בשל נגיף הקורונה ושיבושים בשירות הדואר הבינלאומי
השענו זמנית את שירות הספרים החינמיים המודפסים שלנו.
השענו זמנית את שירות הספרים החינמיים המודפסים שלנו.
עקב מצב זה איננו יכולים לשלוח לך את הספרים כרגע.
אנא התפלל שמגפה זו תסתיים בקרוב ושירות הדואר יחודש.
אנא התפלל שמגפה זו תסתיים בקרוב ושירות הדואר יחודש.
Subject 10 : The Revelation (Commentaries on the Revelation)
[Chapter 2-7] The Followers of the Doctrine of the Nicolaitans (Revelation 2:12-17)
The Way of Balaam
It is said here that among the seven churches in Asia, the Church of Pergamos had some members who followed the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. These people were consumed only by their desire to build up their own worldly wealth and fame, and had no interest in saving souls. Ministers in particularly must be very careful so as not to end up following this doctrine of Balaam. Balaam made the saints worship the world and led them to their destruction.
God gave us His Word of promise that to those who overcome, He will give the hidden manna and a white stone. Put differently, this also means that the pastors who pursue the world will end up losing their manna. The manna here means “the exquisite Word of God,” and losing the hidden manna means losing the will of God that is hidden in His Word.
When the born-again servants of God pursue the world, they come to lose the sight of His Word. This is a fearful prospect. I am fearful of this possibility, and you, too, should fear it. God tells us that to those who overcome He would give the hidden manna and a white stone, but those who lose to the world by compromising with it and surrendering to its worldly fame or pleasure will not be given this manna.
The Bible tells us, “And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.” How true is the Word of God! Those who love the secular world are those who have not been saved from their sins by not believing in the baptism of Jesus Christ and His blood on the Cross. These people do not know the truth that Christ has forgiven all their sins with His baptism.
Some people’s faith in Jesus remains only on a theoretical plane. They think that Jesus took away their sins, and therefore they have been made righteous, but their faith is empty because there is no Holy Spirit in their hearts. This is a theoretical faith. If one has really received redemption, he/she must fight and overcome the things of the world—the worldly fame, honor, wealth, or power. Overcoming the world means holding onto the Word of God that has allowed us to be born again, fighting against those who pursue the wealth and honor of this world, and keeping the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
God tells us that He would write into the Book of Life the names of those who have been redeemed, and in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells. As the Bible tells us, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17), those who have been born again and who has the Holy Spirit dwelling in their hearts know that they no longer are what they used to be before. They realize themselves that their old selves have now become new creations by believing in the water and the blood of Jesus Christ. With their faith they know that their names are written in the Book of Life. This is how they can see the hidden manna of God, and this is how such servants and saints of God can hear God’s Word of truth, the exquisite voice of God.
Manna was given to the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert for forty years before reaching the promised land of Canaan. According to the Bible’s description, manna was like white coriander seed, round and small. When the Israelites woke up in the morning, the surface of their surroundings was covered by manna, as if it had snowed overnight. The Israelites then gathered manna and ate them in the morning. This was their daily bread. Perhaps they fried it, perhaps they boiled it, or perhaps they baked it; regardless, this was the staple of the Israelites during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
Because manna was small like coriander seed, one could not be filled by just having a single manna. But God gave them enough manna overnight so that the need of every Israelite was met for the day—no less and no more than a day, for manna could not be stored. But on the sixth day, God gave them enough manna to last for two days, so that the Israelites would not have to gather manna on the Sabbath day.
The Bread of Life
The Word of God is our manna, our bread of life. In the Word of God is found the bread for our souls, the bread of life. It is not that in a particular passage you would find a huge loaf of bread, but that the great will of God is found throughout the Scripture, even in its smallest details.
To the servants and saints of God who did not make compromises with the world, God has given the bread of life. And He continued to give to each and everyone of us this daily bread that meets both our physical and spiritual needs.
Because of this manna, the Israelites never went hungry during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, even though the desert produced nothing eatable for them. Likewise, to those who reject the deeds of the Nicolaitans, God has promised that He would give His hidden manna to eat. To the servants of God who do not pursue such things of the world as wealth and status, God gives His exquisite Word, the Word of Life that allows them to be born again by the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
We must hate and reject the deeds of the Nicolaitans that prevail in today’s Christian communities. We must not follow the faith of those who are not born again, and we must refuse to conform to the world. Though it is the law of God that our flesh pursues the things of the flesh and our spirit pursues the things of the Spirit, we must nevertheless reject the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, hate all the deeds that conform to the world, and instead feed on God’s manna by believing in the Word of truth that God has given us. Recognizing that we have now become righteous and that we now have the Holy Spirit residing in our hearts, we must all live by faith.
The born-again must fight the world. They must fight the Nicolaitans. As you know well yourself, too many of today’s pastors pursue their own wealth and fame, adorn themselves, conform to the world, and try to be successful in worldly ways. We must fight these false prophets.
We, too, have our flesh, and so we also have the desire to pursue secular gains. But those who have the Holy Spirit in them must know that they cannot follow the world in their hearts, that they must deny the things of the world, and that they must live only by faith. If your heart unites with those who follow the world, approves their faith, and pursues the world as they pursue it, you will end up following in the path of Balaam, moving toward your ultimate destruction. This is the path for the destruction of both your flesh and spirit. When you follow the world, you will lose your faith. God said that He would spit such people out of His mouth; these people will no longer eat manna, and will end up losing their faith completely.
The reason why God rebuked the Church of Pergamos was because its members followed the doctrine of Balaam. God rebuked the servant of the Church of Pergamos because he, though a born-again servant whose heart was dwelt by the Holy Spirit, sought to be recognized by the world and ministered his church as if he was a secular person. Not only that, he planted the same mistaken belief among his flock and led them astray. Such a servant is no better than a worldly pastor who is not born again. With this passage, God has issued a clear and strict warning to the kind of the servants of God whose only interest revolves around secular gains and enriching the church coffers: “Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth.”
Faith That Leads You to Destruction
What would happen if man fought against God? You don’t even have to think for a second—surely this would be the quickest way to destruction. By “He who has the sharp two-edged sword,” it means that the Word of God is a double-edged sword. It does not matter who you are; if you are hit by the Word of God, you will surely die. The Word of God is the sword of power that can pierce “even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow” (Hebrews 4:12). And it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, so that people may be clothed in the redemption offered by the water and the blood of Christ Jesus.
