Revelation: Part 24

In Revelation 7, where God, before he allowed any harm to touch the earth, this is right after every believer has been miraculously snatched up to meet Jesus in the air, and turn from mortal to immortal without seeing physical death and taken to his father’s house, to the dwelling places that he’s preparing for us now, and right after that, he miraculously brings to faith in Jesus as their Messiah 144,000 Israelites. And he shows that these are the great evangelists that are going to take the message to the world during that seven-year period that is about to start. And we also saw in chapter 6 before that the beginning of these great judgments. The seal judgments.

These are seals on a great scroll that Jesus himself broke open and he would unroll the first part of the scroll and read the judgment, and it would strike. And then he would break another seal and unroll it further, and so forth. And now, we return to the chronological movement of this terrible period of seven years we call the Tribulation. And the book of Revelation is primarily about what’s going to happen during that period.

And so in Revelation 8:1, it says, and when he broke – he is who? Jesus – when Jesus broke the seventh seal, there was a silence in heaven for about a half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God; and seven trumpets were given to them. Now, the angels, seven, that stand before God.

Who are they? They’re the archangels. There’s a very carefully delineated ranking of angels. And this is mentioned many times in the Bible.

These are not fairy tales and these are not fairy people. These are real great persons. And so these seven angels that stand before the throne of God, they are chosen to unleash the next stage of God’s judgment on the earth. And they’re given trumpets.

And what a terrifying thing is about to happen. The earth will have never seen anything like what is about to be unleashed. But before this phase of God’s judgments, the first was the seals, now it’s the trumpet judgments. And this will increase geometrically in destruction above the other phase.

So as we get into this second phase, there is an interlude even in heaven, and the silence. And you can just imagine a silence in heaven when there’s been all of the praise and the excitement, but now there’s silence. And these majestic angels stand forth as they’re given seven trumpets. And then it says in verse 3, and another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censor; and much incense was given to him, that he might add it to the prayers of all of the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne of God.

Now, if you’ve ever – your heard of any teaching on the tabernacle in the Old Testament? Some of you have. And the book of Hebrews says that Moses was instructed to build that tabernacle exactly according to the heavenly reality. That there was all of these special pieces of furniture and implements that are in the tabernacle were copies of those in heaven.

And with that being true, where would the table of incense be? Holy of holies, that’s right. There are only two pieces of furniture in the holy of holies. The altar of incense and the ark of the covenant.

Well, Jesus is the ark of the covenant. Anyway, this other angel who steps forth to minister at the golden altar of incense, which is where all through the Old Testament once a year, the high priest would go into the altar, and he would throw incense on this golden altar, and this fragrance would go up, and it was a picture of the prayers of God’s people going up as a sweet essence to God. And so this angel, this other angel, who goes to make this offering has to be who? The high priest.

Who’s the high priest? Jesus. So this other angel has to be Jesus. And he is here fulfilling part of his role as a priest.

He’s a judge and a priest in the book of Revelation. In chapter 20, he becomes a king and a priest. Now, in verse 4, it says, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censor; the censer that they would fill with coal and burning coal and put incense on.

And after these prayers had the lifted up to God, he lets it be known that what he is about to do is just judgment on those who have caused such suffering on his people and have rejected the free gift of salvation that he’s tried to give them. And so it says, he took the censer; and he filled it with fire of the altar and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake. God’s going to cause real physical upheaval to happen all around the earth just suddenly when this is flung down. And that’s just a little prelude to what is about to happen.

As soon as that’s done, these seven mighty angels stand with their trumpets and prepare to blow. In verse 7. And the first trumpet sounded, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, a third of all – the trees were burned up, and all the green grass – translate that grain – all the grass and the grain on the earth was burned up. All of the judgments that happened in the seal judgments were what?

One-fourth of the population of the earth was killed. This one-third of everything is destroyed. So I called the trumpet judgments the judgment of the thirds, and it gets to be terrifying. So he says that a third of all of the trees, a third of the earth, and all the grass, including the grain, is burned up.

Trees are the lungs of the planet. And the trees in this delicately balanced ecosystem are there to purify certain gases out of the air and replenish it with oxygen. Now, just think of the impact of a third of all trees on earth being burned up. And all of the grass and the grain.

Grain is the real fundamental basis of food. It’s the staff of life, it truly is. Because even animals that we have for meat have to eat and be fed the grass and grain. So this means there’s going to be a shortage of food like no one ever dreamed, and this is just the beginning.

Now, it says, once again, verse 7, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And that’s what caused a third of the trees and all of the grass and grains to be burned up. Hail. What’s hail?

