Revelation 11:15-19
15 Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!"
16 And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God,
17 saying:
"We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty,
The One who is and who was and who is to come,
Because You have taken Your great power and reigned.
18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come,
And the time of the dead, that they should be judged,
And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great,
And should destroy those who destroy the earth."
19 Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.
Revelation 11:15-19 is about the Sovereignty of God. This should be clear as we look at the meaning of:
"The kingdom of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!"
My first thoughts on how to explain this passage had me developing the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God. The meaning of “sovereignty” is found in the word itself: “reign”. If a person reigns, they rule.
For the purpose of this message I will accept that you have been sufficiently instructed on the sovereignty of God. There are several excellent books on the Sovereignty of God that I recommend that you study. There are two books that are exceptionally good.
The first one is The Sovereignty of God by Arthur W. Pink and next one is The Doctrine of God by Gerald Bray. An honest study of these two books should settle in your mind and heart about who God is. And I must add that the God preached in most Baptist churches today does not resemble the God of the Bible.
The modern and popular “God” has yielded His sovereignty to man’s so-called “free will” and by that system God is powerless to save anyone unless He [God] is given permission.
Instead of spending much time on the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God, I believe this great truth can be summed up in a few simple and yet profound statements.
God is the Triune God, one God in three co-equal and co-eternal Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and there are no other gods. Pluralism is a grand lie of the devil.
God is not learning anything. God is not surprised by anything.
God does not change.
Nothing happens apart from God’s control.
Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, the eternal Word become flesh.
If anyone is saved [justified] it will be by God’s sovereign choice made by before the foundation of the world, with absolutely no contribution being made from the one who is saved.
God the Father gave those who were sovereignly chosen to God the Son before the foundation of the world.
The Son of God, the Word made flesh, came into the world and earned perfect righteousness under the Law of God and He was approved by God the Father by His resurrection from the dead after being in the grave for three days and three nights.
Those chosen, the elect of God, will be found by God the Holy Spirit and they will hear the Gospel and they will repent and believe the Gospel and they will be saved [justified].
And the sovereignty of God assures us that those chosen, called, and justified will finally be glorified.
And all man does is receive the gift from God’s grace after he is made alive from his being dead in trespasses and sin!
In Revelation 11:1-14 the mighty angel, who is Christ, commands John to:
“Rise up and measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there.”
The “temple of God” to be measured by John is not a literal stone structure to be built out yonder in the future but it is the Church of the living God that is called the “temple of God” by Peter and Paul. The Church is made up of all of the redeemed of God throughout human history.
John is told not to measure the court outside the temple because they are the hypocrites who claim to believe in Christ but they are deceived and thus they are not to be measured with the true Church.
Two witnesses are given the power to prophecy and they are identified as the Law and the Prophets. The “Law and the Prophets” is NT shorthand for the OT Scriptures. The two prophets are symbolized by Moses and Elijah.
It was Elijah who was given the power to shut up heaven for 42 months and it was Moses who was given the power to turn the waters into blood.
But we do not have a resurrected Moses and Elijah, rather it is the spirit of the “Law and the Prophets” i.e. all of the OT Scriptures that Paul says was “the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures”.
The OT Scriptures pointed only to Christ and the Gospel. The full scope of the Gospel was not revealed to the OT saints, i.e. they did not know all that the NT reveals about Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ, but the Gospel was nonetheless revealed in the OT Scriptures. The Holy Spirit worked on the souls of men in the OT with the promise that the Christ would come. If that is not so then no one could have been justified until the NT was written.
But you must know that there is only one Gospel and the Apostle Paul tells us that it was this same and only Gospel that Abraham believed and was thereby justified.
Have you understood this critical truth; that the Gospel is not an NT innovation; a “Plan B” that God had to devise because His original plan for the Jews was rejected? Now if you think that is preposterous just read what some commentaries say; they teach exactly that: that God’s plan failed! What an anemic view of God!
Paul in his great theological treatise to the church at Rome wrote:
Romans 1:1-3
1 Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God
2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, ….
Paul not only opened the Book of Romans with the truth that the Gospel comes directly from the OT Scriptures, but he closed the letter with the same truth.
Romans 16:25-27
25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began
26 but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith —
27 to God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.
And sisters and brothers the mystery kept secret since the world began was not that there would be the church [God’s so-called “Plan B”] but that the Church would be made up of Gentiles and Jews. The mystery was the make up of the Church not the fact that there would be the Church.
