Revelation 9

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You'll uh, somebody open us up with a word of prayer. Amen. We got any volunteers? Any volunteers to pray today?
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Anybody want to? Alright, I guess Andreas of Yuley will do it again.
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Okay. I'll let you close this. I see how you want to be. Father, again, we thank you for our time together.
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We thank you for who you are. We thank you for who we are in Christ. We pray, Lord, you be with us this morning.
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Be with Brother Mike. Open our hearts. Open our ears. Open our hearts. Open our lives, Lord. And change this morning to the image of the one who so loved us that he gave himself for us.
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In his name. Amen. Amen. Revelation chapter 9, beginning in verse 1,
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Then the 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 to them as the scorpions of the earth have power.
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They were told not to hurt the grass of the earth or any green thing or any tree, but only the men which 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 them 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 will flee from them.
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The appearance of these locusts were like horses prepared for battle, and their heads appeared to be crowns like gold, their faces like the faces of men, and they had hair like the hair of women.
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They had teeth more like that of lions, and they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sounds of their wings were like the sounds of chariots and many horses rushing to battle.
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They had tails like scorpions and stings, and their tails was their power to hurt men for five months.
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They had a king over them, an 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 after these things.
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And then the sixth angel 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 were 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, and the year, they were released so that they would kill a third of mankind, and the number of the armies of the horsemen was 200 million.
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And I heard the number of them, and this is how I saw in the vision the horses of those who were on them.
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The riders had breastplates with the color of fire and hyacinth and the brimstone, and the heads were like horses, and the heads were of lions, and out of their mouth proceeded fire and smoke and brimstone.
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A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which proceeded out of their mouths.
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For the power of the horses is in their mouth and in their tails, for their tails were like serpents and have heads, and with them they do harm.
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And the rest of mankind who were not killed by the plagues did not repent of the works of their hands so as to worship demons, idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood which neither can see nor hear nor walk, and they did not repent of their murderers or their sorceries nor their immoralities nor of any of their thefts.
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Well, some crazy stuff. We are getting to a trumpet now where none of the views agree on anything when it comes to this.
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So you will have your early dispensational futurists, many of you older folks in here grew up probably with late great planet earth,
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Jack Van Impey, who else, who else, nobody?
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Nobody heard all those guys? Hal Lindsey, all right, those guys.
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They come to this section and the locusts that are coming out of this pit were
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Huey helicopters and Cobra helicopters and Apache helicopters and to be quite honest with you, they do kind of look like a dragonfly or something.
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And then you have your regular futurist, could be premillennial but not dispensational premillennial and they see this as figurative.
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Then you have your historicist view, which would see these as the
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Muslim hordes that would have taken place when they would come in and they were trying to take over the land and then they were pounded back by Charles Martel.
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Anybody remember Charles Martel in history, Charles the Hammer, and what did he do?
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He stopped the Muslim hordes from coming across and then that's why the
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West did not become a Muslim empire.
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And then, I think I said this when we did the introduction, then you got one that's kind of comical to be honest with you.
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You've got a Catholic version of this and as this trumpet's blown, the abyss is opened by whoever this angel is and he says the angel was
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Martin Luther and this particular man is named Roboto Balibin and his writings are still available.
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He was in, I think he died in 1621. You can still read his catechisms and all.
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He was a Roman Catholic bishop, but he said that the star that's falling in this particular verse is
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Martin Luther. He opens the abyss and when the abyss opened up, all the locusts that came out were the
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Lutherans. In doing so, that is why they hated
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Martin Luther so much. He was the angel with the key to the abyss.
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So, that's not what I believe. We'll walk through this, but some of that stuff is pretty comical.
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But we'll begin in verse 1 and we'll just walk through, see how far we get and this is slam -packed full.
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I'm just going to let you know, there is a lot to deal with because we have something right at the beginning that we have to go to the end of the section to find out who it is.
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So, in trying to understand what this star is that has fallen from heaven, we have to remember its context.
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Everybody remember the first three rules of hermeneutics? Context, context, context. That's what you need to remember.
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If you didn't learn anything else in how to interpret your Bible, context, context, context. The other one is, when you don't understand what's there, keep reading.
