The Book of Revelation: Chapters 7-9

This study is going to be concerned with chapters 7 and 8 and maybe a little bit more, depending on how the time goes. So let’s barrow right into it.  

Book of Revelation 7:1:

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.

The number four here—four is the number of the Earth, because it was on Day Four that the land was divided from the waters. And so when you see ‘four’ like this, you know that it’s having to do with Planet Earth. 

Verse 2—well, first of all, these angels are stationed in each of the compass directions and their job is to hold back the wind from any direction and to prevent it from blowing on the land or the sea or on any tree. Now do you know what that would mean? That means that for the duration of that time there is no weather because weather comes with the wind, right? And so there’s no weather. That means that it’s not going to rain; there is not going to be any breeze. It is just going to be still. 

Now we learn in other places here that this will take place for some time; this is only one of two times that the Book of Revelation mentions this. When we see the Two Witnesses coming up a little later on in the book, you’ll see that again, the Earth is deprived of any rain for three and a half years. So you can imagine what happens, how dry things get and how difficult things would be. But that’s what’s happening now.

In verse 2 it says:

Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.

Some people believe that this number is a symbolic number, but I don’t think so. Later on, in the Book of Revelation we are going to see 144,000 used as a symbolic number, but I don’t think it is here because in verse 5 we read that He is going to seal from the Tribe of Judah 12,000 people: 

From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed,

from the tribe of Reuben 12,000,

from the tribe of Gad 12,000,

from the tribe of Asher 12,000,

from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000,

from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000,

from the tribe of Simeon 12,000,

from the tribe of Levi 12,000,

from the tribe of Issachar 12,000,

from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000,

from the tribe of Joseph 12,000,

from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000.

He has just named off twelve tribes and he’s got 12,000 people sealed from each one of them for a total (obviously) of 144,000. So because of that, because it gets specific about identifying who gets sealed and how many from each of the twelve tribes that he’s named, I don’t think this is a symbolic number. I think these are 144,000, what we call today Messianic Jews. They are going to be given a job of evangelizing the Earth, that’s going to be their job. The seal that God is going to put in their foreheads is going to protect them while they do this.  

A couple of times before this has happened. The one that’s mentioned in Scripture most obviously is in Ezekiel 9:2-4 where in a vision Ezekiel saw people being sealed. 

Here’s what it looks like. It’s in Ezekiel 9:2-4 and I’m just going to start with Ezekiel 9:1:

Then I heard him call out in a loud voice, “Bring near those who are appointed to execute judgment on the city, each with a weapon in his hand.”

(This is the Lord speaking.)

And I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with a deadly weapon in his hand. With them was a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side. They came in and stood beside the bronze altar.

(That’s in the temple.)

Now the glory of the God of Israel went up from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. 

What he is saying is that it went up above the cherubim, and that means it was seated on the Mercy Seat, which is on top of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. So obviously Ezekiel is seeing this in a vision because nobody could get in there and see this happening.  And so he is being shown all this as happening.

The glory of God, that’s the Holy Spirit, what is called in the Old Testament as the Shekinah glory; it’s the Old Testament presence of God. He dwelt in the Holy of Holies and He sat on the Mercy Seat which was the solid gold top cover of the Ark of the Covenant. They had two representations of two cherubim, one on either side, and He sat between them. Sometimes He is called in the Old Testament, ‘He who dwells between the cherubim’ because that’s where He sat. 

So it says that He moved up from above there and moved to the threshold of the temple. We’re still on verse 3 now:

Then the Lord called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side and said to him, “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.”

What He is saying is, He is telling this, quote, “man” (because it is also a supernatural figure who looks like a man) He is saying, “Go throughout Jerusalem and put a mark in the foreheads of each person who, in his heart, is troubled by all the terrible things that are going on here.  Things that are idolatrous and that are opposed to Me and that are detestable to Me.”  

He says, “Whenever you find somebody whose heart is sick over that, that is a sign that they are still faithful to Me. So, put a mark on their forehead, and then once you’ve got them all marked,” (He’s saying to the six men who came from the direction of the gate, also angels) He’s saying to them, “Once all the people who are still faithful to Me have been marked, go throughout the city and slaughter everybody else.” This was this judgment that was coming against the people of Israel for their idolatry and for their disobedience to God.  

The mark He had put in their foreheads is called a tau. It looks like a cross. It can be an ‘X’ shape or a lower case ‘T’ and that was the symbol for the letter that they call ‘tau’. It is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet.  

In the Old Testament, God would say, “I am the Aleph and the Tau.” 

In the New Testament, He would say, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” So, you had this ‘T’ or this cross being used as the mark there.

Now an interesting little sidelight here, because I think we’ve got enough time to do a little wandering around. 

In the first verse of Genesis, it reads:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, if you were reading that in the Hebrew you would see two untranslated letters after the word for ‘God’. One letter is an ‘aleph’ and the other letter is a ‘tau’.  

And so, Genesis 1:1 would say:

In the beginning God (the Aleph and the Tau) created the heavens and the Earth.
Or, in the Greek, God (the alpha and the omega).

Who else also claims to be the Alpha and the Omega? Jesus does; He says so in the Book of Revelation and other places, He is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega.

Turn with me now to Zechariah for just a minute, the Book of Zechariah. We’re way off the track here but I think this will be worth your while. Take a look at Zechariah 12:10 says:

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

This is the awakening of Israel, toward the end of the Great Tribulation, to the fact that Jesus is their Messiah and to the realization that He has been here before and they put Him to death.  He says, “I will pour out a spirit of grace and supplication upon My people and then they will look on Me whom they have pierced.”  That’s an Old Testament euphemism for crucified.

