The Playbill of Revelation
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · March 16, 2025 · Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation series
Jeremy MacDonald walks through the characters and symbols of Revelation, including the mark of the beast, and the throne room scene in Revelation 4 and 5. The message shows that Jesus, the slaughtered Lamb, wins through sacrifice, and calls us to resist empire by following His way.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation series
Topics: Discipleship, Vision, Worship
Transcript
[0:00] So six and a half years ago, Chantel and I got invited to Dave and Luann Black's house for lunch. It's a beautiful invite. We're really excited. We were pastoring in Ontario at the time. They had a nice little spot on the water. And so we brought our two kids. It was baby Riker, baby Archer at that time, and got a chance to have lunch with them. And as a pastor, I've been a pastor my whole career, my whole working life. And so this is kind of, you know, a fun opportunity to connect with somebody. We had known them for the, you know, the year that we had kind of been at the church already, and they were very much a core part of starting this church. And so we were joining kind of that mission of it. And it was partway through kind of the preparation phase. Chantel and I had the kids in their living room. Dave was out back, he was doing the barbecuing. Luann was in the kitchen, and somebody came in the door of their front, of their house.
[0:50] And I don't know if you've had this before where you're at somebody's house, somebody else's space, and then something's happening where if it was your house, you would need to do something, you know, knock on the door, doorbell if somebody comes in, but you're at somebody else's place. I usually like it at restaurants. I was at Starbucks the other day, and if I hold the door open for somebody, I'll be like, Hey, welcome to Starbucks. And they kinda look at me like, you don't work here. But I'm like, oh, just friendly. Come to church. So then for us, we were at lunch and, and Josh walks in, and so Josh is from the church. We knew him. He's a young adult dude, great guy. Played on the worship team. And so it wasn't a weird thing that he walked in, I was just confused that they would've invited somebody else to our lunch. But that's okay.
[1:36] Maybe there's more people coming, you know, maybe it's, you know, something I didn't clue in on or like, it's a young adult event now. And I gotta do something I didn't know. And so I kind of watched as Josh came in ready to say hey to him, and he just like immediately went to a room in the back, maybe the washroom or something. I was like, that's kind of rude, confusing too. And so I look at Chantel and she's like, I don't know. And so Josh comes out and, and he doesn't even really acknowledge us. He goes right to Luann and he gives her a hug. And it was in that moment that I was like, ah, something's different here. And I said to Luann, Josh, how do you guys know each other? To which Luann looked at me very confusingly and said, this is my son. Oh, that makes so much sense.
[2:23] How many times have you been in a situation where you're confused and all of a sudden you get that bit of information, you're like, oh, I get it now. You are connected to you and you used to date you and that's why this is now awkward, or whatever the thing is, you know, those situations, it's like, oh, now I get it. And that feeling of, oh my goodness, this makes so much sense, is what I'd love for us to be able to unearth and uncover from the Christian scripture book at the end of our Bible, Revelation. And what happens is, in the same way that I was learning the context of Luann and her son Josh, and when you know the context of the people that you're around or that you work with, or family members from that new family member, when you get the context and it starts to make sense, the same thing applies to this ancient text.
[3:19] We started this series last week, wrestling through this book that causes all sorts of us very deep confusion and sometimes angst and sometimes all sorts of wild and wonderful things because the book and, this particular piece of literature is so different than we're used to. And so one of the things that we have to do is kind of peel back and understand the characters that make up Revelation in order for us to be able to make sense of it. And listen, if you're not a Jesus person, a Christian person, you don't believe these things, you just look at this like any other piece of literature, you should know that this book has shaped and formed generations of people in really profound ways, and sometimes for the better. And sometimes if we're not careful, if we misread it, it can actually be for the worse. And so for you, I'd say even without believing everything that we believe, I think this book, this piece of literature, the Revelation of Jesus has a profound opportunity to shape you in your life, even if you've got hesitations on it.
[4:13] And so I would love for us to take a look to start at some of the characters. And I wanna walk us through some parts of Revelation that might open up and reveal some things. I've learned a lot so far in this series, and perhaps you will too. So in Revelation, we come across a number of different characters that all sound some kind of terrifying and confusing. And it's the nature of it. But when you get into Revelation, you realize there's kind of these two sides to the story. And the story like changes locations and places and new things happen and the characters morph and adjust over time in some ways. But in lots of ways, you can kind of see that there's a team Lamb in Revelation, and there's a team Dragon in Revelation, and the Lamb side has the woman, and sometimes she kind of is like Eve, and sometimes it's like Israel, and sometimes she's kind of like, maybe Mary, the mother of Jesus.
