The Trumpets Sound (#13) - November 11, 2020

tonight as we move forward in our study in the book of revelation we get into the eighth and ninth chapters and what we see in the eighth and ninth chapters are john's description of the sounding of the trumpets the second series of seven in the sequence of god's judgments poured out on earth during the tribulation and the title is the trumpets sound that's what happens in these two chapters we hear the trumpets sound as john describes them and before chapter 8 begins where we had left off is that the lamb who is jesus had broken the seals that had bound the scroll and the lamb had broken six of these seven seals and then there had been this pause between the breaking of the sixth and seventh seals and chapter eight begins with the lamb breaking the seventh seal and we're going to begin in verse number one where john tells us when he opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour and i saw the seven angels who stand before god and two them were given seven trumpets then another angel having a golden censer came and stood at the altar he was given much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne and the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints ascended before god from the angel's hand and then the angel took the censer filled it with fire from the altar and threw it down to the earth and there were noises thunderings lightnings and an earthquake so the seven angels who had been given the seven trumpets then prepared themselves to sound the trumpets so as we were reading there in verse number one john described for us with the breaking of this seventh seal which completes the breaking of the seals there is this pause of 30 minutes now 30 minutes doesn't seem like a very long time to us but if you stop and think about all of the things that john had experienced so far up to this point i would think that with the intensity of the breaking of these seals and of course what he saw around the throne of god prior to the seals being broken all of the suspense about who was worthy to take the scroll and lose its seals and then the messages the encouragement and warnings to the churches prior to that in chapters two and three on and on we could go as all of this is coming in rapid fire succession the seventh seal is broken and boom there's a pause for half an hour the bible says and i would have to believe that to john this half an hour must have seemed like forever then verse number two says that there are seven angels who stood before god and to each of these seven angels was given a trumpet and we're going to see that these trumpet judgments are more intense than the seal judgments but they're not as intense as the bold judgments which will follow remember the three sets of seven judgments in revelation are the breaking of the seven seals the sounding of the seven trumpets which we're looking at tonight and the pouring out of the seven bowls of wrath in verse number three john tells us that he sees an angel standing at the altar in heaven and this angel is holding a golden censer and he's standing before the altar of god and these two references to the altar and to the censor these are reminiscent of what you would find in the tabernacle that moses constructed at god's direction which eventually of course solomon fortified into a permanent location in jerusalem which was called the temple so the altar and a sensor these are two things that you find mentioned in the old testament description of the tabernacle we've seen a reference to the altar going back into the sixth chapter where we saw that the first martyrs from the tribulation if you remember they were under the altar and john saw them and they were crying out for god to avenge their deaths by the cruel and ungodly people of the world system down on earth but they were nestled under this altar in in heaven and here we see that this angel has a sensor and he burns incense in the sensor on the altar of god now what i wanted you to notice just to realize that the burning of the incense is something that the priest in the old testament system uh did and i wanted you to see this image uh we we got uh from we actually purchased this image that shows what a priest would look like and you can see dangling from his right hand a sensor it was a pan which held coals and what would happen is in the service of the priest twice a day the priest would carry the censor from what was called the brazen altar to the altar of incense within the tabernacle or the temple but i wanted you to see that sensor hanging from his hand so what we're saying is that john sees an angel who has a sensor like the one that the priests from israel would carry and in revelation chapter 5 after the lamb took the scroll from the right hand of god you may remember that worship erupted around the lamb of god who was worthy to take the scroll and in chapter 5 of revelation in verse 8 john says each of the 24 elders who fell down and worshipped crying out that the lamb was worthy they each had a golden bowl of incense which john says in verse 8 of chapter 5 that the incense is the prayers of the saints so i'm just drawing your attention back to the fifth chapter because here the angel that john sees after the breaking of the seventh seal this angel is told as he is holding a censer to add the prayers of the saints to the the colds so that as the incense would go up to god the prayers of the saints would be commingled with the incense so it's just interesting that in the fifth chapter this idea of the incense and the prayers of the saints it's repeated here in the eighth chapter as this angel is told to add prayers to the incense and verse number four as we read it we have this beautiful imagery of the incense lifting the prayers up before god and what this reminds us of going back to the old testament is that this pleasant aroma of the incense is pleasing to god and it's a reminder to all of