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Just keep reading and you can normally find out. And the analogous of Scripture.
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I said this last week, I said it a hundred times, I know already in this class, the best and most important commentary on the book of Revelation is the
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Bible itself. I know people like commentaries, but you're getting men's point of view.
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Let's see what the Bible says about those things, then let's draw our conclusions based on what we know from the biblical data.
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So, that being said, Then the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth.
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So, he blows his horn, a star from heaven has fallen and it's coming to the earth.
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We just, the last chapter, we saw something falling like a star, remember?
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It was a torch falling, and we said we didn't know what that was. We don't know if it was a meteorite, we don't know what it is, but we knew it was something falling from heaven and it was called the star and it actually had a name.
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Anybody remember the name? Wormwood. Wormwood. Wormwood was its name. Well, in this case, we know exactly what this is.
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This is a time when, remember, the star can be used for a number of different things in the book of Revelation.
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Sometimes star actually means what? Star. Star, yeah. When it says that the stars of the sky were darkened, what does that mean?
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It means the actual luminary bodies within the sky were darkened. And they were darkened because the sun was darkened.
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And when the sun's darkened, what happens to the moon? It can't reflect the light.
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Yeah. So, in this case, it says this star from heaven, which had fallen to the earth.
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If we follow it down to the end of this section, it tells us what this fallen angel is that come to the earth.
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It has the Hebrew name Abaddon, Greek name Apollyon. So we know this is an angel.
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Question is, is this angel which has fallen, is it a good angel or a bad angel? And I think that is a legitimate question.
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And how I understand this is, this is not a good angel. We never see angels that are good having had fallen.
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Look, this angel that's fallen is not like he's strolling across the streets of gold and Gabriel goes, oh, check it out.
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I don't like that guy and trips him and he falls headlong and he's coming down. Look, this angel is falling to the earth.
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What do we know about Satan and his fall? We know what
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Jesus said. We know what Jesus said in Luke chapter 10. He said, remember he sent out the 70 to go out and preach the gospel.
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Do you all remember that when he commissioned the 70? And they went out and they were preaching.
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He gave them authority to cast out demons, to heal the sick, and preach the gospel of the kingdom.
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And they came back to him and anybody remember what they said to him? They said, hey, even the demons are subject to us in your name.
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And then Jesus says this, I saw Satan falling like lightning to the earth from heaven.
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What was he talking about? He was talking about the very preaching of the word, the messianic ministry in which
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God gave his, he commissioned his disciples, not just the 12, but this additional 70, he gave them the ability to do the very same things he was doing, which was preach the word, cast out demons, heal the sick.
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And what was he doing? What was the gospel of the kingdom doing? It was binding
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Satan. It was binding him to where they were overcoming the kingdom of darkness.
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And you also remember too, Jesus also makes the statement. He says that if you're going to first go in and plunder a man's house, what must you first do?
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You've got to bind the strong man. Look, if that guy's going to kick the door in and he's going to come in and he's going to rob you and plunder you for your goods, the first thing you're going to have to overcome is who?
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The guy with the biggest muscles, the baddest right hook, whatever it is, you're going to have to get that guy.
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And Jesus said he is going to first bind the strong man and then he's going to plunder all his goods.
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And we know that that's what Jesus did at the cross because he said I'm going to bind Satan. So, here it is, we're seeing this star which had fallen from heaven and is to the earth.
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Now, this particular fallen angel has the key to the bottomless pit, the abyss.
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Does anybody say abyss? E .S .B., would anybody else say abyss? Bottomless pit.
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It is to say it is abuso. It is the word abyss and it is used in other places in the book of Revelation.
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It actually is used again before we ever even find out who the beast is.
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When we get to the structure of the little book, the small scroll, when we get to chapter 11 and we're talking about the two witnesses and what they're doing in their ministry, it says that the beast which comes up out of the abyss makes war with them.
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That abyss is this same place. This is a little sanctified rabbit trail for a second.
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Does it ever, when y 'all read that passage, ever struck you odd that the beast that comes up out of the abyss makes war with two individuals?
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It makes war with two individuals. That should tell you right then that's not talking about two single individuals.
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You don't make war with individuals. You make wars with groups of people.