Now, if you were reading this verse in Hebrew, where it says, “They will look upon Me,” right after that word ‘Me’ there are two untranslated letters. Guess what they are? The Aleph and the Tau. And so, whoever they are looking upon, in Zechariah 12:10, turns out to be the same person who created the heavens and the Earth in Genesis 1:1. Of course, we know from reading John 1 that:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  

It says, all things were created by Him. The One who was with God and the One who also was God.  

Okay, so this little clue that you get—and by the way, I’ve looked this up. This is not some crazy guy giving you something, you know. [laughs] I’ve looked this up, and in the Hebrew, those two letters are there. It’s an ‘A’ and a ‘T’; what we would call an A and a T. It’s the Aleph, the first letter, and the Tau. 

So the Aleph and the Tau is what they marked them with. So, if they do it the same way in Revelation 7, then these 144,000 are going to have a supernatural sign of the cross, basically, in their foreheads. They are going to be identified as belonging to God. And the angels that are sent to bring this judgment upon the Earth cannot do anything until those 144,000 are marked.

That’s one little thing I wanted you to see. 

The second thing I want you to see here before we move on, is the fact that although there are twelve tribes listed, there are two tribes missing. Now how can that be? There are only twelve, right? But there are two that are missing. How can you do that? 

Well, here’s how that happens:

In Genesis 48 when Israel (Jacob) was finally brought down to Egypt from Canaan (as it was called then) at the end of the famine when Joseph had revealed himself to his brothers—do you remember? He told them to ‘go back and get the rest of the family and bring them down here, we want them here and we’ll take care of them here.’

And so, the brothers went back. They brought Jacob and they brought all the rest of the family, which numbered seventy. They brought them all down and Jacob’s now in Egypt. He and Joseph are becoming reacquainted, and Joseph says, “By the way Dad, I’ve got two kids!” 

And Jacob said, “I never thought I’d see you again! Now I’m going to get a chance to see your children too? Bring them here!”  

So, he brings the two kids in. Their names are Ephraim and Manasseh, as you know. He blesses them, and he says, “These children are mine.” Jacob’s saying this: “These children are mine.”  He says, “My wife, Rebecca, God rest her soul, she passed away on me. We buried her in Bethlehem. I miss her terribly. We wanted to have more children. I’m taking these two as my own.” 

He says to Joseph, “All the other children you have are yours. These two are mine.” And he said to him, “I’m going to give each of them half of your tribal allotment when we get back to the Promised Land.”  

So, the tribal allotment that really belonged to Joseph went half to Ephraim and half to Manasseh.  

Okay, so now you’ve got Jacob’s twelve plus two; so you have fourteen. And now you can fiddle around with the names and you can have twelve and still leave some out. For example, when they went to war, the Levites were never supposed to go to war. But, you’ll have lists of tribes going to war and you’ll find there are twelve. By using Ephraim and Manasseh and leaving out Joseph and Levi, you get twelve. You see how they do that?

Now here, he’s left two people out, but they are harder to find.  The first clue is in the fact that he lists down here one, two, three, four, five, six names down, you see the tribe of Manasseh.  Right? So you know that he’s not leaving out Ephraim and Manasseh because he’s got Manasseh listed there. But then you get down to number eleven and it says, “and the Tribe of Joseph, 12,000.”

Well, do you remember what I just said? Joseph’s tribe was divided into two parts, Ephraim and Manasseh. But here in this list, he’s got Manasseh and Joseph—no Ephraim. Now obviously, the tribe of Ephraim is there. But when you take the tribe of Manasseh out of Joseph, what you have left is Ephraim, right? But he doesn’t call him Ephraim. He calls him Joseph. He doesn’t want to mention Ephraim’s name; I’ll show you why.

The other one I want to show you is, one, two, three, four up from Joseph you’ll see Levi. (It’s three up, I’m sorry. It’s four, counting Joseph but it’s three up from Joseph.) And so, he’s got Levi in there. And so, Levi’s mentioned, Joseph’s mentioned, and Manasseh’s mentioned; the only one of the obvious ones that could have been mentioned but isn’t, is Ephraim.  

Now if you know your tribes really well, you can go through there and you can figure out which one is missing. It happens to be Dan. Dan is not mentioned at all. Dan is left out completely and Ephraim is only there by inference, he happens to be there but called Joseph instead of Ephraim.  

Now, why would the Holy Spirit do that? Why would God want to leave out two of these tribes?  

Because what he is saying up above here, is to these angels bringing judgment upon the Earth, “You can’t do anything until I have these people sealed.” The sealing prevents them from being harmed. But Dan’s people are not sealed, which leaves them exposed. While Ephraim’s people are sealed, they’re not mentioned as being so they kind of get the ‘back of His hand’ so to speak. They’re there, but it’s like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ They’re there, but don’t say anything about them.

It turns out, when you look back in 1 Kings 12—let’s do that, let’s go to 1 Kings 12. (I know I’m going to have you jumping around the Bible a lot tonight, so I hope you know the order of books.)  I’ve got these Pharisee tabs, so I can do it pretty quickly. 12:28 is what we are looking for and we’re going to back up and start reading in 12:26 because that is what will get us into the context here.  

What you want to understand here is that David has died, Solomon has died, and the kingdom has been divided, just like God told them He would. He said, “I don’t want to embarrass David. The Kingdom has gone into idolatry, I don’t want to embarrass David and so I’m not going to judge them until Solomon has died. But as soon as Solomon has died there is going to be civil war and the kingdom will get split up.”

Rehoboam, who is a son of Solomon, takes over in the South and Jeroboam, who is one of their officers, takes over in the north and becomes the head of the Northern Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom, by the way, gets called Ephraim. And so, when we read about Ephraim, you want to remember that. 

