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Revelation 9 - 10

Revelation
RevelationSteve Gregg

In this section, Steve Gregg continues his exploration of the book of Revelation with chapters 9 and 10. After the interlude in chapter 7, the sixth and seventh seals are revealed, showing God's salvation of a remnant of Israel and a multitude of Gentiles. The first four horsemen of judgment are shown, with a warning that two more woes are coming. Gregg dives deep into the symbolism and imagery used throughout these chapters, exploring the meaning and significance behind each detail.

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Transcript

In our last session, we went through chapters 7 and 8, and we saw that chapter 7 was an interlude between the sixth and the seventh seal. And in chapter 7, the servants of God in Jerusalem, that is the Christian Jews, were sealed by God before the calamities began. And they were sealed so that those calamities might not befall them.
And we saw that this was actually an echo of what
Ezekiel saw in a vision in Ezekiel 9, where before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, he saw, as it were, an angel going around with an ink horn and putting marks on the heads of all the inhabitants of Jerusalem who sighed and cried over the abominations done in the city, that is, who had a heart for God and were basically his faithful remnant. They were delivered. The other angels that were seen in that vision in Ezekiel chapter 9 went out with battle axes in their hands and slaughtered everybody who didn't have that mark on their head.
So it was a slaughter in 586 BC when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians,
but the remnant were spared, and it is emblemized by the fact that God had them marked on their foreheads. So also in chapter 7, God's servants in Jerusalem before the Holocaust of AD 70 are marked the 144,000, and they did, in fact, escape. The Christians in Jerusalem did escape that tragedy.
Then we saw at the end of chapter 7 that there was a great multitude from all nations and peoples and tongues that also were saved. So God not only saved the remnant of Israel, but an overwhelming mass of the Gentiles as well that are seen in heaven glorifying God, who have come out of all of this. And after that interlude in chapter 7, the long-awaited seventh seal is broken in chapter 8, verse 1, and nothing really happens.
It's like everything is building up. Every one of the seals gets a little worse than the previous one, and then you get to the seventh, and you're expecting the ultimate disaster, and instead there's silence in heaven for a half hour, which perhaps is to be understood as a dramatic tension quiet before the storm, as calm before the storm, as we might say. And then appear these seven angels with seven trumpets.
And there's a vision at the beginning of chapter 8 where there's the prayers
of the saints are being offered up with incense before God and entering into his nostrils. And these prayers apparently are bringing about the results that follow because the same incense burner that offers up the prayers then takes coals from the altar and throws them on the earth, implying a continuity between the prayers and the consequences. And then come the seven trumpets, well, we've covered in chapter 8, the first four.
And after the first four trumpets were sounded,
an angel was flying through the midst of heaven. And I might just say that in the Alexandrian text, it says an eagle. So if you're looking at something other than the King James or the eagle flying through the midst of heaven, it says in the Texas Receptus, an angel.
I don't suppose
it matters too much, but just in case you're looking at another translation, I say, why does he keep saying an angel when it says an eagle? It's a textual variant. But this being flying through heaven in chapter 8 and verse 13 says, woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the land or of the earth because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels, which are about to sound. Now, this is indicating that the next three trumpets, the last three of the series, will be disastrous beyond the scope of the first four.
So much so that they, you know, great pity
is to be had for those who experience what is about to take place with the sounding of these last three trumpets. We'll find after the fifth trumpet is blown, it says in chapter 9, verse 12, one woe is past. Behold, two more woes are coming after these things.
And then we're going to see the
same thing in chapter 11, verse 14. After the sixth trumpet has been sounded, it says in chapter 11, verse 14, the second woe is past. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly.
So each of these last three
trumpets is a woe. And that is because they are set off from the first four, apparently by their intensity. Just as when we saw that there were seven seals, the first four were set off from the last three.
The first four had, were each revealed a horse of a different color and a rider and a
judgment. So the first four seals were four horses, so-called four horses of the apocalypse. And then the last three seals were different.
In this case, the first four trumpets are passed
over with rapidity, but the last three are set off from them as being unusually intense. And we get much more description, at least of the fifth and the sixth trumpets. Now, chapter 9 is occupied with the fifth and the sixth trumpets.
In chapter 9, verse 1, it says, the fifth angel sounded and
I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. And to him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit and smoke arose out of the 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 upon the earth or on the land. And to them was given power as the scorpions of the earth have power.
They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth or
any green thing or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And 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,
men will seek death and they will not find it. They will desire to die and death will flee from them. And the shape of the locust was like horses prepared for battle.
And on their heads were
crowns of something like gold. And their faces were like the faces of men. And they had hair like women's hair.
And their teeth were like lion's teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates
of iron. And the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle.
They had tails like scorpions. And there were stings in their tails. And their power was
to hurt men five months.
And they had a king over them, the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name
in Hebrew is Abaddon. But in Greek, he has the name Apollyon. One woe is past.
Behold, still two
more woes are coming after these things. Now this particular vision of the locust has captured the imagination of commentators probably more than any other passage. And of course, the temptation is very great among those who see these events as fulfilled in the future and see it as perhaps a future modern war that is dominating the landscape of the tribulation, this approach of Armageddon and various other modern wars leading up to that, to see these locusts, as they're called, as some kind of military aircraft.
Helicopters usually are the suggestion of choice. The sound of their wings
is like many horses running to battle. You know how loud choppers are.
They've got crowns of
something like gold. People say, well, you know, John, he's taken off. And he kind of sees this in a vision.
And he doesn't know anything about technology. To him, these just look like locusts.
Frankly, they kind of do.
Some helicopters do. I mean, the helicopters come in all shapes. But
obviously, some helicopters look almost like dragonflies.
In fact, you wonder if someone who,
the first people who designed them, had dragonflies in mind to mimic. They do look like insects from a distance, I suppose, to someone like John. And the crowns of gold, perhaps they were seen off the plexiglass bubble, the reflection of the sun, it was shining like gold.
Their breastplates were like iron. They obviously were metallic. They had faces like men
and hair like women.
Difficult to know exactly what the hair like women would be, unless
the helmets the pilots are wearing don't look like man's hairstyle or something, and the man's faces are there. There's so many attempts to make this out to be some recognizable military machinery. Or some actually say they are UFOs.
But helicopters are usually what is suggested,
even by those commentators who claim that they're taking revelation very literally. It's very common among the dispensationalists. In fact, they are the ones who do this most.
