God Thinking XXV - The Beginning of Revelation 6

"There is something extraordinary about knowing the essence of something, and it is the essence of life that is extracted in this revealing book of prophesy.

 Let’s get started:

Revelation 1

V1 “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John:

V2 Who bare record of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.
V3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophesy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.”

You are blessed to have the Book of Revelation.  The prophesy contained herein is for you, and in the overall big picture, the time is at hand. 

You have got to see this message as it really is - for the living, the time is at hand.  The time was at hand when John wrote the book, and the time is at hand now.  The  revelation of Jesus Christ is for the living and the time that is at hand is for each generation to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, while they are living.  For the living - the time is at hand.

V4 John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be  unto you, and peace, from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before the throne;

V5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.  Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood,

V6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.  Amen.

V7 Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.  Even so, Amen.

V8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

The seven Spirits would have been better translated the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, as found in Re. 4:5, seven hard breathes of fire, one of the attributes of the Holy Spirit.  The seven Spirits are also referred to as the seven ministries of the Holy Spirit.

Try to envision the throne of God.  Jesus holding the angelic hosts and the church in His hand.  Round about the throne is fire burning before the throne.  Jesus was lit up like the sun.  God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit present - And John was there to capture this moment in time.

And now John shares his vision of God revealed with us.  Don’t be too hard on John if sometimes his words fail him.  John wrote what he saw.  And what he saw, he saw when he was in the Spirit, for only in the Spirit can anyone be in the presence of God.

At times John could hardly find words that could even begin to describe this encounter with God - And so it is with you."

 

Excerpt from God thinking XXV - The Beginning Of Revelation by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2013

 

God Thinking XXV - The Beginning of Revelation 5

"We looked at what God did with the people He created after the first two thousand years.

We looked at what God did with His people after the second two -thousand years.

I’ll bet you can tell where I am going.  

It is two thousand years later..... 

What we re about to read is the prophesy of God that spans two thousand years.  The message is to the Church, about what is, what was, and what is to come. 

For the sake of allowing God to teach us His truths, can we set aside any preconceived notions we have about the book of revelation.  Can we set aside the notion that it is for scholars only and that it is the book of confusion and controversy, for it is neither.

The book of Revelation is for such a time as this. 

The answers that lie within must be uncovered one by one.

They must be handled with reverence and patience.

They are revealed by the reading of the Word and the witness of the Spirit.

The book of Revelation, reveals.  As we read and study the prophesies within, God will not only reveal exacting truths about where we are in His timeline -

God will also reveal what is about to happen worldwide...

What is about to happen within our nation...

What is about to happen in our community...

What is about to happen within our Church...

God will reveal what is about to happen within each individual.

A healthy study of this book provides a sobering view of the world, the Church, yourself and myself.

God wrote the end from the beginning and makes no excuses for His candor.  God need not apologize for revealing what was, what is and what is to come.

Never again will you or I think of the Book of Revelation as mysterious or unknowable, but we will be changed by the truth contained within the prophesy of this book.

Full disclosure can sometimes be unsettling.

There is nothing within the pages of revelation that was meant to be hidden or unrevealed or it would have been called the hidden book of undisclosed prophesy.

Even though God intended for us to understand the truths within this book, God does not fully disclose all that is to come, nor does God disclose the exhaustive blessings that He has prepared for us after we leave this body.

Even though God reveals the entire timeline from creation to the end of the age, it is just a glimpse of what God has in store for us. 

 

Excerpt from God thinking XXV - The Beginning Of Revelation by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2013

 

God Thinking XXV - The Beginning of Revelation 4

"Two thousand years later, God came to earth as a man, the man Jesus Christ, and what did He find?  Again mankind had taken what God had made and made it into something unholy.  This time it was under the guise of the temple of the living God.  

This time, instead of open and blatant wickedness, corruption and vial behavior, man had tried to disguise their  disobedience under the banner of religious systems.  It wasn’t only the Jews. 

In Central Asia there was an early form of Hinduism.

In Southern Asia there was Buddhism.

In China there was Confucianism.

In China there was also Taoism.

In Japan there was Shintoism.

In Mexico there were the Aztecs.

Of all the religions of the earth, God came to His own people to reveal to them the foolishness of their devices.  They had taken the oracles and precepts of God and turned them into something unholy and utterly contemptible to God.  

I want you to get a feel for the heart of God concerning this matter.  Listen to what Jesus says to the leaders of the so-called religious people of the times.  I am going to read some

excerpts from Jesus’s discussion with the religious people of the day.  Even though He was speaking to the Jews, the truths of what He was saying applies to every religious order

around the world.

Matthew 23:13-39

“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in.

V14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

V15 Woe unto you, scribes, hypocrites! For ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

V16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides...

V24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

V25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

V27 Woe unto you scribes, and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

V33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

V37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,

and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

V38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

V39 For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

When the veil of the temple was rent, (the moment Jesus died upon the cross), Israel’s house would be desolate until they are forced, by Jesus’s second coming, to bow the knee to the Messiah.

From this time forth, no sacrifice would ever be accepted for the sins of man except the provision made by Christ for sins. 

The temple that once housed the oracles of God, where the priest would enter to offer sacrifices for their sin and the sins of the people would no longer be accepted. 

The holy of holies was rent.  Never again would God destroy man with water, and never again would God allow access to Himself through any religious system.

This time, instead of God destroying man - God destroyed man’s religion."