Okay, to 1 Kings 12:26:

Jeroboam thought to himself, “The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.”

Jeroboam is afraid that if he doesn’t do something, the people will gravitate back toward the worship of God and the temple in Jerusalem and therefore, will choose Rehoboam then as their king, the civil war will be over, the country will be put back together and Jeroboam will be put to death. 

And so in verse 26, you see there what he’s trying to do. Now here’s how he solves his problem:

After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves.

Remember, the two golden calves are what got them into trouble in the wilderness, right? 

He said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

It’s the very same thing that Aaron had said to the Israelites in the wilderness that got them into so much trouble; he’s repeating it. 

One he set up in Bethel,

(Which is a city in the territory of Ephraim.)

and the other in Dan.

(Which, of course, is in the territory of Dan.)

And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.

So, Dan gets pinned, I guess you could say. He gets pinned with the accusation that it was through the tribe of Dan that idolatry was introduced back into Israel.

Now Dan, he was warned that these kinds of things would happen, and it looks like as you look up references to him in the Old Testament you see that almost from the beginning, they knew something bad was going to happen there and they sort of treated him as if it had already happened. We’ll look at those in a minute.

But by the way, when you get to 2 Kings 10:29, it’s a hundred years later and that golden calf is still being worshipped in Dan, up north. It was the northernmost of the territories, up next to the border of Lebanon.  

So, we want to look at some things that we can see about Dan. Some of them are just interesting to know, and some of them are more critical to know. If you go all the way back to Genesis 46—I could just read these to you if you don’t want to get blisters on your thumbs trying to find them all. Genesis 46 is one of them. 

In Genesis 46 they are telling about all the people who come down to Egypt with Jacob and they are giving the descendants of each of the twelve sons. They start with Reuben the firstborn and they talk about who his sons are. They talk about Simeon and who his sons are; Levi and who his sons are; Issachar, who his sons are; and they list the names of the prominent members of each of these tribes. 

They get down to Dan, in verse 23 it says:

The son of Dan:

Hushim.

And that’s all it says. It gives one, quote, “name” for all the sons of Dan, Hushim. It turns out the name Hushim simply means Others. And so, when he’s listing the tribe of Dan, having listed the prominent people in all the other tribes, when he gets to the tribe of Dan he just says, “Dan and the others.” Then he goes on, lists the sons of Naphtali, and all. He lists them all—all except Dan, Dan gets left out.  

By the way, the story of Ephraim and Manasseh is in Genesis 48 so you can look that up there on your own if you want to. But if you go into Genesis 49, in verse 16, where Jacob, who is on his deathbed now, is giving a prophecy over each of his twelve sons. (49:16) And he gives these prophecies about what’s going to happen to the descendants from each tribe and in verse 16, he says:

Genesis 49:16

“Dan will provide justice for his people

It’s interesting that the word dan means judge and the most famous judge from the tribe of Dan was Samson. So, in that sense they’re right. The whole prophecy’s right, but what I mean is, he did provide justice for the people. [laughing] Sorry. That should have been self-evident.

So Dan will provide justice for his people.

And then it says:

as one of the tribes of Israel.

Then it says, verse 17, here’s the rest of the story:

Dan will be a snake by the roadside,

    a viper along the path,

that bites the horse’s heels

    so that its rider tumbles backward.

The prophecy is basically saying Dan is going to be responsible for the people stumbling. And of course, the idolatry is one evidence of that. Some believe that Dan was one of the ringleaders involved in the kidnapping of Joseph and selling him into slavery.

There is a tradition in Jewish—I won’t say in Scripture or theology or anything like that—but in Jewish thought there is a tradition that from the tribe of Dan will come either the antiChrist or the False Prophet. One of the two of them could come out of the tribe of Dan and that’s another reason why he doesn’t get sealed during this time.  

You notice that Joseph, his allotment is split in half. But if you look at the map of how the tribes were allocated, you’ll find out that Joseph’s portion was huge. It’s all of central Israel, on both sides of the Jordan River. Between the two of them they got the biggest share of land in the whole thing, and some of the best land there is. Because the rights of the firstborn to get a double portion of the father’s inheritance went all the way down to Joseph because each of the others somehow disqualified himself.  

Reuben, Simeon, and Levi disqualified themselves by going out and killing this town after one of the sons got involved with the only girl in the family, Dinah. They disqualified themselves. Reuben also slept with one of his father’s concubines, that disqualified him. Judah got into trouble by sleeping with his daughter in law, that disqualified him. All of them got disqualified for one reason or another. 

So, Joseph (who was actually the eleventh-born, I believe, isn’t he?) gets the rights to the firstborn, the double portion. This was a family, Jacob’s family, would have made a great soap opera today. [laughs] I don’t know why somebody hasn’t thought of that; it’s probably because it comes out of the Bible, they probably rejected it for that reason. But it would hold its own with any other show on TV today for all the goofy stuff that went on there, and that’s saying something if you’ve seen any of the stuff on TV lately.

Okay, so Dan is left out; Ephraim, any mention only by inference. But you still have twelve tribes. So, that’s what we wanted to talk about there. 

Dan apparently redeems himself during the Great Tribulation, because when we get to Ezekiel 48, which is where the land is redistributed during the Millennium, Dan is the very first one to get his portion. And so, apparently he redeems himself somehow through the Great Tribulation. 

We don’t know how that happens, but we do know that he is brought back into the family, so to speak, and becomes well enough respected to be the very first one to get a portion of land in the Millennium.  

All right. So, what we’ve got here now is, we’ve got somebody that’s called this group the “144,000 Jewish Billy Grahams” and they can’t be killed, which makes them even more powerful. They are going to run around the world now, evangelizing the world. This is one of the agencies through which God brings the Gospel to all the people on Earth at the end of the age.  