There are many who, while believing in Jesus, nevertheless fall into the trap of legalism, and as a result end up being beaten to death by the Law. To avoid this sorry outcome, we must fight and overcome such worldly faith. God’s workers must overcome the false teachings, and they must also make sure that their flocks are not deceived by such lies. Whoever loves the world and falls into its traps will see his/her faith disappear.
Many of today’s churches are described not as churches but as businesses. This is a sad but penetrating description. Why have these churches ended up being treated as businesses? Because today’s churches are too busy to pursue the world, being the first to follow and worship the worldly values. I am not saying, of course, that the born-again have absolutely no desire of the flesh. Even the born-again believers have the lust of the flesh, but this lust is curtailed by their faith. They do not seek the things of the flesh as the unbelievers pursue their carnal desires with all their hearts.
Those who are not born again set their own standards, and live their lives enjoying everything they can within the bounds of these standards. Idolatry and sexual immorality are only natural for them. Even worse, some of them worship the Devil. Could the born-again do any of these things? Of course not! They can never do such things, because the born-again know how filthy and unclean these acts are. Because we who are born again are fundamentally different from those who pursue the glory of the world and every carnal desire of theirs, we must not live our lives obsessing ourselves with the worldly gains, nor can we ever live so.
Those who pursue the deeds of the Nicolaitans are those who pursue only the wealth of this world. There is nothing wrong, of course, in trying to make a living, and even to become rich. But when the sole purpose of your life becomes accumulation, and when you fall into idolatry and end up being driven by your greed, then your faith is sure to be destroyed. Those who minister for money and those who go to church for the wealth of the world are all following the deeds of the Nicolaitans. These people will lose to the world in the end, because although they claim to believe in God, their hearts are yet to be wholly redeemed of all their sins.
Four Kinds of the Field of Heart
The Gospel of Matthew tells us a parable in which Jesus talked about a sower whose seeds fall on four different grounds. The first ground on which the seeds fall is the wayside; the second is stony place; the third is thorny ground; and the fourth is good ground. Let’s take a look at each of them.
The wayside symbolizes a hardened heart. This person hears the Word of God, but because he/she does not quickly take it into the heart, it is snatched away by birds. In other words, because such a person looks only intellectually at the Word of salvation that can allow him/her to be born again by water and the Spirit, the bird (Satan) snatches it away, and his/her faith does not even begin to grow.
What, then, is meant by the stony place? This refers to those who, while receiving the Word with joy, do not endure for long, because they have no root in the shallow ground. Those who receive the seed among the thorns, on the other hand, refer to those whose cares for this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word that they had joyfully received at the beginning.
Lastly, those who receive the seeds on the good ground are those who bear fruits in their hearts by wholly accepting the Word of God and following it.
Which of these grounds represents your heart? If your heart is like the wayside that is completely unprepared to grow the seed of the Word, it will be swept aside or be snatched away by birds, turning the blessing of this Word completely irrelevant to you. We must realize that because we are the seeds of sin, were it not for God’s Word we would have remained irrelevant to Him. If, on the other hand, our hearts like the stony ground, then the seed of the Word would not be able to take its root, and would not survive rainstorms, winds, or draughts. These people need to turn over their fields. Regardless of how joyfully they might have received the Word of God at first, if it cannot grow and withers away at the slightest trouble, then their first acceptance would have no use at all.
We must also overcome the hearts of thorny grounds. We must fight against and cut through the thorns that threaten our lives. If you leave them alone, the thorns will cover us in no time and block us from the sunlight. Cut off from the sun and losing the nutrients of the soil to the thorns, this tree of the Word would then die.
When we face trials and tribulations in our lives, we must boldly overcome them. We must fight the thorns that are blocking our way and covering our faces with all our strength, as if our very lives depended on it. When the money of this world holds us back or when its fame threatens us, we must fight them all and overcome them. Because the worries of the world and its greed are deadly for the soul, we must always conquer them. When we live such a spiritual life of victory, our bodies and souls will prosper, for they will receive the sunlight and nourishment from God.
For the born-again saints and servants of God, there must always be a spiritual battle against the world. We thus must not follow the Nicolaitans. The Nicolaitans were said to have been heavily involved in providing services for the public. But serving the public in the world is not the main role of the church. It would be a huge mistake to think that the main purpose of the church is social service.
Reject Boldly!
God tells us that we are the salt of this world. What does He mean by that? When God tells us that we are the salt of the world, it means that we are needed by the world. The role of the salt is to preach the Word of the water and blood of Christ to the sinners so that they would be delivered from their sins, made into the children of God, and allowed into Heaven. Just as salt is needed to bring out taste, the world needs the born-again righteous as its salt. The born-again righteous, in other words, must preach the Word of the water and the Spirit and guide the people to their redemption. We must fulfill this role of salt and help the souls to be born again. We must turn the sinners into the righteous.
What is the real church of God? The true church of God is where people gather to worship Him; it is where they praise God; and it is where they pray to Him. When temptation comes, the servants of God must be able to resist it. The saints, too, must be able to resist the temptations of the world coming from Satan. The Devil may tempt you, “Forget your faith; I will make you rich! You don’t have to attend a born-again church; come to one of my churches, and I will even make you an elder!” But because Satan is always trying to make the righteous stumble and draw them into his traps, we must always be ready to fight and overcome him so that we can defend our faith until the end.
Those who have false faith often try to tempt the redeemed with material things. They tempt with money and fame. Satan shows us the worldly values and tells us to abandon our faith and God. What we must have in such times is the faith in the Lord that He will meet all our needs, and with this faith we can boldly reject and overcome Satan’s temptations.
The root of blessings is found in God. God is the one who blesses us, both spiritually and physically. Knowing that the Devil is not the one who blesses mankind, we can fight against him. There are also times when we fight against our own desires. When greed and lust begin to surface as we let our hearts be carried away by the current of this world, we must fight against ourselves. It goes without saying that we must battle against the worldly people who seek to sabotage our faith. We are simply fated to fight spiritual battles against all the worldly forces.
