Revelation's 10

Guest (Male): The book of Revelation is a book about Jesus, about his grace, about his mercy, about his goodness, and about his compassion. It is a book that shares with us the principles of eternal life.
Guest (Female): This is HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today's message: Revelation 10. Enjoy and remember you can always catch past messages and stay up to date with HopeLives365 and Pastor Mark by going to HopeLives365.com. And now, Pastor Mark Finley.
Mark Finley: We are wading through the deep waters as we study the book of Revelation. But yet, we're swimming effectively in those deep waters because we're allowing the Bible to explain itself. Let me review. We've studied the first eight chapters of the book of Revelation. Again, if you've missed one of these presentations, go back and pick them up on the one place where we have stored each of them on our website. You can also discover the meaning of the book of Revelation as you compare scripture with scripture. You may not be aware, but there are 404 verses from the Old Testament that are quoted in the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation reveals mystic symbols, but each of them is explained in Revelation. The book of Revelation explains odd beasts, but they're explained as well. So, as you compare scripture with scripture, you can unlock the mystery of Revelation. Here are a couple of keys to understanding Bible prophecy. We find one in Isaiah chapter 28, verse 10: "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little." So, you understand Bible prophecy and scripture by comparing principle with principle, line upon line. You take a little bit from here and a little bit from there, and you let the Bible explain its own symbols, like putting pieces together in a puzzle. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul tells us something very, very similar. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and the scripture says this as we look there at verse 10: "But God has revealed them to us," that's the mysteries of salvation, "by his spirit, for the spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God." So, the spirit reveals the deep things of God as we commit our lives to him. Then we go on to verse 12: "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." How are we going to know them? "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual." So, we open our hearts and minds to the spirit of God and allow the Holy Spirit to teach us as we study God's word and compare spiritual things with spiritual things. Here are three principles in understanding the Bible or particularly understanding Bible prophecy. One, do not build a teaching or a theology around one text. Get a variety of texts on the same subject and let those texts explain one another. Here a little, there a little, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. So, the first principle is to take everything the Bible says on that subject. Find out everything you can about that symbol. The second principle is to ask the Lord through the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom and ask the Lord through his spirit to reveal to you eternal truth. Thirdly, have an open heart to make changes in your life, to change your thinking process. If God reveals something to you in scripture that you haven't thought of before or known before, accept what God says. Come to scripture with an open mind. With that background, we come to Revelation chapter 9, and we go to the last three trumpets. Revelation chapter 9. Now, you'll recall a couple of principles here. One is that Bible prophecy begins where the prophet is. The prophecies of Daniel begin where the prophet is: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, etc. The prophecies in the New Testament begin where John is in the first century. Secondly, when Bible prophecy speaks to us, it often enlarges on things that have been said already. For example, Daniel 7 enlarges on Daniel 2. Daniel 8 enlarges on Daniel 7. Daniel 11 enlarges on Daniel 2, 7, and 8. When you look at the seven trumpets, the seven trumpets are kind of God's climax in his sequence of sevens, enlarging on what's gone before. In the Bible, as we've previously shown in scripture, trumpets are a symbol of two things. First, trumpets announce a gathering, a gathering of God's people. When ancient Israel had feasts in the Old Testament, they often were summoned by trumpets. The second thing about trumpets is that trumpets often represented judgment. On the Day of Atonement, the day of judgment, trumpets were blown to prepare the people for that judgment. So, when we think of the judgment, we think of trumpets, we're thinking about the judgments of God. The judgments of God in the first four trumpets fell upon Israel. They fell upon Rome. They fell down through the centuries upon a Christian church that united with the state and apostatized. And they fell throughout this history of the Christian church. This takes us down to 1400, 1500, and we come to a chapter in the Bible that has 21 verses. They're some of the most amazing in the Bible. There's one verse in this chapter we're going to read that when an Adventist preacher preached on this one verse, within days it became fulfilled, and a thousand atheists became Christians. It took place a number of years ago, but it's incredible. I'm going to show you that