The Verdict, Part 01

Guest (Male): In a moment, join with Leading The Way listeners all over the world to open up your Bible to the very last pages of the Bible, Revelation, for a message from Dr. Michael Youssef, reminding you that no matter your position in life, all ultimately face reward or judgment. Please do bear in mind that Leading The Way is a listener supported Gospel ministry. We use media as an outreach tool. Dr. Youssef and his leadership team really rely on God's provision through you, our listeners, those who are impacted by the worldwide ministry of Leading The Way. So I invite you to learn ways that you can stand with Dr. Youssef. Just go to ltw.org or speak with a representative at 866-626-4356. Listen with me now as Dr. Michael Youssef begins today's teaching.
Dr. Michael Youssef: If the book of Revelation is teaching us anything, it's teaching us that in this life, we determine our eternal future. And there can be only one of two places in which all of humanity will end, no third, only two: either in heaven with Jesus or in hell with Satan. Either reward or judgment. Here's what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that every soul that was created and formed in the womb was created to live for eternity. Everyone will live forever. The bodies will die, but the soul will not. Secondly, Jesus spoke more about hell than he spoke about heaven. Thirdly, if God does not eternally judge those who have rejected God's plan of salvation, then he's not a just God. If God does not judge those who have rejected his plan of salvation to a place called hell, then why on earth did Jesus leave the glories of heaven and come to earth, live as one of us, die a tortured death on the cross, rising again on the third day? We saw in the last message, while the Antichrist with a capital "A" is yet to be revealed, the world is filled with antichrists with a small "a." Sadly, some of these folks are occupying pulpits and occupying church leadership positions. Even genuine believers in the Lord Jesus Christ today who believe in a literal hell as the scripture teaches, they often avoid the subject. Not long ago, I was talking to one preacher who said to me, "The reason I avoid it is because it offends my congregation, and so I avoid it altogether and stay positive." Well, don't you think I want to avoid it too? But let me tell you something: if I offend you out of hell into heaven, then I have fulfilled my mission. Amen. But if I want to avoid it, it's for a different reason. It's because I weep privately and publicly when I think of a literal place called hell as Jesus taught, and there are literal people who are going to be there and spending eternity in torment. Others say, "The Gospel is good news. How can hell be good news?" The answer is obvious. It makes no sense that we say we're saved. We are saved from what? We are saved from what? We are saved from hell to heaven. We are saved from sin and eternal judgment to righteousness. That's what salvation is all about, and without that, all the church is a fraud. And we're wasting our time coming here on Sunday morning, wasting our time building churches, wasting our time preaching Gospel, unless there is a message of hope. The world is in the grips of hopelessness. The Bible is very clear. The wages of sin is death, eternal death. So what is eternal death? It is a separation from God in hell forever and ever and ever. You say, "Well, that's bad news." But there is great news. There is the greatest news on the face of the earth. While every one of us, including your pastor, deserve hell, God in his mercy and his grace said when you come to Jesus confessing your sin, receiving his forgiveness, he gives you eternal life and he takes you to heaven. This is the greatest news of all. Please hear me right. The holiness and the justice of God are two sides of his character like the two sides of a coin. And therefore, sooner or later, there must be a collision between the holiness and the justice of God on the one hand and a rebellion on the other hand, and sin and rejection of God's plan of salvation. But God is not only holy and just, but he is love. And if one rejects God's love on the cross, they must be judged by God's holiness and receive God's judgment. Here's something I'm absolutely certain about. As I know the character of God and as I know the scripture, I am absolutely certain that everyone who's going to end up in hell in eternal judgment is going to say, "I got here by my own choice." God did not give me a raw deal. No matter what they say on earth, but in that day, they will say, "I got what I deserved." And so please turn with me to Revelation 14. In the last message, we looked at chapter 13 of the book of Revelation, and we saw how the earth is in the grip of an unholy trinity of Satan, the Antichrist, and the false prophet. 666, they short of the holy trinity, which would be 777. And here in Revelation 14, we are transported into the presence of God in heaven. Something I'd love to talk about and I love to dwell on. Here's an amazing contrast. The contrast is this: in the kingdom of the Antichrist on earth, the name of Jesus is being blasphemed. In the kingdom of heaven, the name of Jesus is glorified. Look with me please at the first five verses of chapter 14. We see the lamb of God on Mount Zion with 144,000 who, as I told you, are representative of all the believers from every nation and every generation. The 12 tribes of Israel multiplied, and then the 12 apostles multiplied, and you get 12 and 12 and multiply, that is a symbolic number of all the redeemed. And they stand secure and strong in the presence of our Savior. Question: what are they doing there? What are they doing? They were singing praises to Jesus. John describes them as morally blameless and faithful. I want to stop here just for a minute, as I've been doing throughout this series, to kind of do a little bit of understanding of biblical interpretation. Throughout the Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament, throughout the Bible we see that apostasy, which is unfaithfulness to God and his word. Those folks that you know and I know in churches who say, "I know Jesus said I am the way, the truth, and