Coronation of Christ

Now will not be long let's read please in Revelation chapter 19. Revelation 19 verse 11. And I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse and he that sat on him was called faithful and true and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

His eyes were as a flame of fire on his head were many crowns diadems and he had a name written that no man knew but he himself. That's all I want to read. A word in relation to the coming coronation.

Coronation of Christ. When the Roman occupied Israel and Israel as a nation collapsed. John who wrote after that uses Roman time and Roman systems in his writings.

For instance in Matthew chapter 6 you have the Savior at the cross at 6 o'clock. However in John's gospel you have him at Pilate. So John uses Roman customs and Roman time and in this connection I like to see the verse we've read together.

The year was 1952. I was a little fella in Europe and there was an announcement that in Great Britain a Queen would be crowned. We gathered at the electronic shop for at least two hours and the transmission never came through.

I was disappointed. Now when the grace of God reached and saved me ten years ago I am not too interested in a royal wedding. We pray for royalty.

We should. There's a royal wedding coming next month. I think as far as I know only two invitations were sent to Canada and they were not sent to me.

Doesn't bother me. But what I'm interested in the coronation of our Lord Jesus Christ. You'll be there and so will I. When the Savior was here he only wore a crown of thorns and the Jerusalem thorn is just about that long.

The crown of shame. The crown of pain. And as far as Zechariah is concerned there's a future coronation.

And as far as the epistle to the Hebrews is concerned he is already crowned brethren. The Savior is crowned already. Now I'd like to take it up as John likely was familiar with.

In the Roman army, in the Roman Empire, there were five distinct crowns that were given for bravery. The first one was called, I don't expect you to remember it, the Diadema and that's actually the word, the Diadema muralis, what was involved. When the Romans attacked a stronghold or fortress, the first man who climbed on the wall, he met tremendous and fierce resistance.

The defender threw everything they had at him. Most of them he died. Most of these people died.

And yet if he survived, it was a psychological thing when he climbed upon the ramparts and came over the wall and lived, he was given a crown. The crown muralis. That takes it to Hebrews chapter 2 doesn't it? We see Jesus made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death.

We see him now crowned with glory and honor that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. Brethren, when the Savior went to the cross, even before he met the concerted effort, all his enemies in life, he met the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He met the unbelief of the Sadducees.

He met the sensual Herodians, and the high priests. There's one high priest, 200 chief priests, and about 18,000 priests scattered throughout Israel, of which 7,000 alone operated on the day of not the day of atonement only, but in the Passover. Tremendous amount.

But the Savior had constant hostility. And yet, you know, he overcame. He will get this crown.

Now the second crown is, I don't think you'll remember the Upsidanalis. Repeat after me. Don't.

This crown was given because in the exchange of hostility in the Roman Empire, there were some of these legionnaires, they were taken captives by the enemy forces. When the Roman intelligence found out, they called for volunteers, men who would risk their lives, who found out were their captives were held in the foreign camp. They had to go behind enemy lines.

They had to be skilled soldiers, not afraid of death. And they had to because Rome expended a tremendous amount of training the soldiers. And each soldier was precious to the Roman Empire.

And these men broke through the ranks, usually at night. And they rescued these men, brought them home. So much did these captives, now freed Roman legionnaires, appreciate their freedom.

On the way to the Roman camps, they went into the bushes, got leaves from olive trees, wove a little crown and placed it upon their men who emancipated them. And this is what we have here, isn't it? In Romans chapter 6, Paul says, God be thanked, though you were the servants of sin, captivated and kept. Now from your heart you have obeyed this doctrine.

Oh, brethren, you appreciate your salvation? I do not know all of you. More or less, we're all given over to bondage. And none but Christ could break it.

More or less. In the days when I grew up, we never do drugs. Totally unknown.

But there are other bondage. Mine was in a way political, that's all I knew. And then it was what I got from advertisement and movies and one thing another.

And then the gospel came. Did I ever to shed a lot of things that were not according to the book? And then ultimately, I found the Savior. He liberated me.

Oh, the joy. You know, when I first heard the gospel, all the burden and the grief and the load were gone. A few days later, the brethren and the Bible ring touched about the Lord's coming.

I didn't know what that was all about. Until they told me that the Christ who died, the Christ would come back to receive me to Himself. Well, I tell you, I'm not, I wasn't in a Pentecostal faith like my brother.

But I could have gone through the roof tiles and all. Jesus would come. I'd never might see the casket.

By the way, a brother talked about eternal security. I'll tell you something. Now, we may all be different.

I never had one single doubt about my eternal security. Never had. Right from the day go.

You know why? In salvation, I took the eternal authoritative judgment of Christ in relation to my state. Verily, verily, I say unto he that heareth my word, believe with him that's only half eternal life. That has never changed.

And then I had no problem about eternal security. I again took the Savior as the authoritative eternal Word of God Himself. He says, I give unto them eternal life.

They shall never perish. No one nor anything can pluck them out of my Father's hand. In fact, I am part of His hand.

You see, those who deny eternal security do not accept the authority of Christ in who He is. When I found this out, I said, thank you Lord, I'll be saved and saved forever. It doesn't mean we do what we like.

But to some people, you know that Christianity is crippled. Because they feel, oh my, I'm going to be lost again if I do something. 1 John 1 and verse 9 is the answer.

So here we have the Lord, the Emancipator, He'll get a crown for emancipating you. Set you at liberty. Think of the poor world round about, brethren.

Slaves to money, slaves to sin, slaves to immorality. And yet you're free. But you know, it is quite possible that a child of God can be entangled again.

That's why Paul says to Timothy, no soldier that wars entangles himself. That means captivate, immobile. You can't move for God simply because there are other things that hold you down.

