Christ pulls back shades of heaven's curtain

I Timothy 6: [14] That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ:

[15] Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;

Jesus Christ will appear to the people in the earth to demonstrate who is the King of kings, but prior to that He's going to appear in the heavenly places and extricate from those places the satanic host and throw them down to the earth and that's going to take place in the first half of that 70th Week, says Richard Jordan in his Revelations series.

When He takes them and there's war in heaven and He throws them out, you and I will be installed in those positions of rank and authority in the government of the heavenly places up there.

Involved in that war that extricates the satanic forces, Jesus Christ appears in Revelation 6 to the men of the earth. While He is up there bringing His kingdom to the heavenlies, it's obvious to the men in the earth that there's disturbance and activity and war going on out there.

Maybe you're a Trekkie and you watch Star Trek and the Next Generation and you think all that stuff is wonderful and the explanation--I was reading (my secretary Fran's) TV Guide this week and it talks about how Star Trek: The Next Generation is real popular and what is the explanation.

Well, it said, in the '60s Star Trek gave some hope of stability in the threat of nuclear war and it showed mankind overcoming, you know, and having a peaceful end out there.

And then in the '90s it's catching on because of the gloom and doom and how terrible things are and it gives stability; it shows that "man triumphed after all" and you know that's just a bunch of nonsense. Human viewpoint; man stuck on himself.

Did you ever sit around a campfire and watch fire and notice how it just sort of engulfs you? Have you ever gone down to the seashore and just watch the waves come in and how it just sort of . . . fire and water captivates people and there's some spiritual reasons for that. It's the same spiritual reason that the Star Trek and Star Wars stuff and all that captivates men's minds and, folks, it's because there's some of that stuff on the way.

What Satan does is he counterfeits that stuff before it shows up so when the real thing shows up, you'll think it's just the baloney he's been feeding you, but that stuff's real and it's coming.

What happens in Revelation 6 is in the first half of that week this stuff begins to break out in the heavens and there begins to be war up there and the inhabitants on the earth get a . . . the Lord just kind of pulls the shades back of the curtain of the heavens so they can see into it, and they understand that their side's getting beat.

He throws them out down into the earth and when he does that, Satan comes down himself and goes about to convince men that he's God and that the Lord Jesus Christ in the heavens is really the enemy. 

You say, "Well how could he do that?" Well, that ought not surprise you very much. Isn't that what people think now anyway?

You go out and try to talk to people about the Lord Jesus Christ and people think He's the enemy. You go around and talk to them about religion and being "up" with people and the betterment of society and do all that stuff and they think that's God. You see, it isn't that much different.

The difference is that the message you and I have to preach to the world today is not a message of wrath and judgment--that'll come soon enough--but it's a message of grace and peace.

Remember, as we go on through the Book of Revelation, you're going to be dealing with a situation where from this point onward, the Lord is going to be in the heavens fighting and the war is going to be the wrath that's going to begin to be directed down toward man on the earth.