Revelation Chapters 8-10
Opening
Revelation is a heavenly perspective.
Have you ever looked down below from a mountain top?
Or imagine the astronauts at the International space station looking back on earth in the same way we look up at the moon.
Consider the different perspectives of a parent and a child.
Revelation gives us a different perspective. It is the “lens of heaven”.
Things looks different. Like wearing 3-D glasses, things appear now that didn’t appear before.
It’s like on the movie National Treasure, the special glasses Nick Cage uses to view the secret codes on the back of the Declaration of Independence.
Don’t worry, I won’t do my Nick Cage impression.
On earth we look without the glasses and it just looks like empire, war, and injustice.
With the glasses - there is this immense spiritual war and heaven is at work.
And as we walk through this, remember that there’s more to life than flesh and blood and there’s something bigger behind the events of our world and our lives and there are spiritual repercussions both positive and negative for our actions.
Flow of Revelation
Remember the first seal?
The rider on the white horse, the Antichrist. We will get a deeper glimpse of him later.
The thing that might be helpful to know here is Revelation isn’t necessarily all in order chapter after chapter.
It’s kind of like a movie trailer, we see a montage of the big scenes but not every little detail of the plot and things might jump around a bit.
So what we see now are God’s forces in action. What we will see later, starting in chapter 12, is that God’s forces are acting in response to some really dark and evil forces at work in the world.
Symbols
Revelation is filled with powerful symbols. Why symbols?
I’m not God or the author, so I have to be careful here, but usually authors use symbols to drive home a point more powerfully.
We talked about the seals on the scroll last week. Remember the title deed of earth, there is meaning in the events. For example, we talked about how the scroll could likely be in the form of a title deed. So this unfolding, or breaking of the seals, is leading toward something, the redemption of the earth.
Chapters 8-10
We are in the horrendous throws of the Tribulation.
Thinking and talking with someone this week - Why this, why necessary?
I do not pretend to know the answer.
I just have learned to take the words of this book seriously. Why?
Well, due to its track record of accurately predicting human history.
God consistently and accurate says what will happen and then it does.
We have the vantage point of seeing how God has done that over thousands of years.
Technology and scientific methods actually help confirm Bible prophecy not the contrary.
We will talk more about that in a later message.
God’s Purpose
God is leveraging all this to save as many as will trust Him.
Also God is seeing that righteous consequences fall on evil powers.
His goal is not to destroy people but to destroy those who destroy people.
— God’s judgment vs our judgment — again comes down to perspective.
Do we trust God’s judgment. We are teaching my son to drive.
ILLUSTRATION: It is tempting to take the wheel. He won’t learn if it do. We have a much better driver, God, a perfect one, but we are often reaching to take the wheel.
Trumpets
Seals now transition to trumpets.
Trumpets announce things. What is trumpeting in your life right now? What is God saying to you?
Now this could now be 14 different events (7 seals + 7 trumpets) or a recapitulation, a replay from a different angle.
Imagine a replay of a play from football game at different angles or perspectives.
I want to walk through the trumpets.
I won’t read the entire chapters this week, but will read some key points and summarize as we go along. I encourage you to read it fully this week.
We see mentioned of a lot of celestial bodies. I don’t claim to be 100% on this but they could stand for nations, powers, or authorities (people or spiritual).
We see things falling and influencing - leaders, nations, powers and its miserable affects.
In chapter 8:1-5, leading up to the trumpets is the 7th seal: silence for 1/2 hour in heaven.
Then an angel takes the prayers of God’s people and offers them to God
Ever wonder if prayer matters?
Then the angel throws down some altar fire (judgment) on the earth. Then angels sound 6 of the trumpets in 8:6-9:19.
The Trumpets:
Hail, fire mixed with blood, 1/3 earth, trees, grass burned.
1/3 could be symbolic of something or a way to say an approximate amount.
God judges the idols of the world. Think Exodus plagues in Egypt.
The plagues were a statement on how God judged the false gods and idols of Egypt.
Something like a huge mountain, all ablaze thrown in to the sea
1/3 of see turned to blood, 1/3 of sea creatures die, 1/3 of ships destroyed
Mountain on fire, in the Bible nations can be symbolized as mountains
Perhaps a large global superpower goes down and this has huge ramifications.
Imagine if a nation like the USA went down and how that would impact the whole planet.
Who/What would be the new leader in the world?
Great star like a blazing torch falls from sky onto 1/3 of rivers, they turn bitter.
Something happens that wreaks havoc on trade and subsistence, food and water.
Often stars are seen as symbolic of angelic beings or messengers - angelic or human.
