Mystery of the Church – Part 1

Welcome back. It's good to see you all. I'm glad you made it.

We've been talking about the warnings in the children's story. She was talking about the seventh trumpet and that was our theme last week as well. And we see that the trumpets are warning of difficult times.

And even some of the trumpet sounds themselves, like you heard in the video, can be rather almonds. And so that can have a troubling effect on us, in our hearts. But Jesus doesn't want us to be troubled.

This is the book of John. John 14, and the first verse, Jesus is saying, let not your heart be troubled.

And the reason he starts off this way is because just before that, at the end of chapter 13, Peter asks him, where are you going? Because he said he was going away. And Jesus answered, whither I go, thou canst not follow me. Not now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards.

And Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. And then in verse 38, Jesus answered him, wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, the cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice. So this was a very unpleasant thing to hear.

It was troubling. Jesus was saying, you say you will die for me. And then he says, verily, verily, that means very truly, surely, this night, it was the same night that Peter would deny him.

And not just once, but three times, deny that he had any relation to Jesus. And that tells us that sometimes we may not know ourselves quite as well as we may think. So Jesus says, let not your heart be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.

I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself. That where I am, there ye may be also.

And whither I go, ye know, and the way ye know. And then they have an interesting little exchange because Thomas, he's got a question. He said, Lord, we don't know where you're going.

And how can we know the way? So Jesus answered him. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Now, when Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, that had a lot of significance. That significance has to do with his people. It's about a mystery, the mystery of the church.

And we're going to look at that mystery. And it begins in the sanctuary. Now, this is a picture of the old tabernacle that they built in Moses's time.

And you'll notice there are three doors that are numbered. In the original tabernacle, they were just curtains, but they had names for them. The first was called the way.

And then inside, this is just showing you, there's also a wall there, but it's just a wall. They don't show it in the picture, so you can see what's inside. But the second door is called the truth.

And then the third door, the priest would go there only once a year on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. And that door, guess what it was called? It was called the life. Exactly.

The way, the truth, and the life. So, when Jesus said that he is the way, the truth, and the life, he was pointing to the sanctuary. And this, the whole services of the Jews, all of their sacrifices, all of the things that they did regularly, all centered around the sanctuary.

And they were all symbolic of the answer to Thomas's question. He said, where are you going? Or he didn't know, and he asked where, and he said that we don't know the way. And so, Jesus is saying, this is the way to where I am going.

And so, all of these things are very symbolic. The first thing one would encounter when they come through the first door of the way is the altar. This represents Jesus' sacrifice, the cross.

What he did, he gave his life like a burnt offering, an innocent lamb being burned. That's the first step to where Jesus was going. That's our first step.

We have to come to the cross. We have to, when the Jews would come there, they would bring the sacrificial animal, and they would put their hands over it and confess their sins, meaning that their sins were transferred to the animal. And we understand that, meaning that they're transferred to Jesus Christ.

He died for our sins. And then it was slain, and that means that Jesus took our sin, and he died in our place. So, that's the first step.

And then next, there was a laver, a wash bowl, basically, a basin. And the priests would wash their things there. And this represents the cleansing of the sinner.

When they would confess their sin, then they would be baptized, washed from their sin. That's the significance of the laver. And when Jesus was on this earth, he gave his life, and he was also baptized.

So, so far, this is in the courtyard of the sanctuary. But then Jesus went to heaven, and this was when he was talking with his disciples. And that part is represented in the inner part of the sanctuary.

Inside the sanctuary, the walls were made from boards of wood, but over that wood, it was covered with gold. So, inside there, it was all gold, shimmering gold.

And there was a lamp stand with seven branches, like this. So, one in the middle, and then six on the sides. And that was on one side. Then on the other side, there was a table. And on that table was bread. It was called the showbread. And they would replace it every week.

And then, before the door, there was a little altar of incense. Now, these three things, in this inner part, they also represent part of the Christian's journey.

Once we have accepted Christ, and are baptized, then what does bread represent? What do we do with bread? You eat it, and you get strength from it. Bread represents God's word. Jesus said, I am the bread of life. And His word is what we read in the Bible. So, here we have a representation of the daily walk of the Christian, with the bread.

And then we have the light. Now, the light represents the Holy Spirit. So, since Jesus went to heaven, he has been giving bread and light to his people. He is alive.

The Bible isn't just an old, dry, well, it's not old, moldy bread that's on the table. It's new. It's new every week.

