Revelation 9 Continued

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You'll seal this up, close the door for us. Andy, will you pray for us?
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Now that you have a beard, it might be holier. Looks good, doesn't it?
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Father, again, we thank you so much for who you are and for what's going on.
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That you would help us, that you would aid us, that you, Holy Spirit, would come and teach us. Brother Mike, thank you for his faithfulness.
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And Lord, open our hearts, open our minds, and change our lives so that we would become more like the one who so loved us that he gave himself for us.
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We ask in his name. Amen. Revelation chapter 9.
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I'm going to read the whole chapter because there is a connection between the 5th trumpet and the 6th trumpet.
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Get started. Verse 1. Then a fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth, and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him.
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He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit.
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Then out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth. Power was given them as the scorpions of the earth have power.
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They were told not to hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
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And they were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment for five months. And their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man.
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And in those days men will seek death, and they will not find it. They will long to die, and death flees from them.
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The appearance of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. And on their heads appeared to be crowns like gold.
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Their faces were like faces of men. They had hair like women, and their teeth were like the teeth of lions.
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And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings were like the sound of chariots of many horses rushing to battle.
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And they have tails like scorpions and stings, and in their tails is their power to hurt men for five months.
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They have as a king over them the angel of the abyss. His name in Hebrew is
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Abaddon, and in Greek his name is Apollyon. The first woe has passed, and behold, two woes are still to come after these things.
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Then the six angels sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God.
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One saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, release the four angels who are bound at the great river
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Euphrates, and the four angels who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, the year were released so that they would kill a third of mankind.
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The number of the armies of the horsemen was 200 million. I heard the number of them, and this is how
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I saw the vision, the horses and those who sat on them. The riders had breastplates the color of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone, and the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions, and out of their mouths proceeded fire and smoke and brimstone.
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A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire, the smoke, and the brimstone, which proceeded out of their mouth.
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For the power of the horses is in their mouth and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents and have heads, and with them they do harm.
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The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons and to idols of gold and silver and of brass and stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.
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And they did not repent of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their immoralities, nor of their thefts."
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Well, those are a yummy sight of horses in the sixth trumpet. So, we actually did not get into verse 12, so let me handle that really quick.
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We got to who I see, the angel with the key that released the demons out of the abyss.
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His Greek name is Apollyon, Hebrew name is Abaddon. I believe that to be the adversary,
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Satan. If you disagree with me, we can still be friends. And then it says, the first woe is past.
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Remember, this section, the fifth, sixth, and seventh trumpets are the three woes.
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One woe is going to be worse than the next. And the reason being why these are woes is these not only have just to do with physical destruction, but it has to do with a spiritual torment and a spiritual destruction as well.
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So, what did we see, what did the locusts do? Well, they weren't real locusts, but these demon -possessed men, which were a picture, as I see, as the locusts that come up out of the pit.
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What were they doing? They were tormenting the people in Jerusalem for, it says, figuratively, five months.
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Okay? The next one that's fixing to be blown trumpet will also be of a demonic force.
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So, we'll start in, and this woe will be worse than the second. So, if you have, this was, if the first woe was a three on the woe
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Richter scale, this one's going to be in the sixth range. It says, and when the sixth angel sounded,
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I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, which is before God.
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You remember back in chapter eight, we had the golden altar where the prayers had been offered up with the censer.
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Do you all remember that part? I know it's been a few weeks. It began with them offering up with the golden censers, offering up prayers to God at the throne.
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Now, when we get to this trumpet, he is actually going to answer that prayer.
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And how do we know that? Because it says here, a voice came from the altar. Well, what was the golden altar?
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Obviously, we're seeing, again, imagery that comes from the tabernacle. What was the golden altar with the four horns?
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Does anybody remember? You had two major altars. When you came into the tabernacle or the temple, when you came through, if you were at the tabernacle, and you came through what would be the opening screens, the first thing you would have seen would have been what?
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The altar. What was the major piece of worship in Judaism? It was the altar.
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That's where everybody came to give their sacrifices. That's where oblations were offered up to God for their sins, and it was where they were supposed to offer up evening and morning sacrifice.
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But as you got closer to the most holy place or the holy of holies, you then get closer to God, which then narrowed down who could get there.