Why? Because when a Christian is not engaged in a spiritual battle, this can only mean that his/her faith is dead for all practical purposes. Until the world ends and the judgment day of the righteous and the sinners is over, there will continue to be trickeries to destroy our faith. This is why we must ceaselessly engage in spiritual battles. If we tolerate those who stand against God and seek to destroy our faith, we will end up losing everything, including our lives. Without the strong determination to not permit anything other than our faith to rule us, we will not only lose all our possessions, but we will also be abandoned by God. We must be able to clearly discern who stands with us and who stands against us in order for us to fight and overcome our enemies. While we should be generous to each other, we must be firm in our resolve against our foes—to the point where our enemies cannot even dare to try anything on us.
The Nicolaitans are enemies for us. They are our foes because they are a “synagogue of Satan” whom we can neither tolerate nor work with. We who have been forgiven of our sins must not tolerate the Nicolaitans who engage in idolatry and only seek after material gains, but we must instead devote our lives to serving the Lord and His righteous work of building the Kingdom of God on this earth.
Seek First the Kingdom of God
Jesus told us to “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” admonishing us to do the works of God before the works of our flesh. We who are born again have spiritual desires. These are not the desires of the flesh, but the desires of the Spirit. This is how we can first serve the works of God and His Kingdom. We serve God first, but we also do the works of the flesh. As the Bible tells us, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” We live, in other words, not by our flesh alone, but by both the flesh and the spirit. We must be able to balance between these two. If we follow the deeds of the Nicolaitans thinking that all that matters is our happiness on this earth, we will end up facing our own destruction. This is why we must first seek our spiritual desires.
Some people become rather hostile whenever the topic of Heaven and hell is brought up. They ask, “Have you been to hell? Have you seen it with your own eyes?” But these questions are coming from Satan’s thoughts. Not only are the common people like this, but even most of the pastors who spent years studying theology minister their flocks without having any assurance of Heaven and the knowledge of how to be born again. This is a most unfortunate and deplorable condition, for such ministers who do not have such convictions and are not even born again themselves can never lead those who know nothing of God to be born again. When so many souls are confined to the thoughts of Satan and stand against God, what could they possibly learn from the pastors who neither believe in Heaven nor are convinced of their own salvation?
By “where Satan’s throne is,” it is meant that Satan now reigns over the whole world. This is the kind of age in which we live, the kind of era when the world is full of the Nicolaitans who light up the night skies with their neon crosses and run their churches as if they are running a business. God has told us that these are not His churches, but the “synagogues of Satan.” Today’s world is now full of countless people who, trapped by the thoughts of Satan and seeking after the greed of this world, pretend to minister, attend church, and call upon the name of the Lord; however, the rebirth of their souls and their hope for Heaven have disappeared long ago. This is the kind of age in which we now live and serve the Lord.
Spiritual Battle against Those Who Are Not Born Again
We are living here on this earth “where Satan’s throne is.” We must defend our faith by being on guard and bravely facing our enemies when challenged. Until the day of our Lord’s return, we must carefully guard and keep our “white stone”—our faith, that is—by believing in the gospel that has allowed us to be born again by its water and blood.
We must live by eating manna, the Word of God. To do so, we must fight against and overcome the deeds of the Nicolaitans. We must reject them. We must not go near those who seek only money and worldly fame. Though we can tolerate and forgive their weaknesses, we cannot break bread with those who stand against the truth and lust after only money, far less to do the works of God with such people.
Where are the names of those who have been born again by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit recorded? They are written in the Book of Life. What, then, is meant by writing in a new name into this white stone? It means that we have become the children of God. It is also written that no one knows this new name “except him who receives it.” This means that no one but those who are born again by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit knows the salvation of Jesus. Sinners do not know how they can become righteous—that is, only those who receive their new names from Jesus know how their sins were made to disappear.
We must fight against the Nicolaitans; not against someone else, but against the Nicolaitans. The core essence of the passage is that we must struggle against and overcome the Nicolaitans who, though they believe in God and know the Word of truth, still continue to disobey and reject the Word of God and pursue only money, material gains, wealth, and fame for their flesh.
We must also struggle against ourselves. If we cannot follow God because of our vanity or pride, we must fight against such hearts. And we must also engage in a spiritual struggle against those who claim to believe in Jesus without having been born again.
Despite the fact that we have come far short of His glory, the Lord has saved us by His water and blood. We must defend our faith by believing in this Word and live our lives as the servants of God, giving thanks to Him for the perfect salvation that He has given us. We must first seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Let us all become those who overcome by fighting to the end in faith.
Those Who Overcome Shall Be Given Manna
The biggest case of disappearance in human history will be the rapture that is to come. At the same time, the second coming of Jesus is the issue that draws the most interest from all those who believe in Christ. Some people think, “There will be a massive disappearance of people as the saints are raptured; as people from all walks of life disappear, from pilots to train conductors to cab drivers, the world will be inundated with all kinds of accidents and disasters, with planes crashing down from the sky, trains derailing, and highways becoming littered with traffic accidents.” A book that based its story along these lines, titled Rapture, used to be a bestseller in the past. These people believed that the saints would disappear into thin air when they are raptured. Thus, not only did they repent and prepare their faith for the day of their rapture, but some of them even quit their schools and jobs, a not-so-laughable phenomenon.
Not too long ago, a denomination that embraced the doctrine of pre-tribulation rapture had its congregations give up their possessions to the church and only wait for the day of rapture that its leaders had prophesized. Of course, the day that they had prophesized and so eagerly waited for ended just like every other day—all that wait for nothing! Everything that they had so sincerely believed in and waited for was proven to have been just a lie.
But some of them indomitably declared another day in 1999 as their day of rapture, and waited and waited. However, as before, they were proven to have been all deceived by lies. Their leaders, put to shame for their unfulfilled prophecy, decided to never again set the time of Christ’s return. We can see from these events how the doctrine of pre-tribulation rapture simply does not fit into the Word of God at all.
The most important point in the Book of Revelation is the second coming of Jesus and the rapture of the saints. For all faithful Christians, when Christ would return to the world and lift up His believers into the air is their biggest hope and wait. In fact, it is reasonable for Christians to eagerly wait for the return of Christ in their faith. Whoever truly believes in Jesus must wait for the day of the Lord’s return with great anticipation and eagerness.
It is better to have the kind of faith that waits for the second coming of the Lord and the rapture than the one that does not wait at all. The way which the apocalyptic end-timers veered off from the right path is that they set a specific day and time for their rapture. As the basis of their calculation, many of them misinterpreted the seventy-week prophecy that appears in Daniel 9, as well as Zechariah, and arrived at their own predicted dates.
Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4 that when Christ returns to this earth, the saints will be lifted up into the air to meet Him. It is therefore only proper that those who genuinely believe in Jesus would wait for the day of their rapture. But calculating and setting aside a specific date for the rapture was something deeply wrong, for it was a reflection of their pride that ignored the wisdom of God. It was a great mistake to try to solve and understand the prophesies of the Bible with man-made mathematical formulas.
When, then, would the real rapture happen? Revelation 6 speaks of the rapture of the saints; according to it, during the fourth era of the seven eras of God—that is, the era of the pale horse—there will be the martyrdom of the saints, and after this the rapture will happen in the fifth era. The rapture of the saints is described in detail, and it will indeed become a reality when the time comes.
God has planned seven eras for mankind, the first of which is the era of the white horse. This is the era in which the gospel of the water and the Spirit begins and continues to triumph. The second era is the era of the red horse. This era marks the beginning of the age of Satan. The third era is the era of the black horse, when the world will be struck by both physical and spiritual famine. The fourth era is that of the pale horse. This is the era in which the Antichrist will emerge and the saints will be martyred. The fifth era is when the saints will be resurrected and raptured following their martyrdom. The sixth era entails the complete destruction of the first creation—this world, that is—by God, which will then be followed by the seventh era in which God will open the Millennial Kingdom and the New Heaven and Earth to live with His saints forever. God has thus set these seven distinct eras for all mankind. It is only proper that those who believe in Jesus should know and believe in these seven eras that God has set for them.
In Korea alone, it is estimated that over 100,000 people, at the end of last century, set aside and waited for their own day and time of the second coming of Christ and their rapture. About 12 million Korean are said to be Christians. Among them, about 100,000 waited for the return of Jesus and their rapture. Put differently, these are the hardcore believers who believed in the Word of God as it was written and waited for the return of the Lord—only 100,000 out of 12 million, that is, less than 1 percent.
Their problem, however, was that they did not have a proper understanding of the eras that God has set for them. Without properly understanding the gospel of the water and the Spirit, many of the Early Church Christians made such mistakes of trying to calculate the date of Christ’s return based on their erroneous knowledge of the era of Christ’s second coming and the saints’ rapture. So Paul the Apostle warned them “not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come” (2 Thessalonians 2:2).
Historically speaking, many continued in their ignorance of God’s plan and kept setting wrong dates one after another in vain. I believe that there is a need to correct their mistaken faith. But I have no desire to rebuke them harshly—I only want to correct them. Why? Because their failure was due to their ignorance of the seven eras that God has set for mankind. They miscalculated the date of Jesus’ second coming because they misunderstood and misapplied the numbers that appear in the Bible, seeing them only in human terms.
This mistake has not been confined to the Korean Christians, but has been quite common for the rest of the world. Church leaders from all different parts of this earth, some of them rather famous, have made the same kind of mistake. My heart desires to testify the plan of God to all those who thus have believed in Jesus and waited for the rapture date of their setting, so that they may have a proper, not mistaken, understanding of God’s plan for them. I only hope that they, too, will in fact be given the blessing of being raptured by God.
The true rapture by God will come after the era of the pale horse and the martyrdom of the saints come to pass. When the seven-year period of the Great Tribulation begins in this era of the pale horse, the Antichrist will emerge as the most powerful leader of the world and reign over it.
The Antichrist will begin to persecute the saints when the Great Tribulation begins, accelerating in intensity over the first half of the Great Tribulation—that is, the first three and a half years—until reaching its peak at the midpoint of the seven-year period. This is when the saints will be martyred to defend their faith. And this will be soon followed by the sixth era, when the martyred saints will be resurrected and raptured.
Those who believe in Jesus must know the times well. Depending on whether they believe in pre-tribulation rapture or in mid-tribulation rapture, their lives of faith would turn out quite differently. Whether the believers will wisely wait for their rapture with the proper faith, or make the mistake of focusing their minds on an absurd date of their own choosing—this will all depend on whether they base their faith in the Word of God or not.
If you approach these teachings on the Word of Revelation with calmness, you can actually find out what the reasonable propositions are, and thus be able to correctly resolve all your questions. But if you do not have the right understanding of the rapture and fail to wait for it properly, then your faith will be ruined.
The theory of pre-tribulation rapture was expounded by Scofield, an American theologian, who was the first to systematically establish its doctrinal positions in his Scofield Reference Bible. This Reference Bible was widely translated and used throughout the world. It is because of the impact of Scofield’s Reference Bible that the theory of pre-tribulation rapture came to be diffused so widely. Because the Scofield Reference Bible was written by an influential theologian of a powerful country, the book was translated into many different languages and read by a great number of Christians.
Scofield himself had no idea that his claim of pre-tribulation rapture would become so widespread through the world. The result was the prevalent acceptance of the theory of pre-tribulation rapture by virtually all the Christians of the world. But before Scofield’s theory of pre-tribulation rapture made its appearance, the dominant belief that had prevailed in the Christian world had been the theory of post-tribulation rapture.
The theory of post-tribulation rapture postulates that Christ would return after the end of the seven-year period of the Great Tribulation, and that He would rapture the saints at that time. Many people thus had a great fear of the Tribulation prior to the rapture and the Lord’s second coming. When the revivalists preached from their pulpit about the second coming of Christ, people rushed to repentance, crying and agonizing over their sins, inundating themselves with constant prayers of repentance. So who cried the most often was used as the barometer to measure who was blessed the most. Such people, though they believed in Jesus, shed far too much tears.
But this earlier belief in the post-tribulation rapture was slowly replaced by the pre-tribulation rapture. Why was this case? People found it infinitely more comforting to switch from post-tribulation rapture to pre-tribulation rapture, for this switch meant that they would not face all the trials and tribulations that otherwise they would all have to go through. It is of little surprise that they would prefer to be lifted up to the air before the terrifying hardships of the Great Tribulation descends upon them. In this way, the theory of pre-tribulation rapture spread like a bush fire, for it offered a comfortable faith, much more digestible than the terrifying prospect of going through the sufferings of the Great Tribulation.