It's new every day even, in our lives. And that's because Jesus is alive in heaven. And he gives his people, through the Spirit, he gives light and understanding.

He gives the bread. And the altar of incense would make a cloud of incense. And that is a pleasant smell.

And that would represent the prayers that go to heaven, that go to God, that He communes with His people. So, these things represent the the life of the Christian in their relationship with God, with His word, with the Holy Spirit. But there's a third door, the door of life.

And this represents the last step of the Christian's journey. Because ultimately, in this part, we are on earth and Christ is in heaven. But we want to be together with Christ in heaven.

And that's the transition that's represented by that third door, the door of life. And in there was the Ark of the Covenant. That was the holiest place, that room.

And where there was the Ark of the Covenant, that was God's throne. And under that throne, that seat, which was called the mercy seat, underneath, it was sitting on a box. And inside the box were, who can tell me? Angels.

Angels were on top. They were sitting on the top or beside the Ark. But inside the box were two tables of stone, the Ten Commandments.

Yes, they also, through the experience of Israel, as Moses led them through the wilderness, they also put a couple of other things in there. Aaron's rod and the bowl of manna. But the main thing were the tables of stone, which represented, or they were on which the law was written. And that was under his seat. You know, you can imagine if he's sitting on this throne, he's sitting on the law. It shows the importance of his law for his government, for his kingdom.

That's something that we'll talk about maybe next week more. But first, we want to look at this journey a little bit closer. Because if Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, he said, I am the way.

I am the truth and the life. And therefore, we talk about the sign of the Son of Man, and we should see that, therefore, in the sign of the Son of Man. Because what Jesus identifies himself with should appear in that sign.

We'll look at that a little bit today. But let's first look at Revelation chapter 1. So, Revelation chapter 1 and verse 1. The revelation of who? Of Jesus Christ. So just with that, we see that we are talking about the same thing as what he was saying in John chapter 14.

He said, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again. Because when it says the revelation of Jesus Christ, a revelation is a revealing. That means you're going to see him.

He's going to come again. And that's the first words of the book of Revelation, because that's what the whole book is about. It's about the revelation of Jesus Christ, the revealing, when he will appear, when we will see him, which God gave to him to show to his servants things which must shortly come to pass.

That means quickly. And he sent and signified it. That means it's symbols. It's written in symbolism. By his angel unto his servant John.

Let's look at the big picture of the revelation. The book of Revelation, we'll see it's kind of like a mountain. And the first chapters of the book, first three chapters are about Jesus.

In the first chapter, John sees Jesus and describes him. And then the next two chapters, Jesus gives letters. He dictates to John letters that are to go to seven churches.

Then we have chapters 4 through 7, and that's where there's the scene of the throne of God that's introduced. And there's a special focus on a book in his hand. The book is not like our modern books, but in those days, it was like a roll.

And this particular roll was sealed with seven seals. Now, I put two pictures here because this one, it shows how if you break one seal, because the Bible describes how when one seal is broken, then these certain events happen. And then another seal is broken and those certain events happen.

And so it kind of shows how when you break this seal, then you read that part of the book. Kind of like broken into chapters, if you will. But regardless, it's about this book of seven seals. And that's a prominent theme in the book of Revelation.

And you can see just from that much that it has to do with history, whether past history or coming history. Because when one seal would be broken, then things would happen on the earth.

You could see a horseman ride or you would see scales of judgment or an earthquake. Different things would happen on the earth. So that's the book that is introduced there in chapter 5. And then the unsealing of that book also in chapters 6 and 7. And then the next chapters talk about witnesses.

Now, a witness is one who sees something. They see what's happening. And there are witnesses in heaven. That's what the trumpets are. They witness things that are happening and they give their witness in heaven. But they see what's happening on the earth.

And then in chapter 11, there are witnesses on earth itself that are described. Interestingly, there are seven trumpets, so seven witnesses, if you will. But there's only two earthly witnesses.

We'll talk about that later. Then at the top of the mountain, there's a confrontation. In chapter 12, it's a confrontation between the pregnant woman who's about to give birth and the dragon.

So you have a very fearful beast and a very vulnerable woman representing the church. And it shows that we should never be too boastful or proud about how strong we might be. We're really vulnerable like a pregnant woman before a dragon. And therefore, we need God's help.

And then in chapter 13, it kind of retells this story in a sense, but in an earthly perspective rather than in chapter 12, where it talks about the woman and the dragon in heaven. She's clothed with the sun and a crown of stars on her head.

