Trinity Evangel Church

Revelation 13:1-10 Series: Just Conquer #36 # Introduction Evil never creates, it only corrupts. Idols are like viruses: they need a carrier. Satan himself lives on borrowed glory, and it makes him furious. Power, when exercised against God, can't help but reflect God who *defines* power, not to mention being delegated from Him. Consider how it works with pleasure. Hell hath invented no pleasure,...

Revelation 12:13-17 Series: Just Conquer #36 # Introduction Good liturgy does more than check the boxes of what someone has said is good to do at church. It's more than well-arranged hooks to hang meat on, though it does give opportunity for content delivery. Good liturgy is like a recipe for making food that tastes good and fills you up, even though you usually don’t think about all of the indivi...

Revelation 12:7-12 Series: Just Conquer #34 # Introduction We are in a particular generation of a long battle. It is a battle that began within the first few chapters of life on earth, and it is a battle that will continue until the final chapter of history. From the beginning, our enemy has been seeking our harm not mainly by direct assault, but by trying to deceive us into sin and then presentin...

Revelation 12:1-6 Series: Just Conquer #33 # Introduction Who wants to be left behind? If you don't know, _Left Behind_ is a series of (16!) rapture fiction books, some of which became bestsellers. They were roundly mocked by serious literature people, as well as by those with different eschatology. But my question is not about what you want to read, it's about how you want to be perceived. Do you...

Revelation 11:15-19 Series: Just Conquer #32 # Introduction What is the hope of every Christian? There are different ways to describe it, but “the outcome of [our] faith” is “the salvation of [our] souls” (1 Peter 1:9). “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). We want to be “complete in Christ” (Colossians 1:28). All of those are included in the promise of the gospel, they belong...

Revelation 11:1-14 Series: Just Conquer #31 # Introduction At a certain point, trying to be winsome is worthless. I believe in trying to be winsome, trying to demonstrate that something is attractive or appealing, because Solomon said it was wise. Sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness (Proverbs 16:21, 23), and words seasoned with salt increase desire and can be used to change another's mind...

Revelation 11:1-14 Series: Just Conquer #30 # Introduction Maybe you've run into the buzzword argument which threatens that you don't want to be on the wrong side of history. It sounds bad. It also assumes a number of things in order to have its emotional effect (which, it is entirely an emotional appeal, and possibly includes a number of logical fallacies). To be on the wrong side of history mean...

Revelation 10:1-11 Series: Just Conquer #29 # Introduction God created us with a built-in mechanism that turns off our pain sensors at a certain point. It is, most of the time, a mercy. Shock is a medical condition where the body shuts down certain processes because it’s just too much to handle. We go numb, physically and mentally. We’re only fit for so much negative feedback. This is also true wh...

Revelation 9:13-21 Series: Just Conquer #28 # Introduction The information age in an election year is apparently like a 24-hour truck-stop kitchen, something is always getting dropped in the fat. Some of the information/data torrent is worthwhile, and I’ve tried to sift and skim and sort through a lot over the last few months, as have many of you. For a few months I got out of my regular reading r...

Revelation 8:13-9:12 Series: Just Conquer #27 # Introduction P.G. Wodehouse once wrote to a friend about how there are some things in life that don't break down very well into percentages, such as getting hit by a car. We've likewise past the point in the Apocalypse where percentages of interpretations work very well. It's not quite all or nothing, positively past or fully future, but it's close....

Revelation 8:6-12 Series: Just Conquer #26 # Introduction The first four trumpets belong together, and also the next "And I looked" occurs in verse 13, compared with 8:2, so verses 6-12 will be our focus. The trumpets belong with and are blown after the breaking of the seventh seal. In context, after the silence in heaven for half an hour in the previous paragraph, the trumpets initiate the next p...