[5:00] And sometimes, you know, maybe it's the church, you know, the people that gather in this kind of way. There's like the 24 elders that we're gonna see more of today. And it seems like perhaps they reference the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, the nature of the people who look and worship God. And so they kind of represent those, there's these living beings that are, that have got wild imagery attached to 'em. We'll see that today. They've been mentioned before in other parts, and you'll see this in a second, other parts of the Christian scriptures, you see kind of this same type of imagery, but basically trying to designate that all of creation. And in Revelation we kind of see this, all of creation is wanting to worship the one true God. There's this big number of people, there's witnesses, and then there's the Dragon, and there's these beasts, one from the sea and the earth. There's this Antichrist.
[5:47] And the interesting thing about Antichrist, if you've heard of this before, the term Antichrist doesn't actually show up at all in Revelation, even though we often try to tag it into Revelation, Antichrist comes up as a word used in other parts of John's writings. And if it's the same John or not, it doesn't necessarily matter. But the other parts of the New Testament where John is writing. And antichrist is actually more of a, like a descriptive word, like an adjective. Like anybody that opposes the work of Christ can be an antichrist. You too could become, and you shouldn't be. But you could be like an antichrist. And it's not necessarily that there's one character, although there are characters in the book of Revelation that kind of embody the attributes of somebody that would be against Christ, against the Jesus of the New Testament.
[6:34] So that's happening. There's this Gog and Magog, which also had been in the earlier parts of the Old Testament, but seems a little bit different. There's these four horsemen that, you know, seem to change or they're different. It's a little bit confusing. And then there's these places that are kind of on these two sides too. There's like the new Jerusalem and then there's Babylon, and they kind of embody these two categories as well. And Babylon was a historical place, and yet all of a sudden it seems like Babylon becomes this more representative of the evil of empire and the evil of our world today. And then there's the new Jerusalem, this hope of God and His people and what they might become. And then there's this place, Armageddon, which again sounds so terrifying. But at the same time, when you realize, oh, it's actually a reference to a place, and it and it's a place that is in the Old Testament, and it's a place that you know, you kinda look at on a map, and it's meant to be this place of like, perhaps this giant battle takes place.
[7:28] And yet, when you read about the battle, no battle actually happens, because although the sides take their sides, the Jesus that we look to and that we read about and we serve comes in. And when He jumps into the scene, there's no fight, 'cause He's already won the battle. And so for each of these characters, there's a lot to it. There's a lot packed into it. There's imagery, and we learned about this last week, the idea that you would have emotion and images that would show up as you read through Revelation, that's actually a part of the experience and meant to be actually how you would wade into Revelation. And so when you look at the dragon, there's actually wonderful descriptions of who the dragon is and why, you know, we might even have confidence in understanding a bit of the dragon.
[8:13] So you go to, like, places like Revelation 12:9. It says, "The great dragon was hurled down, that ancient serpent," which if you've read through the Scriptures before, you know, at the very beginning there's this serpent that deceives, that brings the sin into the world through Adam and Eve. And all of a sudden, from the start to the end, there's these connections: the great serpent "called the Devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray." Again, all of a sudden, explanation. The dragon represents this character that we've journeyed and understood more about all throughout the Scriptures, that that is real and actually active in the world in profound ways. But to understand fully what's happening, we do, we have to take a look at the grand story of what is happening in Revelation. And so you take a look, and the actual structure gives you a clearer sense of what's going on throughout the book.
[9:04] And you know, last week we kind of read through and imagined this vision of Jesus that John has. And then later on in the series, we're gonna go through the addresses that He makes to the churches, the people that he is actually writing this book to, this specific audience of these churches. We can read the letters today. We're gonna actually take some time with the visions of the throne and the Lamb and perhaps discover something about this expectation of how the Jesus of the Scriptures brings ultimate, ultimate authority to the world and changes everything. And then the wild stuff like the seals and the trumpets, there's kind of these signs and there's the bowls. And when you read them, you know, you realize there might be more connections because of the way that they're written and the way that it's structured.