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You make with nations of people. So here it is. He was given the key to the bottomless pit.
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It was given to him and he opened it. Now, where did this key come from?
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Who has the keys to the abyss? What is the abyss?
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We've said multiple times that Sheol. Oh look, this one writes good. What was
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Sheol? Great. And it contained what?
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I agree. Good and bad, right? It would be the underworld. It contained, yeah, this actually.
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You said underworld, didn't you? Did you say that? I said dead. The dead. And all the dead.
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All dead. And we're just going to compartmentalize it, okay? You had, how did the
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Old Testament saints understand paradise?
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What was it called? Abraham. And that's what we'll put here.
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We'll put Abraham. Because this is actually where Jesus said the thief on the cross would be.
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What would be over here? We would say this would be what we would call hell or inferno.
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The, this is Hades. This would have been the
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Hebrew form. So, the abyss falls somewhere into the place of confinement for disembodied souls.
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We'll just say that, okay? Where was, where was the, quote, fallen angels confined at?
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What we do know. They were confined in a place called what Peter would say would be Tartarus.
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Is that correct how we'd say it? Tartarus? Not tartar sauce. But, okay. And that would have been a more
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Hellenized word of understanding this as a whole. Where the bad angels that had fallen with Satan were confined.
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So, inside of this underworld was a separate place that contained the imprisoned fallen angels.
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And how do we know that? You may remember when Jesus came across the sea of the
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Gadarenes. And he came to Gadara. And when he came to Gadara, there was two men that were, well, depending on what, if you collect all of, okay, you see what
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I'm saying? I don't want to be confusing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to be confusing. But if you collect and you harmonize the
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Gospels together that have this account, you'll have actually two men in the tombs that had been chained up there.
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They were beating themselves, cutting themselves, doing all these crazy things. And there was two men possessed by a demon. Mark, actually,
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I think in Mark's account, has the longest as far as verse. I think it's Mark 8, yeah,
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Mark 8, verses 1 through 20. And then Luke 8, so just like two eights,
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Mark 8 and Luke 8, give you the narrative of what takes place. So, and as Jesus is coming up to him, remember what the demoniac says to him?
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They fall on their face, Oh, Son of God, have you come to torment us before the time?
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And he says, Oh, please, please, please don't send us to the abyss.
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That is the place in which they were confined until whenever, whatever, however
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God does that on final judgment, he's going to, that's where they're confined to.
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And we don't know why they're confined there other than that they were fallen. There's all speculation.
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Did it have to do with, some people think it had to do with them.
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They came to the earth in Genesis 6, intermarrying, having sex with women and all that.
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That, just to let you know, that don't work. Because what are angelic beings not able to do?
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They're not seminal creatures. And I don't mean like football, seminal. I mean, seminal creatures.
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They do not have the ability to procreate. Therefore, when men say that that's what it is, that they had sex with women and had this crazy wild offspring, off breed, that's science fictional nonsense.
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I'm just going to be honest, okay? The Bible doesn't see it that way. But whatever that is that they did, whether it was the war in heaven before the fall of Adam and Eve, those angels that fell with him, and we don't, just to let you know, we don't know how many that is, and we'll get to that when we get to chapter 12.
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We don't know. We just know this, a bunch of them went with him. And they are wreaking havoc, some of them, on the people of God and God's image bearers, okay?
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I want you to make that clear. God's image bearers are the humanity as a whole, and they are wreaking havoc on it, and they do oppress
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God's people, unable to possess God's people, okay? Don't you understand that? And we'll see that as we go through this text, they're unable to possess
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God's people. But can they oppress God's people? Certainly. So, this is where these are confined.
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Well, this angel, Apollyon or Abaddon, whichever you prefer, has that key.
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He takes that key, pops it open, and this is what comes out.
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He opened the bottomless pit. Smoke went up out of the pit like the smoke of a furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit.
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Hey, we're in Revelation. I'm sorry, so you know where we're at, Revelation 9. Okay, sorry.
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Come on, y 'all help the man out back there. Help the guy out. So, he opened up 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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So, when this thing opens up, they pop the lid. Let's just say it has a lid, all right? They pop the lid on this joker.
