The Only Revelation of Jesus Christ

I am preparing a lesson for our Connect Groups this Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. Our lesson this week is based on the book of Revelation, chapter 1. This is not a complicated book if you pay attention to the extremely important details. Understanding the layout of the entire book helps clarify the message. The layout of the book of Revelation is found in chapter 1 and verse 19.

The Prince of Peace reigns

This week during our Connect Groups, we are going to take a look at the first advent of the Messiah. This is our Christmas lesson since Christmas is just around the corner. Christmas is an annual holiday, a tradition that has been passed down from one generation to the next. The tradition is the celebration of the birth of the Promised Messiah. Celebrating the birth of the Messiah has its roots in Genesis chapters 3 and 4. God promised that a male child would be born and He would crush sin and rescue people from their sins. The first celebration of the birth of the Messiah took place in Genesis 4. Eve believed that her firstborn son, Cain, was the promised male child. She was correct in expecting his birth but she was wrong in the timing. This is the first time we see people seeking to celebrate the birth of the Promised Messiah. That happened roughly 4,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. For us today, it was about 6,000 years ago. During a 4,000 year period, people placed their faith in the Promised Messiah. The people were looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, the birth of the Messiah. Now, we look back on the fact that the Messiah has come. It has been about 2,000 years since this event. Christians have been celebrating the birth of Christ for almost 2,000 years. The idea of celebrating the birth of the Promised Messiah has been around, as I mentioned earlier, for almost 6,000 years in human history.

The Church and the End Times

This week during our Connect Groups at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are going to study two chapters of the Apostle Paul’s first epistle to the church in Thessalonica. Of the subjects covered in this letter, the Apostle Paul attributes much ink to the subject of the end times. The reason that he does so is because false doctrine had wormed its way into the church and had begun to upset the faith of the believers. In Acts 17, we read the story of how the Gospel comes to Thessalonica. The Apostle Paul was on a missionary journey. He visited Philippi and as a result, a church plant was formed from him making disciples. After leaving Philippi, Paul and the team traveled to Thessalonica. While there, Paul and the team began to visit the synagogue and teach the Word of God. Some of the Jews accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. Also, many Greeks accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. The team had a total of three weeks to train these new believers. Paul wanted to stay longer but was forced to flee the city because of persecution. According to II Thessalonians 2:1-12, Paul taught much about the end times during his three week stay.

The New Jerusalem

I am writing this article after teaching this past weekend at Hoffmantown Kids. I usually write before I teach, in order to think through the subject and be better prepared to share the lesson. Last week, I taught on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. This lesson is about the New Jerusalem that God is going to bring down from heaven to the new earth. The question is, “why is there a need for a new earth and a new Jerusalem”? I am so glad that you asked that question because I want to answer it in this article. There are 5 aspects that we need to focus on in order to understand the new Jerusalem.

Striving to live a disciplined life

It has been a lot of fun teaching through II Thessalonians. I have taught this book many times and, each time I teach through it, I learn new things about God and new things about myself.

If you have been following this series, you are aware of the previous lessons and what they teach. If you have not been following the series, take a moment to play a little catch up by reading the following articles.

1. The importance of communication
2. Genuine faith endures persecution
3. Concerning the Day of the Lord
4. The Church and the Day of the Lord 
5. Praying for your disciples

The previous lesson focused on prayer, specifically, praying for your disciples, that they would grow in their knowledge of the Word of God, that they would grow in their faith, that they would grow in their love, and that they would continue making more disciples. 

The Church and the Day of the Lord

I am preparing to teach the next lesson in the study of II Thessalonians and we are going to examine the relationship of the church to the Day of the Lord. This is teaching number 4 in the series.

• The importance of communication
• Genuine faith endures persecution
• Concerning the Day of the Lord

We have seen that it is very important for the followers of Jesus Christ to remain excellent students of the Scriptures so that we will not have our faith shaken by false teachings or by false teachers. Paul is writing to the Thessalonians to encourage them and to get them back on track so that they can remain faithful to the Lord, serving Him by preaching the Gospel in the midst of persecution and suffering. One of the areas in which the Thessalonians had been led astray was in the area of the Day of the Lord. There are many people today who are confused when it comes to the rapture, the Day of the Lord, and the Coming of the Lord. These are three distinct events yet often lead to great confusion for people who attend church or read the Bible. We fully covered the idea of the rapture in the last lesson so I will not get into explaining it in this lesson.

Concerning the Day of the Lord

I am preparing to teach the next lesson in our study of II Thessalonians. Previously, we have looked at the importance of communication from the Apostle Paul’s example in his second letter to the Thessalonian church. After that, we looked at how genuine faith endures persecution because of preaching the Gospel. This lesson deals with the coming of the Day of the Lord. This was part of the reason Paul had to write to the Thessalonians. Paul planted the church in Thessalonica when he was there with Timothy and Silas. He spent time teaching the new believers the Scriptures so that they could know God’s plan for the ages. Part of that teaching dealt with the coming of the Day of the Lord. After Paul left, he wrote his first letter to them to teach more concerning God’s plan for the ages. You can read about that in I Thessalonians. In between the first letter and the second one that he wrote to them, false teachers began to mislead people concerning God’s plan for the ages. There was a series of teachings and letters that taught that the Day of the Lord had already come and the Thessalonians had missed it. It shook the faith of some and they lost hope. They did not see a point in continuing to live out and spread the Gospel. Before Paul’s first letter, the Thessalonians were great about proclaiming the Gospel. They had filled Asia Minor with the Gospel and Paul praises them for it in his first letter. That had stopped because of the false teaching and shaken faith caused by the false teachings. This is where we pick up chapter 2 of II Thessalonians. Paul gives evidence that the Day of the Lord has not taken place yet because of some events that MUST take place first.