They say that they're taking everything literally, and yet these are not taken literally. They're taken to be aircraft, rather than what they are said to be. What they are said to be is locusts with scorpion tails and these other unusual features.
Some kind of a mutant insect.
But obviously, they are symbolic. I don't think they're symbolic of aircraft.
You'll see those
who say that they are aircraft are not really taking it symbolically. They're just saying John's seeing something, and he's giving a literal description of what he sees, but he doesn't quite, he mistakes what it is. We would recognize them as helicopters coming in battle array, but he, of course, is unfamiliar with them, so he thinks he's seeing a locust plague.
Now, there are things about this that make it difficult to know how it could be helicopters. For one thing, they don't kill people. Military helicopters usually do.
If they're armed,
they usually have missiles, and those don't just torment people for five months and leave them alive. In most cases, they kill just as much as any other kind of military weapon does. They're killing machines, and it's emphatic that they don't kill people.
It's repeated twice.
They only torment them for five months. Hard to know how to fit that into the scenario of these being helicopters.
Likewise, they don't destroy any green thing, but helicopters, if they shoot
missiles, especially in a kind of jungle warfare, they're going to destroy a lot of green things. There'll be a lot of green things destroyed that way. Also, they don't hurt those who have the seal of God on their forehead.
Now, these are, of course, the 144,000 who were sealed on their
forehead in Chapter 7. They were sealed to be preserved from this kind of thing, and they are kept safe. I suppose we could imagine a time in the future where the saints are in the midst of warfare, missiles are flying, machine guns firing everywhere, but God preserves the Christians. They simply are not in the line of fire, and God keeps them safe.
That's not an unimaginable thing,
but generally speaking, military machines kill indiscriminately. Whole towns, populations, neighborhoods, whatever they attack, they don't discriminate between the Christians and the non-Christians among them, and it sounds like these do. These are under direct orders to afflict those who are not Christians, but to leave the Christians alone.
So, what are they? Well, if
a dispensationist wanted to be quite literal, they'd have to say they are, in fact, mutant insects. They're locusts with scorpion tails and so forth. Now, we have to remember where they're coming from.
These appear out of the smoke that rises out of what's called the bottomless pit
in our translation. In the Greek, it's the abyss, the abysso. This term is sometimes translated the abyss and sometimes the bottomless pit in scripture, but it is the place where demonic powers are incarcerated.
It is the place where later in Revelation 20, we read of Satan, the
dragon being bound with a chain and thrown into the abyss, and then later he's released from the abyss. This is apparently a place that stands for the enslavement or the captivity of demons. In fact, in Luke chapter 8, when Jesus encountered the man of the tombs who was inhabited by a legion of demons, they begged him in Luke 8 31 not to send them to the abyss, and he accommodated them, at least momentarily.
Where they went after the pigs died, we don't know. Maybe they went to the
abyss then. But the point is the demons saw the abyss as a terrifying prospect for them, a place where he could send them, and they would be apparently trapped there.
We read in both 2 Peter and
Jude that the angels who send are kept in chains under darkness awaiting the judgment of the great day. The word abyss is not used in those passages. In fact, in Peter, the word Tartarus is used, but we have no other reference in scripture to any place called Tartarus, and it's not impossible that Tartarus is a name for the abyss.
We will not press that point, but the thing is that
there is a place that that Peter calls Tartarus, which is where he said fallen angels are in captivity. But we know that the demons were afraid to be sent to the abyss, the bottomless pit, and they knew Jesus could send them there if he wished. In chapter 11 of Revelation and verse 7, it says that when the two witnesses finish their witness, the beast that ascends out of the abyss will make war against them and come and overcome them and kill them.
This is the same beast
that is seen rising out of the sea in chapter 13, and it is clear that the beast is simply the devil with skin on, because in chapter 12, the devil, the dragon, is described as having seven heads and ten horns and being red, and likewise the beast is described as having seven heads, ten horns, and being red. It's a thin disguise, not easily hidden, that this is the devil embodied in some form. We'll worry about what form that is later, but the beast is said to come out of the bottomless pit, out of the abyss, and as I pointed out, Jesus, or some angel, incarcerated the dragon himself in the bottomless pit in chapter 20 for a while.
So these creatures come out of the abyss. All we know about the abyss is that it's the place where demons are kept, and therefore it would appear to be a release of demons upon the world, or upon whoever the victims are of these visions. Now, I've suggested that when we read the word earth, the better translation in these contexts would be land, and I need to clarify for those of you who haven't heard this discussed before that land is not really a better translation for the Greek word.
It's just an equally good one, that the word in Greek can be translated land
or earth with equal justice, because it's the word in Greek for land, and it's the word for earth, same word in the Greek. So the question is, are we talking about things that are happening to the earth, that is the world at large, or to the land, that is the land of Israel? And my suggestion has been that if we translate it as the land, which is something that many commentators believe is the right thing to do, although the translators haven't generally done that, then we're looking at a calamity coming on the land of Israel, and that would be suited to the general theme of the book as I understand it. We're talking about the invasion of Israel and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.
Now, these locusts are not the Romans, in my opinion.
I believe the Romans appear when the sixth trumpet is sounded. This is something that comes and does harm before the Romans do.
You see, in the sixth trumpet, people are going to be killed.
This trumpet isn't killing anyone, just tormenting them. This is not the end.
This is just the time
that makes people wish it was the end. They desire to die, but they can't. They're looking for it to all come to an end, but it isn't coming to an end yet.
There's five more months of torment.
And so, my suggestion is going to be, and I'll give you much to support this, that this is referring to the unleashing of hordes of demons upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem during the siege. Now, before I ever had any reason to interpret this passage that way, I read Josephus.
I haven't
read all of Josephus, but I read enough of Josephus to get a sense of what was going on in the siege of Jerusalem. And I remember thinking, there's no way that intelligent people, and by the way, most Jews I met are intelligent people, would act so crazy as these people acted. They acted like animals.
They acted like demons. They were just absolutely
wicked toward each other and toward themselves, in that they really acted against their own best interests. While they were besieged by the Romans outside, their real enemy, inside, since they felt secure from the Romans, they felt the Romans couldn't get in, they had the leisure to kill each other and to divide into three warring factions in the city and to wage wars inside the city with each other to destroy each other's food supplies when everybody was starving.
I mean, this is just, it's like if anyone had brain one, they would have thought, wait a minute, guys, if we stop killing each other, we might actually survive. But they were crazy. And the details that Josephus records of the things that they did are just so astonishing.
