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Man, this morning I'm going to be preaching on the seven trumpets, these judgments found in the book of Revelation that are going to be poured out upon this earth in the end times. And before we get into the events of the seven trumpets, I want to just kind of get our bearings a little bit in the timeline of what's going on in the book of Revelation just to get a little bit of context. So of course, before the seven trumpets, we have the seven seals. And the seven seals are described in Revelation chapter 6 and of course, at the opening of the sixth seal is where the sun and the moon are darkened and the stars fall and the heaven departs as a scroll when it's rolled together and basically the Son of Man is seen in the clouds. And of course, we would tie that in with Matthew 24 where it talks about the sun and moon being darkened. Christ comes in the clouds, the trumpet sounds, the elect are gathered and so forth. And of course, in Revelation chapter 7, after the opening of the sixth seal and the sun and moon being darkened, there's a great multitude that appears in heaven. In Revelation chapter 7, out of all nations, no man can number. So basically, that's where the rapture takes place and everybody's up there. All the saved are up there. So once that's over with, now God is going to pour out his wrath upon this earth of those who are still here. Now, in chapter 7, one thing I want to point out quickly, if you back up to chapter 7 verse number 3, it says, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. And then of course, you have the 144,000 sealed. Now the thing I want to point out about that is that the events of the six seals that have led up to this did not involve the mass destruction of the environment. You know, if you look at the events of the seals, you've got warfare, famine, pestilence, you've got people being martyred, but notice we're not hurting the earth and the seas and the trees yet until this point. And then God seals the 144,000. We'll get back to that. And then in chapter 8, we have the opening of the seventh seal. So look down at your Bible and don't just glaze over if you're not maybe that up on Bible prophecy. I'm going to make the sermon simple enough this morning that even if you're not a big Bible prophecy person and maybe this is a difficult subject for you, you're still going to be able to take away a lot from the sermon this morning because it isn't really that complicated of a sermon because we're talking about God pouring out his wrath on this earth because he's so mad. Anybody should be able to figure that out even if they are not really, you know, super well versed in the book of Revelation. You've got to start somewhere. Here's a great place to start right here this morning with the seven trumpets. So it says in verse number 1 of chapter 8, it says, and when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. So we've gone through the six seals, now the seventh seal is opened, and it's pretty obvious when you read this that the seventh seal leads into the seven trumpets. If you just read it and take it at face value, it says there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour and I saw the seven angels which stood before God and to them were given seven trumpets. Another angel came and stood at the altar having a golden censer and there was given unto him much incense that he should offer with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne and the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel's hand and the angel took the censer and filled it with fire of the altar and cast it into the earth and there were voices and thunderings and lightnings and earthquake, watch this, and the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. The first angel sounded and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood and they were cast upon the earth and the third part of trees was burnt up and all green grass was burnt up. This is totally unlike anything that has happened up to this point with the opening of the seals. You know you have the world at war, that has happened before. You had famines, that has happened before. Has there ever been a pestilence, has that ever happened before? And obviously throughout history there have been pestilences that were a lot more serious than COVID-19. I mean think back to the Black Plague and all these horrible diseases but the Bible says that there's going to be a time of tribulation such as was not since the world began, no nor ever shall be. So in those six seals of the tribulation you've got warfare but it's on an unprecedented scale. That's the worst war in the history of mankind, worse than World War I, worse than World War II. You've got famine and it's worse than any famine that has ever been. You've got pestilence and disease and it's going to be the worst diseases that the world has ever seen because it's going to be a time of tribulation worse than anything that the world has ever seen. And this is why when people look at coronavirus and say like, hey I think we're in the tribulation right now, it's like hold on a second, is this the worst disease that we've ever seen? Is this the worst time of trouble that we've ever seen? Because last time I checked I can drive down the road and look at all the fancy restaurants and all the parking lots are full. And I can go to any store and all the stores are full of people and everybody's eating and drinking and buying stuff and so this is not the worst time of trouble that the world's ever seen. Not even close, okay? Maybe it was the worst time of trouble you've ever seen because you're seven years old or something, but honestly the world has been through a lot worse and so therefore there's no way that this is the tribulation. It hasn't even started. We haven't even begun to have the tribulation because the tribulation is going to be worse than anything that's ever happened before, okay? So that's how I know we're not in the tribulation right now, okay? But after the tribulation, the sun and moon are darkened, Christ comes in the clouds, the rapture takes place, and then God begins to pour out his wrath upon this earth. And then the actual destruction of the earth itself takes place where trees are being destroyed and oceans are being destroyed and rivers are being destroyed. That's what we see here. Now notice the first angel sounds, right? So this is the first of these trumpet judgments and it says that they're followed, verse 7, hail and fire mingled with blood and they were cast upon the earth and the third part of trees was burnt up and all green grass was burned up. So you pretty much have essentially fire and brimstone raining from heaven on the earth with the open, with the first trumpet being blown. Now what does a trumpet represent? A trumpet represents warfare. You know, you blow a trumpet and that's the call to arms, it's a call to battle. So this is basically God destroying his enemies and destroying the earth and he is going to war is what we see in this chapter. Now keep your finger here in Revelation chapter 8 and go to Luke chapter 17 because again we want to get this in the context of end times, events, you know, where are we in the timeline? And I want to show you how consistent this is, but in Luke chapter 17 Jesus is talking about his second coming and he says in verse number 26, Verse 28, Now what we see here are two comparisons to the day when the Son of Man is revealed. To that day when the sun and moon are darkened and the clouds depart as a scroll when it's rolled together and the