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Well, as you closer you got to the holy place, then only, who could only go in the holy place?
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Only the Levites, okay? Only some of the Levites. Then you had the
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Colophites that could go into the holy place, not most holy places would make, could go in there and they could trim the lanterns and light the, and keep the bowls burning.
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You remember who, remember Samuel? That's what Samuel was doing. Samuel was going, he was a
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Colophite, and he could go into that. The first section that you would come in where you have the show table and you would have the menorah, but then right before you went through the veil into the most holy place, what was sitting right in front of the veil?
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The golden altar of incense with four horns. So you had basically a small, a smaller altar that burned incense right before you go into the presence of God, replicating the larger altar of burnt sacrifice, which was outside.
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Specifically, it was made for burning incense, sweet aroma to God, right before they would enter the, the one time a year they would enter the
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Holy of Holies. What did the, what did the priest have to do? He had to go in there with incense. So even at that, the
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Shekinah glory of God was still veiled through some of the incense smoke, okay?
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Well, this is the golden altar imagery, and it says it's before God.
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Exactly where the, the golden altar of incense would have been if you would have been in the Holy of Holies, and then the holy, right outside the, in the holy place.
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It says, and one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, release the four angels who are bound at the great river
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Euphrates. Now, release means these angels have been bound, okay?
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If, if Andy says release my, that means somebody has me bound up.
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So if these are angels are being released, and we'll go on down, it says they are bound as we continue to read.
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I see these angels as not good angels. These are bad. These are evil, wicked, fallen, however you want to, you want to coin that.
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And as we go through this, this will help understand why
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I believe that, not just because of their being, they're being released, which has a connotation of being bound.
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But they're also been prepared for a certain type of destruction, and they're releasing a certain type of destruction.
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And then it goes on to say that these four angels are bound at the great river Euphrates. Now, don't laugh at my math because it's terrible.
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But you had the river Euphrates that would come up this way. Babylon would have been somewhere down here.
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And you would have the Tigris, and you would have Nineveh here.
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Or we'll just put here the Assyrian empire was here.
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Everything this way would have been like Syria, and you keep going on.
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This is not to exact measurement. And then you would have river, and all of this would have been
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Israel. And then you would have some of the tribes that would have landed over here, like Manasseh and Gad.
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But during the Roman conquest of the
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Roman empire, Tigris, this is the
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Euphrates, anything beyond the
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Euphrates was scary. Even for Rome, we often think that Rome was invincible, don't we?
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Let's just be honest. That's how it's often made that, hey, Rome was absolutely undefeatable.
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Is that right? Yeah. That's not so much the case. Now, Alexander the
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Great went all the way to the Indus, which would have been somewhere over here, okay, to the borders of India.
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And his guys, actually, he did cry there and say there's no more worlds to conquer.
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But there is a little caveat with that. His men were so war -torn and beaten down, he didn't want to let them go any further.
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There was more land to conquer, but his guys just said, hey, we can't do it anymore.
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And what did he do? He says, hey, get in your boats. I want you to go down the bottom. I want you to go back home, go back to Macedonia.
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But I want you to take the ocean beneath, and I want you to go all the way around and see all the lands that you conquered on your way home.
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And then Alexander the Great and Megiddo make his conquest back, set up in Babylon. But once you come after the
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Greeks, the splintering of the empire, and Rome takes over as the world empire, their border was the
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Euphrates. It did not go past the Euphrates because they constantly had someone on this.
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Anybody ever heard of the Parthians? These were some bad dudes.
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These would have been basically your Persians. They were bad to the bone, and they constantly fought.
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So they made a, Rome made a, basically made a treaty with them saying, hey, we'll stop our border here.
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You stay over there. You mind your business, we'll mind ours, because it was a constant conflict. And once you cross that side, nobody knows what happens to you.
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But for the people of God, there was also something crazy about the
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Euphrates. Everybody that came that would wreak havoc on the people of God would come from beyond the
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Euphrates. When Jerusalem fell, and when the first deportation, depending on your things, 603 or 605, where did it come from?
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Came from this side of the Euphrates. When the next deportation came in 597, where did it come from?
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Came from this side, Babylon. When the final destruction came in 586, where did it come from?