You never read of anything like it. When Jesus said, then shall be great tribulation, such as never was, since the world began, nor ever shall be. When you read Josephus, you can almost believe it.
It's hard to imagine anything that bad ever before or afterward. And
he's not writing to confirm anything Jesus said. Josephus didn't even know what Jesus said, or what Revelation said.
He just was there. He just witnessed and did the research and
interviewed the people who were there who survived and got the information and wrote as a historian. But he himself said that it was his opinion.
Josephus said it was his opinion
that there had never been anything in all of history as astonishing as the behavior of these people during the siege, because they simply did not act like intelligent human beings at all. They acted like wild animals or like demons. And when I was reading Josephus, it occurred to me, it's obvious that demon possession was rampant in the city.
And it was later, but not much later,
when I was reading Revelation, I thought, well, hey, duh, we see it right here. One of the judgments that God sent upon them was he opened the bottomless pit and let the demons come out in hordes like a swarm of locusts and torment the people. Now it says for five months, generally speaking, I think that the time designations in Revelation are not usually literal.
And this
might not be either. Though it's difficult to know exactly what five months would symbolize, there is a sense in which it could be literal. And that is that the siege of Jerusalem, that is the final siege, because there's more than one, the final siege that resulted in its destruction, and the time when the craziness inside the city was at its worst, began in April of AD 70 and ended at the beginning of September.
It was a five-month period of siege,
and it was the worst period of time that Josephus describes. And this could essentially be a literal length of time that these locusts supposedly were, I say supposedly because they weren't really locusts, that they were unleashed and tormented the people with insanity, really. That was before the Romans came in and physically did them in.
But they were spiritually possessed, spiritually
wiped out, before the Romans even got in. And by the way, Josephus often mentions how often the Romans were more compassionate toward these Jews when they saw how miserable their own behavior had made them. Of course, the Romans were not exactly compassionate people in general, but they were so shocked by what they saw in the behavior and the misery, the self-inflicted miseries of the Jews when they came into the city, that Josephus often comments on how the Romans were just almost like, they just had, they felt pity.
They were reluctant to do more harm to
these people that had already done so much to themselves. But they got over it. If you turn to Matthew 12, I believe Jesus explains what we're reading here.
Matthew 12. There are many times,
I think five or six in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus makes comments about what he calls this generation. And while some people want the word generation to mean a race or a family, when you actually read all the cases where Jesus uses the term this generation, it just doesn't work as race.
The word generation means all the people living at the same time.
And for example, Jesus said in chapter 11, we're not looking there, but in chapter 11, Jesus said the people of this generation are like children playing in the streets saying, we piped for you and you wouldn't dance. And we played a dirge for you and you wouldn't mourn.
Now he said, that's what this generation is like. He explained it because John the Baptist came to you and you say he has a demon. He played a dirge and you wouldn't mourn with him.
Then the son of
man came eating and drinking and you wouldn't dance with him. You just said he's a wine, bibber, and a glutton, a friend of sinners. Now, Jesus said he was describing that generation.
What generation? The generation that had occasion to react to John the Baptist and Jesus. His own generation is what he's talking about. Likewise, later, of course, we're all familiar with the statement he made in Matthew 24, 34, this generation will not pass until all these things are fulfilled.
And while many people have tried to make that statement mean anything but what it
sounds like it means, Jesus did not leave us the option of taking it wrong because in a statement talking about the same details, only less detailed, in Matthew 16, 28, Jesus said, some of you standing here will not taste death before these things happen or before you see the son of man coming in his kingdom. So what is described in Matthew 24 is also spoken of in Matthew 16. In Matthew 24, Jesus says this generation will not pass.
In Matthew 16, he says
some of you standing here won't die before this happens. Obviously, he leaves no doubt that when he says this generation will not pass, he means some people living at that time will not die. There will be people living of his contemporaries.
That generation is his contemporaries. Now,
in chapter 12 of Matthew, this is one of the places that Jesus talks about his generation. And it says in verse 43, Matthew 12, 43, when an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest and finds none.
Then he says, I will return to my
house from which I came. And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits, more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there.
And the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be
with this wicked generation? That's an unexpected end to that paragraph. Sounds like he's just giving us some information about what happens to demon-possessed people.
Once the demons come out,
they tend to want to come back and bring friends with them. And he's talking about a man. When a demon goes out of a man, the demon goes out and comes back and inhabits that man.
And the state
of that man is worse than the first state. He's talking about an individual and his problems with demon possession. But then he says, and that's what this generation is going to be like.
That's how it'll be with this generation. What? This generation will be like a man who had a demonic problem that Jesus cured, but did not do more than sweep and garnish the house and left the house empty. And the demons came back in force.
Seven means a total number.
Seven is the number of completeness. In other words, the man was somewhat demon-possessed when he had a demon.
When the last state came, he was totally demon-possessed. He was totally
given over in bondage to demons. Now, this does in fact parallel that generation that Jesus came to.
It's interesting how little we read in the Old Testament about demons. In fact, the term demon, in the sense we read it in the New Testament, doesn't really seem to appear in the Old Testament. We read of evil spirits in the Old Testament.
Same thing. The New Testament also uses the term
evil spirits as a synonym for demons. But very little.
We read in the Old Testament of some
people having an unclean spirit or an evil spirit, but that's usually God sent an evil spirit against Saul or against the men of Shechem or a lying spirit to the prophets of Ahab. Or we read of someone having a familiar spirit, which usually means they're a medium and they're apparently demon-possessed. Those references in the Old Testament are found very rarely.
But once Jesus
comes on the scene, demons are everywhere. You know, it's one of the peculiarities of the Gospels that suddenly, once Jesus is there, demons are there all over the place. Every time Jesus goes anywhere, he runs into demon-possessed people in the synagogue, in the tombs, out on the streets.
Many times it says, just summary statements in the Gospels, Jesus went about all the villages in Galilee healing all the sick and casting out all the demons. It's almost like demon possession was as matter-of-factly discussed as sickness. You go to town, you cast out the demons and heal the sick.
It's like a major part of Jesus' ministry everywhere he went was casting demons
out of people. Yet you don't even find the phenomenon of demon possession much before Jesus arrives. So what happened here? Well, you know, it says in Revelation 12 that when Jesus was about to be born, the dragon was poised to kill the child at his birth, but failed.
