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Anne Graham Lotz from today's message of hope on living in the Light.

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When it comes to leaving a godly legacy, an ungodly world, not only do we need to be fired up, not only faithful to Jesus, but we need to be focused on Jesus through prophecy and through praise and through patient endurance and then through prostration.

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Welcome to Living in the Light and the Bible Teaching ministry of Anne Graham Lotz. How would we know the end of the story? How would we know where we're headed? How would we know the climax of human history if it wasn't for prophecy? Anne's message today is taken from the book of Revelation, Chapter 1, titled Focused on Jesus. Here's Anne.

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You know, several weeks ago, I was walking with a friend. We love to walk around the lake about two and a half miles. And we came around one bend in the trail and there's a couple in front of us, and they were both staring intently upward. And then they were sort of turning around like this and they were staring upward. And then the wife went and she started pointing upward. And I knew what she was looking at. There's an eagle's nest in the top of this tall pine tree. But I knew the eagle wasn't there. I knew the babies had left and so I knew it was empty. But because they were staring and she was pointing, I looked up to see what she was looking at. And when we focus on something very intently, often people will follow our focus. I think it may be what happened to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. Remember when she went and she stuck her head in and the angel said, why are you crying? And she said, they've taken my Lord away and I don't know where they've taken him. And I wonder if the angels just looked at me with that focus over her shoulder. So they were staring intently past her because Mary turned around and she saw a man standing in back of her. And he said, woman, why are you crying? And she said, sir, if you're the gardener, you know, she thought he was the gardener. So if you've taken my Lord away, tell me where you've taken him and I'll go get him. And he just said one word, Mary, and it was the Lord, but she turned to see him. And I wonder if it's because the angels were focused over his shoulder and she was looking where they were looking. So where are you looking? Where's your focus? And when it comes to leaving a godly legacy, an ungodly world, not only do we need to be fired up, not only faithful to Jesus. But we need to be focused on Jesus. And it doesn't mean that everybody that sees us focus on him is going to receive Christ. But I think at least they're going to give him a glance. At least they're going to look his way. And I think our focus is more effective when it's against that backdrop of struggle, pressure, stress, hard things. You know that these trials have come into your life so that Jesus would be revealed through the fire. And so I don't know what the trials are that you've been in, but as we said, it's a platform. And when you're going through the struggles and the turmoil is all around you. And sometimes it just gets so hard because it hits us at every level, on every side, and it's just boom, boom, boom, boom. And at that point, if we can keep our focus on Jesus, somebody else is going to look his way. But because we are. In the first century ad, the early church was being persecuted and shared a little bit of that Friday night. But it wasn't Nero. It was Domitian that was on the throne when Revelation was written. And Domitian was also somebody who was a madman with absolute power. He declared himself God. When the early church refused to worship him, he poured out persecution upon them. He burned them at the stake, fed them to the lions, crucified them on crosses. And they had pressure, trouble, stress, every which way. I expect every family living in that area, every single person had been affected by persecution in one way or another. Everybody maybe had a family member who had been thrown to the lions or burned at the stake. They had friends. It was just permeating the Roman Empire. And it was at that moment that God gave to the Apostle John a vision of the glory of Jesus to help the early church and everybody, all of us since then, to stay focused on Jesus. So turn to Revelation, chapter one, and this will be our text. And John is challenging you and me to stay focused on Jesus through prophecy and through praise and through patient endurance and then through prostration. So let's look first of all at staying focused on Jesus through prophecy, the revelation of Jesus Christ. I don't know what your attitude is towards the book of Revelation. Maybe you're afraid of it because, you know, you go through that imagery and the symbolism and it's just so weird and it is like science fiction, except there's some reality to it and you just don't want to go there. Or maybe you're fascinated and you're just trying to, you know, Find everything and see what it means. But the Book of Revelation, the primary purpose is not prophecy. The primary purpose of the Book of Revelation is to reveal Jesus. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ. The word revelation means to lift the veil. And through prophecy, God lifts the veil. And we see something we wouldn't see except we had the prophecy. So in the Old Testament, as we shared the Old Testament saints, from Adam and Eve, they received the prophecy, the seed of the woman that would come, that would take away their sin, bring them into the right relationship with God. And that's a paraphrase of Genesis 3:15. But anyway, through prophecy, they could see the Messiah. They didn't know his name, but they longed for the seed of the woman. And we go on through the Old Testament and the prophecy lifted the veil and revealed Jesus to them in a way they wouldn't had they not had the prophecy. So we focus on Jesus through prophecy, and through prophecy, that's revealed by God. And then John goes on to say he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw. That is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. And so John is saying, this is my personal testimony. It's an amazing thing because John, you know, for you and me, it's prophecy. For him, it's history. If I've counted right in one translation, 49 times, he said, I saw with my own eyes. 28 times, he said, I heard with my own ears. So this is John's eyewitness account of the future, what's still future to us. But he saw it. He heard it. So if he were here, he might want to share his testimony with you. So I love to stand in for him. So if you'll just humor me for a moment, I'm going to share with you his testimony. And he would say, if he was here, something