Revelation Chapter 9: 1-12

“Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him 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 of the pit. Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men 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. In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them. The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.

“And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon. One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things.”

It is hard for some to accept that the book of Revelation is literal. It is hard to accept that these hard things will actually happen. Yes, the merciful, kind, gracious and loving God will set forth a course of death and destruction that many Christians question. How, they ask, could a loving God allow this to happen to people?

For about the last generation we have changed the preaching about the holiness of God to make it so that, for the most part, we talk about His love, His kindness, His grace, His gentleness and the like. And yes, He is all those things. But the same God who made the Garden of Eden and who inhabits Heaven, made Hell and the bottomless pit. We have tried to make God more palatable to the lost man; and what we have done is poison a generation of people, even many Christians who do not fear God any longer.

Just a few weeks ago I was reading through the book of Exodus, and in chapter 19: 21-25 we see these warnings,

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to gaze at the Lord, and many of them perish. Also let the priests who come near the Lord consecrate themselves, lest the Lord break out against them.’

“But Moses said to the Lord, ‘The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai; for You warned us, saying, ‘Set bounds around the mountain and consecrate it.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Away! Get down and then come up, you and Aaron with you. But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest He break out against them.’ So Moses went down to the people and spoke to them.”

This is a warning from the Lord for the people not to come too close to the mountain where He was giving the Law, lest they be killed. The Lord will ‘break out’ on them and many will die. God is loving, He is kind, He is gracious and He is gentle, BUT, He is also ruthless to those that defy Him. He is not your friend if you are rejecting Jesus.

Let this be clear to you, God poured out His wrath on Jesus. He allowed Him to be beaten beyond recognition, His beard to be pulled out, and His brow to be pierced by a crown of thorns; He allowed mere men to hammer large spikes into Jesus’ hands and feet because He became sin for us. What Jesus went through for you and me was a glimpse of how God deals with sinners. It is harsh, ruthless and without pity. If God did this to His Son, imagine what He will do to those who rejected His Son and cheapened His great sacrifice for us.

God does not need you to like Him to be God. But you need God to know you will live forever, and He will only know you if your sin is covered in Jesus’ righteousness.

The beasts of the Bottomless Pit, Revelation 9:1-12

In this passage, one of the angels comes down from heaven and opens a place called the bottomless pit, and lets out some of God’s secret creations. These ‘insects’ (actually demons) are not like any insects that have ever been seen before. They look like locusts, but they bite like scorpions. These locusts are not interested in grass or vegetation; NO, they bite men. For five months they torment the people of the earth. They do not attack the people who are sealed by God, beginning with the 144,000 Jewish men. These locusts are not allowed to kill people, just torment them. They bite them, and the sting is like that of a scorpion.

These locusts-like creatures are a highly organized and well-armored group. It does not appear that men will be able to kill them, and they will affect people all over the earth. How could God make such creatures? He is Supreme and He can do all that He pleases.

We just got a cat, and it is playful and cuddly, but she will turn and bite you as well. We see nature shows about lions; they can be so playful with the cubs but then turn and kill off intruders with ease. We go to these parks and see the killer whales; they are so majestic, but in the wild they are very good killers. They hunt in packs, often killing baby whales with precision and without pity.

These ‘locusts’ will do a lot of damage; your local hardware store will not have the spray to kill them, and they are not afraid of men. Now I understand why there was a cry of ‘Woe, Woe, Woe’ at the end of the last chapter. The previous parts of the tribulation could be escaped by death and dying, but this one cannot be dodged. This is one of the greatest parts of this judgment, and we will look at this in the next section.

Locust swarms can block out the sun as they are so plentiful. There are a lot of these tormentors to go around; no one will be left out. A scorpion bite can be quite painful I have learned as I am researching. Some can cause you to be in great agony, foam at the mouth and even grind your teeth in pain. John the apostle seems to be at a loss for words; he uses the word ‘like’ often. He is trying to wrap his head around what he is seeing, but his confusion is a great reflection of what the people on earth will be feeling during this time. They have never seen anything like this before, and they can neither control them nor kill them. They are powerless to stop the torment.

We are told in Proverbs 30:27 that the “locusts have no king,” yet they advance in ranks. These ‘locusts’ here in the Tribulation do have a king; his name in Greek means ‘Destroyer.’ These locust-like creatures will be demons. They look like men in the face, they look like horses in the body, they have wings and they are loud. They sound like horses in battle when they advance.

Hollywood has not thought of anything this bad ever for any horror film. This is a creature only God can control. I cannot imagine what life, and I use that term life very loosely, will be like on earth. Billions of people suffering in immeasurable agony with no hope of a reprieve.

Only God controls Death, Revelation 9: 6

Life will be so bad on earth during this attack by the locusts that people will want to die. The most basic of instincts is the will to live. Except in the most extreme cases, people have a built-in desire to live. We feed ourselves, medicate ourselves and care for ourselves so that we can live. The entire world takes medication to try to live longer. We fight death with pills, diets, exercise, and religion; and one of the biggest draws to Christianity is eternal life. But the bite and the torment of these locusts will be so painful that the people on earth will wish for death.

From the context, it appears that some will try to kill themselves and not be able to. It says “men will seek death.” They will try to commit suicide, and God will not allow it. Can you imagine the gruesome scenes on earth – people with gunshot wounds to the head, their bodies destroyed from jumping off tall buildings, their necks distended and bruised by trying to hang themselves, their bodies broken for jumping in front of vehicles – and yet they are not able to die?

There are two things I take from this:  one is the absolute Sovereignty of God over life and death. We, in the modern world, are so enamored with our right to vote that we do not understand what a genuine Sovereign is. Even the current Queen of the Commonwealth, Elizabeth 2, is not a true and genuine Sovereign. She does not control life and death. In the heyday of true kings, they did. If they let you live, you did; and if they commanded that you died, you did.

There are a few absolute rulers still on earth, but even then, they can be limited by the international community. We see this in places like North Korea. Their leader is a sovereign, but his power is limited only to North Korea. But God’s Sovereignty transcends all aspects of the creation. He controls the things above, on and even below the earth. God is even Sovereign over death. In this case here during this time in the Tribulation, He temporarily stops death. Wow, listen to that! God stops death.

This is one of the reasons that just reading the Revelation brings blessings. Our God has the power to stop death. This should bolster the faith of everyone who reads this. This is a power unique to the God of the Bible – the power to stop death, to control death and to overrule death. Death, we are told, is not a respecter of persons, BUT it will respect God. It will obey the God of the Bible. Oh, what an awesome God we serve! Oh, what a powerful God we serve!

The second thing that I take from this is God’s grace even in the midst of His wrath. The people want to die to escape their temporary torment here on earth, but death will immediately put them in eternal torment in Hell. This torment will last but a short while, some five months, but Hell is forever. Had God let them die, they would have been in a worse situation.

Maybe, just maybe once they get past the five months, some of them will see and understand that the people of God were not attacked; and maybe, just maybe some of them may repent and be saved. Even if it were just one of them who repented, then this stay on death would be worth it.

Sometimes we miss the ‘little’ wonders of God’s grace in the middle of the storms. God is good; even in His wrath He is good.

Are you as diligent as God at helping people stay out of Hell? This is our primary job as people in local New Testament churches – making disciples, teaching and sharing the Gospel, lifting Jesus up so He can draw ALL men to Himself. Be agents of God’s grace; tell someone the Gospel. Let us work like we believe this verse, 2 Peter 3:9,

“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

 

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