It does
look like the devil was waiting for Jesus. The devil knew he was coming and was threatened by him and seems to have launched preemptive attacks, like when he tried to get Herod to kill him by having him kill all the babies of Bethlehem. It may well be that Satan also unleashed demons on the population to resist the movement of Jesus at that time too.
We can't be sure, but
we do read in Revelation that the devil was definitely mindful of the arrival of Jesus and willing to do everything he could to stop him. It may be that that's why the demons are seen in force in Israel when Jesus shows up, but not before. But what did Jesus do? He cast those demons out.
Everywhere he went, he cast demons out of the people. By the time Jesus left,
I don't know if there were very many villages left that Jesus had not cast the demons out. In fact, he had sent his disciples out two by two.
On one occasion, he sent out 12 of them two by two to
villages that he wasn't going to make it to, or to villages he was hoping to get to later. Another time, he sent out 70 disciples two by two on a similar mission. In each case, he told them, cast out demons.
Heal the sick. In other words, not only was Jesus going to all the villages
casting out all the demons, he had disciples going to all the villages casting out the demons. This was quite an assault on the demonic powers.
In fact, when the 70 came back and reported back in
Luke 10 and said, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. He said, I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven. I think what he's saying is, this is the end for Satan.
This
is Satan's downfall here. We're making a major attack on all his villages and throwing out all of his troops. This is the downfall of the enemy.
It was, by the way, Jesus defeated him at the cross.
But, he was in the process of defeating him during his ministry. By the time Jesus was done and left, Israel was like a man who had his demon cast out.
Satan had come in force, but where the enemy comes
in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord raises up a standard against him. Satan's forces came like a flood into Israel, and Jesus raised up a standard of opposition to them and overcame them. By the time Jesus' ministry was over, there weren't many demons left in Israel.
You find some in Ephesus.
You find them in various places in the book of Acts. Not really in Israel much.
Maybe not at all.
Although Satan filled Ananias and Sapphira's heart, that may not be the same thing as demon possession. The point is, Jesus had come and he'd cleaned house.
Like a man who had the demon cast out of him,
Israel had been given a second chance to get it right. Now, the demon's gone. You need to fill that space.
You need to embrace Christ. You need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You need to fill that vacuum.
So, God poured out his Holy Spirit on the inhabitants of Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Thousands of them received him, but not all. Those who did not still had that vacuum.
Jesus said, this generation is going to be in danger like a man who has the demon cast out of him, but doesn't close that door, doesn't fill that void. The original demon and seven more worse than him are going to come back, and that man's state is going to be totally in bondage to demons, totally possessed. That's what this generation is going to be like.
At the beginning of that
generation, Jesus cast out their demons. At the end, the demons came back in a multitude, and you cannot read Josephus with any kind of knowledge of the New Testament or of spiritual realities. There's no one could read it and not conclude that these people were just totally blinded, totally deceived, totally tormented by demonic powers.
And this, I believe, is what Revelation
is saying. The fifth trumpet sounds in this innumerable horde, probably. They're not innumerable, said to be, but a locust plague generally is innumerable.
Locust plagues are
overwhelming. They come out of the pit, the place where demons are incarcerated. They're let go.
They're unleashed upon the people of the land, and they torment them for five months. Now, we know that we're not talking about real locusts here. In fact, it's almost as if the vision deliberately gives special details, so we'll know we're not talking about regular locusts.
Two things about these locusts are unlike regular locusts. One, it says in verse four, they were commanded not to harm the grass or any green thing or any tree. That's not what locusts are like.
Locusts do little else but damage green things. In fact, they eat everything
the green thing in their path. They don't hurt people, but they sure do hurt vegetation.
These
are locusts that aren't like regular locusts. They don't hurt the vegetation. They hurt people.
Furthermore, it says specifically in verse 11, they have a king over them. Now, not only do locusts not have a king over them, obviously, but the scripture goes out of its way to point out that locusts do not have a king over them. Over in Proverbs chapter 30, in verse 27, Agur in that chapter says this, the locusts have no king, yet they all advance in ranks.
He's talking about regular locusts.
I mean, lions and tigers and bears don't have any king either, nor do centipedes or birds or anything, but it's interesting that the Bible would go out of its way to mention that locusts don't have any king. Actually, no animals have kings, but that locusts are said to have no king in scripture, and yet these ones are specifically said to have a king.
These ones are ruled over
and who are they ruled over by? The demon that opened the pit. I say demon. We don't know that it doesn't say it was a demon, but it's an angel.
It says in verse 1, the fifth angel sounded,
I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth, and to him was given a key to the abyss to open it up. Now, I don't know who this star fallen was, although it could be Satan. If he is, he's the one who's said to be the king over them.
The name given for him here is not
Satan, but it's given in Hebrew and in Greek, Abaddon, which in Hebrew means destruction, and the Greek word Apollyon, which in Greek means destroyer. These are the alternate names. Interesting that Hebrew and Greek names are given for this, not just the Greek.
The book is written in Greek, not Hebrew. Why give the name in Hebrew and in Greek? It may be in order to tip the readers off that when you read names, you want to not leave out of consideration their Hebrew forms. Why? I'm only guessing, but it is my opinion that 666 is a reference to Caesar Nero's name in a Hebrew form, and John says you who are clever, you who are wise, calculate this, figure this out.
I've given you the hints. The man's name is 666.
If, as I suspect, this is a reference to the Hebrew rendering of Caesar Nero, which does total 666, and yet the Latin and the Greek do not, then it is in code so that the Romans, if this book would fall into their hands, would not recognize who's being mentioned there.
The Christians would, especially if they knew Hebrew, which they apparently are expected to know some. There are some Hebrew words scattered throughout the text. Armageddon, for example, is a Hebrew word.
Alleluia, which occurs several times in chapter 19, is a Hebrew word. Abaddon
is a Hebrew name. He could have just said the name of the angel is Apollyon, which means essentially the same thing in Greek, and then it would just be sticking with the language the book is written in.
But by saying, and in Hebrew, his name is kind of the same thing, only in Hebrew,
it might be one of the hints that John intends for the wise to take into consideration when they're calculating the name of the beast. Maybe his name should be considered in Hebrew as well. It may be a stretch.
You certainly are not obligated to hold that view, but otherwise we
have perhaps unanswered the question, why is this name given in both languages? There may be a better answer. I have not heard one. The star in verse 1 is fallen.
