The Time Traveler

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The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

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The Apostle John came about as close to being a time traveler as any man is ever likely to be. He wrote a letter to some churches in Asia Minor in which he described what happened to him. He said he was in the Isle of Patmos. He was apparently there in exile because of the Word of God and because of the testimony of Jesus Christ. And he said, I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a great voice like a trumpet. Now, there are two points of view on what this means. One thinks that John is saying, I was very spiritual one Sunday morning, The other point of view says John was carried by the Spirit into the day of the Lord. And it seems beyond dispute that the record that follows is about that time period commonly called in the Bible the day of the Lord. That great voice that John heard behind him said, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia. Now, what John saw was enough to make our hair stand on end, but we have to decide what it is that we’re reading when we pick up the book of Revelation. There is a view that says that John traveled in vision and saw the future. in real time. He saw people and events, and he tries to describe them for us as best he can. One source on this, for example, postulates that John actually saw a helicopter assault in this vision. But since he had never seen a helicopter in his life, and not knowing what it was he saw, he describes them as locusts that could carry out a kind of chemical or biological or what have you warfare. Now, mind you, John didn’t say they were like locusts. He said they were locusts. And he said on their heads they had crowns of gold. Well, the speaker opined that these might be crash helmets, which John had never seen, and neither had his readers. The fundamental assumption here is that John was carried into the future and saw real events. And from that assumption comes another one. The events in Revelation have, to all intents and purposes, already happened. Because John has seen them. Now, wait a minute. I can hear someone say, how can things that have already happened be in the future at the same time? We have walked smack into a paradox. Look at it this way. If they haven’t happened, how could John have seen them as they happened? Now, before we blow a mental fuse, let’s back away from this and consider another way of looking at the book of Revelation. John did not travel forward in time. He had a vision, and he wrote it down. That vision has come forward to us as the book of Revelation. Someone once said that prophecy is history written in advance. I don’t think so, and let me see if I can explain why. For history to be written in advance, that history must already exist. Now, we’ve already looked in that closet, and we didn’t like what we saw. That means you and I have no choice. The future is already written, and all we can do is walk through it. The future, according to this view, exists. It is already determined that when you walk out of your office this afternoon or when you get up tomorrow morning and have breakfast and get in your car, that you’re going to turn left instead of right when you get to the corner. It’s already there. You have no choice in the matter at all. The future is written down. We can’t change it. But I don’t believe that either the future or the past exist. I can’t go back 30 years in the past and sit down and talk to my father. He’s not there. He died. He’s buried. The past does not exist for us to travel into it, nor does the future exist for us to travel into it or see it. It’s just not there. The future is being built moment by moment by the decisions we are making today. Now, all this has serious implications for the study of the book of Revelation. For one thing, the entire book, from chapter 1, verse 10 forward, is describing a vision, not real history, a vision of the future. And since the future does not yet exist, the visions of that future cannot be real-time events. They are instead symbolic events. What’s the difference? Well, in the flow of human history, a sequence of events like these will definitely take place. But it could be one person or another that fulfills it, one nation or another that fulfills it. And when John walks out here in this vision and sees a great horde of locusts coming out of something and going somewhere, what he sees are locusts. But the locusts probably stand for something otherwise. Now, I know all this makes some people uncomfortable, but human events can change the outcome of prophecy. There was a man named Jonah, for example, who was sent by God to tell Nineveh they were going to be thrown down as a city. And so God said, Go tell them. And he told them. He walked into Nineveh and says, Yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. But Nineveh repented, and it didn’t happen. Then it did happen later. And this is interesting because when you think about it, you ask the question, why should God tell us anything at all about the future? I don’t need to know that. Why does he tell me? The answer is so simple. It’s so we can change the outcome. That’s precisely why God had Jonah tell Nineveh. So they could change the outcome. So they could repent. So they could make a different future from the one that… Jonah told them, walking down the streets of the city, they were going to have. They changed it, because they changed the way they lived. So what am I saying? That the events described in Revelation might not happen at all? Oh, no. They will happen. But we have no way of knowing exactly when they will happen. And oddly enough, we can’t always be certain who the players are, and we sure can’t be certain how they will happen. Because this is a vision, a nightmare, if you will, with all the qualities of a vivid dream, they have very little in the way of predictive qualities. But when they do happen, the person who has studied Revelation will recognize them. So, how should we view the book of Revelation? Not as history written in advance, more as an allegory or an epic poem written As a book that speaks the truth, but it speaks that truth in symbolic terms, which allow an incredible breadth of interpretation, and this may be surprising to you, also allows a certain breadth in fulfillment. Now, the reason I’m going into Revelation today arises from a letter I got from a listener. He said he very much enjoyed my original series on the book of Revelation, but that I had done that nearly 10 years ago, and a lot of stuff had changed since then. He thought it would be good if I could redo the series. Tell us, he said, what the last days will look like. How will they be shaped? What should we watch for? Well, I don’t feel like redoing the whole Revelation series because it’s pretty basic. But I don’t mind talking about it again because a lot of things have indeed changed. You might grab a pencil and a piece of paper. We’re going to give you an address and a phone number right away, and then again later in the program, where you can find out how to get the original Revelation series. And when we’ve told you that, I’ll be right back with more.

