If the YouTube video above is not available, here are two other ways to view:

Rev2022-13
220411AM

Welcome to class #13 of our 20 classes summarizing & applying Revelation’s truths.
In chapter 9, the apostle John introduces us to the dreadful realm of the fallen spirits and their abode: the abyss. At this point, the fifth angel sounds the fifth trumpet, which is a preview of hell—endless darkness. This bottomless pit is the holding tank of punishment for the fallen angels, demons, the beast, the false prophet, and Satan (Revelation 9:1-2, 11; 11:7; 20:1-3). These spirit beings of the highest magnitude of evil are leftover from Satan’s rebellion.
Jude tells us that some of these evil spirit beings tried to corrupt the human race so that the promised Seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, could never come. Others seem to be key leaders of Satan’s forces, while still others have been so vile that they have been held back until Revelation 9. Like Satan, these demonic spirit-beings are filled with a hatred for God and mankind.
This course is called HOW IT ALL ENDS–an Expositional Bible Study course I just finished teaching to 300 college students, leading them through a personal study of each verse of the Book of Revelation.
Every chapter, every verse, every doctrine, every prophetic theme–all here in this one 20-hour class.
Want to get a personal grasp of what God explains about “How it All Ends”?
This 20 lesson course is just what you need!
Thanks for praying for us through these months of travel, and supporting us financially while we were teaching groups of both FrontLine missionaries and NextGeneration students this course three times in 10 weeks!
What a BLESSING!

Transcript

REV2022-13 – How It All Ends – Why Does God Allow The Real Aliens To Invade Earth?

In Revelation 8, look at verse 3. It says “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.” The prayers of all the saints. Remember I told you a few days back that God collects all of our prayers. They’re in these bowls. We saw that in chapter 5 and verse 8. Here in chapter 8 and verse 3 they are scooped up and with the offerings that are coming from the presence of God in the angel’s hands, it’s almost like they throw the prayers out and they are answered by these judgments. See, we have been praying for the Lord to right wrongs and to help the oppressed and punish the evildoers and He doesn’t do it. He waits. What are you supposed to do? God’s listening to all those prayers. He’s keeping track of it. He’ll answer them in His perfect time, it’s time to pray.

When He starts acting, that’s these trumpets of doom. When God responds, it’s time to flee. That’s the last few verses of chapter 8. God strikes the environment that mankind protects. It says in verse 5 that the angel took a censer and there were noises and thunders and lightning and earthquakes. The first trumpet sounds in verse 7 and hail and fire mingled with blood were thrown on the Earth and a third of all the trees were burned up and all the green grass. That means all the photosynthesis is deeply impacted, that which cleanses, takes the CO2 out. The whole process of what we need for life. Most likely there are volcanic eruptions from the quake. Water, steam, and ash go upward and come back down as hail. Eruptions may ignite the forest, a third of all the trees.

Then verse 8, we have an extinction level event. A second angel sounded. Something like a great mountain burning with fire. It sounds like an asteroid that was thrown into the sea and a third of the sea becomes blood. It strikes the oceans. It devastates a third of all ships, perhaps a tsunami tidal wave. God either turns the oceans to blood or lets the normal process of red tide poison the oceans.

Bonnie and I were ministering down south in Florida when the red tide came in and we would walk along the beach and you would see every creature gasping, dying on the shore. The longer the red tide went the dolphins and porpoises were beaching. They were dying from the red tide and every fish and every creature in between. God shows what He can do with the oceans.

What’s interesting is there’s a new study, remember with knowledge increasing. NEOs, near Earth objects. This is a picture of one. Last year asteroid Florence passed by, and NASA showed it was the largest near Earth object ever approaching, and this was the headline on that day. It’s coming tonight. If that thing would have come into our atmosphere, it would have looked very much like what I just read.

Solar stability is the fourth trumpet. Look at verse 12. “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, likewise the night.” God shows us something. The star that I just read about could be a comet that strikes the atmosphere and spreads poison. Solar power is getting hit. God the Son who ignited the sun on the fourth day of creation now dials them down a third. It says a third of all the luminescence declines. That would have horrible implications. This dramatic temperature drop would prompt fearsome weather that Luke 21 reminds us of. It would devastate the fragile life of plants and animals and people. The Lord dials them back up because the sun begins to burn in chapter 16. Just before all that happens, that’s when God sends those 144,000 evangelists, that was our 13th session together.

