Statesman63
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 | | Subject: Revelation Chapter 4 (Part 37) (Verses 10 - 11) Wed Jun 17, 2015 10:00 pm | |
| Revelation Chapter 4 (Part 37) (Verses 10 - 11)
We left off at verse 10 of Chapter 4. It is the middle of a sentence, but that’s fine. It reads, “...the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say...” You recall from last time that the 4 living creatures, who are cherubim, initiate worship. The 24 Elders represent the Church. The 4 living creatures begin worshiping and then the Church, which has been raptured to Heaven now, becomes overwhelmed by God’s glory and lays down their crowns at His throne. This scene occurs soon after the Church gets raptured to Heaven, and just after all raptured Christians are judged for their deeds on Earth, whether good or bad. Those who did well on Earth for God’s Kingdom will be rewarded crowns and positions of authority. Those who were lax or did nothing while alive in this earthly body will either receive very few crowns if they did anything at all or no crowns if they did nothing and lived as a rebellious Christian who entertained sin. All Christians will be told their eternal rank at this time. Those who are given positions of authority will have some type of reign over those who were not given positions of authority. Not all Christians will reign with Christ.
2 Timothy 2:11 reads as follows:
“Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will also deny us; if we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”
This passage reveals that only those Christians who endure will reign with Him (Christ). Those Christians who deny Him—that is, by not acknowledging Jesus before men (who do not evangelize like we were commissioned to do); or deny Him by sinning against Him—will be denied the reward of reigning with Christ. The Christian who denied God will still be saved for Heaven because God cannot deny Himself. God said that all who believe in Christ for his or her salvation will be saved. When we are faithless, He remains faithful. Note “faithless” is the opposite of “faithful” here. “Faithless” does not mean you did not have the required faith in Christ for salvation. Rather, “faithless” means that you have not remained “faithful” in your walk with God because you have been a rebellious and carnal Christian. God will not deny His promise of salvation as a free gift because that is the New Covenant that He ordained in Christ and God cannot deny His own Covenants.
1 Corinthians 3:10-15 speak of carnal Christians who will receive no reward, but will still be saved for Heaven. Please read that passage because I’m not quoting it in its entirety. From verse 14 it reads, “If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up (meaning, he did bad works or no works which did not survive the judgement of the wrath of God), he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” So it is possible, nay, inevitable that many Christians will get to Heaven but receive no rewards at all. They will not receive any crowns. The crowns signify positions of authority to reign with Christ forever. Those who have not been rewarded reigning rights will be reigned over by those who have reigning rights. You get reigning rights by doing God’s will right now while you are on this Earth. If you want to reign, or as Jesus told James and John, if you want to be first in Heaven, you must serve and be last on Earth. Those who seek to be first on this Earth will be reigned over and considered last in the next life. Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, the first will be last, and the last will be first.” To be first (I cannot stress this enough) is to become last right now and to be a servant to your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. This means you will be despised. You will be called a religious nerd. God wants us to be servants and doers of His will and it will be these people who He will appoint as rulers in the next life. Which do you prefer? To be first in this life and be last forever in the next? Or to be considered last now (mocked and scorned by men because you keep bringing up that Jesus stuff) and be one with great importance and prestige forever starting in the next life? To seek importance today is to lose it tomorrow. We should all be striving to be last in this life.
I digressed, but it was a relevant digression. Let’s look back at our verse in Revelation 4:10. It says that those who have crowns (for not all will have crowns as we just saw) will be so awed by these 4 cherubim and God’s throne and glory that soon after Jesus gives us our crowns, we be so overwhelmed that we will bow down and lay our crowns at the throne of God. Again, this verse is describing a future scene that will take place. This is not metaphoric language depicting symbolisms. I believe that soon after we give our crowns to Jesus from being so enthralled by His glory that Jesus will just end up giving us back our crowns. An in depth study of crowns in the New Testament reveals our crowns to be eternal crowns. If our crowns are depicted as eternal, then that means that once we have been given our crowns, Jesus intends for us to keep them. The crowns represent the new position of authority each Christian will be assigned. 1 Corinthians 9:25, for example, says, “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.” Again, since our crowns will last forever, according to this verse, that means that Jesus will give back the crowns that we gave back to Him.