Perhaps a powerful demonic force, a fallen angel, is at work, perhaps through a powerful human leader, group, or nation.
1/3 of sun struck, 1/3 of moon, 1/3 of stars, 1/3 of day was w/o light and 1/3 of night no light.
Could be nations, rulers, leaders falling and or rising to power and influencing.
Bottom line, its global political and economic chaos.
Throughout history people look to and worship the sun, moon, and stars. Now they fall.
Could also be demonic forces at work. This could be a massive geopolitical remaking of order and power.
Star falls, opens Abyss, army of crazy looking scorpion-locusts torment people 5 months.
Likely, a large demonically inspired army being raised up, but could be a real locust invasion
Four angels released to kill a third of mankind. Looks like a massive war.
The number of mounted troops was 2x 10,000x10,000 or 200 million.
Describes their armor and that 1/3 of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that came from the mouths of some hybrid lion/horses.
Sounds like a massive army with high tech, highly destructive weapons of war.
Seventh Trumpet will come later.
It is not clear whether these catastrophic global disasters are caused directly by God, angels, demons, or people.
Perhaps the answer is yes, all of the above, a mix of that.
Perhaps that is the perspective thing, earthly events through the lens of heaven.
Regardless, it is part of God’s judgment or wrath - consequences for sin.
Yet God is still holding out salvation for all who will turn to God.
Why this strategy?
Well, so if there are bad guys why doesn’t God just take out the Madmen of the world right away, then we would have peace?
The real question is why did so many people follow the Madmen of the world.
You see it’s never about one force or person, the heart of humanity is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9)
God doesn’t want to affect just a few but the whole world.
Hearts are moved one way or the other, either toward God or away.
Is God using violence to punish the violent?
While I don’t think we can put that option out of sight and mind, and I don’t think it would be wrong for God to do that.
But, I don’t think God even has to here, mostly.
Without God, people default to sin and evil, they don’t get better they get worse.
While people have wrongly used, even Christianity, for evil gain, that isn’t God’s fault, it is mankind’s fault.
Also, look at secular movements in human history, Nazism, Communist Soviet Union, Communist China, taking God out doesn’t bring more peace it brings less peace.
(Secular and religious America has it’s list of sins too).
What God does is he is wise and discerning enough to both give people free will yet use both the good and bad decisions of free willed people to ultimately save, redeem, and defeat evil, sin, and death.
That includes just wrath falling upon wicked unrepentant people and powers.
And Revelation is this grand illustration of how that happens.
Repentance and Idols (Revelation 9:20-21)
20 The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. 21 Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.
They would still not repent. Idols of wood and stone, that seems strange people don’t do that anymore, right?
Well, actually a lot of people around the world do still worship idols of wood and stone, but let me tell you in America we have our own version of idols of wood and stone.
The American dream and nationalism. I don’t want to take things to the extreme too much, but honestly we can worship these things and they can be more important than our relationship with God can’t they.
John lays it out in 1 John 2:16, “The everything in the world (that is the world system opposed to God) the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - comes not from the Father but from the world.
Lust of the eyes - idols/power.
Lust of the flesh, sexual immorality, pornography, sexual abuse and trafficking.
The industry of sex and violence in our world is staggering.
Pride of life, economic immorality, the ends justify the means to have what we want, greed, injustice, inequity.
Magic arts, sorcery, using dark spiritual forces to manipulate the world, witchcraft, also closely linked with drug abuse.
Murder, the glorification of violence is obvious all around us.
Lion Roar (Revelation 10:1-3)
1 Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven. He was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars. 2 He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, 3 and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke.
Lions will roar to establish their territory
Any other lion within hearing distance is challenged by that roar to stand down or fight.
Whether this is Jesus or an angel, God roars over the earth.
God will end evil once and for all.
And God is roaring over your life today.
Your future belongs to him when you simply trust.
Sour Scroll (Revelation 10:9-11)
9 So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’[a]” 10 I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. 11 Then I was told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings.”
A scroll is given to John to eat, this happens in other parts of scripture, too, and it turns sour.
God’s message is not alway easy to process, not to mention to communicate to others.
The true gospel message is not all sugar.
Christians are pressured to exclude the hard parts of the gospel.
But hard news doesn’t mean bad news, its’ true news.
Would you rather give people hard truth or soft lies?
Whether you think these events are future prophetic predictions, past or recurring events, or a mix of those options, there is a lot to take away here.
Altar:
I need to hear God roar over my life
I need to hear what God would trumpet in my life
I need to turn from some idol(s)