It's in the setting of heaven, whereas in chapter 13, it's now talking about what's happening on earth. And there's beasts and the saints of God that are in confrontation on the earth.

Then we continue. And in chapter 14, it talks about a harvest. Not just one, but two. There's a harvest of wheat and a harvest of grapes.

And what do you use grapes for? Sometimes we eat them maybe for breakfast or something. But if you have very ripe grapes, maybe they're a little bit soft. What's the one thing that you would do with them? You don't want to eat soft grapes.

You crush them and you make grape juice or wine. And that's the other harvest. You have wheat that makes bread and you have grapes that make wine.

That wine is representing the wine of the wrath of God. Whereas the wheat, that's the good harvest, the result of the harvest of God's word. So you see a contrast between the good and the bad.

And then chapters 15 and 16 also continue that description of the harvest of the grapes, the wine of the wrath of God. It talks about the plagues. And then there's the outcome of the confrontation. The outcome and the reign. Because the winner between Satan and Christ or between his people and the devil is the one who will reign. The winner takes all, as it were.

And that is described in chapters 17 through 20. It describes how Satan's kingdom falls. Babylon falls.

And then it describes how Jesus returns in glory and He reigns for a thousand years with His people. And then the last part of Revelation is the last step of the journey, when Jesus is with the holy city in eternity.

Now, the holy city, who's in there? Those are the saints. So I said it's like a mountain because if you look at these themes that are in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, you see there's relationships.

It starts off. Jesus is in heaven and he writes messages like a long-distance relationship. You write to your fiancé your love letters, and he sends those to the churches on earth. So there's that separation.

Jesus is in heaven. His people are on earth. In the end, they're united.

Jesus is with his people, with his city, the holy city. And then there is the main part of the book where we have the throne described, the throne of God, and this book of history in the beginning. And that parallels this part where it talks about the wrapping up of history, the outcome of the controversy, and who will ultimately sit on the throne.

And then you have the witnesses. They see what's happening. They give warning.

The trumpets give warning. The witnesses on earth warn each other, warn the people of earth. And as a result of that, you have the harvests.

There's the harvest of good and there's the harvest of the evil for those who refused to hear. But in this arrangement, where's the one place, if you're climbing a mountain, where do you want to go? You want to just go to the middle? No, you always want to get to the summit. That's the most important part, if you will.

And it's the same in the book of Revelation. The most important part, at least in some sense, is about this confrontation between good and evil, the good forces and the evil forces, the beast and his kingdom and the saints of God. That's what's described in those chapters.

And that's where we are in history right now. We're at this time, more or less, in this area. We haven't settled the outcome yet.

But the witnesses are sounding. We are in this time now of the seventh trumpet. We're at least very near, if not, I mean, all things are a process.

And we're definitely in this confrontation phase where we see how Babylon or the beast system, as it's described in chapter 13, is spreading its tentacles throughout the world and trying to control the world. And they do that in different ways. We've seen that with the censorship.

You can't just publish what you want because, you know, if you put something on YouTube and then YouTube doesn't like it, they can take it down. And there's many controls like that, that they can silence you if you say something that's not in line with what they want you to believe. And it's a confrontation between truth and lies.

There's deception that is very prevalent. They want to hide things. And because they want to hide those things that would expose them, they just don't allow people to share freely about those things.

For example, one interesting thing is about the mark of the beast. If you put videos on YouTube about the mark of the beast, especially in relation to certain themes that start with the letter V, for example, they will often get taken down from YouTube because they don't want that information to be put out. So they censor those things.

There's a lot of deception in the world. But it's a confrontation between truth and those lies. And in the end, we know that the result, the outcome, is that the truth is victorious.

Amen. But there's a heavy confrontation and there's a part for God's people to do in that because if we don't do anything, then that won't be the outcome. There's a role for us to play.

So this is an overview of the book of Revelation. And this pattern, by the way, is very common in the Bible, in general, in many different parts. It's part of the Hebrew poetry.

They would have this escalating part and then coming back down the mountain. And you have this relationship between the different parts of the mountain. Let's look back at the sanctuary.

Okay, so we have the way, the truth, and the life. In our mountain picture, the way comes at the beginning when Jesus sent the letters to the churches. The churches, let me just read that verse.

It's in Revelation chapter 1. And here, Jesus says, I am Alpha and Omega. So that's a key word that we're talking about, the sign of the Son of Man. It applies in that context.

