Revelation Chapter 8:12-13

“Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night. And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, ‘Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!’”

There was a great response about the need to be more actively praying as children of God. Prayer, we are told, is a ‘sweet-smelling aroma’ before the Lord. Jesus prayed often and we should follow His example. The Apostle Paul prayed without ceasing. When I read that as a young man, I did not comprehend the validity of that statement. But I know now that I can be in constant communication with the Lord about everything.

“Amen” is not the end of a prayer. Most of the time I do not get to an “Amen.” I simply leave off the conversation with the Lord until I pick it up again. Often, in the meantime, verses will come to mind that help me to find answers to the prayers. I find that I spend a lot of time in confession and even more time in simple thanksgiving. We here in North America are a blessed people. Most of us have more than we can use and enough to share if we were better stewards. We need to learn that thanksgiving is even more essential when you have been blessed like we have.

As we have looked at the absolute devastation that God has poured out on the people of earth I am reminded of the passage in Romans 1: 24-25,

“Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”

Paul tells us here that the people of earth have and are at the current time, worshipping the creation more than the Creator. They have elevated the creation to god status. We are quite aware that God will not and does not tolerate anyone or anything sharing His glory and His place.

I just finished reading the book of Joshua; and at the end in that farewell speech, he challenges the people to choose whom they will serve. All through the journey from Egypt to Canaan, God warns them not to turn to false gods but to worship the God who brought them out of captivity.

Notice in Romans 1:25 that “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” We have been fed this tripe of man caring for the planet and that, if we do not, we are going to destroy it – we are over populating it, over using it, over fishing it, and soon it will be destroyed. We have a cult of earth worship. This is not the idea of not caring for the earth. We are to respect the earth, we are to use its resources properly, and are to appreciate the way that God designed it to sustain us. But the earth was designed to support an infinite population had man not sinned.

When one reads in the book of Exodus the encounter that Moses had with Pharaoh over the various plagues, we see that each of them had to do with the creation and God’s sovereignty over it. Water turning to blood, an abundance of frogs, the plague of lice, the swarms of locusts, hail and the other plagues had to do with the physical creation. Pharaoh pretended to be a god, but the real God showed him who God was and what God does. Pharaoh had to constantly ask to stop the plagues; he had no power to stop them himself. Man has no power over the creation, whether to destroy it or to redeem it. Only God, the Living Creator, can do that. In Psalm 104:21 we see this absolutely amazing verse:

“The young lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God.”

This is a statement about God’s majesty over His creation. God feeds the lions; we see these nature shows about the majestic lions. The king of the jungle they are called, but it is God who feeds them. If He does not allow them to catch their prey, they will starve to death. This is the sovereignty of the Living God of the Bible. Psalm 19:1 declares,

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handywork.”

Creation demonstrates God’s glory. One has to deliberately deny God when looking at the Creation. Its very design makes clear that there is a Designer. What I observe in the Tribulation is that God is using the very god that the world has placed ahead of Him as their enemy. The very world that they love has become their greatest enemy. The stars fall from the sky, the various earthquakes, the poisoned water, the sea turns to blood, and the sun scorches them. The people of earth are powerless to do anything to stop the destruction. They thought that mere man could destroy the earth, but it is the earth that is destroying them. This may sound calloused; it is not. It is the reality, and sometimes reality can be quite sobering.

The Sun, Moon and Stars, Revelation 8:12

In the trumpet that we are looking at today, a third of the sun was darkened, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars were darkened. Light from the sun takes about 8.5 minutes to reach us from the sun. The people would gradually see the darkness take effect. There would be a sudden and consistent temperature drop. In a matter of weeks, there would be a significant temperature drop all around the earth; the pull on electrical grids, things like photosynthesis would slow down, food production, the waters would freeze, significantly shorter days, and on and on we can go.

The world as we know it would suffer catastrophic changes. Tropical vegetation would begin to die off, and food supplies and even physical health. Vitamin D is essential for us to live, and the sun is one of the best sources of it. We do not appreciate that God built interdependent systems on the earth; we need every aspect of it to survive. So, for all those who think that global warming is the next enemy, it will actually be global cooling that is going to cause the damage.

