When Jesus died on the cross it was not God’s afterthought. It wasn’t a “plan B” It was something God planned from the very foundation of the world. The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. The Antichrist is going to blaspheme God. He’s going to stand on the earth and stand in the temple in Jerusalem and shake his fist at God and say, “God, if you are God destroy me right now. There is no God! Worship me instead!” He’s even going to blaspheme those who are in heaven.
1993
October 31, 1993
How to Beat the Socks Off the Devil
Some people have the weirdest ideas about Satan. They really Satan is some guy in red longjohns down in Hell with a pitchfork and a whip cracking a whip over people shoveling coals into some furnace. The Bible says Jesus, said Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels but he is not there yet. The Bible calls Satan, “The Prince of the Power of this Air.” Jesus calls him, “The God of this world.” The Bible says he roams about seeking whom he may devour. You see that’s where he is right now but the time is going to come when he is going to be cast out of his access to heaven.
October 24, 1993
When Men Will Celebrate Anti-Christmas
Somebody needs to tell Indiana Jones he will never find the Ark of the Covenant, because it is in heaven. How did it get there? I don’t know but the Bible says there it is! The beautiful thing about the temple is that this temple in heaven is the dwelling place of the power of God but the glorious news about the temple is this all of this is in the future. The temple John measured at the beginning of the book is going to be in Jerusalem; the temple we see at the end of this chapter is in heaven but right now there is a temple of God.
October 17, 1993
The Bitter-Sweet Book
October 10, 1993
Life and Death on Earth During the Tribulation
How do you think people on earth are going to react judgement after judgement after judgement after judgement? Thousands of people are killed. There are signs in the sky. There is environmental damage there are all kinds of disasters happening. What do you think is going to be the reaction of mankind?
October 3, 1993
The Sky is Falling…Really!
In the Bible there is a highly organized strata and structure to angelic organizations. We don’t get all the details about it, but anytime you read the words “principalities and powers” that’s a word that means ranks of order, both the good angels and the fallen angels. In Ephesians chapter 6 when it says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers.” Have you ever wondered what those words meant? It means against the organized, structured ranks of demons. God’s angels are organized with archangels and the other angels we are talking about. So these seven trumpet angels appear and they are going to be the ones who blow these trumpets to announce judgment on the earth.
September 26, 1993
The Eye of the Storm
What’s it going to be like the first Sunday after Jesus raptures the church? We make jokes about it and say things like, “Mostly deacons will be there in church and most of the choir will be there,” but I want to tell you the first Sunday after Jesus raptures the church, the church buildings are going to be PACKED, because there are going to be some people who know and have heard all about this and when it happens, they are going to realize they were counterfeit Christians and never were saved and now they have been left behind and what a terrible, terrible time it’s going to be!
September 12, 1993
The Coming World Chaos
Has there ever been a time in the history of the world when it was technologically possible for there to be a one-world ruler? Never before today! But with communications and transportation it could happen today. Every time you hear somebody in government start talking about a global economy, global politics, or one-world government, they don’t even know they are setting themselves up. I’m not saying everybody that says that is the Antichrist. All I am saying is the system is in place and many people want to see it happen.
August 22, 1993
Worthy is the Lamb
June 27, 1993
What will it be like in Heaven?
Do any of you have a hobby where you create things? Maybe you do a little woodworking in your shop. And when somebody asks why, you say, “I just enjoy doing it.” It’s an awesome thought, but do you know why God created this planet? It just gave him pleasure. An angel said, “God, why did you create earth? Why did you create the heavens? Why did you create all of those people in Tyler, Texas?” God said, “It just gives me pleasure to do it. I enjoy the fellowship and the praise these, my creatures, give to me.” I’ll tell you what. When we get to heaven, we are going to know who is boss and who is worthy of praise!
June 13, 1993
The Tragedy of a Lukewarm Faith
A deep theological question I have been asked is, “Was Jesus ever sick?” Some say because he was God in the flesh he never got sick; others say he never had the sniffles or He never had a headache or a cold. Did Jesus ever get sick? I don’t know if he got sick during the thirty-three years he was here on earth. I’m not going to answer that question, but he does tell us there is one thing that makes him sick: Lukewarm Christians–compromising, side-stepping, lukewarm Christians.
June 13, 1993
Help! Someone I Love is Dying!
How do you cope with the experience of a terminally ill loved one? Many of you may have experienced or are currently experiencing pain because someone you love is dying. That’s the kind of pain that’s really hard to deal with but it is the kind of pain that just about every one of us will face during life.
