All right, let's look at Revelation
9. We're gonna begin at verse 12,
and I wanna start off with just a general word of perspective so that we won't
lose perspective of what we're, when we go through the verse,
the Bible verse by verse like this, we're talking about God's
judgment and war on earth. These, we're talking about, we're
studying the, The seven-sealed book of God. Remember back in
Revelation 5, there was the book with seven seals. And no man
could open it. No man was found worthy to open
it. That seven-sealed book, you remember, is the book of God's
purpose, God's power, God's providence as he works all things after
the counsel of his own will. according to his word and his
power. And it's all for the salvation
of his people by his grace through Jesus Christ, the Lord, who has
the preeminence in all things. And you remember back there in
Revelation 5, the only one who was found worthy to open those
seals, the seven seals, was the lamb that was slain, worthy as
the lamb of God. And so the whole salvation And
providential care of the church of the living God is in the hands
of Christ. And he is the revelation of God. And that's why the scripture
says that without him, we're all in darkness. He is the light
in that sense. And his worthiness comes on the
basis of his performing the duties and the terms and all the conditions
and stipulations of the covenant of grace, he is our surety, our
substitute, shedding of his blood for our sins imputed to him,
and that righteousness that comes forth out of his merits, the
righteousness of God that's imputed to all of God's people. And so
that's the perspective of it. So the Lamb of God, He began
to open the seals as recorded in Revelation 6. He began to
reveal the purpose and the plan of God throughout the last days. What we're reading about now
in chapter 9 is a continuation of the opening of the seventh
seal. This is the seventh seal. And
it's kind of all these numbers, you know, come in. It's kind
of easy to get confused. But in the seventh seal, there's
the revelation of seven trumpets. That's what the seventh seal
contains, the seven trumpets. And these trumpet judges, the
first four we found in chapter eight, they kind of go together.
And then in Revelation 8, 13, look at that. He says, and I
beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven,
saying with a loud voice, woe, woe, woe. There's three woes.
Woe is an expression of despair and sorrow and judgment. And
when I see that, I always think about Isaiah the prophet in Isaiah
6, when he said, woe is me, when he saw the holiness of God. Woe
is me, I'm undone, I'm cut off. In other words, there's no hope
for me. And that's when the angel flew, the seraphim flew to the
altar and brought the coal from the altar, all representing God's
salvation by grace based on the righteousness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And that's the only hope for any of us. Without Christ,
all it is is woe, woe, woe. Sorrow and despair. So we read
about the, there's three woes. Now that's the three last trumpets
that are revealed in this seventh seal. And he said that these
woes were against the inhabitants of the earth there in verse 13.
Now understand now, whenever the Bible talks about the people
of the earth, the inhabitants of the earth, what it's talking
about there is people who are so tied to this earth that they
cannot see the reality of God's grace from heaven. Christ. It's talking about unbelievers,
it's talking about people who will perish in their sins because
this earth is their hope, their works are their hope and so that's
what he's talking about. You see we live in the earth,
we live on the earth as believers, as sinners saved by grace but
we're not of this world, we're citizens of a heavenly kingdom.
We're pilgrims, that's what you remember how the Bible relates
to us as being pilgrims. And we're just sojourners. So
we realize this world is not our home. Now that doesn't mean
that we walk six feet in the air above everybody. That just
simply means that we're here as witnesses of the gospel. We're
here to witness Christ. We're here to preach the gospel.
To tell sinners the good news of salvation. by the grace of
God in Christ. So those are the three woes,
and so these three last trumpet judgments. The first woe, the
fifth trumpet judgment, was revealed in the first part of chapter
nine. We just finished that, one through
11. That was the first woe, which was the fifth trumpet judgment.
Now I've got all this written down, so I'm not gonna quiz you
on it after, but that's what it's talking about. And the next
woe is the sixth trumpet judgment. Now look at verse 12 of Revelation
9. One woe is passed, and behold,
there come two woes more hereafter. So there's two more. And verse
13 says, and the sixth angel sounded. That's the sixth trumpet
judgment, all right? And this sixth angel sounded.