The death toll will be great of both man and beast. Think of all the animals that survive in the heat: most of Africa and any animals in the tropics and in the Amazon regions. Imagine fish freezing in the lakes and the oceans. All too often we read these judgments, and we do not stop to think of all that is included in these judgments. The bodies of the dead will pile up, both of man and beast. There is no way that the communities can keep up with the dead. This is piling on top of the destruction that went on in the previous trumpets. Life on earth will be horrible; no one will be spared the hurt and the pain.

This is just the beginning, Revelation 8:13

There are angels that fly about Heaven and cry out “Woe, Woe, Woe” as a warning that the next three trumpets are about to sound. How bad can they be that they get a warning before they come? How can it get worse? What more damage can God bring upon these hapless people? Why have they not repented and fallen prostrate at the Lord’s feet, begging for the destruction to stop? How hardened can your heart be that you are still defying God when it is clear that He is in charge?

Just look at the story of Pharaoh; he defied God. He even questions if God was a god that he, Pharaoh, should listen to him? By the time that God had finished showing His power and majesty, Pharaoh asked the Israelites to leave, and they did. He kicked them out of Egypt with a hard hand and allowed them to keep the treasures and riches of Egypt.

But there does not seem to be a lot of repentance on the earth. We will see in a short while that people would rather die than submit to God. How many are like that today? How many have seen the hand of God and turned their backs to it?

We live in a time when people have hardened hearts to the things of God. They are not submissive or caring for the leadership of the Holy Spirit. But make no mistake; whether by the Fall beauty of the colored leaves and the nip in the air, or by the falling meteors and the darkening of the sun, the heavens declare the glory of God. God’s glory can be seen in the serenity of creation, but it can also be seen in the midst of a category 5 hurricane that is controlled by the masterful hand of its Creator.

We humans like to get a bit big in the head sometimes; we let our egos get to us. God allows us to explore and ‘discover’ a bit of the intricacies of His creation, and we go on like we made the earth. No, we just figured out what God was doing for thousands of years, and then we realize that we have not even scratched the surface of the boundless knowledge of this planet, furthermore the universe.

Do you feel small yet? I hope that you do! I hope that you feel like the infinitesimal cog in creation that you and I are. We are here for 70 or maybe 80 years as the Psalmist says. We see a few snippets of God’s creation, we understand a pinhead full of His ways, and we forget that we are preceded by billions and billions plus those that will follow after us until the Lord returns. God is BIG! He has been here for all those billions of people. He allows each new generation to learn some mind-blowing aspect of His creation, and we get all puffed up and let it go to our heads.

The angels in verse 13 remind us that we have not seen anything yet. Oh, how sad it must be to fall into the hands of an angry God! But Jesus came to take us from wrath to life, from death to peace and from being the enemies of God to being the friends of God.

Are you and God at peace? If not, then you could find yourself in the middle of this mess if you get through the first round of catastrophes. We are going to get into some very deep things in the next few chapters, and right to the end for that matter. But I do not want to miss the main point; Jesus is calling us to be saved, to repent and to avoid this judgment by trusting Him as Savior now. Read, repent and be redeemed!

John 3: 16-18 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

 

Revelation Chapter 8:1-11

“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 to 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. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake. So the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

“The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up. Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.  And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter.”

There are many, some of my dearest friends, that believe the rapture takes place here. They believe that they will venture into the first part of the Tribulation, about 3.5 years; and then, just as the ‘Great Wrath’ of God begins, here as they open the 7^th seal, then the Rapture begins and God turns up the heat on the rest of the world. The scriptures do not bear this out.

