Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #11 of Revelation, chapter 22. We are reading Revelation 22:8:
And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things.
I will stop reading there. As we know, God is giving John divine revelation and John is the man who is on the island of Patmos and to whom God has been revealing these things. Now John is being moved by the Holy Spirit to say, “And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen,” and this would apply to all the things he has seen and heard, especially these things we are reading about in Revelation 21 and 22 about the new heaven and the new earth and the holy city Jerusalem. There was the river of the water of life and the tree of life and God seated upon His throne and all these glorious things that John saw and heard. This is a similar statement to one the Apostle John made in another Epistle God moved him to write. We know that 1John, 2John and 3John are all written by the Apostle John, so God moved him by the Holy Spirit to write those Books, also. It says in 1John 1:1-4:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.
We can see the similarity. We have “heard” and we have “seen” and these are the things he is writing and, likewise, it says in our verse: “And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things.” He is a witness giving testimony and he is simply relaying the things he has heard and seen by writing them down. This has been God’s way of giving us the Bible, as God moved prophets of old to write down the things they had “heard” and the things they had “seen.” God broke the barrier of the supernatural when He compiled the Bible and He showed Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea and all the Old Testament prophets through a vision or through speaking to them and then He moved them to record the things they had heard. That is the way the Bible was written, as God authored the Bible and these men were all witnesses. When Hebrews 11 speaks of the men of faith, it is referred to as “a cloud of witnesses” in Hebrews 12. All the Bible was written by various witnesses about the things they had heard and seen and they recorded it as the Holy Spirit moved them, giving us the Bible we have today.
Sometimes people wonder, “Why did God not wait and why did He give His Word as He did in a piecemeal fashion? Why did He give His Word to Moses and then some 15 centuries or so later He completed it through the Apostle John on the island of Patmos? Why did He not wait for advances in technology like we had today? Can you imagine if God came in a time like ours when there is video and audio and instant communication and He could have shown miracles on video and Christ could have recorded the multiplying of the loaves and the fishes or He could have shown the miracle of cleansing someone from leprosy and He could have recorded His voice when giving the Beatitudes. Everyone would be convinced, as they saw with their eyes and hear with their ears and believe God, or would they? No, God had determined in His wisdom that His Gospel program is all by faith and faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
God had determined that salvation would all be by faith and not by sight. It is a spiritual Gospel. The Word of God, the Bible, is a spiritual Book and God is Spirit. You cannot see a Spirit in this world and, therefore, it is all invisible and unseen. Yet, God did appear in the world and He did show Himself, but in order to maintain the emphasis on spiritual things, God moved holy men to write it down. We can read about it. We can hear testimony. We can read about things Jesus said and did, but we are not seeing Him with our eyes or hearing Him with our ears. It is all by faith. Remember what Jesus said to Thomas in John 20:24-25:
But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
You see, the other disciples saw the Lord. Thomas was not with them at that time. They told Thomas and gave him their testimony. They witnessed to him and they said, “We have seen the Lord,” but Thomas said, “I will not believe it because I did not see Him, hear Him or feel Him. I need to thrust my hand into his side and then I will believe.” We can see that Thomas is speaking for a great many people that have a natural mind. He is speaking for the unsaved, even though Thomas was very likely saved, but God allowed this to happen in order that the Lord could teach us a very important thing:
The physical realm is what you can see and the spiritual realm is what you cannot see and God operates in the spiritual realm. God is Spirit and He is invisible. His kingdom is invisible and, yet, God requires faith. He requires belief of invisible things. Men that are living in the physical realm are required by God to believe and to have faith. Of course, this does occur once the faith of Christ saves them, but that is another matter.
It goes on to say in John 20:26:
And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
This was eight days later and the disciples would have continued to talk about their resurrected Lord, but Thomas was shaking his head, “I will not believe.” Then it says in John 20:27:
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
To lack “faith” is not to believe in things you cannot see. People do not believe in God. Why? It is because they cannot see Him. People do not believe in heaven because they cannot see it. People do not believe the things the Bible says because it speaks of unseen things: “I do not believe it.” So it is a “faithless generation” and that is the nature of fallen man. Some profess faith, but in their hearts they are faithless because they are dead in their sins and a spiritually dead individual is a faithless individual. This is the nature of man. It goes on to say in John 20:28-29:
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
Thomas believed because of physical sight and physical hearing and he could have touched the Lord and experienced physical feeling. Christ appeared, but only to make this point in the Bible to all mankind. The point is salvation is “of faith” by design. God gave His Word at a time when there was no technology. Of course, God is the one in control of technology and He could have opened up man’s ability centuries ago, but He kept it under wraps until the proper time. God wanted to use the written Word – He wanted to use “ink on paper” so it would remain “by faith” and man would have to trust and believe in things he cannot see.