So here he is sounding the sixth trumpet judgment, and here's
what it is. He says in verse 13, and I heard a voice from
the four horns of the golden altar, which is before God. Now
that's very significant. You know, that reaches back in
alluding historically to the tabernacle and the golden altar
of incense. That was the golden altar. Remember
in the tabernacle, you had two altars. You had in the outer
court, once you went into the first part of the tabernacle,
once you came through the main door, you had the brazen altar. And the brazen altar, remember,
represents the atoning work of Jesus Christ. That's where the
sacrifice was slain and the burnt offering was made. That's the
judgment of God against the sins of his people as they are imputed
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see the finished work
of Christ on that brazen altar. Well, on that brazen altar, it
had four corners, it was like a rectangle, and it had four
corners, and on the four corners it had horns, like a bull's horn
or something like that. And the four corners represent
the four corners of the earth. And that's showing that this
atoning sacrifice of Christ was not just for one specific ethnic
group, the Jews, for example, but this atoning work of Christ,
this redemptive work, this reconciliation, this putting away the sins of
his people, reached all four corners of the earth because
God has a chosen people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue,
and nation. Now, on those four horns were sprinkled, or put,
some of that blood that came from the altar, came from the
sacrifice. And what he's simply saying,
that is, if you're one of God's elect, your whole salvation is
dependent upon one thing alone, and that's Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. It's the merits of His obedience
unto death, His putting away of the sins of His people by
the shedding of His blood, which equals righteousness. Now, You
remember as you go into, you had the tabernacle, the brazen
altar, and then inside the walls, you had another tent that was
divided into two different, two separate courts, or two separate
areas. The first one was called the
holy place, and that's where all the priests could go. And
in that holy place, you remember you had the candlestick, you
had the table of showbread, but you also had this golden altar
of incense. And that golden altar of incense,
it was made of chetem wood, covered, overlaid with gold. That's a
picture of Christ and his deity and his humanity. Emmanuel, God
with us. And on the four corners of that
altar, there were horns also, and that blood was to be put
on those horns. Now, I forgot to say this. The
horn represents power and effectiveness to accomplish what it represented.
That's what the horns represent. In other words, in the brazen
altar, when you talk about the atonement, when you talk about
the death of Jesus Christ, you're not talking about something that's
left unfinished. or incomplete. You're not talking
about God trying to save sinners if they will finish the work
or if they will put their stamp of approval. It's a finished
work that secures the salvation of everyone whom Christ represents. Well, on the golden altar in
the holy place, and you remember that holy place was separated
by the big curtain, you know, the veil, and inside there was
the holiest of all. That's where the high priest
alone could go with the blood and sprinkle it on the Ark of
the Covenant, the mercy seat, which represents Christ. But
on this golden altar, that was the altar of incense. Coals were
taken from the brazen altar, the fire, and brought in and
put in there, and the smoke of that altar of incense went up. And, of course, what that represents
is the prayers of God's people presented to Him based on the
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, accepted of God because
of the merits of Christ's righteousness. Now, what it's saying here in
this sixth trumpet is that whatever's going to happen here is an answer
to the prayers of God's people. And you remember this golden
altar, these four horns, and they're effective. See, they're
powerful because of the blood of Christ. Back in Revelation
8, I think it was, in verse 3, look over there. He's talking
about here the smoke, or no wait a minute. It says in verse three
of Revelation 8, another angel came and stood at the altar having
a golden censer and there was given unto him much incense that
he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden
altar which was before the throne. Now this is Christ our intercessor. Christ our mediator. Seated at
the right hand of the Father ever living to make intercession
for us. And it says in verse 4, and the smoke of the incense
which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before
God out of the angel's hand, the messenger's hand. So that's
the prayers of the saints. And you remember back, I've got
this written down somewhere, but I can't see it right now.
I didn't mark it. But you remember the prayers of the martyrs crying
out for vengeance? This is an answer to that prayer.
This is an answer to the prayers of God's people. We pray unto
God through the Lord Jesus Christ. We come boldly to the throne
of grace to find mercy and help in time of need. And what do
we pray? Well, we pray for God's glory. We pray for the salvation of
His people. We pray for our loved ones, we
pray all that, but we also pray, even so, as John said in the
last of this book of Revelation, even so, Lord, come quickly.
