Revelation: Part 22

Revelation 7. And I want to be sure and bring out that this is an interlude. It’s one of those interludes that is all through the book of Revelation where he will – the Holy Spirit guided the apostle John to go chronologically through part of that seven-year period and then after a series of devastating judgments, he’ll stop and then he will introduce an interlude where he will trace important characters, important events and things that are going to happen during this period. And they’re not chronological, they actually give a whole picture of this event or persons.

Well, here’s one of those. In Revelation 7 is set up by the last two verses of Revelation 6. We have the first of the judgments, six seals that were opened up a scroll, and each time it was unrolled and these terrible judgments came out. And at the end, the world is terrified.

It says, and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “fall on us and hide us from the presence of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come and who is able to stand?” as I brought up last week, it’s interesting. And the Holy Spirit wouldn’t lie. It’s interesting that the people in this time, even in the face of these terrible judgments, know from where they’re coming. And instead of repenting and believing, they want to hide.

But there’s no place to hide. And they say, who is able to stand? Well, Revelation 7 will tell us who is able to stand and why. Let’s read the first few verses here.

As I was studying this today, there are a few things that I’ve seen before, but the Holy Spirit made them more vivid and more real to me. It says in verse 1, after this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree. Now, here these are four angels that are in control of the atmosphere of the earth. And they’re in control of the ecology.

And it says, yet God said, don’t let any storm or anything hit the earth until something happens. Read on. In verse 2. And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea.

Now, I want you to note something. They have enormous power, these four angels. And we’re not talking about the holy spook here. We’re not talking about fictitious things in poetic language.

We’re talking about real persons, angels. And the Bible describes several category of this species. We know that we have something in common with them in that we have the image of God in us just as they have the image of God. But the image of God is not a physical thing.

It never was. The image of God in man is this: will, intellect, emotion, and moral reason. Those are the four things that give us the image of God. Oh, yes, and one more.

Everlasting existence. From the moment a fetus, as the world calls it, I call it from the moment a human being is conceived, because it’s not just some fetus. From the moment of conception, it’s a real human being. And every human being has the image of God, and that has to do – will, intellect, emotion, moral reason, and everlasting existence.

Everyone’s going to live somewhere forever. Every human is. Angels have those characteristics, although they have much greater power. And of course they’re in another dimension of existence.

But they’re very real. The Bible talks about the angels of God. The angels of God are those that did not rebel against God in eternity past. At some point in eternity past, there was a great rebellion among the angels against God, and it was led by the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most powerful among all the angels.

Lucifer, which means “the shining one.” and there are many descriptions of him before his fall in the Scripture. And I don’t want to get too far into that rabbit and chase it, but it’s – what I’m talking about is some things very real. Now, there was this rebellion, and a third of the angelic beings followed lucifer in this rebellion against God. Well, the fallen angels are in two categories.

There are some fallen angels that are still free and God allows them to roam about his universe and especially this planet, and he allows them freedom to try to overthrow his will. There are other fallen angels that apparently are so vicious and so out of control that they’re bound in a place called tartarus in Greek. Ii Peter Revelation 2 talks about these. So some of those bound angels that are horrifically perverted are going to be released during this seven-year period.

I’ll tell you one thing. If there were no other reason, I wouldn’t want to be here. … Now, then you have the angels of God, and the angels of God have certain ranks.

And there are cherubim, seraphim, and there are archons, as they’re called. And there are a number of different Greek words that are used to describe the ranks among these angels of God. And they have certain responsibilities that God gives them. Well, there are four angels, and this is not just poetic words here.

There are four angels who have been given enormous power, and they control everything that has to do with the weather, the atmosphere, and the ecology on this earth. And yet I want you to see how gracious God is. God always gives grace before judgment. He always does.

He always give a gracious opportunity for people to turn in faith to him before he reigns judgment. And the book of Revelation shows that even after there’s been given this great opportunity, there are, all the way through the book of Revelation, he will give these terrible judgments, and then there will be a lull. There will be a stop. And he gives, as if God’s saying, I give you another chance.