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Yeah, I mean, what's coming up out of this in the vision looks like smoke, and it's so smoky that what does it do?
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It darkens the sun. So, that tells you this is what? This is thick.
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And big. Yeah, thick. You say big or thick? Okay, well, me and you, big thick.
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Big thick. And it has darkened the sun, and then it says, out of that smoke, poof, comes locust upon the earth.
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Now, we have already went through the first four trumpets, and what did we constantly see in those four trumpets?
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What were they related back to? They were related back to God's punishment on the evildoers.
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One of the first oppressors of God's people was Egypt. I mean, the first civilization destroyed outside the flood was
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Sodom. And as we saw that, we saw that as he was unleashing his hell on Egypt, we had fire, blood, hail, darkness.
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Now what are we seeing? One of the same plagues as, not the exact same, but terminology, is now he is unleashing on the enemies, which
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I believe that it's going to say this here shortly in the book, that Jerusalem is like Sodom and Egypt, and if Sodom and Egypt were the enemies of God, and Babylon was the picture always has apostate
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Jerusalem become. Is it correct to say that before Sodom, Nimrod was also a hunter of people?
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Nimrod was way before that. Yeah, he was before that. Yes, but we're looking here how
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God destroyed groups of people. Sodom was destroyed by God by raining hail down from heaven with fire and brimstone.
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What did we see as one of the punishments we saw in the last class? It was hail and fire, brimstone.
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And actually, you're going to see when the demonic cavalry in the next trumpet, what's coming, we just read it, what's coming out of their mouth and nose?
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Fire and brimstone. Some of yours may sulfur. So God destroyed Sodom. Then what did he do in Egypt?
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He turned that place upside down by using the very things that they worshipped as a way of turning it up on its head, whether it's the frogs, the lice, all these gods.
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Remember, all those plagues had something to do with attacking the deities on which they worshipped.
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And what was Babylon? It was idolatry. Idolatry. Babylon was always the place of idolatry.
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Even when you get to, we're reading in Zechariah, when, anybody remember the part where you had a little midget lady in the bucket?
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Or was it just me? Okay. All right. Mike's crazy. There's a midget, huh?
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There's a midget lady in a bucket. Everybody remember the part where they had the flying scroll going across the sky? Okay. Right after the flying scroll goes across the division, you got a midget in a bucket, and it's a lady.
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And this bird picks it up, because it's a picture of idolatry, and he picks it up from Jerusalem, and she flies him away, and where does she drop him at?
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Or her, or it, or whatever it is. Drops it in Babylon. Idolatry. Idolatry.
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Idolatry. Idolatry is a picture of what in Scripture?
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Adultery. Adultery. How many times did God tell his old covenant people, you have complained the harlot.
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You have now become a prostitute. You have now sold your body to the nations, and when we get later on in the book, you're going to see it.
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You're going to see the whore of Babylon. So, he is treating these people, now, the apostate
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Jerusalem, just like these wicked people, turning them over to the punishments of Egypt.
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Remember, we read that last week. We read that. He says, look, if you just do what
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I tell you to do, remember he made fresh water for them, and what did he tell them? Look, you just do what
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I tell you to do. Just do what I tell you to do, and I won't do what? I won't put any of these things
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I put on Egypt. Hey, that happened in, what was it? Chapter 15 of Exodus.
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You know what? Right before, remember, all of the unbelieving generation died. They died in the wilderness.
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They were dropping like flies out there, okay? For 40 years. Then right before they go into the land of Canaan, the last sermon
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Moses preaches is Deuteronomy, and he says in Deuteronomy 7 the same thing.
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He said to them back in Exodus 15, hey, if you go into the land, you do what I tell you to do,
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I won't do to you the things put on you, the same diseases and plagues that I put on the
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Egyptians. So he's going to unleash these locusts.
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These locusts were given power over the earth, and it was given to them to be as scorpions of the earth.
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What do scorpions do? Sting. Huh? Sting. They sting, yeah.
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And we're going to get here in a minute. They sting and they torment. My son,
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Zach, loved snakes and stuff. So we always had snakes in the house, sometimes literally in the house.
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He had a hard time wanting to leave the lid on so they would get out.
