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May I come to the front of the room?
There down in the back.
Well, good morning.
Good morning.
Mr. Smith, when you have a seat, would you open the door? Will you pray for us?
I will since I have some ice.
Please.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day that you've blessed us with. We thank you that you've blessed us with health and strength and a desire to be in your house. And we pray, Lord, that you would bless this time together for it to be with Brother Mike, that you would use him, speak through him, and help us to hear, and allow this to have its work in our hearts and lives, that we would be more conformed to the image of your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
In his name we pray. Amen.
Amen. Alright.
Revelation 8, beginning in verse 1. And when the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.
And another angel came and stood at the altar holding a golden censer. And much incense was given to him so that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar, which was before the throne.
And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints went up before God out of the angel's hand. And then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire of the altar, and he threw it to the earth.
And there followed peals of thunder, sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake. And the seven angels who had seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound it. The first sounded, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood.
And there were thrown to the earth, and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees was burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. 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 creatures which were in the sea that had life died. And a third of the ships were destroyed. The third angel sounded a great star from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell onto a third of the rivers and the springs of waters.
And the name of that star was called Wormwood. And a third of the waters became Wormwood. And many men died from the waters because the water was made bitter. The fourth angel sounded, and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck so that a third of them would be darkened and the day would not shine for a third of it and the night in the same way.
And then I looked, and I heard an eagle flying in midheaven saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, because the remaining blast of the trumpets are the three angels who are about to sound.
So last week we obviously got through the seventh seal, and then we had a little parenthetical statement of what he was seeing in the vision between verses 3 through 5, and then the actual, now we come to the actual trumpets, and they're actually going to be blown, and we're going to see what those things represent and what the judgments are.
In the Bible, trumpets have significant things. Anybody know what trumpets signified or what they did in Old Testament revelation? Not like Old Testament Book of Revelation, but in the Old Testament, what the purpose of them were for?
Okay, we'll say one's war.
What else?
Judgment.
What's that?
Could be, sure.
Announcement.
Well, I'm going to use that one because it actually was a call for the congregation to gather, which ultimately would mean Moses was fixing to say something important, okay? Yeah, so the announcement, there would be the congregation would meet, but also when we were talking about the 144 ,000 in the Book of Numbers 2, 7, and 10, when I said you would show that they're marching order, that's how they were listed.
The only times those three are listed the same way, they would blow their trumpet or their shofar. It's the same thing, and that would either have them come to bring their offerings, as they would offer them as tribes, or they would blow that trumpet when the cloud or the pillar of fires moved.
Remember that when it would come time for the children of Israel to move, they would blow the trumpet, and then they would start moving. So it was a call, one, it's time to pay attention, something big's fixing to happen.
But when we first started, when we were talking about the series of sevens, Miss Deborah immediately said, I said, what would be the significance of the seven trumpets? Anybody remember what Miss Deborah said?
Jericho. What was the significance about Jericho? Sure, that was the, they'd come across the Jordan. You want to go back? Is your Joshua study on? Go back and listen to his Joshua study. They come across the Jordan River.
They had to prepare themselves to go to war. They did that. Well, when they get to Jericho, I mean, what would be the common thing to think? Hey, we could use a catapult. We could use a battering ram.
You know, we could do all these things, but what did God tell them to do? Seven trumpets. What are they supposed to do for seven days? That's it. And then on the seventh day, what was they going to do?
They were going to let it rip, and then what did the walls do? They didn't collapse this way or that way. What did it say they do? They dropped straight down. So it was an act of judgment. It was an act.
Those trumpets signified the blowing of that God's judgment on, I'm going to say here, these are the Canaanites, and these were the enemies of God. These were the enemies of God. Canaanites were. Hey, you may know when they made the conquest of the land, we often think as they went into the land that they were to wipe out everybody.
How many of us think that's what happened? When it says they go into the land, they were supposed to wipe out everybody. That's actually not as accurate as the Scripture. That's how we understand it, because the land they were going to was the Canaanites, but he made it specific groups of people.
When they would go into the land, they were to wipe out the Canaanites, the Herozites, the Pizzites, all these other ites. But as they come across that land, there might be other people that were not part of that.
If you go to Deuteronomy 20, they were supposed to offer terms of peace. Then if they didn't, then that's what they were to lay waste to them. Could you remember what the Gibeonites did? They tricked them.
They were sneaky.
