Origin
Origin
False Prophets & True Witnesses
Join us for part 2 of THE END, a study of the Revelation. Today we will contrast False Prophets & True Witnesses, seeing the different motivations, characteristics and activities of both. We will see how satan likes to counterfeit the works of God. In and of himself, he is not able to create what God has created. He is not able to do the powerful works that Jesus does. He spends his energy trying. His goal is to destroy. Christ's goal is to rescue. False prophets testify of anything but Christ. The True Witness points right to Jesus.
We're here at the table of Origin again. I'm Regina Johnston here with my friends, Jina McAfee and Kyli Rose. We deal with the elephant in the room through the lens of God's original design and so happy to be able to gather together. This season, we're looking at an elephant in the room, the book of Revelation. For many Revelation is that elephant in the room. It's kind of untouchable. A lot of people just want to avoid it because it's too difficult to understand. We still leave it with a lot of "why's," and we don't like to be left without answers for sure. Some don't want to talk about it because they believe it isn't pertinent to our lives now. But it is very pertinent to how we live now even though it is in the future. How we live now will dictate how we spend our future. We know that on any level. What we eat now plays itself out in our bodies later on. How much we exercise now does that. There's a harvest for the seeds we sow now on any level. Finally, some don't want to talk about it, because it's just too heavy. And it is at times a heavy subject depending on our perspective as we look at it. Our desire is to lighten that load for us as we look at it. For the believer, there's a lot to celebrate as we look at the book of Revelation. Kyli, you are our teacher in this session. If you want to access this session, it's called False Prophets and True Witnesses. You can access that at Bethele3.org. We would love for you to give Kyli a listen. She's an excellent teacher. You used an illustration that day that I'd like for you to start with today so that we could launch this conversation.
Kyli Rose:Absolutely. In my house, we are serious movie watchers, and we used to be like serious movie theater goers. Either one of you frequent the movie theater?
Jina McAfee:I love to watch movies, but I usually do it at home now.
Kyli Rose:We do too now that we have kids. We can't go as much as we want to, but when we do, my husband is a serious movie watcher. He wants to get there early. He wants to see every single preview. He wants the same snack. He likes the same seat. And if any part of this chain is disrupted, he's not going. He's not interested. We watch a lot of movies at home. Like most things, we have very different tastes and opinions on the kind of movies we watch. But because I love him, I end up watching a lot of dramas, and dramas stress me out. I like happy endings. I tend to lean towards romance. What kind of movies do you like? I've never asked.
ReGina Johnston:I like mystery. If it's too much, if it messes with my mind too much, I don't like it. But I do like a little bit of intrigue and mystery. Elwyn likes action, and my boys like action. So guess what I got to watch? Action. But I can still be caught watching a Hallmark movie.
Kyli Rose:My husband likes dramas, and I like to know that everything is going to end well. What I typically do when I'm watching movies with him is I watch with my phone in hand. It allows me to escape because sometimes the scenes are intense. There's a lot of movement. There's a lot of conflict. There are a lot of unanswered questions. There's a lot of suspense. And sometimes I need to check out for a moment. I want to take a break so sometimes I'll just ask him to pause the movie. So I can go and just step away from it.
ReGina Johnston:Does he like doing it though?
Kyli Rose:He doesn't, but he does it because we're trying to be kind to one another. So sometimes I'll just simply ask him to press pause. What I have found is there's power in that pause. We're going to be looking at some Scripture today and unpacking the parallels of the pause and what that means. We get to catch our breath in the pause. Leading up to this discussion, we've already unpacked a lot of big things. We have looked at being sealed by the Holy Spirit. We've looked at being marked by the beast, the Judgment Seat of Christ and the Great White Throne Judgment. And this is just a little bit of all the action and the drama. We have really been in some deep waters these last several weeks and even last season. We see the action. We see the drama. You see the judgment, the conflict unfolding in Revelation. The portion of Scripture we're going to be unpacking today is in a section called a parenthetical pause. We're going to be looking at a pause in Revelation.
ReGina Johnston:Jina, tell us more about this pause. Where's our focus in the midst of this pause? What are we seeing?