us that our prayer is offered from sincere hearts with love and adoration for god when we lift our prayers to god it's pleasing to him it is a an aroma that he loves to take in because it represents our deepest love for him it represents our acknowledgement of our need for him so it's beautiful imagery here that we find in the old testament and yet it is seen it is depicted symbolically here in what john uh is given an ability to glimpse prior to the sounding of the seven trumpets so this all of this happening is the prelude to the trumpets sounding the seventh seal has been broken and then this is what john is witnessing now what's what's interesting to me is that when we were reading it a moment ago it said that when the angel combines the prayers of the saints with this incense and the prayers go up to god from the altar before god's throne that the angel then takes the sensor and hurls it down to the earth i just thought i'd give you this little chart here the angel and the sensor number one the angel added the prayers of the saints to the incense which was burning its aroma the the prayers with the incense ascended from the altar to god and now the angel hurls the censer down to the earth all of that is given to us in these first five verses of the of the eighth chapter now i want you to think with me for a moment about how when these first saints who were martyred from the the uh tribulation period i want you to think about what their cry was before god in revelation chapter 6 verses 9 and 10 john says when the lamb opened the fifth seal i saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of god and for the testimony which they held and they cried with a loud voice saying how long o lord holy and true until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on on the earth so the reason that i'm reaching back there to the fifth seal where the martyrs were under the altar the question i'm asking you is where were those martyrs who had been killed during the tribulation john saw them when that fifth seal was broken they were under the altar and then the question that i would have from this vision john is seeing right now after the seventh seal is broken the angel has the incense with the prayers of the saints and where is the angel standing to burn that incense he is standing at the altar before the throne of god could it be that the prayers that the angel added to the incense here in the eighth chapter included the cries of those martyrs from the sixth chapter who are under that same altar where the incense is now being burned remember they were crying out how long o lord until you avenge our deaths and god responded be patient with me i'm working on a timeline i'm going to avenge your death but there are more who will have to die before that takes place and so the angel now hurling that sensor down perhaps this is symbolic that the hurling of that sensor is god's symbolic way of saying that those who are crying out that their blood be avenged this sensor being hurled the same censor that held their prayers is god's way of saying no more delay i am now going to avenge avenge you and i'm going to execute vengeance on those who took your life and who took the lives of my followers during the tribulation period so it's a very fascinating thing verse number five says the angel took the censer filled it with fire from the altar and threw it to the earth and what happened after that there were noises thunderings lightnings and an earthquake so what we believe is that this is just one more indicator this symbolic casting of this sensor of burning coals down from heaven to the earth it's one more indicator that the judgment is intensifying as the seven trumpets are about to be blown one at a time now in verse five if you remember we saw there the noises thunderings lightnings and earthquake this this description of phenomena occurs four times in the book of revelation the first time is in chapter four and verse five where it says and from the throne proceeded lightnings thunderings and voices now the reason that i just wanted you to understand that that what happens when this sensor is thrown and you have noises thunderings and lightnings it's found four times but the first time it appeared was when john saw the throne of god this tells us that these phenomena reveal the holiness of god and god's divine prerogative to exercise judgment and see here's the thing there are going to be people during the tribulation period on the earth and when all of the catastrophes of the revelation are going to be happening they're going to be saying well a loving god wouldn't do that and there will be people who are prophetically exposing the the reason for which these judgments are falling and they're going to be liberals like there are now who say a loving god would never punish people a loving god would never cause natural disasters a loving god would never ever stand by while people people suffer and what the book of revelation teaches us is that while god is a loving god god is also a holy god so these thunderings and lightnings and voices and noises that first manifest in john's vision of god's throne these things are repeated at other times in the book of revelation when there are judgments being poured out so back to where we are tonight when the angel hurls the censer down to the earth with these hot coals the thunderings and the lightnings and the noises are what john next experiences which tells us it's about to get very bad down there on planet earth and god as a holy god is justified in doing so so now we move from what we call the precursor the prelude to the seven trumpets let's just move into the trumpets now i want to speak for a moment about the trumpets we explained that seals were significant in the validating of official documents like wills and business agreements and so it was no accident that god used the symbol of these seven seals but now what's the significance of