In chapter 10 of the previous chapter, I mean verse 10, chapter 8 verse 10, says, a third angel sounded and a great star fell from heaven. When it comes to the third trumpet, he sees a star falling, but with the fifth trumpet he sees a star fallen. The star has already fallen before he sees it.
It's already sometime in the past fallen. And then he simply sees a fallen star
doing something, opening a pit and letting these things out to torment people. That may suggest it is Satan.
By fallen, we might think of him as a fallen angel. That may be the correct way to
look at him, but that's not necessarily implied. If this is Satan, he could have fallen in the sense that Jesus said.
I see Satan falling like lightning from heaven. This was taking place during
Jesus' ministry and accomplished essentially at the cross. In Revelation 12, verses 7 through 9, we see this war in heaven where the dragon is cast out of heaven to the earth.
That's not the end of
his career because they say, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because the dragon has come down to you having great wrath and he knows his time is short. Satan, as the book of Revelation 12 and John chapter 12, verse 31, suggests, was cast out of heaven at the cross. And therefore, at the time of 70 AD, he was fallen.
He had lost his position. It specifically says a star fallen from heaven to
the earth. That's what Jesus said.
I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven. So this could
be a reference to Satan. The name destroyer may simply be a nickname for him like Beelzebub is apparently in Matthew 12 where there's reference to Beelzebub, the prince of the demons.
Here, this is the king of the demons. King, prince, could be the same character. Or not.
It would be clear that if these locusts are demons and they're under a king named Apollyon, that king named Apollyon is either the devil himself or some lesser ranking official in the devil's hierarchy, under Satan. It doesn't matter too much. But the fact that he's a fallen star and the fact that we know that Satan is said to have fallen may be a hint.
Now, before the locusts were seen, a great pillar of smoke came out of the pit which darkened the sky. Then he saw out of the smoke these locusts came. As it was made clear, they could not hurt the Christians.
They could torment men but not those who had the seal of God. The Christians
have immunity. The Christians were not present at this invasion.
The Christians actually had
escaped from Jerusalem. Christians in general have authority over demons. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, John said in 1 John 4. Jesus said in Luke chapter 10 verse 19, he said, Behold, I give you authority over serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
He's talking to his disciples.
Power over serpents and scorpions. Here we have scorpion stings attached to these locusts.
The next vision, the sixth trumpet, there are horses that have biting serpents for tails. It's figurative, of course, but the point is you've got the imagery of scorpions and serpents. And Jesus said to his disciples, I give you authority over serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy.
He indicates that scorpions and serpents are examples of the
power of the enemy. That is the power of Satan. And he said nothing shall by any means hurt you.
So these images of serpents and scorpions, no doubt, are demonic images. And the locusts, they're described as locusts because of the amounts of them, because there's so many of them coming out of smoke. He could have just said scorpions were unleashed, but scorpions are usually rather solitary animals.
And you'd think maybe a scorpion or two might be seen.
But when you talk about a locust plague, you're talking about the whole sky being dark. Locusts come in the millions, tens of millions at a time.
And when there is an actual locust plague, the sky
is literally dark because the thick clouds of locusts. It's a terrifying prospect. Anyone living in an agrarian land knows that you cannot stop a locust plague.
You can step on a locust, you can
squish them, but when there's 100 million of them and they have only one thing in mind, and that's to eat all your crops, you're doomed. It's the end for you. You cannot resist this.
And I think the
reference to them being locusts suggests they're great numbers. The fact that they have a sting like scorpions suggests that they torment people and that they are demonic, like scorpions. Scorpions sometimes have a sting that's bad enough to kill people, but not generally.
Most scorpions just make you really hurt bad. They say that when the Roman armies invaded Carthage in North Africa, the scorpions there, their stings were so great that although Roman soldiers were taught not to flinch, even when they're in fighting and when they get stabbed or sliced by swords, they didn't flinch. That's how they're trained.
But it says that when
they got stung by the scorpions in North Africa, they wept. The Roman soldiers wept. The pain was so intense.
They didn't die. That's how scorpions were in that region. The pain is just intolerable.
So it is a torment to be greatly feared and dreaded, and enough to make you wish you were dead. But scorpions don't generally kill people. In verse 6 where it says, In those days men will seek death, and they will not find it.
They will desire to die,
and death will flee from them. I believe this is more or less impressionistic rather than that they really would not be able to die if they really set their minds to it. The teacher I was raised under who was a futurist and thought this was talking about a future tribulation thought that imagine a time when you want to die but nothing you do can end your life.
He says,
Imagine shooting yourself in the head with a gun and still living. He said, You have no brains, but you'd still be alive. You can't die.
Well, that's kind of taking these
words a little more literally than I think it's intended. I don't think it's saying that it'll be impossible to die, that you couldn't just jump headlong off the wall of Jerusalem and have your head cracked open and brain splattered, but you'd still be alive. That's not what it's talking about.
It's saying that things would be so bad that although most
people don't have it in them to kill themselves, they could wish that their life would end, but it's not that easy. It's not that soon. It's not yet time.
They are tormented for five
months before the actual invasion of the armies comes through the walls and kills them. They'd rather die sooner if they could. Now, the description of the locust in verses 7 and following is interesting.
It may be that the individual details have symbolic value, or it
may just be painting a really scary picture, but it says they were like horses prepared for battle, which suggests they're warlike, and we are. The demons are warlike. We are waging a war.
We are
wrestling against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this age and spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places, Paul said in Ephesians 6. There is a war going on. These are like an army to be fought, but the people of Jerusalem would not have the resources to fight them because they've rejected Christ, and he alone has the power to ward them off. It says, on their heads were crowns of something like gold.
It's interesting when the 24 elders were
described in chapter 4, it said they had crowns of gold on their heads, but these have crowns of something like gold. It's not gold. It's artificial.
It's foil or something. It looks like
gold. It sparkles like gold, but not all that sparkles is in fact gold.
Not all that glistens
is gold, and their crowns glisten, but they didn't have real authority. A real crown of gold suggests you're a king. You're a real authority.
These don't have real authority. They may be an
illegitimate authority. They're not really crowned and authentic.
Jesus alone has all authority in
heaven and earth. The devil doesn't have any authority, but he'll exert authority if he can fool people. If people are blind and don't know about Christ, they'll submit to Satan and to his demons.
They have what looks like a crown of gold, but the wording suggests strongly it's not real.
It's not real gold. It's something like gold.