Jina McAfee:I just want to set some context. In Revelation, in the first five chapters, you're seeing Jesus be revealed. You're seeing His message to seven actual churches at the time the book was written, but also to the church today. We see that Jesus wants the church to make it, and He knows where we're at. He's giving us information that will help us finish well. And we know that at this time, the rapture happens so you see heavenly scenes. The first five books are really looking at Jesus revealed, the church, and a heavenly scene. In chapter six, it switches. It goes into judgment. And that's basically where you're at. So what Kyli is talking about here is a pause. We've talked about it before. You'll see the action during the Tribulation, and then, you will see a pause, where you see God speaking, and you see Him revealed, and you see what His plan is. We call this"parenthetical." That means, there are two different actions going on at once. There's one on the earth, and there's one in heaven or there's one that has a God focus. So here we're going into chapter 10, and we're going into a pause. I just love how Kyli set that pause up.
ReGina Johnston:We want to talk about what is happening and why. And the why is actually part of this pause. There's time to explain, give additional information, cause people to see on more than just one level, cause the church to see there's more than just one level of what's happening, but unbelievers too. God is a multi-level God, multi-dimensional God. So we have action going on in both places. The pause shows us that all this heaviness is not all there is. There's an unseen. We'll get that additional information as we look at the Scriptures today. Also, there's an assurance that God is with us. No matter what's going on, He's with us. He wants us to know Him and understand His
heart. Second Peter 3:9 tells us His heart. "He doesn't want anyone to be destroyed but He wants everyone to repent and to know Him." Understanding the"why" also strengthens and encourages us. I don't know about you, but there are times not only as I'm looking at the book of Revelation, but just as I'm looking at our culture today, or as I'm experiencing my own private daily life, I need some encouragement. And I need some strength. So, Kyli, tell us this morning more about the book of Revelation, what we're seeing during this pause. And help us to remember that the pause is for some, but not for others. Help us to even know what that means, that the pauses is for some, but not for others. I love that divine assurance. We need it. If I'm in the midst of
Kyli Rose:Just to mimic what you said, the pause is providing hope in the midst of what feels like chaos. As you're reading this book, you can't help but wonder,"Do we win? Does this thing end well?" Even when I'm watching these movies with my husband, I'm living in that place of conflict and tension in my mind, and I don't know if good is going to prevail this time. I don't know. God is so strategic in providing these sections in this book that is full of hard things to read. It's like He is letting the believer know, it's okay. I know it looks chaotic. I know the judgments are scary. I know. But I also want you to know that this thing is going to end well. a movie, and I have the inkling that this is going to end in disconnect and dysfunction, I don't even want to keep watching. I want to stop. I want a good ending.
Jina McAfee:We were made for a good ending.
Kyli Rose:That's the heart of these sections. He is providing additional information to let you know it's going to be okay if you choose Me. So we're hanging out in this seven-year period of judgment called the Tribulation. We personally believe that the church will be raptured. And now we see God pouring out His judgment on the earth. We see Him pouring that out through the seven seal judgments, the seven trumpet judgments and ultimately, the seven bowls. He's going to pour out the fullness of His judgment. Numerology is really important. Those reading this work would have understood this is the complete, full measure of His wrath. They would have known that and seen that. He's pouring out the fullness of His wrath on sin. As you begin reading in chapter six, Jina talked about us transitioning into the judgment. Starting in chapter six, we read about the seven seal judgments. You read about false prophets. You read about war and famine and pestilence and plagues and earthquakes. It says that people in this day will want to hide, but they will not be able to. They'll want to find shelter and rest, but they will not be able to find it. The seventh seal will introduce the seventh trumpet judgments. And you see, with each set of seven, the intensity increases. You see the heat get turned up over and over and over again. We think it's because He's unkind, but really, He will use any means to get people to turn to Him. He will. Because of His kindness.
Jina McAfee:It's His last resort. You have to see that this is the last resort. This is like all holds barred. We're giving you everything we've got in order to draw you.
Kyli Rose:It says He will shake everything that can be shaken, but He doesn't do it because he's unkind. He does it because He loves you so much that He wants to strip you of all the things you're holding on to that will not hold you or sustain you or save you. Because He knows He's the only One who can.
ReGina Johnston:It's like any of us as a mom, if we saw our one of our little toddlers rushing towards a very busy street, and we had called them back and they didn't respond and turn around. And we had even raised our voice and they didn't respond and turn around. We would try to run after them. If we couldn't catch them, whatever it took, we might even bowl them over to keep them from running into that traffic. We know that knocking them down on their little "tush" is not going to hurt them as much as going out in the midst of that traffic. That's what our God is doing. I love that.