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Or I'd go in there and kiss him goodnight sometimes. I was like, hey, dude, where's the snake?
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Pull back the sheet, he'd be curled up in his arms. He's like, dude, you can't do that. And then one time
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I'm out of town and Sybil calls me flipping out. That big brown snake slims in the house. I'm like, hey, find it. Like, oh, baby,
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I'm in Atlanta. So he loved snakes. But he always wanted one of those scorpions.
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Anybody seen an imperial scorpion? They're black. And we used to love to feed ours a lot of stuff.
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So we'd have to go to the pet store. We didn't want to feed them the frozen. We wanted to see, like,
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National Geographic. So we went to buy some of the mice to feed the snakes.
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And you had these imperial black scorpions.
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They're awesome, dude. They're huge. They're like anywhere between 8 and 10 inches long and jet black. And you feed them wild stuff too.
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It's cool. So he wanted one of those really bad. I was like, dude, we can't get that. That gets out of the house.
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That could hurt somebody. You know, you can't keep the lid on there. I'm not getting a call saying mom's trying to wrangle some scorpions.
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But these scorpions they're talking about here aren't those type. These were the smaller, like,
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North African, Middle Eastern, usually of anywhere between 4 and 5 inches. And they were this light brownish, almost white.
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Matter of fact, if you remember when Jesus says, would a father, if his son asked him for an egg, would he give him a scorpion?
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That's the color. And what does a scorpion look like when it's balled up? It looks like that colored egg.
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If I was just to do from here to here, it would look like that egg. Well, these right here were known, this particular type, that Northern African, Middle Eastern were torment people when they were stung.
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You can go back and read, depending on how you want to pronounce his name. I say Pliny. Bert says
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Pliny. So I say we'll meet in the middle and say Pliny, Pliny. And he was a historian,
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Pliny the Elder. He was a historian for Roman, 1st century.
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He said that when they were fighting in Carthage, in Carthage, you remember Hannibal?
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Okay, Hannibal was the bad -to -the -bone general for the Carthage fight, in the 1st and 2nd
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Pinnacle Wars. And he said when they would go through there, these scorpions would bite those men and it would torment them for days.
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It doesn't kill you, but it torments them for days. And he said it was odd that that bite was so bad because Roman soldiers were trained to be stabbed, cut, hit, and not flinch.
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That's how they were treated. I mean, they were trained by actually whipping on them. And he said they would suffer for days after being bitten by these things.
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So when he says scorpion, that's what the Middle Eastern person would have been thinking about.
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Hey, these scorpions bite and the sting is horrible. So he says that these scorpions of the earth had that power.
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Then in verse 4, And they were told not to hurt the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only the men who did not have the seal of God on their forehead.
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Okay, so this hybrid, crazy, locust, stinging scorpion thing is told don't eat the grass, don't eat the trees.
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Anybody know anything about locusts? What do they do? They eat everything in the path. And if you go back to Joel, Joel even talks about how bad the locusts were because when he talks, whether this is imagery or whether it is actually talking about a real locust invasion, we don't know.
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So if you think it's a real one, no problem. If you think it's invading armies, no problem.
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I think it's the armies, but hey. He says when they come through, you've got the first group that would come here, they just kind of mow everything over.
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And then you've got the other locusts that come behind it and they just kind of eat up the scraps.
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And then you've got the other ones that come up and they just kind of eat whatever's left in the corners to where everything is wiped clean.
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These are told don't do that. These are told not to eat anything green.
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So we know right now this is literally not a real locust. This is not a real locust nor is it a real scorpion.
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It's something else. And then it says whatever they do, they're not to eat the green trees or anything green or the grass or the trees, but they are not to touch those who have the seal of God on their forehead.
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So these have a specific purpose. And what are they to do? Not yet.
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Not yet. Torment only a certain group of people. The only a certain group of people, and who are those?
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The ones that don't have the seal. Why were the saints, we'll just use the 144 ,000, which
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I believe that was typological of those who were on the earth, the church on the earth, why did
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God seal them? To keep them from the harm of His judgment.
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Okay? When God saved anybody from His judgment,
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He did one of two things. He either put a protection, a hedge of protection around them, or what did
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He do? He extracted them. What did a lot happen to Him? He got grabbed by His ear.
