WOLFL-2024-13
Transcript
I’d like to invite you to either follow along or read with me maybe one of the most difficult, and if not difficult, controversial, and maybe horrible parts of the Bible. It’s chapter 9, that’s where we are, 9 and 10:10 is the shortest chapter of Revelation, and 9 is the darkest. Horrible chapter. It says in verse 1, the fifth angel sounded. Now remember, you guys, it should start being that you see Revelation, you’re starting to see it because you know the framework, you know the seven parts, and now you know that the throne of God, and the altar of God, and all the prayers, and the bowls, and the seven angels that always face God, those seven are coming one at a time with a trumpet, and we’re on the fifth one.
And so, this fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star. Now remember to John. He’s talking like a normal human that hasn’t been on Google, that, that is in 95 AD-ish times, and anything that’s bright in the sky is a star. And so, this is a star fallen from Heaven to the Earth, and it’s a person. To him was given a key to the Bottomless Pit. So, it’s an angelic messenger, and he calls him a star. Remember John called the, what Jesus was holding, stars, because they were glowing in His hand, but they were the messengers of the churches. So, you have to understand that what it says is John saw a bright object go from where he was in Heaven down to Earth. But the Scriptures tell us that’s one of these angelic messengers who has been given. God gives him a key to, and now we come to the darkness.
Look at this. Abussos, that’s the Greek word. It’s the, abussos, the abyss, the Bottomless Pit. And he opened it, verse 2, the Bottomless Pit. Now, where is this Bottomless Pit? He falls from Heaven to the Earth. So, think about this, God is telling us, John is up by His throne, the throne of God. He’s looking down at the Earth. This star, which is a person, an angel, an angelic messenger with the key, goes to Earth. He goes to some spot-on Earth. He has a key. He opens a door none of us have ever seen and opens it and look what happens: Out of the Pit, verse two, smoke of a great furnace, so the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the Pit.
Now, do you remember what’s already happened in chapter eight? The vegetation, the trees and the grass is burned, the oceans are struck and all the water. So, everybody is dying without water until they find some. And there’s been this huge shaking of the Heavens at the fourth trumpet. And now, I can just see people going, oh, no. Let’s see, I wrote this. In chapter nine the Apostle John introduces us to the dreadful realm of fallen spirits and their abode, the abyss. At this point, the fifth angel sounds the fifth trumpet, which is a preview of Hell. Endless darkness. The Bottomless Pit is the holding tank of punishment for fallen angels, demons, the beast, the false prophet, and Satan himself. These spirit beings of the highest magnitude of evil are left over from Satan’s rebellion.
And welcome to the next part of the Tribulation. It’s this opening of The Pit. And what’s going on? The big picture is this. Lost humanity is fascinated with demons. Look at all the Halloween, horror, Chainsaw Murderer, all these horrible movies. So, God opens The Pit. And in chapter 9, He allows humanity to taste the searing torments of Satan’s demons.
Everybody on Earth, in chapter 9, and again in chapter 16, gets to go to Hell for a little while. Not to the literal place. Nobody’s in there yet. It’s prepared for the devil and his angels. The first two in are the beast and the false prophet. Nobody’s there now. But God brings a taste. You ever go through Costco or, I don’t know where else they do it, where all these people are on these little carts and they’re paid to put cheese on a toothpick and hand it to you, they’re wearing gloves and it’s, it’s safe to eat it and they give it to you. They want you to sample, the cheese or the pizza or the pasta or whatever they’re selling. God gives everybody a little taste of Hell. While the 144,000 are running around telling people not to go there, while they’re going to every person on Earth trying to share the Gospel, God lets this happen. So, it’s just fascinating.
What message is this giving? Remember, who are the primary recipients of the book of Revelation? Not us. We’re secondary. The second-generation church got this book. They were living in a world immersed in the occult. Every city had temples to the false gods. Paul said every temple is the abode of these demons. All those idols, all the museums you go to that has Mars and Venus, all these Greek and Roman gods, Jupiter and Aphrodite and Apollo and everybody, those are all demon magnets. So, everywhere you went in the second century church, they were living around demon shrines that were known as Greek temples. So, they lived around the occult. And you know what this chapter is about? Jesus is all you need to live for God in a demonized world. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how strong they are.