Just as people prefer sweets over the plain or the bitter, people also prefer to have it easy when it comes to their faith as well. They like to choose and believe in whatever fits their taste the best among the different theories that the scholars have produced. This is how so many people ended up believing in the theory of pre-tribulation rapture so easily. Those who supported this view of pre-tribulation rapture thought that they had to keep their bodies and hearts immaculately clean to be raptured. And so they were quite fervent in their lives of faith. But a serious fallacy buckled their belief in the pre-tribulation rapture. While their faith in Jesus and their wait for the Lord’s return were all commendable, they nevertheless made two serious and grave mistakes.
First, not having believed in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, they waited for the Lord while they still had sin in their hearts. They only held onto and relied on the blood of the Cross, but no amount of repentance could bring them the absolute remission of their sins that they commit on a daily basis. Yet for day and night, they waited for the second coming of Christ. They gathered together in their churches to repent their sins, to pray and sing praises all night long, united in their wait for the rapture. There was nothing wrong with the fact that they thus waited and longed for their rapture. But they made the grave mistake of waiting without the right faith—that is, they did not believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, the only faith that allows us to stand before God as His children.
The second mistake was that some of them used to proclaim arbitrarily the imminent date of Jesus’ return without any proper understanding of God’s plan. This not only made many believers wait for Him in vain, but it created all kinds of havoc in the society, leaving only bad impressions of Christianity and ruining its reputation among the unbelievers.
Because of these two mistakes, when the rapture that these people so fervently waited for never actually materialized, it only ended up leading many people to think badly of the rapture, pushing them even further away from the truth. Now, when it is actually the right time to talk of the second coming of Christ and when His return is imminent, hardly anyone speaks about it anymore—all thanks to the fiasco of the misguided few. The passage that we are presently discussing was what God wrote to the angel of the Church of Pergamos through John. God commended the Church’s servant and saints for defending their faith to the end with their martyrdom. But God’s commendation for the Church of Pergamos also came with some rebukes, for the Church had among its members those who pursued the world. This is why God told the Church to repent, and why He told it that He would otherwise come quickly and punish it.
We need to pay attention here to what God said through John to all the seven churches in Asia in common: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” This means that God makes sure that He speaks His truth to the saints and the souls through His churches and His servants. Notably, God told to the Church of Pergamos: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.”
Let me emphasize the phrase, “to him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat.” This means that those who truly wait for the Lord must overcome the enemies of God. It means that they must fight against those who follow the world, and that they must set themselves apart from these lovers of the world. Those who follow Balaam are those who follow the false prophets. God tells us that these people only seek after the riches of the world in their sinful greed, calling them the followers of the doctrine of Balaam.
Not every church is a church of God. Many of today’s church leaders accept that Jesus is the Son of God, but they do not believe that He is God. There are many who do not even believe that Jesus Christ created this world.
In addition, many people come to church just so that they can be materially blessed. Too many church leaders tell their congregations that they will be blessed if they give more money to the church. Deceived by such false teachings, many believers actually think that how much offerings they give to the church is a reflection of their faith. Just by giving offerings and attending the church regularly, too many of them are approved as the faithful believers. Moreover, some of them are even given leadership positions within the church, such as deaconship or eldership, just for their regular attendance and services for the church, and cutting out big checks for their offerings. These are all the ways of Balaam, something that we all must break away from.
We must fight against such faith. If you really want to be fed the hidden manna, you must first discern whether or not your church is a church that truly follows the Word of God. If it is not, then you must fight and overcome it. Only by doing so can you be fed the truth of the water and the Spirit, the true Word of God.
Only by eating from the Word of the water and the Spirit, the hidden manna, can you be born again, and only by being born again can you continue to feed on the Word of truth given by God. It is in this way that the born-gain can discuss what the Word of God is, feed on it by hearing, seeing, and sharing it in fellowship.
If you sincerely desire to be raptured by God, if you really want to be truly born again, then it is only a foolish thing to continue to attend a church that is a church only in name. By attending a church that does not belong to God, you will never be able to feed on the true Word of life, no matter how long you might have been going to that church—a hundred years, a thousand years, or even more, nothing will put you in the correct path toward your salvation.
Such people not only cannot be born again by faith, but they end up making the foolish mistake of waiting for their rapture without having fulfilled its first requirement—that is, without even having been born again. This kind of faith is simply wrong. No matter how eagerly you wait for the return of Christ, no matter if you really love the Lord in your heart, no matter if you are willing to give up your life for Jesus, all these would be futile. Such people will not meet the Lord. Their love for God will end only as an unrequited love.
This is why God told the seven churches in Asia: “To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat.” God does not tell us that we can have His Word of truth without any struggle. If we do not fight against and overcome the liars, we will never be able to eat His manna, the Word of life. It does not matter how faithfully you might have attended your church; if you do not know the truth, it means that what you have known so far has all been just lies. You must escape from these lies by fighting and overcoming them in your search for the truth. Only when you encounter this truth by finding a church that bears witness to the Word of God and preaches the gospel of the water and the Spirit will you be able to eat the manna of life.
We have nothing that prevents us from accepting into our hearts the Word of the truth of the water and the Spirit. The hearts of those who preach and hear this Word of the water and the Spirit become united, and the Holy Spirit dwells in their hearts all alike.
God has promised us that He will give His hidden manna to those who overcome; as such, we must overcome Satan in our struggle against him, and fight against and win over the liars. If you want eternal life, you must be truly born again; and if you want to be raptured by God, you must have the right faith. You must struggle against and overcome the many liars of this world, as well as the liars found within the Christian world.
Your faith must not be that of indecision, one that continues to vacillate from one side to the other and gets dragged by whatever current that happens to flow at a given time. If your church is not a church that preaches the Word of God as it is, then you must stop attending such a church. Only to those whose hearts love and pursue the truth will God come to meet them through His Word of manna, the Word of the truth of the water and the Spirit.
I was a very good student when I was studying at the seminary. I never missed a class, and my grades were all excellent. I studied diligently and faithfully. And yet there were too many things that I did not know. Because I had been, along with all my family, a Buddhist before I encountered Jesus and believed in Him, my knowledge of Him was very limited at the time. Even more limited was my understanding of the Word, and so I was very anxious to learn about the Scripture. Thirsting after the knowledge of the Word of God, I sought learning from the many professors at the seminary, asking them many questions and hoping that their answers would quench my thirst for the Bible.