Son of Man is seen coming and the clouds of heaven and all the tribes of the earth mourn, it's compared to the days of Noah because of the fact that the same day that Noah went into the ark, it rained. So Noah went in the ark, God shut the door, it started raining the same day. There's no gap, there's no delay, Noah gets in the ark, it rains, okay? Also in the days of Lot, the same day that Lot is dragged out of Sodom and Gomorrah, the same day it rains fire and brimstone from heaven. Even so shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. So we're here in Revelation chapter number 8 and we saw that the great multitude appears in heaven. In chapter 7, how long goes by before the fire and brimstone is rained? Well it tells us in verse 1 of chapter 8, and when he had opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. So we can see some timeline here that a half hour goes by here, it's the same day that everybody is caught up there in heaven of the saved, the same day it rains fire and brimstone. Isn't that what Jesus said would happen when he said, hey it's going to be like Noah man, the same day he got in the ark, the rain fell. The same day that Lot left Sodom and Gomorrah, it rained fire and brimstone, it's going to be the same way in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. And so when the rapture takes place, the same day, fire and brimstone are raining out of heaven. That's what the Bible says. Now, is this what the Left Behind movie is going to show you? No, is this what the pre-trippers are going to tell you? No, the pre-trippers are going to tell you that when the rapture takes place, everybody's going to be wondering where is everybody, and they're going to be confused, and they can't find anybody, and everybody's trying to figure out what's going on, and they tell you that for the next few years it's going to be a time of peace, and everything's going to be honky-dory because, you know, the first half of the tribulation, you know, the first half is a time of peace, is what the pre-trippers will tell you. That's funny because the second seal, he says the whole world's at war with the opening of the second seal, and according to the Bible, the same day that Lot left Sodom and Gomorrah, it rained fire and brimstone. So if you believe like we believe, post-trib pre-wrath, not a pre-trib rapture but a pre-wrath rapture, then it's actually consistent with the Bible where the same day that we depart is the same day God rains fire and brimstone, and people aren't going to be wondering where's everybody at, they're going to be wondering like, where am I at? As fire and brimstone is raining from heaven, they're going to be figuring their own self out. They're not going to be like watching some videotape like, hey, if everybody disappeared watch this videotape, you know, it's going to tell you what happened. No, because of the fact that everybody's not going to disappear because most people aren't even saved, and so, you know, sometimes they exaggerate how many people are going to go up in the rapture. And by the way, the Bible never teaches they're going to disappear anyway, but that's another story. But anyhow, the point is that the same day that we are removed is the exact same day that God's going to rain fire and brimstone upon this earth. Now notice in verse 7 here of chapter 8 it says, the first angel sounded and their fall hail and fire mingled with blood and they were cast upon the earth and the third part of trees was burnt up and all green grass was burnt up. So what we have here is basically a wildfire or forest fire that's going on except that it's happening all over the world. We've seen a lot of this in Arizona, definitely seen a lot of it in California, and the way this works is that, you know, when a fire rips through an area, it's not necessarily going to burn up all the trees because some trees are more robust than others, some trees have more moisture than others, and you think about some slopes that are facing in such a way where they get more sunlight, they get drier, they're going to burn more than say, you know, the north-facing slopes that don't get as much sunlight or whatever. And so you're going to have basically two-thirds of the trees making it, but all the little, you know, grass and shrub and whatever, that stuff just kind of gets torched. A lot of the trees make it, a lot of the trees don't, but basically what you get a picture of here is just fire all over the world, just a lot of burning, a lot of major serious wildfires where God rains fire and brimstone and there are going to be wildfires just ripping through whole areas and not only destroying nature, but obviously also there are going to be burning structures as well, just like when we see wildfires here in Arizona, people that live in rural areas, I mean those people are affected by those wildfires. And so we see that if it says the third part of trees was burnt up and all green grass was burnt up, the idea is that the fires are pretty much everywhere and the only reason two-thirds of the trees are making it is just because those are the trees that made it, because they can handle the fire that swept through. Now keep your finger here and flip over to 1 Peter, or excuse me, 2 Peter chapter 3. Just to show again that this is consistent with the timeline, 2 Peter chapter 3, 2 Peter chapter 3, I just want to orient us a little bit as we get into these seven trumpets. It says in 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 9, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. Verse 10, but the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Now that's what we see here because of the fact that the day of the Lord is consistently associated with what? The sun and moon being darkened, all throughout scripture. Sun and moon are darkened, the rapture takes place, and then God a half hour later initiates the wrath being poured out, the trumpet is blown, and it said all the green grass burned up, a third of the trees are burned up. That's consistent with this verse because the Bible says here the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. Of course he tells in 1 Thessalonians 5 that to us who are saved it's not going to come as a thief in the night, it's going to come upon the unsaved as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise. Well we saw that because in Revelation 6 it said the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together. And then it says the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Now some people have wrongfully interpreted this verse to mean that the entire world burns up and it's just gone. Like it just melts, everything just melts, everything just toasts, just nuked, it's gone. And that's the way I always heard this taught growing up, and you know I'm pretty sure there's a time when I probably erroneously believed that just because that's what you hear so much. But in reality here, since we know what the day of the Lord is, and we see the heavens departing in Revelation 6, and then we see all the grass on the earth pretty much being burned up and a third of the trees being burned up. That's consistent with this because if there's that much fire going on to where a third of the trees are burned up and all the green grass is burned up, then wouldn't you be able to accurately say about that the earth also and the works that are therein got burned up? Yeah, so it doesn't mean that they're burned up in the sense that it ceases to exist or something. It's just burned up because all over the world it's burning. There's mass, mass burning and destruction. So that's consistent with what 2 Peter 3 is saying. 