[9:50] That if it's not a chronological, like, hey, this is exactly what's about to happen thing that you might discover based on the structure, that it would make sense that there would be a retelling of each of these elements in unique and new and different ways. And as you read through each of these sections, you also realize the sections, in each individual verse, actually calls back to other parts of the Christian Scriptures in really profound ways. In fact, one of the scholars that kind of looks at Revelation, she wrote this specifically about this point that throughout Revelation, in almost every passage, you can trace back to another passage of Scripture or two. And it's estimated, and it's hard to be perfectly clear on how this works, but there's, you know, 404 verses in Revelation. We know that. And there's probably a round, give or take, you know, some 518 references to earlier Scriptures.
[10:40] And so when you take a look at this next slide, you see all the different, you know, big chunks of the where verses are coming from. You know, Isaiah, so many verses in Isaiah that show up in Revelation on all these different kinds of themes. And so you realize as you're reading, oh, there's something really important going on, but sometimes it requires a little bit of extra research or reading. And it's not that you couldn't understand it, it's just that you should know it's happening because the early church, when they would read it, would have made those connections based on their understanding of the Old Testament. Okay? So for us, a really helpful resource around Revelation, especially if you want a little bit of extra work on it, is the YouTube series, our YouTube channel called the Bible Project.
[11:27] And they have two fantastic videos that kind of incorporate the overall narrative of Revelation. And they say at one point, this kind of can maybe help just clear up a little bit of what we're looking at. They say, and based on the scholarship and the understanding of how people read Revelation, they particularly say that symbolic visions are what we're reading in Revelation, but symbolic visions that reveal a heavenly perspective on history in light of its final outcome. And when we understand that and understand the connections, all of a sudden we can actually read through and catch the message of what John, the writer, is trying to convey both to the church in his day and even to us today. And the message is really profound, and the message actually has profound implications for you in really important ways.
[12:16] For example, although it's perhaps different than you would've expected, there's this really interesting part of Revelation that talks about the mark of the beast. And even if you're not a religious person, or again, believe these things, perhaps you've heard people talk about the mark of the beast, and it's like that thing that ends up, well, in fact, let's just read it so you can kind of catch it. That he required, speaking of the beast, the beast, not from the sea, but from the earth. The beast required everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead. And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name. And so for you and for me, you think, well, what is that? Are we in that season? Is my PC Optimum the mark?
[13:01] Because they track everything and they know how many, no, that's not it. But like, is there something coming? Should I be nervous about, you know, the surgery or, am I allowed to get tattoos? Is that a mark? And people have talked for generations about what is this and how nervous should we be about it? Well, John, specifically writing about that, actually gives us some clues. So he says about it, he says, "Wisdom is needed here, wisdom is needed here." We should ask and want wisdom on this. "Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. of a man." "And his number is 666," which is the terrifying number. But for the readers that are reading this about this mark, they would think about another mark that they were called to have.
[13:54] They would think all the way back to Deuteronomy, when it's clear that God instills His particular values on His people, but also that He calls them to mark themselves with His commandments, the one true God's commandments. We read this in Deuteronomy, "Hear, O Israel," and this is this ancient Jewish prayer, the Shema, that would anchor their theology and their understanding of who God is. And it's a profound prayer and it brings everything together into this one beautiful image and package: that the Lord our God, the Lord is one, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. This all-encompassing kind of thing, that your faith in God is not meant to be a Sunday faith or a Saturday faith if you're Jewish. It's meant to be something that is part of your entire life.
[14:44] It's marked throughout every part of your day and your week. "These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts," to be marked about who you are, at your very core of who you are. "Impress them on your children, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads." Because if your commandments are marked on your hands, it can represent the things that you do. If His commandments are marked on your foreheads, it can represent all the things that go on in your mind, your thoughts. And between these two things, you might be marked by the God who's real and cares for you.
[15:32] And this isn't necessarily meant to be a physical, specific thing. It's an invitation to participate with everything that you do and everything that you think in the ways of God. But the beast, the devil, will call you in the exact same way to mark the things you do and the things you think about with his ways, the ways that are anti-God. And that becomes a symbol, a mark of the ways of his world and his ways. Do you see the connection here? But more than that, there's this number, this 666, that again, has caused a conversation. Well, what's happening here is a little different in our day and age because we don't do this particular thing with our words.