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It came from Nebuchadnezzar and his people from this side of the Euphrates. Before that happened, in 722, where did the
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Assyrian Empire come and wipe out Samaria? With Tiglath -Pileser, he actually did the first siege.
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Sargon actually picked up where he left off and wiped them out in 722. Where did it come from?
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Beyond the Euphrates. So just remember, anything on the other side of the
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Euphrates, north of Jerusalem, north of the Euphrates, is scary.
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Whatever comes from there ain't good. And that leads to the context of, hey, you have four angels who are bound at the great river
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Euphrates. And these four angels have been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year.
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This is God actually now bringing about His decree that this particular type of invasion and destruction was ordained before time.
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He's saying, look, this is God's decree. He has prepared them for this very year, month, day, hour in which this would happen.
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And what is their purpose? Why are they being released? What does it say? To kill a third of mankind.
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Not all. To kill a third. You remember what it was in the seals?
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Remember I said you had this progressive parallelism? What happened when the armies came in with the seals?
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What happened? They killed a quarter. Now, this next revelation of what's going to take place with the destruction of Jerusalem and its surrounding areas is now
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He's saying, when I release these, they're going to kill a third of mankind. Question?
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Okay. The number of these armies of the horsemen was 200 million.
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The actual rendering is double myriad of myriad. Andy, is yours new
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King James? What does yours say? 200 million.
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Anybody got the King James? Double 10 ,000? 200 ,000.
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200 ,000. Okay. Would yours, would ESV say? Twice.
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Okay. So, there's been a lot of shenanigans with the 200 million.
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We'll just be honest. Hal Lindsey and Mao and when he, the
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China actually claimed a army of 200 million and if you were a
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Hal Lindsey supporter, well, Hal Lindsey jumped all over that and said, this is it. This is, these are the guys.
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Well, the actual rendering is not 200 million. It's myriad of myriads.
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Double myriad. And it just means it would be almost like saying an innumerable amount. Let's just be honest in historical data.
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There was no army. There was no army that manned or horsemen with 200 million in that time.
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Let's just be honest. There wasn't even that much, you know, population wasn't there. Might have been that much population.
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Could have been because I even believe at the time of the flood, maybe more than that were drowned. But I believe certainly not footmen and horsemen.
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And who I believe this, this, this group of people are certainly wronged it.
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Okay. I believe who these are or God is, well, I don't want to get too far ahead, but at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, part of the 10th
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Legion was stationed here guarding the border. Well, when Titus got the, the okay from his daddy,
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Vespasian, some of the 10th Legion were brought from here to help with the siege because they had the engines.
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They remember what the engine was? What's the engines? Catapults. Catapults. Yeah. They had the catapults that could launch a boulder of one talent.
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How big one talent? 100 pounds. So if this, if my understanding is correct, then the 200 million is just representative of an innumerable amount of forces, an overwhelming amount of forces that would come from the
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Euphrates. And it is, remember, anything that comes from the
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Euphrates ain't coming for good purposes. Now, let's even take, for instance, when, when
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Babylon fell. Babylon fell from another force coming from over here, right?
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What came from over here and destroyed and wiped Babylon out in one day? With very little, very, very little bloodshed.
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The Persians. Yeah, the Persians. And this also, when we get to chapter 16, it talks about the drying up of the
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Euphrates so that they could make way for destruction, which leads to also, you remember how
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Babylon fell? They dried up the river Euphrates. That's how
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Cyrus was able to get into Babylon. He, he dug a, he dug a way around so that the
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Euphrates went around so that he could go up under the wall, come right into the city. And remember the handwriting on the wall with Daniel?
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Yeah, that's how it happened. That's how it fell. That's, that's how it fell with little to no bloodshed, with the exception of probably who was in the room with Belshadder.
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So the 200 million is not a statistical number.
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And a lot of times, most of the time in Revelation, statistical numbers are not to look to be a statistical.
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They're looked as to be impressionistic. So if it says, hey, there's a, there's a, a horseman army of 200 million, in your mind, you should be thinking that's overwhelming.
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That's overwhelming amount. And it says, and then I heard that number of them.
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And once again, he heard the number of them. You remember what he went in the, the, the 144 ,000?