Their faces were like the faces of men.
In all likelihood, having human faces suggests that they were intelligent. Now I realize some of you women might not think that a man is the best example of intelligence that could be thought of, but of course this is in contrast to locusts, not to women.
Compared to locusts, men are considerably more rational, and demons are rational creatures. They're not just locusts. They're not just creatures acting on instinct.
Their faces have
intelligence. They are human-like in that they can think, and they are rational creatures, beings. Now their hair is like the hair of women.
Now you have to understand what this would mean
to a Semitic mind. In Israel, women of course had very long hair, although they usually kept it hidden. They usually kept it up and covered.
If a woman's hair was down, it was considered that she was being
much too casual, much too familiar. A woman with her hair down in public, invisible, would probably be considered to be a little too improper, maybe a little seductive. Men are attracted to women's long hair, and it may be that these are seductive spirits, like women with their hair down.
They have the hair like women, which seduces people spiritually. Not that anyone really seen a demon would find them sexually attractive. The imagery is simply trying to get across something else.
I think namely that as a woman with her hair down might be considered to be
a seductress, so these demons are seducing spirits. They have teeth like lion's teeth. They're ferocious, and they don't actually eat people, because they don't kill people.
I guess just as their torment is like a sting of a scorpion, perhaps it's like the biting of a predator. They have breastplates like breastplates of iron. I suppose the lion's teeth may be intended to call to mind Satan, especially if 1 Peter had already been written before Revelation, because Peter says, be vigilant, be sober.
Your adversary, Satan, walks about like a
roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. The lion's teeth are for devouring things, and Satan may be seeking to devour these people. Therefore, the demons are said to have teeth like a lion.
The
breastplates of iron would suggest they're invincible. Most soldiers didn't have such strong breastplates as that. They'd be very expensive and heavy to wear, but if somebody had an iron breastplate, the weapons of that day would hardly be able to penetrate, and therefore they'd be somewhat invincible, like someone with Kevlar today, and a day before they had armor-piercing bullets.
So their breastplates like iron would seem to mean that they cannot be defeated
by human means. They are like war horses coming in, but you can't fight them. You can't defeat them.
Man does not have the resources within him to overcome Satan's power or the demons. So they torment people for five months, and they are following the king, who is probably Satan, which again suggests they are the demonic hordes under the command of Satan. This horrendous five-month period is what he sees as the first woe.
One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes
are coming after these things. Now, I don't have as much to say about the details of the next trumpet, but I do believe that we can identify what it's referring to.
In verse 13,
Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, Release the four angels who are bound at the great Euphrates River. So the four angels who had been prepared for the hour and the day and the month and the year were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million, and I heard the number of them.
And thus I saw horses in the
vision. Those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow, and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions. And out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone.
Out of these three plagues, or by these three plagues, a third of mankind was
killed by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents having heads, and with them they do harm. But the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.
And they did not repent of their murders
or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. Now this last verse makes it very clear that these trumpets are warning judgments. They don't kill off the whole population.
They
really are a third. A third of everything is affected. A third of the trees are burned up with the first trumpet.
A third of the sea turns to blood. And a third of the ships are sunk. And a
third of the waters become bitter.
And a third of the day is darkened. And a third of the night.
All these thirds, the trumpets are all about one third, which I said is an emblem for a significant minority.
It's enough to really make a point. There's still more people surviving than not,
but it's definitely trying to get their attention, trying to get them to repent. And they don't repent.
Now these horses that are described have heads like lions and tails like serpents.
Their tails bite like serpents. Their tails have heads that bite like snakes.
The lion's heads
of the horses, one wonders why they're called horses. But then one has to wonder why the first group are called locusts. They don't, in most respects, resemble locusts at all, nor do these really resemble horses at all.
Except that horses are, throughout scripture, an emblem of armies,
of military power. And therefore, as the locusts probably represent a demonic invasion, the horses no doubt represent a military invasion. And this would be the Romans coming and following up on the invasion of the demons.
And so, Jerusalem finds itself
assailed both spiritually and militarily. Now out of the mouth of these horses, so to speak, really out of their lion's mouths, come fire, smoke, and brimstone. It says a third of mankind are killed by the fire, smoke, and brimstone.
Now fire, I could see a lot of people dying from fire.
And even smoke, because when a building is burning, most people die not from being burned, but from smoke inhalation. But brimstone? Brimstone is sulfur.
One has to wonder, well,
how does sulfur kill people? And I think perhaps what we're to understand is that fire and brimstone, fire and sulfur, are symbolic. But for what? Well, fire and brimstone are mentioned a number of times in the book of Revelation. And it is best, I think, to understand the reference to fire and brimstone to be an imagery reminding of Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is Sodom and Gomorrah who perished
with fire and brimstone, and no doubt smoke, because it says that Abraham saw the smoke of the city rising like that of a great furnace the next day. So you've got the fire, brimstone, and smoke destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Now Jerusalem in Revelation is called Sodom.
Remember chapter 11
verse 8, it says the city where our Lord is crucified, clearly that's Jerusalem. It says it's spiritually called Sodom. And Egypt, which means that the destruction of Jerusalem is being described in emblems reminiscent of the destruction of Sodom, and also emblems representative of the destruction of Egypt, which would be, of course, the plagues.
The plagues in Revelation are echoes of the Egyptian plagues. That is, in the symbolism of the book, there is a city, Jerusalem, symbolically likened to Sodom, and symbolically likened to Egypt, and the judgments are symbolically similar. That is to say, we don't really have real fire and it is the destruction of the city likened to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Probably
meaning in principle, not in type, not in actual way. I mean, God didn't destroy Jerusalem and has never destroyed any city that we know of other than Sodom and Gomorrah and the three cities with it in this manner. But it's symbolic.
It's reminiscent of the destruction of Sodom. It's seen as a divine
judgment. It's a divine judgment that takes out about a third of mankind, but the form is in horses.
God's judgment is coming through an army, through military invasion, and I think that that
is what is being suggested here. Now, I want to say something about the number of these. It says in verse 16, now the number of the army of the horsemen was 200 million, and I heard the number of them.
Now, 200 million, if a literal number, would be an incredibly large army such as
would never exist in ancient times and would hardly be expected to exist today, except for the fact, as Hal Lindsey was fond of pointing out whenever he spoke about this, that Mao Tse-Tung had boasted that China was capable of fielding an army of 200 million, this very number that the Bible mentions. The coincidence was irresistible to the dispensationists. This is clearly referring to Chinese armies attacking in the Battle of Armageddon.