[16:24] But for Hebrew readers, there was specifically a way that you could take, and the way that the Hebrew alphabet and numbering system works, that you take letters and turn them into numbers. It's just kind of common practice. You could do codes and speak things through this kind of process. And so one of the commentators, Fanning in particular, articulates this. He says, the letters for the Greek words beast and Nero Caesar are transliterated into Hebrew, which just means that you don't come up with a new word, but you just transliterate and say them in the same way, actually, that Caesar is a Greek word, Kaiser, and that is a transliteration. There's not like a new word for it where beast, this isn't pronounced beast, this is the on.
[17:09] And so it's a new and different word, but when you transliterate like Caesar Kaiser into Hebrew letters and then calculate that number, that word numerically, they add up to 666, which seems kind of hokey to me and to you because again, we don't do this, but for those days and those readers it was very natural. This is a way that you would offer a code in your particular writing and that there would be something showing up, showing the true character of Nero Caesar, who in the days of John writing the Revelation was the one who, if you look at history, was gathering up Christians and killing them and was truly the mark of evil, an empire, this ruler that oppressively would destroy and kill.
[17:56] And his empire, although it would fall, was marked by all the things that were against the things of God. And so here you have a mark and a number representing and showing that for every generation, there's going to be the opportunity for us to live into this terrible empire, or we can live into the things of God and bring God's kingdom to this earth. And the decision that we have to make is which kinds of people do you want to be? And would we be the kinds of people that would resist that empire at every turn? So in some ways it's perhaps less scary or ambiguous, but hopefully the call is just that much more important and personal.
[18:42] We read another example, Revelation 17. "I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that had seven heads and 10 horns, blaspheming. Blasphemies against God were written all over it." And in this instance, you're going to see this again, this symbolic nature of John's seeing something. It's visceral, but it carries with it a message if we can understand the connections that he was drawing. And so, a mysterious, we read in this next verse, "A mysterious name was written on her forehead." Again, you see the forehead kind of motif coming through. "Babylon, the great mother of all prostitutes and obscenities in the world." And then the angel said, "This calls for a mind with understanding," again, with the understanding, with bringing the wisdom. "The seven heads of the beast represent the seven hills where the woman rules."
[19:32] So it's kind of a clue. Where does the woman rule? Well, for that particular audience in that particular day, they potentially could open up their purse or pull out from their pocket. This particular coin, a somewhat common coin, in that first century around Rome at the time, depicting the goddess Roma on the seven hills of Rome, which was, again, this common kind of vernacular conversation. This is a part of the story of Rome itself. Here's a woman on the seven hills marked on all of their coins. And John is saying, "Here you go. This is the audience. This is the direction that we need to be careful of."
[20:18] Because what Rome is doing is so antithetical to what God is wanting to do in our world today. You have to resist it. You have to resist participating in that empire. You have to resist the value system of our world today. You have to be the people of God and be a part of His kingdom because the day is here where the decision needs to be made. And so here we are a couple thousand years later, oftentimes with that same question, that same challenge, that same thing in front of it. And Revelation becomes this call for people to dissent against the powers of the world today and choose the way of Christ, or put this way by a couple of the writers, specifically in the book Revelation for the Rest of Us, that Revelation is written for dissidence, for followers of Christ ready to challenge the powers of world and empire because our world is corrupted.
[21:16] And the corrupt systems that cause things to go awry and astray, we're called into those places to be the people of God and to bring transformation. But the way that we do that is often, well, it's definitely different than the way of the empire. And so when you read Revelation, what also happens is not only are you called to be a dissident and to resist the empire's influence on your own life and in your own heart. And recognize also, let's be clear, friends, that this is a personal call, that the empire of Rome, as much as it's a political force, that also resided in the hearts of the people. We discover that in the letters, that it's obvious that although the pressures of empire, sure, political in nature, but they're also so personal that you and I might be caught up in the value system of our world today and that we might be drawn to that, and we have to fight that battle each and every day in our own hearts.
[22:11] And that's okay, this is the call. But then when we present ourselves as dissidents and when we resist against the empire, what does that actually look like? Well, we get an image of that in the throne room when we come face to face with the character that's bringing God's kingdom to this earth. And so with our final minutes together, I wanted to read you the throne room scene from Revelation 3, or from Revelation 4 and 5, to give you an image. And it is an image. You can view this as a visual thing in your mind to kind of capture the emotion of the moment of what John was conveying to the church, to the people that would look to God for all things. Revelation 4 says this, "Then as I looked, I saw a door," this is John speaking, "standing open in heaven.
