This is how, when I said Alexander the Great on his conquest to conquer the world his idea of one nation under Alexander translates right down to Hitler’s time. Wipe out what we don’t want.  Keep what we want. One nation under him. We live under the shadow of horrific things that happened in the past. That’s why you shouldn’t forget and anybody who denies any of those things just as denying this, these people came forward and they so persecuted the people in that first church, they couldn’t make a living.

They were destitute. He says don’t worry about it. You’re maybe destitute but you’re rich. What does the text say? It says “Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer.” I have to get back to this I have no choice. This verb here is an action, verb paschein. Difference between this “tribulation you’ll have with you always.” This suffering, you can overcome it. Suffering is something you may have suffered in the past or yet to come but this deal that’s going to be part of your trip. He says “I know,” the text reads “What you will suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, you’ll be tested and have tribulation ten days.”

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that now many people want to take this tribulation ten days and say you’ve got the ten successive waves of persecution in history you’ve got, and I’ve got them listed here; I’m going to read them off: Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Severus, Maximinus, Valerian, Aurelian and Declension, Diacletian. But the reason why I don’t put my stamp on that is it’s problematic. If there are ten successive waves of persecution in the church of Smyrna, which starts at the close of the apostolic age, the persecution of Nero started before this time. I’d much rather say and interpret the passage this way. Ten successive, ten days of tribulation or ten days that it says ten, remember we covered the numbers.

Now I’ve put verse 9 in the Greek on the board and we’re going to go and do some very simple grammar. Very simple, this is one of these times where I’m not going to get into a whole bunch of different tenses and moods and things like that. The simpler I make this today the more I hope it’ll be indelible in your mind. “Oida,” this is Jesus speaking, He says I know, I know “oida sou ten thlipsin,” I know your tribulation. Work, when it says “I know your work,” that’s in your King James; it’s not in the original and best manuscripts. If you want to adjust your Bible you’re not doing any harm. It is the King James translation you’re using. These are from the best manuscripts that I’ve taken, the best sources available to us. “Odia,” Jesus speaking ‘I know,’ and I want to stop right there.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that this word for ‘I know,’ Jesus speaking, it’s, it is so amazing. Now you’re going to think I’m a little bit wacky. But this is why I love grammar. Who could get excited about grammar, only me. All right. Now, I didn’t say grandma; I said grammar, okay.

This word ‘I know’ is in the perfect tense. It’s a verb and it’s in the perfect tense and why it is so amazing. Well I have a little cute catch phrase. God’s knowledge of us is perfect. Well that’s wonderful because it’s true, but let me give you another example. When Jesus was on the Cross and He said “It is finished,” tektelistai, ‘it is finished’ in the Greek, that tense was perfect. It means the act of what He did was perfect in conjugation, in tense, but the act itself, the act stopped but the reaction of the act continues forward. So what was finished on the Cross keeps going in our lives. You don’t have to keep crucifying Christ afresh every day, He did it once, but the effects of it carry forward. Do you understand what I’m saying when I say ‘perfect?’ Okay, perfect, wonderful. See?

Believe you me, Paul knew an awful lot about endurance. If you read most every letter he writes he talks about endurance. That’s why, if I seem to be a little bit on the rebellious side today it’s because I’m just livid about people saying “Just sit back and relax and let God do it.” Well that’s true, but not before you having, having you take a stand and having done that and stand therefore, you’ve done all, and you’ve done it with endurance, you’ve done it with Faith, you’ve done it with your eyes fixed on Him not fixed on people around you. “Your endurance,” the King James reads ‘patience:’ “I know your patience.” He didn’t say that, and that makes it sound like when He says I come quickly. “Well, Jesus, I’m pretty patient; it’s been two thousand years now.” Doesn’t mean that. ‘Endurance.’ Number 4: ‘Being able to see their discernment.’ Why? Because people came under the guise taking you back. I’m not going to, I’m not going to stop just yet. I feel like I want to keep going.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that people came under the guise of being Apostles. And I, I said at the beginning I challenge you to find somewhere where all the ones that were called of God in the Bible, none of them stepped forward and said “God sent me to do something.” I challenge you to find one of them that was really called by God Moses: “Well, what am I going to say and who am I?” Trained in schools, in the palaces, in the grand places of Egypt “Well, who am I?” Joshua: you can go down the list of people, not one person stepped forward to say “Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me!” You know where you’re going to find that? You’re going to find that to the one who sold his birthright for a bowl of pottage, porridge. That mindset that says “I can play with the things of God.”