Now, of course, we haven't read of the Battle of Armageddon
yet here, but this battle, these horses, could be said to be the same ones that come in chapter 16 in a battle that is called the Battle of Armageddon, or it's called the Battle of the Great Day of God Almighty, which takes place at Megiddo, or Armageddon. And it is in chapter 16 where we read also of those, of the river Euphrates drying up to make way for the kings of the east to come. So from our perspective, since John is perceived as being in America, the kings of the east, what country is more east to us than China? And that there are 200 million soldiers fits like a hand in a glove with Mao Tse-Tung's boast.
So we've got the dispensationists
seeing it almost impossible to resist this identification. However, as I've said previously, I think the drying up of the river Euphrates to make way for the kings of the east is an image of the Persians conquering Babylon. It's in the context of Jerusalem falling likened to Babylon's fall.
Remember how many times in Revelation it says, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great harlot of Babylon. Well, how did Babylon fall? The Persians, the kings of the east that is, not the Chinese, the Persians dried up the river Euphrates and marched under the wall of Babylon. So the drying up of the river Euphrates to make way for the kings of the east is not a reference to China, it's a reference to a historical event which is providing in principle a similarity to what's going on here.
A fall of a new Babylon. Jerusalem is the new Egypt and therefore the plagues are like
the plagues of Egypt. It's the new Sodom so that its destruction is likened in imagery to that of Sodom.
It is the new Babylon, therefore its destruction is likened in the imagery of the fall
of ancient Babylon. The ancient judgments on Egypt, Sodom, Babylon, and even Jericho are applied because the very use of seven trumpets is like Joshua and the seven priests with the seven trumpets that sounded that caused Jericho's walls to fall. Obviously Jerusalem is being likened to various pagan entities, pagan cities and countries that God judged in the past.
In the past God judged all
those entities for Israel's sake, but now Israel has become as bad as they are and now he's judging them as an example of his consistency. He judged those wicked nations when they're that wicked, when Israel becomes that wicked, he judges them in the same manner and therefore the likeness to the fall of Jericho, the fall of Sodom, the fall of Egypt, the fall of Babylon. These images are conveying the idea that Jerusalem has become what all these nations were.
All these nations were destroyed
by God because of their wickedness and now Jerusalem has become as wicked and God is judging it too. All the imagery from these historical judgments is being used in order to shame the Jews who thought themselves to be a better people, but they're not any better and therefore their judgment is not any better. So we have these horses and this large army.
Now I would take
this to be the Roman armies, but of course the Roman armies were not 200 million, true, but I'm of the opinion that the numbers in Revelation can in many cases, if not all, most cases anyway, be shown to be symbolic rather than statistical. In this particular case, verse 16, he says, the number was 200 million and I heard the number of them. You might think, well that is a way of emphasizing that this is a literal number because he heard the number announced, but if you look back at chapter 7 when the remnants are sealed to be delivered, in Revelation 7, verse 4 he says, and I heard the number of those who were sealed.
That's 12,000 from this tribe, 12,000 from that tribe, and so forth. Now people, if they wish, can take this literally if they want to, but to my mind the symmetry is too great to be considered to be literal. 12,000, literally 12,000 men from each of the 12 tribes, God could do it.
That is,
if he could find 12 tribes today, the Jews don't even exist in 12 tribes anymore. The 10 tribes to the north are essentially absorbed and the ones that were absorbed into Judah have for the most part lost their tribal identity. Not all of them.
There are some Jewish names that still retain
some memory of their tribal ancestry, and that was true in Jesus' day. It's even true today. If you meet someone named Cohen, well the word Cohen means priest.
It seems obvious that somewhere
in their ancestry were Levites, the tribe of Levites, and no doubt there are other Jewish names whose meanings preserve something of their tribal ancestry, but we do not have distinctive tribes anymore. When Jerusalem fell, along with it were burned up all the ancestral records, and therefore the Jews since that time have not had authoritative records to even identify what tribes they're from. So I believe when it says there's 12,000 from this tribe, 12,000 from that tribe, it's simply spelling out that this is a large number of a remnant from all the tribes, or from Israel generally, and when he says I heard the number, I don't think he's saying this is a literal number.
He said I heard the number twice, the time when it was 144,000 and also the
armies that are numbered here 200 million. I don't think either of them are references to literal numbers, but you can if you want to. If so, it wouldn't be the Roman armies.
The Romans didn't
have 200 million, but I don't think that's necessary. I think the number is intended to be an emblem of an overwhelming, invincible army that the Jews or whoever was attacked by them would never have any hope of driving back. Some of the details about these I cannot comment on.
I don't know why the mouths are like lions or why the tails are like serpents,
except to say that both of these are images that are sometimes used of Satan, and it may be that saying although the judgment is from God with the fire and brimstone reminiscent of God's judgment on Sodom, yet the agency is of an army that is more inspired by Satan than by God. God uses Satan's people many times to bring about judgment as he used the Assyrians to destroy Samaria in the Old Testament and the Babylonians to destroy Judah. Those were the devil's people.
Those were worshipers of other gods, but God used them because he's sovereign and he can
do what he wants to. Now, we are expecting now to read of the seventh trumpet sounding, but once again we don't. When we expected to see the seventh seal broken, we didn't.
There was this chapter seven was an interlude between the sixth and the seventh seal. Likewise, we have an interlude between the sixth and the seventh trumpet. We've read of the sixth trumpet, but we will not read of the seventh trumpet until we get to chapter 11 and verse 15 where it says, Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.
Notice what happens with the sounding of the seventh
trumpet. In addition to the announcement that Christ has now become the king of every kingdom, and the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give you thanks, O Lord God Almighty, the one who is and who was and is to come, because you have taken your great power and reigned. The nations were angry, and your wrath has come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that you should reward your servants, the prophets and the saints, and those who fear your name, small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth or the land.
Now this is the seventh trumpet. There are certain preterists who believe that this is simply talking about the destruction of Jerusalem, and when it says that nations were angry and it's time for you to judge the dead, it just means it's time for God to vindicate the dead. That is, the dead martyrs were vindicated by the fall of Jerusalem because Jerusalem had shed their blood, as Jesus said, from the time of Abel to the time of Zechariah.