In human terms, Gentiles [non-Jews] have been in the heart of God longer than the Jews. Was anyone justified before there were Jews? Was Abel a Jew? Abraham was the first Hebrew but Abraham was justified before he became a Jew.
After the Lord Jesus had arisen from the dead He admonished some believers for not understanding what the OT Scriptures had always taught.
Luke 24:25-27
25 Then He said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!
26 Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?"
27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
Dr. Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School, said that Paul ran a pretty good New Testament church without a New Testament.
So it is the spirit of Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, the OT Scriptures that is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, symbolized by the two olive trees and the two lampstands taken from Zechariah 4.
Zechariah 4:6
'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' Says the LORD of hosts.
By My Spirit – Holy Spirit conviction of sin and guilt and the gift of the new birth.
Let me offer a correction in case anyone detected my mistake in the last message.
What I should have said:
Zechariah sees one lampstand and John sees two because since Zechariah’s time an important change has taken place in the status of the Church. The Kingdom of God has come, the OT Church has now been fulfilled in the NT Church and what stood for the Old and the New in Zechariah’s day are now seen as the two, the twelve and the twelve.
There will be times when it will seem that the Law and the Prophets, the Gospel will have been killed. And the enemies of Christ and His Church will rejoice. But after a time the breath of life from God will cause the two witnesses to stand on their feet and the Gospel continues until the end of this present age.
Behold the third woe is coming quickly. [11:14]
The third woe comes quickly but that does not mean that it will be over quickly.
The Book of Revelation is presented in seven dramas or sweeps through History.
The first drama is in chapters 1-3 where Christ speaks to the “seven churches that are in Asia” and the messages are not only to those seven local churches but are for the Church until the end of time.
The second drama is in chapters 4-7 and presents a vision of the throne of God and the scroll sealed with seven seals that only the Lamb of God was worthy to open.
The third drama is in chapters 8-11 and comes to the end of the third sweep of history which reveals the seven trumpets that sound throughout history and it is now the end of the world.
Chapter 11:15-19 is the end of the world but there is more prophecy yet to be revealed and the fourth sweep chapters 12-14 begins with the birth of Christ.
Now let’s see what is revealed as the seventh angel sounds the seventh trumpet.
15 Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!"
We are told in 10:7 that:
… but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.
There will be a “day” when the mystery of God will be finished.
What do you know about why God permitted evil to enter the world?
Why does God do something “this way” instead of “that way”?
If you want to be humbled go to the Book of Job, who was a servant and a prophet, and see if you can answer all the questions that God asked Job. In Job 38 and 39 God asked Job 48 questions that no one can answer. The mystery of God!
There is an interesting verse in Romans 2:16:
“… in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ,
according to my gospel.”
This verse can be translated: “All this will become clear when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.”
At the end of the world, the mystery of God will be finished and all this will become clear.
“There were loud [great] voices in heaven.” The expression is common in the Book of Revelation. In the first chapter Christ announces Himself with ‘a loud [great] voice as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last ….’ (Chapter 1:10-11).
In chapter 4, verse 1, John is summoned up to heaven, in the spirit, by a voice ‘as of a trumpet talking with me.’
In chapter 5:2, a ‘strong angel proclaims with a loud voice.’
At the opening of the First Seal in chapter 6, one of the Four Cherubim speaks with ‘the noise of thunder’.
The sealing of the elect in chapter 7 is introduced by an angel who cries ‘with a loud voice’ (v.2). In the same chapter, v.10, the multitude of the redeemed cry with a loud voice ascribing salvation to Him who sits on the throne.
The trumpet judgments are introduced (chapter 8, v.5) with ‘voices, thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake.’ In the same chapter (v.13) the three Woe Trumpets are introduced with a loud voice.
The ‘Mighty Angel’ of chapter 10 cries with a loud voice ‘as when a lion roars’ and at his cry seven thunders roll.
[See also 12:13; 14:2; 14:7, 9, 15, 18; 16:1; 16:18; 18:2; 19:1, 6, 17; 21:3]
There is some disagreement about the correct translation of verse 15.
"The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!"
The second occurrence of “kingdoms” should be in italics indicating that the word is not in the original but the translators thought it would make the passage clearer. In this instance I believe they added confusion.
Without the italicised words the reading would be:
“The kingdoms of this world are become our Lord’s and of his Christ.”