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The book of Revelation. What are the seven trumpets of Revelation? Who can open the seven seals? Will all life be destroyed from planet Earth? For a free introductory CD and information on the entire Revelation series, write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-4444.

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When I open the book of Revelation with a view to asking what the last days will look like, I find myself in some difficulty. For a long time, people thought the final war, perhaps an Armageddon, would result from a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, and that was truly a daunting prospect. It was so daunting, in fact, that it never happened. I never really thought it would. We’ve gone for 60 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki without killing a single person with a nuclear weapon. I think that may be some kind of a record in human history. Oddly, though, we are in greater danger of a nuclear weapon being used tomorrow than we were back when the Cuban Missile Crisis was scaring all of us to death. But the use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist group will not precipitate Armageddon. It’ll kill a lot of people. It will set the economy on its ear. But we can recover even from that. And here’s the surprise, perhaps for a lot of people. I don’t think you find a hint of Islamic terrorism in the book of Revelation. And if we are approaching the last days, you would think there would be some mention of them. Unless the book of Revelation doesn’t describe every last thing that happens… or unless the Islamic terrorists turn out to be relatively inconsequential in the history of man. They are, after all, nothing but criminals. If you look in the Bible for parallels, they would most resemble the bandits that terrorized Israel during the time of the Judges. But the bandits themselves had not that much in the way of a direct effect on history. They had an indirect effect. Because the call, the response of Israel in those days was to call for a more centralized and a more powerful government to defeat terrorism, which, for a time, they did. But the effect of the terrorism… was to create more centralized, more powerful governments, and to take away more and more freedom from the people. And in the end, that may turn out to be the way the terrorists become consequential. Not because of what they directly accomplish, but because of the changes that take place as a response to what they are doing. Now with that in mind, we could take a look at one who really is a big player in the book of Revelation. Now remember, these are not real-time events. This is a vision of the shape of things in the last days. Revelation 13 presents us with what may be the dominant evil figure of the entire book of Revelation. John says, I stood on the sand of the sea. I presume he’s saying I stood on a beach. And I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. Now, I told you this was a nightmare, and it really sounds like one. This is one ugly animal. Unfortunately, John doesn’t tell us some things we would very much like to know. He doesn’t give the beast a name. He declines to tell us what the name of blasphemy is. He doesn’t tell us where this thing exists and where it is and where it does its work, where is its center of power, although it does become a world-dominating power, apparently. It may be that he didn’t tell us about the blasphemous name because he didn’t want to write it down. It was too blasphemous. He doesn’t explain the seven heads and the ten horns and the ten crowns. But, of course, everything about this is symbolic. And it’s entirely likely that John himself didn’t know the explanation of the seven heads and the ten horns. He just looked at it and saw it, was scared half to death, and thought, I’d better write this down. He didn’t have to write it down before he forgot it because I don’t think he was ever going to forget it. Everything about this now is symbolic. There is one symbol in this verse that finds general agreement among commentators. The C symbolizes a great mass of people. And it’s out of this great mass of people that this beast emerges. After that, opinions on what all this means diverge wildly. And the beast which I saw, John continues, was like a leopard. His feet were like the feet of a bear. His mouth, well, that was the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power, his seat, and his great authority. John didn’t know, nor do we, where that seat was. What was the center of his power? He just tells us that it was the dragon who gave him that power and that seat