None of them, however, ever gave me a clear answer. When I brought my questions to the professors acclaimed for their Scriptural knowledge, they only used to commend me on my own knowledge of the Bible instead of answering my questions. At the seminaries, professors do not preach the Word, but they teach their own “theories” on the Bible. But all their theories, from Old Testament Theology to New Testament Theology, from Systematic Theology to History of Christianity, from Calvinism to Arminianism, from Christology to Pneumatology and from introductory studies to detailed expositions, are only the products of man’s thoughts. They only teach different theories espoused by the scholars, no different from your own college experience of learning different theoretical perspectives in your secular field of study.
I was a person who was ignorant of the Bible. It did not matter how extensive my scholarly training had been, or how many had commented on my wide knowledge of the Bible, or even how I myself had based my sermons on this knowledge—the more I studied the Bible and theology, the more doubts I had about my path. I eventually came to the self-realization that I was a completely ignorant person, and that I had to begin from scratch all over again. So I began to raise what were then considered to be strange and awkward questions in my classes. One of them was this: “Why was Jesus baptized?” I never heard a clear answer for this question. No one was able to give me the correct answer, that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist to take upon all our sins onto His own flesh.
I also had questions about the miracles that Jesus performed, such as the one in which Jesus fed more than five thousand men with only five loaves of bread and two fish. So I asked, “When Jesus blessed the five loaves of bread and two fish, did they just explode in a heap of bread and fish all at once, or did they keep multiplying when the food was distributed to each?” More often than not, I was scolded and reproached for raising such questions.
This is how I came to realize, “So this is what theology is all about. We are just learning what the Frenchman Calvin systematized into a scholarly theory and expositions. We know nothing of the Bible.” So I began to engage myself in extensive research by compiling the publications of the many denominations and comparing them to the Bible. Still, I gained nothing.
They all reached the same conclusion, that when people believe in Jesus, their sins gradually disappear as they are sanctified by their prayers of repentance, and that they become completely sinless at their death and then enter Heaven. Denominational differences didn’t matter—the same bottom line conclusion for all of them was for Christians to pursue prayers of repentance and incremental sanctification, something that had nothing to do with the Word. All these claims departed from what the Word of God had to say. So I knelt before God, and sought and asked for His truth.
This is when God taught me the true gospel of the water and the Spirit. This truth simply marveled me. And when I realized that the truth of the water and the Spirit is found in the whole of the 66 books of the Bible, my blinded eyes were opened and I began to see the Word of the Bible clearly. I was able to find out how the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together, and the Holy Spirit came to dwell in my heart when I found this truth. After seeing and realizing this Word of truth, so many sins that had plagued my heart and had weighed me down so much disappeared completely, in an amazing and wonderful act of God’s love and grace.
As ripples are made when a small stone is thrown into a tranquil lake, a serene joy and light entered my heart. By the light, I mean that I came to realize what the truth of the Word was. At this very moment of recognition, the Holy Spirit entered my heart, and because of the Holy Spirit I came to see the Word of the Bible clearly. From this moment on, I have always been preaching the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
To this very day, the gospel of the water and the Spirit has steadied my heart, comforted and strengthened me, and kept my heart always clean. This is how I came to feed on the Word of God. When I dwelt on the Word, along with my realization of its meaning came the serene blessing that filled my heart, and my heart, in turn, began to swim in this sea of grace. Just as my heart was thus filled by this blessing, when you believe in His Word of born-again salvation, the Word of God will also bring you into His grace and blessing.
When I opened the Bible and dwelt on the Word, all my worries and restless thoughts disappeared, filling my heart with joy and peace instead. I was enabled to always answer what God really meant in His Word whenever asked about the Bible. Only by knowing and believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit can one feed on the Word of God, and only by feeding on the Word of God can one be born again. Because the born-again no longer have sin left in their hearts, regardless of when the Lord returns to this earth, they are all ready for their rapture when the Lord finally lifts them up to the air.
The Faith That Can Lead Us to Rapture
Rapture is what we wait for after we receive our redemption by knowing and believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. And when waiting, we must wait with a clear understanding of the times set by God. The times set by God are the seven eras, and the era for martyrdom among these is the era of the pale horse. The era of the pale horse is the fourth of the seven eras set by God. The era in which we are now living, on the other hand, is the third, the era of the black horse.
When we climb a high mountain, we rely on a map as a guide. But in order to accurately and safely reach our destination by using this map, we must first know what our location is. It does not matter how well-versed you might be in reading the map or how accurate the map itself is—if you do not know where you are, the map is useless. Only when you know your own location can you safely reach your destination.
Likewise, only by being born again through the gospel of the water and the Spirit can you find out when you will be raptured. The biblically accurate timing of the rapture is slightly past the midpoint of the seven-year period of the Great Tribulation—that is, three and a half years into the Tribulation. This is what God planned in Jesus Christ when He first created this universe.
God’s plan of salvation in Jesus Christ, with which He sent His only begotten Son to this earth, had Him baptized and killed on the Cross, and raised Him from the dead, is not the only plan, but He has also set the times for the universe, from its creation to its end, with His seven eras. Even we draw blueprints before building our houses and plan ahead for our businesses—better yet, we even schedule into our organizers what we would do in a day. Would, then, God have created this universe, man, and you and I in Jesus Christ without any plan? Of course not! He created us with a plan!
This plan is clearly revealed in the Word of Revelation. When we open and dwell in this Word, we can find out exactly what God’s plan is. This Word is the truth. Though the Word of God is several thousand years old, it is still the unchanging and unaltered truth, neither added to nor subtracted from. Those who do not know this and have not been born again by water and the Spirit still remain ignorant of the truth revealed to us by the Word of God. But those who dwell in the Word will be able to find and realize all the truth revealed in the Bible.
The passage in which God promises to give His manna to those who overcome means that God will shed light on His Word only to those who can discern the truth from the false and overcome the liars by knowing His Word of truth. Those who have escaped from the lies and found the truth must overcome these lies by preaching this truth. God has promised us that to those who believe in the gospel He will give the blessing of eating His manna: “To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.”
The hidden manna here means the Word of God. The white stone, on the other hand, means that our names will be written in the Book of Life. When people believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit that God has given them, their hearts change. With their hearts filled by the Word of the Holy Spirit, they come to realize that by believing in the Word, all the sins in their hearts have disappeared. Having thus been cleansed by the water and the Spirit, their names are written on the white stone.