Oh, we all have to make a living. That's understood, isn't it? We come to the third one. And that was called in the Roman system the diadema or the crown triumphalis.

And that was given to any general. In this case, it was Titus or any general in the Roman army, which conquered a Roman province and brought it into the Roman Empire. Of course, the advantage was not only slaves.

The advantage was taxes. Ultimately, the Jews, Luke 13, they rebelled. 2 Thessalonians, Paul says to the here's that the wrath of God has come upon them to the uttermost at 8048, when the Romans killed thousands of Jews.

Ultimately, the nation collapsed. There are still a thousand Jews who hid up in the fort of Masada. And the Romans couldn't go home until the land was cleared.

Most of them took their lives. But there was still resistance till 135 AD. Bar Korba.

Have you ever heard of Bar Korba? Have you? Young men here, you know your history, don't you? Bar Korba, the false messiah, who took 400 guerrilla fighters and hid in the hills of Galilee. And they attacked the Roman garrison, killed them, and vanished just like this. The Romans didn't know where they were.

And finally, meter by meter, they looked at the Judean hills and they came upon a goat stable. Soldier kicked away the straw and there was the entrance. I've been in this cave and actually little, little city in a sandstone rock.

That's where they hid out. And so the fire was lit below. And Bar Korba, the false messiah, who tried to bring back the Jewish nation, was killed.

That was the last resistance. While here, the Crown Diadema Triumphalis. Some years ago, I met an American astronaut.

He was saved at 12 years old in Florida. He told me that because of the intense pressure of his military training, testing rockets, rocket planes, and ultimately he was selected to be Apollo 17 commander. Very interesting man.

He knew the Lord. But you know something? He told me, Fred, the pressure was so intense in the NASA program, I got cleaned away from God. Not until he went to the lunar surface, he said, up there, I tried to find my home state, Colorado.

I couldn't find America. Asia was about the size of my thumbnail, covered by clouds. And the Lord restored me on the moon when I saw his creation from a different perspective.

He said, I had no problem to realize what Isaiah and the Revelation teaches sometimes, that God is going to roll up the whole thing. See, when you're up there, you see the earth just about the size of a small apple. This thought, he told me, came to me, oh God, how great the Lord.

He got restored on the moon. Well, maybe brother, we should be saving up some money to get there too. I don't know.

So he had the crown triumphalis. Christ came from a realm experimentally we know very little or nothing. He came to this small earth to occupy for his God.

He'll get a crown for that. Look how they treated him. The greatest, kindest ambassador from heaven came to this earth.

Look what he received. Revelation tells you just like the devil, as soon as he was born, tried to drown over the flood of water, oppression, difficulty, opposition, and enmity from every hand, and yet he stood firm. Stood firm ultimately at the cross.

Oh, the wonders of it all, my dear brother. He did that for you. He did that for me.

He will receive a crown for having conquered for his God upon this earth. He'll be crowned for it. Now, very briefly, the fourth crown, it's called the Diadema or Corona Valaris, and that was promised to the conqueror of the city of Jerusalem.

Titus organized the Tenth Legion. The enemy always attacked from the north. Why? The walls of the southern temple mounds were 250 feet high, plus 150 feet to the Kidron Valley.

Impossible military to conquer from the east and the west and from the south, so they always attacked from the north. The walls were not that high, and when ultimately they breached the defenses, they neared the temple. The priests, loyal to what they had been taught, resisted them.

Mercilessly, they killed every one of them, couldn't care less whether it was made a main priest or whatever functioning priest, killed every one of them. You see, the Romans figured that the temple was a depository of riches, gold, and all kinds of valuables, and the leading general came out wringing his hands. There was nothing in the most holy place, nothing whatsoever.

Oh, the Ark had been gone since 586 BC. Some saints in Ethiopia, don't think so. Some saints in Egypt, don't think so.

Some saints under the temple. Well, why was it not the most holy place? The Ark's been gone since 586. And in the millennium, the Ark will be missing.

Why? Christ will be there. The Ark speaks of Himself. Now, here the Romans, as a psychological ploy, they climbed the temple.

They were under orders not to burn it, and they planted the Roman standard right on the temple. Now, that was a psychological ploy. The Jews realized, oh my, we're done for.

Here the Romans are, the most sacred structure. You know what it means? I like to think of it this way. When you trusted Christ, young man, young woman, you are now under new management.

You are. You belong to Christ. Follow Him.

Obey Him. Recognize the tremendous blessing that God has brought to you. Child of heaven.

Child of God. Oh, the dignity. Square your shoulders, will you? We're not just anybody, you know.

Sons of God. Oh, the dignity of our standing. Sonship, one of the greatest truths in the Bible.

Valaris. Now, we come to the last one. And the last one was called Diademas Miltia.

You see, in the service of the Roman army, they were mercenaries. That meant their pay was not great. Their pay wasn't great.

So when they conquered a castle or a stronghold, they sometimes were tempted to fill their pockets. And of course, when you had enough money to last you for years, you could fade in the bushes. Desert.

That was a death penalty. Nevertheless, the Roman governors, they recognized this temptation. And they promised an additional crown to every soldier in spite of temptation, in spite of difficulty, who stayed loyal in the service of the Emperor.

Oh, brethren, here we are. Brethren, we know that our journey will almost be over. I mean, as a church.

Everywhere I go, there seems to be the conscious realization that the time is not only late, but the coming of the Lord is near. And that's good. And the Lord will give you all a reward for being faithful.

Stay, brethren, sisters, in the service of the Master. Up home, we have problems with quite a number leaving the local assemblies. I don't understand this.

Young men are brought up in Christian homes, in elders' homes, leaving the gathering. Oh, the Lord help us to be loyal in divine service, to help to study and to enjoy the book, for there's going to be a crowning day coming.