Come quickly. And that's part, we're gonna,
later on, when we get into Revelation 11, we're gonna study what I
call the bittersweet gospel. And what he's saying there, you
know, that's where he tells John to eat the scroll, the book.
And that's the gospel, the little book. So you have the big book,
the seven seal book, that's God's whole plan and purpose. That
little book is the good news of the gospel. And it's a bittersweet
gospel. And you know that because the
bitterness has to do with the conviction of sin and the realization
that so many people are determined to perish, even our loved ones. Think about that. That's a bitter
pill to swallow. But we know it's so because God
says it. But then there's a sweetness.
And the sweetness is the joy and the peace that comes from
knowing Christ. And in our struggles, in our
pain, and in our sorrow, a lot of times, you know, we pray,
Lord, come quickly. Just get it over with, you know.
We don't know the time. We're content to be where he
puts us. But that's what he's talking about. And these prayers,
and they're going to be answered. And look what happens. Look at
verse 14. He says, saying to the sixth
angel, which had the trumpet, loose the four angels which are
bound in the great river Euphrates. Now there's a lot of symbolic
language there, isn't there? These four angels. Turn back
to Revelation 7. Who are these four angels? Well,
they're four messengers of God. Verse 1 of Revelation 7. After
these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners
of the earth. Now that's where they're standing. Symbolically,
they're covering the whole earth. North, south, east, west. holding
the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow
on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree." In other words,
they're holding back the wrath of God. The wrath of God all
throughout the history of this fallen world, we've seen, there
have been, and we've seen manifestations of the wrath of God against this
world. The most obvious one, the biggest
one, was the flood of Noah, wasn't it? But we've seen other manifestations
of his wrath. But this final full wrath that
will destroy this earth is being held back. And he says in verse
2, look at Revelation 7-2, I saw another angel ascending from
the east having the seal of the living God. And he cried with
a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt
the earth and the sea, to destroy the earth. saying, Hurt not the
earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the
servants of our God in their foreheads. That sealing the servants
of God has to do with the new birth, the regeneration, the
conversion of the elect of God, those whom God chose before the
foundation of the world, those whom Christ redeemed by his blood
on the cross. In other words, this earth is
not going to be destroyed totally and completely until the last
one of God's people come into the fold of Christ. And so I
often say to people, I can tell you exactly when Christ is coming
back. It's when the last one of his sheep are brought into
the fold, whenever that is. Nobody knows the date. But here
in Revelation 9, 14, the message is loose the four angels. And
so what we see here in this sixth trumpet judgment is the finality
of this earth. It's coming to its close. Now
here in the sixth trumpet, it doesn't all happen at once, but
we go on through this and we'll see several manifestations of
it. Loose the four angels. They're
bound. Now who binds them? God does. God's in control. God's the one
who determines the when and the what and the where. We'll see
that in just a moment. But he says these angels are
bound in the great river Euphrates. Now, you know about the River
Euphrates. It's the river that ran by, kind
of bordered Babylon. And it's an actual geographical
river. I can remember studying in middle
school, or what we used to call junior high school, studying
the history of the world. They talk about the Fertile Crescent,
and they talk about that area, which a lot of people believe
was the location of the Garden of Eden originally, and I don't
know if that's so or not. But we talked about the two rivers,
the Tigris and the Euphrates. Is this talking about the actual
geographical river Euphrates? And the answer is no. Now these
angels are bound by the great river Euphrates, and I don't
have time this morning to turn to all these scriptures, but
I've got these scriptures listed in your lesson for you to turn
to and study and know what this is all about. But think about
it this way. God's restraint is lifted and
his judgment now falls upon, it says, a third part of the
earth. Look down at verse 15. The four angels were loosed,
which prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year
for to slay the third part of men. So we see, again, a gradual
increase of this destruction. And remember I said, you know,
as we looked at it at the beginning of Revelation, it talked about
a fourth part of the earth. That's more indicative of just
the natural way of things, the death rate, all of that. And then it comes a third part
where men and women began to take notice. There's something
wrong here. We're facing destruction. I remember back in the 60s, remember
that song that was so popular? You don't believe we're on the
eve of destruction. All of that. People, and seriously,
people begin to take notice about things like that. Nuclear weapons,
you know. Man begins to think that he can
destroy the world, which he cannot. God created this earth, didn't
he? God's in control. Now, when God brings about final
destruction, he may use men in certain ways, maybe in wars or
nuclear, I don't know. But man does not have the power
to destroy this world. But here's another thing, and
this is probably the best testimony to the rebellion and pride and
depravity of man. Man cannot fix it either. He
thinks he can. But he can't. Well, let's do
this. Let's have nuclear arms treaties. Let's go green, you
know, things like that. Let's recycle. We'll fix this
thing. It's not going to fix it. This
world's going to burn up. You see, in glory, we're not
going to inhabit the world as it is now. It's going to be a
new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. And who
are they? Well, those who stand before
God in Christ. washed in his blood, clothed
in his righteousness. So here it comes. Men began to
take notice. And it says here in verse 15
that they were prepared for an hour, a day, a month, a year. What it's saying here is that
God's in control of the timing of this thing. You see, it's,
you know, people talk about God delaying this and delaying that
and they always go back to Hezekiah to try to prove that, you know,
how Hezekiah got sick and God, you know, he prayed for more
time and God gave. Listen, that's just a way of coming down on
our level and our finite minds in communication. God already
knew the fixed day of Hezekiah's death. God knows the times and
the seasons. Read Ecclesiastes 3. For everything,
there's a time appointed. Well, who did that appointing?
God did. God's in control. So whether
it's for an hour or for a day, a month, a year, God knows, God
has appointed, it's fixed in time. It's not gonna change.
I've often told you about the fella who called me, heard me
preaching on TV. This was up in Kentucky. And
he was upset because he heard something that tipped him off
about predestination. And he told me, he said, I can't
believe you believe that predestination. And I said, well, I can't believe
you don't believe it. He said, what are you talking about? And
I said, well, don't you believe the Bible? He said, I believe every word
of it. And I said, well, I didn't get, I didn't invent predestination,
it came from the scriptures. He said, well, I don't think
it's in there. And I said, well, let me ask you, I said, do you
believe the book of Revelation? He said, I believe every word
of it. I said, well, do you believe those are things that might happen
or that those are things that will happen no matter what? And
he said, I believe they will happen no matter what. I said,
that's predestination for him. God's the one who's in control.
Man's not. Man's not. Let's think about
it. If men were in control, what this world would be like. We'd
probably already be dead. God's in control, so that's what
he's talking about. And this sixth trumpet judgment,
it's gonna start gradually, and it's gonna get worse and worse
and worse, all right? In what way is it gonna get worse?
Well, he's talking about the judgment of God here, all right? And it's coming down, it's kinda
like it's a clock winding down. And God's the one who's in control.
But what about this great river Euphrates? Well, These angels
were bound by the great river Euphrates. That's caused many
commentators to say that, well, this is talking about a future
war with Syria or Iraq, Arab nations, or even China. He talks
about the 200 million man army. There's never been a 200 million
man army. And people say, well, China could
put that together. I don't think so. But anyway. Recall that these
angels were described before as, where are they? Where's their
location? Standing on the four corners
of the earth. But he says they're bound by
the river Euphrates. Now throughout the Old Testament,
the Euphrates River was always a symbol of a river that feeds
and nourishes ungodly empires. That's what it was. Such as Babylon
and Assyria. And of course Babylon is a great
symbol in the book of Revelation and throughout the Bible of what?
False religion. The great harlot. That's false
religion. So what is this river Euphrates
talking about? It's a symbol of the wicked world.
It was also, it was the boundary. Think about this, the river Euphrates
was a boundary between that which lay in exile and danger for the
people of God. when they were captured and taken
to Babylon, that river Euphrates. That's where they had to go beyond
the promised land. It's like a border between the
promised land and the land of bondage. And that's what it's
about. So it was a boundary of God's
land of promise and peace to his people. And you can read
about that back in Genesis. I've got, in Deuteronomy, I've
got two places here referenced that you can look at for this.