Yeah, they came in tattered, torn, crusty old bread. Then as they left there, they had heard what they were going to do, the Gibeonites. Then there was another battle of the five kings that raised themselves up against the Israelites.
That's when you remember when the sundial didn't move so that they could fight all day? That's the actual battle. It's because they raised themselves up against the people of God, and God said, okay, now you go in and you wipe all those guys out.
Anyway, Jericho is a representative of the decimation of the first enemies of God. Do you remember what the condemnation of the seals represented? When we did the seals, they were representative of covenant curses.
Remember what the seals was? Hey, if you do what I tell you to do, armies won't surround you. You'll always have food. You won't have to worry about civil war. You won't have to worry about anything. You do what I tell you.
You do this, and you can go back and read in Leviticus 26. If you do what I tell you to do, all of these things will be good for you. If you don't, these are the things that are going to come upon you, war, famine, pestilence.
Your mothers are going to eat your children. Remember all those horrific things you can read in Leviticus 26. So we saw the seals represented them breaking the covenant curses. When you get to the trumpets, these are going to represent God treating them as his enemy.
The trumpets, as we go through the trumpet, If you've read through some of the trumpets, you're going to see some similarities to the Exodus. What were the ten plagues? Blood, flies, frogs, lice, disease, darkness.
Hang on, we're getting there. I'm trying to do them in order if I can remember them. Disease on livestock, boils, hail, darkness, and death. Good morning. As we read through these trumpets, you're going to see some of these in there.
We're going to see right off the rip, we're going to see blood and hail. Right at the beginning of the first trumpet. God has already said, if you do these things, I'm going to punish you. Remember, we're specifically speaking about the covenant people of God in the Old Testament.
Remember, what is the book of Revelation rooted in? Is it rooted in the Wall Street Journal? Is it rooted in Politico? Times Union?
Times Union.
What's it rooted in? The Old Testament. Look, I was asked twice this week. As a matter of fact, you asked me a couple weeks ago or a month ago. What commentaries would you use? The best commentary of the Bible is always the Bible.
You want to know the book of Revelation better? Read the prophets. Read the prophets. As a matter of fact, once again, when we were reading last week, I don't know if anybody caught it, when we were reading Jeremiah, did you hear what he said about wormwood?
What did we just read today and last week as we were reading through this?
Wormwood.
Anybody catch what it was? What God said he was going to do through the prophet Jeremiah because they had broken the covenant and now we're their enemies? He was going to feed them wormwood and make their bellies hurt and they were going to barf.
Okay?
What are we seeing here? In the same text, we're seeing some of the same things. So if you want to know more about the book of Revelation, read the prophets. Read Isaiah, Jeremiah, all of the minor prophets.
Read them and you will have a better understanding of what's taking place in Revelation. Why? Because the prophets all pointed to the culmination of all things, which was the coming of Christ, His resurrection, and His decimation of the old covenant and the enemies of God.
So let's pick up in verse 6. And the seven angels who had prepared had been prepared to blow the seven trumpets, prepared themselves to sound them. Trumpets all over were used, like we said, for a number of things.
But if you go to Joel chapter 2, and we read part of this, Joel chapter 2, it says, Blow the trumpet of the Lord for the day of judgment has come. Blow the trumpet of the Lord. Once again, signifying judgment, punishment, doom, gloom.
And just as in the seals were separated by four and three, we're going to see the same thing with the trumpets. Like in the seals, we saw a separation one through four, which had horses. And then you had the successive ones after that.
See separation here? On the trumpets, you're going to have one through four trumpets. But then you're going to see the separation of being the three woes of five through seven. See how they're separating the threes and fours?
The separation? See what I'm saying?
No?
See?
These are going to be a unit, just like these were a unit.
Separated.
That's just part of the parallel of the book. It does it all the way through it. So the first was sounded. And there came hail and fire mixed with blood. And it was thrown to the earth. Once again, what we say was going to happen, we were going to see right off the hail and the blood.
Anybody remember other times we saw hail in the Old Testament? What about Sodom and Gomorrah? What did God do to Sodom and Gomorrah? He rained hail down from heaven. That's actually what it says. He began to rain hail down from heaven on them.
What did he do that for? Yeah, because they were, one, they were disobedient to the command of God. You know, some people say it was because they were unhospitable and it was this, that, and the other.
It's certainly related to its sexual immorality. And God said, the crazy thing about Sodom and Gomorrah is we have no indication that Lot, Abraham ever called them to repentance. It was never the gospel preached from what we know.
