John Sees Heaven Open

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The Tribulation

The Marriage of the Lamb

Then this is again reiterated in Philippians 3:21: "Who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has, even to subject all things to Himself." So, one of the great things that is going to happen, when we come into the presence of God, is that our bodies will be made perfect. They will be placed at some ideal age. And the sin nature itself will be removed so that there will be no longer any capacity or desire to do evil.

The Judgment Seat of Christ

Rewards

So, the tribulation is in force. The church has been taken to heaven. On earth is being played out the final seven years of Jewish history, and the dispensation of the Jew is now about to come to an end in Revelation 19. Jesus Christ will return to the earth in His Second Coming with His bride, to whom He has been married in heaven, to celebrate the supper of the Lamb. And, we read about that in Revelation 19:7 when the believers in heaven are called upon to rejoice, and to be euphoric, and to honor God, because the marriage supper of the Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready through her good works garments for this event. For the marriage supper to appear means that Jesus Christ is ready to take over the world government of the antichrist.

Armageddon

The Second Coming of Christ

John Sees Heaven Open

This is in contrast, for example, to other openings into heaven that we have had previously. In Revelation 4:1, John saw a door in heaven: "After these things, I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.'" "After these things" refers to after the church age, which has been described in Revelations chapters 2 and 3. Now, John sees just a door open in heaven at that point, but he is invited to come through that door into God's heaven. There he is going to have the vision of all these things that we have been studying which have been recorded in this book.

At the baptism of Jesus, heaven opened, and John the Baptist saw the Holy Spirit descending as a dove upon Christ from that open heaven. We read about this in Matthew 3:16-17: "And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water. Behold, the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and coming upon Him." This is what John the Baptist observed: "And behold, a voice out of the heavens saying, "This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased." So, here we have another occasion record in Scripture where heaven is opened in terms of the throne room of God.

Then one of the most poignant records of heaven being opened is Acts 7:55 upon the martyrdom of Steven, the first Christian martyr: "But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." So, heaven again there was opened, and Steven saw Jesus Christ, who got up from the Father's throne, which He shares there, in order to greet Steven as he came into heaven.

Jesus told His disciples that heaven would one day open for them to see Christ being honored by the angels of heaven. We have this in John 1:51: "He said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you: you shall see the heavens open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.'"

So, on special occasions, heaven has been opened for humans to look into. On one occasion, the apostle Paul himself was taken into heaven, where he saw some very special things that he was not later permitted to tell others about.

Now, John, in Revelation 19, sees not just the door, and not just a moment here, but all of heaven suddenly thrown open – the whole heavenly scene wide open to his gaze, and to the awesome picture that portrays the Second Coming of Christ, because that's what he sees. So, John says, "I saw heaven open, and behold." This word "behold" in the Greek language is kind of a technical word that occurs every now and then. It is the word "idou," and it signals that you should pay attention – a very dramatic thing is about to be revealed.

A White Horse and its Rider, Jesus Christ

In the ancient world, as the general would march down through the main street of Rome, for example, behind him would come his legions marching (the soldiers). Along with them would come a certain number of captives and the spoils of war that he had accumulated. The whole parade would move forward as a victory parade. The color white itself symbolized victory.

So, here is a climactic moment in human history. This is a preview. This is going to happen, and probably not too many years hence. Suddenly, heaven will open, and there will be the coming of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. He is the commander-in-chief of the host of heaven (of the armies of heaven), and He leads His troops. And the battle that He is leading them to is on the field of Armageddon.

Earlier in this book, in Revelation 6:2, Satan tried to imitate this dramatic conquering picture of Jesus Christ, where he had the antichrist come on the scene on the white horse symbol: "And I looked, and behold a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer." This is not Jesus Christ. This is the antichrist riding on a white horse, imitating Christ with military power. He is given a crown what he conquers those three kings, and he takes over as the king of the Western Confederation. One rider here is from heaven, while the other one originates on earth. The antichrist is from earth; and, Christ is from heaven. So, there are two different riders.

We're going to see in a moment that Christ comes wearing many crowns, while the antichrist has to be given a crown. He doesn't begin with one. Christ is described with the attributes of deity, while the antichrist is simply described as a mere human rider.