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He heard the number. Somebody's telling him these things. He heard the number. And this is how
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I saw the vision. The horses and those who were sitting on them. So now we're fixing to get a description of these wild, crazy, looked like he took a bunch of zoo animals and put them in a, a bucket, shook them up and threw them out.
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And they all came, pushed together. It says, I saw in the vision, the horses and those who were on them.
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The riders had breastplates, the color of fire and hyacinth and brimstone.
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Look, if you, if anything has the color of fire, fire is a representation of what in, so far in, in, in Revelation and actually all through Scripture, what's fire.
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Judgment purification. What's that? Yeah. Judgment purification. What are your works as a believer going to be tested with on that day?
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They're going to be tested with fire and that which is pure will remain. That which doesn't will burn up like wood, stubble and hay.
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And then it says of hyacinth. Now, this, this, some may say sapphire.
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Does anybody say sapphire? Anybody else say jacenth? King James say jacenth?
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Okay. Hyacinth. This is where this can lead to different shades of color.
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Hyacinth is actually what's used in the, in the Greek language here.
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And it is actually the color of a blooming flower that is a deep purple.
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It's purplish in color. Purplish blue, purplish red. Then the
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French Latinized translation is the jacenth, which is, gives a more reddish, blackish reddish tone.
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And sapphire is, says blue. Does everybody, does anybody's translation just give the color?
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I think one translation I looked at, maybe it was the NLT or NIV, said like red, blue and yellow.
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And that is the idea of trying to give us a picture of what these colors were. Because in mine, you actually have the color is actually in italics, meaning it ain't there in the original language.
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They put it there for us to understand. So if yours says the color of fire or the color of hyacinths, color should be in italics because it's not part of the original language.
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And then it says brimstone. Well, what's brimstone? I know some say sulfur. What was brimstone a picture of?
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Judgment. Judgment. What came down on Sodom and Gomorrah? Fire and brimstone.
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Sulfur. What does sulfur do? Sulfur will suck the oxygen out of your lung.
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It will deflate you, is what it will do. And it says these things that had on the horses that had these breastplates of fire, hyacinth and brimstone, they had heads like horses.
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Okay, so these are battle -tested ready.
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Look, what does horses represent in Scripture? Armies of war.
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Let's even go back to the seals. What did the, what were the first four seals?
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The four horsemen. What did the four horsemen represent? The coming army of Rome.
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The very first one, the conquering armies of Rome. And what would they bring with them that comes with conquering?
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It would bring civil war. It would bring famine.
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And it would bring pestilence and the sword. That's what comes with war. In this case here, we're seeing it again.
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These horses are bringing with them destruction. And it says they have heads like lions.
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So this is like some crazy minotaur -looking thing with a lion's head.
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But what do lions do? They're ferocious. They're vicious. And what does a lion, with the exception of the lion of the tribe of Judah, what does a lion represent who has teeth, who's wanting to devour you?
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That is Satan. That is him. He is the one that has teeth, brawling around, seeking whom he may devour.
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Well, in this case, this is going to be the unleashing of the demonic cavalry that will come and wreak havoc and destruction.
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And it says, and out of their mouth proceeds fire, smoke, and brimstone.
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And it'll go on to say that that is where their power's at. So what's coming out of their mouth is judgment.
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What's coming out of their mouth is going to prove to be destruction. And as we look at not only the physical part of the destruction that comes with these armies, which
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I believe to be Rome, there is a spiritual death connected to it.
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They are coming to destroy apostate Jerusalem, if my understanding is correct. Okay?
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What happens to apostates when they die? Where do they go?
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That's it. So not only are these coming with a physical destruction, they're coming with a judgment on the apostate soul.
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In the first woe, what were they told not to do?
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They were told not to kill. Not to kill. You torment them. And what did we see in Deuteronomy 28, which would be an actual fulfillment of the covenant breaking of the first covenant?
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And what was it? We're going to drive these people insane. That's what God said he was going to do. He said,
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I'm going to send these things upon you. It's going to make you blind. It's going to make you crazy. I'm going to drive you insane.
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And then I'm going to turn you over to pestilence, sword, and famine.
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It's ironic that those three come up with the destruction of Jerusalem.
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You know what we're going to read about in Jeremiah this morning when we read chapter 14? Those very things for breaking the covenant which
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God gave them. And apostate Jerusalem was told, you break my covenant.