2 Peter 3 is not going into some big end times prophecy, he's just making the point, hey all your stuff's going to get burned up anyway, so why are you so worried about all your stuff? And you're so worried about your houses and your cars and your boats and your RVs, that stuff's all going to burn up, you need to think about eternal things. That's what he's saying in 2 Peter 3. But it is consistent with the timeline that we see in Revelation. So back to chapter 8, we saw the first trumpet, we get it, it's fire and brimstone, it's wildfires ripping across all continents, ok that makes sense. That's pretty bad, that's already serious. But let's look at the second angel sounding, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea and the third part of the sea became blood. And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life died. And the third part of the ships were destroyed. Now whenever you see this phrase as it were in the Bible, it means that that's not literally what it was. It's like as if it were that, that's what it was like. So it's saying that when the second trumpet sounded, it was as if a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea. It was something like that, where something crashed into the sea and ended up destroying sea life and ships and turning the water into blood. And again, this might not be like literal blood coursing through our bodies, it could be that John's looking at this and it basically turns dark or dark reddish or something, it turns a color because of the damage and it's poison and it's killing wildlife and ships are destroyed. Now what I would say that this is probably referring to, because it says it's like a mountain being cast into the sea, it's probably some kind of a meteor, you know, that's crashing into the ocean and if you actually look at the predictions of what scientists predict would happen if a meteor crashed into the earth and then you read the book of Revelation, you're going to notice a lot of familiar things because what they say would happen is pretty much what you see described in this passage because there's another meteor that I believe crashed into the earth in the next trumpet because in verse number 10 it says, and the third angel sounded and 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 stars called wormwood and the third part of the waters became wormwood and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter. So we have, you know, with the second trumpet this something like almost like a mountain being thrown into the sea and then in the third trumpet it's like a star falling from heaven and crashing to the earth and both of them are destroying or contaminating water, you know, the salt water with the second trumpet and the fresh water with the third trumpet. Now here's what you have to understand about the Bible's language here. When the Bible says star here, it's not referring to what we think of as stars in 2021, which when, you know, just because we have a certain definition for a word, it doesn't mean that it had the same exact definition back when the Bible is being written because a lot of the names that we give things are just arbitrary. Some scientists somewhere just decided to call something something. Like for example, the Bible calls the whale that swallowed Jonah a fish, calls it a fish, right? Yeah, that's a mammal. That's not a fish, that's a mammal. But here's the thing about that, you know, somebody decided somewhere to classify it as a mammal. Okay, but isn't that just an arbitrary classification? I mean, you know, right now we've got mammals and we've got amphibians and reptiles and birds, insects. Don't you think somebody else could have come up with just completely different distinctions? Instead of having five of those categories of vertebrates, you could say have eight or three or 20 because it's arbitrary. It's just somebody, somebody made up these distinctions, right? So today in our world, when we say star, we are only talking about these gigantic burning gas nuclear fusing objects throughout the universe. You know, we would say in our solar system there's only one star, it's just the sign and then the nearest star is super far away. But what Jeff Tender says is that in the ancient world they used the word star to describe any bright object in the sky whatsoever is called a star at the time that the Bible is written. You can't say that it's wrong, it's just another way of thinking or another way of looking at it. In fact, because we would say like, well no, those are planets, those aren't stars, those are planets. But here's the thing about that, the word planet comes from the Greek word which means wanderer. But it wasn't used by itself, they were called wandering stars. So like in the book of Jude we read about wandering stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Planets used to be called wandering stars and then it just got shortened to wanderer, just wanderer and that comes over in English as planet. Planet means wanderer. Because here's the thing, if you look up at the sky every night, the stars, they look the same and they change over the course of a year. But if I'm looking at them in March and then next March I look at them and then the March after that I look at them and then the March after that I look at them, I'm going to see the same constellations, aren't I? And it's a pattern and it's just, it's very regular. But then you have these other little star looking objects that are not consistent like that. You know, if I look up in the sky in March and I see certain constellations, next March all those constellations are going to look the same but you know what's going to look different? The planets. Because they've wandered somewhere else. So you have to put yourself in the mind of people that are looking at this thousands of years ago and looking up at the sky, they called the sun a planet, they called the sun a star, the moon a star, the planet stars. Any bright object in the sky is a star to them. That's how they use that word. It could be a comet, it could be a meteorite, it's just, that's what it is. So when the Bible talks about the stars falling from the sky, it's not talking about these giant balls of gas crashing into the earth because one of those would obviously just completely incinerate the earth before it even got close, okay. Now here's the thing. Who's ever been to the meteor crater in northern Arizona? Who's been to that meteor crater? Okay. Now that meteor crater is like two-thirds of a mile in diameter. But it was made by a meteorite that was about one-tenth of that size, okay. So you know, that crater is a massive crater made by a fairly small meteor in the scheme of things, you know, of what's out there in the universe, okay. Now if you look up, you know, what would happen, you know, scientific predictions and they've done computer simulations and you can do this even if you go to that meteor crater, they have a little computer in the lobby where you can like hit the earth with whatever size meteor you want and you know, you can, and if you hit it with one that's like 10 kilometers, you know, the entire earth is just destroyed by that impact. There's so much energy released, it would just completely annihilate the planet, which pretty, you know, if you think it's not really that big compared to the size of the earth, but you know, a six mile diameter meteor would just completely wipe out earth. But if you look at smaller meteors than that, the damage that they would do, it's still