trumpets well going back to the old testament in israel trumpets were used to call the people of israel into their assemblies and times of worship also we know that trumpets were used to summon soldiers to war we also read in the old testament that trumpets were sounded to commemorate holy days times of celebration on the jewish calendar and then when paul describes the appearing of christ to rapture the church he describes the sound of a trumpet as accompanying the return of christ announcing the fact that jesus has appeared and the church is being taken away another thing that's worth our pointing out about trumpets is that when moses went to sinai and he was given the law including the ten commandments embodied in those tablets of stone god told him in the 19th chapter that he was to have the people take three days to prepare for god's presence to manifest there on mount sinai at the base of which the people of israel had camped and and sure enough on the third day as god promised because they prepared for god's arrival god showed up and in exodus chapter 19 and verse 16 it says then it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunderings and lightnings now uh that doesn't have anything to do with the trumpets but i underlined that because remember that was one of the phenomena that accompanied the casting down of the sensors but for where i am now i just want you to see a thick cloud appeared on the mountain and then what happened the sound of the trumpet was very loud so that all the people who were in the camp trembled so think about it for a moment you have the thunderings and the lightnings which are indicative of the holiness of god we saw in chapter four of revelation those those phenomena occurred around the throne and came from the throne but here you have the trumpet that pierced the ears of the israelites and it was awe-inspiring so much so that we're told they trembled so the trumpet caused them to tremble and here there is not one trumpet but the sounding of seven trumpets which are going to commence seven corresponding judgments after each of these trumpets sounds what i want to do is just to kind of walk through the the the trumpet sounds trumpet number one all the vegetation on earth is affected and this is in verse number seven and as you know we rely on vegetation to to for the for the things that are healthy for us to eat and to the degree that the vegetation is affected then it will affect the food supply then uh trumpet number two is the seas are affected the salt water and when you read verses 8 9 where it talks about the the second trumpet affecting the seas included in this plague is a significant reduction in the seafaring vessels in the in the ships that sail around the world so if you can imagine for a moment a significant percentage of the sailing vessels affected by this judgment the second trumpet it would suggest a resulting economic fallout and a crisis in maritime transportation and which includes the distribution of food from food producing economies in countries around the world so the import and export of food that depends upon ships for commerce all of that gets affected by the this second trumpet then trumpet number three is described in verses 10 and 11 that is where the fresh water the streams and the rivers and the lakes are affected by a plague trumpet number four a judgment occurs such that the luminaries are affected and by luminaries we're talking about the sun the moon and the stars and this is described in verse number 12. now i'm moving through this without looking at the specific verses just to save as much time as i can but hopefully you will go back and just look at john's description as best he can either describe it to someone writing it down or writing it down himself he is seeing catastrophe predicted in the in symbolic fashion with just these first four trumpets and then after the fourth trumpet verse number 13 john says i looked and i heard an angel some translations rely on the manuscript which says an eagle instead of an angel so not sure which of those but it's probably eagle an eagle flying through the midst of heaven saying with a loud voice woe woe woe to the inhabitants of the earth because of the remaining blast of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound and when you see that word woe in fact in some of the preaching of jesus he used that same word woe and it means judgment or condemnation he spoke many woes to the pharisees here this eagle is crying out woe not once not twice but three times so if there are seven trumpets and we've already heard four of the trumpets and seen the corresponding judgments now three woes are pronounced one woe for each of the remaining trumpet blasts trumpet five six and seven each of those has its own woe or its own proclamation of judgment and damnation that will result from the sounding of the last three trumpets so this is where we cross into the ninth chapter hard to believe that we went through the entirety of chapter eight already now we're going to try to move through chapter nine and before we look at the the uh the next two trumpets of three that remain i wanna just hit pause for a moment and i i want us to go back and review something that i displayed last week uh on the screen you'll see that this this chart depicts that with the breaking of the seventh seal the seventh seal really commences the sounding of the seven trumpets and that's where we are tonight so in chapter 8 and verse 1 the seventh seal was broken which led to the sounding of the first trumpet and then what we're going to see is that when we get to the end of the sequence of trumpets when the seventh trumpet sounds it immediately commences the pouring out of the seven bowls so the reason that i wanted to review that with you is just to remind you that the seventh in the first two sequences gives immediate uh you know uh activity gives immediate uh forward motion to the following