Revelation chapter 9, we'll be
looking at verses 13 through 21. As the seventh seal of God's
eternal decrees was opened, John said there was silence, absolute
total silence in heaven. There were seven angels, all
of them holding trumpets of judgment. Now it's a strange thing, and
eternity will shed some light on it for us, but as we talk about these seven
trumpets of judgment, I don't have the same reaction here that
was in heaven. And there, they know. They know. And we're so compassed about
with sin and have so much sin in us that even the very judgments
of God and the eternal consequences of these judgments, it doesn't
have that effect on men and women here like it does there. And when they saw those judgments,
when they saw those angels and those trumpets, they knew what
it was. And there was silence. The purpose of these visions
is to make known what's coming to pass and shall yet come to
pass in these last days. That's why this vision was given
to John. They're given to show us the
judgment and condemnation of this world So to turn our hearts
away from it and that we have no hope in it. It's to tell us
the truth about what's going on around us and why. And it's
to turn our hearts to God. And also it's given to shut us
up to Christ and to rejoice in Him. There's nothing to rejoice
in in this world. Everything here is temporary.
You might one day rejoice in your health. You know, you wake
up and I know for years I looked, because everybody told me, boy,
wait till you turn 40. You'll see a difference. Well,
I didn't. I didn't see any difference. I was almost 50 when I saw the
difference. It's just that we look around
us and we feel good one day and we look good, you know, there's
no major signs of aging or anything else and we feel so good about
that, you know. And then the wrinkles start to
appear and the pain begins to come and old age sets in and
you lose your memory. It's just awful. It's awful.
And these things are given to show us and to shut us up to
Christ and to rejoice in Him. It's to show us what's going
on around us and that all the rejoicing that men pretend to
do is they've been lied to. That's why they're rejoicing
in a salvation that doesn't save. Now in the last two studies we've
been looking at the trumpet judgments of the fifth angel which he calls
locusts, spiritual locusts, sent forth in giant swarms upon the
earth. And these locusts represent,
I believe, organized false religions. These are the swarms. They don't
come one at a time, but they come in huge groups, huge organizations,
and they fly together, and they devour together. They're one
band, one band. This morning I want you to see
the sixth angel and his trumpet woe in Revelation 9.13 and through
the end of the chapter. In verse 13 it said, And the
sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of
the golden altar, which is before God. Now this altar is the altar
of incense. If you care to look it up, you
can find it back in Exodus chapter 30. And it was located beside
the Ark of the Testimony and it was made for the high priest
to pour a predetermined incense. He gave him the formula for it.
And he told him, don't add anything and don't take anything away.
You pour this. When you go in before that ark,
you pour this. He had a, I forget what they
called it now, but he took the hot coals from the altar and
he laid them there upon that altar of incense and he poured
this incense on there and that incense would just fill the inside
of that tabernacle. And these things were typical
of the intercessory prayers of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's our
high priest. And so here he describes him,
this voice is coming from that altar with the four horns. And
there was only one golden altar and that was the altar of incense.
It had these four horns on it. So he's speaking here in Revelation
9.13 as the great mediator between God and men, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is whose voice we're about
to hear. And no matter what the circumstance,
it is of great comfort to the believers to know that it's sent
of God. These judgments that are about
to come, of which this voice is going to speak and tell us,
is of God. And that's a comfort to a believer.
I remember when my daughter was very small, she was involved
in a three-wheeler wreck and did a lot of damage to her. And
she actually hit a pine tree with her face doing about 30
mile an hour on this three-wheeler. And she was only four or five
years old. And it was just unbelievable
what all it done. And the first thing, he knew
I was a pastor. And the first thing my neighbor
told me was, now don't blame this on God. I said, I'm not
going to blame this on anybody. But don't tell me it's not of
God. Because I know better. This is sin of God. This is the voice of the mediator.
Or no matter what the circumstance, it's of comfort to the believer
to know that it's sin of God, and purposed of God, and purposed
for our good in His glory. This voice is the voice of him
who must reign until he hath put all enemies under his feet. He must reign. There's never
a time when he don't reign. All right, Revelation 9, 14.