I will tell you, had I known back then when Dr. Scott laid hands on me, had I known where I was going to be today I probably would have said “See ya!” Because you know deep down what I really want, it’s so simple. Follow me. You know what I really want so you’re not looking up at me and I’m looking right at you? I want you to come to the place where you say “Jesus is my Lord and Savior, and I know there’s nothing that can shake that away from me. This is my home! God called me here to this place for me to stand, for His name’s sake, that I might see the Kingdom of God when I finally cross the finish line! I’m not scared, I’m not afraid, and I’m not ashamed of the Good News of the Gospel!”  You may be seated.

I’m not suggesting that something’s going to happen right now, but when you come to the knowledge forget about all the other stuff being peddled out there; it’s just what it is, it’s being peddled. I lift up His name and I proclaim it proudly because I have not forgotten where I was taken from, and I certainly have my eyes fixed on where I’m going. I have so much more to say on this.

I really want to keep going, but that’s my message.

“And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not that the city of the Ephesians is, is a worshipper of the great goddess Artemis, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?” from the sky because that’s what they claim, that her image she just appeared there. She fell from the sky and, voila! “Here I am!” “Seeing then that these things cannot be spoken against, ye ought to be quiet, and do nothing rashly.” At least this person, this fellow, had a clear mind. He said “For ye have brought hither these men, which are neither robbers of,” and it says “churches.”

Now I need you to circle that too, because ‘churches.’ Let me just address this right now: the word you circled, “assembly” and “churches.” ‘Assembly,’ and I’m going to talk about this later, ‘assembly’ is ekklesia in Greek.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that we’re going to look at Jesus’ use of ekklesia and the ekklesia being named here which is not the Church, but the ones, the ‘out called ones.’ They would send people in or call people or people would amass that assembly could be ekklesia.

Until a certain point in time then ekklesia becomes exclusively used of the Church, but at this time it was still used for a general assembly of any kind. And there’s a difference between ekklesia and synagogue, syne gogue, which is a Greek word syn, ‘with;’ gogue, teaching ‘with specific teaching,’ and when it says in verse 37 “churches,” that is ‘temples’ different word, not “church;” ‘temples,’ okay? So there’s a little, it’s important because we’re going to pick apart some of these words. You need to know what you’re reading; some of you already do.

“Wherefore if Demetrius, and the craftsmen which are with him, have a matter against any man, the law is open, and there are deputies: that, let them implead one another.” Take it to the, the proconsul; take it to someone of authority and let them hear the matter. “But if ye inquire any thing concerning other matters, it shall be determined in a lawful assembly. For we are in danger to be called in question, this day’s uproar, there being no cause whereby we may give an account of this” ‘action,’ what happened here. Whoever is speaking is pretty level headed. “And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.” “And afterwards,” into chapter 20; don’t go there, “After the uproar was ceased, Paul called his disciples,” and departed for Macedonia.

We’ll get into each Church He’s going to say “I know your works.” I’m sorry, it’s a subject we can’t avoid. Works does not get you in. There’s nothing you can do for Jesus. The flip side, there’s a lot you can do if you’re doing it for Him by His direction. It comes back to the same thing: “No man cometh to the Father save the spirit draw him.” Well if that’s the case, then I can’t come on the scene and say “Okay, I’m here now. I’m, I’m ready to be one of the seven stars.” I want you to think back at this poor John who has lived through eyewitness to Jesus, all the things he’s seen, the transitions he’s seen, now exiled.

And the first letter is going to be addressed to a Church that’s lost its first agape, unconditional love   not phileo. I want you, I want to stimulate your mind for those of you that are familiar with this Book because supposedly that agape love   unconditional, no strings attached   it lost its first agape. The messengers of the Church, like a beacon shining a light. People read this and they think “Unto the angel of the church at Ephesus.” “Angel has wings, angel flies, angel proclaimeth.” Only cherubims are said to have wings.

I read in no passage in the Bible where it’s says an angel appeared with wings. It’s one of these things, it’s like the three wise men. It doesn’t say there were three wise men. It says “the wise men.” We assume there were three wise men because there were three gifts, but I just, a long time ago, said that can’t be because three men traveling thorough such hostile territory, they had to come with more than just three.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that there might have been three of them but it doesn’t say it anywhere. Likewise, I challenge you to read and find in the Bible, every time an angel of the Lord, and some of them were angel messengers, others were proclaimers, but each time you have one of these that occurs, a message from God is being delivered to the people. Nothing else. I like this. Listen to what it says here. I mean, bla bla bla bla bla! Okay, let’s go! Here we go.

