In his sermon titled 'Revelation: Introduction,' Douglas Campbell addresses the complexities and challenges of interpreting the Book of Revelation, emphasizing its role as a revelation of Jesus Christ and a source of comfort for believers. He discusses various theological approaches to the text, including Preterist, Futurist, Historicist, Idealist, and Eclectic views, each offering different perspectives on the timing and nature of the events described in Revelation. Campbell highlights the importance of approaching the text without preconceived notions, urging the congregation to focus on the symbolic meanings grounded in Scripture. He stresses that the ultimate message of Revelation is one of Christ's victory and sovereignty, meant to encourage believers to remain faithful amid suffering. Campbell also reminds listeners of the significance of interpreting Revelation as a single revelation of Jesus Christ's ultimate triumph and the fulfillment of God's plan.

If you would turn with me this morning to the last book in your Bible, the book of Revelation, Chapter 1. This morning I'd like to read verses 1 through 3 and begin our journey through the book of Revelation. Again, that's Revelation 1, 1 through 3. The Word of God says, The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place, He made it known by sending his angel to his servant, John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all he saw. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near." Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this day that you've given us. Thank you for this opportunity to gather together as brothers and sisters in your family. Father, thank you this morning that you have brought many back from travel, and thank you this morning that you've brought many whom aren't far away, and thank you this morning that you've brought friend, brothers, and sisters to be with us. Father, this morning would you give us wisdom? Would you give us understanding?

Would you help us to put aside preconceived notions and ideas and to simply look at your Word and to read it. And would your Holy Spirit give us the understanding we need. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. We thank you that you have given us, you have revealed to us things that are to come and things that have came. And Father, as we think even all the way back, you give us your Word also as a history that we might learn from the past.

So Father, thank you for your word. Would you draw us near this morning? Would you help us to understand Father that we might glorify you in living out your truth For your glory we ask in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.

Well this morning I would probably understand that there are some of you that have been looking forward to the beginning of the book of Revelation. In fact, Brother Vodi Bakum, as he began his journey through it, he started with a statistic. I don't remember where he got the statistic from, but it was about a poll that was taken, and it was a poll on church members on what book of the Bible would you most like your church to teach on. And the book of Revelation was the top of the list. It was number one.

There was a second poll that also went out, and that poll was towards the pastors. And the question on this poll was, what book of the Bible would you least like to teach on? And it coincided. It was the book of Revelation. Now there are lots of reasons for that.

I believe I agree with Vody in this aspect as I began to wrestle with this a few months back, and even was shared with my elders that I felt, I really thought it would be good for us to go from 1st John to the book of Revelation. I said, but I to be completely honest with you guys, I am completely intimidated and I'm starting to wonder if this is really where I can go at this moment. But that comes from some of all of our preconceived ideas. That the book of Revelation is an apocalyptic or a revealing book, and within this we have to take it differently than, or we have to read it differently than other books of the Bible. There's much symbolism.

There is things that, there are many things that lots of people don't agree on. And as a couple of years ago, I sat on the bus of Scott Brown while it was raining for the Father-Son retreat in North Carolina. And it was raining, and so we had not much else to do but to talk. And here is a pastor who has been a pastor for most of his life, and actually shepherds other pastors. And it was an opportunity to ask him anything.

And so what is it that we ask him? What do you make of Revelation? And I was deeply blessed that day, because the very things that I have wrestled with through it and the the very reason why I'm so reluctant is what he vocalized to us. He said you know there's there's lots of approaches and there's lots of ways of looking at it. And at the end of the day, no matter which approach you take, and we will talk about these approaches here shortly, no matter which approach you take, it seems that the puzzle pieces never quite fit together well.

And so we're left with, if you wanted to sum up my future things theology, there is one thing that I'm sure of, and that is Jesus Christ is coming back. And everything else, you might be right and I might be right. So this morning, and I'll explain that further as we go forward, The first thing that I would like us to understand about the book of Revelation as the last book of the Bible is that, as Brother Jake reminds us so well, is that there is no S on the end of Revelation. It is one Revelation. There aren't multiple.

There aren't future Revelation. Remember this book is the book that says this is the end. No one will, no one this at this point forward will add to the Word of God, and no one can do it, they will try. No one can do it, and no one should, can subtract from it. So it's revelation.