Ice. Fire. Hail mixed with fire. Now, no one in the first century would have any idea of why these two antithetical elements would be mixed together and cause this kind of devastation.

It would have been beyond anything they could dream. Hold your place here and turn with me to Ezekiel 38. Start with verse 21. Now, this is Ezekiel’s great prophecy about what’s going to happen to this army led by this great power from the extreme north of the reborn state of Israel in the last days.

God from the land of Magog, Meshech, and Tubal. It can only be Russia. There’s only one nation to the extreme north, and they are descended from those ancient tribes of Magog, meschech, and Tubal. So here is what God says is going to happen to him and the Persian-led confederacy that fights with him.

Who’s Persia today? Iran. It clearly spells it out as the leader of confederacy of people that live surrounding Israel, which are all muslim. Now, he says in verse 21, “I shall call for a sword against him on all my mountains,” declares the Lord God.

Every man’s sword will be against his brother. Now, note carefully what 22 says. And with plague – pestilence means plague – with blood I will enter into judgment with him; and I shall rain on him, and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, a torrential rain literally – of hailstones, fire, and brimstone. So once again it’s the same thing, you see.

Hail mixed with fire resulting in tremendous bloodshed and destruction. Now, I’ve preempted myself, and forgive me for repeating this because I’ve said this before, but for the sake of those who have not been here before, I’m going to show you what this means in today’s technology. When the thermonuclear weapon first won, we exploded at enewetak. The hydrogen bomb.

When it was exploded there, they had all kinds of ships staked out there to see what the effect of the thermonuclear blast would do. And the whole thing was filmed from many different angles. And so when they set this enormous blast off, I think the first one was five megatons, and the destruction was horrific. The fire was so intense and the flash of it was much brighter than the sun, and it melted everything around a certain diameter.

But also, as is the case with every nuclear explosion, there is the most typical sign of a nuclear explosion that took place. What is that? The mushroom cloud. You notice how it quickly just rockets up into the air, and then when it gets up into the rarefied air in the atmosphere of the stratosphere and the ionosphere and so forth, it mushrooms out.

Now, what was not expected would do so much damage to the tops of all of these ships than was recorded, because, you see, the tremendous force of the blast of this weapon quickly condensed the humidity in the air together and just pushed it at hundreds of miles an hour, pushed it up and compacted it together up into the stratosphere where it’s minus 60 degrees below zero and higher. So what happened? All of that compressed humidity was frozen by being suddenly compressed and made into a compacted water and put up into freezing temperature. And then it fell back down to the earth in huge chunks of ice.

So there you had together fire and ice. That’s what John saw, and he described it from the standpoint of a man who was from the first century. What I believe what happened was a tremendous exchange of nuclear weapons. And this is the result.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all we know about a nuclear war is theoretical. We don’t know exactly what happens when a great number of nuclear weapons are exploded in close proximity both in time and location. And it’s been projected by many scientists that it could start a chain reaction. And I believe that’s what is going to take place.

There’s going to be a number of warheads fired in close proximity and at close period of time so that it will generate chain reactions in various places in the planet, which will burn up, incinerate, trees almost within an hour. There was one scientist that I read about, and he said, unless we find an answer to controlling the proliferation of these weapons, especially thermonuclear weapons, he said, in 30 minutes, the east and the west can destroy a civilization. He said, but what we’ve got on the cones of icbms aimed at each other right now could destroy civilization. In 30 minutes.

That means both sides of the world in 30 minutes. Well, the time is coming when that’s going to be unleashed, and I believe God is going to release man to be what he is in his heart without Jesus Christ. It isn’t God that makes them do this. It is God who releases his restraint.

Listen. I don’t believe there would be anyone alive on this planet if God, through the Holy Spirit, wasn’t always restraining evil. He never lets it get as bad as it could be. But here he’s releasing it.

Now, let’s go to the next judgment of the thirds. Second trumpet blows. Verses 8-9. And the second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood; and a third of the creatures, which were in the sea and had life – were killed, or died.

In other words, a third of all marine life killed. And a third of the ships were destroyed. Now, I have to admit here that, I don’t know what causes this one, because it talks about something like a great mountain is thrown into the sea. It could be a meteor.

I don’t know. I know that a meteor, if it hit, if it was large enough and it hit the earth, it would cause this kind of devastation. Or it could be the first nuclear naval war, and John just saw the beginning of it when he saw an underwater nuclear explosion. Because I’m telling you, I’ve seen picture of an underwater nuclear explosion, and it looks like a mountain coming up out of the ocean.

So I don’t know.

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.