But let’s meet chapter 9’s people. These are super angels, the most powerful creatures in the universe, and the only aliens out there in space. If you read, the Bible says, everything in the universe, everything, is going to be dissolved in 2 Peter chapter 3. And it becomes brand new in Revelation 21. Everything. There, there is nothing in the universe that God didn’t create. Everything that is involved with redemption before the destruction of everything is described in the Bible. You know why I’m saying this? There aren’t extraterrestrial civilizations out there that live, out in a faraway galaxy long ago, like George Lucas tells us about. There aren’t. The only aliens out there are demons. There aren’t super intelligences. There are. The word demon means intelligence. So, they’re always looking for extraterrestrial intelligence. In fact, there’s a whole a multi-billion-dollar American defense program called SETI, S-E-T-I. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Here’s where they are. Either they’re running around inhabiting all the places demons inhabit or they’re incarcerated. There aren’t any others. They’re in these two places. And this fifth angel opens the key, briefly, to this Bottomless Pit. And we meet the only aliens. These are the real aliens. All the aliens God has accounted for.
Remember I told you on your matching, you’re going to see one passage that’s not in Revelation. Two passages. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Those are the two chapters that tell us how Lucifer fell. Now here, I brought my pen today. This is my pen, my illustration. This is God. He’s holding Lucifer. And God, in Isaiah 14, briefly did this. He stopped holding him. That’s the origin of evil. I just showed you something. Philosophers have written pages on how to, where, what’s the origin of evil? How is there so much evil in this world? Here’s the origin of evil. Anything God does not hold, any part of your life and my life that God is not holding on to, watch what happens to it. [Dr. Barnett drops the pen in in his hand]. Oh no, that was my favorite pen. Thank you for helping me.
I’ll try that over and over again. No, not really. That’s why Satan fell. God allowed him. When you read Isaiah 14, you know what it says? Satan’s thought in his heart. God knows your thoughts. God’s reading your thoughts right now. I don’t know your thoughts. That’s why I consider myself to be the very worst sinner I know in the whole world.
Why? I don’t know anything about you. I’ve met you; I’ve gotten several rows done, and I’m marking you down, I’m trying to remember things about you, and it’s a blessing, and I’ve seen your marked Bibles, and I like all that stuff, and hearing your testimonies. But I know how much of the Bible I know, and I know how much I do not allow God to do that He wants to do. And I literally, even this morning, surrendered again, just like I encourage you to. So, I’m the worst sinner I know because I’m the only person I really know. God knows everything about us, and He knows that Satan said in his heart, I will be like God. Now that shows me, God inspired the Bible. Do you know why? If a human wrote the Bible, the arch enemy of God would not have said, I want to be like You. They would have said, I want to be what? Greater. But Satan, a creature, knew He was not God, that God made him and sustained him. And Satan just said, I just want to be self-sufficient like You. I want to be like You.
That’s another thing about God that you’ll learn that only God is self-sufficient. Only God doesn’t need any holding. Everything else in the universe needs holding. Do you know what happens to the universe? You know what Peter says? God lets go of it, and it basically implodes. All of the atoms just [Dr. Barnett makes an exploding sound], and it with a loud noise and a fervent heat, it just is destroyed, and God recreates the universe perfectly. So, there’s nothing you see now of this world that’s going to be left except for the people around you and they live forever.
And by the way, we live forever in this body. Do you understand that? That’s why Paul said, be careful what you do with your body because it’s the one you’re going to have forever. And sins against this body are different. than outward sins. Harming outward or thinking, ill and speaking ill is one thing, but sins against this body are different. So, we’ll get into that.
So, these are the real alien invaders. And they’re the ones that are in chapter 9. And God has this maximum security, cosmic being, real alien prison. And it’s right here on Earth. And He opened the Bottomless Pit, and the smoke comes out of the Pit, and the smoke of the Pit is darkening the sun in the air.
So, what is this place? We know if you study the Bible, one of the things you’re learning in hermeneutics, and you learn in Systemic Theology is Analogia Scriptura. And what that means is, you allow the Scripture to interpret the Scripture. The most important tool to understanding the Bible is asking God to open your mind to allow the Scriptures to explain the Scriptures. There are 1189 chapters in this book. There are 404 verses in Revelation. If you study them, you’ll find eight hundred ties to other parts of the Bible. So, that’s the Scripture interpreting the Scripture.