It is the final revelation. There's nothing beyond it. So we are, we are, The reason I joke about that is because I grew up, I always called it revelations, and I don't know why. And Jake broke me of that several years ago. He said, you know, there's no S on the end of that book.

It's just revelation. Elders need elders. Amen? Amen. So this morning, I'm just going to do an overview this morning of the Book of Revelation, and I'm going to look briefly at the first three verses, but next week, Lord willing, we will come back still to the first three verses.

We won't extinguish them or exhaust them in any way this morning. So the first thing I want to look at is what are the approaches to Revelation? What are the approaches to end times theology, but what specifically about the book of Revelation? The first one to look at is the Preterist approach. The word Preterist is from a Latin word that just means that which is past.

And I didn't start with the most common view, But the most common view of the Book of Revelation is the futurist view. And what that means is the Book of Revelation, apart from maybe the first three chapters, everything beyond that is for the future, things that are going to happen in the future. And because that is in the last century, because that has been the norm, understand it was not the norm before the last hundred years. What most people in mainstream Christianity would say, their basic understanding of end times is actually very new. It's a very new teaching in light of history.

And so when you come from that perspective and you start to, this is kind of, this is what will make your ship start to, I tell my family, to jerk the front of your ship around, to start to pull you and to sway you. With that understanding, when you look at the Preterist view, or the idea that essentially everything except for the last two chapters of Revelation has already happened. It's already happened in the past. And there are, as you research this view, you will start to see that things really make sense in this view to a point. All right, What do I mean by that?

Well, when we think of the Antichrist as not being some future, almost mythical, or I don't know if mythical is the right word, some future supernatural, in a sense, being. And you start to look at it in the eyes of the early church or in the eyes of John the writer. And we start to see rulers like Nero, who would fit this well, who actually begins to make lots of sense as we see the things that, and remember as we just read, the things that that are going to happen soon is what John tells us. And we find just a few years later after this that certain events happen that fit very well in the book of Revelation. And the Preterist looks at these, and Jew and I look at these, and I will promise you that if you RC Sproul has a book entitled The Last Days According to Jesus and if and he takes a very preterist view towards things and if you read this book you will be like I don't know what I believe anymore about the end times.

This makes too much sense. This actually works. What's happening to me? That's what I said to myself. But the Preterist teaches that most of Revelation has already happened.

Now There are some problems or some things with that that we have to struggle with as we do with every approach. One of the problems if you take a strictly preterist view is that if this is already all happened, how does it apply to us today? How does this book encourage me? Or what does this mean for me today? Is it just historical, or is it to encourage God's church today?

The next view that I want to look at is the historicist view. It's the 16th century reformers. This was the main view that they took, and they would see it as a symbolic representation of the the parorama of church history that it covered much of church history in a symbolic form. They would view, as you we will see in the first three chapters in the letters to the churches, they would say there wasn't seven churches, but there were seven ages of church history, and each of these churches represented that age in history. Now this is an interesting approach to it, but this approach, its shortcoming, leaves us with the question, where are we now?

I believe we would say that we're probably in line with the Church of Laodicea, the lukewarm church. But in light of all of eternity and in times, it says, where are we now? Because things don't seem to add up, or it's very hard to determine where we're at in this history of the church. Thirdly, we brushed on it already, but it's the futurist view. It would teach that the books of Revelation, or the chapters of Revelation 4 through 22 are still in the future.

This brings us, some of the problems with this brings us with the, or in light of what we just talked about, if it's already happened, how does that apply to us now? But if the futurist view is correct, that much of Revelation only applies to a future generation that will live this out. It doesn't actually apply to much of the church. It's only that generation. With this idea, and Joel Beeke said it well, he said, many Christians use the book of Revelation as a kind of horoscope to predict the future.

They might as well read the stars. The Bible is not a horoscope, It is a revelation of Jesus Christ. With this futurist view tends to come all kinds of, if all of this is in the future and we come into the symbolic things of the book of Revelation, we begin to put things there or force things into it that aren't actually there. We have specialists on the Christian television who will interpret and place things. And I believe even a while when I was younger there was someone who even said that Saddam Hussein was in the book of Revelation.