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This is what will happen. Jesus comes in. He fulfills all of the old covenant. He was the fulfillment of the old.
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The embodiment of the new. And apostate Jerusalem and Israel says, we don't want him.
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We want our system. And God says, I'm going to give you what you want. Here it comes.
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He's going to give them what they want. You want your stuff? You don't want the full revelation of which I have sent to come and redeem you?
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You don't want the Messiah from which I sent to bear the sins for you?
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Okay, I'll do the same thing I did to you in 586. And I'll do it through the Romans. And it says here that a third of mankind was killed by these three plagues.
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Well, the three plagues would have been the fire, the smoke, and the brimstone. It says it proceeds out of their mouth.
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A third of mankind. So when Rome comes through here, we shouldn't think of it as, hey, they've wiped out the
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Jewish race. Now, was it a holocaust? Yeah, they did.
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But not only when Tigus comes in with his armies, surrounds the city, they actually breach the walls.
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You know what? They did enslave some of them. They did enslave a good bit of them.
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Now, they did tatter the roads all the way out from the Damascus Gate and leading the others where they were picking up wood that had not been burned.
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And they were crucifying an insurrectionist in such a rate that they were putting two on one stipe.
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They said there was up to 30 ,000 on the roadways crucified as you would leave
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Jerusalem after the fall. But they did enslave some of them. So it wasn't all of them were wiped out.
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They enslaved some of them so that those zealots and those that were part of the insurgents were heading to Masada.
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Anybody heard of Masada? No Masada? Okay, Masada was built by Herod along with Herodias.
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And it was a place of fortress that if war ever broke out, they could go up. It was carved out of mountains.
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It is, I've been there. It is absolutely gorgeous. It's up on a way up.
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It's like 1 ,100 feet in the air. And it is way high. We went up the little snake trail up to get to the top of it.
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And you can still walk up there today. But they have it marked out to where Titus, once he got there in 71,
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I think it took two years there. After the fall of Jerusalem in 70, they skedaddled trying to save the nation and set up at Masada because it was fortified.
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Hard to get to. Well, the people that Titus enslaved then set up camps to make a siege ramp.
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And they made a siege ramp with slave labor from captured Jews to kill their own people. That's what they did.
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And Masada fell in 73. And that was the end of Jewish culture for a long time.
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So they didn't wipe out the whole Jewish race. They enslaved some of them. And there was obviously there were some that were still up in Asia Minor that weren't part of the insurrection.
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But this specifically dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem and the aftermath after.
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Then it says, for the power of the horses is in their mouths and their tails.
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And their tails are like serpents and have heads. And with them, they do harm.
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So once again, we're seeing they're serpent -like. When you see a serpent, is that good or bad normally?
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Bad. Bad, yeah. I think there's only one time we could say that a serpent actually did something good.
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And that would have been when they made the brazen serpent in the time of the Exodus. And he said, look at it.
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But what was the reason for them to look at it? Because it was the various things that were biting them that was killing them, okay?
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When we see serpents and scorpions, what are those representative of? Evil, Satan.
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We can even go back to Luke 10, verses 17 through 19.
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And he talks about giving them the ability to tread over serpents and scorpions.
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So this is not good. And they have heads and they do harm.
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No kidding. Yeah, I mean, you have things that are breathing out fire and smoke and brimstone out of their nostrils.
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This is not for your benefit. It says here in verse 20, and the rest of mankind who were not killed by these flags did not repent.
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They didn't repent of the work to their hands so as not to worship demons. We'll stop right there for a second.
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It seems that the purpose for these trumpets being blown was to produce a certain response.
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And what is it? It tells us they didn't repent. When horns were blown, and we, or trumpets were blown in the
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Old Testament, it was to alarm people. One, it was either to come. Remember when they were in the
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Exodus and they were walking around the mountain for 40 years? They would blow the horn. It was time for people to get their jump together.
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It's time to move. It's time to be alert. It's time to pay attention. Well, when these trumpets are blown, you should pay attention.
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You should pay attention to what God is doing to these people. Then in the sixth trumpet's blown, and a third of mankind is wiped out, and it had a purpose to point them to repentance, and it didn't.
