Rev. 21:4). There will be no death (Rev. 21:4), no disease. No more depression. No more broken hearts, loneliness, trauma or tragedy. We will never feel sorrow (Rev. 21:4), and we will never feel shame. We will never grow tired or weary, because the bodies that we have here and now, growing old and falling apart, will be replaced with perfect glorified bodies (Phil. 3:21; 1 Jn. 3:2).

And there, with glorified bodies, where death is no more, we will find perfect rest (Heb. 4:9). This rest will be perfect, not simply because there will be no death, no fear, and no worry, but because there will be no sin. When we enter into glory and see the Saints who have gone on ahead of us, our grandparents, our children, there will never be a single temptation. No more will we have to wrestle with ourselves to point our hearts and minds to Christ, for He will be there with us, seated at the head of the table for the Marriage supper of the Lamb. We His bride, adorned with our wedding clothes and in our sinless bodies, will commune with Him for all eternity as we Worship and serve Him forever.

In closing, we need to understand that eternity is ours, yes, but not because of us. We will see Him again in glory, not because of our best efforts, but in spite of them. All of our sins, all of our attempts to make ourselves righteous, have earned for us the flames and fires of Hell, and there is nothing we could have done to change it. We were helpless bystanders in our Salvation, and if He didn't act, it would be our blood staining His clothing at the end of time, and our cries of anguish filling the black caverns of Hell. The only thing that separates you from those doomed to be crushed in the winepress of His indignation… is not your actions, beliefs, or behaviors, it is Christ and Christ alone. He saved you when you were fully unable to save yourself, by accepting the wrath that you deserved, dying under it, then rising back to life. And He will save all of His children, losing none of them, and He will keep the doors of eternity open until they all go through. And once they have, once all who will ever believe have had their hearts replaced, the door to Heaven will shut…and The Father will send The Son to Earth to claim what is His.