Also, the plural word ‘kingdoms’ is challenged by many who prefer the singular ‘kingdom’. There is not much at stake either way. What the verse is saying is that the total power or dominion or this world has passed into the hands of Christ in accordance with the decree of the Father in the fundamental prophecy of Psalm 110, “Sit thou at my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool.” CDA
Charles Alexander has the correct meaning of “kingdom (s)” but Edward A. McDowell, in his helpful book, The Meaning of the Message of the Book of Revelation, informs us that the reason the translators made the Greek word basileia to be the English plural word “kingdoms” is due to a lack of understanding of what the word conveys. On page 118 he writes:
“The English word ‘kingdom’ conveys the idea of territory or of a political entity. It is unfortunate that this connotation of the word has dominated the efforts of those who have sought to interpret the meaning of ‘kingdom’ and of the kingdom of God in the New Testament. It is true that the Greek term basileia also has the connotation of ‘territory’ and it may mean a political entity ruled by a king. But there is another meaning that the Greek word has, and that meaning is ‘sovereignty’ or ‘rule’. Unfortunately the English word ‘kingdom’ does not carry over this meaning; hence it is incapable of correctly representing the idea that is most prominent in the word in the New Testament. That is the idea of sovereignty or rule (and it may be added ‘dominion’) is the most common meaning of the word in the New Testament, is plainly evident to any person who will take the time to study its usage. It will be found that this is the meaning of the word when it is used so frequently by Jesus in the terms ‘kingdom of God’ and ‘kingdom of heaven’. The kingdom of God is the rule or the dominion of God. And here in the great proclamation that is revealed when the seventh angel sounds his trumpet, the meaning of the word is most certainly sovereignty or rule. ‘The kingdom of the world’ means ‘the rule or sovereignty over the world.’ ”
Without controversy “kingdom” verse 15 means the sovereignty of God.
There remains a question of when? “The kingdom of the world has become…”
It is “verily, verily” that God has always been sovereign over His creation.
But there was a point in space-time-history that all power [authority] was given to the Son.
John 17:1-2
1 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,
2 as You have given Him authority [power] over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.
The Second Psalm is also fundamental to the understanding of this verse in Revelation 11:15.
Psalm 2
1 Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying,
3 "Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us."
4 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The LORD shall hold them in derision.
5 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, And distress them in His deep displeasure: 6 "Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion."
7 "I will declare the decree: The LORD has said to Me, 'You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You The nations for Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth for Your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel.'"
10 Now therefore, be wise, O kings; Be instructed, you judges of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear, And rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, And you perish in the way, When His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.
And we have the grand presentation of Christ in Colossians 1:15-19
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
Passages like these make me tremble when I hear Jesus Christ being reduced to a beggar who can’t save a man without man’s permission.
The Worship of God
16 And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, …
The Church is again brought into the scene in the figure of the twenty-four elders, whom we first encountered in Rev. 4:4. The twelve tribes of Israel represent the Church in the OT, and the twelve apostles, represent the Church in the NT.
The twelve and the twelve: the OT and the NT.
The Church worships the only true God. True worship is thanksgiving because no matter what this life brings to us it is that we are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb that is foremost in our thoughts. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.
16 And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God,
17 saying: "We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, The One who is and who was and who is to come, Because You have taken Your great power and reigned.
It is tragic that in our day so many sincere church-goers have believed the original lie of Eden that God is not truly sovereign. They demonstrate that belief by saying such trivial things as, “God will save you IF YOU will [fill in the blank].”
But if your God is not absolutely sovereign then He is not God at all and you better find out who is God!
“The eternal nature of God is expressed in the words, “Who is, who was, and who is to come.” We are not to understand this in terms of past, present and future, for God has no ‘history’ as we understand it. God lives in the eternal, ever-present moment, and the phrase quoted tells us that what He is He ever was and always shall be, but not in our terms of time. He is what He is, and what He has determined Himself to be. He wills His own Being and determines His own perfect will. He has neither priority nor consequence. Nothing can be added to Him or taken from Him. He is not in time, but time is in Him. He is not in heaven, but heaven is in Him. He is complete in Himself, in the ineffable mystery of Three Persons. He is ever Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in an order of Godhead, though not an order of time. The Son is Eternally Son without beginning, yet of the Father in filial order. The Holy Spirit is eternally the Spirit of the Father and the Son, ever proceeding, but never beginning. The Godhead is an eternal, never beginning, never ending, communion of holy and perfect LOVE.” CDA
The Wrath of God
18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come,
And the time of the dead, that they should be judged,
And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great,
And should destroy those who destroy the earth."