Now verse 9:

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,

who sits on the throne,

and to the Lamb.”

All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:

“Amen!

Praise and glory

and wisdom and thanks and honor

and power and strength

be to our God for ever and ever.

Amen!”

Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”

 John, in verse 14, says: 

I answered, “Sir, you know.”

Today we would use a phrase more like, “You tell me.” Because John doesn’t know who they are and he knows the guy asking him really does. The reason he’s asking the question is to see if John knows. But John doesn’t know them and so he says back to him in verse 14, 

“Sir, you know.” In other words, “You tell me.” 

And he did:

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 

This is the group, or part of the group, that we call today Tribulation saints. Tribulation martyrs is a more accurate term because saints—there will be Tribulation saints left on the Earth. But these are part of the Tribulation saints and they are also part of the Tribulation martyrs. 

These are believers who missed the rapture because they hadn’t made up their mind yet. 

Probably, at least partly, because of the rapture, they’ve gone back and done their homework and recognized the mistake they’d made and come to the Lord. These are the main characters from the Left Behind series, right? They all were non-believers when the rapture came, they didn’t believe it was coming, they didn’t believe they had to make that kind of a choice. Then boom! The rapture comes and they realize that they have missed the greatest opportunity and now they can get Plan B which is to come to the faith during the Great Tribulation at tremendous personal risk. Many of them wind up being martyred for their faith. These are the ones that are in view here.  

The other thing that makes this Plan B is, look at their destiny. Verse 15: 

Therefore,

“they are before the throne of God

    and serve him day and night in his temple;

and he who sits on the throne

    will shelter them with his presence.

‘Never again will they hunger;

    never again will they thirst.

The sun will not beat down on them,’

    nor any scorching heat.

For the Lamb at the center of the throne

    will be their shepherd;

‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’

    ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

Pretty nice duty but it’s not the job description that the Church has. And so these tribulation martyrs, along with other tribulation saints, get a very nice reward; but it’s not the reward that the Church receives.  

You see, the Church is an absolutely unique group of people in all of the history of mankind. No one else gets the reward the Church gets.  

What reward does the Church get? Well, first of all, instead of being servants in the Temple of God, we are kings and priests. A rank—at least a rank—above. Now, being servants in the temple of God is not a bad duty, but it’s not like being in charge of things.  

Secondly, the Church is called joint heirs with Christ in all of His inheritance. What does the Psalm say His inheritance is? 

Psalm 110 [Psalm 2:8] says:

Ask me,

    and I will make the nations your inheritance,

Jesus inherits the whole world, and the Church is co-heir of God’s estate, if you will. 

You say, “Well what good would that do? God has to die before His estate’s any good.”

He did, remember at the cross? Paul makes a big thing about that. 

He says a testimony, or a testament (a will) is no good unless the person dies. But this One died; He died on the cross. So, His ‘will’ became effective. 

That means that the Church has inherited part of His estate, because, having believed in Jesus we have been adopted into the family.  

Romans 8  tells us this, and also Galatians 4. Being now sons and daughters of God, we are now heirs as well, joint heirs with Christ. Do you know all that from other studies we’ve done? All right.

There is no mention of any inheritance here for these tribulation martyrs. They are protected, they have an eternal destiny of happiness and fulfillment, but it’s not the same as the Church gets because the Church is elevated above every other classification of human, from Adam the first man, all the way to the very last man ever created.  

All right. So that’s chapter 7. 

Now we’ve got to get back to the business on Earth because, you see, since we got to verse 9, we’ve been in heaven with the tribulation martyrs. 

And now, chapter 8 is going to focus back on events taking place on Earth. Chapter 8 begins the second cycle of judgments known as the seven Trumpet Judgments; but of course we’ve only had six of the Seal Judgments and so the first thing we are going to see is the seventh Seal Judgment and what you’re going to discover is, the last judgment of the previous cycle introduces the first judgment of the following one. And so the last Seal Judgement introduces the Trumpets; the last Trumpet Judgment introduces the Bowls. There are three cycles.  

This is a good time to remind you, the Seal Judgment appears to be associated with Jesus.  The Trumpet Judgment appears to be associated with the Holy Spirit. And the Bowl Judgments, the last cycle, appears to be associated directly with God. So the Trinity, each member of the Trinity, is prominent in one of these cycles: The Son, the Spirit and then the Father.  

Chapter 8, verse 1:

When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

Can you imagine? Absolute silence for half an hour. This is to build suspense. I mean, after thirty seconds of silence most people get uncomfortable. [laughs] What they say when you are setting up voicemail and things like that for phone systems, they say after about five seconds, in peoples’ minds, they’ve been switched from ‘Hold’ to ‘Ignore’. And so we pretty soon get the idea that, when there is silence, that the focus is somewhere else. 

Well, here, the focus, the silence, is meant to heighten the suspense and to get everybody’s attention on what’s going to happen; and for half an hour everything is still. Everything is quiet.  And people are standing there holding their breath. Waiting to see what will happen.  

Now, in heaven, you can hold your breath for half an hour! [laughing] You can’t do that on Earth but in heaven they can do that.  

Verse 2:

And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.

Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. 

He’s an intercessor and he’s there on behalf of the people on Earth who are believers who are going to be down there when these judgments strike. So, he is there praying for them. 

The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.

Now, these are always warnings of judgment. Whenever you see this group of events taking place in the Book of Revelation, it means big judgment coming, and that’s the warning.  

Verse 6:

Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them.

The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth.

Now, these judgments are pretty clear; they don’t need a whole lot of interpretation. So I’m just going to let your imagination have this. These first several (there are four of them) are very reminiscent of the plagues in Egypt.  