Excerpt from God thinking XXV - The Beginning Of Revelation by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2013

God Thinking XXV - The Beginning of Revelation 3

"Man had perverted the law of God and the law of faith by denying God’s witness of Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. They had created for themselves religious expressions, and continue, even today, to create for themselves religious expressions, that exclude the need to recognize the Messiah.

The whole world is in on it.  Every religion in the world that denies the Son of God, cannot find consolation or peace.  They cannot find solace for the soul, nor can they find truth from God.  They discern with the mind and the body, but their spirit is dead.  They cannot receive the revelation that comes from God, nor can they understand it.

They choose a path that has but one end, because they deny their creator.

The Word says, “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?  He is the anti-Christ, that denieth the Father and the Son.    

V23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.” 1 John 2:22-23 

I don’t want to belabor the issue, but until we, the Church of the living God, believe what God says:

until we understand that God, the Father has entrusted you and me with the truth of salvation until we understand that there is only one name by which all mankind is saved, Jesus the Christ until we understand that there is only one who can make alive the spirit within a man, the Holy Spirit there is no reason for God to give us further revelation.

The prophesy and revelation from God is for His people. It is there to bless us and inform us. It is the truth about mankind, where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.

Who we were, who we are and who we will be. 

Excerpt from God thinking XXV - The Beginning Of Revelation by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2013

                                  

God Thinking - The beginning of Revelation 2

"This wasn’t the first time that Jesus cleansed the temple of its folly.  Go with me to John 2:13-16.  I want you to get imbedded in your heart what the intent was, of having a temple in the first place. 

 

When we catch the vision that God had/has as, (the place) where His people would gather to pray, praise and worship Him, we can then get a better understanding of the revelation that is set before us this day.

 

John 2:13-16

“And the Jews’ Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,

V14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:

V15 And when He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;

V16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not My Father’s house an house of merchandise.”

 

What Jesus did here, in the temple, in Jerusalem, in AD 33, He is going to do again.  How do I know that?  I’m glad you asked.

 

120 years before God destroyed the earth with water, God gave this prophesy, “And the LORD said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”  Genesis 6:3 

Remember this timeline.  Remember only eight persons were saved.

 

“And God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

V6 and it repented the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.

V7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth Me that I have made them.”  Genesis 6:5-7

 

The word used here as repented as used here is different from the word repent as used in the new testament.  The word used in the new testament is metanoeo, (met-an-o-eh-o) and metamorphoo, (met-am-or-pho-o) where we get the word metamorphosis, i.e., to change from one thing to another.  The word used in the Old Testament is, nacham, (naw-kham) which means to sigh unfavorably or to rue, i.e., to feel deep sorrow on account of. 

 

And if we look at verse six with this understanding here’s what God is saying,” and it repented the LORD, (And the LORD sighed with deep sorrow, deep enough to get to the very heart of God), that He had made man on the earth.”

 

God did what He said He would do.  He destroyed the people He had made, all but eight.  Here we see how God saved a remnant for Himself, and His wrath was poured out upon a wicked self-serving people. This was just a little over two-thousand years after God made mankind."

 

Excerpt from God thinking XXV - The Beginning Of Revelation by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2013

God Thinking XXV - The Beginning Of Revelation 1

"God is about to reveal the emptiness of all religions that deny the Son of God. 

God is also about to reveal the emptiness of life without the Son of God. 

God is about to tear down the walls of any church that does not do what they were called to do.

 

Their services, programs, doctrine, hierarchy - their staff, their debt, their unfaithfulness, their sin will all be tried, as by fire, and exposed for what it is.

 

God is not doing this to punish His people, but to enlighten them. 

 

Instead of being the body of Christ, many Churches have been making for themselves a body of clients, of clicks, of fraternities, of social clubs, elitist groups  - In and of themselves, having clients, being part of a click, fraternity, social club or group is not a bad thing, but when they are disguised as God’s holy church, that’s another thing.  

 

God will not have it.  Hear what Jesus has to say about it in Matthew 21:12-13

“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, V13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

Abuses, unfaithfulness and irresponsibility must first be purged out before that which is right can be established.

 

Excerpt from God thinking XXV - The Beginning Of Revelation by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2013

God Thinking XXIV - Prepare To Be Prepared 12

"If you continue to live outside of God’s will for your life, it won’t be because God didn’t clearly expose the consequences.

It won’t be because God didn’t clearly identify Himself to each and every human being.

It won’t be because God missed your name and forgot to call you.  It is the will of God that all mankind be saved. 

It won’t be because someone grew up in the remotest area of Brazil and God couldn’t reach them. 

Stop believing the lies of the unbeliever and their religious cohorts about how and when and who and why and where.  They don’t have a clue.   

The next time the question comes up, “If God were a loving God, how could He let so many people die without knowing Him?”  You tell them, “How could so many people die without having recognized the love of God?”

Here is the sum of it all:

Take a close look at your life.  Ask yourself, “With what I know, with the knowledge I have, in my present state of awareness:

• Have I prepared my body to be the temple of the LORD?
• Have I prepared my mind to house the truths of God?
• Have I prepared my spirit to receive to receive what God has prepared me for?

The answer to these questions will help you to gravitate toward a healthier diet and better living conditions for your body.

The answer to these questions will help you to learn the Word of God and let it create in you the mind of Christ.

The answer to these questions will help to seek His face and go deeper than ever before.  To quit playing games with your future.  God doesn’t want you gambling with your future - He wants you to see His vision for your life. 

Then He wants you to live out that vision, in Christ."

Excerpt from God Thinking XXIV - Prepare To Be Prepared by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2013