No, hey, turn or burn, none of that stuff. Nothing like the little nine words that Jonah said, you know, 40 days and none of us are going to be smoked. We didn't get that. We just get out of there. And we do see the plea for Abraham.
And then he does his decline to try to find enough people in there to not destroy it. And he can't seem to meet that quota. And God says, all right, I'm going to get Lot and them out of there. And what did the angel do?
He laid Lot and the family didn't even want to leave. What did the angel have to go in there and do? Basically, grab him by his ear and pull him out. And his wife still wanted to go back. And then what did God do?
He rained hail down on them and pulverized that place. And there was nothing left. And when they looked back the next day, all they could see was the remnants of the city. And what was it?
Smoke.
What other times in the Old Testament did hail come down?
Moses.
With Moses.
With Moses, yeah. That is, to me, when you're reading through that, Exodus 9, one of the craziest things. Moses tells them, hey, here's what's going to happen tomorrow. I'm going to raise up my hands.
Hail.
And if you, let's go read it real quick. Because it actually says, I think, fire is mixed with it. Exodus 9. Yeah, Exodus 9 verse 18. He says, Behold, about this time tomorrow I will send very heavy hail.
Such has not been seen in Egypt for the day it was founded until now. Now, therefore, send and bring your livestock and whatever you have in the field, bring it to safety. Every man and beast that is found in the field and is not brought home, when the hail comes down on them, they will die.
All right. He has given them a clear instruction. You don't want to die. Bring them in because this hail is fixed to be pretty bad. When I'm fixing to read after this, I hadn't noticed this until maybe about a year ago when I was reading through the book of Exodus again.
It's the first time I remember reading it. Maybe you all are smarter than me. It says, One of the servants of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord. I had never seen that in all the times I have read through the Bible.
One of the servants of Pharaoh's court said, I'm going to bring my people in. And the Lord made his servants and his livestock flee into the houses. But he who paid no regard to the word of the Lord left his servants and his livestock in the field.
Now the Lord said to Moses, You stretch out your hand towards the sky. That hail may fall on the land of Egypt, on every man, on every beast, on every plant of the field throughout all the land. And Moses stretched out his staff towards the sky.
And the Lord sent thunder and hail and fire ran down to the earth. And the Lord rained down hail on the land of Egypt. So that the hail and the fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail was so severe, such had never been in the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.
So here it is, we're seeing God use hail as against the oppressor of his people. He says, Look, here's one of the judgments I'm going to do. And this hail, this didn't soften Pharaoh's heart. This hardened Pharaoh's heart.
And as he began to throw the judgment down on the land, it was shattering. We're going to read another passage where it says, As hail came down, it shattered the trees. Now, how big of a piece of hail does it have to be to shatter a tree?
I have some guys I used to run around with. They do painless dent removal. And man, they couldn't wait till hailstorms come. Because, you know, it would pelt the car and they would go all over the nation chasing.
I call them chasing hail. That's what I would tell them. Y 'all chasing hail again. And they would go all over. Man, I said, Well, hey, when y 'all get out to some of these places, how about giving me a call?
This is when I was flipping cars. Maybe I could buy a couple of those cars, the newer cars, and then I will have the body work done on them and flip them. Man, they sent me some, like, Corvettes and stuff that I could probably make some good money off of.
But, hey, they would have holes in them this big from up north where hail had come through and either went through the back glass, through the back seat, from the windshield, through the dash. So, I mean, just imagine, there's one passage in here where it says there were hailstones of 100 talents, or one talent, which is 100 pounds.
So, just imagine how big of a piece of hail it would have been to shatter the trees. So, here it is. Moses goes out. He does his thing. Hail starts falling. And if you continue to read through what happens, Moses, I mean, Pharaoh then sends for Moses.
What's happening when he sends for Moses? Hail's coming down. What about the servant that's got to go fetch Moses? Can you imagine that guy? So, he goes and gets Moses. Y 'all read it when you get home.
This is the Cliff Notes version. When Moses, he goes and gets Moses, Moses walks from Goshen. You know how far Goshen is till you get to the city of Ramses, which is supposedly where Pharaoh would have been?
That's a good walk. You know, you're probably anywhere from 10 miles from Goshen to there. So, they do their walk. Here it is, Moses and Aaron just walking. Stuff just falling everywhere, and God protects them.