This voice that we hear that arises from the golden altar
with the four horns, saying to the sixth angel which had the
trumpet, loosed the four angels which are bound in the great
river Euphrates, and the four angels were loosed which were
prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for
to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of
the horsemen were 200,000,000. Now I'm not a mathematician,
so I took somebody's word at this, that's 200 million. The
number of this army was great. It was great. And I heard the
number of them. And thus I saw the horses in
the vision, and them that sat on them having breastplates of
fire, and jacinth, and brimstone. And the heads of the horses were
as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued fire,
and smoke, and brimstone. Now, as the world was filled
with the judgment of God by these spiritual locusts, organized
false religion, so it shall be sent great wars, which shall
kill huge portions of its population. Now, I did a little research
on the computer. I didn't spend a whole lot of
time at it. And if I'm off a little bit, you'll just have to grant
me that. But in World War I, do you know
how many people died in that war? 13 million people. And they separated these and
they told which ones were killed in battle and which ones were
just the population who got killed in the bombing and in the shooting
and in the raiding and all that took place during the war. There
was 23 million people wounded. And in World War II, there were
more than 80 million deaths plus the wounded. There were 620,000 who died during
the Civil War. And so it is, you can go back
in history and you can see these huge numbers of people who died
in these wars. And these wars are but just a
splash in the pan compared to all the wars and conflicts since
Christ died. And if you carefully look at
how John describes these horses, I think you can see how they
symbolize wars. As the locusts speak of great
and organized swarms so these horses speak of great numbers
and large groups causing death and destruction throughout the
world. And he talks about the fire and the brimstone and all
of these things and anybody that's even seen a movie on war knows
how close this depicts exactly what was going on. Now there's
two things about wars that we need to know as believers. First
of all, they are the result of two sides which are opposed to
one another who cannot come together. They cannot come to some kind
of an agreement to live together. They're opposed to one another,
and sooner or later, they're going to have a conflict. That's
how wars begin, either between governments or between kings
or whatever the reigning power happens to be. They cannot, by
diplomacy, seem to come to any kind of an agreement. And finally,
there's some kind of a trigger. Something triggers the war, and
off it goes. And then secondly, we need to
know this about wars. They're ordered from him who
sits on the throne. That's right. That's the end
of God. In the book of Daniel and Ezekiel
and different books in the Old Testament, you'll see where he
prophesied of wars and governments being established and taken down
and wars and conquering and all that type of thing. These wars are sent from him
who sits on the throne and they're sent to fulfill the just decrees
of God. All right, Revelation 9, 18. By these three was the third
part of men killed by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the
brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power
is in their mouth, and in their tails. For their tails were like
unto serpents, and had heads, and with them did hurt. And the
rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented
not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship
devils and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and
wood, which neither can see nor hear nor walk. Neither repented
they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their
fornication, nor of their thefts. Now, Brother Don, in his book
on Revelation, he mentioned four things that we ought to learn
from these verses here that's talking about these wars. First
of all, that the powers of this evil world are restrained until
God turns them loose to accomplish his purpose. How long did the
United States and Russia, during the Cold War, almost my whole
life, go back and forth, and back and forth, and right up
to the edge, and then back off, and so on, and so on, and so
on. But it never came to war. It never did come to war, and
so they called it the Cold War. So these powers are restrained
until God turns them loose to accomplish his purpose. David
said in Psalm 76.10, surely the wrath of man shall praise thee. Man's anger and wrath is going
to praise the Lord. He's going to use it to his advantage.
And the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. He restrained
it. I remember Henry in a message
one time saying that man's evil and even Satan's evil was restrained
even in the death of Christ. Otherwise they'd have put him
in a pot and boiled and ate him instead of nailing him to a tree.
They restrain men from being as evil as they could be. There's no end to the depth of
the wickedness and evil of sin. And then Paul said this, he said,
for the mystery of iniquity doth already work. It's at work all
the time. It was in his day. Only he who
now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way. When
God raises His restraint from this world, be it spiritual wickedness
or be it wars, those things are going to come to pass, but not
until. Not until. Nothing in God's providence
which is not arranged by our great Mediator, everything in
His providence is arranged by Him. He worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will and Nebuchadnezzar, that old wicked
king, he was a king. And I can tell that by his next
statement that I'm going to read to you. He was a king. He understood
what a kingdom was. And listen to what he said when
his reasoning returned to him. That is when God gave him some
spiritual reasoning. He said, he doeth according to
his will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth. Who's will is being done? His
will. Believers, angels, it says in
the New Testament, do always stand before your father. You
have angels that God has appointed for your protection, and they
stand before your father day and night, waiting for his instruction. Stay or go. according to his
instruction. And he rules. I'm telling you,
he rules in the armies of heaven. He restrains them from coming
upon this earth and doing what's going to be done one of these
days. He's restraining them right now. Let the grace of God be
accomplished in this world. And the armies in this world
are doing his will as well and bringing his judgment upon men.