Why does God allow the aliens everybody always talks about and watches movies about and plays video games about and reads science fiction about it, why does God let the real aliens invade? That’s what chapter 9 is about and it’s fascinating. I don’t know if Titus and all of his wonderful work is going to work out. He’s already gotten all of last week’s slides. He’s converted them all to the Microsoft kind you need, and he’s turned them in for them to be uploaded in Canvas. I don’t know if they ever will. Last night I sent him all of this week’s slides, everything I’m showing you and he’s busily working on those.

If all that doesn’t come, this is what you need to know for the final exam and your next quiz. The book of Revelation has these topics that you should know where to find them in Revelation and share with people. Someone will ask you where the seven churches are and you say, oh, that’s in Revelation 2 and 3. Someone will ask you where the 24 elders in Heaven are, and you say, oh the Church in Heaven is chapters 4 and 5. Someone will say, where are those hundred 144,000? Chapter 7, I remember reading and studying that, and chapter 14 they are in two places. How about this hour? Where are the cosmic monsters in the pit? They’re in Revelation chapter 9. You could go through the whole list, but you should know those. Revelation 2 and 3 are the seven churches. The 24 elders are 4 and 5. The 144,000 are 7 and 14. This hour, we’re looking at the cosmic monsters in the pit. The two witnesses come in chapter 11. The dragon and the woman are in chapter 12, and the beast and the Anti-Christ are fully profiled in chapter 13. Armageddon is chapter 16 and then the origin of Satan. Where did he come from? People always wonder about that. His biography, his story of how he went from the highest created being God ever made, the smartest, most powerful being God created to falling. He went from Lucifer, the son of the morning, to Satan the adversary of God. That’s in two places, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.

You also need to know where we are in the book and how to navigate around both in the next quiz this Thursday and your final. You should know this progression, but especially some of the hard ones when chapters are broken up. The Second Coming is the last half of Revelation 19, and the Millennium is Revelation 20, the first six verses, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve shown you that also in the form of a chart. Right now, today, we’re in the big red box, the Tribulation. What we’re looking at is Lucifer, this greatest creature, the most powerful creature God ever created, and His fallen angels, the real alien invaders.

By the way, there’s nothing else in this universe other than what God has made and God has told us everything we need to know. There are no lifeforms on the 50,000 possible planets out there that someday we’re going to bump into that are somehow going to help us with the problems we’re having on Earth. The aliens of this universe, God has identified. That’s what we’re going to study in chapter 9.

What’s interesting is when this book was written the occult was very present in the Roman empire. See for us living in American Western culture there’s a subduing of that. If you ever go to any of the less Christianized parts of the world, you find the occult and demonic powers and demons and all that is very much in your face. I remember when Bonnie and I were ministering in Kyoto, Japan you can go into some of those Shinto shrines and feel the demonic power. Literally for any believer, you are so aware that they worship the dead and the vast amount of demons that are all involved. In fact, in the Shinto temples when you walk up to them and come to the door to enter there’s a white pile beside the door. They pour salt at the doorways of all the Shinto temples because they believe demons can’t cross salt so they keep them inside. It’s very interesting how their beliefs about that are and of course, it’s not biblical.

These churches were at the epicenter of the empire. Do you remember when we were covering Pergamos, it’s where Satan’s throne was? Satan’s headquarters was there. These people are very much doing hand to hand combat. That’s why in the book of Revelation when we find the first church of Ephesus in chapter 2, we know what Paul taught them because we have the book of Ephesians, and whether you teach them “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might…Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore” and all the spiritual armor is listed. That’s what these people knew.

Back to where we are, chapter 6 has the four horsemen. We went through them. Then the martyrs, then that cosmic earthquake. Chapter 7 is the box, the sealing of the 144,000. Chapter 8 starts with the silence and then the seven trumpets. Look what has happened. Number one in the fourth seal, back in chapter 6, 1/4th, 25% of the population of Earth dies. Now, when we get to the sixth trumpet 33% more people die. That total is 58% of the population. This is what it looks like, those trumpets. The first trumpet was the grass. The second trumpet was probably the asteroid, then the next one is the wormwood, the poisoning of the waters. Then the sun dials back.