Now some people find it very difficult to imagine the Lord Jesus Christ as a man of war. They continue to pervert the justice of God by saying that Jesus Christ is a man of peace, which means that anything goes. Increasingly, as the Word of God has been abandoned, we live in a society where the criminal is considered innocent, and the victim is considered guilty. Everything gets turned around when justice is perverted. But the Lord Jesus Christ is clearly here a Man of war, and He is going to bring the peace of the millennium to mankind. At that time, nations will finally study war no more.

The antichrist, by the time of the end of the tribulation, will demonstrate his total incapacity because everything will come apart. He will not have been able to secure peace. The army of Christ has been formed in heaven, and it is ready now to follow Him to the earth. Who is in His army? Well, certainly we are: we Christians, the church. We come in a special capacity as His bride. There are probably angels included, and probably Old Testament saints. In any case, Jesus Christ comes in a great contrast from the previous presentation to Israel, which was on the first Palm Sunday, when He rode into Jerusalem in fulfillment of Zachariah's prediction that He would do this, marking Him as the Messiah. He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. A donkey is an animal of peace. A donkey is not an animal that you take into warfare generally, and into combat situations in the ancient world.

But now Christ comes as a man of war. He comes on a horse. He comes as a conqueror. He now comes and presents Himself to Israel, this time, as the Man of conquest. Rebellious humanity has taken its arrogant stand against the Bible; against Christ; and, against the Word of God. Now Jesus Christ takes His stand against them.

Christ came to earth the first time with His divine glory veiled. But here at the Second Coming, He will come with His full glory revealed – with pomp; with powers; with martial splendor; and, with banners flying in defiance of Satan. This is a totally different picture of the Lord Jesus Christ from His First Coming. His Second Coming is not just spiritual. It is real.

We have these poetic pictures of Him because these symbols convey the truth. A white horse is the sign of a conqueror. That's the sign of a leading general. He is going to fulfill those roles. However, the symbols may work themselves out in actuality. But we have the picture here of Christ in His Second Coming – an event which transcends the imagination of man.

The Rapture vs. the Second Coming

In the 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, the rapture event, where the church is caught up, we see that it is caught to meet Christ in the air, and then it returns to heaven. He never takes the church to the earth. Instead, at the Second Coming, He actually descends to the very earth itself. Those are big differences. Notice 1 Thessalonians 4:15: "For this we say to you, by the Word of the Lord, that we (we Christians), who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep." When Christ returns to the air to take the church, most Christians will be dead in the grave, but some Christians will be alive on the earth: "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead and Christ rise first."

So, the Christians in the grave are first in line. They pop out of those graves in their perfect bodies, and they meet the Lord in the air. Then we Christians, who may be alive at the time, have our bodies transformed, and we are caught up: "Following them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus, we shall always be with the Lord." What happens is that Christ meets us in the air; turns around; and, takes us back to heaven. That is different from the picture in Revelation 19, where He actually comes to the earth.

At the rapture, furthermore, there is no immediate divine judgment on the earth, while in the tribulation at the Second Coming, there are catastrophic judgments. At the rapture, people are going to be aware that something has happened because so many individuals are missing. I don't know how much catastrophe this will cause. I suppose it will cause something where a Christian is suddenly taken out of a car that he's driving. However, God is going to handle it. These people will be missed. By that time, the New Age religion will be so in position that the explanation probably will be that these people (these Christians – these fundamentalists – these biblicists) have been taken off to another plane, or a camp in which they may be reeducated before they are brought back to the enlightened part of humanity.

There's also this difference: that Jesus Christ imposes a world peace at the Second Coming, but he doesn't impose anything on the world at the rapture event. The Second Coming of Christ the Messiah was, of course, anticipated in the Old Testament. This is the other thing that we must stress to you – that the Old Testament was constantly stressing the Second Coming of Christ. This is not something that just came about in the New Testament.

In Zechariah 14:3-4, the Second Coming event is described: "Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as when He fights on the day of battle. In that day, His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives (which is in front of Jerusalem on the east), and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north, and the other half toward the south."

This is distinctly different from the rapture, where He does not come to the earth. At the Second Coming, Zechariah reveals that Christ would actually come to the very place from which He went to heaven. He departed to heaven (Acts 1:9-12) from the Mount of Olives. He will return to that very mount, which is just across the Kidron valley from Jerusalem. It's maybe something like three-quarters of a mile. It is what the Jews used to call a Sabbath day's journey. That is where He left the earth. That is where He will return. In the Second Coming, He actually comes to the earth.