[23:04] And the same voice I had heard." And if you were here last week, it was the voice of Jesus. And that imagery, that powerful imagery of Christ, "I heard before, spoke to me like a trumpet blast. And the voice said, 'Come up here and I will show you what must happen after this.' And instantly I was in the Spirit and I saw a throne in heaven and someone sitting on it," who was the character of God, the Ancient of Days, the powerful one, God the Father on the throne, "and 24 thrones surrounded Him," then 24 elders, again representing the people, the apostles, the Israelites, the people that would worship after God gathered around Him, "and they were all clothed in white and had gold crowns on their heads. And in the center and around the throne were four living beings, each covered with eyes front and back. Day after day, night after night, they keep on saying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God the Almighty, the one who always was and who is and who is still to come.'" We have this worship song and perhaps you've heard it, chanting the same refrain reminding us that all of creation, and pulling from imagery throughout the Old Testament, that all of creation worships the one and the true God.
[24:16] And then, and this is where the tension starts coming, "whenever the living beings give glory," sorry, I missed this, "and honor and thanks to the one sitting on the throne, the 24 elders fall down and they worship the one sitting on the throne, the one who lives forever and ever. And then I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one who was sitting on the throne, and there was writing on the inside and the outside of the scroll, and it was sealed with seven seals." And this becomes the part where we get seals and there's like these wild things happening, but at the very start of it, we get this example of this scroll. What is the scroll and why is it sealed? Well, again, you pull back from the early parts of the Old Testament, you realize that the nature of this scroll has actually been talked about for many generations.
[25:04] In fact, you can find it in these places in Isaiah and Ezekiel and Daniel, the same concept, that the scroll is the message of the prophets about how God's kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven, because the people of God have lived hoping that His kingdom would come fully on the earth because it's not perfect here yet. And you don't have to tell your story much before you would uncover the parts of your life and your story that are clearly not perfect, that we clearly want more of heaven on this earth. But the call of Christians, right from the very start, that Jesus invites us to pray, is that Your kingdom would come, Lord, on this earth as it is in heaven, that we are citizens of heaven to bring the nature of heaven into our world today. This is the kinds of people that we're meant to be.
[25:51] And the examples throughout the Old Testament are where the prophets would call the people, bring the reign of God to this earth. This is what you do. And this is what this scroll is about, how it ultimately happens. And the seals are harkening back to Isaiah. In fact, you go to Isaiah 8:16, it says, "Bind up this testimony of warning and seal up God's instruction among my disciples." Same word, seal up this instruction. And it's just like the Bible Project said, it's the symbolic vision of a heavenly perspective on history in light of its final outcome. And so we come back to the throne room, we see the scroll, we see the seals, we see the idea that God is gonna do something in our world today. And we read Revelation 5.
[26:38] "And I saw a strong angel who shouted with a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and open it?' But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll and read it." And so John speaking, "I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll and read it," opening the scroll, bringing the instruction, the kingdom of God to this earth, helping finalize the what was gonna happen to the people on this earth and bringing God's reign to this earth. Who could actually enact that, who could open that scroll? And so for John in the moment, is there no one that could do that? And he's crying. And in that moment, one of the 24 elders said to me, "Stop weeping. Look."
[27:26] And here comes the image. Here comes the image that you could imagine in your mind of what they were hoping for. And if you think in your own life, hey, where there is hell in my life and I would rather there be heaven, what could possibly be the thing that could transform and change the situation? What would it look like for the awfulness of whatever it is that you see in your life that's clearly not of God? If it was to transform and become a holy and good and pleasing and like heaven, what would be the thing? Who would be the person? What would you imagine? And this is what John is getting at. This is the vision. What would you imagine? And so then they say, "Look, the lion of the tribe of Judah," this image of strength and power, of the expectation that the Israelites had for the God to come back in strength and bring His reign to the earth. "The lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David's throne," a kingly person, "has won the victory.
[28:27] He is worthy to open its seven seals." And so you imagine, what would that look like? It looks like this conquering king, this powerful force, this huge behemoth coming to right all the wrongs and bring justice and fairness and freedom to the captives. And then John says, "I saw, I saw the person that could unwrap the scroll." And this is what he said. He saw a lamb. Like, hold up. Like, my world is so broken, it needs a conquering king. Like, my world is so broken, I need my enemies to be defeated and destroyed because, gosh, there's no other way to bring justice in this situation.