Look where we are. We’re in the three woes. Look at the end of chapter 8 and notice what the angel says. “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.'” There are three blasts left. We have three trumpets, and the fourth one hits. We need five, six, and seven. Those are the three woes.

Verse 1 of chapter 9, “The fifth angel sounded.” You can see the fifth angel there and they are called demon locusts. They’re awful. “And I saw a star fallen from Heaven to Earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit.” Wait a minute. During the Gospels, what did Jesus say? He said I saw something like lightning coming down to Earth. He was talking about Satan coming down because of the great strides the Gospel is making. Satan is not omnipresent. Jesus was saying that Satan was coming down to stem the tide of the Gospel, which is his full-time job, he’s trying to thwart and be an adversary to God. He comes down again, most likely.

“The fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from Heaven to 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.” Every time it says “like” John is having trouble putting into human language what he’s seeing. It’s unbelievable. “So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. Then out of the smoke,” verse 3, “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.”

We get into this and what is going on? These 12 verses are about these demon locusts. They look like locusts. They have characteristics of locusts, even the life cycle, the five-month life cycle, and everything about locusts. They’re not physical locusts, they’re different. They are demon locusts. What we see is they’re the first part of the three woes. In the second part you see there are the Euphrates angels. Four angels get loose.

In fact, let’s read it starting in chapter 9 verse 13. “Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.'” You all know where the river Euphrates is, you can see it on the map like it was on every map during the Iraq war when America had so many troops over there. The Euphrates river, somewhere over there at the cradle of civilization, God has four angels that are bound somewhere by the great river Euphrates. Verse 15, “So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released,” look at this, “to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horseman was 200 million.”

All of a sudden, we’ve got all these people and they’re asking, is this army Chinese? This is a Chinese army. They’re the only country on Earth that could have 200 million soldiers. They’re not a Chinese army. These are not humans. Just the description tells us they’re not humans. These are four demons, but they’re not these locusts either. These are two different woes, so we’ll cover that. Then chapter 10 we’re going to get to and then finally all this has finished.

Let’s get down to it. Lucifer, his biography is in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. These four horsemen are representative of his real alien invaders, demons are the real alien invaders of Revelation chapter 9. John introduces us to the dreadful realm of fallen spirits and where they live, the abyss, and it’s awful. It’s enough to keep you awake at night if you didn’t know that you had the protection of the Spirit of God.

Number one, God’s super angels are the most powerful creatures in the universe. That’s why when we see them in chapter 9, this star falling from Heaven is one of God’s super angels. They’re amazing, but God has maximum security, cosmic being, a real alien prison. They’re not in area 51. Don’t worry about it. The Independence Day movie was about there being things that were like demons there. These things are in God’s prison. No one gets out of it until He lets them. Satan is most likely the star God allows to open the pit and this abyss is mentioned seven times. Look there 9:1, 9:2, 9:11, 11:7, 17:8, 20:1,3. The seven times this abyssos, that’s the Greek word and this abyss is the prison for the worst demonic creatures. Jesus talks about it in Luke 8:31. Remember when the demon said don’t send us to the abyss. We don’t want to go there. You can’t get out and they like to roam. 2 Peter 2 talks about it in verse 4, and Jude talks about it. These are angels that are so lethal, so vile, so malignant that if they’re let out, they would destroy everything, so God keeps them incarcerated.

The whole topic is angelology in systematic theology. Systematic theology has many different divisions. These are the most powerful creatures in the universe, stronger than the Eternals, stronger than the Avengers, all those are false. These are real, and these are the ones God talks about.

Where did they come from? The doctrine of the creation of angels. I’m slipping a little bit forward to help you understand chapter 12 because it explains how Satan took a third of the heavenly hosts. Here’s what happened: God created all angels. 2/3rds remain with God and serve Him. 1/3rd rebelled. Some of them were so bad they’re in prison, the abyssos, the abyss that we see in chapter 9. Most of them are not.

Let’s talk about the most that are not. Most are not our angels. They are a third of the angels, they’re demons now, but let’s talk about all the angels. Each of the angels we read about in God’s word has power. Each of them has power that exceeds anything that we can understand as a human, as possible by the laws of the physical world. Every angel is off the chart. That’s why the Lord said, and that’s why Paul said, don’t worship angels. People are given to worshiping angels.