We have been told that the geologists are aware of a fault line in the Mount of Olives. And when Christ touches upon that mount, it will split in two, north to south. It will create a huge valley that goes from Jerusalem all the way down to Jericho at the Jordan River. That in itself will be a dramatic event. There's no such event associated with the rapture.

There is one other stress of the difference. And the reason I stress this is because all the amillennialists interpret the 1 Corinthians 4 passage as Jesus Christ meeting the church in the air, and then escorting them the rest of the way down to the earth. That is wrong. The two do not fit. What accompanies those do not fit at all. Here's one of the strongest evidences of how different the context of the Second Coming is from the rapture.

Matthew 24:27-31: "For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be." This is the Second Coming: "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. But immediately, after the tribulation of those days (the seven-year tribulation period), the sun will be darkened; the mood will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky; and, the powers of the heaven will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other."

Obviously, this is a very different, different picture of the return of Christ here in the Second Coming. Here is an event that all the world will see in a very dramatic way. Here it will be marked by disruptions in the heavenly luminaries. This is totally different from the picture of the rapture, which will be a comparatively quiet event with simply the observation of people who are missing. But the world will go on in its own sweet way without being disrupted.

Jesus Christ is Faithful

For centuries, the faithfulness of Christ on Calvary has been met by indifference and contempt by the human race. People have thumbed their noses at Him. People have scoffed at the idea of needing to be born-again. Even the public school educational system is increasingly incorporating the Outcome-Based Education (the OBE system), which is designed to train children to have an attitude of acceptance of all cultures as of equal value, and of all religions as of equal paths to God. So, children in the public schools will be taught that a Buddhist will go to heaven just as well as a Christian. It's just whether you like a Chevy or a Ford. It doesn't make any difference. It's your personal choice, but the result is the same.

This monstrous lie is suddenly being brought in at the expense of academic excellence for the children, and this is preparing them (all of American youth) to have an indifference toward the heritage of this nation, our Judeo-Christian culture. Mankind rejected the peace of God through the cross of Christ. So, here in the tribulation, they must now face war with Him.

Human sin reaches its high watermark in the tribulation, and it must be put down by force in a war which is led by Christ, the commander-in-chief on the white horse. God is faithful to His promises. Therefore, in due time, He will vindicate the faith of all who have placed their confidence in Him. When you and I come on the hard times of life, and when you and I come on the incapacity times of life, that's when you have to remember that God (Christ) is faithful. He's going to keep His promises. He has never promised that we would not have difficult times. He has never promised that He would not take us through the deep waters. But He has promised that He will faithfully see us. So, God is faithful, and He will vindicate those who put their faith in Him.

The reason for this is that the Word of God is treated with such dignity by God Himself, that in Psalm 138:2, we read the amazing statement: "I will bow down toward Your holy temple, and give thanks to Your name for Your lovingkindness and Your truth, for You have magnified Your word according to all Your name." God has magnified His Word in terms of all that He stands for as represented by His name. Everything that God stands for, His Word is placed above it all. You can count on what He says. You can never count on what the devil says. You can never count on the people of our society whose frame of reference is human viewpoint from the devil. The devil is a liar. He will always deceive.

So, here God magnifies His Word. So, if He says something, He's going to be faithful to it. He is the faithful one. God is faithful to us in all the promises. And where do we need His faithfulness more than in 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse from all unrighteousness." That is a verse that you should never forget. You should realize that God is faithful.

A lot of you people are pretty nice Christian folks. You recoil in the sinful things that are done in our world. You recoil from things that you can't imagine that anybody would do. But I want to tell you that some of you have a sin nature that would be eager to jump on some of those things if you just had a chance. You just haven't had a chance to jump into those evils. Sooner or later, it's possible that you, too, may fall. Paul says that the arrogant are the ones that do fall: "Let him that thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall." Do not consider yourself above what you would consider some really unthinkable sin.

At that point in time, when that happens, how great it is to remember that God is faithful. 1 John 1:9 wipes it all out; puts it all behind you; and opens the door to full communion with Him; to full fellowship with Him; and, to full blessing, because He is faithful to do that – to forgive you if you admit it to Him. And He is just because He has already paid for that sin through Christ on the cross.