prophecy. It's an amazing prophecy. But we have to go to Revelation chapter 9, Revelation 9, verse 1: "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." Who is that star falling from heaven? Every time we see a star falling from heaven to earth, it reminds us of Satan. He's in his activity again. And to him was given the key to the bottomless pit. Where else do you read about the bottomless pit? Revelation 20, verse 1: "I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand." We find that in Revelation chapter 20, verse 1, and in verse 2 it says: "He laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan." At the beginning of the millennium, the beginning of the thousand years there in Revelation 20, Satan is bound in a bottomless pit. When we come to Revelation 20, we're going to study that in detail. But what I want you to see is that the star falls from heaven, the bottomless pit. That's language that should give you a clue that Satan's activity will be going on. Back to Revelation chapter 9. He opened the bottomless pit. Smoke arose from the bottomless pit like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. Then out of the smoke, locusts came from the earth, and to them was given power as scorpions of the earth have power. Every time you read of locusts in the Old Testament, it is a story of enemy armies coming to destroy. You can read about locusts in Jeremiah, you can read about locusts in Joel. It's always the destruction of war, a literal locust coming to destroy. The coming of locusts in the Old Testament never brings goodness; it always brings bad news, or it can also represent a literal locust attack on crops. But it's always destruction. Now here we find, and follow me closely on this, Jerusalem has been destroyed. The judgments of God have come on pagan Rome as it is destroyed. The judgments of God have come on apostate Christianity in Western Rome. But what about the Eastern Roman Empire? After the destruction of the Western Roman Empire, what about the Eastern Roman Empire and what about a movement that would sweep across Europe like locusts bringing destruction? In Revelation chapter 9, we have an introduction of the Muslim invasions, which, like the judgments of God, shook all of Europe. And so we find in the introduction here, smoke like locusts coming across Europe like the judgments of God, coming from the east across Eastern Europe, across Western Europe, rocking all of Europe like scorpions with poison in their tails. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth. What do we talk about when we talked about the green tree? God would still have a faithful people. Faithful Christians would hold the banner of truth high during all these Muslim invasions that came across Europe during these years. Now the Bible says they were commanded not to harm but only those men that didn't have the sign or the seal of God. Verse 5: "They were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. In those days they will seek death and not find it. They will desire to die, and death will flee from them." They would have authority for five months. Now, let's take a little look at the picture of these five months. What are the five months of the fifth trumpet? Is the time period of five months mentioned anyplace else in the Bible? Well, it is. After the floodwaters came down, the floodwaters remained on earth for 150 days. In the Bible, the days in prophetic time were 30-day months. So you have the floodwaters, which are a judgment of God, and remember, water always represents peoples in prophecy. So you have floodwaters that are literal waters covering a literal earth in a literal time for 150 days. I mentioned a little earlier that they covered the earth for 50 days; I meant to say 150 days. So you have this literal period of 150 days, which is five times 30 or five months. Genesis 7, verse 24 and Genesis 8, verse 3.
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Mark Finley: Genesis, what was the chapter? Chapter 7, verse 24. We're going to look at this 150-day period: "And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days." If you look at chapter 8 of Genesis, verse 3: "And the waters returned from off the earth, and after the end of the hundred and fifty days." In the Bible, there are 30-day months in Bible prophecy. 150 days represents literal days in the days of Genesis, representing the floodwaters that covered the earth; they were God's judgments upon the earth. Now, when you look at the five months in Revelation, we're talking about judgment, just like the 150 days in Genesis, judgment. But there's a difference here. In this chapter, we talk about locusts and scorpions and horses and so forth. It's obviously symbolic language. In the Bible, one prophetic day equals one literal year. When you have straight statements of fact, those are literal days. For example, the days of creation are literal days; the world was created in six days, God rested the seventh. You have a seven-day creation. When you look at the flood and the waters on the earth for 150 days, five months, that's literal. The reason I brought that up is because it represents judgment. When you come to Revelation, the five months or 150 days would represent prophetic days because they're in the context of symbols, symbols that are not explainable with natural explanations if you just take them naturally. For example, let's go to Revelation 