set of seven all right now for a moment now i want you to think about looking at these in in in light of their similarity i wanted you to see that they are connected to the seventh the the trumpets are unleashed with the breaking of the seventh seal the bolds begin to be poured with the sounding of the seventh trumpet but i want to line them all up together to show you from a literary perspective some patterns in these judgments and the patterns in these judgments which is really fascinating is that whether it is the seals the trumpets or the bowls the first four in each one of those series are are similar to one another for instance in the first four seals you remember what they were they were the four horsemen of the apocalypse and we just got through reading about the first four of the trumpets which are similar in nature in the effect they had on planet earth and we'll see when we get to the bolds the same thing the first four similar but notice something else that there is a pause and that's a that's a pause button there there is a pause in the activity between the sixth and seventh of each one of those sequences so we saw there was a pause between the sixth and seventh seal being broken and we're going to once again see there'll be a pause between the sounding of the sixth trumpet and the sounding of the seventh and when we get to the bolds we'll find the same pattern you'll get to the pouring out of the sixth bowl then there will be a pause before the seventh bowl is poured all right so when you think about that pause the pause does not mean all activity ceases it just means there's a pause before the seventh takes place it's what we could call an interlude there will still be activity which happens between the sixth and seventh we saw that on the sequence of the seals but we'll see it again in the sequence of the trumpets and in the sequence of the bowls now we didn't have to i didn't have to show you that i just thought that there is no way in my mind that type of structure that type of parallelism that type of pattern can be coincidental or accidental to me it it's just one of the many ways that we see the book of revelation is actually a literary masterpiece one of the books that i am reading in refreshing my understanding of the book of revelation devotes a lot of time to these kinds of structural patterns in the book of revelation which show that if we want to give john some credit for how he arranged it but i think you have to go higher than john the holy spirit so orchestrated the sequence of all of these visions that were revealed to john in which john experienced that this is the work of a mastermind in laying out this and not only the patterns in these seals and trumpets and bowls but the fact that there is so much woven into the fabric of revelation from the sacred pages of the old testament it truly is a literary masterpiece and we know it is the uh final book it is the climactic book of all prophetic revelation and properly situated in the canon of scripture as the 66th or the final book in the sacred writings of our god so i i'm fascinated with things like that and i hope that some of you who get into that type of structural analysis will have appreciated those those two charts so uh let's get back to the idea of the sounding of the trumpets the the effects of the first four trumpets they're similar are physical in nature but the essence of the last three are spiritual or demonic in nature and so there is one of the there's there's that distinction yet again the first four are more physical in nature the last three are spiritual or demonic in their essence so let's go on to the fifth trumpet trumpet number five unleashes a demonic assault against people on the earth now this is where when you get it when you start reading what what happens what john describes as seeing when he hears this angel blow the fifth trumpet i've read this many times and it makes you wonder if he struggled to find the right words to describe these things that he was seeing in these visions god was giving him i have to believe it it was a struggle and what i want to do just lunge right into it beginning in verse number 1 of chapter 9 where john says the fifth angel sounded and i saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth and then to him he fell from heaven to the earth this star and i believe it was a personal entity and to him which that verifies was given the key to the bottomless pit and he opened the bottomless pit and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace so the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke that came billowing up out of that pit then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth and to these locusts was given power as the scorpions of the earth have power they were commanded not to harm the grass or any green thing any tree in other words don't mess with the vegetation but only to harm those men or people those people who do not have the seal of god on their foreheads and they were not given authority to kill them but to torment them for five months their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man and in those days men will seek death but they will not find it they will desire to die but death will flee from them so what i want us to do is just kind of talk about that a little bit because this star falls from heaven to the earth and and and then he is given a key to the bottomless uh pit and i have to believe this is satan it would make sense that it would be satan since he was given the key to the bottomless pit the bottomless pit or the abyss as it is often called is mentioned seven times in revelation surprise surprise and three of the seven mentions of the abyss are right here in chapter nine now i think it's it's worth noting that the word abyss translated bottomless pit here that it uh appears seven times because just as the number seven denotes the totality concerning god and god's actions so