So there were no video recording of Christ and, of course, that would have gone contrary to the Law of God anyway because the Bible says there are not to be images of God. There are no audio recordings of His voice and no pictures of His miracles. There is nothing “seen” in that way. Yet, the Bible is an account of the things He did and God has written to us and we received the testimony of men that had “heard” and “seen” and they wrote it down for us. Of course, God grants faith to His people and He grants understanding to His people that see by the eyes of faith.
Let us go to 2Corinthians 4:17-18:
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
God would have His people to look at unseen things. Moses looked for unseen things, as we read in Hebrews 11:27:
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.
This is the record of the people of God. It is by faith, by faith, by faith. Noah built the ark when he was warned by God of the flood. He was moved with fear even though he had not seen the flood waters as yet. That is how God’s people operate in response to the Word of God.
Now “spiritual sight” is explained in a major way in Matthew 13 in a parable, as the disciples asked Jesus why He spoke unto them in parables. As part of His explanation, it says in Matthew 13:13:
Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
Now let us think about this carefully. Jesus is referring to unsaved people and the vast majority of unsaved people have physical sight, so the phrase “they seeing” refers to their physical sight and it also refers to their ability to perceive and understand physical things. They exist and they live perceiving the physical realm of “natural” things. Therefore, the unsaved people of the world “see” in one realm, but “they seeing see not.” In what way do they “see not?” It is in the spiritual realm – they do not “see” God; they do not “see” His kingdom and they do not “see” the truths of the Bible.
But notice how God explains in what manner they do not see, as He goes on to say, “because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.” Spiritual sight involves “understanding” and lack of spiritual sight involves lack of understanding. There is a parallel account that is repeated in Luke 8:10:
And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.
It is the elect that are given to know spiritual things. But for the others, it is said, “that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.” The elect child of God “sees” through understanding and the non-elect (the unsaved) person does not “see.” The Bible says that person is “blind” and “in darkness” due to a lack of understanding. Speaking of people that profess to know God, but are unsaved, God said in Jeremiah 8:7, “My people know not the judgment of the Lord.” They do not see it and they are blind to it, because they cannot discern spiritual judgment – those in the churches fail to perceive it because they “see not.” Although they can see in the physical realm and they can see the physical Bible, but because the Bible is spiritual, they “see not.” That is why the Bible says, “A wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.” To discern, you must understand and see.
When God spoke of the opening up of the Scriptures at the time of the end, the Lord said in Daniel 12:10:
… and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
The wicked cannot “see” because they are limited by God to one realm of existence. They are “dead” in the other realm because they have not been born again. When Christ spoke to Nicodemus concerning being “born again,” it said John 3:3:
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
This is the work of salvation as it transfers a man out of darkness and into the light or we could say that God gives “eyes to see” and “ears to hear” and they are born again into the spiritual realm.
You will find atheists and other people that despise the things of God. They despise the Bible and they just cannot stand to hear about it and they put down the believer: “You really need enlightenment. You need to think for yourself and realize there is no evidence at all for the existence of God.” What they are really testifying to is the limitations God has placed upon them; God has not opened their spiritual eyes and translated them into the spiritual realm. This is the advantage and the blessing that God has done for those He has saved. The child of God exists in the physical realm while they live in this world and they can see physically and perceive things with their senses like other people, but God has also brought them into the spiritual realm and they have heavenly citizenship. They can “see” and “hear” and they have spiritual life. They can see God by faith and they can see the truth of the Word of God through the “eyes of faith” God has granted them and they have access into the spiritual realm.
The unsaved people do not have access and God has not granted it to them. So when the child of God speaks of spiritual things to the unsaved, the unsaved dismiss them and despise them. The reason is “lack of access” and the limitation placed by God on them and they can only perceive within the boundaries God has set upon them since the fall of man into sin. Man was “cut off” from spiritual connection to God, as the lights of a city go dark. Man’s spiritual light went dark and he could no longer accurately perceive the things of God. He no longer had life in the spiritual realm. He was “dead.”
In the day of salvation when God was still saving, God brought His people to life and made them “born again” and entrance was granted into the spiritual realm and they could “see” and “hear” and understand the things of God that they could not previously understand. This is how it is today, except that these things are established. Those that have been granted spiritual access will continue that access, but no one else will be granted spiritual access. No one else will be granted understanding of the things of God if they are in an unsaved condition. Everyone’s spiritual condition has been fixed by God.