Enoch was taken before the Flood, and Lot was removed before the judgment on Sodom; and specifically, the angels told him, Lot, that they could not do anything until he was gone. But the most telling part of the account is the conversation between God and Abraham before the judgment even begins. It is recorded for us in Genesis 18:22-25,

“Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. And Abraham came near and said, ‘Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’”

Abraham asks two rhetorical questions in his conversation with the Lord, ‘Would you destroy the righteous with the wicked?’ and ‘Shall not the Judge of the earth do right?’ These are rhetorical questions, because the answers are very clear in the scriptures; and God cannot violate His word. The righteous have passed from wrath, from death to life and from foe to friend.

We would not treat our own children this way, so much more then will the Judge of the earth do right. And, to prove the point, Abraham got God down to 10 righteous souls being enough to save the city (Genesis 18:32). God could only find 4 willing to leave: Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. He rescued these before any judgment fell on the cities; and Lot actually saved the city of Zoar by finding refuge there (Genesis 19:21-22). The angel tells him that they would do nothing until he was safe.

The Bible tells us that we are “not appointed to wrath,” whether it be the little wrath (whatever that is in God’s power) or ‘big’ wrath.

1 Thessalonians 5: 9 “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I don’t know about you, but the seven seals seem a lot like wrath to me: the death, the destruction, and the suffering are all huge. This may seem like I am rehashing, but it is important to know where we are so that we can properly assess the scriptures and apply them properly.

Silence in Heaven, Revelation 8:1

These 30 minutes will seem like an eternity. Heaven is not a quiet place. There is activity always – angels singing and moving, cherubim worshipping, God decreeing, and on and on – just the hustle and bustle of running the Universe. But when the 7^th seal is opened, there is silence, maybe for the first time in eternity, in Heaven. This was the calm before the storm.

From the last chapter and then the opening verses of this one, we are in Heaven seeing things there, not really aware of what is happening on earth. But now we are about to return to the chaos on earth. Seven trumpets are handed to seven angels, and they begin to signal one wave of destruction after another.

The Trumpet was a very important tool to a city. It signaled impending danger, it could call an assembly, and it could be used in celebration. It was very important for the Trumpeter to be skilled and to know what he was doing. The wrong blast from a trumpet could cause fear when there was supposed to be celebration, or vice-versa. We, the redeemed, and especially we preachers, are called ‘watchmen’ in the scriptures. We are to sound the trumpet of the Lord’s wrath, the Lord’s soon return to judge this earth, and sadly, we are not doing a good job.

There is so little preaching on the Lord’s return, so little warning about the impending judgment – first, of us, His children, and then of the whole world. Hell is HOT! Yet there is so little warning of it. We do not want to upset people and think they respond better to ‘good news.’ The GOOD NEWS, also called the GOSPEL, is that Hell is real; but we who have Jesus living in us don’t go there. There can be no real appreciation of Heaven until the reality of Hell sinks in and the price that was paid to redeem us is realized. We cannot truly appreciate Grace without a real vision of Hell and an understanding that without His grace we would be there forever and ever.

The Prayers of the Saints, Revelation 8:2-5

One angel takes a golden censer and takes incense and offers it with the prayers of the saints on the altar in Heaven.

I am just about to finish reading through the Pentateuch for the fifth time in the last 4 years; one cannot go long into the book of Exodus without the things of the Tabernacle being mentioned. In Exodus 27:3, we find that the tools of the Tabernacle are made of brass. These tools, censers, are used to move hot coals from the brazen altar to the altar of incense to ignite the incense twice a day at the morning and evening sacrifice. The Tabernacle and the Temple are simply earthly models of the things in heaven.

We are told that the angel in verse 3 was given a golden censer, and then he stood by the altar. Yes, an altar in Heaven right in front of the Throne of God. He is about to ignite the fire there with incense and the prayers of the saints. We are told further that the smoke of the incense is right before God. In Revelation 5:8, we see that the incense is the “prayers of the saints.”

God loves our prayers. Jesus prayed often. Paul prayed without ceasing. Prayer is the incense in heaven. A sweet-smelling aroma before the Lord. I do not appreciate prayer like I should; and I fear that many, if not most, Christians do not either. We get lost in the ‘manmade and self-made’ world, and we forget that without the Lord we can do nothing.