the mention of the word of the word abyss seven times could be understood as an intentional reflection that this abyss depicts the totality mentioned seven times the totality of darkness and damnation so this star falls from heaven most probably satan he's got a key to the bottomless pit and this bottomless pit of this abyss we understand to be the place where fallen angels are confined now with the fifth trumpet john describes for us these things happening that when this chief angel star that fell from heaven unlocks the abyss demons are released from the abyss and this is where i wonder how john might have struggled to describe these these demons that appear out of the smoke that billows up from this pit and the word he uses is the word locust these are locusts flying around and of course locusts are something that that we find in the old testament locusts were one of the plagues were they not locusts represent destruction an entire you know infestation of locusts can devour all vegetation for miles and miles around and cause irreparable harm and so he describes these demonic entities as locusts and he goes on to tell us that they had tails that could inflict pain and suffering like the sting of a scorpion now i just want to give praise to god i've never been stung by a scorpion but i know some people who have and if it is bad enough it can cause you to convulse in the floor and to foam at the mouth and it can it can have a very deadly effect so imagine this now the these locusts with these stinging tails they are they are told to leave the vegetation alone that their harm is only to be inflicted on humankind and in particular on those people who did not have the mark of god's seal upon them now when you're when you're reading this john specifies that these locust-like beings with these tales that sting they they didn't kill anyone they just tormented these people who did not have god's mark and they tormented them for five months now you have to be careful about making too much out of numerology but you also don't want to overlook the significance of it and isn't it interesting that when the sensor was thrust down in the beginning of chapter eight before the trumpets sounded that the lightnings and the thunderings which also happened at mount sinai where the law of god the holy commandments of god were given and the number five is the number of the law because the the jewish people refer to the first five books of the bible as the torah we call it the pentateuch the prefix p-e-n-t meaning five so five indicates the law and isn't it interesting here that they are tormented not for one month or two months or three or four but for five months and all of these trumpets in their judgments were were were commenced with these types of phenomena that also occurred at mount sinai when the law was given i just think it's an interesting parallel that we should we should at least consider and then do you remember we were reading it a moment ago in verse number six where john says people will want to die but death will evade them they will not they will not be able to die even though they want to so this is going to be a time of heightened judgment and torment for those who have rejected god and who have rejected the lord jesus christ and who are following the world system now verses 7 through 12 of chapter 9 give us a more detailed elaborate description of these locust-like forces and now these verses have led to some very fanciful interpretations of what these locust-like beings could be including modern helicopter-like war machines you know like literal flying devices or machines that could either be operated remotely like drones or have pilots operating them but we have to remember here that these forces appeared from the smoke that came out of the bottomless pit which leads me to believe that what john is seeing here is not some symbolized version of of modern day warfare although i'm not saying that's an impossibility i just happen to believe that these locust-like creatures are most probably demonic forces that are being unleashed from the bottomless pit during this stage of the tribulation to inflict torment on all of the unsealed all of those who are unmarked who worship at the altars of the world system and who do not know christ verse 11 of chapter nine tells us that these locust-like hordes these these locust-like beings they had as their king over them the angel of the bottomless pit whose name in hebrew is abaddon but in greek he has the name apollyon now once again we have john at least being told that the name for this this general over these these locust-like beings he has a name in hebrew he has a name in greek hebrew is the language of the old testament greek is the language of the new testament and whether it is abaddon or apollyon hebrew or greek the translation is the same it is the word destroyer and i want you to think about it would you agree with me that can be none other than satan this star who fell from heaven when we first started reading chapter 9 who was given the key to the bottomless pit listen he is accuser he is deceiver liar manipulator but think about this is is destroyer not a wonderful word for him as well absolutely because he destroys everything he touches and here he is given that name both in its hebrew form and in its greek form now let's move to this sixth trumpet and the sixth trumpet is an additional release of spirits an additional release of spirits so we have this demonic assault that occurs when trumpet five sounds but i want us to look now at the release of four spirits here in the ninth chapter of revelation with the sounding of this sixth trumpet and i must tell you this is one of the most intriguing references to spirits in the scripture i i'm fascinated by it let's look in chapter 9 and read the verses 13 through 16. the sixth angel sounded the trumpet and i heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before god saying to