Just look. Turn and believe in me and receive the gift of pardon that I sent my son to die in your place to purchase for you. And so there’s always this lull in the book of Revelation where we see God’s grace at work again. Now a lot of people read over this book and they miss that entirely.

To me, that’s the most important thing in this book is that God is overwhelmingly gracious to anyone who will change his mind about how his own good works are. Anyone who will change his mind about his ways and realize he’ll never be good enough for God to accept and then simply to receive the gift of pardon that Jesus Christ died to give them. He realizes what Isaiah said in Isaiah Revelation 64:6. We’re all as unclean things, and even our righteousnesses – plural – are as filthy rags – in God’s sight.

We can never be good enough. And so he wants us to see this. And when we come to him in faith, even though we may be beset by all kinds of habits and all kinds of learned bad conduct and the damage of a wasted life, if we will come to him in faith, he promises he will receive us and then he will begin to change us. If that were not so, I wouldn’t be here.

I would not be here. I’m sure I would be dead. The life I was living on the river in new orleans, consequences definitely would have been death very soon. And I would have brought that death on by my own hand by my own behavior.

So God wants us to know that he’s gracious. All right. Let’s look further now. This one comes with the sale of the living God; and he tells the four angels to whom it was given to harm the earth and the sea.

Now, that tells us something. These four angels are commissioned to harm the earth and the sea. And it’s going to be enormous. The destruction will be enormous.

Now, let’s read on then I’ll get to what the sale of God is. Verse 3. And this angel said, “do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until… .” now, if you heard me teach at any length of time, you will know that I make a big point about how important the word until is in the Bible.

It’s used in some of the most important verses in the Scripture. It means something is to be held off until something else happens. And he says, “they are not to harm the earth, the sea, or the trees, until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their forehead.” doing a little reverse engineering here, that tells us that these angels have power over the earth, the sea, and the trees, doesn’t it. That they are, during this period, especially during the last – it’s a seven-year period about which there’s more prophecy than any other period of time in the Scripture called the Tribulation.

But the second half of it is the part that is so terrible. It’s called the great Tribulation. And apparently during that time, there’s going to be such enormous destruction, not just from the weapons of war, we saw a little of that last week, but also from the weather. I believe that they’re going to have to invent new ways of rating storms during this period.

… Like a category 5 hurricane won’t even cover it. Probably something more like category 7, if we’re going by exponential calculations. But just think that when these angels are given command by God, okay, have at it, they’re going to be hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, the like of which the world has never seen.

Probably some of them will reach winds of over 300 miles an hour. And there are many places in here where John’s testifying about what he saw, and the devastation is unimaginable that he talks about. And notice a great deal is made about the wind and the sea. The sea covers most of this planet.

And just think about what a terrible wind can do with all that water. And to the trees. The trees are what God put in the ecological system has the lungs of this planet. Well, there’s going to be a devastation of the trees as we’re going to see when we get to Revelation 8, it talks about something is going to happen.

We’ll try to grapple with what that something is later. Something’s going to happen that will cause a third of all the trees on earth to turn up. And suddenly. You saw what this terrible fire could do that we just experienced here.

But think of a third of all the trees. But here’s a point that most people miss. In this prophecy, it doesn’t say just a third of the trees are going to be rooted up. It says, and all of the grass, it says, only the word in Greek means “grain.” all of the grain.

A third of the trees, but all of the grain will be burned. And so when you see what God is holding back here. You see he’s gracious to let there be a way out for those who will receive it. All right.

Now, it says that this angel comes out of the sun and he has the seal of the living God to sale the foreheads of the bondservants of God. And notice, this is done before any harm can come to the earth. When will this happen? Well, harm will begin to come to this earth almost immediately after you and I are suddenly snatched up to meet Christ and the errant chain for mortal-immortal without seeing physical death, what we call the Rapture or I call it the great snatch.

But he’s going to snatch out every believer in the twinkling of an eye. Now, God wants us to know that even then, he’s not deserting this Christ-rejecting world. He’s going to pull out instantly every living believer on this planet, and suddenly, there are no believers here. But God will never leave himself with no witness on this planet as long as man is here.