The tense changes – the nations were angry…
The Church, now secure in heaven, looks back and remembers the anger and envies that the world poured out in her long period of trial and persecution.
Now there is abject silence as every tongue is mute and the sense of guilt overwhelms the lost. This is the wrath of God and is the only reality for the wicked at the judgment.
The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
24 "Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.' (Luke 16:22-24)
THE TONGUE AND THE WATER
The rich man in hell (Luke 16:19-31), whose riches were his own self-sufficiency without God, longed for a drop of cooling water on his tongue, from the hand of Lazarus, the destitute whom in life he had despised. The account enshrines the real principle which creates hell out of itself. The tongue is that little member of which
James speaks, that it is in itself ‘a world of iniquity’. It sets on fire the whole course … of nature, and its fire is the fire of hell (see James 3:1-6). The fire of which this man complained (“I am tormented in this flame”) was therefore a fire kindled by the tongue which he had only used for pride, boasting and insolence, and never for blessing and worship. That fire is a conflagration which finds its never-ending fuel in the conscience - a flame beyond all comparison to be dreaded, which parches the soul which has set itself up to be the centre of its own world, to draw all things to itself. CDA
“Your wrath has come.” God’s anger is not an emotion. There never is nor can be any disturbance of the divine peace. The divine nature is not subject to change or the play of emotions. God is one simple thing - a Unity of Eternal, Unchanging LOVE. How then can it be said of Him, “Thy wrath is come”?
God’s wrath is His righteous judgment in the upholding of those inevitable and holy principles of His own glorious Being, without which creation would become amoral waste in which nothing could live. Joy and peace and love would cease to be.
This then is the wrath of God. Here is no storm of disturbed emotion. No gales of passion ever trouble the surface of that measureless sea. No angry waves toss and rage. Unutterable peace reigns in that great heart which beats only in the measures of eternal love: that love which unites in the eternal blessedness of the Three Persons, without whose tender relationship deity had become nonentity. Anger is impossible there - anger as we know it. In accommodation to our feeble understanding we are permitted to speak of the divine wrath. The Lord Himself uses the expression in His Word, but always with the caution that we must not regard our God as being such an one as ourselves. His anger is not our anger. We may say it is the streaming forth of His righteousness impinging upon the selfish resistance of a carnal, unsubmissive heart, to which peace and truth would be hell itself.
God cannot be angry as we are angry, because He who determines His own existence and all the conditions thereof cannot be taken by surprise with unknown, unanticipated events arising to vary His procedures and lead Him into paths not foreseen. All things are present to Him with whom there is neither past nor future. In the light of His perfect knowing, He has determined the outcome of all things. Events always foreseen and ever present with Him, can create no surprise or disturbance in those unfathomable depths of God. Our anger and wrath may rise because of opposition, self-will, or an outraged sense of justice or grievance. He who bore all injustice, and all the consequences of the sin of man - the hatred, the mocking scorn, and mockery of those whom He came to save, and cried “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” - knows the end from the beginning, and has perfectly planned all that shall be, yet without taint of evil or of constraint. The purity of His Being and the singleness of His glorious wisdom, cannot be soiled with any taint of our emotions of anger and arbitrariness. CDA
And the time of the dead, that they should be judged,
And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great,
And should destroy those who destroy the earth."
It should be fairly noted that it is all of the dead, not some of the dead. The righteous dead and the unrighteous dead are judged.
The Church is defined perfectly as “those who fear Your name, small and great.”
The best man or woman that ever drew a breath is as deserving of hell as the vilest of men. If you don’t agree with that you have a wrong view of grace. You would be thinking that there might be a person, perhaps even you, that doesn’t deserve to go to hell. Hell will be full of men and women that did not see themselves as “all that bad” – not good enough for heaven, but not bad enough for hell.
OT and NT, prophets and saints, small and great.
The true church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Ephesians 2:20). Let us look for those who believe and worship on that foundation, for there is the church. Luther is said to have observed, “Where the Word of God is preached, there is the church”. CDA
There is not enough time to finish this message so I will stop here and if God so wills I will continue next time I have the opportunity to deal with
18 … And should destroy those who destroy the earth."
19 Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.
Amen
Sola Scriptura 