and authority. Most interpreters at this point call on the book of Daniel to connect this beast to the prophecies of Daniel, and that’s probably correct. Also, I know of no one who disputes that the dragon is symbolic of none other than the devil himself. More than one modern interpreter of Revelation connects this prophecy to the Roman Empire. Having made the connection with Daniel, they see a sequence of empires beginning with Babylon and ending with Rome. And since there have been several attempts to resurrect the Roman Empire in Europe, they see the ten horns here as a kind of United States of Europe at the very end time just before the return of Christ. And some see the seven heads as successive revivals of the Roman Empire down through time. And so on it goes. Hal Lindsey and others imagined that the European Union we see now would grow to ten nations and emerge as the beast of Revelation 13. However, that was back before the European Union went way beyond ten nations and developed into whatever. How many of them are there now? Twenty or so? The problem, the European Union now is clean off the scope on anything like this. It’s anything but a great military power, in fact. If it weren’t for the protective power of the United States military, who knows where they’d be. In fact, it seems entirely possible. It’s right on the horizon. You can see it as a reasonable thing to project that the European Union will collapse as an economic union and an economic power. Now, what might come out of that collapse is another matter. He says in verse 3 of Revelation 13, I saw one of his heads, as it were, wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon that gave power to the beast. And they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him? Now, to give you an example of how shallow some interpretations of this are, they look at that who is able to make war with him, and they look around the world and say, well, the most powerful military thing is in the world, so therefore the United States of America must be the beast. But there is no other connection other than military power there, and you really need more than that when you start interpreting biblical prophecy. Now, if indeed the beast is a European power, as some thought, or even a super dictator leading Europe. The suggestion is that first, it has to have a deadly wound. And looking at Europe today, you’d say, okay, I see what you’re saying, is that this Europe that’s there today would somehow have to have a wound that would kill it normally. And that wound will have to be healed, and only then will it become anything like a superpower. And one wonders if it might be right here that the Islamic terrorists would play a role. The Europeans have long allowed and even encouraged immigration from Islamic countries. They all have large Muslim populations. These unassimilated new European Arabs are daily becoming more radicalized by the imams preaching in their mosques. People were really stunned at the major bombing of the transit system in London when they learned that the bombers were English-born. They weren’t English. They were Arab. Actually, Pakistani, probably. And they had returned to Pakistan, but they had really become radicalized in England, in the mosques, by the teaching of some of these people that the British government tolerated. Well, England is being forced to crack down on these in a way they have never had to do before, and in a way they really would rather not. England has had a sort of approach of saying, we believe in freedom of speech. As long as you don’t do anything bad to hurt people, you can say anything you want. Now they’re coming to realize you can’t allow that to happen, or else they will finally destroy the economy and the country. One has to wonder how long it will be before some kind of civil war erupts in Europe. between the true Europeans and their unassimilated Arab populations. By unassimilated, I mean the Arab populations which have kind of stayed in their little ghettos, as it were, their own little villages, their own little places, and where they all meet together. They don’t even learn French or German or Spanish or Dutch. They don’t learn any of the languages of Europe. They just sit there and speak Arabic and read the Koran and listen to their imams talk about how important it is to kill infidels. Now, it’s possible, it’s plausible that terrorism could emerge as the source of a deadly wound for Europe. I hope you noticed the maybe in what I just said. Because everyone who has advanced a detailed interpretation of Revelation so far has turned out to be wrong. I’m not interested in joining that group. Keep listening.