May 30, 1993
The Kind of Church God Blesses
Of all of the seven churches in Revelation, this is the only church of the seven that does not receive a rebuke from the Lord. This is what you might call a church that is really blessed. Philadelphia means “the place where the brothers love one another a place of brotherly love.” This was a very small, insignificant community in Asia Minor and it was not nearly as important as Ephesus or Sardis or some of these other places, but this is the location of a group of believers although they only had a little bit of strength, God was blessing them and he was using them. If we want to be a certain kind of church of all of these seven churches, we as members of Green Acres Baptist Church we want to be like the church at Philadelphia.
April 25, 1993
How to Wake up a Dead Church
I have never wrung a chicken’s neck, but my mother had an expression, “The most active chicken in the barnyard is the one who just had its neck wrung.” When you wring a chicken’s neck, that chicken is dead, but it’s out there flopping around and running around even though its neck is broken. It’s dead but it’s busy and that’s true of a lot of churches. There’s a lot of activity going on but the church is dead. That’s what Jesus said about this church here at Sardis.
April 18, 1993
Torn Between Two Lovers
Thyatira was a literal church in Asia Minor. This was a place well-known for the color purple, because they had a profitable business of dying cloth into the royal color of purple. Lydia, who became a Christian in the book of Acts, was from the city of Thyatira and she was known as a seller of purple garments. We don’t know much about the church. Of all these seven churches, this is the most obscure and unknown of all of them. I want us to learn three lessons from this church and apply them to our own lives.
March 28, 1993
Kicking Satan Off the Throne
The church in Pergamum is the third of the seven churches. So, let’s look at this church at Pergamum and talk about that and think about what God wants to do for us. The title of the message is “Kicking Satan Off the Throne,” because twice Jesus says Satan has his throne in Pergamum and Pergamum is where Satan lives.
March 21, 1993
How to Persevere Under Pressure
Smyrna was the center of emperor worship for the Roman Empire. If Romans had believed in Jesus, they would have put him up on a shelf in the Pantheon with all of their other gods: Jupiter, Zeus, Mercury, Mars, etc. But when Christians refused to name any other God than the one God of heaven they were called atheists and many of them were put to death. That’s the kind of setting in which they lived and that’s why Jesus said, “I know what you are going through.”
March 14, 1993
What to Do When the Glow is Gone
The city of Ephesus was one of the most important cities of the ancient world. Ephesus had a problem. It was the center of a fertility type of pagan religion. It was a religion that basically worshiped sexual reproduction. It was also home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
These Christians in Ephesus lived in that kind of a setting. Yet they were a church Jesus wrote to and said, “I praise you. You are working hard and you are not giving up. You are hanging in there. You are keeping on keeping on.” Yet the church at Ephesus was guilty of forsaking their first love.
March 7, 1993
Face-to-Face with Jesus
When you see Jesus what do you think he will look like? Most of us have in our mind what we think Jesus looked like when he ministered for three years. Then we have in our mind what he looked like in his post-resurrection appearance when they recognized him but sometimes they didn’t, how he could appear through walls. But the description in the Bible is not his earthly appearance, nor his post-resurrection appearance it is his post-ascension appearance, after he went back to heaven where he is right now. We’re going to see what he looks like.
February 21, 1993
This is Dedicated to the One Who Loves Me
Revelation is the only book in the Bible that has a blessing promised at the beginning and a warning posted at the end. Revelation 1:3 “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.” We all know we are blessed when we study and read God’s word but this is the only book in the Bible that promises a specific blessing to the people who not only read it and hear it, but especially those who obey the things that are found in it.
February 14, 1993
The Blessing of Baptism
Salvation is not achieved by works; it is only by the grace of God and our faith. Baptism, as good and as important as it is, is a good work and we are never saved by works. I’m not saying it’s not important. If you want to be fruitful in your life and want to have the blessing of God on your life, you ought to be baptized. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
February 7, 1993
Preview of the Revelation
The word of God, the Bible, is a total completion; it is a unit. It is not 66 disjointed books. There is a marvelous unity to the word of God that begins with the book of Genesis and ends with the book of Revelation. Even though they were written thousands of years apart, Genesis and Revelation are sister books. For instance, in Genesis we read about the creation of the first heaven and the first earth. The Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In Revelation, the first heaven and the first earth pass away and we read about the creation of the new heaven and the new earth. That’s the parallel.