God protects them. What does he do? He gets inside the Pharaoh's court. Pharaoh says, dude, check it out. I'm tired of all this craziness happening. If you'll just basically tell God, I'm sorry, I'll let you go, and just tell him to quit.
And Moses says, okay, one condition. I'm going to wait till I get outside the city, and then I'm going to do it. So, y 'all can't come and try to get me. I'm going to get outside. I'm going to raise my hand.
God's going to stop me. What did God do? Moses raised his hands. God stopped the hail. God stopped the hail. Another time we see hail come is Joshua. And Andy was teaching through Joshua. When you get to Joshua chapter 9, God uses hail to pulverize the Canaanites.
Joshua says, what do I do? And he says, don't worry about it. Almost basically, he says the same thing, but in different terms, he told Moses when they came to the Red Sea, and he says, well, God, what do you want me to do?
And he says, stand and watch the salvation of the Lord. I will fight for you. He basically says the same thing for Joshua. And what does he do? He sends hail down from heaven and pulverizes the enemies of God.
The enemies of God's people, God protected through sending down, and as retribution against the mistreatment of his people, he sends down hail from heaven. So once again, when we look at hail, what's hail?
It's a judgment of God on the enemies of God. Judgment of God on the enemies of God. Back to Revelation chapter 8. And it says that that hail was mixed with fire, which we also saw in the Exodus passage.
And we see that too. Hail and fire and brimstone came down in Sodom and Gomorrah. What was fire a representation of? The purification and judgment of God on someone. Some have said that maybe this was lightning.
I don't believe that. I believe this was actual hail with fire in it, and it was coming from heaven. Yes, sir?
You said it was like what?
Some have said they think that the hail as it was raining was lightning. Yeah, and I don't believe that. And one, it's because if it's connected to every other time the judgment of God comes down with hail and it says it's mixed with fire, it was actually fire.
Hey, it wasn't just hail that came down on Sodom and Gomorrah, was it? Well, if it was just blocks of ice coming down, then why wasn't when Abraham looked up it was smoking?
Yeah.
No, it's because it was mixed with real fire, not lightning. In the Old Testament, when the word lightning is used, it actually means lightning. You know, when they're up on the mountain and they're seeing flashes of lightning up on Sinai, it was real flashes of lightning.
It wasn't floating fire, you know. And in this case, fire was a representation of the judgment of God. Hail, a representation of the judgment of God. And any time you see bloodshed, what's that a representation of?
The judgment of God. The judgment of God. Now, this is coming down on, this is the representation of what God's going to do to the people that have mistreated, have rejected His Messiah, have murdered the prophets.
This is His judgment on the Old Covenant people. Remember, how I understand the book, it primarily is dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem. Then we see the shift in every one of these sequences of seven where we shift and it goes to points towards the end of the age.
This here is still speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem and its destruction on the people. Now, do I believe there was really hail and fire coming down from heaven on Jerusalem? No, I believe that this is an apocalyptic vision of God treating the Old Covenant people for breaking the Old Covenant, not receiving Christ as the fulfillment of the old and the embodiment of the new.
And now, how is He treating them? As His enemy. As His enemy. First, as covenant breakers. Now, He's going to treat them through this next sequence of trumpets, He's treating them as His enemies. It says, and when this hail and this fire that was mixed with blood came down, it was thrown to the earth, it says that a third of the earth was burned up.
A third of the trees were burned up and all the green grass was burned up. Do we see an escalation from the seals to this? Anybody remember what happened with the seals? It got to the last of the seal and it said that a quarter was affected.
You get to the trumpets, we see an escalation in the destruction. Now it's going to be a third of everything. When we get to the bowls, or the King James, I think it says vials of breath, you're going to see it go from a quarter to a third, everything, the whole.
Now, do I believe these are real numbers? Does this say if there was a hundred livestock in the field, do I think that God killed 33 and a third of all of them? No, I think what it's trying to do is to convey that this is the judgment of God on something and it is going to be the largest significant minority to the half.
You understand that a third is the largest before you get over half. So this is a significant minority of stuff that's being destroyed. Where before you go, this is only a quarter of what had happened.
Now God says, now we're going to see another angle of my judgment and now it is significantly increased. It's now a third of everything. So he says a third of the trees were burned up, a third of the earth was burned, but all the green grass was ate up.