Jina McAfee:I love that too.
Kyli Rose:His kindness is woven in even in the Judgement. So we saw the seal judgments and now we're transitioning into the trumpet judgments. The trumpet judgments include hail and fire, which destroy much of the plant life. You have to remember that people are still living and doing life. You can imagine if there are shortages on grain, there are shortages on food. We got a teeny, tiny taste of that during COVID. You could see how the whole world lost its mind. It was scary. We see swaths of aquatic life wiped out. You see the darkening of the sun and of the moon. You see food supplies dwindling. You see dark days. The darkness is just pervasive. It talks about demonic locusts, people being tortured and hoping to find solace and death but not being able to die. There is so much chaos, so much evil, so much demonic activity as you read through this event, and then the next event and the next event. And then between the trumpet judgments and the bowl judgments, we see God essentially pick up His divine remote and press pause. As you're reading it, you can almost feel the anxiety welling up inside of you.
ReGina Johnston:I was. I was feeling it. I'm like... pause...pause...pause.
Kyli Rose:Give us a break here. We're thinking, "How is this thing going to end?" until you see Him pick up his remote and press pause. We see that at the beginning of chapter 10. So right in the middle of all this chaos, you see Him essentially press pause. He shifts the lens over to Jesus. Is this going to be okay? It is. Why? Because Jesus says so.
ReGina Johnston:So Jina as He shifts that lens over to Jesus, tell us more about what we see.
Jina McAfee:That happens right at the very beginning of chapter 10. And this is what it says in Revelation 10:1-3. "Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, surrounded by a cloud with a rainbow over his head. His face shone like the sun, and his feet were like pillars of fire. [So we see a heavenly being.] And in his hand, was a small scroll that had been opened. He stood with his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land. And he gave a great shout, like the roar of a lion." It's so interesting to me, as we're getting ready to talk about beasts, one of the beasts is from the earth, and one of them is from the sea. But this angel, he has one foot on the earth, one foot on this sea, and he is actually swearing an oath by the One who lives forever and ever, who created the heavens and everything in them, the earth and everything in it, and the sea, and everything in it. And he says, "There will be no more delay." So he's swearing by our Creator God. There's so much going on. This is our ultimate authority. We're looking at witnesses. We're looking at the true witnesses. Jesus is a true witness. This angel is a true witness. John is a true witness, and God's giving him what's coming so he can give a true witness. I love that.
Kyli Rose:This is a Christophany. We believe that this angel is Jesus Himself. Right?
Jina McAfee:I read about that to get ready for today. And I saw that some people think that could be, but they also said they don't see that Jesus came down to the earth during the Tribulation. So it may not be. It may just be another mighty angel, which is what it says. But we know it's a heavenly being. We know this heavenly being has a word from God. This heavenly being is anointed. This heavenly being has a word. And he's giving Jonn revelation in the midst of all of it, in the midst of the Tribulation. At the time Revelation was spoken, it was not a pretty day to live in for the Jewish people, for God's people. They were in in danger with the witness they were giving. They were in danger for their very lives. And, really, today, there are some places in the world where that is happening right now. There are people who witness for Jesus who are in danger right now. So this is that encouragement you talked about. We've got to see that there are true witnesses. There are true witnesses.
ReGina Johnston:So I want us to think about this in terms of the lens staying focused on Jesus, because Jesus is the principal character of the whole New Testament. I want us to understand that He is the true witness, just like Jina said. As the lens is firmly placed on Him in our peripheral, we're beginning to see some other things unfold in this book of Revelation. So the enemy knows how things are going to end. I think he knows he's in a losing battle. But at the same time, I think there's some inkling in him that thinks he can win. Maybe it's his pride. We read about him being really prideful, and pride can blind you. No matter what, he is turning up the heat, and we're seeing that unfold here in the book of Revelation. And so I'm wanting Kyli to introduce us to what is unfolding here in these particular chapters where we see not only Jesus as the true witness, we see a counterfeit witness come on to the scene. We call him the False Prophet and that's the contrast we're really dealing with today. The true witness Jesus and the False Prophet. It's been really eye opening to me to watch how the enemy wants to create counterfeits to everything Jesus does, even to His very personhood, to His purpose, what He's all about. It's almost like a compliment. When someone wants to create a counterfeit to everything you're doing it's because they think what you're doing is pretty incredible and it's working. Whatever You're doing is working, so I need to do something just like that, but a little bit different. And with the enemy, that's kind of what he's doing. So tell us about this False Prophet.
