Corona Chronicles - Crown of Gold

Welcome back to the Kroger chronicles. We are in chapter 19 and we've just seen Jesus come on a white horse, and we were talking about his different names yesterday. And now we see an angel speaking in verse 17. And I saw an angel standing in the sun who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in mid air, come. Gather together for the great supper of God so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty of horses and their riders and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and small.

Then I saw the beasts and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and his army. But the beast was captured and with it, the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. With these signs, he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The 2 of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword, coming out to the mouth of the rider on a horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.

Well, again, this is a really, really graphic sort of picture and image of the of the last days. And I guess we've got to remember where that where the early Christians were when John originally wrote this book. They're under the Roman Empire, They're being persecuted. You had kings like Nero that were gruesome to Christians, you know, that tying Christians up setting them on fire for his garden parties and putting animal skins on Christians so that bears or wolves or dogs would come and and kill the Christian because they smelt the animal and rip them to pieces. And that this is they grew some days.

And these are language saying, hey, Christians, that might be happening to you, but there's good news coming. And actually, the system that is killing you, in the way they do it to you, it will happen to them. You've got that sort of picture. And I think the thing is when you read this, it does show up our thinking of God. Yeah.

Because I think a lot of us want to have the idea of God as a sort of generally a sort of nice father Christmas that basically gives good people presents if you've been a good boy. And even if you've been a bad boy, you'll still get a present, but you might not quite quite a good president or someone else. Sure. But no, God is not like that. God is God and God is full of justice.

And God is gonna say an end to this and the cruelty that you've given, then it's gonna come upon your head. That's what he's doing, isn't it? Yeah. Yes. And we need to remember also that throughout the book of revelation, we've seen the way that these people have been trampling on God's people.

Trampling in the in the outer core. We saw the saints under the throne saying, how how long o lord, the blood of God's people have been crying out for justice from the ground. So this is not suddenly an angry sort of violent stir up the moment. Just aggressive God. This is this is him sort of delivering judgment and justice -- Mhmm.

-- which which the world and God's people have longed for for a long time. So you've got these birds being called upon to to come to what is called the great supper of God. Mhmm. So this is the judgment. We had the great the wedding supper of the lamb, which was beautiful where we're sitting down with God.

And eating, and now these birds are to consume. They're going to peck the life out of all of these enemies of God that have been against God's people. You know, so we've got that. And then we come on to this little second section where there's the beast and the kings of the earth, and they're gathering their armies. You know, they're still they're still against Scott -- Yeah.

-- against God's people, and they think that they've got a chance in fighting God. Yep. And God's gonna put put an end to it. Yeah. And we've seen that again throughout the whole of revelation.

There's been this warning. There's been an invitation to come to the the wedding of the lamb. And there's been a warning that if you don't, then judgment's coming. Yeah. And we've seen the judgments and we're looking at the third of the earth, quarter of the earth, and slowly ramping up.

Like, will you pay attention, will you listen? And even here, the birds are flying in mid air. These these are the vultures circling. Above people who are still alive, but will soon be dead. And that's when, you know, they you know, the the vultures will circle when they know that there's gonna be dead bodies soon.

And so the birds are invited to come before this final judgment. Which again is sort of like a final warning, isn't it? Like, do you see do you see the birds? Reread -- Reesize. -- as it were.

Reesize. Yeah. But we we saw earlier and it's all I think it's almost word for word. So we saw that when the God's judgment comes, the kings of the earth, the mighty, the general, the free, and the slaves are all trying to hide themselves under the mountains even then they won't repent and come back into heaven. No.

And I think we see the same things here. Yeah. So instead of people reading the science, the birds are here to just to peck every all the flesh off and all life is gonna be gone, They they've believed that the signs of these false prophets -- Yeah. -- which you which you see in verse 20. Because they've done miracles or and they and they've deluded the people into worshiping the beast and and and and these these false prophets and so forth.

So again, you know, we gotta keep our ears open. We've gotta stay alert And well, it is be alert to your spiritual, where you'll be in eternity. Because God is gonna put an end to this world and all of its force teachings and so forth. Yep. And then you've got the sword coming out of his mouth.

So again, that we see the lord Jesus is the 1 that comes with the sword, and either it cuts us down to repentance so that we can have new life in him. Or it kills us that way in the sense, doesn't it where we repent and and give him our life? Or it cuts us down and says, you you didn't listen. Yeah. And so the birds are gonna gorge on your flesh.

Yeah. I mean, it's very strong language. Yeah. But, you know, this is the warning. It says.

Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose it's God's kindness to us to show us. I mean, part of our sinful nature is that we don't see how sinful. It is.

Yeah. We don't understand. We look at this and we go, whoa, God can't down a bit. Yeah. Like, you really it's not going overboard a bit.

But But this is this is the way things are. Yeah. This is the goodness of God. And it's his kindness that he shows us this. We need to we need to try and stomach it in a sense and go, this is God's kindness.

You know, if he could have sugar coated this. And then perhaps we wouldn't be so earnest or ego in trying to share the good news with people. Yeah. We'd be like, well, it's not. But, you know, this is this is a horrific image.

Let's tell people about it that they might be saved and at the supper of the lamb instead of this suburb. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll come on to chapter 20 next time.