I mean, if the apocalyptic imagery that's being said and this fire that's coming down from heaven is hitting trees, it's hitting the earth, and it's hitting the grass, let's just be honest, what happens to stuff when fire hits it?
It's going to burn it up. Now, Josephus does have, remember I said as we go through this, you could probably find some correlation or correspondence to some things that actually did take place with the destruction of Jerusalem, and you can read in Book 6, it's in Chapter 1.
You can read where he talks about how they had clear cut a good bit of the land, they had burned up a good bit of the trees. Remember when they made the siege wall, they didn't pile up dirt. They didn't have bulldozers to pile up dirt around the city in 70 AD.
When they began that siege, what did they begin to do? They began to cut the trees from all around and bring it up, and bring it up. And Josephus says that they had cut all the trees for 90 furlongs. You know how many 90 furlongs is?
That's 11 to 12 miles. So in my mind, I go, we have a good indication of how far Bethany was from Jerusalem, two miles. I might have walked for two miles and not seen a tree, because when the Romans came in to actually lay waste to the people because they were, my understanding, demon possessed, killing each other, doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
They were killing Romans. He said, look, we're done with it. Just start wiping it all out. We'll make up a siege wall. We'll go in. And every time they, up until the last final siege, it lasted around about 120 to 150 days, every time they would get a good siege wall up, the insurgents of Eleazar, John Giskella, and Simon, the three-way Civil War, they would send someone to go torch the siege wall.
So every time they'd get one big and built, they'd torch it and it'd be on fire. So just imagine looking. Imagine you're looking from, we'll just say, if you look from the Mount of Olives or Mount Scopus and you were looking at Jerusalem, it would look like it was on fire.
It would look like it was burning. And everything in the city was obviously on fire. If anybody knows what actually happens to the temple, anybody know that the Romans did not set the temple on fire? It was already on fire when the Romans got there.
One of their guys had already set the temple on fire from the inside, one of the insurgents, and when one of the Romans had seen that, you know what he said, you can read this in Josephus, Titus did not give the order to torch it, but one of the guys did it on his own.
And then there it went. It went up in smoke. Now, it was Titus who ordered the final destruction, which was, you see everything that's up here? These buildings up? I want every one of them knocked to the ground.
The only thing I want you to leave is the western wall. We'll use that for fortification at another day. That was Rome's intention. When Titus says, knock every stone to the ground, who was that a fulfillment of the prophecy of?
Jesus Christ himself. So here it is. The city's on fire. The judgment of God's come. Even when we get to the bulls, they talk about, again, hailstones being 100 pounds coming down. And even if you read Josephus, he even has a correlation that when Rome had begun to use the catapults, they call it engines.
Anybody here read Josephus at all? Okay, when you see engines, that's what he's talking about. He says they draw in the engines from the 10th legion. And when they bring those in, they begin to use the catapults to throw stone rocks, big rocks.
And they would do it at night. But they had painted them white. And as they would launch them into the air, this is what is said by Josephus, is that he says as those catapulted rocks would come in over the wall and batter everything, it says the sun is coming.
The sun is coming. And how it is spelled is S-O-N. That is a translation of how they are. This is not like in Greek. Sun and stone are not close to the same spelling, okay? Because it has been said, oh, it was just a misprint.
They meant the stone is coming. No, it was a mockery that they had known what Jesus had said that when he would come in power and he would come in glory, and that was a mockery of him saying, oh, look, the sun is coming.
This is Josephus' writing. Y 'all can go read it. Look, Josephus was not a Christian, okay? Josephus, he was not a follower of Jesus. He's just recording what people were saying, what was going on, and he was an eyewitness.
And, hey, as these stones would come down at 100 pounds, they were just blasting that place to pieces for the last siege. But we'll get into that when we get to the bowls. And it says that all the grass was burned up.
I mean, obviously, grass burns up easier than the trees. Once it's here, it doesn't take much to scorch it. Once again, we're seeing the judgment of God. What was the land of Israel supposed to be if they obeyed God?
A plush land. Did somebody say something? I said a witness. Well, it's certainly a witness, but it would be a witness of the goodness of God to an obedient people. If you go back and you were to read, even in Deuteronomy chapter 7, as Moses is giving basically his swan song speech, he's saying, hey, man, look, I'm fixing to die.
I'm giving you your last instructions. In chapter 7, he talks about, hey, as you go into the land, God has promised to give you all the green grass, all the green trees, everything. Your cattle will never be sick.