Kyli Rose:So we meet the False Prophet here in Revelation 13, and we're going to first look at his authority. We're picking up in verse 14, It says, "With all the miracles he was allowed to perform on behalf of the first beast, he deceived all the people who belong to the world." So the first thing we see about this False Prophet is he's going to be able to perform miraculous signs and wonders. Remember, he is a creator of nothing, but a counterfeit of everything. And so he takes his cues and he runs with them. And so we see that he's going to perform miraculous signs and wonders, one of those being healing the first beast, the Antichrist, of this deadly wound; we don't know exactly what it is. So we see this counterfeit, or this imitation of Christ's authority and ability to heal. The second thing we look at is we see his activity. What is he doing? Verse 14, continues, "He ordered the people to make a great statue of the first beast [This is the Antichrist] who was fatally wounded and then came back to life. [verse 15} He was then permitted to give life to the statue so that it could speak. Then the statue of the beast commanded that anyone refusing to worship it must die." So we see that his entire objective is to get the people of the earth to worship the Antichrist, anything but Christ. And then in verses 16 and 17,"He required everyone to take the mark of the beast and anyone who does not take the mark will not be able to buy or sell." Basically live. So the False Prophet is going to deceive with the end goal of eternal death and separation from God. That is his goal. He knows how this thing ends so his goal is to take as many people with him as he can. And at this point in the narrative, you're thinking, "Can we get a pause? I could go for a pause right about now. It feels heavy, and it feels a little bit scary." This is typically the part of the movie where I want to sign off. Like, I'm going to take a bathroom break. But let's not do that. Don't go take your bathroom break just yet. Hold on. Don't sign off. Because God does in the seven years of Tribulation, what really He's been doing since Adam and Eve made a mess of things in the garden. And we kind of touched on this already. He raises up messengers. He has been raising up people to try and draw people back to Him, true messengers from the very beginning of time. And we see Him doing that, even in the hardest seven years that history will ever know. Even in the darkest moments, He is raising up people, because the invitation has been on the table from the very beginning. So we have to remember what the pauses are for. It's additional information to reveal His heart. And here in Revelation, we see His heart so beautifully displayed, right in the middle of this mess. We have to remember that those who are here in the Tribulation are the ones who have said "No" to God. They didn't end up here by accident. They said, "No." They made up their minds. He invited and He pursued and they said, "No." You see it over and over. He would invite, He would pursue, they would say, "No." He invited, He pursued and they said, "No." So that is the pattern. What does He do in the Tribulation. He judges sin. He has to. But He continues to invite and pursue and invite and pursue all the way to the end.
ReGina Johnston:As we look at this False Prophet, we see some things about his personality and his character, some adjectives you used to describe him. He's subtle, seductive, and strategic. Those are some strong adjectives. Jina, can you break that down for us a little more? What are we what are we seeing here in this False Prophet?