God tells us that no one knows this new name except him who receives it. Those who have been forgiven of all their sins must realize that their hearts no longer have any sin left in them, and that their names have been written in the Book of Life. They know, in other words, that the gospel of the water and the Spirit has taken away all the sins of their hearts. Only those who are born again by thus knowing the true Word of the water and the Spirit and received their redemption are able to know the Lord and the truth. Those who are not born again do not realize that they are yet to be born again. But the born-again can easily discern these people, that they are yet to eat the manna of God, and that their names are not written on the white stone.
Do you really want to be raptured? If you want to be raptured, you must be qualified to eat manna. By being qualified to eat manna, I mean that you must be born again by water and the Spirit. To feed on manna, you must also fight against and overcome the lies with your faith. The false teachers do not bring redemption to the sinners, but only exploitation of their souls and material possessions. We must battle against and overcome such false churches, false prophets, and false servants of today’s Christianity.
We must know, based in the Bible, exactly how Jesus has taken away all our sins, why He was baptized, why He took upon the sins of the world, why He died on the Cross, and why He rose from the dead again. We must know accurately why Jesus came to this earth in the flesh and did all these things, and we must know who exactly Jesus is. But the false churches, instead of teaching these truths, call anyone who attends them “a saint” on their own authority. They only ask, “Do you believe in Jesus?” If the answer is, “Yes, we do,” then these false churches immediately call them saints, baptize them in about a year’s time, and then proceed to extract all kinds of offerings from them, from thanks offerings to special offerings to pledge offerings for that shiny, brand new church building. Such churches as these, obsessed only by money and their greed to build a bigger, glittering church building, are all false churches.
When we feed on manna, we must fight against such false churches and those who spread the false teachings. If we lose in our battle, it would mean not only that we no longer are the saints of God, but also that we will not be raptured by Him. Not being the saints of God is the same as not being the children of God; even if Christ were to return for the 100th time, we will never be raptured.
Matthew 25 tells us the parable of the ten brides, five of them wise and five of them foolish. It tells us how foolish were the five brides who carried their lamps but no oil and went out to buy it only after the arrival of the bridegroom was announced. We must be the wise brides who had prepared the oil beforehand. By having the faith of preparing the oil, I mean that we must be qualified to feed on manna before Jesus, overcome the liars, and be born again by the Word of the water and the Spirit.
When we hear a sermon, we must ask ourselves whether or not the pastor is preaching the Word of God. We also need to ask if the church spends its money, as God wants it to—that is, on His works, not on itself. We must find, in other words, the true church of God. Be weary of the churches that pay only lip service to preaching the Word of God and His teachings.
No matter how good they are in their talks and repentance, their deeds will tell you what they really stand for—whether they are more interested in building bigger church buildings than anything else; whether they look after the poor or cater only to the rich; and whether they show any interest in saving souls at all. God has given you your eyes and ears so that you could see and judge for yourself. And when you reach the conclusion that your church is not the right church, then do not hesitate to come out of it at once, for continuing to attend such a false church is akin to trying to get into hell. You might as well throw away your life.
Do you realize how good the gospel of the water and the Spirit is? When you know and accept this truth, the gospel of the water and the Spirit, into your heart, you become a whole new person. Those who had belonged to the earth before now belong to Heaven, and those who had been tormented by the demons now become freed.
The demons can enter and torment the souls of those who have sin in their hearts and are thus chained by their sins. But the Lord came to this earth and took away all our sins with the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Because He has completely taken away our sins, the demons can no longer torment or steal our souls. This is why when you know and believe in this gospel, the demons are cast out and your life is changed.
In other words, those who had been the servants of the world become freed from this servitude. God has done the wondrous work of turning the sinners into the righteous, remaking those who were of the earth into those of Heaven, and, when the Lord returns, He will lift them up to His Kingdom.
Our earthly life is not the end of us. Having made us in His image, God did not put us on this earth to live only briefly. Life in the flesh is in fact very short. By the time we are out of school, we already reach our mid-20s. We spend our 30s trying to establish a base for our lives, and by the time this foundation is ready for us to build on, we are already in our 40s or 50s. When we finally reach the stage where we think to ourselves that we can now slow down a bit and enjoy life, our whole lifetime has already passed by us, and we are faced with its end. As flowers blossom in the morning and wither by the afternoon, just when we think that we finally got a hold of life, we realize that our time has passed by, and that we are only looking at its nearing end.
This is how short life is. But what is even more unfortunate is that there are far too many people who do not even realize this brevity of life. Yet the end of our lives in the flesh is not the end of us, for it is only the beginning of our souls’ spiritual lives. Why? Because God, as if He is compensating us for the shortness of our earth lives, has prepared for us not only the Millennial Kingdom but also the New Heaven and Earth, where we are to live eternally. This is God’s blessing of eternal life that He has bestowed only on those who are born again by believing in the Word of His water and Spirit.
Only when you eat the hidden manna and your name is written on the white stone can you be raptured. God tells us that only those who feed on His manna will be able to overcome Satan during the Great Tribulation, and that the names of only those who thus overcome will be written on the white stone. Those who do not overcome, therefore, should not even dream of being raptured, nor can they dream of being born again.
It takes great sacrifices to attain something valuable and precious. A good example is gold; it takes a great deal of effort, time, and risk to find and extract gold. Many people have died in gold mines before they could even find a piece of nugget. Extracting alluvial gold also takes many toils. Panning a truckload of earth all day long produces only a minute amount of gold. Moreover, this cannot be done in just any river, but you must first find a river that has alluvial gold. It takes, in other words, hard effort to find gold, at times even your life. Why, then, do people try so hard to find gold? They do so because they think gold is that valuable, worth risking their own lives.
What is far more valuable and precious than gold and silver, however, is the fact that we can become the children of God. Gold may bring you some transient happiness for your flesh, but becoming the children of God brings you never-ending, eternal happiness. To be raptured in the end times, to enjoy the wealth, prosperity, and honor of the Millennial Kingdom and the New Heaven and Earth, and to live such a life for eternity, you must now fight all the liars on this earth, believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, and defend your faith and secure your victory.
There are so many lies in this world that are always watching for chances to snatch our hearts, trying to make us lose our faith. Those who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit and have the truth in their hearts know just how precious their faith is. And because they know the preciousness of this faith, they fight against all the false teachings that try to steal it from them. If we realize just how many people yearn after this faith and yet are unable to attain it, and if we realize that only this faith will clothe us to be welcomed to the marriage supper of the Lamb and give us His blessing of eternal life, we must make it completely ours and never let anyone take it away from us. This is the kind of faith that fights and overcomes.