In fact, there are even all these people that like to keep their little angels around and they buy them, precious moments and all that. Don’t get into that. All of that, especially the cultic part and the gaming part, is very dangerous. Why? Because God is absolutely all powerfully greater than everything. When you go into angelology it’s easy to get fearful, but God says don’t be fearful. He said I want you to know the real aliens that swirl around us, and God explains them.

By the way, if they can make humans think that they’re aliens from some other civilization that are bringing new technology, they’ve accomplished their feat. The only goal of fallen angels, demons, is to distract people from the truth. If they can distract them with drugs, they do it. If they can do it with immorality, they do it. The bigger thing they do is false religion. They do it. Now, with the endless distractions of electronica, the demons are very active. They’re getting people away from the truth. If they can get a Christian to be more interested in science fiction or entertainment or anything else other than God, then they’ve accomplished their purpose to distract. Angels are supernatural and super powerful creatures.

As far as we know, angelic creatures are indestructible. Do you ever think about that? They can’t be killed. You can’t destroy them. Frank Peretti wrote all his books, and the angels would blow up, but as far as we know they can’t be killed or destroyed. They can be imprisoned. They travel the universe effortlessly. They don’t need a spaceship. They seemingly never rest or sleep and there’s only one verse that implies that they even need to eat. In the Psalms, it talks about angels’ food. We don’t know if that implies that they eat something, but we do know that they’re not self-sustaining. Why? Because only God is self-sufficient, everything else needs to be fed to be repowered. See only God is self-contained, self-sufficient, eternal, infinite, needing no plugin. Angels are only kept alive by the power of God. Demons are only kept alive by the power of God. We are, remember life’s breath? We talked about that last hour; God holds our life’s breath. He’s the one that keeps us alive. In Him we live and move and have our being, Acts 17 says.

What are the angels? We know of at least five orders of the good angels, the angels I’m calling good. The bad ones I’m calling demons. Both are angels, good and bad angels. Lucifer was the guardian. He was the number one, top, highest. How do we know he’s so powerful? Because when Michael, the head of the armies of the Lord, came near Satan at the burial of the body of Moses, you know what Jude tells us? I’m sure you know what Jude tells us. I’ll read it to you. It says, “Yet Michael the archangel,” verse 9 of Jude, 1 “in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said ‘The Lord rebuke you!'” The highest good angel doesn’t tangle with Satan. He backs up and says the Lord will take care of you. That’s the highest of all the good angels. Satan is the most powerful, most brilliant, the greatest creature God ever made, and he fell.

Someone asked me one of the perennial questions, where did evil come from? Remember I was a youth pastor, so I’m not going to get into the philosophical, what the great minds have pondered, but let me show you something. God alone is self-sufficient. Everyone else needs help to continue. Here’s the greatest creature God ever made. Satan is a purple pen, or Lucifer was. Notice why the pen is standing up. I’m holding it. Everything in the universe needs holding. Watch what happens when I stop holding it. I tried to hold it up, but I couldn’t. What evil is, is when God takes His finger off, nothing can keep up. It all goes downhill. The scriptures put it this way in 1 Peter 1:5, “who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” Those who never choose to let God hold them up get further and further fallen from Him.

How did Satan fall? God temporarily took away the holding and boom, he fell. That’s what you read about if we were doing Isaiah 14. When I teach Isaiah, we go all through that and Ezekiel 28. Lucifer was the guardian; he’s called the covering cherub. Actually, I think of him like, for any of you that are photographers, those big parabolic reflectors that you shine the light in, and it diffuses it so you get a good picture for the portrait mode or whatever. Satan’s wings, because you know he’s called the anointed covering cherub, look like a big reflector hood over the throne of God reflecting the glory of God back on God. He was up there with all that glory, and it says in Isaiah and Ezekiel that he thought in his heart, this is really nice. One of the greatest proofs of inspiration is that he doesn’t say in Isaiah or Ezekiel that I am going to be greater than God because he knows he’s a created thing. No one in their right mind knows they could be greater than God. What did he say? I will become like Him. He started absorbing that glory. That’s the essence of pride, when we want to be like God, not in surrender to Him. Look at this spelling: LUCIFER. Now, spell pride. PRIDE. Then look at sin, S I N. What’s the center of everything? I. That’s what happened with Lucifer, and he fell, but he still was number one.