Jina McAfee:He really is a master at warfare. All of these adjectives are aspects of warfare. Subtle means "difficult to perceive." In other words, it's hard to tell what's going on. He wants you to have trouble knowing what's going on. He doesn't want you to know that if you choose Antichrist, if you choose him, it's not going to be good for you. He doesn't want you to know that. So we have got to pay attention. When Kyli was teaching this, she talked about having her kids at the beach, and it was new for them so she was giving them the boundaries. She was saying, "You be careful; don't go beyond these boundaries because it's dangerous." At first, they're doing really well with it. But then, she sees that they're getting closer and closer to danger. They're drifting. In water, you drift, right? Well, we drift too. I don't know if you've seen that in your life. Sometimes we can start out so strong, and it's very black and white. We know this is God, and this is not. And then as time progresses, we can see ourselves drift. Yes. If you're not putting more energy in to keep yourself in the right direction, you are going to drift. That's
ReGina Johnston:Kind of like the New Year's resolutions? It's a discipline, and we don't like the word "discipline." We the natural progression of what happens. So you have to do something intentionally, supernaturally to keep that from happening. So this mama, just like Regina said in danger you would go after your babies, she made sure she went after her little one to keep him from danger. Similarly God wants to keep us from danger. Matthew 7:15, Jesus says, "Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves." Wolves. Really, that's who they are. So we want to see clearly. Another one of those words is"seductive." What seduces us? Anything that appeals to ourselves, our own selfish interests. We are physical beings, so we get tired, we get hungry, we like pleasure. Anything that appeals to those selfish interests over what God has for you, over His plan, will seduce you. Romans 1:25 says this, "They have exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator." That is quite a statement. We have to know our God intimately and not settle for less. That's settling for less, and the enemy wants you to settle for less. There's always a settling when we choose to worship the created rather than the Creator. We think, "We don't do that." But we do whenever we want it to be organic. Like we just wake up feeling like taking choose something that appeals to our flesh, something that appeals to ourselves, something that sounds good. We think, "I should do that, but this is what I really want to do." That's settling. We love comfort, we love control. And if we're not careful, we'll be deceived. We can be deceived. So we have to
be careful. Luke 9:23, Jesus speaking, says this, "If any one of you wants to be My follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow Me." That's hard, isn't it? up our cross, but nobody feels like taking up the cross, honestly. I mean, that's death to what you want to do.
ReGina Johnston:Death to my desires. Death to the way I think it should be. Let's just be real. It's hard to balance death to self in some situations, because it's not being a "doormat." It's not,"Don't use your giftings because you're trying to die to self." No, it's a dying that Christ might live through us. And it's His anointing on our unique personalities that He created. And giftings that need to live. But we have this thing that self turns to selfish.
Jina McAfee:I'm even thinking, fear can be self. If God is calling you to be a witness, you can be afraid to witness and so you can give in to that fear. Sometimes we don't realize that can be the reason. He says,"Don't be afraid," but He knows we're afraid. He wants us to do it, even while we're afraid. And
Kyli Rose:We're creatures of comfort, and so there are cultural ideologies that will always appeal to us. Whenever He's with us in the process. And when we do that, we're like, you hear, "Do you, just do you," that is a half truth. He did"Wow, look what You did, God!" create us uniquely. There is some truth to that. But we take some of these cultural ideas, and we don't hold it up against the truth of Scripture. It can lead us to really selfish places where we build a theology and an ideology where I am the center, I established the terms, I say what I will do and where I will go and how I will serve. And if that works for me, then I'll do it. If it doesn't, I'm not going to do it. And it can get really dangerous. We can get off course really easily.
ReGina Johnston:Right. Because the Bible talks about rest a lot, I define what rest is, not the Bible.
Jina McAfee:And if we think about it, the enemy's all in this. He is the one that is seducing you to think that way. And if we got that, we would put our foot down and say, "No enemy, you're not going to seduce me." We want you to have eyes to see what's happening. The enemy is active. He's subtle. He's sharp at what he does.
ReGina Johnston:And there's almost a contract that can be formed between the flesh and the enemy. We really do want to blame the devil for everything. But we have our own free will. God gave it to us. Sometimes we choose the seduction of the enemy, initially, knowing it's not, right. But yet somehow we get ourselves wound up in that, and we're justifying it. We're justifying ourselves in such a way that we've become seduced. We become duped. We've allowed it.
Jina McAfee:So really what we want to do is open your eyes to see what's going on. The other word is "strategic." In a military sense, it's trying to have the upper hand in combat. It's very strategic. The enemy is strategic. He knows how to appeal to your flesh, without it even sounding like that. So his strategy is to make sure we don't know who we are in Christ. We know Christ, but we've got to know who we are in Christ. So the enemy is trying to keep us from really understanding that. We need to understand what is going on.
ReGina Johnston:So Kyli, you already really talked to us about the False Prophet and his activity and his authority and the things that he actually did. So what we're going to do then is look at the true witness. We're going to shift that camera now. We've heard about these adjectives that describe the False Prophet. He's subtle. He's seductive. He's strategic. We've heard about his authority and his activity among us. We heard that, even then, we're still reminding ourselves about the pause. Am I moving along too quickly? Did you have any more to cover on this? Okay, so let's look at this true witness. Jina, tell us about the true witness.