And you have seen it. When we come to the book of Revelation and we read about locusts, we don't force the idea that this is Apache helicopters. I believe it was Joel Beeke and his commentary as he evaluates these approaches, he says, and I believe he is right, that when we start to do such things, we start to practice what the Bible is, what God is completely against. We practice fortune telling. We practice divination.

We try to turn revelation into our key, and to take it to extremes. I guarantee you, you can go to the internet, And you will have people adding up letters and dividing and doing this and that and coming up with the number 666 or even worse. They will take verses and add these letters and that ones. And I can't remember what the, I can't remember what the title of the, there's a book about this even. But they will add all this up and they will come up with, I have the date of the rapture, because the futurist view believes in a rapture of the church.

They'll say, well it was super easy. You just turn to this page and you add up the letters in the Greek and you assign this number to all the letters. You do this and that and you add it up and and all of a sudden you come up with this date. Does everybody know what I'm talking about? Have you seen these people?

Okay, let me make it really clear for you. That is deeply sinful. And the only people that are attracted to it are the people that don't want the rest of Christ. They just want to figure out his code. And I don't have to know when he's coming back.

I wish it would be I wish it'd be before I was done with the sermon. Then I wouldn't have to figure out how to get through the rest of Revelation. I'm just teasing. I shouldn't joke. Revelation is a blessing.

Amen. It shouldn't be this way. I'm pointing to myself. It should not be this way. I shouldn't drag my feet at Revelation because it was given to us to be a blessing to the church.

Now the futurists also, they have to bring in to the book of Revelation this idea that within the book of Revelation we take everything as literal unless it is specifically said otherwise. I believe this is another downfall of this approach. It's how we get three and a half years, and three and a half years, and seven years of tribulation. We start to take all of this literally, unless it says otherwise. And you say, well, what is the problem with that?

Well, to me, the big problem, if you go down this road, is the number 144, 000. Because, If I take that literally, there's only 144, 000. And I think that's actually completely opposite what that number means. And we're not going crazy into this. But what is the number 144, 000?

Well, it's 12 times 12 times 1, 000. What it means is the number of the elect will be complete. Not only will it be complete, it's really complete. And it's a thousand. We have skewed numbers in our head.

It's a thousand. Therefore, it means the elect are lots. There are many. It's much. And when it gives us this number, it's that God is sovereign.

And Jesus will not come until everyone that he has elected has come to know him. And until that's happened, God is very patient. He's not like me. He's not like you. He's extremely patient.

So the futurist has So the futurist has these problems. The futurist is actually what is a futurist dispensational end times theology is the most prevalent teaching in mainstream America today, at least in America. It's the view that I learned in Bible college. I can tell you much of the view, and it's because we know this view so well that it's what causes the struggle when we go to the Word of God. I've shared this many times, but when I was young in the ministry, there was something that God used to really wake me up, And that thing was the teaching on dating.

And you all are so happy to always hear about this. But it's so important to me because God used it to wake me up. What I was told to tell students was, as long as the person's a Christian, then that's the only requirement for dating. And I read books, and I taught from books, and they all said these things. And I came across a guy who was teaching something very different.

And I wouldn't recommend this guy today. I'd go to lunch with him, and I think he's a nice guy, and I owe much of... God has used him greatly in my life in the past. But he started with, this is what we teach, but let's take four weeks, or I think it was four weeks, let's take a month and let's actually just see what the Bible says about it. And as I started to take this journey of what does the Bible say?

And obviously it's not, there isn't a chapter on the dating chapter. We're doing some digging and we're going through and we're seeing what does Paul say about marriage and how do you find a wife and all these things. And at the end of it, it was more than dating, the idea that had changed me. It was that, this was horrifying in my mind. If I have been taught this, and the Word of God presents something entirely different, what else have I been taught?

It accelerated my Bible reading. It changed the way I looked at things. If I wanted to understand something, I didn't go to a book first anymore. I started to say, well, I want to see what the Bible says. What does the Bible say that missions are?

Is it going somewhere and building a hospital, and then going home? Or is it sharing the Word of God? Is it going somewhere and digging a well, and then going home? Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't do these things. It's a blessing to help the less fortunate.