The cherubim are next. Lucifer was the highest cherubim, so we know what he looks like. I already told you that, four faces and covered with eyes. Then we have the archangels like Michael and Gabriel, they are two that are mentioned. Then we have the seraphim. That’s just a Hebrew word that means the burning ones. They’re constantly burning and they almost, in Isaiah, look interchangeable with the cherubim. Then we have all the normal angels and there are lots of them.

On the bad side, there are at least seven orders of bad. There are probably seven of the good ones. God is not telling us everything. He’s only telling us what we need to know. There’s the angel of light. That’s the worst one, that’s Satan. Then we’re going to meet in just a moment the number one general of Satan called the destroyer. His name is Abaddon or Apollyon. That’s why I tell young people, the gamers, I say I wouldn’t play a game that has the name of the very worst of all the demons out there that’s down in a pit somewhere that God lets out from time to time, because I wouldn’t want to attract his attention. Of course, I wouldn’t play anything God says to not have anything to do with, like demons. I wouldn’t anyway, but I would especially avoid Abaddon, Apollyon, and Destroyer games.

Then they’re the horrible monsters of the destroyer that come out that we just saw. Then there are the doomed angels that not only are in the abyss, they have chains on them. Peter talks about them. It says they’re in everlasting chains under darkness awaiting the judgments of the last day. They are so malignant. They’re the ones that caused the whole Earth to get flooded. They caused so many problems at the time of Noah that God just chained them up and they’re waiting for Hell.

Then we have in chapter 10 of Daniel, the nation princes, the prince of Persia. Did you know the ancient name of Iran is Persia? Did you know that Iran has its own demon that’s in charge? There’s another movie, The Prince of Persia, that’s a movie and it’s all about the occult too. All of this stuff, the truth seeps into all of the media and of course, they distort it a little bit. There’s the prince of Greece. There’s the prince of Persia. All these princes are demons that control nations.

Then Paul introduces a whole sixth category. When he’s talking about spiritual warfare, he says principalities, powers, rulers of darkness of this age, spiritual hosts of wickedness. We don’t know if that’s one kind of angel or many kinds of angels. Then there are just plain demons that Jesus is bumping into everywhere, at least seven groups.

Think about this, our God is greater than the sum of everything He created. God is greater than the whole universe. They just got that new telescope out there. It’s so amazing. Science, I love science. I had an MIT Scholarship to work on data transmission over lasers, and I turned it down to go to Bob Jones University. I’m so thankful, but if I had stayed in data transmission on lasers way back in the 70’s, what they’re finding is unbelievable. They started mapping the universe. The British were leading. They decided they were going to map the entire universe from every point on Earth so that we get a 360, complete map of the universe. They assigned all these astronomers, and they mapped the whole universe. Everything has a quadrant. Every part of the universe has a quadrant and then they assign higher learning to go into each quadrant and learn all they can. What they learned, you can see all this at the creation museum, Ken Ham’s place. Their planetarium does this.

When they assigned the square, like to Caltech Berkeley, that was their square. They started examining it and what they found that they thought were stars in their square, many of them weren’t stars, they were galaxies. What they thought were galaxies in their quadrant, when they studied it more closely, they found out they were clusters of galaxies. In other words, what they said is there’s so much out there they don’t understand. They can’t even number. Our God is greater than all the universe; the Earth that we know a little bit about, and the entire spiritual world I’m just talking to you about.

Why does all this matter? What can demons do? They’re supernatural creatures. Here’s what they can do, we see it in verse 3. When God allows them to, they can become predators. How would you like a predator that does not stop by doors? In all the dinosaur movies, Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs and the velociraptors always run into the doors and if you put a fire extinguisher or an ax in the door they can’t get in. Demons aren’t like that. They’re not stopped by material walls. It’s amazing. The locusts are demonic creatures that John struggles to describe. As you read it this week, he has to use the word “like” nine times. That means I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just blowing his circuits.

Like scorpions they can paralyze victims with pain. Like real scorpions that can cause foaming at the mouth and grinding of the teeth because of the venom. Like those real locusts on Earth that have a five-month lifespan from May to September, God limits this judgment to only five months. Notice no one dies from these predators. For five months you just can’t get away from the wrath of God that you feel like a horrible sting.