the life, but he really meant to say I am a way." You know what I mean? The Bible calls that apostasy. But the Bible uses a word, a symbolic word, to call it adultery. Why? Why? Because just as an unfaithful spouse commits physical adultery against his or her spouse, unfaithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ and his word is an act of spiritual adultery. So what is God's word saying to us today? Listen to me very carefully. Those who say, "No matter what, I'm going to cling to Jesus for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health," are the faithful ones who will find their total fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who find their complete fulfillment in the Lord alone. They're the faithful ones. I know personally and I know some of you, when you go through dark times, when you go through the valleys, when you go through tough times, when you go through circumstances that does not make sense and you cannot even understand it and you look up to heaven—and I've done that many times—I said, "Lord, I don't understand it. Oh, but I trust you. I trust you." Look at verse four. They are called the firstfruits. Why? Because they are the first to be harvested and there will be more to follow. Still in verse four, again he tells us that the church, the bride of Christ, will be spotless in heaven. We're going to be as pure as Jesus is pure. We will no longer struggle with sin and anger and bitterness and lust and envy and all the rest of it. From verse six all the way to the end of chapter 14, the angels make a series of announcements. I don't want you to miss these. They're very important. The first angel fly overhead proclaiming the eternal gospel and is calling for repentance. His message is very clear, but it is to every single human being who lives on the earth: "Fear God and give him glory because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and the spring of waters." Don't miss this. This is the only place in the book of Revelation where the word gospel appears. It's the only time, only place. And this is the last time the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is going to be proclaimed to the world. It's going to be the last opportunity, it's the last chance. The second angel announces: "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adultery or her immorality." Now, while the fall of Babylon will not take place literally until we get to chapter 18, but the announcement is made here. Please don't forget this. Don't forget this. God is not subject to time like we are. You see, in God's presence, all time—past, present, future—all exist at the same time. In God's presence, there is no time, just eternity. There are some people who interpret Babylon as a literal city of Babylon in Iraq today. Others view it as a prophetic symbol. Don't get hung up on it. It doesn't matter. You're not going to lose your salvation one way or the other. Major on the majors, don't major on the minors, okay? Either way is fine. The problem is that those who really get hung up on it being a literal place, they got so excited when Saddam Hussein spent several billion dollars of rebuilding the old Babylon, the old city of Babylon. Ha, you see what's happening. And then came the American invasion and the Babylon got destroyed. And then they got deflated. Don't live by the headlines. If you live by the headlines, you die by the headlines. I prefer to take Babylon as a symbol of a city, any city, any city USA, any city in Europe, any city in the world, who so steeped in secular godlessness, who so steeped in cultural immorality. Because they will fall. The third angel, verses nine and 10: "If anyone worships the beast—we saw that in the last message, the Antichrist who insisted people worshipping him—and his image and receive his mark on their forehead or their hand, he too will drink of the wine of God's fury which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath." Isn't it amazing? Those who drink of the cup of immorality will drink from the cup of judgment. This proclamation of this third angel actually suggest to me at least that Babylon represents that political system that's ruled by the Antichrist and the false prophet. Then verse 13 comes the next message from that angel and says, "Write: blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." And then the voice of the spirit says, "Yes, they will rest from their labor for their deeds will follow them." If you attended a funeral, you probably heard pastors preach and it's for good reason, it's very comforting. Now some of the preachers who take this out of context, out of Revelation context, so I want to tell you what it's saying in context. Here's what it's saying in this particular part of Revelation. That in those days there will be such severe suffering for believers just like we're seeing with Boko Haram and ISIS and the suffering of believers all over the world. But it's going to be global. That suffering is going to be so humongous, it's so vast, that death will be a tremendous blessing. Here's what he's saying in context. That the horror of the great tribulation will make death to be such a blessed rest in comparison. And so after I grieve like you do over your loved ones, I think of this prophecy and then I rejoice for them. Just as in Matthew 5:11, there is a spiritual blessing upon those who have been reviled and those who are falsely accused for the sake of Christ, there is a blessing for those who die in the Lord ahead of the tribulation. Verses 14 all the way to 20. Look with me, please. Here we see the time has come for humanity to be ripe for the harvest. Finally, the hour is here. The time of judgment has come. John sees the white cloud, seated on the white cloud is the Son of Man wearing a golden crown and in his hand a sickle for harvesting the crop. You remember Jesus said the tares are going to grow with the wheat and he said don't try to separate them. You wait because the angels when they do the harvesting, they will be precise. No one of Jesus's children will be lost. They will then take the wheat and the chaff and separate them. This is that picture here of that sickle. No wonder people love to think of baby Jesus in