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It didn't. The sheer wrath of God will not convert the soul.
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Should we proclaim the Word of God in such a way that we should persuade men of the terror of the
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Lord? We should. Yeah. But just sheer terror is not going to turn a man to God.
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It's going to take God with the regenerating power of the Spirit, with the preaching of judgment that will do it.
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What's not being done when this judgment's being poured out? There's no preaching of the
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Word. Matter of fact, the Jewish Christians are gone.
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The Jewish Christians are gone from Jerusalem. They heeded His words.
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You head to the hills. When you see the abomination of desolation, you see the surrounding armies, what did
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He tell them to do? You better get out of Dodge. It says, "...they
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did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons." We often don't think of the religiosity of the city of Jerusalem, even in Judaism, as being demonic.
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You know, anything, when we think of antichrist, and we'll get into that when we get to chapter 13.
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When we think of antichrist, it's not so much this oppose, okay?
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It's like face -to -face against. It's in place of. So when the antichrist, which
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I do believe at the end of the age, there will be one that will raise himself up. There will be a figure that will be, and we'll get to all that more, of like the false prophet, and he will point himself to the beast, which will be the religious political system, and he will set himself up wanting to be worshipped as God in place of Christ.
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What every religion that has idols, and they all do,
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Paul says those idols are what? Well, they're dumb.
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I agree with you. Yes, they're dumb. Meaning what? They can't talk. They can't hear.
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They can't speak. They can't do anything. And even the prophets in the Old Testament, what do you say? Hey, man, y 'all are...
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You go out there, you chop a tree down, you whittle it up, or you take a piece of stone, and you chip it, and you fashion it, you make it into what you want, then you take the little pieces left over, you sweep it up in a dustpan, you go over, you throw it in the trash can, then you take chains, and you prop it up, then you take the little bit of wood that you had left over, and then you go cook your food over it as you bow down and talk to the very thing that you just made.
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They have no power, but don't be deceived that behind every idol is a demon.
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Now, you know who I'm talking about most likely when I say this. I knew a man.
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I knew a man. He's actually... He might even still be alive today. He's an older man. His name...
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Well, I won't say his last name, but his name is Bob. Okay. And he was a pastor of a church here in town, and he had a ministry of deliverance, and he preached the gospel, but buddy, he had some whack -a -doodle stuff about demons.
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There was a demon behind every doorpost. I mean, it was there everywhere. I mean, he talked about casting out demons wherever he went.
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Okay. I don't believe it quite like that. Now, I do believe we are in a spiritual war, and I do believe if God was to open up our eyes, we would probably see some of the unseen and probably be somewhat terrified of what we would see.
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But hey, I don't believe when I walk out that door that there's a cohort of demons waiting to attack me.
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That's how this man saw it. Okay. This is how this particular individual I know.
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He just saw it. Has anybody ever read the book A World Unseen by Michael Heiser?
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Okay. It deals with demonic oppression, demonology. There are some things in that book that are good, but there are some things in there that are pretty wacky.
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What we do know about demons is their desire is one, to destroy the image -bearer of God.
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Okay. Their desire is to wreak havoc on the human being as an image -bearer.
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What do we see in the time of Christ when He's going around casting out demons? What were some of the people doing to themselves when they were possessed by demons?
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One was throwing himself into the fire. Y 'all remember that? And he kept throwing himself into the fire and he wanted
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Jesus to cast the demon out. And he did. What was the crazy two demoniacs doing to themselves in Gadara?
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They were cutting themselves, running around naked. They were uncontrollable. Everything was always connected with crushing the image -bearer.
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Okay. Destroying that which God put His impression on. But now, they've gotten a little...
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I think demons learn. They get a little smarter. They learn how, well, we're not going to quite do it that way.
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We'll do it in other ways. We'll do it by choice.
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Her body. We'll do it by abortion. Or we'll do it by gender dysmorphia.
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Understand? So, those are demonic forces behind that destroying the image -bearer of God.
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This case here. These people were worshiping Judaism.
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Why? Hey, on Stephen's proclamation...
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We've got about five minutes. Stephen's proclamation in Acts 7, which got him stoned to death.
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First martyr in Christian church. He proclaimed that what they were doing was wrong.