Then the real destroyers were unleashed. That’s the preview of Hell. That’s why we have chapter 9. Chapter 9 is God giving humanity a preview of Hell while the 144,000 are out trying to lead everybody to the Lord just before the two witnesses come and the Gospel angel. God is not willing that any should perish. He says, I want to get your attention. What was I supposed to announce? I forgot, what’s your name? Carson, my friend, just reminded me. I saw that little smile you gave me. I was supposed to remind you that the study guide says you have to pick 10 chapters from 6 to 22. That’s a mistake. For years I only taught Revelation 6 to 22 and Dr. Davis taught 1 to 5. A few years back, five or so, they asked me to do all of it, but that old thing is still out there somewhere. You know how you can never erase stuff, so it’s any 10 chapters from all 22. How many of you had that question? Okay. So, good. You were right. When one person comes and asks me, probably 10 people have the same question. The rest of you haven’t read the assignment sheet, so you should get down to it. Okay. It’s time. Okay.

The real destroyer is unleashed. Here we meet the most powerful demon under Satan. He’s called Apollyon. He’s called Abaddon. Apollyon is Greek, Abaddon is Hebrew, and both translate destroyer. That’s what it is in English. There’s nowhere to go. There’s no escape. There’s no secure room to hide from creatures that transcend physical barriers. This is the main reason why the Tribulation is so bad. You can’t get away from God. You can’t get away from Him anyway, but most people don’t care. They don’t think about Him, and they put Him out of their mind. God says, you’re going to put me out of your mind? I will get your attention. I’m going to send these things that can go through walls and into your safe room. During the Ukrainian war, it says all the oligarchs, the billionaire Russians, are all going to their safe rooms and their bomb shelters and everything because they want to be safe. You can’t hide when God lifts these demons out. Think of all those bound demons in the pit being turned loose in addition to the ones that are already running all over the Earth.

As if these hordes are not bad enough out of the smoke from the pit, look at verse 11, you talk about this would make a great movie. After everything going on and then verse 11, “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.” You see him coming up as all these locusts things are flying out and all of a sudden, the destroyer shows up.

Let’s think about him. He’s not just here. He’s in Exodus 12. Did you know that? Do you know what he did on one night? Have you ever thought about what the Passover event was? God let this angel out for one night, very limited on what he could do. What did he do? He went over the nation of Egypt and with no special forces’ night goggles, no field kit, or DNA sample things, he found the firstborn of every family of humans and the firstborn of every family of animals. The cattle in the stalls. He’s able to cover, one angel, covers the entire nation of Egypt in one night, finding the firstborn male child in every family and in their beds they died. No one else does. The Bible says they didn’t know until a while went by and people started weeping when they found their baby dead. Then it woke everybody else up, but it seemed to have been a silent death. Then, he got out into everybody’s barn and killed the firstborn of their cattle. One night one angel knew where they all were in the dark, could find the right one in their bed, could find the right one in the stall. Wow. Do you see why God keeps him penned up? What if God hadn’t put any limits on him?

He’s in 2 Samuel 24. He kills during that judgment on David’s pride. 1 Corinthians 10:10. I’ll read you that one. 1 Corinthians 10:10 says “nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer.” That happened in Numbers 14. Isn’t that amazing? This angel shows up here. The angel’s name is destroyer, in Hebrew Abaddon, in Greek Apollyon. Wow.

The greatest loss of human life arrives. Starting in verse 13 the sixth trumpet sounds. If this wasn’t bad enough, the pain, now the four bound angels, allowed by God, led a demonic army that numbers 200 million horsemen that destroys a third of all remaining humans. This event is not to be confused with the later human army announced by the seventh trumpet led by demons in Revelation 16. That’s a human army. The Armageddon army are people, and they are coming from the east and probably there will be Chinese and every other Eastern nation soldier as well as all the people from the former Soviet republics. Everybody is going to come to that because the whole world converges on Armageddon, but these are 200 million demon horsemen. This demonic army destroys a third of all remaining humans.

Why am I going through all this? Look at verse 20 of chapter 9, because I want to show you. Revelation chapter 9 and verse 20, “But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues.” That’s the 42% of humans alive who’ve already seen the comets and the asteroids and the demons and all this stuff, “did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone and wood, which can neither see.” You know how idols are nothing, “and did not repent of their murders.” Pharmakeia, that’s the Greek word, pharmakeia. The drug involved, the drugs that open the mind. Remember the mind is a portal between the physical and the spiritual world and drugs free the mind from some of the restraints. That’s why it’s always involved with the worship of demons, “sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.”

