No Proxis on Judgment Day Revelation 20
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No Proxies on Judgment Day: Revelation 20 By Charles Feinberg Is specifically no proxies on Judgment Day? Now I know how we use the word proxies today. We use that of people to dye their hair by using peroxide. But that's not what I mean by proxies. Proxy is a word that means a substitute. One who as a substitute is allowed to vote in a certain organization when a regular member of the organization is not there or is absent, detained for some reason. No substitutes then, no proxies on Judgment Day. I'm going to ask you to turn to a portion of Scripture, though it is brief. I know of no comparable portion anywhere in the Word of God and certainly not outside of it. Fifteen verses that are so remarkable in their disclosure of a piling up of events in the future. I'm speaking of the 20th chapter of the revelation. This chapter is intensely important and intensely significant because in a sense it marks a continental divide in the Bible. You may take all commentaries on the Revelation and all theological works. Theologies as we call them and they divide right down the line. Clean cut mark of demarcation, a line of demarcation between those who treat this 20th chapter of the Revelation one way and those who treat it another way. It is a dividing line. It is a chapter where if you have been interpreting the Bible incorrectly from Genesis on to this is pay day you come to a dead end. You come to an impasse. You come to a problem that you cannot solve. There are some who have been interpreting the Bible spiritually as they call it. Allegorizing things using figures and symbols in an unwarranted way, though the bible does have figures and will tell you when it's a figure. Unless the Bible wants you to understand Jerusalem as a literal city. The Spirit of God has a tremendous command of language, you know that don't you. The Spirit of God can use the word, The New Jerusalem. The Jerusalem that is above. It has numerous ways the Scripture has of indicating something that is a figure or is to be used symbolically though those who have been using figures from Genesis on unwarranted and will apply that kind of thing to the 20th chapter of Revelation become bogged down in a helpless hopeless morass of questions and unresolved problems. But if you have been interpreting the Bible according to the common sense view that all things are to be understood at the beginning literally unless there are demands in the text there or in the broad scope of scripture that would tell us according to the usage of language that it is to be understood. Otherwise if you have been interpreting the Bible literally the 20th chapter of the revelations should not loom up in your mind and heart as something that is an insoluble mystery. The Bible will let you know where there's a figure. Feinberg: No Proxies on Judgment Day: Revelation 20 When you read the psalms that the trees of the forest clapped their hands, you know that that's figurative because you can look at all the trees in the world and you'll find no literal hands on them. If you did that would put all the tree surgeons out of business you just put a saw in every one of the hands of the tree and they just trim themselves. No, the figurative language and so here, and by the way, figurative language has meaning because there is a literal actuality or reality underlying it. The reason we say four is symbolic of the world is because there are literally four points of the compass, north south east and west. And so we could go on. One to speak of deity because there's one God. Three symbolic of the Trinity because there actually three persons in the Godhead. So we could go on showing what is meant by a literal interpretation. Now in the 20th of the revelation there has been before us a tremendous panorama of events. There has been given to us in the first chapter of Revelation a picture of the resurrected Christ seen with the long garment in his high priestly office coming as judge. His eye is passing all scrutiny. Purity, probing, scrutinizing, judging, evaluating a saying, purifying and we find in that first chapter that he speaks of the story that's to come. Things that are, the vision of Christ, the things that is the things that you see and resurrected Christ the things which are. The spiritual moral history of the church from the beginning onto the end and then the things which shall be hereafter from the fourth chapter on through the 22nd chapter. And so the Saints are seen caught up under the person of the Apostle John. Not only for that reason but because the 24 elders, their testimony, the fact that they're crowned, the fact of their apparel, so many other features and for a very good simple reason that there's no other proper place no other place that will make sense out of the book of the revelation where the Saints can be raptured. If you do not have them raptured by the fourth chapter there is no good place not the 11th not the 18th or 19th, no. And then you have tribulation on Earth such as has not been our Lord indicated in the Mount of Olives discourse, Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, Luke 21. After the rapture of the Saints, the church has run its course on Earth, then the Saints are taken home to glory. The bridegroom takes the bride home. He says that where I am there you maybe also. The Rapture is not a reward, it's the way the bridegroom takes the bride home for the wedding. And then the tribulation on Earth and Satan is cast out of heaven. That's an added thing to contend with on Earth. That's what makes the tribulation so gruesome a time. Satan is cast out of heaven and the next chapter we find a political and religious leader the beast and the anti-Christ making a trio. Don't say the evil Trinity. Let's watch our language. If you gonna talk about biblical things use biblical language. There is no such thing as an evil Trinity. Trinity means God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. If you mean these three who are evil say the evil trio. We’ll even allow you to say the gruesome threesome, but don't say the evil Trinity. Beast, the anti-Christ and Satan. The evil trio and they hold sway, Page 2 of 12 Feinberg: No Proxies on Judgment Day: Revelation 20 have a lot of power allotted to them and then God's witnesses execute their duty and the marriage of the lamb. And the nations gathered for war under the figure of a supper. In the sixteenth of the revelation it's Armageddon in the 19th of the revelation the latter part is the great supper of God, two supper's in the 19th to the revelation. Marriage super of the lamb and for the believers and for unbelievers the Great supper of God condemnation. Were all holy birds of heaven are invited to come and eat of the carrion, corpses of the ungodly. Christ appears and doom is poured out upon the leading rebels and their followers and now with the twentieth of the revelation. Look at the first three verses. The binding of Satan, "And I saw an angle come down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit. And a great change in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that old serpent who's the devil and Satan and bound him a thousand years and cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal upon him that he should deceive the nations no more till a thousand years should be fulfilled. And after that he must be loosed a little season." Now my dear friends, if you have not credited the Bible up to this point all the 65 books that have gone before and the first nineteen chapters of the revelation, if you have not credited the biblical testimony that Satan is a real person, an actual person. I don't know that this chapter itself will settle it for you, but how you can escape it I don't know. Satan is real. First two chapters of Job and he has a lot of henchmen. You know why you don't read about Job after the second chapter, I mean why you don't read about Satan in the book of Job after the second chapter? You don't read of him again. For a good reason, because Job's friends took over his business and the devil's kind that way. If anybody wants to take over the devils business, he is always ready to allow you to do it because he doesn't not going to pay you off and anything for free is the right price according to the devil's way of reckoning. No, Satan is real. Only the devil himself could have invented the lie that he's not real. Reminded of the story of the two little fellows, older brother and younger brother coming home from Sunday school.