But if that's all our trip includes, it's not a missions trip. It's a goodwill trip. Anyway, I'm taking rabbit trails. And so this morning as we come to the book of Revelation, what makes it hard is, I know what I've been taught, but when I read it, I don't see it. I see some aspects, but I don't see it in the futurist view.

So going forward, and we've still got a couple of more views to look at, as and my, and I was going to tell you at the end of the views, My proposition or my offering to you is, as at a church, let's just read the text. Let's see what it says. You know, the other thing that we come to in the futurist view is this, and I'm not saying always, I'm just saying the normal. We see this the sloppy studying of it. The Apostle, or I believe it was the Apostle John, but John who wrote the book of Revelation, he would have assumed that when we come to a symbol in Revelation, that we don't go to the newspaper and we start to say, Well, what could this symbol be?

John would have assumed that we would go to the Old Testament and we would see, say, what does this symbol mean? What is this? He would have assumed that that's what would take place. And so as we go through the book of Revelation, we will have to take many trips to the Old Testament to understand it well. We must understand when it's talking about this symbol, what does it mean back here?

Because back here, oftentimes, is where it's explained. What is this? I believe going forward as we go through the book of Revelation, if you're a now I can't think of it the the books the left behind books I think you're going to be disappointed in those books I was gonna say this I was gonna say disappointed in the messages, but that better not be. Amen? All right, on to the next.

The next view is the idealist view. It's sometimes called iterism, or that's a Latin word that means to repeat. If we apply this to, let's just apply this to the first few chapters in the Bible when it talks, when the specific churches are addressed. This is a letter to the churches. It's told to be read out loud to the churches.

It's to be an encouragement to these churches. And I believe that these are specific churches that this letter was given to. And so when it comes to the churches that we look at, I do believe we can take the Preterist view. But I also believe there's some, we can take the idealist view, that these are stages of the church. That maybe whatever church we are evaluating, whether it be this church or another church down the road, or a church on the other side of the world, we may be closer illustrated by the Church of Laodicea, or the Church of Ephesus, or one of these other churches.

We must ask, well, where does our church fit within this? Because I believe that this did happen, and these were real churches, but I also believe that it's applicable to us today. And the idealist would believe that, that we repeat these stages. If you think back to the Old Testament and in Israel and the stages that they seem to repeat over and over and over and over again. That God gives them everything.

They turn against God. They suffer for it. They eventually, God turns their hearts back. They repent. They draw near.

They have a good relationship again. They turn away. They suffer for it. We see this repetition or this thing happening over and over, and as we get farther into Revelation, we find different bowls and wrath that's being poured out. And even within this, we can see through history a repetition, or that this seems to happen.

That the church even has times where it seems that it's almost completely falling away. And yet through God's remnant, And yet through God's remnant, through the blood of Christ, God brings them back. Now most of the time, In my life, I lean towards the idealist view. That it seems this view has a different application. It's different from the prejudiced or the futurist.

I believe this view is applicable or applicable applicable to churches the church of all time that as you and I read it it applies to us and as the past generations have read it, it applied to them. In the future generations, it also applied to them. Lastly is the eclectic view. This view embraces the apparent strengths and rejects the apparent weaknesses of the other four approaches. And that is the view or the position that I'm going to take as we go forward into this.

Again, as we look at all of these views, we find where the puzzle pieces don't always fit well together. I find that I lean very heavily towards the idealist view. I think the predator's view is oftentimes right, that these things have happened. And as we look at history and as we look at the text and we start to look at history and see how this has happened you'll I believe you will begin to say wow how could we have missed this these things were already going on One of the things that I have battled against for quite some time, and it's not because I am against the rapture, it's because it doesn't make any sense to me. And you say, well, What's that have to do with anything?

Why didn't that make sense to you? Well, one, we get the idea of the rapture because we think that God will save his people from suffering. And we forget that John is exiled to an island while he writes this book. John has watched those apostles with whom he spent many years of his life with, no doubt great friends with, he has watched them be crucified, he's watched the church suffer immensely, He has watched at this point all of his friends are gone. It's just John.

