What is Babylon, and why does it deserve judgment?

<p>What is Babylon, and why does it deserve judgment?</p>

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Hope Channel

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

Sikhu Daco

Justin Kim

Israel Ramos

Callie Williams

01 Jesus Wins—Satan Loses

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Justin Kim, with Inverse.

Hey everyone, my name's Justin Kim and you're on Inverse, and in our studio we have Israel and Siku and Kelly and you guys and we want to say thank you for joining us.

We are in a new topic and we want to ask you guys, if you guys can respond and communicate with us, that we talk about 4 topics a year.

Are there topics that, Bible topics, not just random topics about teeth?

We're not going to do a Bible study on teeth.

Although you could do a Bible study on teeth.

But anyway, some topics that are on your minds, that are in your social conversations that we haven't covered thus far.

Our group has covered a lot, and we've been on air for what?

It doesn't seem like it, but it's been like what 5678, like 70 years, whatever we've been on.

And there's a lot of topics that we have still yet to cover, but if there's something of particular importance to you, we'd love to hear from you and just write us a little comment and say, hey, not teeth, but what about X, Y, or Z?

We're gonna talk about the 3 angels' messages.

The title is 3 Cosmic Messages, and we're looking at the book of Revelation, not just only the book of Revelation, but there's these right in the centerpiece, there's these 3 angels.

Why, how does that impact us today in the 21st century?

So, I'd like to have a word of prayer and we'll get into the Bible text if you want, if you guys have your Bibles out there, take it out.

And Callie, can you pray, not just for this episode, but really this is the first episode for the next 13, our episode, Ark, if you can pray for that as well.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the privilege it is to study your word together.

I pray that you guide us by your Holy Spirit, as Justin said, today in this moment, but also in the coming weeks, in the coming times that We study it together as a team here on Inverse, as we listen to these episodes, but also just in the quietness of our time, one-on-one with you, as we study these passages, as we try to figure out what you're trying to say to our own individual hearts and minds.

May we understand what the judgment really means.

May we understand what the 3 angels' messages really are.

And may we see what they mean to our individual experience on a practical level.

And I pray that we would be blessed, we would be encouraged, and we'd be drawn closer to you because of our study.

We trust that you will make this so, because we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Revelation 12, we're going to read some scripture and we're going to encourage you guys to take out your Bibles as well and also go to inversebible.org, inversebible.org and there you can go to 3 cosmic messages.

If you're familiar with the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, we are very, very obsessed with the 3 angels.

It's core to us, but the reality is there's many who don't know what it is.

It's important, but we don't know what it is.

So, although this is in a sense basic, it's not really basic at all.

So, let's go to Revelation 12, and we'll start with today.

Episode is entitled, Jesus Wins, Satan Loses.

Kind of the cliffhanger is already, you know, spoiler alert, but not really alert.

Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought.

But they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.

So the great dragon was cast out, the serpent of old called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.

He was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him.

Then I heard a loud voice saying, in heaven, now salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of this Christ have come for the accuser of our brethren who accused them before our God day and night has been cast down and They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and they did not love their lives to the death.

Therefore, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them.

Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you having great wrath because he knows that he has a short time." up to verse 17, you said?

It sounds like you're tired, but it's a good break to talk about.

So I do want to talk about Revelation a bit.

We're going to spend a lot of time in Revelation 12, 13, and 14, specifically 14.

Scholars say that 14 is like the center of Revelation.

And then the center of Revelation 14 is the 3 angels.

So it's like the apex of the apex, kind of the center of a sandwich.

You know, it's the meat or veggie meat or an avocado if you're vegan.

So to understand 14, we need to understand 13, and to understand 13, we're gonna understand 12.

So sorry for the long intro, but it talks about war.

And Siku, there's some angels and demons and devils here.

Like, there's a lot of people out there who believe in God and believing in God is like no problem at all.

But like, for this study, we have to believe in angels and demons.

And some people, there's a lot of people, a lot of post-moderns, Gen Z, Gen Zed, sorry, from the British Empire, education.

So let's talk about a little bit like well, how why is that and then and then how do what's your what's your?

You have you had a struggle with that or not?

Yeah, I guess My thing would be that the idea of there being angels is a biblical idea, because we just read it in the Bible.