When you get to the other Churches, and we’ll look at for example just to give you an idea; each Church contributes something, for example, Smyrna we know is the Church of martyrs. The word ‘smyrna, in it is the word ‘myrrh.’ We’ll look at how that came to be and how the words change. It’s now modern day Ismir. But how it changed, how for example the story of Pergamos, a lot of people who read texts on these things, there’s a great story about how parchment came to be instead of papyri.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that the process to make papyri, unbelievable! They’d gather the reeds, they’d wet the reeds, they’d lay them down and kind of just set them out straight, pound them, put them between rocks to flatten them out. Now they’d, once they’re dry and they’re flattened, they’d weave them, wet them again, flatten them out the whole process to make papyri, super long process just to get one sheet of paper, of papyri. And there’s a great story attached to how parchment or vellum came to be used that comes out of Pergamos.

The largest library outside of Alexandria was in Pergamos, 200,000 volumes, which is an immense library. And the king of Pergamos, King Humines, he wants to get the librarian from Alexandria to come and help him out. Ptolemies who controlled at the time in Egypt was ticked off at this king and he said “Okay, no more papyri for you!  Well, when you’ve got 200 volumes of things, you know you’re producing a lot of work. No problem! That’s where vellum started to be officially used.

They took the skins of animals and that’s where it came to be officially used as an official use. There’s all these little neat things, how we got paper and vellum developing from these places. Our first coins, gold and silver coins, were minted at Sardis. There’s a whole I mean all of our, what we use today, has some roots somewhere in that part of the world. So it’s pretty fascinating, and I’m not done. I don’t want to bore you with history, but when you dive in you see these are pretty cool things because we still use money I think today I think, the last time we checked, we still use money, and paper.

So I’m going to stop with the numbers and we’re going to continue on in the text. I just want to make it clear that when we get to the numbers later on, it’s going to be important to really have a good grasp not just to say “Well 7 is complete.” There’s more to it than that. Verse 5 reads “And from Jesus Christ, actually verse 4 and verse 5 it’s another run-along sentence, “And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness.” We have that word again, “And the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.” If I could just say this to you, if you don’t get anything else today out of what I’ve said, I hope you’ll carry this picture with you. “Unto him that loved us,” is not correct. You read in the Greek, let me write it phonetically for you. You grammarians, go check me out. I’m going to write it phonetically, agaponti.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that it’s in the present tense. So when they translated it makes sense to put it in the past but it really reads “unto him that loves us, present tense. Now I could, I have much to say and I could say many more things but “Unto him that loves us.” It’s not a past tense event. He just loved. This is why we changed the words to No One Ever Cared For Me. Oh how much He cares for me. Well, He cared for me to die for me, but He still cares for me daily and people that are in trouble and trial.

I said to somebody earlier this week likewise people think they only are in God’s plan when they receive a blessing. God must know and He’s really got me in His mind. Let me tell you something. When you take a fall, when you hurt yourself, when you lose a loved one, anything that happens God sees that too. He knows what’s going on in your life, not just when things are good. He’s not a fair-weather God that just is around when everything’s rosy. “Unto him that loves us, I hope that this in one thing that you’ll correct in your Bibles. He loved us. He loved me, He loved you but He loves us continually present.

It is going to keep going until He comes back again for His church or we get caught up and “Washed us from our sins in his own blood.” The tendency is to make this also a one-time action. “And hath made us kings and priests unto God his Father, a little strange “his Father, “his Father to him be the glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.” What you have is John writing and I want you to really picture this with me, John is writing and in the middle of writing he gets carried away because I guarantee you this didn’t have to be dictated to him. “To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.” You’ll read this again, in fact, I should have taken us into the 7 beatitudes, there is another 7 again in the book.

From this one can easily see that an improvement can made be in the masses when one gives room for repentance.” Listen to the emperor’s reply. It’s very brief. “My segundes,” my lesser, my second, my underling. “You have chosen the right way with regard to the case of most who have been accused before you as Christians. Nothing exists that can been considered a universal norm for such cases.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that christians should not be sought out, but if they are accused and handed over they are to be punished but only if they do not deny being Christians and demonstrated by the appropriate act,” i.e. worshiping of our gods, the worship of our gods. “Even if one is suspect because of past conduct he or she is to be acquitted in view of repentance. Anonymous accusations may not be considered in any trial, for that would be dangerous precedent and does not fit our times.”

Just in this little world, how many people died because they would not deny and they would not bend and they would not break because they knew? And of course most of you know, we’ve got a beautiful copy. Most of you have read the Foxes ‘Book of Martyrs’, if you haven’t I highly suggest that you do. Most of this church has so you know what I’m talking about. Listen to the undercurrent that was at the time of the writing of the book of Revelation.