like this, that I was a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth for three years. And on many occasions, I saw Jesus do some of the most amazing things. I saw him feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. And I saw him cleanse the leper and give sight to the blind. And I saw him actually raise the dead back to life. But I'll never forget that Thursday night, and we'd all gone upstairs to have a last supper with him. And while we were there having supper, he shared all sorts of things with us. And he washed our feet and taught us that if he did that, we're to do likewise. He taught us about heaven. He taught us that we would be persecuted because of our identification with him. He taught us that he was the vine, we were the branches, that we couldn't do anything without him. That taught us about the Holy Spirit who would come in his name. And then he asked us to come out, and we followed him. We overheard him praying to his Father. And he took us to the Garden of Gethsemane and went in to pray. And he asked James and Peter and myself to go in, in the inner part of the Gethsemane and pray with him. I went to sleep. When I woke up, I saw with my own eyes the Roman soldiers placing him under arrest. And because I'm a relative of a high priest, I followed at a distance and I slipped inside that courtyard. And with my own eyes, I saw him placed on trial before Annas and then Caiaphas and then the full Sanhedrin. And with my own ears, in the end, I heard them convict Jesus of Nazareth for blasphemy. Nothing more, nothing less, just blasphemy, claiming to be the Son of God. And I saw with my own eyes as they took Jesus and they took him to Pilate and placed him on trial before the Roman governor, on trial before Pilate and then Herod and then back to Pilate. And I saw as Pilate told the crowd, and I heard, this man is innocent. Seven different times the Roman courts said, this man is innocent. But then Pilate turned him over for flogging. And when they brought him back and he stood on the judgment hall platform in front of a crowd that was now beginning to riot, you would have a hard time identifying him as a person, much less know exactly who he was. The blood and flesh was ripped from his body, still had a noble bearing and dignity. And the crowd rioting, crucify him. Crucify him. And Pilate asked for a basin of water. And I saw Pilate wash his hands of responsibility and say, this man is innocent, but. But you can crucify him. And I saw as they put a cross on his back and they took him up to Calvary and stripped him of his clothes and laid him down on the cross and drove the spikes through his hands and feet. And I saw them raise that cross and plant it in the ground like a tree. I saw Jesus of Nazareth crucified on a Roman cross. And I stayed at the foot of the cross for six hours. At one point, he even noticed me and asked me if I would take care of his mother, which I did for the rest of her life. And then at the end of six Hours. I heard with my own ears. It is finished. And I saw with my own eyes as he bowed his head. And he deliberately refused to take the next breath. I saw Jesus of Nazareth die on that Roman cross. And you understand, my whole life fell apart. All my hopes and dreams, everything I believed in. Just crashed into little pieces at the foot of the cross. Because I thought Jesus was. Was the Messiah. I thought he was God walking the earth in his human body. I thought he was the redeemer of Israel. I thought he was the Son of God and he had died on a Roman cross. And I went back to that upstairs room with the other disciples. And we locked the door and we barred the windows. We were terrified the Romans would come get us. And in my grief, the hours just ran together. And before I knew it, it was Sunday morning. And I heard somebody banging on the door. I thought the Romans had come to get us. But I heard a woman's voice. And I opened the door and it was Mary. And she was saying something about the tomb being empty and grave robbers. And Peter and I looked at each other. We had the same thought. We ran through that open door, through the early morning streets of Jerusalem. We came to the tomb where Jesus had been buried. The stone was rolled away, just like Mary said. I ran inside. And I will never forget what I saw. Nothing. Except for the grave clothes. And I was there in Bethany when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. You remember? And he told Martha to unwrap him. And when Martha finished unwrapping Lazarus, those grave clothes were lying there like a pile of stinking rags. And the grave clothes of Jesus weren't lying there like a pile of sinking rags. Like somebody had taken the body off naked. The grave clothes were lying there like an empty cocoon. As though the body was still inside. And I knew Jesus had risen from the dead. But I was more confused than ever. So I went back to that upstairs room with the other disciples. And we locked the door and we barred the windows. And Sunday afternoon, with my own ears, I heard that very beloved, familiar voice say, peace. It is I. Be not afraid. And I turned and I looked. And I saw Jesus of Nazareth standing in front of me. I saw the wound on his brow where the thorns had been. And the wounds in his hands and feet where the nails had been. And he invited me to reach out and touch him. And I'm here to tell you I have seen and felt and experienced the risen Lord Jesus Christ. He's alive. He's alive. For 40 days he came and went. And he taught us. And about 40 days later, we were standing on the Mount of Olives and reached out his hands to bless us, as was his custom. And as I saw him reaching out his hands to bless us, I saw with my own eyes Jesus of Nazareth began to rise up from the ground in his man's body. I saw his body begin to go up through the air. I saw him go up through the clouds of glory. I saw Jesus of Nazareth ascend back into heaven. But that's not all I've seen. Let me tell you what else I've seen with the same eyes and heard with the same ears. I've seen wars on a worldwide scale so devastating that the blood of those slaughtered rises to the height of a horse's bridle. I've seen pestilence like AIDS and Ebola virus and cancer and some of these other things wipe out a third of the Earth's population. I've seen stars like Scud missiles falling out of the sky. And I've seen mountains falling into the sea. And I've seen a beast rise up out of the sea to rule the world. And I've seen a false prophet who does miracles in his name. And I've seen a dragon give them both power. And I've seen hell opened and demons flooding the earth. And I've seen heaven opened. And I've seen angels come out and declare the gospel in the sky for the whole world to see. And I've seen the sky unfold and a white horse appear whose rider is faithful and true, followed by the armies of Heaven.