If we just do this underworld tour, if you let Jesus take you around on a tour, think about the cross and everything we know. Jesus died on a cross. That’s John 19. He, in His ministry, He said in Luke 16:28, that there is this place, Sheol, or the grave, and that’s on the right there. It’s a place of torment. We heard about that. But He told the thief on the cross, today I’m going to take you to where? Paradise. Today you’re going to be with Me in paradise. But when Mary saw Jesus on Sunday morning at the empty tomb, He said, don’t touch Me, I haven’t gone where yet? I haven’t gone up to My Father. I haven’t ascended to Heaven yet. I haven’t gone there yet. He was on His way, actually. Where was He over the weekend? See, that’s very interesting. So, we’ll talk about that in a minute.
There’s also, Peter introduces us to Tartarus. That’s actually a Greek word and John introduces us to the abussos. That’s the abyss. So, when Jesus rose, He ascended, He went to Heaven, and we find paradise is up there, but paradise wasn’t up there at point two on the chart. It was somewhere else. He took the thief there. So, where’d He go?
Here’s a here’s just a drawing, now I’m not a very good drawer, but you see the cross there in the middle The roundedness is the Earth, to the right of the cross is the empty tomb. Where did Jesus go after the cross? He told the thief He’d go from number one, a cross, to number two, paradise. So, only Jesus body was in the tomb. Where was His Spirit? He was with the thief in paradise, wherever that is. But what’s amazing is when Jesus described it in Luke 16, He said it had two parts. The rich man was over in the unhappy part of the grave, and Lazarus was in the happy part. So, it had a happy and an unhappy part. It had a place of bliss, and it had a place of torment. But it was here.
Now, let me ask a question when you did the Old Testament when you studied the life of Samuel, do you remember when King Saul went to the witch at Endor and he said I need to talk to Saul, and she said okay, and she was a professional charlatan. She worked with demons who impersonated people. That’s what seances are, a demon comes up in a seance and tells you about a person that they know all about because demons are intelligent. They’ve lived thousands of years. They’ve met everybody. They know all the languages. They can impersonate anybody. Just think how good our actors are after just one lifetime. How would you like to live all lifetimes? You really get good at everything. Demons are really good at everything really bad at everything. They’re evil, but the witch of Endor who has done this show over and over again. She made her living doing it. She does her thing, and all of a sudden it says, coming up in the tent, out of the ground, from below, rises an old man, and she screams. Why? She’s done this over and over. This is not one of her friends. It was actually Samuel. He came up from below. He came up probably from the happy side of the grave, which Ezekiel describes, and I’m not teaching the Old Testament, but it does connect eight hundred times. So, she screams and says, [gasp] what have you done? You’re Saul! She realized then what’s going on. The demons told her, this is not one of your fake things. This is God doing this.
Where did Samuel come from? He didn’t come down. He came up. So, probably he came from that happy side over there, the paradise. But what happened during Christ’s time over the weekend? He goes down, takes the thief down there. He declares over in the abyss, that’s what Peter tells us. He tells the demons that are in jail that tried to destroy everything at the flood. That’s when the demons got incarcerated. They tried to destroy all of humanity. They went into overdrive, and they did their thing. So, God killed everybody on Earth, except for eight people. There was probably a billion people by then. God killed all of them, but eight. And the demons that were responsible are down chained in the abyss. Then Jesus comes up, walks out of the tomb, tells Mary, sorry. And He goes up and presents Himself to the Father. And then He stays here on Earth for forty days, walking around. So, I just told you, did the whole Gospel last week of our Lord’s life. But when Jesus shows us Heaven again in Revelation, we’ve already been in chapter 3, paradise is now up there. So, there, of course, are two views of this. All I know is what fits with every verse. I believe that the Tree of Life and the Garden of Eden and all that, that we see in Heaven, was waiting until after the cross to go up there. And that’s where we’ll see it again. And then look off to the right. You see the flames? That’s the lake of fire. Nobody’s there. It was prepared for Satan and his angels forever, and anybody who follows him, but that abyss we’re looking at is down there to the right, it looks like a baseball that has a chain on it.
Okay, how did all this happen? This is angelology, and you guys study it for a long time, I’ll do it in thirty seconds. The doctrine of the creation of angels. God created all angels, two thirds of them obey and serve Him, one third of them don’t. Some are in prison, Tartarus. Most of them are not. They’re loose. Okay, so one third, and that’s in chapter 12, and we’ll cover that tomorrow, the whole deal where that happened.
