John the Beloved

Hi, this is Lee Webb, host of Renewing Your Mind with R.C.

Sproul. You know, long before I came to work here at Ligonier Ministries, I was a Ligonier student, accessing its many valuable resources. In fact, I go back to the cassette and VHS days. I began subscribing to Table Talk magazine in 1990 and have been reading it ever since. As a husband and father, I used it as the foundation of our family devotions. My children gained a deeper understanding of God's Word as we read the articles and daily studies. One Christmas, I decided to round out the gifts we gave our now grown children with gift subscriptions to Table Talk.

They tell me now it's one of the most cherished gifts they receive each year. I'm grateful for the impact Table Talk has had on my life. That's why I'd like for you to have a free trial subscription to Table Talk with my prayer that it will mean as much to you as it has to me.

Just go to renewingyourmind.org slash table talk, and one of my colleagues will be glad to send it your way. John had no idea when Jesus rose from this planet into heaven that at some time in the years to come, Jesus would come back for a private visit and reveal Himself afresh to His beloved disciple, John. It had been decades since John had last seen Jesus. He was now an old man banished to a remote island. But as he was about to discover, the Lord wasn't done with him yet. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb.

Let's join Dr. R.C. Sproul now as he tells us what happened when this beloved apostle had one last face-to-face encounter with Jesus. One of the earliest traditions of church history is the tradition that survives to this day that teaches that eleven out of the twelve disciples that were called of Christ, apart from Judas of course, that eleven of the twelve suffered the death of a martyr. James was the first to experience martyrdom, and we don't have the details of the deaths of all the rest of the disciples, though much of the tradition is recorded in the famous volume Foxe's Book of Martyrs. We know that in the year 64 A.D., both Peter and Paul were executed under the reign of the Emperor Nero during the Neronic persecutions. Peter, of course, was crucified, but he was crucified upside down because he refused to die in the same manner of his Lord.

He felt unworthy, where Paul was beheaded by the executioner's sword. And the tradition is that only one of the disciples died of natural causes and lived to the fullness of age. The tradition also indicates that this disciple was the youngest of the group of twelve, and he is given the description in the New Testament as being the disciple whom Jesus loved. I'm referring, of course, to the beloved disciple John, John who was one of the inner circle, that inner three of Peter, James, and John who went with Jesus to so many special events and places such as the transfiguration. But even though John escaped the death of the martyr, he did not escape persecution. And late in his life he was banished from his homeland.

He was sent into exile in a remote place called the island of Patmos. And it was while he was in exile at Patmos that the heavens were opened before his eyes, and he was given a unique revelation, an epiphany that came from Christ himself that was then written down and recorded for the benefit of the church. And we call the book that is a result of that experience the Book of the Revelation or the Apocalypse, the last book of the New Testament canon. Now John, as we said, was intimately acquainted with the earthly Jesus. It was presumably John who laid his head upon the shoulder of Christ in the upper room. It was John who went with Jesus everywhere that Jesus went with during his earthly ministry, and I have to ask the question and speculate what was John thinking when he stood on the Mount of Ascension and watched Christ ascend into heaven, knowing or at least believing that this would be the last time in his life that he would lay eyes upon Jesus, thinking that he would never see him again until they saw each other once more in heaven. Well, John had no idea at that point when Jesus rose from this planet into heaven that at some time in the years to come, Jesus would come back for a private visit and reveal himself afresh to his beloved disciple, John. But that's the record according to the apocalypse, according to John's own testimony that we read in the book of Revelation.

Let's turn now to the first chapter of the book of Revelation, beginning at verse 9. We read these words from his pen, I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. Here John writes to fellow Christians, and though he is by now the patriarch of the church, he identifies his readers as his companions, companions not only in faith, comrades not only in patience, comrades not only in their love for Christ, but they are companions in the tribulation.

He's obviously referring to the intensity of persecution that the church is at that very moment experiencing. And he said, here I was, isolated, alone, in exile, on the island of Patmos for the sake of the testimony of Christ and for the word of God. And he said he was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. This refers to some kind of deep spiritual experience that he was having during the worship of the Sabbath day, which at that time now was the Lord's Day or Sunday. And John tells this story. He said, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet.

I think it's interesting. These are the kind of things that jump out of me in the pages of Scripture when I'm reading the Scripture that John notes the minor detail that when he hears this voice, he hears it behind him. This is face-to-back encounter.