[29:16] My goodness, God, there needs to be some heaven here, but it's gonna take some pretty intense work to get to that point. I need strength. And John turns and he says, "I saw a lamb." A lamb is not strong. A lamb is not powerful. At least that's the feeling, because as you look at a lamb, you think, this is not gonna solve my problems. I need to bring strength to it. And John says, "I saw a lamb, but not just any lamb, a lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered," which is a visceral image even for those days because of the sacrificial system and the way that their food was not at a grocery store. It was in the, right there and you could see it happening. A lamb slaughtered is bloody. It's gory, it's awful.
[30:07] And that's what John sees, is a lamb slaughtered. Because the nature of what God is doing in this world today is very different than what even the Israelites had hoped or expected. They were looking for that king and that power. And you are too. And I am too. And most often when I see the awfulness around me, and even in my own heart, I need strength to come in and bring justice. But Jesus shows up in the throne room of of God Almighty as a slaughtered lamb because He laid down His life, and that is the way, that is the truth.
[30:53] And that is the life that we are called to reflect. Now, that's a different approach. 'Cause you think, gosh, Rome is oppressive. Rome is vindictive. Rome has the ability to kill all the people around me. How are we gonna resist Rome? Let's rise up. And in Revelation, John would say, "Yeah, I see the rise up. I see the one that we follow after. It's a slaughtered lamb." It's a way that's different. It's a way of dissent that causes everything to change. But it is not one that most people expect. "I saw a lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered, but now it was standing between the throne and the four living beings and among the elders. And He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting on the throne. When He took the scroll, the four living beings and the 24 elders fell and before the lamb."
[31:52] And for you and for me, the call of Revelation is to look to the lamb and realize that the transformation and the change and the world that could be different all comes from a very different source than we would hope or expect. But what happens with the 12 and the and the 24 is they each had a harp and they held bowls filled with incense. And the prayers of God's people sang out with a new song. And the song that we sing is that You are worthy, for You are slaughtered and Your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And You have caused them to become a kingdom of priests for our God.
[32:40] And they will reign on the earth. You see, Revelation is a call to you and to me. But what it calls us to is not to take up arms. That's what the Caesars would do. Our call is to take up the way of the lamb and to live as He would in all situations. And that looks like sacrifice. It looks like deference to other people, it looks like kindness and gentleness. But in the midst of that, it's the most profound power imaginable, because it's by that that Jesus Christ has changed everything.
[33:32] And so you don't look to Revelation for hope of some wild and fantastical ending. You look to it for the reminder that for the evil of this world and the empire to fall and for people to understand who God is, will require the people of God to follow after their slaughtered lamb, that is the person of Jesus. And in acting and reacting like He would, a little bit more heaven comes on this earth because we know that God has won the battle and He will win the day and all justice will prevail. But it will happen very differently than anybody was expecting and anybody was hoping for.
[34:20] And it'll happen very differently in your own heart because of what it calls you to, what it calls me to. We pray for us. Heavenly Father, these days in some ways are no different than those days. The power of empire and Babylon, the draw on our hearts away from Your ways and into the ways of the beast, the ways of the antichrist, the ways of Babylon, that happens. It happens in profound ways. And when we lean towards that, it ruins and and destroys our relationships, destroys our marriage. It hurts our ability to parent, it hurts our ability to be a good team member or employee or citizen. And in the midst of all of that, if we would let the power of Babylon, an empire, draw us away, God, we'd be marked by death and destruction.
[35:14] And so would we see God? Would we see that? Yes, Your kingdom ultimately wins. It's a profound vision, but that it does with You at the helm and that You have sacrificed Yourself and You call us. You call us each and every day to sacrifice. And so, Lord, would there be a sense in this room that for those that are wondering what, what kind of way they're gonna make it through this battle, that You would remind them even in these moments in their mind and their heart, that their hands, in their head, might be marked by the sacrifice that You've called them to, that the way through this problem might not be one of strength and powers. They've expected it, but it might be through. It might be through making our lives more like Your Son, Jesus, that we might win these battles by giving up ourselves and giving ourselves over.
[36:10] And so, Lord, as we wrestle through what that means for each and every situation, would Your Spirit guide us to give us the wisdom that we need in the same way that John told us to look for wisdom? And then God, would You give us the courage to follow after the slaughtered Lamb and know that that is the good way and that is the way forward? And that is the way that You have ultimately won all the battles.