Prayer has many facets: worship, praise, asking, pleading and waiting. It is built on confidence in the One to whom we are praying. Why pray if you do not believe that God can help and do for you? For many of us, prayer becomes a formality; it is what we do at 6 a.m. We pray. Just like we shave, we shower, and we eat breakfast, it is just another thing to be done and get into the day.

But, true prayer is the definition of intimacy between us and God. Prayer is essential to the Christian life. God wants us to talk to Him.

I have a little six-year-old, and she can talk and talk forever; sometimes it can get tedious. But most often she just wants to tell me about her day, she wants to know stuff, tell me stuff and have that interaction. In the process I get to teach her stuff, show her things and help her to understand why and how we do things. This is kind of what happens with us as we pray to the Lord. We talk and talk, and then He talks back via His word and through our day, and we realize that God is real. He is listening and He answers us. We have a real conversation with Him.

Well, we are told here in Revelation that our prayers are ever before Him, and they are the incense in heaven, a sweet-smelling aroma. Yes, we have a model prayer given to us in the New Testament, and we can follow that format if we choose or we can simply talk to the Lord just like my little one talks to me.

We need to remember the saints, the Christians around us, remember the sick, the lost, and the hurting; we need to be thankful for His grace, His mercy, His provisions, His protection, and His general kindness. We can transcend borders with prayer. We can pray for people thousands of miles away, and yet it is as if we are there.

God answers our prayers in His time, in His way and for His glory.

Prayer teaches us patience, contentment and gratitude. Prayer reminds us that we cannot, and so we need the Lord to do for us, in us, through us and by us. Prayer reminds us that we are limited and He is not. Prayer reminds us that we are finite and God is eternal. Prayer reminds us that God is faithful all the time. Prayer is truly the only power we have as Christians. Sadly, too many of us forgo this power for other things. I will admit that I am guilty of this as well. We should fall asleep talking to the Lord and awake talking to Him. This is the kind of intimacy that we need in and with the Lord.

Trumpets of Trouble, Revelation 8:7-11

We will look at the first three of the seven trumpets today.

God announces the return to the proceedings on earth with thunder and lightning. If there was a bit of a reprieve on earth, they are being warned that trouble is about to begin. They must have had some time for recovery because there is vegetation and things for God to destroy again. He begins with the trees and the grass. One third of all the vegetation is destroyed, and then God hits the seas and the fresh water. One third of the seas become blood, and one third of all the sea creatures die. One third of all the ships are destroyed, and then He hits the fresh water; one third of all the fresh water becomes deadly, and many people die.

God uses heavenly bodies to do the destruction: one, a great mountain burning with fire, most likely a meteor; and then He uses a ‘great star’ to do more damage. The first one in the sea would have caused an immense tidal wave hitting the coasts of just about every land mass around it. If we simply use the immediate area where Patmos is located, then we can see that Asia Minor, parts of the Middle East, parts of Northern Africa and then parts of Europe would be hit by the tidal wave. The loss of life would be great, and the loss of land and equipment would be great.

A star named Wormwood hits the fresh waters and does some serious destruction. Here in Canada, we have 2 of the largest freshwater lakes in the world: Lake Superior and Lake Huron, but 20% of the world’s fresh water is in Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia. There are gigantic rivers all over the world from South America to Australia. There are numerous and impressive rivers that affect millions of people. One third of these will be rendered dangerous and deadly to mankind.

The wrath of God is serious. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God (Hebrews 10:31). The world has called into question the person and power of God. But God is showing them who is the King of the World. Sadly, we have just touched the surface of what the destruction will be like. From here on out, God will bring the earth to its knees groveling before Him.

We have a ringside seat to see the majesty of our God. Thank God for His Son, His sacrifice, His Holy Spirit and His loving kindness that has brought us to life and placed us so that we are no longer enemies of God, but His children and under His protection. I leave you with these comforting words in 1 John 3:1,

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore, the world knowest us not, because it knew him not.”

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca