Thank you, Brother James. Go
back with me this evening to Revelation chapter 9. We are studying the fifth trumpet
judgment. John has witnessed the opening
of six of the seals of the book that is sealed with seven seals. In this book, as we have said
so often, are all the fates of men and angels, all the events,
all the happenings that will ever take place during this gospel
age, during this error between our Lord's first advent and His
second advent when He will come back and gather His people together
and then time will end. And those who are redeemed of
the Lord shall enter into an everlasting day without a night
For the Lamb of God is all the light in the city of God. John has seen six of the seals
opened. And in the beginning of the eighth
chapter, he sees the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, opened the seventh
seal. This leads to the seven trumpet
judgments or warnings. The seventh trumpet opens up
to the seven vials of wrath from God. What are these trumpet judgments? Well, they are divine visitations
whereby God warns and judges this world, the wicked people
in this world, for their rejection of the gospel and how they have
mistreated God's elect. That's what these trumpet judgments
are about. They're warnings. They're warnings
to everybody, and I said this morning at Most of the time,
people don't hear the warnings. God has to give us ears to hear
the warnings. We know that. He's got to give
us some understanding that this life is not all there is. The
average man and woman, the natural man, the natural woman in this
world lives for just this life. We know that. That's no shock
to any of us. And we know that's the way we
would live were it not for the grace of God that's been effectual
in our souls and made us to realize the brevity of this life, the
absolute certainty of death, and the fact that we're going
to meet God someday, and we want to meet Him in Christ Jesus,
don't we? That's what we want. I guess
the older we get, the more we are made to realize by the Spirit
of God just how desperately we need God's grace in Christ Jesus. I think in this issue of growth
in grace, certainly it's growing to where you're growing spiritually,
you think of the Lord and you think of His beauties and His
glories and the preciousness of who He is and the wonders
of all that He's done for us by His bloody sacrifice. What a wonderful advocate He
is to all of His people of the greatness of the forgiveness
of our sins and the fact that we stand accepted in the Beloved. but also growth in grace is a
realization of the depth of our depravity. And I'm speaking to
some people who are older in grace than I am. And I'm absolutely
certain that your experience is as mine, that as I grow in
grace, I grow in a greater awareness of my own rottenness and depravity. I look within and I don't see
any good thing. And you know that's a gift of
grace right there that God gives us an understanding of our own
dilemma in and of ourselves. That's a great blessing. If God
ever takes the veil off, if He ever takes the covering off and
lets us just look into our innermost being, it's an awful sight. And I'm
certain that we haven't even begun to begin to commence to
see the depths of our depravity. As we do see more of it, we have
a greater appreciation of the grace of God. And we're thankful
that God gave us ears to hear the warnings to flee to Christ
Jesus. I've said before in this series
of messages, we can't frighten people into a profession of faith. It was interesting, I received
this week, this past week, an email from somebody in Texas
in whom I have absolutely no confidence. And I don't know
how he got our email. It's out there in the public
domain. And so he's probably sent this
to lots and lots of churches. But he said that if we'll buy
his spiritual program, he would guarantee that everyone that
of all that we present this to, one out of every four will make
a profession of faith. He guaranteed it, or your money
back. That's the religion of the world.
That's somebody who doesn't have any understanding of the blindness
of the heart of man, of the deadness of our heart, of the inability
of man to do anything of a spiritual nature. That's somebody who doesn't
see his own sinfulness, doesn't see anything of the glory of
God or the effectual work of Christ Jesus on the cross of
Calvary, doesn't realize anything about the necessity of the work
of the Spirit of grace. within the heart. He's got to
take away the old heart, the stony heart, and give us a heart
of flesh. He's got to give us a new heart,
which is a heart of faith. He doesn't have any understanding
of that, but we do. Isn't that amazing? We do. We understand how God
can be just and justify the ungodly. We understand how God saves sinners
by His grace. through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. We understand how God can forgive
us in a righteous way. Because somebody paid our debt.
Somebody stood before a holy God and answered for all of our
sins, all of our iniquities, all of our transgressions. God
one day got our attention. Every day he sends into this
world trumpet warnings that judgment is going to come But nobody will
pay attention to those Unless God gives them an eye to see
what's going on and an ear to hear his word through these judgments Now Judgments are going on every
day. Have you ever noticed in John
chapter 5 when, you know, our Lord Jesus had healed the man
who had been lame 38 years. And then he went seeking that
man in the temple and found him and revealed himself to him.
And then the Jews, the Jewish leaders got so upset with him
that they couldn't stand him. And they were ready to kill him. And then our Lord Jesus began
to set forth himself to those people. And he set forth himself
as being the judge. And he said this, the Father
judgeth no man. That's exactly what he said.
The Father judgeth no man, but he's committed all judgment unto
the Son. Whenever you see that, those
three letters, E-T-H, that doesn't indicate a one-time event or
a one-time action. You see, there are lots of judgments.
which all lead up to one last, final, gigantic, great white
throne judgment. But throughout this age, judgments,
judgments are coming upon this world, upon those who've despised
the gospel, upon those who persecuted God's people. They come in various
forms. Sometimes they're physical things,
sometimes it's religious lies that God causes men to begin
to spew out. Read sometime, and I'm sure within
the next two or three weeks we'll be going, or probably after our
Bible conference, we'll be going to 2 Thessalonians chapter two,
which talks about men don't believe the gospel. And because they
don't believe the gospel, God sends them a strong delusion. What do you think that is? What
is a delusion? That's when God sends a false
message to people who wouldn't believe the truth. They wouldn't
embrace grace. They had no interest in the Lord
Jesus Christ. They had no interest in salvation
by the bloody sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ alone. They
despised the message of the gospel and therefore God sent a trumpet
judgment. And here's what it is, a delusion. And actually, that's what this
scripture is about in front of us this evening. The Lord, in
this fifth trumpet judgment, He has John to see, first of
all, Satan, this star. He sees him fallen from heaven. He's fallen. He's not dead. Well, he's spiritually dead,
He exists today. And He goes about seeking whom
He may devour. And as it says in verse number
one, the fifth angel sounded and I saw a star fall from heaven
unto the earth and to him was given the key of the bottomless
pit. And this is another judgment
from God. Because the Lord every so often
according to His will He has great heresies to arise in this
world. And almost seem to cover the
world. And only a few still believe
the gospel. Let me tell you something, that's
a judgment from God. Now in all of these judgments,
which we call trumpet judgments, in all of these we need to remember
this, God's elect, are never under the judgments of God, but
we will be affected by the things that God sends in this world
to those who despise his gospel and those who persecute his people.
It's going to mean for God's people, and it has, it has in
time past, it means it today and it will mean it up until
the time when the Lord Jesus Christ comes, tribulations and
troubles for God's people. You see, God had one. He only
had one Son without sin. But all of His sons partake of
tribulation. I know that. Go back. Turn back
a page or two to chapter 7 of the book of Revelation here.
In chapter 7, you read this. Look at verse 13. One of the
elders answered saying unto me, he said, What are these which
are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? And I said
unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are
they which came out of great tribulation, all of these. They
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. All of God's people come through
tribulation. Great tribulation. Now there
are times when tribulation is not so severe. There are other
times when it's very severe. But all of God's people experience
troubles in this world and trials in this world. And many of them
are associated with these trumpet judgments and warnings. And so
when we go back to chapter 9, here is the fifth angel sounding
his trumpet. And John says, I saw a star fallen
from heaven. That's the tense. I saw him as
one who's fallen. When did he fall? He fell back
before God made Adam, apparently. And I'm sure he did because when
God made man, then God said everything's good. It's very good. And then, But, and after, after
Adam's creation, I should say, make sure I say this right, after
Adam's creation, Satan fell. He sees him fallen, a star fallen
from heaven, and he comes to earth, and to him was given the
key of the bottomless pit. He's given the key to the shaft
of hell itself. He doesn't have the key naturally. He doesn't own the key. He's
given the key. Go back to chapter 1. He's given
the key by the one who has all the keys. Revelation chapter 1. Look with me in verse 16. John said he's describing the
glorified Son of Man. He had in His right hand seven
stars and out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, Revelation
1.16. And his countenance was as the
sun, shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at
his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon
me, saying unto me, Fear not, I am the first and the last.
I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of
hell and death. I have the keys. Who has the
keys? The owner has the keys. The Lord
has the keys, the king has the keys. And now over here in chapter
nine, it's as it were, he takes this key off the key ring, all
symbolic, of course. And he gives the key to the bottomless
pit, to the abyss, to this star that fell so many,
many years ago. And then when that was given
to him, he commenced to open the bottomless pit. The angels of God that fell.
One third of the angels fell in Satan's rebellion. We know
that. They didn't fall through a representative. They fell individually. They
didn't have a representative. They fell one by one. There is
no mercy for them. There is no savior for them.
But these, according to the Scriptures, have been assigned to hell, to
outer darkness. And there they are confined,
as in a dungeon. And yet, John sees that our Lord
gives the key to Satan, and this goes on periodically throughout
this age now. And they are unlocked, they are
allowed to come out to belch forth out of hell itself as a
smoke. Black, dirty, filthy, polluting
smoke. What's the purpose of that? To
hide the light. But I remind you, this is the
judgment of God. And I want to say to you, and
I'm not skilled to understand all that this is about, but I
want to say to you, you better walk in the light that God gives
you, lest He take the light away. The Lord can, He can in His purpose,
say to Satan concerning you, send a smoke screen to him. He
won't have the gospel. She won't believe the message
of grace. She's sat under the gospel. He's
sat under the gospel all of these years. He's heard of the glories
of Christ Jesus, of redemption and reconciliation and substitution
and satisfaction. He's heard of the blood over
and over again and He turns a deaf ear to Him. All right. All right. I've had it with Him. I'll send
him a strong delusion. I'll send him a judgment. I'll
send black smoke. And now he can't see the light. You say, would God do that? That's exactly what He did to
Israel, isn't it? Isn't that what God did to Israel? He blinded them. It's a judicial
blindness. To Israel, God gave the Word
of His prophets in the Old Testament. And over and over again, they
warned them the Israelites of the Lord. God gave His word.
God gave them His law. God gave them His tabernacle.
God gave them His priesthood. God gave them His sin offerings. God gave them all these sacrifices. God gave them the Passover. God
gave them Pentecost. God gave them the Feast of Tabernacles. God gave them all of these privileges
and they said, we don't want this God. We'll have other gods. And the Lord in judgment said,
now you can't believe it. I don't know how to express this,
but God can fix it in his judgment to where you
can't believe. It's impossible for you. You're
dead while you live. And I don't understand about
Bible deadlines, but I do believe they exist. I believe you can
go so far with your fist in God's face and God will finally say,
I'm through with you. I'm through with you. And you're
as good as in hell as if you was there already. I believe
that. I believe that. How does he do
that? He takes the light away. That's
what he does. He takes the light away. He takes
the gospel away from you. He sends you a strong delusion.
And all of a sudden, we'll say, well, where's so-and-so? I haven't
seen them in a while. Well, you know, they started
going to this church down the road here somewhere. And boy,
they're really into that now. They're in that whoop-de-doo
religion. They're so excited. They're speaking
in tongues. And they're doing this, that,
and something else. What in the world has happened? Oh, a trumpet
judgment. And I'm going to tell you something.
That's a warning to all of us. Don't you leave the gospel now.
This is tried and true right here. This will do you through
life, it'll do you through death, it'll do you to the judgment,
it'll do you through eternity. Don't leave the gospel. You say,
preacher, don't you believe in eternal security? I sure do. And I believe in persevering
in the faith too. I believe in keeping on in the
gospel. Because if you can leave the
Gospel, if you can leave the Gospel, you will. We've seen
others leave it, haven't we? You're stronger than they are.
You know more than they do. You quote more Scripture than
they say. Well, I never will leave! If God doesn't keep you,
you'll leave. You'll be one of the ones who
made a strong profession, Then you'll be gone. There rose a smoke out of the
pit, the smoke of a furnace. And look at verse 3. There came
out of the smoke locusts upon the earth. Locusts? Yes, locusts. This black cloud of smoke, demonic
smoke, pollution that's polluting the air. I'll tell you what this
does. This black smoke, you know what
it does? It pollutes the gospel. It pollutes the fresh air of
the gospel. You see, that's what's meant
back up here. Go back to chapter 8, if you
would. Look in chapter 8. Look at verse
number 10. It's the third trumpet. Chapter
8, verse 10. The third angel sounded, there
fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and
it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains
of waters, and the name of the star is called Wormwood, and
the third part of the waters became Wormwood, and many men
died because of the waters, because they were made bitter. You know
what happened? You know what this Wormwood did? It polluted
the waters. You see, the water of life, the
water of the gospel, it's pure, it's crystal clear. Everything's
very clear. Nothing hidden. The Word of God
declared so brilliantly and so beautifully this message of good
news. And for the thirsty sinner, come
to Christ Jesus and drink. He's the living water. And you
won't drink. And you won't drink. And you
won't drink. And God says, OK, I'll send wormwood
to you. And here's what somebody will
do. They'll have a message that in many ways it'll sound just
like the gospel, because they'll use the same kind of terminology
we use. But you know what they pour into
it? They pour poison into it. See, all it takes to poison the
gospel is add a little bit of man's works or a little bit of
man's will, and now you don't have a pure message anymore.
It's polluted. It's polluted. When you listen to religion,
if you do, on radio or television or whatever, there are a lot
of men out there who talk about the Bible, And they'll tell you,
I believe the Bible from cover to cover. And they'll talk about
grace. They'll use the same kind of
words that we use. I was talking to somebody the
other day about a certain preacher. And they said, you know, he can
say so many good things. And then he gets right to the
end. And you know what he does? He pollutes the water. Because
then he introduces something that is absolutely contrary to
the grace of God and to the word of God. He adds the necessity
of man exercising his free will. And he says something to this
nature, now it's up to you. It's up to you. Will the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ be wasted as far as you are concerned? And here's what he's done. He's
taken that crystal clear glass of water. He's taken that wonderful
gospel message full of grace and full of the glories of Christ
Jesus and his substitutionary death, and he has introduced
into it wormwood, bitterness, Nah, it's no good. It's no good. And here's the
thing, people will drink it. They'll drink that bitter water.
And you know, there are people in your family who drink that
bitter water, and you know what they say? It's good! It's good,
that's what they say, isn't it? It's good! Oh, you just, boy,
y'all's church is dead over there. Y'all come to our church. Oh,
we're so happy in Jesus. Why, there are people saved every
service. They're walking the aisle. Why,
our baptism, we don't ever empty the baptistry. We just keep on
baptizing them. We're so excited, whoopee, it's
a hallelujah, praise the Lord's service every time we meet. Yeah,
you drank the bitter water. And the reason, the reason this
has happened, the reason that came your way is because you
wouldn't have the pure water. Tell you something, God in His
judgment can take the water right away from you. Take it right
away from you. But here comes this fifth angel.
He sounds. And here comes this smoke out.
And then the locusts, the locusts. But these are not ordinary locusts.
These are deadly. You see, locusts, cicadas, they
will destroy, a whole bunch of them can destroy vegetation.
But they don't sting. They're not scorpions. But these,
these rascals here, these devils, these locusts, unto them was
given, you see this, power. As the scorpions of the earth
had power. In other words, they can sting
you. They can sting you. And it was commanded them, verse
four, commanded these scorpion locusts. God gave them commandment that
they should not hurt the grass of the earth nor any green thing
nor any tree. In other words, you can't hurt
anything that's alive. You can't hurt God's people. That's what I take away from
that. They can't hurt God's people because we're alive. We've been
made alive by the spirit of grace. Well, you say, well, who are
these? Who are these locusts that sting like scorpions? False
prophets. That's what they are. They're
deadly. They're deadly. And they're God's
judgment, God's judgment upon this world that won't have his
gospel, that won't have his message of glad tidings through Jesus
Christ. And I want the message of grace.
God said, well, I'll give you something else then. And you're
going to love this. You're going to swallow it. As
we say of a fish, he swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. You're
going to swallow it and then read 2 Thessalonians 2. God said,
I'm going to damn you for believing it. Will God do that? Absolutely
He'll do that. His sends you spiritual blindness,
and you think you're seeing clearer than you ever saw before. Boy,
I've never, boy, I see religion over at this other church. This
other preacher I've been watching, he's got it over there. Yeah,
you drank the Kool-Aid. That's what you did, you drank
the Kool-Aid. But you know that Kool-Aid, that
wormwood, that bitter water of a false gospel, of a gospel that's
dependent upon you exercising your free will and you doing
some works that'll please God, I don't like that, do you? Now
that's bitter to me. As for me, I want the pure stuff. I want that's not diluted. and it hadn't been polluted by
man's free will. God says you can't hurt my people. A false gospel can't hurt us.
These trumpet judgments, they can't hurt God's people. They
can't hurt our souls. I'm not saying that the trumpet
judgments won't result even maybe in our death. Angelina told me she's working
on a paper on the Reformation, Martin Luther. We sang his great
Reformation song this morning, and I thought about this verse.
He said, the body they may kill, God's truth about it still. You can't kill God's truth. They
might kill our bodies, but they can't kill us. and it
can't kill God's truth. To them it was given that they
should not kill them, but they should be tormented five months. I read an interesting article
in National Geographic about cicadas, about locusts. Sometimes
They come in a great swarm called gregarious locust swarm. And they can devour crops quickly. You know what their average lifespan
is? The average lifespan of an adult, four to six months. That's literally. God says He
sends these locusts five months. That's kind of interesting to
me. Four to six months, five months. And here's what I take
away from this. God periodically, He has heresies to arise. And they seem to be so powerful.
And like it says here, their torment was like the torment
of a scorpion when he striketh a man. And the saints of God,
just small little pockets of believers, they look around and
say, my goodness, it's so many of them. And then, to fulfill
his purpose, God will kind of push those locusts back in the
black smoke and push the black smoke back in the pit for a while. That's the way it is with heresies.
It's strong according to the purpose of God. Remember, everything
is according to the purpose of God. All of this is written in
the book. Don't ever lose sight of that. And then to fulfill His purpose. The Lord again says to Satan,
here's the key again. Here's the key again. These people
have been listening to the gospel. I have privileged them. I have
shown them great mercy and sent them the truth. And they don't
want it. Well, I'm going to send them
something they will receive. I'll send them a strong delusion.
Release the locusts. And I'll tell you, this world
is full of religious locusts. They've come from Satan, false
prophets. They're disguised as ministers
of light, just like their leader. He's disguised as an angel of
light, but he's the prince of darkness. You see, it's with
good reason that it says this smoke, it's a darkness that hides
the light, because he's the prince of darkness. He's over the darkness,
evil, error. Whereas our God is the God of
light, the God of purity. And you know what we're called
in the Bible? We used to be children of darkness in the sense that
we were in the dark. But we're the children of light.
So walk in the light. Walk in the light. And next Lord's
Day, we'll get more fully into these locusts. Vicious bunch. Vicious. Show no mercy. They're sent forth by him who's
the very source of all sin. Satan himself, that one who is
Apollyon. Well, let's sing