Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #11 of Revelation chapter 21 and we are going to read Revelation 21:5:

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

God is speaking of the words He was specifically relating to John in the Book of Revelation, but we cannot limit this statement only to the Book of Revelation.  It applies to the whole Bible and it is “true and faithful.”  God is true and faithful so it figures that His Word would be “true and faithful.

This is something different and it is something with which we have no experience elsewhere in this world.  Try to think of another place in the world where you can find that which is “true” and that which is “faithful.”  You may find an individual that speaks the truth sometimes.  You might find someone that faithfully goes to work or does one thing or another faithfully.  But God is speaking of the giving of His Word in the entire Bible (all 66 Books) and every single word is “true” and every word is “faithful.”  In this Book, the Bible, God has said a lot of various things.  He has told us of things past.  For example, He has told us He is an eternal God and that is “true and faithful.”  He has told us how this world was created and that account is “true and faithful.” 

On the other hand, what does the world tell us about how the world and universe came to exist?  Well, they go into an elaborate “story” and it is concocted out of the minds of men.  It is as ridiculous as anything you could ever hear, concerning events that supposedly took place billions of years ago.  Of course, their story has changed over the course of the last several decades.  First, it happened millions of years ago and then hundreds of millions of years ago and then billions of years ago.  They keep changing how far back it goes and it really appears as though they think that if they come up with a great number (like billions of years), it will keep someone from asking the simple question: “Where did that stuff that exploded and formed the universe and is the basis for everything that would evolve come from?”  They have no answer.  You can ask the most brilliant scientist and he or she will not have an answer to that very basic question: “Oh, we are working on that,” they might tell you.  “We have been hard at work studying that and someday that information will open up.”  But it will never open up because they have no answer.  The only answer is that there was some sort of eternal matter; that is there has always been “substance” of some kind.  They do not want to say that because that is too similar to there being an Eternal God who has always been.  But, if evolution were true (which it is not), there would have to be a beginning of whatever everything came from, according to their ideas, but there is not.

God tells us everything we need to know.  He is an Eternal God and He has existed from all eternity past and at a point in that eternity He determined to create the world and form a people for Himself.  He devised His whole salvation program and He predestinated all those He would save, knowing that man would sin.  The Lord Jesus died for the sins of those people from the point of the world’s foundation and resurrected from the point of the world’s foundation and then the Son created the world, according to the Book of Hebrews.  In order to be called the Son, He first had to die and rise from the dead to be declared the Son of God.  All these things the Bible does tell us and those words are “true and faithful.”  We can trust the Bible.  We can trust the things God says because He is God and He knows all things; He knows the end from the beginning and He possesses an infinite supply of knowledge about all things.  God knows and, therefore, He can write the Bible and every Word is true because He cannot lie.  He is also faithful because He does know what will happen at the very end of the world.  He can place promises in His Word at various points, like in the Book of Genesis, and He can do so thousands of years before it happens like He did with the account of Abel, which pointed to events that would happen at the time of the Great Tribulation.  He also did this with the account of Joseph and the seven-year famine which also pointed to events that would take place at the end of the world.  Even though those events took place 4,000 years or longer before the end would come, God could write them faithfully.  We can trust these things because God already knew what would happen. 

For example, God inserted a Biblical calendar of history and He made the statement to Noah, “For yet seven days,” and the flood waters would come upon the earth and then in 2Peter, chapter 3, He tells us that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” and He inserts this information into a discussion of the flood and the end of the world.  Right in the middle He inserts that statement to help us understand that we have Biblical justification for taking that statement to Noah in 4990 BC and applying the “thousand years for a day” principal to understand that man would have only that 7,000 years to enter into the safety of the Ark (Christ) in salvation and then the door would shut on that very day exactly 7,000 years from the date of the flood.  God placed the information in the Bible regarding the very day of Judgment Day, which began May 21, 2011.  He pinpointed it and He wrote the information in Genesis, chapter 7.  He gave that information to Moses when Moses was used of God to write the Book of Exodus, but God had already said it directly to Noah and, therefore, it was many thousands of years ago when God pinpointed the very Day of Judgment in this amazing Book called the Bible.  These Words are trustworthy.  These Words are “true and faithful” and the doctrines that are taught are faithful doctrines. 

God inserts promises to Abraham concerning giving him the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.  He inserts promises to the seed of Abraham that they will dwell in that land everlastingly.  These promises of a new heaven and a new earth that God wrote about 2,700 years ago are stated in His Word.  When the Bible says that God is “true and faithful,” it means that what He has said will come to pass because God is faithful.  If they did not come to pass, they would not be true.  Truth and faithfulness are very closely related.  God speaks the truth and the things He promises that involve a future fulfillment can be absolutely counted on and there is no doubt that they will happen. 