I think that there are different ways to view reality, and it's got to do with your worldview, let's say.

So if our concept of God is rooted in the way God is presented in the Bible, part of that worldview, part of that picture of who God is and all that he has created includes the creation of angels.

And this text in particular speaks about angels who are worshiping God and who have remained loyal to God.

But then it also presents a scenario where there are angels who are disloyal to God, who gave up their loyalty to God in this cosmic conflict, so to speak, in this battle that happened in heaven, which is kind of hard to fathom, because we think heaven is like, oh, happy, and babies flying, that's what the picture, but it's saying that war broke out in heaven, right?

And so what the Bible is presenting is actually the foundation for how we are supposed to understand reality, that the reality is, even though we may not see, you know, these angels or these fallen angels, that there are angels, ones who worship God and then ones who have fallen from God.

Like, I think we take this for granted, this story.

And then, but what's so hard for many people is not the belief in like God exists right now, but there's a narrative, there's a war, and then there's like, you know, some people see like lightsabers and...

Or like, you know, war, like, you know, their guns, like how do angels, is anyone dying here?

So talk about the struggle that we, sometimes if we don't, we take it for granted, like that happened, but like That is a presupposition for the entire background story.

I think part of it has to do with the fact that we watch a lot of movies and society impacts our understanding of reality.

But if you look at the Bible throughout different portions of scripture, you have the idea of angels, whether they're good angels or bad angels, it's essentially the idea that there is other life out there outside of human life, right?

And so the Bible talks about other life outside of human life.

It doesn't necessarily talk about it as like ghosts or people who look, you know, weird.

Jonathan Walter

02 A Moment of Destiny

Hey everyone, my name is Justin and you're on Inverse.

And I want to say, crew, say hi to everyone.

We are looking at the 3 cosmic messages we looked at last week.

If you missed it, you want to go to, where should you go to?

You should go to hopetv.org slash inverse.

You can see the video there or you can go to your podcast of choice and you can also download and upload or load into your mind last week's episode.

It was really good on looking at the background of the meta-narrative of the great controversy.

If you have no idea what I just said or what that meant, you wanna listen to that episode.

We're looking at the 3 angels' messages, and you can go to inversebible.org, and you can look at the 3 cosmic messages Bible study guide and it looks at the book of Revelation.

So we're going to go to Revelation chapter 14 and in the house we have Jonathan Seku in Israel and Jonathan if you can pray for us before we read scripture, that would be appreciated.

Father, we thank you so much for this opportunity we have to study the word again.

We just want to invite your presence to be with us, your spirit to enlighten our minds, to help us understand these very important messages from the book of Revelation for each and every 1 of us.

We pray that you will clean our hearts from any sin, anything that is a disruption in our relationship with you, so that we will be in total surrender attitude to you and to your word.

Pray to your bless each and every 1 of us here and those watching and listening, I pray in Jesus name, amen.

Siku, we're gonna go to chapter 14 of Revelation.

We're spending a lot of time in the book of Revelation, especially chapter 14.

But for today, let's go to verse 14 and go to the end of that chapter.

Verse 14, then I looked and behold a white cloud and on the cloud sat 1 like the son of man having on his head a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle.

And another angel came out of the temple crying with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud thrust in your sickle and reap for the time has come for you to reap for the harvest of the earth is ripe.

So he who sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth and the earth was reaped.

Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.

And Another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in your sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.

So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horse's brittles, for 1, 600 furlongs." Okay, so, I mean, that's a heavy passage.

But Israel, can you kind of give us a synopsis of what happened last episode?

Yeah, so Last time we talked about the importance of understanding the fact that we are in a meta-narrative that the world as we know it now is just a partial understanding, there's something greater, so we talked about the fact that even though we cannot see them, there are beings I guess that the Bible describes as angels or messengers or sons of God and then there's also fallen beings, people who were part of God's family but who are now at war with Him, that was kind of the beginning of where we started, we talked about the fact that in order to understand our narrative, the main character, the central character of the story is God himself.

And when we come now to Revelation 14, we're kind of looking at the opposite side of that coin, the other side of that coin, which is the conclusion, close to the conclusion of the narrative, the destiny where we are headed as a people in the story.

Yeah, I, actually, that's a really cool element you said that God is the main character of the story.

