What will it look like when Jesus actually returns? Most of us picture a Rambo-style hero charging in with a sword, but the Bible paints a very different picture, and it changes everything about how we live right now.

This week at 2|42 Community Church, we walk through Revelation 19 and the moment the hero finally steps into the story. Jesus returns on a white horse, eyes like fire, wearing a robe dipped in blood but here's the thing most people miss: it's His own blood. Before there was a white horse, there was a cross. Before a crown, there were thorns. Before Jesus was the conquering King, He was the sacrificial Lamb. And He's not riding back alone, there's an army behind Him, dressed in white, following Him into final victory. The question this passage leaves us with isn't "is Jesus coming back?" It's "when He does, where will you be?"

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In Revelation 17, John has already watched dragons, beasts, and armies without flinching and then one thing finally stops him in his tracks. Not something terrifying. Something beautiful. A woman called Babylon, dressed in gold, holding a cup that looks like everything you've ever wanted. That's the warning: the most dangerous things in our lives rarely look dangerous. They look like the good life.

In this sixth week of our Revelation series, we walk through Revelation 17–18 and
ask what Babylon, "the great prostitute," actually represents — and why John keeps insisting she's not just an end-times symbol for some distant empire, but a
present-tense pull on every one of us. Babylon is what the world becomes, and what our own lives become, when we quietly slide ourselves into the center where God belongs. She promises that a little more — more success, more approval, more security will finally hold your life together. Instead, like a wheel spinning
without a hub, it slowly shreds. That's why, right in the middle of her downfall,
a voice from heaven says something tender: "Come out of her, my people." Not an
accusation. An invitation. The real question this passage leaves us with is a
quiet one worth sitting with: what's actually at the center of your life right now?

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Everything you've heard about the mark of the beast is probably wrong — and the truth is honestly more relevant to your Tuesday than to some far-off end times timeline. In this message from our series on Revelation, we walk through Revelation 13 and 14, decode what 666 actually meant to the people who first read it, and ask a more uncomfortable question than "what is the mark?" The real question is: what's already marking you?

Because here's the idea underneath the whole chapter — everyone is already marked. The only question is which mark you're living under. Long before the spooky 666 stuff, Scripture says you carry a mark in how you think and how you live: what you give your attention to, what you worship, what's quietly shaping you without you ever signing up for it. The algorithm knows what you like and feeds it back to you. Something is always competing for your attention. This message is a reality check, and a hopeful one — because the choice of which mark you carry is actually yours.

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There's a sin you keep promising yourself you'll quit — and you're starting to wonder why you can't. This message walks through Revelation 8 and 9, the seven trumpets, and one uncomfortable truth most of us feel but rarely say out loud: sin doesn't stay a choice forever. At some point you stop choosing it, and it starts choosing you.

We tend to read Revelation as a map of the end of the world. But the seventh seal doesn't open onto final destruction — it opens onto the Day of Atonement and a trumpet blast that, to the people who first heard it, meant one thing: a call to come home. The trumpets aren't only about the future. They're a warning about right now — about the thing quietly enslaving you, the way it dresses itself up as harmless, and the freedom that's actually possible when you finally name it. This isn't a timeline. It's an invitation.

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What if the hardest part of going through a difficult season isn't the pain itself — it's wondering if anyone actually sees it? This message from Revelation 6-7 offers something you might not expect from one of the Bible's most misunderstood books: real, grounded comfort for people in the middle of real, hard things.

In this sermon, we look at what happens in Revelation 7 when everything around John is falling apart — and God pauses to seal and protect his people. Not by pulling them out of the chaos. But by marking them, sheltering them, and promising to personally wipe every tear from their eyes.

This isn't a prophecy lecture. It's a word for the overwhelmed, the overlooked, and anyone quietly wondering if God knows what they're carrying right now. The answer from Scripture is clear: he does. And he's not finished.

Three things this message covers:
— What it means to be "sealed" by God in the middle of a broken world
— Why God's protection doesn't remove suffering but is present through it
— The promise of Revelation 7:17 — and why it might be the most tender verse in the whole book

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What is true worship, really? In Revelation 4, John gets pulled into the throne room of heaven and sees something that completely redefines what worship is supposed to look like in our everyday lives.

In this message from our series on the book of Revelation, we walk through the three movements of worship we see from the 24 elders around God's throne: they bow, they worship, and they lay down their crowns. And it forces a question most of us avoid — am I actually worshiping God on Monday the same way I worship Him on Sunday? Or am I praising God with my mouth and then managing my life without Him the rest of the week?

If you've ever felt the tension between believing God is in control and still gripping the steering wheel of your own life, this one is for you.

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What if the book of Revelation isn't actually about predicting the future? In this Week 1 sermon from our new series on Revelation, Pastor Tony walks through what John was really writing, who he was writing to, and why most of what we've been taught about end times misses the heart of the book entirely.

The book of Revelation is the most often-read and most-misunderstood book of the Bible. For 2,000 years, Christians have tried to decode it — figuring out who the antichrist is, what the mark of the beast means, when Jesus will return. But Revelation was a letter before it was scripture. It was written to seven real churches under real pressure, in language they would have understood, full of Old Testament imagery (500+ references in 22 chapters).

In this message, Pastor Tony unpacks the Greek meaning of "apocalypse" (it doesn't mean what you think), walks through the four main ways Christians interpret Revelation (preterist, futurist, historicist, idealist), and gives four warnings to keep in mind before you read a single chapter. He pulls in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 to show how John's original readers understood the imagery — and what we miss when we read it through a 21st-century lens.

The bottom line: what appears to be a warning about tomorrow is actually a picture of what today must be.

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If you've ever felt disqualified — like you're not measuring up as a husband, a wife, a parent, a believer, or just as a person — this message is for you. In Luke 19, Jesus walks into Jericho and stops at a sycamore tree to call down a man everyone else had written off. What He did next changed Zacchaeus's life forever, and it speaks directly to anyone who's currently feeling overlooked, inadequate, or like they don't belong close to God.

In this message, Pastor Elisha Poole — lead planter of Evergrove Church and a church-planting resident at 2|42 — opens up Luke 19:1-10 and walks through the moment Jesus interrupted His own schedule for one disqualified man. The sermon explores why Zacchaeus climbed the tree in the first place, what it means that Jesus saw him there, and the difference between seeing Jesus from a distance and actually getting close. Because closeness with Jesus is what produces real change — not distance, not performance, not pretending.

If you've been hiding in a sycamore tree of your own — a habit, a thought pattern, a wound, a season of feeling unworthy — this is your invitation to come down.

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