We know no suffering like John knows. And then we tell John, hey John, we know it's bad, but it won't get too bad for us here in America because God's just going to take us out. Contradicting everything. God has never rescued his people from suffering. Sometimes he delivers them, but it's because they've suffered long enough to get them to come to their senses again.

I think it was Paul Washer who said, suffering doesn't hurt the church, only prosperity. Prosperity is what is disastrous to the church. A rapture makes no sense. And it's strictly a futurist view. So again, as we go forward, I also don't believe we can throw out all of the futurist view because I think revelation applies to our future.

I think it applies to our past. So as we go forward, I will be doing my best to take the eclectic view, to look from all of the approaches and to put before you the strengths and to leave out the weaknesses of those approaches. Cornell, I can't ever pronounce his name, Cornell Venema is a theological professor, and he explains this way of approach well. He says, Preterism rightly insists that the visions of Revelation reflect events and circumstances contemporaneous with its writing or the period immediately thereafter, but Preterism fails to adequately account for the way Revelation also reveals events and circumstances that characterize the struggles of the church throughout the entire inner Advental age. Futurism partially solves the problem of preterism by emphasizing the way that visions of Revelation portrays events that will take place shortly before the end of history, but in doing so, futurism exaggerates the future orientation of the book.

As for historicism, although the events portrayed in the vision of Revelation have occurred in the past or may reoccur at various points in history, these events are not limited to a particular time in the past, present, or even future. The obvious strength of eclecticism is its ability to incorporate the primary emphasis of the other approaches without the one-sidedness that often characterizes alternative views. The weakness of the same approach may be its tendency to ascribe different meanings to the same vision. And understand as we go forward with this approach, it's always subject to the Scriptures. Scripture is always our primary.

We define Scripture with Scripture. Amen. So if that means going to the Old Testament and understanding something, that is the first thing that we should do. So what is, why do we want to be here? Why is this book so important that we should spend, I'm sure several months if not, I'm sure we're going to spend a good amount of time here, probably more than a year.

Why is this so important? Well, Revelation is about, what does it say in the first verse? It's about Jesus Christ. It's about our Lord and our Savior. And not only is it about Jesus Christ, it displays before the church that He is the victor.

He is victorious. His plan will succeed. His will will come to pass. He will make things right. Is a comfort to his people who are suffering.

And I believe that's one of the big reasons why we must take a balanced approach to it. Because the book of Revelation is to comfort you today. Now, we are still, I think we're probably coming to the end of our prosperity in America, but so far, many of us don't know suffering. But we would be foolish to think that this won't come to an end. The real suffering will come to Christians in America.

Why? Because that's what's been normal throughout all of history. Suffering will come. We will once again, in our lives, we will suffer to an extent that TV shows and games and devices and all these things aren't going to suffice anymore. Our suffering is going to be to an extent to where we will need something who can really comfort us.

And there is nothing and no one and no device and no game and nothing like that that can comfort us apart from Jesus Christ. And He is victor. The same comfort will comfort those who know Him. In the 80s, when 50% of murderers got away completely free, And they will say, my mother or my father or my best friend was murdered, and they just got away with it. They were never found out.

And yet, you and I, as we read the book of Revelation, we will know that our Lord and Savior will set things right. No one will get away with anything. And if you're not in Christ, Revelation should be deeply fearful to you. The book of Revelation gives us many unfun pictures of torture and punishment of a king who is coming with a sword out of his mouth. He is almighty.

He is Victor. Book of Revelation, I believe, is a very evangelical, evangelistic book. I think it was Brother Vody that said, there's something about preaching through the book of Revelation that that even though the world doesn't normally want to come to church, this may be something they come to church for. It's interesting to them. So I would encourage you share with your friends.

I don't believe our primary method of evangelism is bringing someone to church the primary method is sharing Jesus Christ with them amen but bring them to church. Much of Revelation we're going to come back on, he is our victorious king. And we're going to see these pictures of what he will do to his enemies. And friends, if you're not really in Christ, as you read through this, I would plead with you. Look what's going to happen.

Repent and trust in Jesus Christ. Your future is not, does not look good. In fact, it looks more terrifying than an all-day trip to the dentist. That's a terrible joke to try to lighten the mood. It's terrible.