the six angel who had the trumpet release the four angels who were bound at the great river euphrates so these four angels look at this underline this if you've got your bible in front of you they had been prepared for this very hour and day and month and year these four angels are spirits were released to kill one-third of mankind now the number of the army of the horsemen that these four spirits unleashed was 200 million and and john says i heard the number of them and then he goes on to give a more detailed description of these 200 million horsemen warriors riding on the backs of horses so why is this intriguing to me well because trump at 6 signals the release of demons who had been confined to a geographical territory to a certain place that was at the river euphrates now why would we say since they're called angels that they're not heavenly angels because the scripture here makes clear john makes clear these angels were bound at the river euphrates and there is no reference in scripture to a heavenly angel being bound as if confined so we have to infer that these are fallen angels these are demonic forces these four specific angels now remember before satan was kicked out of heaven angels were angels spirits were spirits but since satan was banished and those who participated in his attempted coup to overthrow god these angels who were in heaven are now fallen angels and we call them demons so these four demons that were geographically bound at the river euphrates they're released and if you if there is any way that we get something literal out of this this has to mean that that even now those four spirit forces are bound at the river euphrates now this imagery specifically having to do with the river euphrates could have several meanings one one of the things that was commonly known by romans which of course the roman empire was in full sway when john was receiving the revelation is that the roman the roman authorities lived in fear of a group called the they were always fearful of an invasion of this parthian group of people and the parthians occupied the territory to the north and east of the river euphrates so there could be this this encoded understanding to those in the in the audience that would be the first recipients of the book of revelation that it is this river euphrates that represents the the wall behind which there are invading forces that are just waiting to come into rome could it be that that same concept of the parthians always poised to cross you for the euphrates into roman territory could it be that that was a foreshadowing of a time in the future maybe our own day and time 2 000 years removed from the context of this book could it be that that same region where the euphrates river flows represents this boundary that separates and for the moment holds back eastern forces that will one day cross over and invade what lies west of the euphrates it was not uncommon in the days in which john was receiving this revelation for the river euphrates to be considered as the dividing line between the east and the west if you uh you know if you ever attended college and maybe some advanced courses in high school you had to take a course in western civilization and um by the way i i uh everything in me would love to do a series on western civilization because what we're witnessing right now is the intentional deliberate strategic willful savvy shrewd destruction of western civilization by demonizing it as being corrupt at its very foundation and in roman times this euphrates river for many was considered the symbolic divide between eastern civilizations and the western civilization now the euphrates river is also mentioned in the 16th chapter of revelation in verse 12 where john says that the sixth angel poured out his bowl that's in the bowl judgments on the great river euphrates and its water was dried up so the that the weight look at this so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared so it could be that the mention of this river euphrates with these four angels here in chapter 9 kind of plants the seed for what will happen when the sixth bowl is poured out causing the euphrates river to dry up symbolically meaning that the wall holding back eastern invaders is going to be removed with the pouring out of the sixth bowl making way john told us specifically in revelation 16 12 for the kings of the east we're talking about eastern we're talking about asian countries that it it is probable from these prophecies we are talking about an invasion of the holy land by asian nations and when john says these four angels that were released from the river euphrates they caused the appearance of an army of 200 million to dawn the scene and we linked it to the river euphrates and in chapter 16 the river euphrates is linked to kings of the east invading westward which ultimately culminates in the battle of armageddon which will be over the the nation of israel being ultimately wiped into oblivion or being rescued by someone who comes from heaven to intervene and establish a kingdom centered in jerusalem's capital well you see i'm just sharing all this with you because the mention of these four spirits that's why it intrigues me they're bound at the river euphrates and um john lets us know that that when when these four spirits at the river euphrates are unleashed all of a sudden warfare is about to break out now did you see in verse 15 of chapter nine it says that one third of the earth's population is killed and back when the lamb broke the fourth seal john told us that one-fourth of the earth's population was killed at that point so earlier in the tribulation fourth seal a fourth of the earth's population is killed sixth trumpet a third of the population is killed by these 200 million horsemen that go out what i'm telling you is by this time in the tribulation with the sounding of the sixth trumpet over half of the world's population gone and it's just in those two