an incredible amount of damage, incredible amount of energy that was released. You know, there was a, there was a meteorite that came down in Siberia in the early part of the 20th century and then again in the early part of the 21st century and thankfully this thing came into the earth's atmosphere in a place where it was pretty uninhabited. You know, there weren't a lot of people, if it would have hit a city, it would have just completely nuked the city because I, you know, don't quote me on this, but I want to say, you know, it released the power of like a thousand Hiroshima's or something. You know, this thing went off in Siberia as it comes in the atmosphere and you know, it was just like a nuke going off. The one that just happened less than 20 years ago, in fact, in Siberia, it busted out like 1,000 windows or something in the area and you know, thankfully no one was harmed because it went off in the middle of nowhere. But it was pretty incredible and people were filming it and stuff because of the fact that it was in modern times. So you can imagine how an object crashing into the earth could cause major, major cataclysms across the earth just from a meteor striking the earth, okay. And what is it going to cause? It's going to cause earthquakes, tidal waves, it could obviously throw up debris into the atmosphere and just, it could cause a lot of havoc and you can look that up and see what it would do. But the point is that when you look at this description here, it says in verse number 11, the name of the star, and again, any heavenly object is called a star in the Bible's vernacular. The name of the star is called wormwood and the third part of the waters became wormwood and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter. Now what does wormwood mean? Wormwood is a poison, okay. Wormwood is a substance that could kill you. You know, some people take it in tiny amounts medicinally or something, but it's, it's a, it's a, it's a poison, it's toxic, it would kill you. So it's poisoning the water supply, that's why it's known as wormwood. Now here's a really interesting fact and this, this almost sounds too weird to believe but I fact checked this six ways to Sunday and it's true that wormwood, that Chernobyl literally is Ukrainian for wormwood. You know, it sounds like some weird conspiracy thing you'd see online or something, but I'm a language guy. I don't speak Slavic languages, but I am a language guy and I did a bunch of research. I fact checked it six ways to Sunday and literally Chernobyl means wormwood. That's kind of interesting, isn't it? Now stop and think about this. Remember what happened when there was an earthquake in Japan and that Fukushima nuclear plant got flooded from a tidal wave, right, a seismic sea wave tsunami flooded it and it ended up taking out their power supply and flooding their facility and they had all of this nuclear waste that was being contained and it had to be cooled all the time to keep it contained and when that cooling system went out, all of a sudden that toxic radioactive nuclear waste started to just melt through the floor of the facility and melt out and contaminate the area. Now it didn't end up being a huge deal. I mean, you know, but people in California, you know, they're sensing slightly elevated radiation levels or in the immediate area. It didn't end up being a huge deal. Nobody really knew how it was going to play out at the time, but it didn't really end up being that big of a deal. But here's the thing. The Bible says that in the end times, there are going to be earthquakes that are greater than any earthquake that the world's ever seen and if you've got a meteor crashing into the earth, creating all this upheaval and you end up damaging these nuclear power plants, you could see how a lot of that junk could get released into the environment. A lot of that radioactive byproduct of nuclear power generation could actually get released and contaminate water supplies and you could see why people would call it, it's wormwood. It's like Chernobyl because the word Chernobyl has become synonymous with what? You know, any kind of a radioactive nuclear disaster. That's the point of reference because it's kind of the first big one, you know, that had severe consequences, the Chernobyl meltdown that took place. If people don't know what I'm talking about, Chernobyl was a major meltdown of a nuclear power plant and the Soviets tried to cover it up and people suffered from the effects of that radiation that was leaked out. And so it's pretty interesting to think about the fact that that's what could be happening here because if you just have Fukushima's happening all over the world on a much bigger scale, on a much grander scale, you could see how it could really contaminate the water and a third of the water in the world could get contaminated and made bitter by this. Now I'm not against nuclear power and here's the bottom line if you think about it, okay? The world is gaining more and more population and not only that, a lot of parts of the world right now that are kind of primitive or third world countries, you know, they're going to catch up eventually and guess what? They're going to want to plug in all their electric gadgets too and they're going to want to have all the same technology that we have and then you're going to have all the electric cars and everybody's using a lot of electricity today. And do you think we're going to be using more or less electricity 20 years from now, 40 years from now? I mean if you look at a picture of the planet at night, the United States is all lit up like a Christmas tree and then you see parts that are kind of dark because they don't have a lot of electricity. Guess what? Eventually those are going to light up too. This whole thing's going to be lit up. We're going to be using a lot of power. Where's the power going to come from? You know, you can only burn so many fossil fuels and obviously that's spewing out a bunch of junk into the atmosphere, all the CO2 that that's putting out. You know, the cleanest way to make energy is nuclear power. I mean you can get more power for your buck, more bang for your buck. So you're probably going to see in the next 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, you know, a lot more nuclear power happening which is really probably the only solution to meet the power needs of our world and it's all going to be great. You know, as long as we're here it's all going to be great so it's fine with me. But you know, when God starts destroying this thing and when God starts smashing it and crashing meteors into it, guess what? A lot of that nuclear waste that's developed, even if it's the cleanest, you know, nothing's perfect. There's no great way to generate energy without making a mess. And so all of that toxic radioactive garbage that's basically, you know, kept contained, if that stuff were to leak out then you could see how this prophecy could be quite literally fulfilled and people would call it wormwood, wouldn't they? They would be calling it Chernobyl. It's going to be poisonous. Now I'm not saying that I'm 100% right about what I just explained, but it's very plausible what I just explained. And so we see what the Bible says and I'm giving you a scenario of how it could play out that's very realistic. Look at the next verse, it says, the fourth angel sounded and the third part of the sun was smitten and the third part of the moon and the third part of the stars, so as the third part of them was darkened and the day shone not for the third part of it and the night likewise. And