There are several words in the English language where a change of just a few letters completely changes things, even if they kind of sound the same. The easiest example that I came up with as I was thinking about this was dessert and desert. They look the same. It's one letter that's different, and if you're like me, you probably have to stop every time you need to spell one of those words and remember which one it is that you're trying to spell and which one has one S and which one has two. But they're completely different things. I don't think a dry, barren wasteland and a tasty part of the meal have anything in common, but they look the same. They even kind of sound the same. And two other words that are similar that come to mind for me are thermostat and thermometer.

We love underdog stories. They are the types of stories that really draw us in, everything from something in the Bible like David and Goliath to that forever classic the Little Engine that Could. We naturally gravitate towards these types of stories. Now, we're just recently removed from the games of March Madness gracing our television screens, and I'm guessing that most people have similar feelings to mine. As you watch those games, if you aren't a fan of a particular educational institutional basketball program, you find yourself cheering for the team that's the lower seed. We love to see the little school topple the basketball powerhouses.

External appearances can be deceiving, can't they? I think we can all relatively quickly come up with an idea of something that seemed to be unshakable based upon its appearance, but then ended up not holding up. We wouldn't have too much difficulty, I don't think, brainstorming a few different examples of this. Arguably the most obvious example, and probably the example that is probably running through your mind, is the world-famous ocean liner, the Titanic.

There's been a repetitive theme so far in our time in the book of Revelation. The original audiences of this book, particularly these seven churches that are talked about that, are in Asia. In the second and third chapters of Revelation they are facing coming, tribulation and persecution, and for some of them we've seen that this persecution has already arrived.

On Friday morning there was a 4.8 magnitude earthquake in the New York City area. Now, 4.8 on the Richter scale is rather mild, and the earthquake originated near Lebanon, new Jersey, and it was felt in the Northeast. Now, the reason I heard about it was because of a news article about how long it took for the emergency notification of the emergency alert system. You know the one that comes to our loud. Messages went out from people's phones letting them know that an earthquake had occurred in the New York City area, and in the message residents were advised to remain indoors and call 911 if they were injured. Now, by the time, 45 minutes had passed I'm guessing they were long past that point of what that notification told them to do. People had likely long since left their homes. You know, asking the question, did you feel that? You know, you want to know if it was just in your mind or if it was something other people experienced, something other people experienced, and if you were injured beyond anything that you could take of yourself, or if you could get yourself to the emergency room, you would have long since called 911, right Now you've probably gotten late news yourself and had the thought well, that information would have been much more useful before this happened to me.

As we've been making our way through the book of Revelation thus far, I've been emphasizing that the book of Revelation is a word of hope to these seven churches who, in the first century, were going to experience great persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire. To first appear in the face of persecution is something that most believers desire to do. No one stops and thinks about persecution and says man, I hope if persecution ever comes, I'm the first one to sell Jesus out. That's not the way we think. No one wants to be the first one to give up their faith. In fact, our aspiration is actually the exact opposite. We see faithfulness as a very important virtue. To have a conviction, to have beliefs and to hold to them is something that we greatly value.

We've all had someone come to us with a story of something amazing that they've seen. Now some people experience, say, a rare phenomenon or an unlikely event, and it becomes something that they just have to tell other people about. It's something you just can't keep to yourself. You have to share, and actually the chances are that you've been on both sides of having to tell a story like this. I know that I have been and I will say that I find it to be just as hard to explain something amazing to someone as it is to understand something amazing that someone is telling you. I don't know about you, but when I'm telling people about something amazing, I find myself spitting out well, it was like this, but it wasn't quite like this. It was that, but it wasn't that right. I'm sure it doesn't make any sense to them, but I'm excited about it. It's something I need to share and I'm sure if you have ever been on the other side of me describing something in this way, you're just trying to keep track of what I'm saying. You're trying to picture in your mind, but you know that unless you see what I'm talking about yourself, you'll never fully be able to understand what it is that I'm trying to describe. Regardless of how well somebody describes something to you and regardless of how well you understand it, you can never really understand it unless you see it. But you do come away with something. You do know that what they saw was exceptional, maybe it was even amazing. That is easy to convey.