They'll never not have calves. They'll never not be pregnant. Your women's wounds will be fruitful all the days of your life. You'll never have to worry about war. There'll be no drought. You'll have so much wine.
You'll be able to drink it. You can pour it on the mountains. All these things, if they do what God tells them to do. But if they don't do that, what's going to happen? You ain't going to have no green grass.
You're not going to have any trees. You're not going to have any cattle. There's not going to be any livestock in the stall. I mean, even what does Habakkuk say? He says, hey, the judgment of God is coming.
If there's not any grain in the fields, there's not any wheat in the silos, there's not any cattle in the stall, I still will worship the Lord. He knew that the judgment of God was coming and that when the judgment of God would come, these were going to be the things that God would take away.
How did he know that? Because he knew his Old Testament. He knew the Old Covenant, that the covenant curses of God and God treating His people like an enemy was because they did not obey the prophets.
And that's what God's doing here. And then we get to verse 8.
It says,.
And a 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 creatures which were in the sea that had life died.
And a third of the ships were destroyed. Once again, what are we seeing?
A third. A third. A third.
It says that when he sounded this trumpet, there was something like a mountain burning with fire thrown into the sea. This is certainly figurative in the sense of in the vision that John is seeing, I do believe he is seeing something that is like a mountain and it's coming from the sky and it's falling into the sea as representative of something.
Now the thing is, what does it represent? When Andy preached on the eternal state, anybody remember what he said? What is the sea represented normally? When you get to the recreation of all things, you know what we don't have?
We don't got no sea. I'm kind of sad. I like the ocean. But that's not the point. The sea was always looked at as what? Chaos. Chaos. What happens on the ocean? Anybody ever been out on the ocean out there fishing?
Ocean deep sea fish? Man, you could be out there, it'd be clear as can be. Next thing you know, Andy, you probably seen it out there, hadn't you? Next thing you know, you got a tempest, per se, pop up out of nowhere.
Why?
Because you don't have any way of understanding. Hey, those little tempests that pop up out there on the ocean, you don't even see them on a radar. They just pop up. What was dangerous in Middle Eastern time or even the time of Christ, what was so dangerous about the Sea of Galilee?
We often think of the Sea of Galilee as just being like this huge lake. I mean, it's not. The place was dangerous. It sits down in a bowl and you have the cool air and the hot air coming up and what happens when that happens with the sheer air that cuts across, what happens?
It causes a tempest across the Sea of Galilee. How many times are you reading Scripture that they were on the Sea of Galilee and a storm came up? I mean, let's think about two. One, we know that Jesus was crashed out when one of them was...
He was sawing at the bit, wasn't he? And they were like, oh no, we're going to die because the tempest was up. What did Jesus do? He gets up, dried up. Shut your mouth. And calm as can be. Then another time when the Sea of Galilee was crazy, hey, Jesus then comes walking across.
I always wonder, how's He doing? Hopping from wave to wave. If it's that windy, you know, it's like, what was he doing? Whatever it was, it was awesome. Awesome enough that when Peter saw it, he's like, if that's the Lord, tell me to come out.
And Peter started walking. That's because the Sea of Galilee and the sea is a place of chaos. Unpredictable. Now, when Jesus was coming into the city the week of His passion, and we'll wrap up here in about five minutes.
And His passion week, He's coming into the city and He sees a fig tree. And it says Jesus was hungry. And the fig didn't produce any fruit. Remember what Jesus did?
He cursed.
Our tree huggers. Yeah, our tree huggers said, that's wrong what He did to that tree. He should have blessed that tree and let it produce fruit. Oh, it should have been producing fruit. And when the Son of God got there and He was hungry and it didn't have it, He reserves the right to curse it.
They go on and see. Remember what happened? It was on the next day. On the next day, they're coming. And what did it say?
Like, how'd you do that?
And then Jesus uses a time to speak about faith and prayer. And He says something in that little discourse with them that's often overlooked. We often read it as if, hey, if you pray for a mountain to be cast in the sea and you believe, it'll happen.
That's not what He says. Remember, they're walking to Mount Zion. What was Mount Zion? That's Jerusalem. Jerusalem was Mount Zion. They're on their way. They're coming from Bethany. They get there to where this fig tree was at.
Jesus uncursed the fig tree as a representation of the judgment of God already on the covenant people of God because they had become fruitless. And He begins to talk about prayer and faith with His disciples.