9 again. I want this point to be abundantly plain for you. See, when you look at Revelation 9, it says the fifth angel sounded and I saw a star fall from heaven. This is obviously a symbol. And he opened the bottomless pit, there arose smoke, and there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth. This is obviously symbolic language. Scorpions of the earth, they should not hurt the grass of the earth, but the seal of God is in their foreheads. So they last for 150 days, so it's actually prophetic days and one prophetic day equals one literal year. Now, here's something amazingly fascinating. In the Battle of Bapheus, the Muslim Turks attacked the Byzantine Empire on July 27, 1299. Exactly, exactly 150 years later, July 27, 1449, the Byzantine Empire collapsed. The Byzantine emperor at that point, July 27, 1449, had to ask permission of the Muslim Sultan to ascend the throne. Isn't that rather curious? We read about a judgment that would come from the east. We read about a judgment that would come like locusts that would bring devastation. The Muslim invaders came across Europe. We read about the fact that they would exist for this period of time of 150 days, and that's five times 30 or they would exist for five months. Five times 30, 150 days. In Bible prophecy, one prophetic day equals one literal year. 150 years from the first invasion of the Byzantine Empire in the year 1299, from that first invasion, like the floodwaters that covered the earth, so these Muslim invaders in their destruction existed for that exact period of time. This is the trumpet of the entire period of Eastern Europe. But we go on in the prophecy. It becomes even more fascinating. The Bible says in Revelation 9, verse 15: "So the four angels who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year were released to kill one third of mankind." Now we have another prophecy. What does this time prophecy mean? It says for an hour, a day, a month, and a year. We have to do a little calculation. So let's go to the year first. In Bible prophecy, one prophetic day equals a year, right? So this is a prophecy of a day. Let's go the opposite way: a year, a month, a day, and an hour. It says it would be for an hour, a day, a month, and a year. Let's start with the year. The year has 360 days. If this is a prophetic year, it has 360 days or 360 years. Then we have a month. A month is 30 days. Thirty prophetic days equals 30 literal years. If this prophecy is for a prophetic year, a prophetic month, a prophetic day, a day is one year, and if it's an hour, it's a 24th of that period, which is 15 days. This prophecy says, and this is amazing, that the Muslim invaders would have 360, the prophetic year; 30, the prophetic month; 1, the prophetic day; and 15, the hour. So 360, 30, 1, and 15 is 391 years and 15 days. If you take the year 1449, when July 27, 1449, when the Muslim invaders established the zenith of his power and you add 391 years and 15 days, you come exactly, exactly to August 11, 1840. Now, there's something incredibly amazing about this. There was a preacher by the name of Josiah Litch. He was part of a popular group that was proclaiming the second coming of Christ. In the 1830s, he began to predict that the Turkish Empire with the Muslims had to fall, get this, on August 11, 1840. This was popularized in many, many newspapers across the United States. People thought this man is crazy, this is not going to happen. He traced back this prophecy, he kept looking at it, he saw the day-year principle applied. This Turkish Muslim power began on July 27, 1449, and he said 391 years and 15 days later is August 11, 1840. It's going to fall. He was a popular preacher throughout America. He preached in a variety of states to thousands of people. They looked back and the newspapers ridiculed him, they mocked him. But on August 11, 1840, the Treaty of London was signed by Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the prophecy found fulfillment. And the Ottoman Empire lost its power exactly as predicted under that trumpet. When that was established in the newspaper, Josiah Litch didn't look so foolish. His interpretation was widely circulated in the press and as a result of that fulfillment, in one day he had over a thousand letters in acknowledgment from infidels and atheists saying that if Bible prophecy is this precise, we can no longer follow and espouse atheism any longer. That led to the fulfillment of a great revival in America that took place in the 1840s and 1850s. In America, a great revival. Why? Because Litch's prophecy and many other prophetic preachers, of course, preaching on the second coming of Christ, were being fulfilled to help people see that Christianity was based on solid biblical evidence. The first trumpet shows us judgments upon Israel. Second trumpet shows us judgments upon Rome. The third trumpet shows us judgments upon apostate Christianity. The fourth trumpet, those judgments upon apostate Christianity intensify in the Dark Ages. The fifth trumpet, we see indeed judgments upon Eastern Europe as the Muslim invaders come across. The sixth trumpet, we're amazed and astounded as those judgments intensify, and as we come to the 1840s we find the fulfillment. We've gone all the way from AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem. Now we've come to the last with the sixth trumpet, when the Muslim invaders come across the Ottoman