Each of the angels and demons we read about in God’s Word have power that exceeds anything we can humanly understand. They break the laws of physics. They can walk through walls. They are just, nothing keeps them out. Except being sealed by the Holy Spirit. They are astounding. One of them killed 185,000 soldiers just [snap] like that. It’s just unbelievable. Why do we know that? Because God is absolutely all powerfully greater than everything that is anywhere.
So, look at anything, look at the demons, God’s greater than that. You look at the storms, God’s greater than that. You look at the universe as far out as we can see, however many billion light years out there we can see, God is greater than all that. God shows us those things to show us His power.
But what are these real aliens that swirl around us? God explains in the Bible, everything we need to know about angels and demons.
And this is a summary. Angels are supernatural, super powerful creatures. As far as we know, angelic creatures are indestructible. They can’t be killed. They can’t be destroyed. They can travel the universe effortlessly with no spaceships. They don’t ever seem to rest. They don’t sleep. In fact, we never see one eating. God just sustains them. They are very interesting creatures.
And there are two kinds. There are good ones, and there are bad ones. The good angels, the highest of everything God made, that’s why you read Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, is Lucifer. He was called the anointed cherub. He actually was over the throne of God. Kind of, any of you who are photographers, you know how you have your light, and then you have that parabolic umbrella behind it and the light poofs, and it hits the reflective and it broadcasts the light? Lucifer who has six wings was like a giant parabolic over the throne. That’s what cherubim look like. When you see the picture of the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant, one cherub here and one cherub here, and they have their wings out like this, looking down at the mercy seat. That’s a picture of what Satan was doing over the throne of God. He was like the worship leader, reminding everybody, all the glory goes to God, all the glory goes to God. And he was up there, the covering cherub. He’s the smartest, most powerful being God ever made. He’s called Lucifer, the son of the morning. He’s a part of the second group, the cherubim. These are the living ones; they’re the ones we saw last week. Four of them with four faces flying around the throne of God. He was one of them, only he was the one that was stationary and was right there over the throne. Like the worship leader of Heaven.
Then you have the ones that are always facing God. Those are the archangels, we only know two of them Michael and Gabriel. Then you have the seraphim, the burning ones that Isaiah meets in chapter 6. And then you have the angels, just the normal ones. Just the normal ones are astounding, what they can do. Those are the good.
Remember, Lucifer fell from that and became number one of the bad guys. He is the highest of the bad. He is called the angel of light. I don’t think Satan primarily involves himself in the sleaze and the scum and the bad stuff. He primarily is a deceiver. Our flesh draws us to the sleaze and the scum. He is trying to capture minds and get minds infected. He’s the angel of light. His highest lieutenant, we’re going to meet in a minute. God keeps him in The Pit. He lets him out. He’s the one that killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers [snap] like that. He killed all the Egyptian firstborn without batting an eye. God keeps him under wraps. The Destroyer. By the way, a lot of video games are about the Destroyer. He’s called Apollyon and Abaddon and all these things. Then there are the horrible monsters we see in chapter 9 coming out with him. Then we have the doomed angels. They’re the ones in chains that are never allowed out of the abyss. Then we have, oh, who are these? Daniel 10 tells us there is a demon in charge of Greece. There’s a demon in charge of Persia. So, we call these nation princes. It appears that they’re over, that these demons try and influence countries, groups, ethnic groups to do things that Satan wants them to do. He’s the God of this world. Then, we don’t even know what Paul was describing in Ephesians 6. He says, and principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual hosts of wickedness in Heavenly places. What is that? I don’t know. Is that 1, 2, 3, 4, other groups? I don’t know.
And then we have the ones that are showing up everywhere in Christ’s ministry. Every time Jesus is preaching, screech, there comes another demon trying to disrupt the thing. And Jesus silenced him. Actually, the word He uses is, you be muzzled. Kind of you know how a dog, they muzzle him when they are misbehaving? Jesus would muzzle the demons. He said, I don’t want you. You know what they would do? Once He’s preaching in Mark chapter 1, Jesus is preaching along, and the demon was in the back indwelling some person and the demon was just there not paying attention because he didn’t like the synagogue anyway. And he was listening to the voice of the speaker and in Mark chapter 1 it says the demon looked out of the person he was living in, and he goes, what have I to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Don’t put me in the Pit. He discovered he was in a service and the God of the universe was teaching and he didn’t want to be in there, and he’s trying to get the body he was in out of there. He wanted to get out of there. That’s how demons are and they’re all over the place and Jesus was silencing them.