Jina McAfee:In Revelation 11, we hear about two witnesses. The thing that you've got to see here is that the Tribulation has been going on for three and a half years, half of the seven. In the middle of the seven years of Tribulation, the peace treaty with Israel gets broken. All of the things that Antichrist has allowed, worship in the Temple, is all broken. At a very strategic time then, God sends two witnesses. It's so interesting. In verse 3, He says, "I will give power to My two witnesses, and they will be clothed in burlap and will prophesy during those 1,260 days[3.5 years]." So they're going to prophesy during the last half of the Tribulation. So during the the hardest time of the Tribulation, God's sends witnesses from heaven to earth. I love that. We don't know who they are; we just know that they're His witnesses. We know that they're clothed in burlap, and Kyli, as I was listening to your teaching, I thought about the fact that there's a mourning and grieving for people who have not chosen Christ. Along with Him, we don't want to see that happen. We don't want to see our family members not know Christ. We do not want to see them end up in the lake of fire. We want a witness for them. So He sends them. And He describes them as two olive trees and two lampstands that stood before the Lord of all the earth. What do the olive trees represent there?
Kyli Rose:That's a reference to Zechariah 4 where he had a vision of two olive trees and the lampstand. You see the oil from the olive trees represents the power of the Holy Spirit. You see a regular candle will just burn down, but it's given us this picture of a never-ending supply. The anointing. A little holder of oil is going to run dry, but not an olive tree. It's going to produce more and more and more. There's going to be a never-ending supply. You can have as much as you need. And that's what they're empowered by.
Jina McAfee:And we need it, don't we. So I think about how Holy Spirit is the true witness corresponding to the False Prophet which is the false witness. So, we've got a never-ending supply of Holy Spirit right there. And that's so cool. Verses five and six say that God protects them as they preach repentance and salvation. So they are His witnesses. They are preaching Christ, they're preaching salvation. They're going to be there for that whole three and a half years, empowered by Holy Spirit. After that, after they preach for three and a half years, God's going to allow the Antichrist to wage war and kill them. We know they're in Jerusalem, they are in front of Israel here in Revelation. But in our day and age, and the day that these witnesses are going to be witnessing, their message will go out over the airwaves. People all over the world will hear the message. At the time of John, he didn't get that. But now we know that.
Kyli Rose:Scholars used to argue, "How could this be? What in the world does this mean?" Now we have an idea of how everyone in the world can know and be watching the same thing at the same time. But back in the 50's even, they would have read this and thought, "How in the world is this going to come to be?" So you see parts becoming clearer.
Jina McAfee:We get it. They get to witness for three and a half years. So they're coming to the very end of the Tribulation period. And God allows them to be killed. They lay in the streets. People celebrate. I know Kyli, you said that it was like Christmas. They were so glad to shut them up.
ReGina Johnston:It feels so evil.
Kyli Rose:They exchange gifts, and they make merry. Talk about a counterfeit Christmas, celebrating like Christmas the death of two witnesses in comparison to how we celebrate the birth of Christ.
Jina McAfee:At the end of three and a half days, then God resurrects them. They come to life.
ReGina Johnston:They're just seeing this.
Jina McAfee:It's ominous, right? And then they go up into heaven. They return to God.
ReGina Johnston:Shut the mouths of people, I'm telling you.
Jina McAfee:So God has a witness. You've got to realize that God uses these witnesses. People come to know Christ during this last three and a half years of the Tribulation. Not everybody, not a majority, but people will come to know Christ.
ReGina Johnston:We're still seeing that pattern of pursuit, pursuit, pursuit.
Kyli Rose:One of the things I was reading as I was preparing is that whenever they were raised from the dead, terror struck all who were staring at them. Several of the commentaries I read said, "It denotes awe and wonder, but no heart change." Even after seeing something like that, their hearts were so steadfast in their own way, it was like, "I will not bend, I will not bow."
Jina McAfee:To their own detriment.
ReGina Johnston:Is it by then people have seen so much that they're not moved by what they see anymore? I can almost sense that kind of thickness in the atmosphere right now. We're at a place where we're just seeing so much. We've seen so much death, whether in reality or just in movies. We've seen so much untrue, that we don't even know what truth is anymore. And we're suspicious of everything. And I'm just sensing that right now our emotions are not engaging in the reality of things. Our hearts are seared, darkened.
Jina McAfee:The word says that in the end, hearts will grow cold. So watch your heart. Don't let it grow cold.