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Well, by His hand, but probably by His ear too. And said get out, because He didn't want to leave. There's other times when
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God removes people from judgment. Removes them. What about Noah?
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Did he get removed from the judgment? Or did he go through the judgment? He went through the judgment, but he had that protection around him, which was the ark.
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What about when 586 comes? B .C. Did God remove people from His judgment on apostate
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Jerusalem in 586? You better believe He did. What do you think the exiles were? He removed them.
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They didn't suffer the bloodshed and burning and all of that.
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God removed those people by His grace. What happens in 70 A .D. when that destruction is coming?
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It says those that listened to Jesus, what did they do? They head to the hills. So they listened.
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And in this case, God says these things that I'm fixing to release by the hand of this fallen angel are to torment unbelievers.
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Unbelievers. And they were, in verse 5, they were not permitted to kill anyone.
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But the torment was for five months. And the torment was like that of a scorpion sting. And we just talked about how bad the scorpion sting was.
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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 will flee from them.
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So here's how bad this is going to be. These tormenting whatever they are, and we'll talk about that in just a second, hopefully.
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As they torment these people, torment these unbelieving people, they're going to be tormented so bad that they're going to want to die and they can't.
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Who holds the keys to death in His hand? Jesus. Jesus is the one who calls the number of the person and then they die.
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He's saying here these people are going to be tormented for five months. I don't think that's a real five months.
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I think it's an extended period of time to become a crisis, but not absolute chaos yet.
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The chaos is coming in the next round. Five and a half months or five months, whatever it is, these guys are going to be tormented.
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Hey, and they're going to be stung by these things. They're going to be tormented in such a way that they're going to want to die and they can't.
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Now, if you're going to be a wooden head literalist, and you're going to say, well, then what you're saying is, is this guy, he'll be tormented in such a way that they're going to be able to jump off a building headlong and land on their cranium and not die.
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That's not how you're supposed to understand this. You're supposed to understand this as their desire will be to die and they can't.
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It's not saying, oh, and then the guy's walking around with half his head, okay, or slits his throat, or he cuts his head off, and he's walking around with no head.
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That's not how we should understand it. Understand these people are going to be in such pain and in such torment and torture that they're going to want to die and they're not going to be able to.
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I understand the reason why they want to die and then they don't is because the thought of dying, look, these people know what's going on.
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They know the judgment and who it's coming from. They've already said, remember, in the last chapter, when all the judgment starts coming out, what did it say?
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They were hiding in the rocks and the hills to do what? Hide us from who? The wrath of the
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Lamb, so they know who this is coming from. And the thought of dying is worse than the thought of enduring.
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Look, if I die, I don't know what happens when I die. I know what's going on right now, this torment, it's bad.
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It stinks. It hurts. But man, if I die, it's worse. It's worse.
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Now, I believe these locust, scorpion, grotesque looking things, and we'll see what they are not this week, what they are are demonic spirits released from the abyss, unleashed on apostate
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Jerusalem. The last siege of Jerusalem lasted around five and a half to six months, depending on how you understand that siege in 70
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A .D. That was the worst. There is no way, has anybody in here been reading
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Josephus? I've read all of Josephus a number of times. Hey, if anybody gets this book, don't worry about reading
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Antiquities, because it doesn't deal with the Jewish wars. If you get his book, it'll have both of them in there.
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I'm not saying Antiquities is not good, but in many ways, it's not relevant to what we're talking about.
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But if you listen to how he talks about what was going on inside Jerusalem, there is no way that you can't read the things that those men were doing to their own countrymen and to their own people.
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Not the Romans. What these men, these Jewish men that had the three -way civil war going on inside Jerusalem, what they were doing to one another.
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Look, when Titus walked around, when he was trying to find out where he was going to set up the final siege wall, he was like, these people are doing this to themselves.
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Romans would never do that to each other. And as he walked around, now he didn't say this to the
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God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but he looked up to the gods and said, don't hold me accountable for what they've done to themselves.
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That tells you how bad it was. Hey, anybody thinks that... What is that?
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A scorpion loose in here? Yeah, if you...
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As he was walking around to see what was going on to set up the siege ramp, it was like the unspeakable things they were doing to one another.