This world will end, no matter what man thinks or believes and no matter how people act.  They act as if it will continue to exist for evermore, but this world will end according to the faithful Word of God and according to the truth of the Bible.  It will end and God also tells us of the circumstances under which the world will end.  He told us about the society of our time and their standard of morality (or lack thereof) and the condition of the churches at the time of the end.  We learned it from the Bible, as God has written these things and put it in His true an faithful Word.  He told us that at the end iniquity would abound and the hearts of men would wax cold and God detailed, in Romans, chapter 1, the sins that would be commonplace at the end of the world.  Listen to this and tell me if you do not see this on the nightly news or read of it in your newspaper.  It says in Romans 1:24-25:

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie…

See how God speaks the truth in the Bible.  He says there is “male and female.”  There is not “neutral gender.”  Then He said that a man will leave his parents to be joined to his wife and the two (male and female) will be one flesh.  And, yet, the people of the world that are under the influence of Satan take the truth of the Word of God and they change the everlasting ordinance and they break the everlasting covenant of the Bible.  Each human being is married to the Law of God and they commit adultery against their “husband,” God’s Law.  Again, it says, in Romans 1:25 that they “changed the truth of God into a lie.”  Just think of how things are today.  They turn the murder of an innocent child in the womb of her mother into a “good thing” and they turn the sin of homosexuality into a “good thing” and they approve of two same sex people being married.  You can go on and on with other commandments of God.  For example, the commandment that man should not commit adultery is turned into a lie when people say, “Oh, it is two consenting adults, so who is to say it is wrong?”  They turn the truth into a lie and it is as common as grass today.  Then it goes on to say in Romans 1:25-31:

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

The list mentions 23 sins, pointing to the time that God would give man up to their sins at the time of the Great Tribulation, which lasted for 23 years.  Then it says in Romans 1:32:

Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

What a list of evil deeds.  Is that not an accurate description of our present evil world?  Yes, there were always these sins in the world to some degree, but never to the degree they are today.  There has been an explosion of iniquity and it is abounding across the face of the earth and it is unprecedented in the history of the world.  God had declared that at the time of the end iniquity would abound and it tells us that God would give men up to these sins and that is exactly what we see today.  We see a world that is going full force after each and every one of these sins.  There is no “turning back” and there is no slowing it down or going back to a previous time when there was a sense of morality.  That time is gone, as far as this world is concerned and there will never be a return to that period of time.  God is showing us that this is the end by allowing all these things to happen.  We can see on a daily basis Biblical confirmation as the world progresses in evil and the churches have fallen away.  There is no doubt about it and there is absolutely no question that the corporate church is completely apostate.  We will not even bother going into detail because it is so obvious.  Yes, churches have been unfaithful throughout the period of the church age, but never to the degree that we see today.  It is unprecedented in all of church history.

So we have these two major catastrophes occurring at the same time in the world and in the churches and it matches exactly what the Bible says will happen at time of the end because God knew from the very beginning what would take place.

We also find that 7,000 years from the flood fell precisely on May 21, 2011 during this period of time and God had declared these things.  He said that when we see the “fig tree in leaf” we would know that summer is nigh or when we saw the “sign” in the sun, moon and stars, we were to look up for our redemption draweth nigh.  God’s people can “see” the Biblical signs, the signs that God permits, which are seen only in the Bible; we see the Biblical evidence all around us and that is why we have a good expectation and hope that October 7, 2015 will be the completion of the judgment of God upon this wicked world and the completion of the judgment means the end of the world, the destruction of this earth and this cursed universe and the creation of the new heaven and the new earth and a new people.  There will be a new order of people made after the “second Adam,” the Lord Jesus Christ, created anew in both body and soul and placed in the new Eden, the spiritual land of Canaan, which was promised to Abraham.  God will come to His people.  He will talk to us.  He will teach us and instruct us.  What will it be like?  We just cannot know. 

There will come a point when time will be no more and this present world and the things we are experiencing are no more.  They are the former things that will pass away, never to be remembered or brought to mind and there we will be with the Almighty God of the Bible.  That will be the fulfillment of all things and that will be proof positive of the truthfulness and faithfulness of the Word of God in everything He has declared from the very beginning in regard to the end (and everything in between).  God’s Word is “true and faithful.”