Remember they had fire, and they had hail, and they had blood in the plagues of Egypt. You’ll find pretty much this is a repetition of the plagues of Egypt, only on a worldwide scale coming in these Trumpet Judgments. 

and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.

Now you remember, there hasn’t been any wind blowing so everything is pretty parched anyway. Now the fire comes on Earth and now you’ve got the whole world on fire. One-third of it consumed in this fire. 

You can imagine the smoke; and I want you to try to visualize that: a third of the Earth is being burned in a grass fire. If you’ve ever seen the pictures of the brush fires, we have out in California every year, if you’ve ever seen pictures of that and how the smoke broils up from those—well, think of a third of the Earth under that kind of a situation and how much smoke it would generate. But, we’re not done yet.

Verse 8:

The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea.

This might be the meteor you guys were talking about earlier. Something, some big meteor comes out of the sky and crashes into the sea here.

A third of the sea turned into blood,

(Because of this meteor.) 

a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

Obviously a big meteor like that coming down creates a huge tidal wave like the tsunami that was created; it capsizes ships, and all kinds of things happen. Just so you’ll know, a third of the ships last year in 2005, officially there were 130,000 ships registered in the US under the flags of 195 different countries. So a third of 130,000—43,000 or so—ships capsize and sink in this event and obviously, all the cargo and sailors and everything with them. And so it would be a huge event.  

Verse 10:

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water—the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

Now this is interesting. Wormwood is a very bitter tasting herb, it is the product from which the liquor absinthe is made. If you know anything about it (I don’t but the people have told me) you have to be careful when you buy this stuff because if it is not made just right, it will poison you.  People die from drinking the stuff. It’s a very popular drink over in Eastern Europe. You’ll see it glamorized on TV from time to time, I think it’s blue and it comes when you buy it in special little glasses. But you have to be very careful because you can die from it. Absinthe comes from wormwood.

Now, the thing that’s fascinated most people about this in recent years is the fact that Wormwood in Russian is Chernobyl. And if you know anything about recent history you know that Chernobyl is the city in which a nuclear reactor went out of control a few years ago.

Did you know that in England there are still pasture lands that they still can’t use because of that Chernobyl disaster? I was just reading this the other day. There are pasture lands in England and Scotland where any sheep who graze on those pasture lands have to be brought into an inspection for radiation before they can be sold or slaughtered or put on the market. There are many pasture lands that are off limits. You can’t use them even now (I don’t know how many years ago it was, and this was hundreds of miles from the scene) but there’s a swathe of it all the way across Europe and all the way into England where the land is still unusable because of this. 

Did you know that the reactor is still going? Every once in a while it flares up. They pour tons and tons of cement into it but it’s still going.  

Do you remember the movie, The China Syndrome? Well, it’s happening in Chernobyl. This reactor will burn its way down through the crust of the Earth eventually. 

What they show happening here is that it gets into the aquifers, the underground water systems, and it poisons a third of the Earth’s water. And people who drink the water die from it.

Now, I don’t know if that’s what’s in view here or not, but I just think it’s interesting that we’ve got an out-of-control nuclear reactor in Russia. It’s burrowing itself down into the ground. Its name is Wormwood. And if it gets into the underground water supply it will poison much of the water in Europe and Asia. 

So, that may be happening. It may be just wild speculation. Who knows? But that’s one you can think about.  

So, when you get home tonight, get out your computer and Google Chernobyl and see what the latest is. I was going to do it today, but then I ran out of time and so I didn’t get it done. But the last time I checked the reactor didn’t ever go out. They just plugged everything up with cement. It’s still burning. Because that stuff doesn’t go out. And so when you get home tonight, look it up and see what happens.  

Okay. Verse 12:

The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.

Now personally, I believe that this is due to all the smoke. They say that if a big meteor would hit the Earth—and this is what they say happened once in history, by the way. They say the big meteor struck the Earth and it threw up so much stuff into the atmosphere that it turned the Earth dark for several years. Plants all died. Vegetation was destroyed and that’s what killed off all the dinosaurs. This is science’s answer to what happened to the dinosaurs. 

And of course, they say it happened millions of years ago. We, of course, believe that dinosaurs were all killed in the Flood and that’s how they happened. But others think differently.  

But the point is, that a big enough meteorite strike on the Earth could throw up enough debris onto the air along with all the smoke from the grass fires and all the other stuff that’s going on, it could throw enough debris up into the atmosphere to cause the Earth to be darkened. 

And the way I read this here, it looks like a third of the sun’s light can no longer get through.  And at night the same. One third of the stars can no longer be seen because of the haze in the air. A third of the moon’s light doesn’t make it to Earth and a third of the sun’s light.  

Now I used to believe that they were talking here about something big enough striking the Earth so that it spun us up, so the rotation went up to sixteen hours instead of twenty four. But as I went back and checked the actual Greek here it doesn’t appear that way. Because, when this says here “a third of the sun was struck and a third of the moon” in the Greek it says, “A third of the sun’s light and a third of the moon’s light.”  

So, it’s not the sun and the moon being struck, it’s the light that comes from them that’s being affected. So I no longer believe that it’s a speed-up of the spin rate on our axis, I believe it’s mostly caused by the debris up in the upper atmosphere that turns everything dark.

This is also a reversal, if you’re watching these kinds of things—remember when in the wilderness Moses found the bitter water and they couldn’t drink it and he threw the stick into the water and it became sweet? This is a reversal of that. Now the sweet water is becoming bitter.  

Verse 13 says:

As I watched, I heard an eagle

That’s not a good translation. Some translations say ‘angel’ and that’s not a good translation either because it’s neither an angel nor an eagle. 