I tell you all that because our God is greater than the sum of everything He created. He’s greater than the whole universe, plus the Earth, plus all this Spiritual world.
But all this is revealed to us because God wanted us….Why did God put chapter 9 in Revelation? He wants us to know what demons can do. What can demons do?
Well, when a demon is allowed to become a predator, there was a movie called The Predator, or there are a lot of movies called The Predator. That’s what demons can do. They can inflict torture, look at verse 3, out of the smoke. So, the whole world, they’re already having smoke inhalation from the trees burning and the grass burning, and then the oceans, a third of them have died, and now a third of all the ground water is polluted. And that just leads up to this, the smoke, and it’s like more smoke, and it’s probably smells worse, and they’re looking, and all of a sudden, through the smoke, look what comes, out of the smoke, verse 3, locusts come on the Earth. And to them was given power as scorpions of the Earth have power. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the Earth, so these are not. Locust insects, these are demon locusts, these are monsters, John said, look like locusts, they act like locusts, and they are coming through, out of The Pit, through the smoke, and they can, they don’t eat grass, or any green thing, they don’t eat the trees, they go after anyone, look at this, Who does not have the seal of God on their forehead.
Oh, do you know what Hebrews 1, I was having a little conversation with Joy about this. Do you know what Hebrews 1:14 says? “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation?” Do you remember when I read to you Ezekiel 9? That the angel marked all the people God did not want to be killed by the Babylonians? Now God has marked people that he doesn’t want to be killed. These locusts to bother. Certainly, there are the 144,000, and certainly there are people that are hearing the Gospel and are going to come to Christ. And those people are not tormented by these. God doesn’t allow Christians to be tormented by demons. So, basically anybody that has a seal of God on their forehead that He’s marked off, by the way, it says in Hebrews 1:14, they’re going to become heirs of salvation. Angels guard people before they get saved. But God’s protecting them until they hear the Gospel and respond to salvation.
But verse 5, They were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them. Look at the date stamp for five months. By the way, how long is the normal life cycle of a locust? Five months. See, God uses what the people, He uses the natural world as an illustration to backdrop of these spiritual truths. And their torment was a torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. In those days, men will seek death and not find it. They will desire to die, and death flees from them. See, God holds the length of our days in His hand, and He doesn’t let anybody miss this. And for five months, the whole planet gets overrun with these locust monsters.
But now look at verse 7. The shape of the locust was like horses. Their heads crowned something like gold. And their faces were like the face of men. And their hair was like women’s hair. And their teeth were like lion’s teeth. What does that mean? It means John’s saying, I don’t know what these things are. I see a little bit of, oh, they look like a lion. No, they have this long hair. Oh, they, and he just says, ah, they’re like lion’s teeth. They had breast plates like iron, like the Roman soldiers, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle, and they had tails like scorpions. And there were stings on their tails, and their power was to hurt men five months, and they had as king over them the angel of the Bottomless Pit.
So, in the abyss, the number two man, number one man is Satan, number two is this one. He’s over this whole Bottomless Pit group. And his name in Hebrew, in the Old Testament, is Abaddon. In Greek, in the New Testament, Apollyon. Isn’t that interesting? that God names these creatures and tells us their roles and ranks.
Let’s talk about him for just a second. Note just the power of the destroyer, this Abaddon, this Apollyon. He’s introduced in other parts of the Bible as the Destroyer. Most of all in Exodus 12:23. What does he do? Think about what this angel does. God pops him out of the Pit for one night. It was probably Friday the 13th.