again, nothing actually is probably happening to the sun, moon, and stars themselves, but rather that basically it's the atmosphere that's being blocked to where you don't see the sun, you don't see the stars, you don't see the moon. And again, if a meteor were to strike the earth, that's exactly what happened. You know, you'd have a cloud thrown up and basically that would block out those things. And it says, and I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven saying with a loud voice, whoa, whoa, whoa to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels which are yet to sound. What's God saying? He's like, is this already bad enough or what? I mean imagine the chaos, imagine the societal breakdown, imagine the environmental breakdown when a third of the life in the ocean is dying, one third of the fresh water supply on earth is poisoned, you've got the sun being blacked out for one third of the time and all of these things going on and you think to yourself, could this get any worse? Probably the worst if it's over. But then he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa to the inhabiters of the earth by the reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels which are yet to sound. He says, oh no, I'm just getting started. There's three more trumpets. Look at verse number one of chapter nine. And 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. Now here the star quote unquote is a person apparently because it says a star fell from heaven unto the earth and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. Sometimes in the Bible the word star is also used to represent angels. So sometimes angels will be represented by stars. So this is an angel that comes down from heaven and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. We're talking about hell obviously. And he opened the bottomless pit and there arose a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. Does anybody remember maybe ten years ago, I have no concept of time, but sometime a while back there was that volcano in Iceland and it erupted and it ended up just like filling the sky with smoke to where they had to ground all the plains in Europe and people got so stranded in Europe for a couple weeks or something, who knows what I'm talking about with that Icelandic volcano. So obviously this is something on a much greater scale where again it's just throwing this garbage into the atmosphere, you know just this thick smoke from the bottomless pit that's going to black out the sky. The sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. Verse three, and there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth and unto them was given power as the scorpions of the earth have power and it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, that they should be tormented five months and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man. In those days shall men seek death and shall not find it and shall desire to die and death shall flee from them. So the fifth, it's been pretty bad but now it gets really bad because God literally opens up hell and brings out these locusts from hell just to torture the people on the earth. And it doesn't kill them, it just hurts them. It just torments them. It just stings like being stung by a scorpion. Who here has been struck by a scorpion before? Are you even Arizonans? What's going on? Until recently, virtually every member of my family had been struck by a scorpion except me. And I finally got hit a couple years ago so I got to join the club of being struck by a scorpion and it's pretty painful. I mean it stings. It hurts. I mean it's like being stung by a bee or whatever but it's just worse. But it's similar to be, it kind of feels like being stung by a bee, maybe a little bit worse. And it hurts pretty bad but then what's weird is that it spreads like a numbness and your hand gets numb and then the numbness will like jump to other parts of your body and they tell you you're okay as long as you don't get numb like in a lot of places at once, you know. And I guess the anti-venom is dangerous so you're better off to just, you know, just deal with it. Only if it gets really bad and starts being numb all over the place like where you're just systemically messed up do you go to the emergency room. But anyway, so you know I got stung and the place, I got stung on my finger and literally I kid you not, a month later just the place where I got stung on my finger, my finger was still numb. It took like over a month for feeling to come back to my finger. So but when you initially get struck man it's painful, it's just like a really bad bee sting. So these things are going to be just everywhere, just stinging people, people are getting stung and it's going to hurt so bad. I don't know if they're going to get numb and tingly or if they're just going to feel the pain or what but whatever it is it's going to be so bad and things are going to be so messed up that a lot of people are just going to want to die. Like they won't even want to be alive anymore, it's going to be so bad. And so it says they'll desire to die, you know, and death shall flee from them. Verse seven, and the shapes of the locust were like unto horses prepared unto battle and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold. And notice again, as it were, they don't actually have little human heads with crowns on them and you know horse legs or whatever. He's just basically just using comparisons, like if he says on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, it's just saying that their head is some kind of a horned thing or they have like a hard exoskeleton on their head or something, you know what I mean? He's just kind of describing a pointy head is what he's saying when he says, you know, hey it's like a crown on their head. And he says the shape of the locust were like unto horses prepared unto battle and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold and their faces were as the faces of men. They're not actually going to have like human faces, but there's just something about their faces that's like a human face, you know, I don't know, maybe two eyes, nose and a mouth or maybe, you know, some kind of, you know, a beard or something or, you know, a little fuzzy part or something. You know, they're not actually just like these human head things. It's just, that's what it's like. It looks like, he's just trying to describe these bizarre creatures from hell. And they had hair as the hair of women and their teeth were as the teeth of lions and they had breastplates, again it's like an exoskeleton, right, like breastplates of iron. So you're stepping on them and they just keep coming. And look, even when you don't open the bottomless pit, some insects are pretty hard to kill. I mean have you ever just like swatted it at an insect and it just won't die? I mean how many times have I just like swatted it and smashed it and it just doesn't die? It just keeps coming. Or when I was a kid sometimes we'd find like a bee or something in the pool and we'd like hold it under water with a skimmer and we're like, because you know, you're freaked out when you're a kid and there's like a yellow jacket or a wasp. You're scared so you want to get rid of this thing. So we would basically like hold it under water. And I remember one time we held it under water, I kid you not, for like 20 minutes or something and then the thing just flew away and I was just, I was like whoa. So you know basically what the Bible's describing here is just really resilient creatures here. They've got these