The enemy convincing you of all the things that he distracts you with that are so much fun, you will wish, I can't remember who said it, but I think it was Martin Lloyd-Jones said, if you aren't born again, there will be a day that comes that you will wish that you were never born at all. Revelation will show us this, will show us the day that's to come. Now one of the things I love about the book of Revelation is it gives us a picture of our Savior that's contrary to what we normally see. This is an amazing picture. I keep going back to Vody because he has a way of sticking in my head.

He says in Revelation we come to a vision of Christ that's way different than the world. He said in the world you see this, he called it a European shampoo model with a little gentle lamb over his shoulder. That's not the Christ we find in Revelation. And he says over and over, he says, I don't want that sissified Christ. He's like, I want the one that's in the Bible, where we see here in Revelation 19, 11 through 16, it says, there I saw heaven open and behold a white horse, the one who is sitting on it called faithful and true and righteousness.

And in righteousness, He judges and makes war. His eyes are like the flame of fire, and His head are like our many diadems. And He has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed with a robe dripped in blood, in the name of which he is called the Word of God." Remember back to John chapter 1. He is called the Word of God, and the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the wine presses of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords what a beautiful vision of our Savior amen so we got through the introduction Dave so I got a couple of verses to look at briefly. Revelation 1 3, and super briefly if you're starting to lose focus. Revelation 1 3 again, Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

The first thing that I want to point out is, while this, I believe, is written to a church to read aloud the book of Revelation to the entire church, I would suggest that you do this yourself. There are those who stray away from the book of Revelation because they think it is a puzzle box or this complicated thing that no one can understand. And yet we know in theology, the perspicuity of scripture, that God doesn't write Scripture in a way to try to confuse us. And it wasn't intended to confuse us. And for the most part, if we don't start to try to plug things in there that shouldn't be there, It's not confusing.

I can't remember who said it, but he said, you should read it to your family. You should have your children read this book. And his saying in this, and talking about the understanding of it, your children probably can understand it better than you can because you haven't been given all these crazy ideas or they haven't been given all these crazy ideas. So read it aloud. Read it in one sitting.

You will understand it, I believe, lots better if you just read through the entire book in one setting. It helps you to put the pieces together and it doesn't leave them separated. But read it aloud. It says, blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed is those who hear. And again, contrary to what many who have slung into the other ditch in their salvation theology, it says, not only, blessed are those who hear, but and who keep what is written in it.

We obviously don't gain our salvation by any obedience. We don't gain our salvation by any merit of our own. But if you are in Christ, you will begin to want to obey His Word. He adopted you into His family, and He changed your desires. We're reminded of this again in Revelation.

It's not only those who hear, but it's those who keep what is written in the Word. We're reminded by John again the time is near. Oh, I figured out what happened here. So, this morning as we begin our trip, our journey through the book of Revelation, what's the main point? The main point is, as every book of the Bible, it's about Christ.

It's about God. It's about His glory. It's to comfort His people that God is sovereign. So we struggle with that word so much in salvation, but if God isn't sovereign, He can't tell you the future. Yet God tells us.

He's a sovereign God. He has things in control. And while He was here the first time and laid down His life and meekness and humility to save those who'd come to know him. When he comes back, he will come as a warrior and he will set things right. The book of Revelation was to encourage the church to stay faithful amidst your suffering, stay faithful, Amidst your suffering, stay faithful.

Keep on track, because Christ is the victor. He wins. You're on the winning team. He'll set things right. You don't need to avenge yourselves.

Your King will do it. Just stay faithful in your suffering. Amen? Amen. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you again this morning for your Word. Father, thank you so much for the completeness of your Word, that you have given us everything that we need to glorify you in this life. You've given us everything we need to be comforted in our suffering. You've given us everything we need to live out what you've call us to live. So Father, would you draw us to this book at this time?

Father, would you put within us the deep desire to not just know what we've been taught, but to cry out, I must know what the word of God says? Would you help us through this? Would you help us not to turn this into a debate of pre-millennial or post-millennial or all these things, but Father, would you help us to see our Savior? Would you help us to draw near above all that your name would be glorified in the study of the word you've given us. Father help us we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.