What I wrote is this: sin is far more powerful than we realize. Despite all the horrors, all the cataclysms, people are still chained by their sins of rebellion that only Christ can release us from. Remember what it says in chapter 8 of John verses 32 to 35, whom the Son will set free will be free indeed. Do you want to know the acid proof of salvation? You now can say no to sin. The grace of God that brings salvation, Titus 2 says, teaches us we can say no to sin. Do you know what one of the greatest thrills is? Being tempted and looking that temptation straight in the eye and like Joseph saying, no, I will not sin against God. You feel the grace of God so much at that moment. Despite all that people are still chained to their sins and rebellion because only Christ can release this from them. John lists the five.

Do you remember days ago, last week we talked about the Thyatirans, and I told you about sins against our body and all that stuff I was talking about? It says, Jesus said you know the depths of Satan. This is the depths of Satan, when a believer gets imprisoned by these horrible sins they’re experiencing the depths of Satan. Okay.

Now it’s time to go to chapter 10. Some of you thought we’d never make it there and here we go. God reminds us He’s in control. Look at chapter 10. “I saw another mighty angel come down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.” This is describing what Jesus looks like only it’s not Jesus. Okay, but it describes what Jesus looks like. The covenant and the face, bright and blinding and like the sun we see in chapter 1. His feet are like pillars of fire, that’s also in chapter 1, but He had a little book in His hand. He puts one foot in the sea and the left foot on the land and cries with a loud voice and seven thunders uttered their voices. When the seven thunders uttered their voices, John said I was about to write down, verse 4, what I heard from Heaven, but a voice said to me seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and don’t write them. There’s something God didn’t want us to know.

There are a lot of things God doesn’t want us to know, only what He wants us to know. Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to The LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us.” I would worry about what I know and what the Bible says, rather than everything I don’t know and wonder about. Most people spend most of their time on the white spaces of the Bible, the stuff it doesn’t say. Why don’t we just focus on what it does say? That’s what this chapter is about.

God reminds us He’s in control. By the way, God pauses the horror movie of Revelation to encourage us, with all our troubles that surround us, with His beauty, power, grace, and perfect plan. That’s what He does in chapter 7. He does it again in chapter 10 and He’s going to do it again in 14 and 15. Each pause, theologians that commentate on the Bible call it a parenthesis. Each pause in Revelation is to remind us of what we learned the first day. Remember we’re in this secure compartment. He is all powerful. He’s all knowing. He’s always with us and He loves us and we’re secure. He’s leading us in every event in history toward the promised victory.

As I already said, Jesus is not portrayed as an angel in the New Testament. The mighty angels often thought of Him as Christ, but because the word another clearly refers to God’s messengers of judgment. Another, see how it says in chapter 10 “I saw still another mighty angel.” Jesus is not another. He is God and God the Son, so the language says it’s not Jesus. It’s best to never think of Jesus as being portrayed as an angel. In the Old Testament, He is the angel of the Lord.

Number three, this little book, it’s the same title deed we probably saw in chapter 5. It’s open in chapter 6 and the angel’s feet remind us that despite Satan’s temporary rebellion the Lord rules everything and that’s why He puts His feet like that. Then I like this. Look at verse 3, it says “And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices.”

Have you ever noticed how many sevens there are? I did when I was reading. There are 54 sevens. There are 18 sets. You can study them. In order, they are seven churches, seven spirits, seven lampstands, stars, lamps of fire, seals, horns, eyes, spirits of God, angels, trumpets, thunders, heads, crowns, last plagues, golden bowls, mountains, and kings. They’re just complete sets. It’s the way God communicates, but this is the important part. God’s sweet and sour word. John illustrates what God’s word in Revelation does in the life of the believer.

Look what happens in verse 7, “But in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets. Then the voice…. said, ‘Go, take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea’…So I went to the angel and said to him, ‘Give me the little book.’ And he said to me, ‘Take and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be sweet as honey in your mouth.'” And John did it. John illustrates what God’s word in Revelation does in the life of all believers through the ages that take the challenge to be blessed as we read it. There are two effects of Revelation we’ll have: the sweetness of anticipating God’s victory over sin and His vengeance on sinners. It’s the nauseating reality of how horrible the effects of sin are on both creation and fallen sinners. It makes us sick.