exoskeletons or breastplates, like breastplates of iron. The sound of their wings was the sound of chariots of many horses riding about. So it's kind of like a buzz, you know, some kind of a buzzing. Think about how loud insects can be. Think about cicadas. I mean cicadas will be screaming. It could be like almost deafening when you listen to cicadas. And so you know it's going to be just really loud like, like the sound of their wings is the sound of chariots of many horses riding to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions and there were stings in their tails and their power was to hurt men five months and they had a king over them which is the angel of the bottomless pit whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. Now who's ever heard of Apollyon as being a name for Satan? What up your head if you've heard that? Like where people say, oh Apollyon that's Satan. Well it comes from a book called Pilgrim's Progress where this long haired guy wrote a book called Pilgrim's Progress 400 years ago where he teaches you can lose your salvation and a bunch of other stupid doctrine in it. But anyway, he in this book refers to the devil as Apollyon. That's not correct. That's not biblically correct because the Bible says here that the angel of the bottomless pit or the king over these creatures who is the angel of the bottomless pit's name is Abaddon or Apollyon. This is not the devil because let me explain something to you. The devil does not rule hell. The devil is not the king of hell. He's not down there like ah ha ha ha, you know, ruling and reigning in hell at all. The devil is going to be tormented in hell someday. He's not going to be ruling down there. You know the Satanist motto is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. Well guess what? That's not an option because the job of reigning in hell is already taken. It's the Lord's job. God is the one who reigns over heaven and earth and under the earth and God, the Lord is the one who has all the power and authority even over hell. Satan isn't down there poking people with a pitchfork. He's getting poked by a pitchfork. It's ridiculous. Where does this doctrine come from? In fact, I'll prove it to you. Keep your finger there. Let's go to chapter 20. Go to Revelation 20. The Bible says I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit. You remember this guy? We just saw it in Revelation number 9 that the star fell from heaven and he has a key to the bottomless pit. He's the angel of the bottomless pit. He's the king over these locusts from hell, right? So let's see more about this angel of the bottomless pit. It says I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit. Here's an angel. He's got the key of the bottomless pit just like Revelation 9 and he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil, and satan and bound him a thousand years and cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal upon him that he should deceive the nations no more. So what we have here is Apollyon throwing satan into hell in Revelation chapter 20 is what we see. The angel who has the key of the bottomless pit who is known in Revelation 9 as Apollyon, he throws the devil into hell because the devil is not the king over these locusts. Now stop and think about this, okay? On this earth during this time, who is the one who is in authority on the earth humanly speaking is the Antichrist, right? And I can prove that to you. Keep your finger in Revelation 8, go to Revelation 16 quickly. Revelation chapter 16, this is the vials of God's wrath. Watch how when the vials of God's wrath are poured out in chapter 16, it says in verse 10, and the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seed of the beast and his kingdom was full of darkness. Whose kingdom? The beast's kingdom. His kingdom was full of darkness and they gnawed their tongues for pain. So whose kingdom are we talking about here when God's pouring out his vial of wrath? He pours it upon the beast's kingdom, the Antichrist's kingdom. So let me ask you this, can satan cast out satan? Apollyon throws the devil into hell, Apollyon's not the devil. And here's the thing, if you think about it, who are these locusts hurting? They're not hurting God's people. They're hurting the devil's crowd. So why would the devil be leading the locusts to destroy himself and his own kingdom? It doesn't really make any sense, does it? So it's wrong. Apollyon is not the devil, there's no evidence for that. In fact, it's impossible. So this army of locusts from hell, whose will are they carrying out here? The devil's will or God's will? I'll prove it to you further. They're hurting everybody, right? But look at verse 4, it says, and it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. So remember how back in chapter 7 you had the 144,000 sealed? God seals 144,000. They're the only ones that are immune from these locusts hurting them. So why would the devil be like, okay guys, don't hurt God's people, only hurt my people. It makes no sense, does it? So this is why, don't get your doctrine from a storybook from the 1600s written by some long-haired preacher, okay? Why don't you get your doctrine from the word of God, okay? So and I'm not trying to hurt your feelings if you like the book Pilgrim's Progress, but there are multiple places in that book that teach false doctrine and one of them, he warns the, what's the guy's name, Pilgrim or Christian or whatever, you know, he warns Pilgrim, hey, if you commit suicide, you're going to go to hell, you're going to lose your salvation. That's what the book teaches, okay? So I, you know, I'm not interested in a book that teaches that you can lose your salvation. And plus, why is it so hard for this guy to get to heaven anyway, because I thought getting to heaven is easy. Why is it so hard for him to get saved? Why does he have to work so hard before he finally gets saved? Because last time I checked, getting saved is easy and Jesus did the hard part because you just believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. So that was what I never understood about that book as a kid is why it was so hard for Pilgrim to get saved when getting saved should have been easy. Now the Christian life's hard, but he should have got, he should have got saved in the first few pages. It should have been easy. He shouldn't have had to do so much work. And he shouldn't have to be threatened that he's going to lose it and go to hell. It's garbage. Sorry to spoil that book for you. But anyway, so that's the fifth seal. Now remember how after, excuse me, fifth trumpet, sorry about that. Stop me when I make mistakes like that. So remember after the first four trumpets, he said, woe, woe, woe for what's coming? So trumpets five, six, and seven are also known as the three woes. So at the end of the fifth trumpet, he says, one woe is past. Look at verse 12 there, Revelation 9, 12, one woe is past and behold, there come two more woes hereafter. Now the first woe was pretty gnarly because we thought the first four trumpets were bad. Then we got to the woe. We got to the fifth trumpet and it's, it's, it's, it's worse. It's physical torture. It's these locusts from, I mean, look, I wouldn't even want to have normal locusts infesting all my stuff. I wouldn't even want my house to be infested with house flies. Even that's annoying. Look at the stuff Pharaoh went through in Exodus where there's lice and flies and frogs and you know, but these things are worse, man. You'd rather have frogs than these locusts from hell with tails that sting you like a scorpion any day of the week. Okay, so let's get into the second woe. The six angels sounded, verse 13, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God 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 man. So one third of people are going to be killed. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand. Another way of saying that is obviously two hundred million. So two hundred thousand thousand, 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 of 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. 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 and their powers in their mouth and in their tails for their tails were like unto serpents and had heads and with them they do hurt. So again this is pretty horrific. These just horsemen from hell and obviously they're, they're slaying literally one third of the population on the earth so they're killing billions of people. I mean this is pretty intense. Two hundred million of these horsemen killing a couple billion people. I mean that's pretty intense. But notice verses 20 and 21. It says, and the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues, so the two thirds of the population that's still alive, 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 of wood which neither can see nor hear nor walk, neither repented they of their murderers, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. Now the reason that these two verses are important is that they show us God's mentality here of what has got him so mad. Like why is he punishing the earth like this? Why is he pouring out his wrath? Why is God just up in heaven and we're literally up there just eating popcorn and just watching this of just watching it be wiped out and just locusts from hell and these horsemen and meteors crashing into the earth and nuclear meltdowns and poisonous waters and just the sky being blacked out, just all this horrific stuff. Why is God mad? That's a good question, right? Like what is making God so mad that he would do this? He's explaining that even though all of these horrible punishments are coming upon the people of the earth, they're not repenting of their worship of idols, their murder, their sorcery, their fornication, and their theft. God's wrath is upon this earth because of sin. It's because of sin that God's wrath is upon this earth. God hates idolatry. God hates stealing. God hates murder. God hates sorcery. God hates fornication. God hates that. You know, maybe you should think twice about doing these things when you realize how God feels about it because I think that these chapters should give you a little picture of how God feels about it. And you say, well, I think God's overreacting. Well, I tell you what, you can create your own universe. Go join the Mormon church and then you can go create your own universe and then you can, you know, react a little more moderately. But last time I checked, God is the creator and he makes the rules and it's not for us to just sit back in our, you know, because we know everything, right? You know, because we grew up watching TV and listening to the radio and reading comic books and we're like, you know, that's not fair. I don't, you know, it's too much. You know what? This is what God, this is the word of God, my friend. And you know what? This book that I'm reading to you from is the same book that's been preached faithfully for the last 2,000 years. It's the same book that Christians everywhere have believed and cherished and read. But you know, I have a funny feeling that there are probably a lot of churches across America that have probably never pulled this book out on a Sunday morning and turned to Revelation 8 and 9, right? Because you know, this isn't necessarily what people want to hear, but it's what we need to hear because we need the whole word of God. Yes, we need the sweetness and light. Yes, we need love one another. Yes, we need the gospel. Yes, we need love thy neighbor as thyself, but we also need this, my friend, we need the whole word of God. God is angry today and when you stop and think about stealing something, maybe you should stop and think before you steal something how God feels about theft. Oh, it's not a big deal. I mean, you know, these people have a lot anyway and I don't have much and you know, they got more than they need and I don't have enough so I'm just going to take it. I'm just going to steal that bicycle. Who's ever had a bicycle stolen from you? Put up your hand. Look around. It's the whole auditorium. It's the whole auditorium. How do you feel about that when somebody stole a bike from you because you're just super rich and you just have 20 bikes, right? No, I mean, usually when your bike gets stolen, that's your only bike and you end up having to walk places or you end up having to go buy another bike. It's a hardship. But you know, probably the person who stole your bike was telling themselves, hey, you know, I'm entitled to this because I didn't get a fair shake in life or whatever. You know, everybody's always got an excuse for the sins that they commit. Every thief has got an excuse for why they're being a thief but let me tell you something, stealing is wicked. Don't downplay stealing because you know what God says here? He's pouring out his wrath because of theft. Is theft such a big deal? What does the word of God say? Murder? Murder's a big deal. Abortion's a big deal. All forms of murder are a big deal. Sorcery, witchcraft, worshiping idols, bowing down to these statues of gold and silver and stone and wood. You say, I don't see a lot of people doing that. That's because you don't live in India. It's because you don't live in China. It's because you don't live in Japan. Did you know that there's a whole world outside of the US that exists out there? And guess what? We're in the United States of America, we're a small percentage of the world's population. One out of five people live in South Asia, right? You got a billion people plus in China. Well over a billion people in India. You got 128 million people in Japan. You got tens of millions of people in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and guess what they're doing? You know what they're doing? They're bowing down to statues of gold and silver and stone and wood and they're worshiping idols. It makes God angry. Fornication. You say, so what if I sleep with my girlfriend before we're married? What's the big deal? At least we're straight. You know because the devil exposes us to sins that are so much worse so that our sin won't seem that bad. To say like, oh so what, you know, I mean hey, it's no big deal, everybody's doing it. First of all, everybody's not doing it. Number one, everybody's not doing it. Hey, I grew up in this wicked society. I grew up in America and guess what, I was a virgin when I got married. Because not everybody's doing it and I'm not the only one. Lots of people, lots of people waited until they're married to sleep together and you know why? Because of verses like this is why I waited because you know what, as a teenager, guess what I wanted to do? I wanted to commit fornication because I was young and stupid and because the flesh is weak and because we're all sinners. But let me tell you something, it was verses like this that made me stop and say, hey, you know what, I think I can just wait until I get married and then I got my whole life ahead of me. I was going to wait on this because I don't want to incur God's anger. Think about that, my friend, fornication, don't downplay it, don't downplay stealing, don't downplay murder, idolatry's wicked, God is angry because of these things. God's wrath is poured out in the end times because of these things and he's just so mad, he's so flabbergasted that even after he's punishing them, they just persist in these sins. I mean they're probably just fornicating thinking, oh, the whole world's crashing down, let's go out with a bang. Hey idiot, why don't you get saved? You know, hey idiot, why don't you clean up your act so that God can spare you long enough to figure out how to get saved? To get, you know, it's like, give me a break. But these people are foolish, and by the way, you don't have to give up your sins to get saved because if we did, we'd all be going to hell because we're all sinners. You believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved, but let me tell you something, this is earthly punishment and in order to avoid earthly punishment, you do have to give up your sins. Everybody get that? Heaven and hell is determined by one thing. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, but guess what, when it comes to this earth, punishments on this earth, you've got to clean up your act if you want to be blessed on this earth. Because I can tell you right now, I'm saved, I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as a six year old boy, and I'm eternally saved. I've been saved for what, 34 years now, but let me tell you something, if I went out that door and I went out and started stealing and I went out and committed adultery and I went out and got drunk and I went out and committed murder and did these things, do you really think that God's just going to be like, oh well you're saved so you're good to go? Now I would still go to heaven no matter what, but do you think he's just not going to punish me on this earth? Folks if I went out there and committed adultery, I guarantee you God would punish me severely. He'd hit me with an STD or just cause me to be killed or incarcerated or beaten or who knows what would happen, but it'd be something awful. If I went out and got drunk, I'd probably be guaranteed to get a DUI, guaranteed to get in some horrible drunk driving accident, get maimed, why? Because unto whom much is given of him shall much be required. I'm a pastor, I'm a preacher, I grew up in church, I grew up with the things of God, God's going to expect a lot out of me and if I go out there and sin, I'm going to be punished in this earth. So we need to understand the difference between earthly punishments for our sins and spiritual salvation through Jesus. You know, I could be spiritually saved, but if I'm out committing fornication, God's still going to punish me on this earth. I'm going to heaven and look, when I was a teenager, you know why I didn't commit fornication? It's not because I was scared of going to hell, because I knew that I'm going to hell no, excuse me, I knew I'm going to heaven no matter what. I wasn't scared of going to hell if I, if I committed fornication. You know what I was scared of? God kicking my butt on this earth. That's what I was scared of. Because it's like, oh, I'm going to heaven no matter what. Okay, but do you want to get your butt kicked all the way there? Because you know, I, you know, I might live on this earth for another, you know, if God blesses me, I might live on this earth for another 40, 50 years. I might live on this earth for 40 or 50 minutes. Or I might live on this earth for 40 or 50 years. But look, 40 or 50 years is a long time. You think I want to live on this earth for the next 40 years with God kicking my butt and hurting me and punishing me and making my life miserable? Because there are some people out there living some pretty miserable lives as a result of their sins in this life. So there's two things at play here, okay? There's spiritual salvation, which is personal, which is based on believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. And then there's physical judgment that comes in this life because of people's actions, whether they're saved or unsaved. Everybody's saved but living like, you know, the world, obviously they're going to get punishments. And so God's wrath is on the earth because of sins. Because of things like theft and murder and fornication. Some people will foolishly say, oh, well, we just have to be saved to go to heaven. We just have to stop sinning. Too late because you already sinned anyway. So you're still going to hell because of the stuff you already did. The only way to be saved is to believe on Jesus and have all your sins past, present and future forgiven because the Bible says that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. But just because you're saved doesn't mean that you're going to avoid punishments on this earth. Obviously none of us that are saved are going to be here for this particular incident. What I'm trying to say is that if that's how God feels about these particular sins at this particular time, how do you think he feels about it right now? Because last time I checked, God is timeless. Doesn't God dwell in eternity, the Bible says? God inhabits eternity. God dwells outside of time. And so God feels the exact same way about theft today in our lives as he's going to feel about it in Revelation number 9 when he's actually pouring out his wrath on unsaved people. So well it's not us, let's not worry about it. Well maybe we should worry about how God feels about fornication and theft and murder and idolatry and we as Christians to say, you know what, I'm glad I'm saved, I'm glad I'm going to heaven, but you know what, I don't want God to mess with me on this earth and mess up my life. I want God to bless me. I want to have a good life and a good eternity. I want both. I'm not so stupid to just say, oh I'm going to heaven, so I'm just going to live however, because then it's like, okay, well, you know, he, I'll just give you a world to hurt for the next 30 years and then you go to heaven. It's like, well no, I want to have a blessed life for the next 30 years and go to heaven and I want to get a bunch of people saved and take people with me rather than just being out living like an idiot. What's the point? It's vanity of vanities to do that stuff. So we see God's wrath poured out and you say, how do I apply this to my life? This is so abstract, you know, learning about the end times, learning for something that we're not even going to be here for. Hey, here's what you learn, that God is mad about these sins and we need to understand that God hates theft, God hates murder, he hates fornication and God is not just all sweetness and light, my friend. Our God is a consuming fire. Get to know the God of the Bible and Revelation chapter 8 and 9 is an aspect of his personality. You say, I don't like him, you know, he's, well, go pick another God and good luck with that because there's only one that's real, it's only one creator and so you don't get to pick. Okay. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, and thank you for these powerful chapters, Lord, warning us about what's coming someday, Lord. First of all, it's a warning to the unsaved that they'd better get saved if they want to escape these things, if they want to go to heaven and get away from this ship before it sinks, Lord. I pray that anyone who's not saved here today would get saved before it's eternally too late. But Lord, for those that are already saved, I pray that they would understand just how serious stealing and fornication and idolatry and murder, how serious these sins are in your eyes, Lord, and that they would not take these things lightly. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.