You say, how did Friday the 13th get to be so bad? The 14th is the Passover. We know that for sure. God instituted the Passover on 14. And the Passover starts on the evening of the 13th as it turns to the 14th. So, that’s Friday night at sunset is that night. The night of Friday the 13th. Do you ever wonder why there is such a superstition about that? Because the first Friday the 13th was probably the night this guy Killed all the firstborn in Egypt, and it went down in history as a really bad time. What did he do? He comes into, he’s let out of the Pit, he can analyze, he goes like this and looks over Egypt and God gives Him assignment. He must obey God. God says I want you to kill the firstborn male of the humans in every house. How many houses were in Egypt? They figured that there had to be millions of people to build those pyramids. And we know that there were three million, just among them were the Jews. So, there were more than three million of them. So, we’re talking about millions of people. One night, one angel, has to find the oldest male child in every house. Now, we could do that in America. The Pentagon could easily do that. In about four years, they’d have to fly in mobile DNA places, and take tissue samples, and analyze them, and keep everybody penned up, and analyze them all, and look at the DNA, and the clicks, and they can see who’s the oldest, and then they find the male, and they pick him. They say, that’s the one. It would take us, for millions of people, months. With our whole military involved. This angel, into darkened houses, alone, kills the firstborn male in every house, but he avoids the ones that have blood on the door and the posts because those are protected, sealed by God. But he doesn’t stop there. He goes out back to the stable and finds the firstborn of the animals, the cattle. Now that’s harder. Veterinary DN aging process. What do you do when there’s one litter and there’s eight of them? They’re all born moments apart. That shows how powerful these beings are, and he did all of that in one night, as one angel. It’s unbelievable. Then you read about him in 2 Samuel. He goes through and kills 70,000 Jews just like that. In 1 Corinthians 10:10 Paul talks about him and here he is again.
But what that leads to is the next trumpet. Now you notice where we are. That was the fifth trumpet where we met him. Now the sixth angel comes out, comes to the edge of the balcony of Heaven, blows his trumpet, John can see on Earth, and this is what happens. Trumpet 6 releases four demons, four more demons, allowed by God to lead a demonic army that numbers two hundred million horsemen, that destroy one third of all humans. For you, it’s late. I mean we’ve got fifteen more minutes, it’s late. Don’t confuse this with the later human army, launched by Trumpet 7, that’s also led by demons, but it’s not a demonic army, it’s a human army, and they go to Armageddon.
If you read that there are two hundred million Chinese soldiers that cross the Euphrates River that’s what’s in all the popular, literature. That is called a conflation, it’s a confusing, because this army is not the army that’s coming to Armageddon. These are demons. Let’s read about it. And the first woe is past, that was bad enough. Behold, two more are coming. And here’s one of them. The six angels sound in verse 12. “I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, which is before God, saying to the six angels who had the trumpet. Release the four angels that are bound at the great river Euphrates. So, the four angels who had been prepared for the hour and the day and the month and the year were released, and they kill a third of mankind.”
Pause for a minute. While this is going on, God has His 144,000. God has His two witnesses we’re going to see in the next, after we get done today, tomorrow we’re going to see them. And, God has the Gospel angel we’re going to meet. That’s the other layer. You talk about God wants everybody to hear the Gospel, but while that’s going on, all that evangelism is going on, the army of the horsemen were two hundred million. I heard the number of them, and I saw the horses, and those that sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, sulfur yellow. The heads of the horses were like the heads of lions. Out of their mouth came fire and smoke and brimstone, and people say these are helicopters and they’re shooting missiles. No, they’re demonic creatures. They’re released and led by demons and they’re not humans. And by these plagues, one third of mankind was killed by fire, the smoke, the brimstone that came out of their mouth for the power of their mouth and in their tail and their tails are like serpents having heads.
All that to say this, look at this. We’re right here in chapter 9, looking at the fifth and sixth Trumpet, five months of Hell on Earth, and then the death of one third of all humans.
Basically, by this point in the Tribulation, 58% of all the people die. A fourth of them die in chapter 6, verses 7 and 8, and a third of them die, 58% of the population.
What does it teach us? Look how the chapter ends. Look at chapter 9, verse 20. But the rest of mankind, the other 42% that have not died yet, everybody else, look at this, who weren’t killed, did not repent. Now, up to the top of the slide, sin is far more powerful than we realize, despite all the horrors, the cataclysm, the people are still chained by their sins of rebellion, that only Christ can release them from, and they don’t want to be released. It’s probably the saddest, verse 20 and 21 of chapter 9 in the darkest chapter is the saddest verse. God has all these evangelistic tools in motion. He sent the biggest display of horror show possible, warning people of the death coming, and they would not repent.