What it is literally, is a griffon vulture. 

The Greek word describes a griffon vulture which is an ugly looking thing. If you’ve ever seen griffons hanging off the edges of these buildings in Europe—griffon vultures looking down at you, that’s what they are. They were just a lot of stone and put up there to scare the birds away.  

Okay. So, whatever it is:

As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!”

So, there are three more judgments coming. Now I think you’ve got a pretty clear picture of those first three, there wasn’t a whole lot of explanation necessary. They could all be classified as natural disasters. 

Spontaneous grass fires, an asteroid striking the Earth, a nuclear plant goes wild and poisons the water. These are things that could be considered natural disasters by somebody who wanted to see them that way. We know where they’re coming from because we’ve been up in heaven and watched how they were thrown onto the Earth. But the people on Earth so far, could see these things as natural disasters. Now watch what happens.  

Chapter 9, verse 1. I think we’ll try to get through chapter 9 here.

[Question from audience:
Hey Jack, what is the timing of this? Is this during the Tribulation? 

Jack:
The Great Tribulation hasn’t begun yet. This is before, this is the lead up. The Great Tribulation begins in chapter 13, so we’re still in the first half of that last seven-year period on earth. Some call it the tribulation period. Some call it the Beginning of Sorrows. It’s literally the first half of Daniel’s Seventieth Week; that last seven-year period of history before the Kingdom Age. 

And you’ll notice that the judgments are partial. It’s not getting the whole world yet. Remember, in the Seal Judgments a fourth of the world was affected. In the Seal Judgments when we talked about those in Revelation 6. Now we’re talking about the Trumpet Judgments and a third of the world, which is a bigger piece, is being affected by that. When we get into the Great Tribulation, it becomes worldwide. So, there are still many parts in the world who are relatively unscathed by these things.]

But watch what’s happening next.  

Revelation 9:1:

The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth.

A star that had fallen. Literally, ‘that previously had fallen from the sky to the Earth.’ 

Luke 10:18 has an interesting comment that might tie into that. It comes right out of the blue.  The disciples have just come back from their missionary trip around Israel, seventy two of them.  Luke 10 is talking about how He appointed seventy two disciples and sent them out two by two into every town and place.  

Verse 17:

The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’ Does that sound similar to ‘a star that had fallen from heaven’? Especially when this star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss, the Underworld? Don’t we see that (from our mythology, mostly) as Satan’s domain, the Underworld?

I think there’s a very key tie-in there. The shaft of the Abyss. The Deep, it is sometimes called; from the translation of the word Abysso which is where Abyss comes from. It’s bottomless,  it’s like a bottomless pit, basically.  

By the way, you can only have a bottomless pit in the center of the world, did you know that?  Because from there every direction is up. So, there’s no “down”, so it’s bottomless. [laughs] It really makes sense. Just like the North Pole—every place is south from there, right? You can’t go north from the North Pole. Every direction is south. You can’t go down from the bottom because every direction is up. Bottomless Pit; the Abyss.

When he opened the Abyss,

(This ‘he’ identifies this ‘star’ as being a person, not some meteor.)

When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened

(As they already have been.)

by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth.

And there’s another tie-back to that Luke 10:18 version, because the Lord said, “I give you authority to stomp on snakes and scorpions” right? And now you hear scorpions being mentioned again. This is just circumstantial, but it may tie in here.  

Verse 4:

They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 

Now that’s strange because locusts are vegetarians. That’s all they eat—grass and trees.  These locusts are told not to eat grass or trees or plants. So, these are not your ordinary, garden-variety locusts. 

There is something strange going on here. Locusts also don’t attack humans and they don’t have stingers like scorpions; but these do. And who is their target? Those people who do not have the seal of God in their foreheads.  

If you read this literally, what it says is, only the 144,000 have been spoken of as having that seal in their forehead. Many commentators (if you’ve read the Left Behind series, this is how they did it) go to Ephesians 1:13 that says, “You were sealed with the Holy Spirit when you first heard the word of your salvation and believed.”

They extrapolate that ‘seal’ into something that is visible in the supernatural world. Do you remember how in the series, if you read it, that they can see the seal in each other’s foreheads but nobody else can see them because it’s a supernatural seal?  

You and I have such a seal. It cannot be seen in the physical world but in the supernatural world it is visible. It marks us as belonging to God. So, it limits any access that any tormentors or tricks-players can have to us. It’s only with God’s permission that the enemy can have access to us at all, and that permission is only granted to help us come closer. That’s what the whole Book of Job is about, to help us get rid of something that is holding us back.  

And so, the Lord will permit us to be tinkered with to a certain level by our enemy for the purpose of bringing us the victory over something in our life. That seal we have is visible in the supernatural realm and that’s what people use to make all believers immune from these locust attacks. Now, I don’t know if they are or not. It doesn’t say that literally. It says here that only the people who had the seal of God on the foreheads would be exempt from these attacks. I don’t know how the Lord is going to work that out. He didn’t ask my opinion about this, so He just went ahead and decided that on His own. But anyway, at least the 144,000 are immune from these attacks, maybe others.  

Verse 5:

They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. 

Now this has never happened to me, but I’ve heard tell that the scorpion bite is the most painful that you can get. The poison from the scorpion agonizes, puts people in utter agony.  I pray that that never happens to me because I don’t have a high tolerance for pain. These scorpions, the thing is not deadly, but it can afflict people for up to five months. And the agony they suffered was like the sting of a scorpion.  