And so he says, don’t let any harm come until I have sealed 144,000 israelites from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. It’s interesting that, as we’ll see in Revelation 13, there’s another seal that’s going to be there, isn’t there? Either on the hand or on the forehead. And I believe that that is going to be a microchip that everyone’s going to be required to receive, and when you swear allegiance to the great leader in Rome, the Bible calls him the Roman Antichrist, when you swear allegiance to him, you get that chip validated by the adding of a prefix of 666 to your personal number.

Well, here’s someone else that’s going to get us the seal, and it’s the seal of the living God. It’s easy to figure that one out. They’re going to be somebody just like you and I are right now. Ephesians 1:13-14.

It says, he has sealed us with the Holy Spirit of God, until the day of redemption. Now, you see, the seal of God is to put the presence of the living Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity, inside of you. And every believer has the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of his or her. Well, the Holy Spirit, the living seal of the living God, is going to be put into 144,000 israelites.

Have you ever asked the question, why only israelites? Why not gentiles? Well, some of you went through a study of God’s outline of history calls dispensations. You see, what happens here, oh.

Put in the chart, will you? Can’t learn much from that picture. All right, there we are. I don’t have anything to point with, but you see that green line that curls over and then under the cross?

That covers the time that God used Israel as his special ambassadors to the earth. So it’s called the generally the age of Israel, okay. And then after the rejection of Jesus, Israel, after it – and this was all predicted by Daniel in Daniel Revelation 9, after Israel rejected Jesus as Messiah, they were set aside until – there’s that word again. And there’s a great parenthesis that was not mentioned in the Old Testament that was started right after Israel was set aside temporarily.

This great parenthesis is the Church, the Church age. And during the Church age, who are the ambassadors of God? Primarily Gentile. Today, if you are a Jew or an israelite and you believe in Jesus Christ, you become one with Christ and part of the body of Christ.

Today if you’re a Gentile, you become one with Christ and become a part of the body of Christ, okay. And it says, today there’s no difference in God’s sight between a Jew or a Gentile or israelite or a Gentile. We’re all one in Christ, right? But when the Church is taken out here in the Rapture, there are seven allotted years that Daniel predicted that are still left to them on God’s timeclock that are given 490 years.

It was cut short at 483 years leaving seven years on God’s timeclock. And that allotment of time is still remaining on their timeclock to fulfill the reason for which they were created as a people in a nation. And it is in this seven-year period, right. First there is, I’ll give you a little chronology here.

First there is the taking out of every living believer, taking out the Church, that’s the Rapture. Then there’s going to be a little parenthesis in time, because ii thessalonians Revelation 2 tells us that immediately after we christians are taken out of the world, Satan’s going to be allowed to unveiled the Antichrist. He can’t be unveiled until we’re gone. So if you think you can find out who he is, give up.

Probably any guess you would make would be wrong. All I know is this: he’s being groomed right now and he’s very much alive and well somewhere in I believe italy. And I genuinely believe that he will be descended from the etruscans who are the real romans. Daniel 9:24-27 says that the coming prince, this Antichrist, will have to be of the people who destroy the city of Jerusalem and the sanctuary.

70 a. D., it was the Roman tenth legion that did it. The tenth legion was the proudest legion probably in the whole Roman empire because they were all romans. But drew of all legions.

But the tenth, yeah. So this man is going to be a Roman. Okay. But when he appears, the seven years doesn’t start immediately.

How do I know that? Because Daniel 9 says the seven-year clock begins to count down when what happens? The Antichrist signs a covenant with Israel. Now, in order to be able to have the power to sign a covenant with Israel, what does he have to do?

He has to build a power base. If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary, and he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives. Thank you so much for standing with me as a watchman on the wall. I pray daily that he will reward your faithfulness and protect and prosper you in these difficult times.

Thank you again for being a vital part of my team. Male announcer: join us next week for the continuation of Hal Lindsey’s Bible study of the book of Revelation. Male announcer: you can find more of Hal Lindsey at his website, www.hallindsey.com. There you can access our video and article archives.

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