Bonnie and I were teaching at a medical missions’ conference I think in Thailand. All the doctors came from all these closed countries. I was teaching along on Ephesians 6, actually, I was doing the armor of God. These doctors come for two weeks from all over the world. They’re medical missionaries, and they’re all struggling. It’s very hard where they live, everyone is opposed to the Gospel. They’re there because they love Christ and are trying to lead people to Christ and their stories made us cry often.

After one of the sessions this doctor, you always know the doctors because they come in those scrubs, those turquoise scrubs, I don’t know what colors are, bluish tinged green colored scrubs. They usually have a little stethoscope. This doctor came up. I think he even had those little things on his feet, those little mesh things they put over their feet, and he came up after I spoke because he was going into a medical seminar. He looked at me and said, you’re in my book. There are 800 medical personnel in the auditorium, and I just taught my heart out for an hour. You never know what people mean. Even you guys, you come up and some of you say unusual things and I love it. I always smile and say, oh, thank you.

I said, oh, thank you, but what does that mean, you’re in my book? He went like this, I’ll never forget it, he pulled out of his pocket a little tiny Moleskine. Do you know what Moleskine’s are? They’re a kind of a notebook that is expensive and they make one that’s really small and just fits in your back pocket. He popped that thing open, and he said I’m a doctor. I work in Jordan right on the border with Syria where ISIS is. He said our hospital patches up to people that are blown up and shot up from all the conflicts going on there. Some of them are soldiers. Some of them are Jordanian. Some of them are Syrian. Some of them are Afghans. He said but I work in the ISIS impacted region.

He said the problem is between my hospital and the army base, the US army base where I live there’s a road I have to drive on every day. He said, plus, I have to go several days a week and drop my children off at the army provided school for US military personnel because he was considered part of the medical staff so he could drop his kids off. He said I have three stair-step daughters. He said they all had blonde hair, blue eyes, and look like their mother. He said, I used to be a doctor, I think it was either at Johns Hopkins or Harvard, I don’t know, one of the uber big, famous hospitals. He said but the Lord stirred my heart that I wanted to go to the hardest region to share the Gospel.

He said, so I have a problem. I will be in surgery, and I’ll finish the surgery, and all of a sudden, this darkness comes down over me and I feel like I’m being suffocated. He said I can’t think I’m so afraid. I think they’re going to capture my kids and murder them at the school, or I think they’re going to capture my wife after she drops me off at the hospital and drives back to the military base. He says, I think when we’re all in the car they’re going to capture us and blow us up. He said, I just get scared, and I can’t do surgery. I can’t do anything. He said I found the only place in the hospital I can go and it’s in the restroom. He said, I go in the restroom, and I turn that lock and I’m all alone in that room. Then I pull this book out. He said how you got in my book is because today as you were teaching one of the verses stood out. He said, by the way, I didn’t listen to anything else you said.

He said, one of the verses that you talked about got my attention. I looked it up in the Bible. I copied it in my book and then I wrote a prayer, the application prayer from it. He said, so the next time I’m in surgery and the dark cloud of demonic oppression and fear comes over me and I’m paralyzed with fear and don’t want to serve the Lord and can’t go forward, I’m going to run to the bathroom, lock the door, pull out my Moleskine and I’m going to probably read what you just shared. He said that’s what I mean you’re in my book. He said you know what happens? He said, I’m sitting in there with the door locked and I read that verse out loud even though I don’t want to. I start praying that prayer out loud because I’m paralyzed and the darkness lifts like this. He said, I go right back and do surgery and I share the Gospel and I drop my kids off and I drive my wife around and I’m totally unafraid and bold.

Why? Because greater is He that is in us than he that is in this world. We have the power of God unto salvation. We’re supposed to take the full armor of God so that we can withstand even the darkness of Satan oppressing us with the only offensive tool we have, the sword of the Spirit. I would encourage you to be a Christ loving, Bible believing, hope overflowing servant of God. You’re desperately needed because this world is so dark.

Slides


Check Out All The Sermons In The Series

You can find all the sermons and short clips from this series,  Revelation Taught In 2022 here.

Looking To Study The Bible Like Dr. Barnett?

Dr. Barnett has curated an Amazon page with a large collection of resources he uses in his study of God’s Word. You can check it out here.