Verse 6:

During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

That’s another fascinating verse because, if you read it literally it says you can’t kill yourself to get rid of this. Those who are afflicted like this will be prevented from even committing suicide.  That will make for an interesting time and if you’ve got a warped sense of humor like I have you can picture people going around shooting themselves and blowing half their head away, but they are still alive, people walking around like that. I don’t know if that’s how it’s going to happen or not and I’m just thankful that we don’t have to deal with that. It won’t be a fun time. Nobody in his right mind, understanding Plan A (gets saved by asking for it during the Church age), would reject Plan A in favor of Plan B. Nobody. Of course, a lot of people will and it won’t always be because they are not in their right minds. A lot of people just won’t feel the urgency to do anything until it’s too late.

[Question from the audience about the five months being described here.

Jack:
Yes it did. Exactly 150 days. And so there might be a tie-in there; that the five months here is reminiscent of the five months in the Flood. It’s another circumstantial thing. I’ve got a note like that in my Bible as well so we must have been in the same study here earlier on!]

So now verse 7—and here is where it is going to be tough for the—I’ve begun to call them ‘anti-Christians’. Here’s where it’s going to be tough for the anti-Christians to say this is a natural disaster like they could have in the first three.

And you know, that’s how it was with the plagues. It’s the same time. In the beginning, you know how the priests of Pharaoh could duplicate what Moses was doing, they turned water into blood, and they did this and that. But when it got to attacking their religion—I think it was the plague of the gnats which made them ceremonially unclean and therefore unable to contact their gods, when the two priests Jambres and (I forget the other guy’s name) the two priests of Pharaoh, said, “You’d better stop tinkering around with this Pharaoh, because this is coming from God.  This is not some natural—we can’t duplicate these things! These are being done by the finger of God.”  And that’s I think what people are going to start realizing here when they see this judgment coming.  

Quite honestly, I’m not going to try to speculate much about these locusts except to say that they aren’t ordinary, natural locusts. These are some kind of supernatural entity. Books have been written, some very, very creative imaginations have been used to try to explain to us what’s really going on here. 

Some people take the view that John had a hopeless, impossible task in trying to describe with his 1st century vocabulary what a 21st century weapons system would look like. And so, some say what these locusts really were are attack helicopters and they fired rockets out of their front and out of their back, and that’s where their stingers and things like that came from. We even have Stinger missiles that people talk about. I don’t know if that’s what John was seeing or not.  But it looks more to me as if these are some sort of supernatural weaponry that has a life of its own. 

You may think that’s pretty far-fetched, but did you know that our government today is implanting chips in insects and training them to fly into enemy territory and send signals back, video signals, of what the enemy is doing? We have that program in place and we’re spending millions of dollars trying to train insects to fly into enemy quarters and send video pictures back from microchips that have been implanted in them so that we can eavesdrop on what the enemy is doing. So, it’s not as far-fetched as you might think.  

Verse 7:  

The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. 

Some believe that this means that they simply have human intelligence.

Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).

(Both of these words mean ‘Destroyer’ when you translate them into English.) 

And then it says:

The first woe is past; two other woes are yet to come.

So the first of the three woes, the next three Trumpet Judgments here, is these supernatural scorpions—a combination of locusts, scorpion, whatever else that attacks and tortures and torments people and gives them the pain cycle of their lives for a five-month period. But they can only harm those who do not have the mark. And isn’t that fascinating, because, if we read Luke 10:18 right, it is Satan who releases them into the atmosphere. But he releases them, and they attack his own forces—which is God’s way, He does that a lot. He uses the enemy to defeat himself in a lot of cases.

All right. Here’s a fascinating little tidbit—I don’t know what it is worth to you, but it kind of helped me come up with my view that these are supernatural locusts. They are probably not really locusts, they’re probably just big insects that look like locusts. In Proverbs 30:27, there’s an interesting little thing here that doesn’t—Solomon here is talking about animals and insects and things and in verse 27 he says:

locusts have no king,

    yet they advance together in ranks;

Proverbs 30:27. Locusts have no king, but they progress together in ranks.

The point he is making is they don’t seem to have anybody organizing them, yet they know to move together. But if you overlay that on verse 17 of Revelation 9, it says, these locusts had a king and he was the Angel of the Abyss, and his name was The Destroyer. So that’s one of the things that you can look at to say these are not ordinary locusts. There is something going on here.

Okay so that’s the locusts. 

Now let’s look at verse 13. Here comes the second of the three woes which turn out to be the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Trumpet Judgments.

Revelation 9:13

The sixth angel 

(This is the sixth one now.)

sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God.

The golden altar is the incense altar that sat right at the entrance of the Holy of Holies. Some people think it was inside and some people think it was outside, but it was right at the entrance of the Holy of Holies which is the second room of the two-room temple. The outer room was called the Holy Place and the inner room was called the Holy of Holies, that’s where God dwelt.  In there was one piece of furniture, the Ark of the Covenant, and God dwelt there. Nobody could enter that. 

Once a year, the High Priest could go in after great preparation. They had to tie a rope to his foot in case he got zapped in the process and they had to drag him out. I’ve often wondered—I don’t think it ever happened, but I’ve often wondered—how would you like to be second in command and you have to go in after the first guy just got zapped? [laughs]

Anyway, he’s behind the Golden Altar there, and in verse 14: 

The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice

(The voice coming from the altar is God’s voice.)

I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.

Now, I don’t know whether you know this or not, but the Earth just went over six billion. So, if this is literal, and it appears to be, two billion people are about to die. I think I told you that when you put all the different numbers that are given about the deaths of people in the Scripture over these last seven years, it turns out to average, if there were the same number every day (which it isn’t), but if it was the same number every day, basically an average of 1.2 million people would die every day for seven years. That’s the death toll that would be taken on the human race. It turns out to be about half the human race is going to die during this seven-year period. 

Verse 16:

The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.