It’s my desire that we don’t look at this book like some goofy mystery. It’s my desire that we look at it with a scholar’s eye, intelligently, that we recognize that there are a lot of things in here for us to take out and it is prophecy, unlike the rest of the Book this was written for the churches; the things which are and the things which were yet to come. When my husband taught on this he taught rightly, I agree with him.

The key to this book is Revelation 1:19, but, the key to the total understanding is not looking at it like the way some people look at the book of Genesis. It’s got be a mythological tapestry of things from some other realm. Now, when we get to the seven churches you will see it’s like reading a newspaper. It’s not anywhere near in the realm of just the churches that were or the churches through the ages, but the church today. Perfect case in point, it’s not even my message yet, help me. Perfect case in point: we have in our church, right here, lest people say the seven churches, the seven churches which are in Asia, and the seven churches which we’ll get to, historically, through time.

Now, Noah walked with God, can two walk together except they agree? Which means Noah was obedient, listened, and was in Faith. That’s how you get to “Noah was a just” or “right” man. From his walking with God he had to be thus, but not perfect. Does that make sense to you? Do you understand what I am saying? We have a repetition of and this is where you can see where people would pick apart the text, when it says, “Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, Japheth.” This is where we have that separation of the writers . So people say, “Well, it is repetition.” It does not matter.

It confirms himself. We didn’t say that Noah’s sons were this, that, and another name. They are the same names leave it alone. “The earth also was corrupt before God” not only the people, the earth was corrupt. And the earth was filled with violence. “The earth was also corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with ‘hamas’ violence.” “And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” “God said unto Noah” and I think He was speaking to him at this point when it says, “God said.” “The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold I will destroy them with the earth.”

I don’t want to get into too much grammar. But when you read in that 12th, 13th verse you have… the 11th verse I am sorry, “was corrupt; the 12th verse says, “It was corrupt; and the “I will destroy” those are all in the same root and I didn’t want to fill up the board with translation, but think of it this way, He says: “The earth was ruined and it was being ruined and I will ruin it.” God is really… He has had enough. Noah, “Make thee an ark of gopher wood.” Now it is important as we go through this that I chisel away at some sidebars. I am going to write it in English. The word in Hebrew phonetically in English tebah; and the Septuagint reads the word kibotos. I asked if maybe this might be related to kebuth but no one seems to know anything on that subject, leave it alone.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that Tebah is the word being used 26 times in Genesis for ‘ark.’ Now listen carefully because everything that is in this book is here for a reason. The only other use of this word tebah outside of Noah’s Ark is the little basket made for Moses. It is called an ark, too – same word. The Ark of the Covenant different word; so tebah is very important. It lets us know God set apart a special word for the salvation, the saving purpose and we will see that when we get into the text.

Now I’m just going to fast forward. As I searched to take this in a comprehensible way, it dawned on me euangelisasthai the good news of the Gospel, right? Right? Iasasthai, healing, to be healed, cured of sickness and disease. I’m going to try and do this right. A, or maybe I missed one, but nevertheless let me do it backwards. We have the same letters, can you read that, euangelisasthai, Iasasthai, good news and healing. Healing is in the good news. The word healing is taken right out of the good news. Do not try and separate that.

Now, settle down. Be seated. Please, please.  Be seated. I’m not even going to indulge you with some of these other manuscripts. I’ve made my point sufficient enough. Now we’re going to go to what I came here to do.

I started with saying these, I’ve numbered them, are things for us to go back to the basics on. You don’t even have to go there. Don’t turn to these, just mark them down somewhere and look at them later. Psalm 119:89 “For ever O LORD,” anybody that comes in this building should have that memorized, “For ever O LORD thy word is settled in heaven.” That’s a good place to start. That means what He said when He gave His Word and His Word, not just spoken word but His Son incarnate. That it is settled whatever is bound on us shall be bound in heaven. That when He said and gave promises they are going to come true. They are true, they already are and have been realized. Numbers 23:19 this is old school for a lot of you folks but bear with me. “God’s not a man that He should lie”. Why, what is the point of God giving a promise and saying this is the good news, I’m going to send my Son, He’s going to die on the cross, raise up and do penance for the whole world. If it’s all a lie just don’t bother. Why put it in there?

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that God’s verity and His Word settled in heaven. 2 Corinthians 1:20 “all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen.” That means everything that God has laid out for us in the promises including His Son belong to you and they belong to me. That includes the promises of healing, healing in the Old Testament.