The first and the last, and what thou seest, write in a book and send it to the seven churches. So this is the very beginning. He's introducing it.

He's saying, this vision I'm showing you of the whole revelation, you write it out, this book of Revelation, and you send it to the churches, to the seven churches, which are in Asia, modern-day Turkey, to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. So these churches were more or less on a mail route. There was a loop that would go around this general area, and the messenger would take the books and go to church to church, or city to city, and the people who were there, he would deliver the book.

So it's a way, it's a course that would be traveled. And we see that in heaven also with the comets in the sign of the Son of Man. They form also a way, a loop, if you will.

And along this loop, this path that first the comet K2 travels, and then this way the comet is coming the other direction, and it makes the return path. And along this route, there are the seven churches. Now, we'll look at some of those now to see clearly how they fit in this course.

But first of all, when we look at this sequence, this was the order that the churches or each of these towns would come on the mail route. So in this order, they formed a loop from Ephesus to Laodicea. Now, I want to look at the letters to these churches, and those start in Revelation 2, where first he writes to the angel.

Now, that sounds a little bit strange, but the word angel just means a messenger. It doesn't necessarily mean a heavenly being with the wings and all that. It's just a messenger.

So you could read this unto the messenger of the church of Ephesus. So he was the messenger who went around the way. Writes, these things that he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.

So this refers to chapter 1, where John saw Jesus. And in the very beginning, here in verse 12, he said, I turned to look to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks. And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man.

So he sees Jesus there in the midst of seven candlesticks, and he goes on to describe him and what he was wearing and his white hair. So Jesus introduces himself in his letter to Ephesus as one who is among the seven, or rather he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand and walks in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. In the very last verse of chapter 1, he says, the mystery of the seven stars, which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks.

So here's a mystery. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches. So Jesus is telling him that there is a mystery here with the churches and these seven stars.

And now I want to go to Stellarium so that we can see this. We want to see the seven stars in Jesus's hand.

Here is the heavens. There is the ecliptic. Let me draw that line here. So now we have a line that shows us the path of the sun.

And you'll notice you can arrange it so that you see it's really a circular path. And that makes sense. As the year goes, the sun makes its course through the heavens every month, more or less, in a different constellation.

Now Jesus said he has seven stars in his right hand. Now let's look at Orion. Here is Orion.

Let me see if I can get him right side up. So here's Orion. He's backwards.

That's how we usually see him. Okay. Correct? So when you look out, this is how you see it.

And you see that his right hand, he's facing this way, his right hand is reaching up to the ecliptic. And that's where the stars, rather the planets, they make their course. If I advance time, make it go very quickly, you see year after year after year after year, all the planets fly past his hand.

And how many planets are there? Well, first of all, there's the sun and the moon that go through there. And you have to understand that in ancient times, you know, everything for them, they didn't have the concept of planet versus star. They were just bright lights in the sky.

They were all stars. And that's why it says the seven stars, because it's actually referring to these seven bodies, the seven lights that pass through Orion's hand. There's the sun, the moon, there's Mars, Venus.

What's next? Now there's Mercury. I forgot about Mercury. There's Jupiter and there's Saturn.

Now today we know about Uranus and Neptune and maybe Pluto, but those were, they're too faint to see with the naked eye. There are exactly seven that you can see with the naked eye, seven heavenly bodies that go through Orion's hand. And those are the seven stars.

They're the seven messengers, the seven angels to the seven churches. That means they have messages that they deliver to the church, at least if we look at the heavens and seek to understand them in the light of the Bible. Okay, so that's the mystery of the seven stars, which thou sawest in my right hand.

He's speaking as Orion with the seven stars in his right hand and the seven golden candlesticks. We could also, the candlestick is the fixed part, whereas the lights are in motion. We'll see that again in a moment.

But we have also seven stars in Orion, like the seven lampstands. So this is how Jesus is introducing himself to his people in the book. And I'm just going to quickly look at a couple of these so that you can see how they fit into the sign of the Son of Man.

Because we want to see how do these churches, like what is the way, what is the way, the heavenly way for these churches? Jesus began with Ephesus and he made the loop all the way until Laodicea. In chapter 3, Revelation chapter 3, yeah, let's start with verse 14. This is where he speaks to, he writes his letter to the church of Laodicea.

Unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things saith the amen. We saw that same word before when Jesus said, verily, verily, I say to you. It's the same word, amen, amen, I say to you.