Revelation 8:1-5 Series: Just Conquer #25 # Introduction Every prayer we make adds fuel to the fire of God’s wrath. When we feel pain and cry for help, when we observe evil and cry for deliverance, when our chests pound with longing for God to do something, God *does* something. Even our tastes of blessing and our gratitude for His goodness makes the fury of the furnace of His righteous anger hott...

Revelation 7:9-17 Series: Just Conquer #24 # Introduction John sees two visions between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals. The first vision, in Revelation 7:1-8, concerned the sealing of 144k of the sons of Israel, which I believe refers to a future generation of Jews who are chosen to believe in, and witness for, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. The group in the first vision is portrayed...

Revelation 7:1-8 Series: Just Conquer #23 # Introduction It has been 70 days since our last time together in the Apocalypse. Of course, the last 70 days have been their own sort of revelation, and while it shouldn’t be identified as the Great Tribulation, it has included some here-to-fore unseen power-grabbing devastation. Plagues of locusts have nothing on partisan legislators when it comes to de...

Revelation 6:12-17 Series: Just Conquer #22 # Introduction One of my greatest concerns with Postmillennialism—I’ll even call it my bias against it, however it was that I came to have such a bias—is that the Postmillennial hope for the future, where the gospel conquers and brings about [a golden age in which Christian ethics prosper] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmillennialism ), while confide...

Revelation 6:9-11 Series: Just Conquer #21 # Introduction We do not know the extent of evil on earth. We do not know how bad it has been in the past, we do not know how bad it is in other parts of the world, we do not know how bad it still could get. We do not know if we can believe how bad things are as reported, we do not know if it’s the reports themselves that are bad. Perhaps the most dreadfu...

Revelation 6:1-8 Series: Just Conquer #20 # Introduction Of the 1189 chapters in the inspired Word, none reveals a more explicit and more exalted scene of worship than Revelation 5. There are other visions of the heavenly throne room, but none that identify both the one sitting on the throne ruling history *and* the one standing as having been slain, the redeemer of men from every tribe and tongue...

Revelation 5:11-14 Series: Just Conquer #19 # Introduction When Jesus gave John a vision of His glorified self in Revelation 1, it was fantastical. His eyes were on fire and His face was shining like the sun at 110%. Jesus was revealing Himself to John, and He intended for John to write the revelation for His people (verse 11). The seven churches, representing all the church of God, needed the enc...

Revelation 5:6-10 Series: Just Conquer #18 # Introduction When it comes to worship there are two categories that must be distinguished and must be taken together. If worship is a bookcase, it must have two shelves or the whole thing will fall apart. The shelves are not just corporate and individual, let alone formal and casual. The two categories are comparative and integrated. I remember reading...

Revelation 5:1-5 Series: Just Conquer and Boom # Introduction Timing matters. _When_ an event happens may not always be the most important thing about the event, but it frequently matters a lot. Sex after making marriage vows brings glory to God, but sex before marriage damages souls and relationships. God gives His beloved sleep, but not through harvest time. Men with guns pay no attention when y...

Revelation 4:6b-11 Series: Just Conquer #16 # Introduction This really is an amazing scene. The vision of Jesus that John had in Revelation 1 was amazing, and the messages from Jesus to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 were somehow both local and cosmic, immediate and eternal, startling but unsurprising, confronting and also comforting. But our imaginative capacities are pushed to new heights...

Revelation 4:1-11 Series: Just Conquer #15 # Introduction Things are different from here on out in the Apocalypse. It is time for John's second vision, and it is otherworldly. In the first vision, John saw Jesus walking among the lampstands. In this second vision, John sees Jesus as a Lamb standing. In the first, John was in the Spirit and saw an image of Jesus who gave messages to seven churches...

Revelation 2-3 Series: Just Conquer # 14 # Introduction I continue to find myself more and more in the strange position of defending optimism. For much of my life I claimed to be a Realist, which is really a pessimist who likes to argue. Before that I was just an idiot. But for a growing number of years I have come to believe, especially about the Last Days, that things are going to become truly a...