What are they not willing to repent of? The works of their hands. They want to worship demons, number one. They want to worship idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood, number two. They can’t even see or hear or walk. Verse 21, they wouldn’t repent of their murder. They’re so hateful, they’re like their father, the devil. He was a murderer, Jesus said in John 8:44, from the beginning, people are murderous.
There are sorceries. Boy, that’s an interesting word. If you go to Logos and right click it, do you know what that word is? Pharmakeia. Now, we still have that word in America. It’s an English form of the Greek word pharmakeia. We call it pharmacy, pharmaceuticals. What this is, pharmacological, all the pharma’s are drugs. It’s called sorceries in the Bible. Why? Because what is the demon world? It’s the spirit world. What are we? We’re physical beings. What’s the portal? What’s the connection? What’s the doorway between the physical world and the spiritual world? You can’t see. It’s right here, your mind. What do people take drugs for? Because it brings them into this emotional, mental, ecstasy, or whatever it does to them. Uppers, downers, whatever they’re doing. What are they doing? They’re affecting their minds. Actually, what they’re doing is, it says right here, they’re allowing sorcery. Drug usage has always been tied to demonism. Why? Because it’s opening the door.
Do you guys live around mosquitoes? What happens when you have a screen door in your house and your grandma sitting in the chair doesn’t want to be eaten. Shut that door. Don’t open the window. That doesn’t have a screen, you don’t want any of that stuff in here. Your mind is a barrier between the spirit world and the physical world. When you have drugs, you open all the screens and the doors, and anything out there can come in. It’s horrible and they’re indwelt, and they won’t repent of their sorceries or drug use that opens her mind the demon world.
Oh, look at this. They still have time for this? All the water’s polluted. The sun is scorching them. The demons are running loose, and they will not quit their sexual immorality. You know why? They’re addicted. It no longer brings pleasure, but they are totally addicted, and they can’t get along without it. Or their thefts. Wow. Those are six terrible things.
What does all that mean? That we need to resist Satan, the Serpent, the Devil, the Deceiver, the Dragon, the Accuser. He’s alive and busy on Earth today. This is the worst. Chapter 9 is the worst. But he’s here now.
Bonnie and I had a wonderful opportunity to meet this guy. I was teaching at a missions conference, all doctors, I’ve told you about it before. And this guy was wearing his scrubs. And like they all did; I just can see them all there.
In fact, I’ve said this so many times in this class. Bonnie knows my favorite outfit I wear are my scrubs. One of the doctors listening to one of these classes online bought me a pair of doctor scrubs, and I mean they’re really nice ones, and had my name engraved on it, or monogrammed on it, and he put Dr. Barnett, Pastor. And when I’m studying, I wear my scrubs.
But I saw this guy wearing his green scrubs, and he came up to me, and he went like this. He pulled out of his pocket a moleskin. You know what a moleskin is? It’s a high-end notebook. They’re about three by five. They’re only that big, black, and they have a little rubber band around them. They’re famous. You can buy them. They’re expensive at Barnes Noble. And he pulled out his moleskin. He said, you’re in my book. Now, how would you like to be walking around with nine hundred people and one very nice doctor says, you’re in my book, and I said, thank you. What does that mean? I never knew what these people were saying. He says, let me tell you my story. I said, I want to hear your story. He says, I am, I serve in the, in Jordan on the Syrian border where ISIS is constantly working, and he says I’m on an American base and I’m in an international hospital and my wife and children go to school in a mission school that the government allows for all the military personnel and the doctors. And he said, we drive in this little area in northwestern Jordan by the Syrian border near Iraq where all the ISIS stuff was going on. I said, wow. He said, I’m a surgeon. I said, wow. You’re talking about all stuff I could never do. I couldn’t survive there. I’d probably die in the desert. I don’t know anything about surgery and you’re brave. He said, I have three blonde, stair step girls, six, four, and two. He said, every day I drive them from the military base to the mission school and I live in dread that the ISIS people will stop us. And will kill me and take my blonde wife and three blonde daughters and sell them, which is what they do, in the slave market. Because especially those girls would be very valuable for the markets that they have. He said, I live in fear. And so, what happens is, he says, I drop them all off, I go back in my car to the hospital. He said, and I’ll be washing up and prepping for surgery and getting all my gear on. He said, all of a sudden, he