plagues fourth seal sixth trumpet not counting all of the other deaths that will come from the other judgments that have gotten us up to this point it's just in those two the fourth seal and the sixth trumpet where we have have fractions employed to tell us how many died not since the flood of noah will there have been a death toll to rival what is happening here certainly percentage-wise so these four spirits had been bound i'm fascinated by the fact that john tells us they had been prepared and confined just for this very hour this very day this very month this very year when they're finally released to do what they're supposed to do john tells us these horsemen inflict death through their mouths and tails and their weapons of death he identifies as fire smoke and brimstone and it is through fire smoke and brimstone which he calls their three plagues that this one-third of the earth's population this death toll is carried out okay so i want us to stop here we're getting ready to pray but before i pray i'll ask you the question you've gone through seven seals and we're now up to six trumpets over one half of the earth's population is dead the sea water's been affected maritime transportation commerce economy vegetation food supply all of these locust-like demonic forces are flying around tormenting people who are not sealed with god's protection on them you've got all these jews have been saved if we take it anywhere close to literally 144 000 messianic jews who get saved during the tribulation they're blanketing the globe preaching the gospel challenging political correctness challenging the cultural marxism of the antichrist and the one world system defying all of the all of the prohibitions of preaching the gospel and there's death and there's destruction and let me tell you would you think that by this time in the tribulation wouldn't you think people would be broken would be humbled would be crying out oh god save our souls forgive us we need jesus wouldn't you think by this time in light of all the hell that is breaking loose you just know in your heart people would be saying save us lord save us but john tells us in verses 20 and 21 of chapter 9 he says but the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands that they should not worship demons and idols of gold silver brass stone wood in other words materialism the system false religion these things can neither see nor hear nor walk so they didn't repent of everything they were doing verse 21 says and they did not repent of their murderers of their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts their thefts they're stealing taking what belongs to other people oh and i imagine there will be people saying well you don't know their story you don't know what they've been through you don't know their history they have every right to be stealing oh no john says they don't repent that's what you need to do sexually moral people need to repent thieves need to repent and by the way the word sorceries translated there in verse number 21 is the greek word from which we get our word pharmacy so bound up in that word is the use of drugs so even at this stage in the tribulation having seen what they've seen heard what they've heard felt what they felt they still keep sinning and resisting god you want to know why because the bible has a word that that we call reprobate because they are reprobate it means at this stage they're hopeless causes how tragic to say that of someone they are beyond repentance and romans chapter 1 says it is possible for someone to get to the point of rejecting god for so long that it is impossible for them to repent because god signs them over and seals them in their unbelief they're no longer savable no longer redeemable and i want to tell you something if these kinds of things we talked about tonight were to happen today there would still be people reacting just like they will act in the culminating moments of the tribulation you want to know how i know that because we have had a pandemic circle this globe has it brought people to cry out to god has it brought people to faith in jesus christ in unprecedented numbers are our people still persisting in their sins in their rebellion in their defiance you've seen one plague after another just in the last eight months and you know what we're seeing we're seeing alarming signs of reprobation and it concerns me that that's true of the world but what breaks my heart is the signs of reprobation in the united states of america none of us can say when someone has reached a point of reprobation but what i just want to say tonight is we need to pray for people for whom there is still an opportunity that they can be saved and we need to fall on our face when we read a passage like we've studied tonight say thank you god for saving my soul thank you for showing me the light thank you that i never have to fear facing your wrath or your judgment because jesus paid it all father thank you for this study tonight looking at the sounding of these trumpets and i thank you for your mercy and grace which have spared those of us who've been washed in the blood of jesus and may you use tonight's message not only to deepen our knowledge of the scripture and to help us see where even things that we are seeing happen now world views ideologies philosophies even in the united states political system in the entertainment industry and god help us in the forsaken media of our country all of it is moving towards this economy and system of the antichrist help us to see what it is for what it is and lord help us to walk in the freedom of men and women who aren't governed by emotion who aren't gullible to deception but who walk in the confidence of the truth of god's holy word in jesus name amen

Channel: FirstBaptistAtlanta

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Id: abYnuBkcdYI

Length: 55min 29sec (3329 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020