A lot of people like to look at this because the great river Euphrates has been the traditional  boundary between East and West. The Eastern Empires, China, Mongolia, and those couldn’t get across into the West, so it was a natural boundary because the river Euphrates is huge—wide and deep and runs fairly fast so it was impossible in olden times for troops from the East to cross the Euphrates and attack into the West and vice-versa. 

So, the East and West were kind of left alone and that’s one of the reasons why the two parts of the world produced such remarkably different types of civilization. 

Some look at this 200 million and recognize that only one country in the world can mount a 200-million-man army and there’s one in the world that can do that today and it’s China. But I don’t know what they’re talking about here. Revelation 16:12 also talks about 200 million belonging to the Kings of the East, so I don’t know if there is a tie-in there or not. But anyway, there are 200 million combatants here ready to go to war. And John says, “I heard their number.” So he’s saying, “I’m not making this up.”  

Verse 17:

The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. 

I don’t know whether that meant some of them were red, some were blue, some were yellow; or whether it meant they had three stripes or tricolor. I don’t know. We’ll have to do some more research on that. I haven’t seen anybody pin that down. It doesn’t look like the red, blue, and yellow are the colors of any particular country or any particular people that you could pin that to.  So, that’s just what it says.  

The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. 

(That’s the horses’ mouths.)  

The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.

If you tried to figure out what kind of weapons system John was describing, you’d have trouble coming up with one. And that’s another reason that I believe—you know, some people say attack helicopters because they can fire from both directions. They have power to fire forward, and they have power to fire backwards. They can do all kinds of things; and they can move around, and their noise is like the beating of many wings and many hundreds of wings and horses and thunder and all that stuff. 

So, some people try to make a case for the fact that these are attack helicopters. Well, if you want to make it into something manmade or natural, my view is that this is some kind of supernatural being that we’ve never seen on Earth. If that’s the case, you can imagine the fear it will strike into the hearts of people when they see these things coming down on them.  

Verse 20:

The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.

These judgments are not sufficient to convince people to clean up their act and do things right to please God.

By the way, in verse 21 where it says “magic arts”, the Greek word there is pharmakon. It’s the word from which we get pharmacy, and some people think this is drug use rather than just magic tricks; this is drug use.  

I’m going to close now with a speculation as to why these plagues do not wake people up and cause them to turn to the Lord for deliverance. It has to do with 2 Thessalonians 2:9 that basically says, because they refused the truth—I think it’s the way it reads—it says:

2 Thessalonians 2:9

They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Now, here’s my speculation—and this is around in the world today and this has been around for a long time. There is a, quote, “religious doctrine” that has been around for a long, long time. It’s called the Luciferian doctrine. This doctrine teaches that Lucifer, the one we know as Satan—Lucifer is actually a Latin word meaning Light Bearer. Just like Christopher is a Latin word meaning Christ Bearer, Lucifer is a Latin word. The Latin word for light is lux. And so, Lucifer is the ‘Bearer of Light’.

This doctrine states that Lucifer is trying his darndest to help us achieve the Utopian state that all mankind has longed for. ‘Peace on Earth, good-will toward men.’ It is a new age doctrine. The Luciferian doctrine precedes the new age because most of the new age came out of 1st century gnosticism and this doctrine is way older than that.  

But anyway, the idea here is that Lucifer is trying his darndest to help us achieve this next evolutionary leap. The view is that our physical evolution is pretty much complete; what’s coming next is a spiritual evolution that gives such a change of attitude that we are willing to live together in peace and harmony; and Lucifer is trying his darndest to make this happen.

One of the big stories that will go around through the tribulation period is that the reason so many Christians disappeared is because they were fighting this, and they had to be gotten rid of. That will be the excuse that they use to explain the disappearance of all of us Christians; it will also be the rationale for killing off all the Jews. Because only two groups in the world won’t join this one-world religion and those are Christians and Jews. So they both have to be done away with, because if they aren’t, the rest of the world can’t get this “evolutionary leap” into Utopia.  

According to the Luciferian doctrine, the enemy is an evil god-like figure whose name is Adonai, which happens to be the Hebrew word for Lord. Adonai is the one preventing this from happening, and during the Great Tribulation, all these judgments that are coming on Earth will be described and explained as the evil Adonai trying to prevent us from getting into our next level of evolution and achieving the peace we want. That’s why people don’t repent when they see all these judgments coming because they think the judgments are coming from evil that is trying to prevent them from getting what they want.  

You see, what will happen is, Black will have become White; and Dark will have become Light;  and Evil will have become Good and opposite, of course. The people on Earth will be tricked into this. This is, in my opinion, the Big Lie that is coming. That, basically, Satan is God and God is evil.  

And that’s why, that’s the only reason I can come up with to explain why after all these obvious judgments that are obviously supernatural now in their origin, why people aren’t saying, “God must be angry! Let’s fix this and maybe He’ll stop!” It’s because they don’t think this is coming from God—they think it’s coming from an evil, supernatural enemy that is trying to prevent them from, in some people’s views, achieving godhood; in other people’s views, achieving this spiritual evolution that they’ve dreamed about. So that’s what I think is behind the whole thing.  

Now, we’re going to run out of time here, so we’ve got to button this up. 

This brings us to the end of the Trumpet Judgments. The next couple of chapters are going to be a little break again before we get into the Bowl Judgments, and so this is a good place for us to stop. I think that you can see clearly though that, already (and the Great Tribulation hasn’t even begun yet) you can see already the tremendous impact this is having on Earth, these judgments; and why it’s so important for those of us who are getting ready to leave this place that we become less and less subtle about trying to convince others to come with us. That we become more and more obvious about this because, if we are judging these timelines right, there isn’t much time left before all this starts to unfold. And once it does then things are going to happen pretty fast.