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And he didn't want to be held accountable for that. If anybody knows anything about the Roman armies, they're not compassionate.
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Look, they actually had compassion on the people inside saying, man, look what they're doing to one another.
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Now, that compassion dissipated like the morning dew once they breached the walls, and then it would kill everything pretty much in sight.
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Enslave some, kill everything else in sight. So, there's no way that you can't read the
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Jewish wars, probably chapter 5 on... I mean, book 5 on to the end of the
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Jewish wars and read what they were doing to one another and not go, hey man, these men were demon -possessed. There's just no way.
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I mean, everything from homosexuality on the temple complex, men dressing up like women, putting on makeup, wearing women's clothes, having open, blatant homosexual acts on the temple steps.
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I mean, this is what's said. Don't take my word for it. You know, terrorizing the older men during the day so that they could try to get the younger men to come alongside to fight in the insurgence against Rome, slitting kids, mothers,
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I mean, just butchering one another. Hey, Josephus says that the blood that ran down the steps of the temple was like a river.
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Now, people don't kill one another because they love one another. They kill one another because they hate one another.
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And that's what was going on. That's what was going on. And we've got two minutes.
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I'm not going to start at verse 7 because that gets into more of the locusts and then we have to deal with the name and who
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I believe that person is. Why we use the
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Hebrew and the Greek. Any questions? Comments? Outburst of anger?
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Letter to the editor? Demonstration? Yes, ma 'am. When you said the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, that is not the star that fell.
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No, ma 'am. Another angel. Yes, ma 'am. Another angel. So, and that act, what you just said falls in line with what
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I was saying last week. To keep that 7, that's a good question. Because that keeps that 7 model angel proclamation.
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That's why, I mean, we were talking about this earlier. Some of your translations I think says angel last week.
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Is that correct? Not eagle. And I believe that is, the eagle is the correct rendering because that would then break up the 7 model proclamation of the angels.
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Except, except, I do want to make a caveat. Remember, you're going, when we get to this, between the 6th and the 7th trumpet, you have a parenthesis which removes, basically removes us from what's going on, for instance, takes you to another place.
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You do have another angel speaking there, but that's not concerning the 7 trumpets. So, not to be complicated, but yes,
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I think that's a good question. It's not the same one that's blowing the trumpet because the one that's blowing the trumpet is an actual messenger of God proclaiming judgment.
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Who is God using? And we'll talk about this next week. God's actually using the wickedness of these evil spirits to possess these men to then pour out torment on apostate people.
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And you go, man, that just, that don't seem right. Well, it is. God can do what
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He wants. God can use the wicked to pour out on wicked people.
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If you remember Ahab, when Jehoshaphat was ever going to go to war, I've got to shut up,
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Jehoshaphat was ever going to go to war, and Ahab wanted the prophets to tell him if it was okay.
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And what did Micaiah always say? He always told him what was right. Well, when they asked Micaiah, he says, yeah, you'll win.
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And they knew he was being snarky. And he says, hey,
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I told you. I told you that guy was that way. So he says, well, go, why don't you go find another prophet of God to tell me what, to say what's going on with Jehoshaphat.
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Well, then another, you know, he walks in and goes, well, we can't trust none of these prophets. They've got Vote for Ahab t -shirts on.
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Remember, those were all his prophets. And what did God wind up doing? He sent a lying spirit.
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You're like, what? Yeah, God sent a lying spirit. They wanted to be deceived.
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You know what? You want to be deceived? I'm going to deceive you. Here you go. And he sent a lying spirit to do that.
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God can do that. You'll see when we get to some passages we'll look at in 1 and 2
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Thessalonians, God sends a strong delusion to those who do not believe. Look, you continue to suppress that truth of unrighteousness,
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God has the right to turn you over to a debased mind. Okay. You want to pray for us?
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No, Mike, I'm so sorry. You can pray in three weeks. Mike, you'll pray for us?
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That's right. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you've gathered us together today. We thank you for the study of your word, for our brother as he's prepared it.
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And now as we get ready to go into corporate worship, we pray,
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Lord, that it will be pleasing to you and all things that are said and done will bring honor and glory to your name.