This is not face-to-face. And you realize how startled a person can be when they expect to hear something, or don't expect to hear anything, but when they hear it, they hear it from behind them. I have to tell you a story quickly. The first time my wife and I went turkey hunting, in fact it was the only time my wife and I went turkey hunting, we were complete amateurs and novices, and I dragged her out of bed in the middle of the night because she can hoot like an owl. And I needed somebody to find the turkeys as they were still roosting in their trees, and so we went with our camouflage and with our decoy, and we went deep into the forest, and it was pitch dark, and it's like 4.30 and Vesta's stopping every 15 yards going, whoo, whoo, whoo, she's hooting, and pretty soon the turkeys start to answer my wife. This is an experience she's had for a long, long time.

She has a knack for attracting turkeys, as she will bear witness. And so there we are, and we get down and we build a blind, and I start with the diaphragm call, I start to call in the tom turkey, and I give my very first call on the diaphragm, the mating call, you know, whatever it is, and to my absolute astonishment, no sooner did I get the mating call out of my mouth through this diaphragm than we hear in the distance, this tom turkey gobbling for all he's worth, and my heart just leapt in my breast. And we hunkered down real quiet, and I said, be careful. We can't be impatient.

We don't want to make the rookie mistakes. Get your watch. We're going to wait 10 minutes before I give another call. And so that was the worst experience of patience, to have to wait 10 minutes.

You're sure that the turkey's going to lose interest and go away, but those turkeys are sharp and you can't rush them. And so I waited. I timed it 10 minutes later. I gave the yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck call on the thing, and again, here he comes.

He's closer. I can't see him, but I know he's coming. And we were so excited. We were beside ourselves, but we know that a turkey can spot movement from 100 yards in the woods, blinking of an eye. So we had to stay absolutely still, and we were sitting in front of this huge, big oak tree. I waited another 10 minutes, and at the end of that 10 minutes, I'm thinking that turkey has to be coming in here close.

And I gave the call again, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck. And to my absolute astonishment, we hear boisterously loud, behind us. And with that, I broke every rule of turkey heading. I jumped up from behind the tree to look.

That turkey was gone before I could even point the gun at it. But to be hearing a voice from behind you can terrify you, as Vesta and I will both testify to. It wasn't the voice of Christ.

It was just simply the gobble of a turkey. But John tells us that little detail, that while he is in the Spirit, almost a mystical trance, if you will, suddenly he is startled and frightened, hearing a voice calling to him from behind him. Listen to what the voice says. The loud voice that sounds like a trumpet says, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea. I mean, John understood instantly whose voice it was because the voice identified himself as being Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.

Alpha, of course, being the first letter of the Greek alphabet, Omega being the concluding letter of the alphabet. This is as if Jesus said, John, I'm here. I am the A to the Z. I am the beginning and the end. I am the creator. I am the redeemer. I am the author. I am the finisher of faith. And the command is given to John in his terror.

Write it down. I have a message for my churches. Send this message to the seven churches that I direct.

And then the record continues. John writes this, Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes like a flame of fire.

His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. On an earlier occasion in our studies, we had an examination of the titles for Christ that are found in the New Testament. And on that occasion, I made mention that the title that is the third most frequently used title for Jesus in the New Testament is the title Son of Man. And though it ranks only number three in frequency behind the title Messiah and the title Lord, and it's way behind those two, it's the number one title in terms of frequency of those titles that Jesus used for Himself in the New Testament.

It was Jesus' favorite self-designation, calling Himself the Son of Man. And rather than seeing that as a title of humility, Jesus is clearly identifying Himself with something that is revealed in the Old Testament when another man has a visitation from on high, when Daniel also gets to see behind the veil, and the internal court of heaven is opened to the gaze of Daniel, and he sees the ancient of days seated upon the throne. And then he sees the approach of one like the Son of Man into the inner sanctuary of heaven itself. And if you recall, when we looked at that text in Daniel, I spent time reading the imagery and the graphic description that Daniel gives of the appearance of the ancient of days who sits upon the throne. And it's almost an exact replica of what John describes here in his vision, not of the ancient of days, but of the Son of Man. Do you see in this face-to-face encounter, this vision, the Apostle John is seeing into the inner chambers of heaven itself, and he is gazing now upon the exalted glory and majesty of the ascended Christ, who now does not appear as a humble peasant walking the roads and the streets of Jerusalem or of Galilee, but the one who is now enthroned at the right hand of God who is the King of the kings and the Lord of the lords. He is appearing in this manner. He said, I saw one like the Son of Man in the midst of the seven lampstands, in the midst of the heavenly temple.