Kyli Rose:I think even as believers, if you do not stay close to Him, you will not be able to see people the way He sees them. You will be blind. They wore the sackcloth and the ashes to denote their mourning. They saw brokenness, and they were moved by it. When was the last time as believers, we were moved by brokenness? Are we moved by injustice? Are we moved by the things that move the heart of God? Are we moved by lack? Are we moved by things that hurt His kids? We know that for people who are separated from Christ, there will be a disconnect of heart. But my question is for those of us who are believers, "Are you moved by the things that move God?" Do the things that hurt Him, hurt you? Or have we become so accustomed to the brokenness? I mean, do we just pour into the house of God every Sunday and just go back home? It's just what we do. We're going through the motions. Are we even moved by the presence of God? Are we so used to His God activity that we miss His presence? We feel the heat, but there's some kernels left in the bag. We're all walking into the same building, we put the bag of popcorn in, but some do not pop. They all experienced the same heat, some pop, and they're usable. And some stay a kernel. Why is that? Are we moved by the things that move God? The only way you can be is to be moved by God Himself. So are you positioning yourself to do that regularly?
ReGina Johnston:We've got to wrap up our time together today. But Kyli, you have you said something that has just echoed in my mind, in my spirit, since you said it. You said from the beginning of time, Jesus Christ, the faithful witness has been asking a question. What is that question?
Kyli Rose:Can I get a witness?
ReGina Johnston:Can I get a witness? Can I get a witness? And that is so true. All throughout time, He's asking us, those of us who believe in Him today, "Can I get a witness? Can I get a true witness?" Our lives are witnesses. So what are we saying about who Jesus is? What are we as the church saying? Are we mourning over sin? I mean, this is a message for the church, not necessarily for those who aren't believers today. This is a message for the church. Will we mourn over sin, even people who maybe haven't wrapped their hearts around Jesus Christ yet and the fact that there is sin and evil in this world that we we need to refute and reject and mourn over, that has consequences that end up in death. Maybe you haven't received that thought process and had your heart open up to that. Maybe you're listening today and you're thinking I'm missing something. I want you to understand that's that sweet pursuit of Jesus trying to pursue you, saying"I'm not willing that you would perish. And I want to know you and I want you to know Me." So I just want to read a Scripture before we close. Second Timothy 2:1-7 says, "If we die with Him, if we stick it out with Him, we'll rule with Him; if we turn our backs on Him, He'll turn His back on us; if we give up on Him, He does not give up on us, for there's no way He can be false to Himself." That's the Message version of this Scripture. But I just want to encourage you. There is a cost to following Him, but the reward is life everlasting. Everlasting. So will you be that witness? That's the question I just want to leave our listening audience with today. Will you be that faithful and true witness like Jesus, like other witnesses that have been raised up? Will you be one who testifies of the mighty power? Yes, and consuming love of a saving Christ. So I'm just going to pray for our listening audience. Lord Jesus, You have ordained all that would hear this podcast today. And Lord, You know that there are those who are listening whose hearts are being tugged in a direction closer to You. There are those who want to know You. God, I pray that they would know that just by the very admission of their own, by their own tongue, by their own words, and their own heart. If they were to just say, Lord, I know You're real. Come and be my Lord today. That you would do that, with joy with gladness, like the voice of a Father saying, "Man, I've been waiting. I've just been waiting for you to ask." Lord it, it is not Your will that any should perish. So I pray, Lord Jesus, that we as the church would be true witnesses to who You are, to Your character, to Your personality, to Your authority, to Your activity, Lord, in and through us, God that we would be faithful, faithful to the very end. Lord, thank You for the pauses that You give us in our lives, even where You can insert yourself in a visual sense, in a tangible sense, and assure us that we are not alone, that You are with us. The thing is, You're always here, but sometimes we're just not aware. And we need to have those pauses with You where we understand that You are with us, You will never leave us, You will not forsake us and Lord, there is an expected end for those who believe in You and it's good. It's good. Lord, thank You for exposing the works of the enemy among us. He does have a counterfeit. Lord, I pray that You would open our eyes to see what he's doing, open our mouths to speak the truth about what he's doing. And Lord, I pray that You would just help us, strengthen us. Help us to be encouraged by Your word. Help us to encourage one another in Your word. Help us to look forward and anticipate the coming Christ. Lord, thank You for what You're doing in people's lives this very day. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.