I know we've gotta go into 14, but can you break that down a little bit?

Because, You know, when we hear stuff like that, we think we are in the story, and we are in the story.

But what do you mean when God is the main character?

We know that he's the protagonist, he's doing all the actions, but when all this, how does it really impact God at the end of the day?

So in the beginning of Scripture, God is introduced as a first character, Genesis Chapter 1, in the beginning, God, right?

So, when time began, when our lives began, when our understanding of this world began, God was already there, right?

He's the central figure of Genesis Chapter 1, the 1 that's constantly acting, the kind of...

He's the central focus of the story and His character is what the story is speaking about, He's a God of love, He's the Creator, He's someone that can speak with His Word and He is the 1 that is actively involved in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 and so, because of this, He is a central figure, He's the Creator, He's our Redeemer, He is our Sustainer, He is all of these things but above all, He's love, now, the accusation that Satan has made against Him is that He is not love and so because of this, now you have this great battle that takes place, right, because He's love or because He's not love, He's created, according to Satan, he's created this horrible law, a law of selfishness that pleases him, that seeks to separate us from him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And now the Bible is teaching us this is not true.

This is bad seed weeds that have been sown in.

So we often think that Satan's attacking us and He is, but the ultimate goal of that is really to get at God at the end.

God has to prove His worthiness for loyalty.

Because God is not interested in forced worship, forced obedience.

He wants people to follow him, to be with him, to want to be with him because of who he is.

And that's really what the story is about.

The story is about God showing who he is and then giving people a choice to say, okay, I want to be with this God.

Satan is trying to, you know, throw lies in there and discredit him and twist his character.

But the story of the Bible and the story of this great controversy is all about showing that God is truly who He claims to be, that He is love, that He is truth, that He is good.

And once we are convinced of this and we want to be part of God's side, once we see the lies of Satan and we want to be part...

Are we enrolled in the Heaven, Heaven program?

So we've gotten from really macro, and now we're getting into the individual perspective.

That's a choice that we all made around this table.

Hopefully that's a choice that you've made or you're being convinced of that choice in some sense being driven to like man How if I take Jesus God's side seriously what happens after that?

This is probably intermediary to where we're headed but You know I think about when Jesus was on earth and he would say, the kingdom of heaven is like unto, the kingdom of heaven is like unto.

And he was describing the reality of what it means to be a citizen of heaven.

Like if you enlist in being part of God's side, this is what it looks like because we've been, we're on this earth, our heritage, our ancestry, and we're impacted by these lies that the devil has been telling now for, you know, centuries, right, for millennia.

And so Jesus came to clarify, to distill, which he's been doing throughout scripture, but to distill and make it absolutely plain what it means to be a participant in God's kingdom, what it means to align ourselves with God's side.

And so that was part of what Jesus, that was his teaching, was teaching us how to be citizens of heaven.

So that's kind of, I guess, in the trajectory of where you're.

Maybe if I can push back a little, and I'm just trying to provide some dramatic tension here.

But it's just not merely only Jesus' teaching, although his teaching is powerful.

But this can be easily misunderstood as Jesus was another Confucius or another Socrates.

He's coming here to give teaching on how to live well with human beings and just moral teaching.

And there's a whole people group out there who believe Jesus does that.

But there's something extra that Jesus provides.

Well, if Jesus was to just come to provide, you know, another lifestyle, another way to live that is, you know, on the same level as all the other options out there, then that's nice.

But the Bible is teaching something very different.

It's saying that there really is only 1 way.

And if you want to be there in eternity, That's the way.

God created reality to be based on love and truth and compassion, all these things.

And when we step into that by faith, when we make that choice to be on that side of God, then we are stepping into that experience that God has for us.

And so there is, but this is about life and death.

So it's a decision you make, not just, oh, I want this alternative lifestyle.

No, it's a decision to choose life, the only way of life that is lasting.

And sadly, and this is what the scripture is also telling us from today is that when you don't choose that, there is going to be an end to life.

So essentially, you know, what God is saying in I think what you're alluding to is Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life.

This is not something that Jesus just comes up with when He was born on this earth.

This has been the foundation of the government of God.

And so, He's essentially saying from the very, very beginning, it's my way or no way, no other way works except my way.

Now, Satan says, that's kind of a very proud thing to say, like your way or no way.