So, this is a wonderful thing to be able to describe this commander-in-chief as the commander who is faithful. He is not going to turn tail and run on the field of battle from His troops. He's going to take the flak, and like any true and faithful servant of God, He's going to stand by His guns.

Jesus Chris is True

The Lord Jesus Christ does not make false promises. He does not misrepresent the facts to gain some political advantage. This is not true of the rulers of this world, and it will certainly not be true of the kings of the tribulation who rule with the antichrist. The political leaders on earth function by telling lies to gain an immediate goal, like whatever they have to say to get elected, and then putting a loophole in it such that they can claim that that isn't what they really meant. The political leaders of our day do not want people to remember what they say. They want the citizens to forget what they have said and what they have promised until they have the power that they seek. They do not want you to remember.

Politicians

From Washington, February 8th, 1994: "You don't have to believe in a golden age to recognize that somethings of moral and practical importance really have gotten worse over the years. The other day, believe it or not, a liberal columnist actually repined over the crime rate. He noticed that the rate has changed for the worse since he was young. The streets are no longer safe. You pay for gasoline at a bulletproof booth, and business offices have security guards at their entrances. That's a tough admission for a liberal to make. It means that the old faith in progress is gone, and progress (a vague and general improvement of society) is the only thing that liberals really believe in. Being moral relativists, they don't even have a stable standard by which to measure improvement. But it is hard to find any standard by which American society is healthier today than it was in, say, 1950.

"We were told to let go of our outdated attitudes, and we'd get a brave new world. Well, it turns out that the outdated attitudes were the stuff that held civilization together. Unfortunately, we can't rebuild either the outdated attitudes or civilization. Not all outdated attitudes are sound, but I always try to give them a hearing because they are, as it were, victims of a purge who have never been allowed to give their side of the story.

"One large change in our century has gone almost unnoticed, as large changes often do. I mean the decline of political oratory. At one time, oratory was the very stuff of politics. Politicians published their speeches, and people bought and read them. Now there are many reasons for this decline, and some of them are quite understandable. Nevertheless, the striking fact is this: Until the time of Franklin Roosevelt, it was normal for statesmen and politicians to write their own speeches; and, not only to write them, but to want to be held to them. They thought their claims to immorality, if any, would be literary. Their models were Demosthenes, Cicero, and Burke, who they read in school. The idea for a statesman was to be a teacher to later generations; and, then in politics, aspire to live in the classroom.

"Today's politicians don't want words to be remembered. They actually want them to be forgotten. Their words are spoken for immediate effect in the media. It's symptomatic that polls are taken moments after a presidential address to gauge its success in manipulating the public (meaning the mass). No polls were taken after the Gettysburg Address. Roosevelt's words: pledges about balancing budgets; the Supreme Court; or, keeping our boys out of foreign wars were not meant to live on. They were purely tactical utterances – the verbal equivalent of planned obsolescence. His defenders today don't even try to argue that he told the truth because it's so plain that he lied. They say his lies were far-sighted evidence of his leadership.

"Vice no longer pays virtue the tribute of hypocrisy. It offers itself as the updated version of virtue. Apparently, the ideal of a democracy is to find men who will lie to us for our own ultimate good. Or maybe democracy now means sheep under the illusion that they are choosing their own shepherd.

"Maybe it's also symptomatic that we no longer call people eloquent, which has an archaic ring, suggesting the beautiful expression of enduring pole-proof truth. Instead, we call them articulate, which suggests mere facility and speech, like a lawyer explaining his client's position.

"In this sense, Bill Clinton is supremely articulate. He is fast on his feet, much faster than the great communicator Ronald Reagan. He even has the rare gift of remembering his own words. Just in case someone else does quote his own promises back to him, he'll point out that he added a loophole clause that makes the promise non-binding.

"For every Lincoln among the old politicians, there were dozens who were gaseous and grandiloquent in the worst way. But at least they believe that a man should live by and through his words, and be willing to be judged by them. Even the worst of them might be shocked by a generation of rulers who want their own words to pass into oblivion as swiftly as possible."