And He says, if you were to pray that this mountain... Dude, that is a demonstrative pronoun. Near demonstrative pronoun. They're walking up. If you pray that this mountain, not that mountain, this mountain, be cast into the sea, it'll be done.
Now, you might disagree with me how I understand that. I believe that Jesus is telling them, you pray that this mountain, this people, this group of people that have consistently rejected my prophets and then will reject for me.
You pray that God throw this into the mountain. You throw this mountain into the sea. What do we see already in the seals, the souls? What were they praying for God to do?
Good.
Destroy them. What were they doing? What did we just read at the seventh trumpet? What were those? What were they praying? That God would judge those people. Well, now we're seeing once again God fulfilling the judgment on the unbelieving apostate nation because they rejected Christ, because they rejected the prophets that came before Him.
And He's saying, now you pray that this mountain be cast into the sea. Throw it into the chaos of the Gentiles. Let them have it. That's how I understand this passage. So what is that mountain being cast into the sea?
I believe that is the destruction of Mount Zion. I believe that is. Remember, Zion was only typological. We don't even see the word. I think it comes up in 2 Samuel, the first time we see it. And it talks about David going up to Mount Zion.
And it was going into Jerusalem to set up the holy place, to set up the place where God's people would actually meet and have a place to meet and gather Him and worship Him in a stationary place. And Mount Zion was always looked at as the meeting place of God where God would dwell.
Then we do see in Hebrews where Mount Zion goes from being a place to being a people. You know, we are the fulfillment of Mount Zion in the sense of now God doesn't dwell on a mountain in a temple made with hands.
Where does He dwell? In the hearts of His people. And where is that? That's everywhere that His people are at. So it says it would be cast and be thrown into the sea. And a third of that sea would become blood.
A third of those creatures would die. And everything in the sea that had life, a third of it would die. And all the ships were destroyed. I understand... Let me try to do this quickly. I understand, once again, when water turns to blood, is it usable?
What did He do to Pharaoh? He turned His water to blood. Was the water drinkable? No. What was it? Poison. It would kill him. When God turned over the judgment on the people of Israel, their water in some places did become blood.
Josephus has another maritime battle that takes place on the Sea of Galilee. I'm not saying this is the actual fulfillment of this. I'm saying there is some correspondence to what took place. There was a maritime battle between the Jews and between the Romans on the Sea of Galilee.
Did you read this in Josephus yet? There was a maritime battle. The ships were fighting. And as the Romans began to overtake the Jewish people on the Sea of Galilee, their boats began to break apart through the use of darts and catapults.
And those men began to fall out of their boats. Their boats began to sink. They would then, in an attempt to think that the Romans, and why they thought this, I have no idea, thought that the Romans might enslave them instead of kill them.
So as the Romans would then come up to the men floating in the water trying to save themselves, they would do one of two things. Cut their hands off and let them drown. Or cut their heads off and leave them in the water.
So after that maritime battle, they said the Sea of Galilee looked like blood. I have to go back and read in Josephus. I think it said the count was 4 ,500 bodies. The Sea of Galilee has 4 ,500 dead corpses.
You may know what river runs down from the Sea of Galilee? Jordan. Rivers and sea like blood. Rivers now contaminated with corpses. Waters now contaminated through rotting corpses and blood.
Certainly.
Did the fish begin to die?
Do I believe that's the fulfillment of this? No, I think there's this correspondence to say man, as this took place, the judgment of God, God wasn't playing. He was making it very horrific on these people.
And then about the ships being destroyed, certainly in that maritime battle it was a destruction of ships and all that, but I understand this in its fulfillment of the prophecy as the ability to do mercantile and merchandise leaving and coming from Jerusalem has been cut off.
God has now... Remember, the nations loved Jerusalem. They loved Israel.
Say it again?
Money.
You had it. Yeah, they had it. They were a very good customer. And as we get towards the end of the book, we're going to see when we get to 17 and 18, we're going to see when Babylon falls and the whore is destroyed, why the nations whined and moaned.
Their money source was gone. But we'll get to that when we get to 17 and 18. You'll pray for us so we can go? Yes, sir.
Father, I come to you this morning, Lord, just once again thank you that we could gather in a place and hear your word taught. I thank you for Mike and his time that he spends to study your word and to teach us, Father.
Also, Father, I'd like to ask that you... We pray for the victims out of Texas and the flooding, Father, that's happened over this past few days. Lord, I just pray that your will will be done in these things I pray.
In Christ Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.