It means truly or surely. In this case, he's trustworthy, the trustworthy one, if you will. And he describes himself as the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

And then he says, I know your works, he says that to every one of the churches. Then we skip down to verse 20, because in his letter he gives counsel to the churches, each one, and he tells them what things he appreciates about what they're doing and what things are not good that they need to repent from. And then in verse 20, Jesus says, behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with him and he with me. So there's a door, and that should ring a bell in the context of the sanctuary, because there are not many doors mentioned in Revelation. And this is one, and it's a closed door.

He's knocking on the door, and he wants you to open the door. He wants the people of Laodicea to open the door so that he can come in. Now contrast that with the previous church in Revelation chapter 3 and verse 8. He's talking to the church of Philadelphia, and he says, behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.

So on the one hand, we have an open door, and for the others, we have a closed door, and it's a door that he wants to come in. He wants the open door. So Philadelphia, that's this church, Philadelphia and Laodicea are contrasted.

Jesus had nothing negative to say about Philadelphia. He just encouraged them and said, hold on to your crown. They already had a crown.

He said, hold on, don't let anyone take it from you. He gave them encouragement, and that was it. But with Laodicea, it was a completely different story.

In fact, with Laodicea, he had nothing good to say about them. He only had negative things to say, because they were really not, ah, they thought too much of themselves, and he says to them, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. He's making a reference to drinking water.

You know, you like water, usually cold. It's never really nice to drink water that's just warm, you know. It's the worst kind.

Maybe if it's hot, you can handle that better than if it's just this lukewarm temperature, and so he uses that as an illustration, and it was very fitting because Laodicea was a city that was fed by a river, and the river that fed that city came from hot springs, so it was hot water originally, but by the time it came down to Laodicea, it wasn't hot and it wasn't cold, and so they couldn't use that water so directly for drinking, and he uses that as an illustration because he's saying that's how they are, and when you try to drink that water, you can't. You just spit it out. So when we look at the sign of the Son of Man, we see a river, and part of that river is inside the sign, and part of that river is outside the sign, and it's even if you think of it as the whale, the great fish, then here is the mouth of the fish, and if you spit the water out of your mouth, that's kind of what we see here in this part of the sign.

This is the part that is spit out, and this is the part that is already inside the sign. They have the open door, and here they have the closed door. They're on the outside, the other is on the inside. So we see that we're starting with Laodicea, and then we're going back around through the seven churches, and I will show you here. This is our Laodicea spit out. Then we have Philadelphia, and we continue on the line with Sardis.

Now Sardis is interesting because in Revelation chapter 3, this is the church that represents most of Protestantism today, and maybe you can understand why just from reading these lines, and to the angel of the church in Sardis writes, these things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars. He introduces himself very similarly. I know thy works, that thou hast the name that thou livest, and are dead.

So they seem like they're living. The church seems like it's living, but in fact, it's dead, and he says, be watchful. Strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die, for I have not found thy works perfect before God, and what was it that they needed to repent of? Remember, therefore, how thou hast received, and heard, and hold fast, and repent.

And here comes the specific part. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. So this describes the Protestant church in general today.

Maybe not just the Protestant church, but especially. They do not want to know the time. Most people will say, oh, Jesus said, no one knows the day or the hour, and it's true.

He said that. He also said that in the present tense 2,000 years ago, was it meant to be a statement that no one will ever know the hour? Because here, Jesus qualifies that, and he says, if you won't watch, if you do not watch, then you will not know the time. Then it's when you watch, you will know the time.

So this is the description of Sardis, and when we look at the sign of the Son of Man, let me bring this one up, we see that Sardis, this constellation of Lepus, the rabbit with the hair, is directly underneath Orion, right there where we have the hourglass constellation, the clock. So Jesus, who has the seven stars in his hands, that's how he introduced himself to Sardis, and right next to him are those who refuse the time.

They're not watching, and he says, you need to repent. You'll notice there is a dog in there. That's not one of the churches, and the reason for that comes from Revelation chapter 22, 22:15.

He's talking about the holy city, and he says, outside the dogs, for without, are dogs. Outside the city are the dogs. So that means if the city are the people of God, then the dogs are those outside, and they're described here as sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whoever loveth and maketh a lie.

And we see that today there's this battle between the lies and the truth, and those who hold to the lies are the dogs. So this is outside the city, and so that's not one of the churches, but the churches continue with Thyatira, Pergamos, Smyrna, and finally, at the end, Ephesus. So we see the pattern is exactly the opposite.