All right, the second thing we need to learn from this is that
when sinners are ripe for punishment, the instruments of God's wrath
are already in place and they'll be turned loose upon them. Oh,
I tell you, this is the most frightening thing to me. When
I think about my former state and when I think about some of
you young people in here that yet do not know the Lord, I'm
telling you, you better listen to what I'm telling you right
now. When the sinner is ripe for punishment, I don't know
when that is, only God knows, but when he's ripe for punishment,
the instruments of God's wrath is ready to carry it out. Henry
said one time, they may be making a car in Detroit today that's
gonna kill you next week. Might be. There was a little town up in
northern Ohio, just a little old church. It didn't amount
to much. They was without a pastor, and after much prayer, God sent
them one. But there was a rich farmer there
who was a member of the church, and he was used to getting his
way. I mean, he owned everything in the town. He probably held
the office as mayor, and what he said went. And he was a dictator
of sorts in that little community. And as it was sure to come, he
crossed that preacher, crossed that rich man one day with his
doctrine. And the man getting no sympathy
from the body of believers, he left the congregation and stomped
out the door angry and mad. And being angry both at the church
and its pastor, and owning everything around it, He would start up
his tractors and on whatever day they had a meeting, he'd
drive those loud tractors up and down beside that church,
plowing those fields and disking the ground. And he'd do it on
those days when they were holding a meeting and come right up against
the church. And finally, on one crisp October
day, this old farmer went out and he made a caravan. He went
out to harvest his crops and he made just a literal caravan
of tractors and wagons and he brought them down and stopped
right in front of the church, waited for the meeting to come
to an end. And when it did, the people came
out and the pastor came out and the man called to the pastor
and he said, Preacher, he said, for months now I've defiled your
meetings. These meetings that you tell
me that God is in the midst of. And he said, I've defiled your
meetings. And he said, I've disrupted your
services and I've mocked the God you preach. Now look, he
said, at this bountiful harvest that I have. And explain to me Why God would
allow such a thing from a rebel if a rebel's what I am. And that
preacher looked at him after a few minutes and he gave him
the answer. He said, God doesn't settle his
accounts in October. That's right. And when the sinner's
ripe for punishment, the instruments of his death is already there. They're already in place. And when the time is right, God
will execute his judgments upon men. The third thing is that
the duration of these wars and damage inflicted by these things
is not determined by men but by God. God can bring it to an
end if he will, if he will. Their purpose is to kill and
destroy, and death and destruction. That's why they were sent. That's
what he tells us there in Revelation. They were sent to kill the third
part of men. And they're going to continue
killing until the objects of God's wrath are all taken out
of the way. I tell you, the figures of the
dead and the percentage of loss, not to be taken literally here
in the book of Revelations, but he uses these numbers to indicate
how great a loss it's going to be. When he talks about 200 million
in this army, he's just simply telling us that it's a great,
massive, irresistible army. You can't stop it. You can't
stop it. You know, he tells us over in
Matthew 24, our Lord said, you shall hear of wars and rumors
of wars, but don't be troubled. Don't be troubled. For all these things must come
to pass, but the end is not yet. These things are gonna come to
pass. Yes, they are. And we weep about them and we
weep for those who have to go out and serve and put themselves
in harm's way and we weep for the dead. But there's sin of
God and we're to take comfort from that and rest in Him. He tells us that nations shall
rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there shall
be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places. And this gospel of the kingdom
shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all
nations. And then shall the end come. That's when the end's gonna come.
You can read about that in Matthew 24. Now the last thing I want
you to see in these verses is that these wars and these providential
judgments are to warn men and women to flee from the wrath
of the judgment to come. Yes, this is a judgment. You
can't look at 200 million dead or 80 million dead and not think
that this is the judgment of God. It is the judgment of God.
But it's not the judgment. He left some alive to repent.
He left some alive to quit what they're doing. He left some alive
that they might examine themselves and say, what are we doing to
bring this upon ourselves? Their sin is a warning. It's to warn men and women to
flee from the wrath and judgment to come. If God please even now
to execute His judgment and wrath upon evil men, what's going to
happen at the last day? If we think these things are
great and terrible, what about that last day? What about that
resurrection of all men? What about when he doesn't bring
a third of them? What about when he brings the
whole world before him? These judgments are also given
to assure us that this great judgment day of Christ is coming. but they're also to show us that
God is merciful to those who repent. But here's the sad fact
of the matter. After millions lie dead on the
ground and in the streets, and after the wars cease and the
killing comes to a halt, Revelation 9, verse 20, the rest of the
men which were not killed by the plagues yet repented not,
had no victim. And so it is with Israel. in
all the wars that they did. And finally, in Isaiah chapter
one, I believe it is, he said, why should you be smitten anymore?
It has no effect on you whatsoever. They repented not of the works
of their hands, that they should not worship devils and idols
of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood, which could
not hear nor see nor walk. Neither repented they of their
murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor
of their thefts. I once knew a man who laid on
the battlefield being cut from ear to ear, his throat slit open,
bleeding, gushing out of his body, had but minutes And he
made a deal with God. He laid there and he said, Lord,
if you'll save me, if you'll somehow bring me back to health
and restore to me my life, he said, I'll serve you till I die. And the Lord did preserve him.
And he did bring him back to health. And I asked him this
question. I said, there's just one thing I want to know. Did
you serve him? And are you serving him now?
And he just hung his head and looked at the ground. Those which
are yet alive repented not. They repented not. I'm going to tell you something.
Wars and catastrophes do not bring about repentance. It's
the goodness of God that leadeth thee to repentance, not wars.
We ought to repent. at the side of the dead. We ought
to repent at the side of God's judgment, but we won't. We've
got to be led by the goodness of God to repentance. What goodness? That goodness which is manifested
in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose voice we're hearing at the beginning
of this judgment, praying and interceding for us at the altar.
Now that's it. That's what will lead For godly
sorrow worketh repentance to salvation. Now listen to this,
not to be repented of. Most repentance needs to be repented
of, but not godly repentance. Not godly repentance. It needeth
not be repented of, but the sorrow of the world, it works death. May the Lord lead us by his grace
to true repentance. Thank you.