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Your holy place ain't holy. He has come and sent the true revelation in Jesus Christ.
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And, in short, the CliffsNotes version of that long chapter, you can go ahead.
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God's going to destroy that because of it. That's... They gnashed their teeth. They drug him out of the city and stoned him because of it.
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They didn't want Christ. They wanted their system. They didn't want
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Yahweh in the Old Testament. They wanted their system. We even see that the last book of the
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English Bible in the Old Testament is Malachi. What do we see the rebuke to those people in Malachi?
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They weren't doing what God wanted them to do. They weren't doing what God told them to do with their worship.
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They wanted to worship God on their terms, on their way, how they wanted to do it.
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And their sacrifices were lame, unclean, no leg, no eye, spots on their body, okay?
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All those things that God said don't do, they were doing because they said, we're going to worship God our way, not the way that He said.
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They worshiped their system. Even when you come to the time after the time of the
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Maccabees, you get into where you have the Heracanus and the
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Aristobuluses of that time. Then you get to the time of the Herods. What did those
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Pharisees and Sadducees want? They wanted their system.
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They did not want God. That's idolatry. And behind every idol, there's a demon.
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Because that demon says he wants to be in the place of Christ, meaning substitute.
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Substitute. And the idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood, which could neither see nor hear nor walk.
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And then he goes on to say, we already discussed that in verse 21. It says, and they did not repent of their murders, nor their sorceries, nor of their immoralities, nor of their thefts.
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They were murdering one another. I said it probably a hundred times. They were killing one another within the city. God gave them over to a debased mind.
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And it says here, they did not repent of their sorceries.
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And that word in the Greek is pharmakon. And it can mean a number of things. Sorceries wasn't like they were playing with a
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Ouija board. They weren't reading Harry Potter books or something. This has to do with how
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I understand it is using, in that particular time, a pharmaceutical to stimulate them in their worship.
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Okay. That happens today. That happens in, don't just think it just happens in like the satanic, the satanic church, the temple of Satan.
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And they got a new one out now. Some other Satan something. They know what those people don't even know who the devil is.
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That's what's crazy. They can't even agree if he's a real person or if he is just a figment of someone's imagination.
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But some of those groups do believe in using pharmaceuticals to stimulate their worship.
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Anton LaVey, I've read the satanic Bible. He was not into all that. But he was into worship.
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He didn't believe you needed your mind stimulated through drugs to worship the devil the way that he thought.
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But the other people that come along after him did. But it leads to opening any type of drug, opens the mind and spirit open to what?
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Demonic forces. Hey, why do people take drugs?
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To get out of reality. Well, sometimes when they get out of reality, they get into a reality that they did not want to.
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Anybody know who Nikki Sixx is? You know, he, we got to go.
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Nikki Sixx, when they did Motley Crue, did the album which got so much backlash,
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Shout at the Devil. When it came out, it was originally supposed to be
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Shout for the Devil. Nikki Sixx went to a seance. This is his, this is what he said, okay?
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He went to a seance. So we're going to call it these spirits. And he said that fork went from the ground, from the table and shot up and stuck to the ceiling.
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He said it was at that point. He said, I'm not shouting for the devil. I'm shouting at the devil.
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That's wild. That's crazy. And that scared me, okay? So he knew what he was going into, he thought was fake.
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It then, hey man, he said the spirit realm is real. Now, obviously he's not converted.
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He's a pagan, all that. That's just to show you that when someone thinks they're opening self up to that might not be, it might be a hoax, was real.
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And it scared the daylights out of him. And it should. And then it says their immorality nor their thefts.
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Whether it be how they extorted their own people, they didn't repent. Remember the priesthood constantly extorted their own people and the immorality that came along with it.
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There was open -blatant homosexuality in the city. There was open -blatant homosexuality and brothels and all that in Jerusalem.
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And God poured His judgment out on them. They still did not repent. So we will pick up in chapter 10 next week.
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And the next few weeks, we're going to have to get into the weeds a little bit.
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Sometimes you got to look at the tree so you know what forest you're in. So we're going to have to do that next week. Burt, would you close us in a word of prayer?
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Father, we do thank you. The day we set aside
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Sunday as the Lord's Day, a day of worship. And Father, prepare us to do that now as we enter into that time in Jesus' name.