I saw one clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and his hair were white as wool. I think it's an incredible thing that in the art of Christian history, it seems that every time a painter picks up a brush to give us his rendition or his depiction of what Jesus must have looked like. You get all these different portraits painted like Solomon's Head of Christ and others. They always have Jesus depicted as a strong, virile young man, muscular and the rest. He almost never, in fact I can't remember ever seeing a painting of Christ with gray hair or with white hair, but that's what John saw. He saw Christ who has been here from everlasting to everlasting. He saw Christ garbed in the garments of God in this vision. His hair was white as snow and his wool and his eyes like a flame of fire.

Wow! It's been said of the human eyes that the eyes are the windows of the soul. Sometimes when we're speaking with people, we step back quickly because we notice a certain look in their eyes, the way they glance. They express so much about what's inside, and we know what it's like to see someone whose eyes seem to be burning. That seems to indicate an expression of great fury. We do amazing things with our eyes. If we want to look silly, we cross our eyes. My wife likes to do that when she disagrees with me but doesn't want to let anybody know.

She just crosses her eyes in front of me like saying, that's a silly thing to say. But these eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like fine brass as if refined in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. I don't know what it is about that phrase, but that really gets me, that to hear the voice of Christ was to like to hear the sound of many waters. I love the sound of waters. I love to hear the surf crashing on the seashore. I love to hear the water in a fountain spilling over into a pool. I like the sound of water.

But I can remember going to Niagara Falls as a boy and standing at the railing and watching that magnificent cascade take place right in front of me and hear the roaring of the water as the falls came down into their basin. And I mean it was a deafening roar. And I think that's what John is saying here when he said his voice was like the sound of many waters. It was the sound of a powerful waterfall, again indicating power.

He had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. All of these images again point us back towards the images reserved for God the Father in the Old Testament. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. If you've been following this series of people who came face to face with Jesus, have you noticed that refrain, how repetitive it is? How many times we read in Scripture when somebody comes face to face with Jesus, they fall on their face. When this face sees that face, this face goes next to the ground. That's the standard appropriate response of any human being to the presence of Christ, to put our face on the ground. But as John is groveling here in the dust as Isaiah did in the temple centuries before, Jesus comes over and touches him and tells him to get up, helps him up.

He put his right hand on him saying, do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am he who lives and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore.

Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of death. Write the things which you have seen, the things which are, and the things that will take place after this. John, I have the keys. I have the keys of death. I have the keys of hell. I have the keys of heaven. Don't be afraid.

Let me help you up. Face to face with the risen Christ. I am the one, says Jesus, who was alive. I am the one who was dead. But I'm not dead anymore, John. I am alive forevermore.

What an encouragement. What an amazing privilege this was for John in his old age to be reminded that one day Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. This is what Jesus revealed to John in their face-to-face encounter, and it's our great hope too. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and the message we just heard is from Dr. R.C. Sproul's series Face to Face with Jesus.

R.C. describes in great detail these up-close and personal meetings and what they teach us about Christ's holiness, His justice, and His compassion. We'd like to send you this video series for your donation of any amount, and this is the final day we're making this offer. So ask for Face to Face with Jesus when you go to renewingyourmind.org, or call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. And if you're looking for other opportunities to dive deeper into God's Word and learn more about your faith, you can do that when you check out Ligonier Connect. It's a virtual online classroom where you can learn from Dr. Sproul along with other respected pastors and teachers. There are more than 100 courses on theology, books of the Bible, Christian living, and apologetics. You can take classes with family members or friends in a group study, or you can go at your own pace.

So we invite you to check it out at connect.ligonier.org. Jesus used several metaphors to describe Himself. He said He was the light of the world, the true vine, and the bread of life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they are dead. That is, the manna in the wilderness sustained them from day to day or from week to week, but eventually they die. This bread is different. I am the living bread. Dr. Sproul walks us through the I Am sayings of Jesus beginning Monday, here on Renewing Your Mind.