I was convinced of the need to propagate the proper knowledge and understanding of the Word of Revelation—to make sure that you are able to defend the precious gospel of the water and the Spirit—because I knew that many false teachers would try to use the Word of Revelation to deceive and confuse not only the people but also the born-again saints. This is why I am preaching the Word of Revelation through my sermons and books, to ensure that you can live your life of faith with the correct knowledge of and belief in the end times.
The Book of Revelation offers something tremendously important. But the Word of Revelation reveals nothing to those who cannot eat God’s hidden manna and who have no Holy Spirit in their hearts. From the signs of the end times to the rapture, the hope of every Christian, to the New Heaven and Earth, an extraordinary plan is written in the Word of Revelation. But because of the wisdom of God that does not reveal His secrets to just anyone, Revelation remains a difficult text that not everyone can understand. No one but those who have fed on God’s manna and whose names are written on the white stone by being born again by the water and the Spirit and overcoming the lies can understand the Word of Revelation.
This is why, in their ignorance, those who are not born again speak of pre-tribulation rapture or post-tribulation rapture, and why we now even have some people who claim that the Millennial Kingdom is only symbolic. The Word of God is the truth, and it clearly states that the rapture will not happen without the Great Tribulation. It tells us that the rapture will happen slightly past the midpoint of the seven year period of the Great Tribulation—after the martyrdom of the saints, and simultaneous with their resurrection.
Being raptured while going about the usual everyday life—pilots disappearing all of a sudden and mothers disappearing from the dinner tables around the world—will, I am sorry to inform, simply not happen. Rather, the rapture will happen when great disasters fall upon the world, earthquakes ravage through it, stars fall from the sky, and the earth splits open. The rapture, in other words, will not happen on a peaceful day in broad daylight.
Stars have not fallen yet, one-third of the world is yet to be burnt down, and the sea still has not turned into blood. What do I mean by this? I mean that now is not the time for the rapture yet. God tells us that He will give us the signs that we can all recognize before the rapture comes. These signs are the disasters that will fall on this world—one-third of the sea and rivers turning into blood, one-third of the forests burnt down, falling stars, undrinkable water, and so forth.
When the world is thus engulfed in great calamities, the Antichrist will emerge to bring order. First emerging as a remarkable world leader, he will eventually turn into a tyrant who will reign the world with his absolute power. The Bible tells us that it is at this time, when the Antichrist’s tyrannical reign over the world is established, that the Lord will return to the earth to take away His saints. The rapture will not happen when the great natural disasters are yet to happen and the Antichrist is still to emerge.
It is wrong, in other words, for anyone to quit their work, stop going to school, and all around come to a complete stop in their lives, thinking that they are about to be raptured, when in fact these signs that God has promised us have not materialized yet. You must not be deceived in this way, for it is to fall into Satan’s traps of lies.
We must battle against and overcome everything that such false teachings have set up to trap us. The only faith that can triumph over the false teachings is the faith in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Only those who believe in the baptism of Jesus that has taken away all their sins are completely freed from the chains of these sins. Because Jesus took upon our sins onto Himself with His baptism, and because He has bought us with His own blood that has cleansed away our sins, we received His perfect salvation by believing in all these things that the Lord has done for us—by faith and faith alone. Those who believe in this Word have now become the children of God, and they will triumph in all the plans that God has set for them.
On the other hand, the only thing that awaits the liars who claim to believe in Jesus and yet have sin in their hearts, and who seek after only their own greed in serving the Lord, is the punishment that they will face together with Satan. This is why our gospel of the water and the Spirit is so precious. Only those who know it and who can discern between the true and false gospels can eat God’s hidden manna, overcome all the lies in the end, and enter the Millennial Kingdom and the New Heaven and Earth. Read the Word and see for yourself what is the real truth that can save you, give you hope, and bless you with eternal life. Realize it, and believe in it. This is the faith of victory.
Victory in our spiritual battle is exceedingly important for us because losing this battle does not just mean a simple loss, but it means to be bound to hell. In other fights we may recover from a loss, but in this battle of faith there is no chance of recovery. You must thus be able to discern between what is the truth and what are your own thoughts, the lust of your flesh, and the lies of the false teachers, and you must prepare your faith for the end by coming to grasp the correct knowledge on its times with the light of the Word.
God has prepared the plagues of the seven trumpets and the seven bowls, and He has permitted the Great Tribulation to us. When the world is struck by enormous natural disasters—great fires ravaging, stars falling, seas, rivers, and springs turning into blood—the Antichrist will emerge, and you should realize that this marks the beginning of the seven-year period of the Great Tribulation. The martyrdom, resurrection, and rapture of the saints will happen at the end of the plagues of the seven trumpets, when the last trumpet sounds, but before the plagues of the seven bowls are unleashed.
When the fourth seal of God is removed, the Antichrist will demand apostasy from the saints. At this time, those whose names are written in the Book of Life—that is, the born-again saints who have eaten manna and whose names are written on the white stone—will be bravely martyred. This is the last and the greatest faith that gives all the glory to the Lord. This is the courageous faith of those who believe in and live according to the gospel of the water and the Spirit. This, in short, is the faith with which we can become the victors in our spiritual battle.
We must overcome our adversaries at all costs. After being born again, we must continue to fight against and overcome the liars. To do so, we must live the kind of life that feeds on God’s manna and preaches the Word of our Lord until the end. To those who overcome, God has promised to give His glory and blessings. The faith that deserves to be lifted to the air by God, the greatest hope for believers, and the conviction for the Millennial Kingdom and the New Heaven and Earth—all these things will be permitted to only those who have received God’s hidden manna by overcoming all the lies with the faith in the Word of God.
Those who know what is truly precious sell everything to get it and withstand great sacrifices to keep it. Because such sacrifices will come not as a pain but as a great joy for us, and because this is the truly priceless treasure that will give us everything in the end, it is worth every while for us to give up everything we have to defend it.
It is my hope and prayer that you will continue to hope for the Millennial Kingdom and the New Heaven and Earth, overcome all the adversaries with this hope, and emerge as the winner of great joy and happiness in the end.
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Copyright © 2021 by The New Life Mission