The sign shows us parts of how the letters of the churches related to the sign should go. I won't talk about all of them, but let's look at Ephesus one more time, because Jesus gave counsel to Ephesus in Revelation chapter 2 and verse 5. He said, Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. And this is actually what happened with several of the churches. They lost their candlestick because they didn't repent.

Now it doesn't actually describe that, but that's where we see described in Revelation chapter 11, for example, there's the two witnesses. There's not seven. And in the letters to the churches, there's two churches that Jesus has nothing negative that he says about them.

The church of Smyrna, who went through a lot of tribulation, a lot of martyrs were in the church of Smyrna, and Jesus said, be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He had nothing against them, and I mentioned already about Philadelphia. So Smyrna and Philadelphia are the two churches who witness for Jesus in the end. The other churches, Jesus removed their candlestick.

They're not giving their witness, their light. We actually have that symbolized in our candles here. We have the two witnesses who are giving their witness, their testimony, their light, and then there's the five that are not burning.

They're not giving their witness. So on an individual basis, we want to be among those who are giving witness and sharing the light from heaven with others so that they can join us on the journey that we are on. So let's look one more time at the mountain of Revelation.

We have the letters, and we saw the way of the churches in the beginning. That's the way, and then the major part of the book is talking about the struggle between truth and error. That's the part of the truth, and then in the end, that's when we enter into life.

That's the last part of the journey, and that is also represented in the sign of the Son of Man. The Horologium clock is part of the sign of the Son of Man, and it is made from the comet that we talked about a couple weeks ago, Bernardinelli-Bernstein, the comet that was discovered on Jesus's birthday and has perihelion 2,000 years after his crucifixion, representing Jesus. And here is a symbol for the Tree of Life.

I want you to look at that so that you can understand it. In the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation, he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal. We've seen the river.

I'll show it to you again in a second, and that's proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb. That is, remember, the throne room scene. That's where you have the four stars around the throne, represented in Orion.

So we have Orion, and we have a river, and then we have in the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, so on one side of the river and on the other side of the river, there's the Tree of Life. So the Bible describes the Tree of Life as having apparently two trunks, but being one tree, so they must be united. And they bear twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nation.

So there's twelve fruits, and there's leaves that are described on this tree. And that's what we see there. Those are the leaves of the tree.

But when we look at the sign, here we have the throne of God represented with the four living creatures around the throne, just like it's described in Revelation chapter 4. And then it says there's a river proceeding from the throne. That's the river Eridanus in heaven. And then there's the Tree of Life.

Now the Tree of Life is on both sides. The trunk is on both sides of the river. So this is one part of it, but there's also this part.

And we have the clock and the hourglass, the two time-telling devices in the heavens. Those are representing the Tree of Life. Of course, you need time to have life.

So that just shows you a little bit more about how the whole book of Revelation is showing us, or is being shown to us, in the sign of the Son of Man. From the way to the truth, which is represented in all of the symbolism that we've been talking about. The truth that time is important, especially in this last battle between the truth and error.

We need time to sort things out, because that's how we understand the book of Revelation, is through a knowledge of the time, through the stars in the hand of Orion. And ultimately, we have the way I mentioned, the truth, and the life. Going to Orion, we have the Orion Nebula, which is also connected with the opening in heaven where Jesus will come from, and where we will go to be with him.

Amen? So I'll stop with that. It shows us the process of restoring our first love, Jesus. That was the problem that the first church had, Ephesus.

Jesus said, you lost your first love. And therefore, Jesus went forward through the churches, but now we're going backward through them to restore the first love. And it's all through the book of Revelation, from the way, understanding the truth, until at last, we come to the life.

And that is our desire and our prayer. Therefore, we want to share. So let's close with a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, once again, we are amazed at what you have put in your word, and how everything fits together in a beautiful package. And we appreciate your guidance and the instruction that you have given in your word, that it could be understood in these last days with the technology and the diligence to search the scriptures and compare them with the heavens, that we can be warned of the things that are happening, and not fall prey to the lies in the world that the beast and his system are pushing as though it were truth. So we praise you for giving us these gifts, and we pray for those who have not heard these things, who have not received your gifts, that they will open their hearts to your messages of truth, and they will make their way through the sanctuary, through the truth, to the life.

And we pray these things in the name of Jesus, our Savior, the wounded one of Orion. Amen. Thank you, and come back next time.

We'll talk more about the sign of the Son of Man, and focusing a little bit more on the Horologium. It'll be very interesting, I think.