I am not sure if I covered it (I probably did), but even if I did, now is a good time to review: Christians will not all be considered equal in Heaven. That is the purpose of the crowns and reigning with Jesus. If there are Christians who will reign in eternity, there must be those Christians who will be reigned over. This is not the complete picture. We will not get the complete picture until we actually get to the last chapter of Revelation. There is more involved here, but Christians will indeed reign over other Christians in Heaven. That is one thing that Christians will be doing for eternity. Not all Christians will be considered equal in Heaven. Your reigning status (or being reigned over) is completely determined by what you do while alive in this body right now on Earth. Once you die, or if you are alive and saved at the time of the Rapture, and that takes you away—then that’s it. There is no more opportunity to improve your Eternal Heavenly status. You will be judged by the body of work that you did prior to your death (or the Rapture). Matthew 5:19 says, “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven.” This verse clearly states that not all Christians will have equal status in Heaven. If you indulge in sin or teach others to do so, you will not have a position of authority in the next life. You will be among the least group. You will be a spiritual pauper. We briefly mentioned this verse, but I’ll apply it here as well: Matthew 19:30 reads, “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. See also Matthew 23:11-12.
I mentioned this passage too without citing it: Mark 10:35-45. This is where James and John came to Jesus and asked Him to let one of them sit at His right hand and the other at His left. They were asking to let them reign with Him in a position of authority. Jesus did not rebuke them for asking. He said, “Sure, you can sit at my right hand and at my left hand. But it is not for me to assign. The Father will assign the ranks for Christians to reign with Christ.” Instead of rebuking, Jesus basically says, “The way you are going about it fellas, is not the way to become first. If you want to become first and have the privilege to sit at my right or at my left hand, you must become last here on Earth and be a servant. You must have a servant mentality and not have any pride. You must not seek authority here if you want authority later. Those who step on others to lift themselves up will be last, but those who are humbled and do the will of God will be first and have a position of authority” (my paraphrase).
Let’s quickly finish off the rest of the verses in Revelation 4. I’ll mention first: if you intend on studying crowns you should pay close attention to not only the type of crown, the name of the crown, but also the conditions given to claim the crown. I mentioned before that there is the kingly crown (diadema) and the victor’s crown (stephanos). Names include “crown of glory,” “crown of life”, and the “crown of righteousness” to name a few. To get the type, that is, whether it is a victor’s crown or a kingly crown, you would need to compare the Greek word. They are 2 different Greek words. The condition is often something like “If you finish the race”, or “If you endure to the end and keep my teachings.” Crowns are rewards and represent positions of authority.
After we lay our crowns at the throne of God, Revelation 4:11 tells us we will say: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” There will be no evolutionists in Heaven. We will all know that God spoke something from nothing. Nothing took millions and billions of years to form. Evolution is a fabricated story. God spoke Adam and Eve into adulthood from nothing. They were never babies. They were never an egg or a sperm. The chicken came before the egg. Adam and Eve did not branch off from the ape family. God spoke everything as aged, and yet man looks at the aged looking rocks and materials and tries to apply an age to them. Jesus pointed to stones and said from these stones God can raise up children of Abraham. Man will one day realize that science does not have all the answers because God usurps science. He is able to usurp His own natural laws and physics that He created. God created the universe as aged. It looks old, but it is as young as from the moment God spoke it into being and everything started off in working order. Christians do not have to conform their understanding to scientists and believe the lie of the Big Bang. God is the One who has told it how it really happened. Science should first align itself up with the Truth of God if it really seeks accuracy. They say the galaxies are all spreading apart, and if we were to rewind the clock billions of years it would all go back to a single point. Well, if we actually did have the opportunity to rewind the clock all the way back then we would discover that the single point never existed because God spoke it all into existence already aged-looking and already spread out and from there things continued to spread apart more (if that’s really accurate what they say). Andromeda is scheduled to bump into our solar system one day according to them. Are the galaxies really separating? Today there are many excellent YouTube Christian resources that debunk the Theory of Evolution very well using physics and the Bible.
This verse says that we will realize in that day that God is truly worthy to receive glory, honor and praise: the 3 things that carnal man seeks to attain for himself. America is all about the dollar and the race to attain glory, honor or power, and praise. We put hope in the stuff we accumulate and attribute that to self-worth. We praise the movie stars, the NBA and NFL players, the Donald Trumps, the Oprahs, the Bill Gates’, and everyone who “made it.” But as we have seen, those who “make it” as we define “making it” will be last (if they even get to Heaven in the first place), and those who do not have their hearts on mammon, but rather on serving mankind and doing the will of Jesus will be first. In the next life, the Donald Trumps, Oprahs, the Bill Gates’, the Lebron James’, the Kardashians will be the poor folk and those who will be ruled over. It is nothing wrong with being rich now so as long as your heart does not get rich. Jesus Himself said that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
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