the manger. They love to think of the crucifix of Jesus hanging helplessly in that cross. They don't want to think of judge Jesus. They don't want to think of judge Jesus. Two more angels appear. One with a sickle and the other with a fire from the altar. The angel of the altar calls out to the other angel with the sickle and he said, "Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grape from the earth's vine because the grapes are ripe." Talking about humanity of course. Although John will return to this global event when we get to 16:16 to be specific, he introduces it here in chapter 14. Just gives us a little introduction as it were before he gets to the subject. And that is what's going to take place on the plain of Megiddo as people call it, Armageddon. What is that Armageddon? I'm going to introduce it just like John did and then we'll get back to it. The word Armageddon comes from two Hebrew words: Har Megiddo. Har means plains, Megiddo is the name of the area. And it's a strategic region in northern Israel. And it is a place where many historical battles have been fought through the years. Many historical battles have become famous, that's why it could be more symbolic than anything else. The most recent battle, the last battle ever fought on the plains of Megiddo was in 1918 between the British army and the Ottoman army. Armageddon has been a crossroads for travelers. Although it's inland, it's really close to the coastal city of Haifa. In fact when you stand on the mountain you can literally see the Mediterranean from the mountain. Which would make a logical site for a D-Day style of invasion. Har Megiddo or Armageddon is about 50 miles north of Jerusalem. But the focus of the final battle is going to be Jerusalem. That's really where the focus is because that's where the Antichrist is going to set his kingdom. As I told you, the Muslims believe that the Mahdi is going to come and he's going to rule from Jerusalem, their Messiah. But during that battle, the Bible said the blood will flow for 200 miles. Just to give you an idea, the whole nation of Israel from north to south is 263 miles. It's a horrific scene. It's a horrific scene and every time I read this horrific scene I said, "Lord, I pray that we'll be out of here before that happens." In the next message, we will see the seven bowls of judgment upon the earth, which corresponds to the plagues of Egypt. We'll look at those closely. But I want to close by telling you this. The Bible is a collection of 66 books. They're written by 40 authors in three languages on three different continents in a span of 1,600 years. It consists of some history, drama, poetry, law, prophecy, and yet the Bible is one book. It's the most remarkable thing when you think about it. God's word is amazingly consistent because God is consistent. And the God of Exodus who sent the plagues on Pharaoh, rebellious Pharaoh, is the same God who's going to judge those who rebel against his plan of salvation. When the seven bowls or plagues unleashed, John writes: with them, God's wrath is complete. But don't ever miss his vision of the victorious believers triumphant over Satan around the throne room of God. That when Jesus entered Jerusalem, it was fulfillment of Zechariah, but it is also a vision of the future when he is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. When every knee shall bow to him and every tongue, whether they agree or not, going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. I know some of you have been shaken by this series from Revelation. Dads and moms concerned about your children, grandkids. Trust me, the last time I checked I was flesh and blood too and I care deeply about my family, my grandchildren. But here's what I want you to listen to very, very carefully. I'm coming close to the end. This is important. My confidence is in my God who said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." That's the confidence that every one of us should have. Listen, this is part of what I'm talking about, this faithfulness, that you trust God no matter what. I have no fear in me whatsoever, not over my family, not over you, not over my congregation, no, not at all because I know of the faithfulness of God. We've seen it over and over and over again. He will not tempt us above that which we can bear. And so whatever happens, he will be there with us every step of the way. The question is: are you certain that if he comes back today you'll be with him in heaven? Will you be with all of those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ?
Guest (Male): Thank you for allowing Leading The Way audio with Dr. Michael Youssef to be a part of your day. Need answers to questions about your eternal destination? How about a conversation with one of Leading The Way's pastors or counselors? Well, you can start your connection at ltw.org/jesus.
Dr. Michael Youssef: We've been asleep for a long time. The world needs us to wake up. Lord, we see how the world around us is getting darker and darker and bleaker and bleaker. Rise up, the church of God. Wake up the church, Lord. Wake up your church.
Guest (Male): A movement is stirring across the country. A remnant is crying out, cultivating hope, sowing seeds for this country's next great awakening. Join the movement. Join with 550,000 other prayer warriors to pray for this nation to finally wake up. Discover more at awakeamerica.com. And as we wrap up today's program on Leading The Way, we have a request to you from Dr. Michael Youssef. He would so appreciate your prayers as he's preparing for and traveling to and participating in and leading events literally all around the world. He asks that you would please pray that the Gospel message would be spread, that lives would be changed. And you can learn the specifics of these events—maybe even find an event near you or near a loved one and you can suggest that they attend as well—visit us at ltw.org/events. That's ltw.org/events. This program is brought to you by Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Connect further with audio and video content at ltw.org or through your favorite social media platform including YouTube, Facebook, X, previously called Twitter, Instagram, and more.