03 The Everlasting Gospel

My name is Justin and you're here on Inverse, whether you're by video or for a podcast, we want to welcome each 1 of you.

In the studio, we have Callie and Siku on that side of the table, and we have Jonathan and Justin on this side of the table.

Yeah, and this is gonna be an interesting episode to see, you know, men versus women.

So let's go to Revelation chapter 14, verse 6.

And we're looking at the 3 angels' messages.

We've looked at it for 2 weeks now and if you want to catch up where we are at, you want to go to inversebible.org and you'll want to look up the 3 Cosmic Messages Bible Study Guide.

But also you can watch the videos at hopetv.org slash universe.

And you can also look, we watch the videos there.

For a podcast, you can go to any of your preferred podcast provider and you can get the episodes there.

And then see if you can pray for us and we'll get into Revelation chapter 14, verse 6.

Loving Father, we thank you that we can come to the study of your word and we pray that the Holy Spirit would be our teacher now.

Open our minds to comprehend truths from your word and give us inspiration for how we can apply these truths to our lives so that it just does not remain as a mental exercise, but that we can actuate and live out the truths that we are learning.

Revelation 14.6 says, then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven having the Everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth to every nation tribe tongue and people Yeah I'm just kidding do 7 to Saying with a loud voice fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment has come.

And worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.

Okay, we're going to spend a lot of time on this episode and the next episode, subsequent episodes on Revelation 14.

But here, we're just setting up the discussion.

The word gospel is 1 of those words that you get super excited about or super not like at the same time, Just because like, oh, do you guys have that?

Like, it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.

It's gospel music that we're talking about.

Yeah, but it's just kind of like it's 1 of those churchy words that when you hear, you're just like, oh.

And so many people, as you said, have so many definitions of it.

It could be like, I love grilled cheese sandwiches.

It's also used in so many hyperboles that it loses its power.

At the same time, it's so core to Christianity.

It's so core to the Last day eschatology, last day movement, Adventism, Protestantism, theology that you can't get away from it.

So without getting into text, like how do you guys have a similar thought and how have you overcome?

Callie, what's your take on this gospel thing?

I don't even know which question in there to answer.

So I would say, yes, there have definitely been times in my life, And even now, I would say when somebody's talking about the gospel, how I react to it depends on the person who's saying it, the context in which they're saying it, and my understanding of what they mean by it when they say the gospel.

Because honestly, there are certain people who, they seem bored when they're talking about the gospel.

And I'm like, well, now I'm bored, because you're bored.

And there's other people who are super hype about the gospel.

I'm like, well, now I'm excited about the gospel, because I'm very excited.

So, because sometimes people will talk about the gospel and they'll talk about it kind of like you just did in your introduction, but not sarcastically.

They're like, yeah, we already know about the gospel.

Let's talk about the real important things.

I'm like, well, I felt like that was important.

Or the other people were just like, man, like Jesus loves us and this is what he did for us, this is the gospel, and that is their passion, and so it's a more passionate topic.

And so depending on how that's shared, honestly is a lot of times how I respond to it.

Gospel is just really in brief, means good news, good news of what?

We were sinners, Jesus has saved us from sin and now we in Christ, we can, we actually talked last week, have victory over sin and become like God as a result.

I was just gonna say that, just maybe even going back another episode, that it's predicated on there's bad news, right?

The bad news is, you know, we're fallen, that there was a war in heaven, and that lays the foundation for the good news.

Series

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

09 A City Called Confusion

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

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Recorded

InVerse, 4th Quarter 2023: Adventist Heritage

12 The Final Message

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

10 Satan’s Final Deceptions

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

05 The Good News of the Judgment

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

04 Fear God and Give Glory to Him

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

11 The Seal of God and the Mark of the Beast: Part 1

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

08 The Sabbath and the End

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

11 The Seal of God and the Mark of the Beast: Part 1

29m

InVerse 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

01 The Author of Evil

28m

InVerse 2nd Quarter 2025: Back to the Altar

12 The Altar and the Three Angels’ Messages

29m

InVerse 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

10 The Keepers of the Flame

29m

InVerse 2nd Quarter 2025: Back to the Altar

01 A Relationship Breaks

29m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

13 Ablaze With God’s Glory

29m

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