That's an exact presentation of what is in the world of political leadership today, and which is in such contrast to Christ, who will be the leader who is really true. The politicians today are squealing like the proverbial stuck pig, because there is a commentator now that is doing what, for a long time, I said I wished somebody would do. Take the video camera and record with the politician says. And then later, show it when he shows his true colors. And this commentator does it par excellence. He constantly comes back and shows what they said; what they did; and, what they're doing now. And the deceit is really hard to hide. It is discouraging to be a politician today, because you cannot lie and cover it up.

The news media joins in this deceit in distorting the truth, and putting a spin on it to place upon it their liberal human viewpoint. Are these people sincere? Oh, yeah, they're sincere. They think that they are taking care of you. They think they're doing for you what you need to have done for you because you're not smart enough to do it. They have great visions.

How often we used to hear Adolf Hitler, their Führer, as he would stand and excite the German people with the vision that they were creating a 1,000-year Reich. Well, that 1,000-year kingdom that they were building lasted 12 years. But here comes Jesus Christ, and guess what? He's telling us that He's going to create a 1,000-year kingdom. And I'll tell you something else. He's going to do it. Why? Because He's faithful to His promises, and because He's true in what He says. He does not deceive us.

It is tiresome to be associated with people whose comments you have to analyze to see what the hidden stinger is in what they're saying, because you know that they're not telling you the truth in some respect. Everything about the world of the antichrist is going to be false. The devil is a deceiver. The antichrist is a false Christ. The false prophet communicates false doctrine, and the citizens practice a false worship of idolatry. The unsaved do not like to hear God's truth. Therefore, they do not welcome it. But when Jesus Christ returns to the earth, all the false propaganda about Scripture and about Him is going to be exposed, and He is going to judge them.

Jesus Christ, in Revelation 3:14, is described as God's final Word: "And to the angel of the church in Laodicea, write: 'The Amen, Christ the final Word of God, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.'" Jesus Christ is God's final word. He is the Amen of God, and He is the faithful and true one. He will keep His promises, and he will tell you the truth, in contrast to the political leaders of mankind today. Their unfaithfulness to the truth has led our world to the ruin of humanism and liberalism. Jesus Christ embodies faithfulness and truth, so He can be trusted to lead men into blessing, and to lead society into peace and prosperity.

We take no pleasure in the fact that we live in a world where these who are the opinion-makers are unfaithful to us, and they are liars. We can't ever take pleasure in what is evil. We cannot take pleasure in seeing the meanness of trying to injure a skater headed for the Olympics in order to put her out of competition with other skaters that she may be a threat to. We recoil with horror from that. But having said that, we must also admit that, as Christians, we take no pleasure in seeing justice done necessarily to the person who is guilty. Sin is no fun at either end. Sin committed and sin punished is a grievance.

The world that Christ is going to create for us is a world where that kind of thing is not going to take place. We're not going to have a world where we have to grieve over the effects of sin. And we're not going to have a world where we have to see the sadness of the consequences that sin brings to people. Who can find happiness in looking at the people who are in the lake of fire and the eternity they spend there. We cannot. Yet, we understand that justice has been done to them because God is faithful to His own character, and He is true in what He says. Jesus says, "No man comes unto the Father but by me. If you come, He will faithfully take you into heaven. If you don't, He will faithfully put you in the lake of fire. His words are true, and you may count upon it.

I don't care what all the other religions of the world have to say; how they resist this; how they sluff this off; and, how they insist that they have a religious system such that God is merciful and will accept them – they're wrong. I don't care how fanatical the Muslims get, they have rejected Christ as Savior, and they're all going to join the Ayatollah Khomeini and all the rest of their mullahs, along with Muhammad himself, in the lake of fire.

A statement like that in the Muslim community today is a mark for somebody to justify under Islamic teaching to take your life. For anybody to suggest that Islam takes you into the lake of fire is considered justification for execution. These people are vicious because they are the agents of Satan. The religions of the world have been created by him, and religion is the devil's trump card. That's how he's going to win in this world. Those who are foolish enough not to recognize that Jesus Christ is going to come back as a conquering commander-in-chief, and He is going to execute faithfully what He has promised, and He is going to demonstrate that His words have been true. Have a great respect for the Word of God, and thank God for every opportunity that you have been given to be instructed in that Word.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1993

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