said, it hits me. He said, it’s like a black cloud. He said, I get so discouraged. He said, it’s like darkness comes over me. He said, it’s spiritual warfare because he says, I’m here solely because I get to share the Gospel of the Jordanian government. And the U. S. military allow these medical missionaries to share the Gospel with dying people through an interpreter while they’re doing medical work on them. And he says, so I work with people that are wounded and blown up and everything else, and I get to tell them about Jesus Christ as long as they’re alive. And the ones that survive, I get to keep talking about them. He said, so I’m a missionary in a very dark place. And he said, I’m afraid. And when I’m afraid, it opens the door to Satan’s horrible black cloud. And he said, when that comes, I can’t do surgeries. He said, I can’t even think. He said, I get so discouraged. He said, I run into the only quiet place in the hospital. He said, it’s a single stall, locked door bathroom. And he said, I put the lid down. He said, I sit down, and I pull out my moleskin. He said, that’s where you are. He said, whenever I hear a message about the Word of God that resonates in my heart, I copy the verse they were talking about, and then I read it in my Bible, and then he said, I write a prayer, just like you’re doing for your project, from the truths of that verse, I write a prayer, out, where I ask the Lord to do what that says, and he says, this morning, you were teaching on the fact, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and Thy word was for me, the joy and rejoicing of my heart, for I am called by Your name, O LORD of Hosts,” and he said, I didn’t listen to anything else you said. They all tell me that. He said, I just got that one verse and got my moleskin out and I wrote that verse out. I found it in my Bible, and he said, and I wrote down a prayer and said, Lord, when I’m feeling the dark cloud coming over me and when I’m paralyzed by Satan, he said, I’m going to read that out loud, that verse and that prayer. And he said, you know what? That’s the only way I’m still a doctor. He said, in my little locked in, single stall bathroom, he said, I pull out my moleskin, I read the verse, I pray the prayer out loud, and he said, I’m sitting there, asking God to help, and he said, I can feel the dark cloud rise. And he said, I go back out and do my job and share the Gospel and go get my wife and kids, and Satan can no longer give me a spirit of fear in that day. Ephesians 6 basically says what he told me. And that is the only offensive weapon to resist the devil we have is the Sword of the Spirit.
Let’s get to chapter 10. We have exactly four minutes, but it’s the shortest chapter and we can do it. Here it is. “I saw still another mighty angel coming down from Heaven.” Do you know what people say? Jesus is showing up now on Earth. He’s clothed with a cloud, He has a rainbow on His head, His face is like the sun, His feet are like a pillar. It must be Jesus. No. Look at this, Jesus is never portrayed as an angel in the New Testament. He is in the Old Testament; you all have covered that. Christophanies, Theophanes, the Angel of the Lord, but not here.
This is an angel sent to tell him about the plan. Again, we’re going between Earth and Heaven, and Earth and Heaven, and down on Earth, a third of everybody’s getting wiped out, and they’re hard heartedly not repenting. And this angel is coming, holding the plan. Here it is. He had this little book open in his hand. “He set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land.” What he’s saying is God has a plan, and He’s unfolding it, and He’s going to do it, and that’s what this whole thing’s about. And He tells John to eat the book, and it’s going to be sweet in his mouth and sour in his stomach.
What’s He telling him about? And what was the early church getting from this message? Why? You’re here at Word of Life. The discipline of Scripture is vital. Jesus said this, man shall not live by bread alone. The only way to live is to read the Word of God, every Word of God. How long does it take to read the whole Bible? I hear a lot of A-students out there. Seventy-two hours. Every Word of God.
Memorize the Word of God. Joshua said the only way to prosper. I’m meeting you. You’re going to be architects, and engineers, and mechanics, and in the medical fields, and some you’re going to be evangelists, and some you’re going to be in children’s ministry. I’ve heard all these different, Bonnie and I have met about fifty of you so far, almost half. Do you want to prosper? The only way to prosper in whatever you’re going to do, this Book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. Then you’ll prosper and have good success.
Read the Word, it’s the only way to live. Memorize the Word, it’s the only way to prosper in whatever you do, and God wants you to prosper in whatever you do. Meditate on the Word. That’s the Jeremiah verse; it’s the only way to have joy and rejoicing through life.
This is the real alien invasion. And this is the only hope we have. The Sword of the Spirit, that’s the Word of God.