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We’ll come right back with more from Revelation 13. For a free copy of this radio program for yourself or to share with friends and others, write or call this week only and tell us the call letters of this radio station and today’s date. Write to Born to Win, P.O. Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44.

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Continuing in Revelation 13, verse 5, there was given to this beast a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies. The archetype of this is that mustachioed little paper hanger they had in Germany named Adolf Hitler, who was a mouth on legs. This one also will have a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and power is given to him to continue 42 months. Now, here is something unusual. Sometime off in the future, there is a definite time period, it seems. And the way this 42-month period keeps cropping up in prophecies leads one to think there must be something quite literal about it. The interesting thing is that it crops up as 42 months, three and a half years, 1260 days, a time and times and half. But we’re still left with some ambiguity. We can’t tell if these are all the same three and a half year period or if they’re two different halves of a seven year period or if they are recurring three and a half year periods. The significance of three and a half years is a little harder to come by. He opened his mouth in blasphemy against God to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and all them that dwell in the heavens. Now, the beast himself seems highly unlikely to be an Islamic power for two reasons. One, Islam is very strict about blasphemy, and I don’t think that this would go over very well there. But second, no major player in history has emerged from Islam on the world scene without for a very, very long time. Islam created one of the great empires the world had ever seen at one time. But then they began to break up and divide and splinter until now, if anything, they are even more splintered than Christianity is. And there is no person who has been able to pull all that together. Many do not understand this. They don’t realize that one of the things that’s going on with all the terrorism going on around the world is that certain individuals, Osama bin Laden, perhaps some others, are trying to establish themselves as the caliph, the great one leader of the Islamic people. But Sir John Glubb, in writing about Islam, about the Arab people, said, they have never been united for any period of time in their history except under force of arms. In the modern world, they are simply too divided and too weak to fulfill this prophecy. And it’s evidenced by their inability to accomplish anything except killing women and children. But the beast can surely be provoked by an Islamic terrorist movement. It was given to him, verse 7, to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And power was given to him over kindreds and tongues and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall do obeisance to him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He becomes an extremely important, crucial figure in world history. The one group of people… that will not do obeisance to him, are Christians. If any man has an ear, let him hear. He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity. He that kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. Think about that. What he’s saying to him, patient be patient, my brothers. Because the one that is carrying you into captivity is going to go into captivity himself. The one who’s killing you with the sword or with bombs and blowing up subways must himself be killed with the bombs. Here is the patience and faith of the saints. Now, if one ugly beast were not enough, we have another one. In verse 11, he says, I beheld another beast coming out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon. And he exercises all the power of the first beast before him and causes the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast whose deadly wound was healed. Implications? This is a religious power because the two horns like a lamb is suggestive of the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He is presented almost, maybe not even almost, like a false Christ. He does great wonders. He makes fire come down from heaven on earth in the sight of men, and he deceives them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles he has the power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, they should make an image to the beast which had a wound by a sword and did live. He had power to give life to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. We’ve got a terrible martyrdom going on here. And he causes all, small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand and in their foreheads, And no man could buy or sell save he had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. And all he tells us is the number of the beast’s name. Six hundred, threescore, and six. Six, sixty, six. Well, what you probably may not know and should know is that 666 in the system in Greek of using letters for numbers works out to be Nero Caesar. So there’s not much question that in the original typology of this, that the major player in all this was none other than Nero, who was the beast. But in the principle of type and antitype, What John is telling us is, as we come rolling on down toward the end time, there’s going to be another Nero. There’s a lot more to say, but that’ll have to wait until another day.

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Until then, I’m Ronald Dart, and you were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1 888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:00

Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.