Empire, and the empire falls apart in 1840. But what's next on the horizon? What's next in the 1800s, the 1900s, and in the 20th and 21st century? How does this seventh trumpet open and end? Take your Bible, please, and look directly from the text, Revelation 9, verse 19 and 20: "For power is in their mouth, and in the tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do harm. And the rest of the men," that's those after the Muslim invasion, after the 1800s and in the following centuries, "who were not killed by these plagues," these trumpets, "yet repented not of the works of their hands." Here's what I want you to see: four or five expressions in verse 20 and 21 describe an end-time, 21st-century generation that, just like in the first generation, you have destruction of Jerusalem just before the coming of Christ, you have destruction of the world. These verses describe an end-time generation. Look at it, verse 20: "The rest of mankind, who were not killed with the plagues in the earlier generation, yet they do not repent of their works of their hands." It's a generation that takes pride in the works of their hands. It's a generation that is materialistic, secular, godless. It says: "Look at what we do, the works of our hands." Secondly, "that they should not worship demons." It's a society that's involved in spiritualism, worshiping demons in items of gold, that is money, and silver, brass, stone, and wood. You see the works of their hands. "I don't need God, I can do it myself," some say. Worship of demons, it's a spiritualistic generation. They're more interested in the Ouija board and astrology and spiritualism. The idols of gold, it's a materialistic generation that worships the dollar, that worships money, that worships things that cannot see or hear or walk. It is confused and does not know where it's going. "It did not repent of their murders." It's a generation filled with crimes and sorceries. An interesting thing about sorceries. This is not spiritualism; spiritualism mentioned earlier. This is a different root word in the Greek for spiritualism than this word sorceries. Does anyone have a marginal reference in the Bible? There's a little number in the Bible and sometimes there'll be a number by a word that leads you to a marginal reference. What does it say there? Drugs. It's a word for drugs. The judgments of God are going to come upon a generation of people who say, "We don't need God, we don't need you God, we can accomplish it with our own hands." The judgments of God are going to come upon a people that are involved in spiritualism and astrology. The judgments of God are going to come upon a people that are involved in their money, in their corporate greed, in their idols of gold and silver and brass, in their homes, in their clothing, and they've drifted from God. They've worshiped idols that they can't walk or talk. And these people are all confused. The judgments of God are going to come upon a generation filled with murder and crime. The judgments of God are going to come upon a generation that is a drug-infested society that takes pleasure in drugs and sexual immorality. What does Revelation 9 say? It says as every generation in the past has gone down through the centuries as experienced the judgments of God, so that this society that we live in will not avoid the judgments of God. We see natural disasters coming. Could it be that the judgments of God are already in the land? Could it be that the handwriting is already on the wall? Could it be that the handwriting's in the sky? Could it be that the chariot's about ready to rumble and that Jesus is about ready to come? Revelation speaks to you and to me. It speaks to our hearts and it calls to us to be ready when Jesus Christ comes again. Listen to these words of Revelation chapter 9, verse 21. They are haunting words. It says: "Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts." This is a generation of lawlessness, a generation of rising crimes and violence, a generation of immorality. And Jesus says: "Come unto me, all you that are burdened and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest."
Guest (Female): You've been listening to HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We hope you've enjoyed today's message and remind you that you can find more in our many ministry resources at HopeLives365.com. And you can support this ministry by going to HopeLives365.com/donate. And now, a final thought from Pastor Mark.
Mark Finley: Isaiah 55, verse 1 and 2: "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come to the waters. Come, you that have no money. Come, buy and eat. Come, buy and wine and milk without money and without price. Incline your ear and come to me and your soul shall live and I will make an everlasting covenant with you." Jesus speaks to you, my friend. He says: "Why do you spend your money for that what doesn't satisfy you? Your heart is empty, your soul is barren." And Christ says to you: "Come, come to me and I will satisfy the needs of your heart." Will you do that as we pray? Father in heaven, thank you for your love. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you that although the judgments of God are in the world, Jesus, the living Christ, can satisfy us deeply. We come to you. Forgive our sins. Help us have a new direction in our life. Change us and transform us, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.