And what he's saying is this, I believe. These angels were
bound by the great river Euphrates, which means this, they cannot
come across to hurt God's people. That's what it's talking about.
God's people are hedged about to be preserved and protected
from the judgments that fall upon this world. Now, the river
Euphrates is a symbol of the surety of God's judgment upon
the wicked people of the earth, the inhabitants of the world,
Babylon, false religion, bordered by this river. But this river
is a boundary that these angels cannot cross. And what it's talking
about, it's not talking about geography, it's talking about
our standing and our state before God in Christ. We cannot be harmed. Now, that doesn't mean that we
cannot physically be harmed, You know, people talk about wars
and rumors of war, and we'll talk about that later on a little
bit. Yeah, there are going to be physical
wars and rumors. There always have been. You know,
when Christ made that statement, he didn't say now in the future
there's going to be wars and rumors of war, but there's not
now. You know what he means by that?
There are going to be wars and rumors of war. When in the history of
mankind have there not been wars and rumors? He's saying that
things are going to go on in this earth just like they always
have gone. There's always been wars and
rumors. And sure, there's going to be wars. And millions of people
will be killed physically in these wars, even believers. But
as far as our spiritual state and standing before God and the
Lord Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, we cannot be touched. That's what he's talking about.
The judgments that fall upon this world that consign the unbelieving
world to eternal damnation will not harm the people of God. Now
why? Because we're in Christ. We're
washed in his blood and clothed in his righteousness. The river
Euphrates was the home of all the hostile nations listed in
prophecy. You can read about that in Ezekiel.
led by the mysterious Gog and Magog. We'll get to that later
on. But more importantly, it was beyond the river Euphrates
that Israel had been taken during the years of her exile and captivity
in Babylon. And here it speaks of the boundary
between peace with God and war with God, salvation by his grace
and destruction. in the unbelieving world. Look
at verse 15, he says, and the four angels were loose, they
were prepared for an hour, a day, and a month, and a year for to
slay the third part of men, verse 16, and the number of the army
of the horsemen were 200,000,000, 200 million, and I heard the
number of them. Now I'll close with this. Now
remember, these angels were prepared. This is the work of God. This
is the purpose of God. And I always think about this
now, this is God's judgment. I always remember now, we speak
of God's love, his mercy, his grace towards his people, but
we never speak of that outside the judgment of God, which we
have already experienced in our representative, in our substitute,
in the Lord Jesus Christ. But this world needs to know
that God is a God of judgment. that God will punish sin. God must punish sin. That God
hates all workers of iniquity. And the only remedy for a sinner
to stand outside of that condemnation is in the person and work of
the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no love from God, no
mercy from God, no grace from God outside of Christ. That's
what they need to know. And judgment is coming when he
speaks of a vast army here. You talk about wars and rumors
of wars, as I mentioned. The number of the army, the horsemen,
200 million. In the physical realm, this great
number could represent all the armies which did and do battle,
war, all over time. It's an infinite number. It's
always been there. Put them all together in the
history. I mean, some political scientist,
I can't remember who it was, he wrote a book and he talked
about how the history of man is written in bloodshed. And
it is. Whether we've been shielded from
that or not, that's still the history of man. Man's inhumanity
to man. But the greater problem is this. Man's inhumanity to man and man's
war against man is simply a symptom of a greater problem of man's
war with God. Man has declared war with God. And so what he's talking about
here is, as there's never been one nation with one army of this
size, Some people say, well, that's gonna be in the future.
No, the spiritual application of this has to do with the overwhelming
number of Satan's army that will attack and infiltrate the church
of the living God here on earth in the great apostasy, in the
persecutions. It's a war against God. And it's
a war they're gonna lose. Satan and his army. It's a war
that Man has risen up of his own self-righteousness and self-love
and religious pride to wage against Christ and his church because
man by nature loves himself and hates the truth of God. And that's
what he's talking about. We'll deal with more of that
in the next lesson. All right.