And they talk about destroying
those who destroy the land, meaning the Jews who had defiled the land by their sins and so forth. So there is an argument made by most preterists that the seventh trumpet is simply another look at the downfall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Perhaps you'll be surprised to know that I don't see it that way.
I see how people can, and I can't prove that they're wrong, but I have my reasons
and I'll give them. And I don't believe anything without reason. I may believe some things without such reasons as others would see as adequate reasons, but I don't believe anything without reasons that I consider to be adequate, and my belief is that this is the second coming of Christ.
That it is the end of the world, the judgment and the resurrection, and so forth. Now that might seem really inconsistent for someone who's a preterist like myself, but you see, right after chapter 11, we go back to the beginning again. Chapter 12 is the birth of Jesus.
It's like there's
a consideration of the destruction of Jerusalem, and then a long gap is given. Then you see what I consider to be the second coming of Christ. You're welcome to see it otherwise, but I'll tell you my reasons.
You're still welcome, even after you hear my reasons, to see it otherwise.
But I believe that the question that is naturally asked when people are reading about this cataclysmic judgment of Jerusalem is, well, is that the end of the world then? It sounds like it. It's described in terms of so cataclysmic, and once Israel's removed, what is there left? I mean, this is God's ancient, eternal people.
How could they be destroyed and it
not be the end of the world? And the answer of Revelation is, well, not quite. There's more to come, but the end of the world will come. As Jesus was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem, and he said, this generation will not pass before these things are fulfilled.
Then he said, heaven
and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But of that day and hour, no one knows. Although, again, many preterists would disagree with me, I believe Jesus then transfers his vision in Matthew 24 to the end of the world and the second coming of Christ.
That the end of
Jerusalem was, from Jesus' point of view, the next big judgment. And after that, the next big one will be at the second coming of Christ. The gap between the two is not left out.
There is a gap
suggested, I believe, and I think we're going to read about that in chapter 10 and the early portion of chapter 11 before the seventh trumpet is blown. Now, I would remind you that in the case where the seals were broken, and we had many reasons when we cross-referenced scripture with scripture to believe that we were reading about the destruction of Jerusalem, we saw that the remnant of the Jews were preserved, the 144,000. But then it looked at the innumerable company of Gentiles that would be saved, which seems to look beyond the fall of Jerusalem, the outcome.
After Jerusalem has fallen, evangelism goes out to the whole world.
And an innumerable company of Gentiles from every nation and people in time is the church age. John, or the Holy Spirit, I believe, is saying that the next big event for John's readers is the destruction of Jerusalem, but it's not the end of the world.
However, there will be an end
of the world. Heaven and earth will pass away, but if that day, no one knows. But I'll tell you something about that, too, in case you're wondering, is this the end of the world? No, there's also going to be this ingathering of all these Gentiles.
There's going to be this indeterminate time from
the destruction of Jerusalem to the end of the world. And that, I believe, now comes up for consideration. As I said, I have reasons.
It may seem like a cockamamie theory, but let me tell you
why. We come in chapter 10 to a transition, and I realize how soon I have to end, so I'm not going to go over time, but I just want to deal with chapter 10, which is a short chapter, only 11 verses, and I take it as a transition between what we've been looking at, which I believe is the judgment on Jerusalem, on the one hand, and a treatment of the period from the destruction of Jerusalem until the actual seventh trumpet, until the end of the world. Now, remember, Paul said at the last trumpet, the dead will rise, and we who are alive and remain, we are going to be changed.
We won't all die, but we'll all be changed, he said. The trumpet shall sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. He said that's at the last trumpet.
Paul was probably
not thinking of Revelation, since it's not likely that Revelation had been written so early, as Paul Paul's running of 1 Corinthians, but it's possible that the early church used the term last trumpet as Paul used it, generally speaking, and therefore would be expected to recognize the last trumpet being the seventh when this vision was given. But here's the thing. There's a new prophecy given here, and it is heralded by this vision at the beginning of chapter 10.
Now, what we're going to
find is that in chapters 11, 12, and 13, now I didn't lay it out this way, so don't blame me. You wouldn't expect the seventh trumpet to fall right in the middle of this section, but in chapters 11, 12, and 13, there are a number of references to a time period that is recorded as three and a half years. It actually doesn't say three and a half years.
It says different things.
It says 1,260 days. That's three and a half years.
Or it says 42 months. That's also three and a half
years. Or it says time and times and the dividing of a time.
Well, that is also three and a half years.
These three references, 1,260 days, 42 months, and time times and half a time, are all different ways of talking about the same length of time, three and a half years. For some reason, Revelation, among the other strangenesses of the book, strangely doesn't speak of this time by the same way.
Sometimes it's the number of days, sometimes the number of months, sometimes the number of
times. If a time is a year, then a time, that's one year, and times makes two more years, and then half a time is half a year. That's three and a half years.
And this period of time is spoken of,
these various terms are used interchangeably in chapters 11, 12, and 13. That period of time is not mentioned outside of those chapters. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 are like a separate unit that talk about this period of time.
Prior to chapter 11, you don't read of
a three and a half year period. After chapter 13, you don't read of a three and a half year period. But within those three chapters, you find it mentioned five times.
It is clear that this
section, chapters 11 through 13, is about a period of time that is symbolically likened to a period of three and a half years. And four different things are said to take place for the duration of that time. In chapter 11, we will see that the Gentiles tread upon Jerusalem for that period of time.
Revelation 11, 2 says, Leave out the court which is outside the temple. Do not measure it,
for it has been given to the Gentiles. They will tread the holy city underfoot for 42 months.
So Jerusalem will be trodden underfoot by Gentiles for 42 months. You may remember that in Luke 21, Jesus said that when the Romans would destroy Jerusalem, Jerusalem, he said, will be trodden underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. From the time of 70 A.D. to the end of the times of the Gentiles is here called 42 months, which I believe is symbolic.
And then we have the two witnesses prophesying,
and they also prophesy for the same length of time. In Revelation 11, 3, I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy 1,260 days. That is the same thing as 42 months.
So we have the treading underfoot of Jerusalem for this period of time by the Gentiles. We have the witness of the two witnesses, who I will give you advance notice, I believe the two witnesses are the church. And their witness extends for this whole period as well.
Then we find that the
woman flees into the wilderness in chapter 12 and is nurtured by God there for the same length of time. In verse 6 of chapter 12, it says she is fed there for 1,260 days. And the same in verse 14, it says that she is nourished, in verse 14, for time and times and half a time in the wilderness.
So this period of time, three and a half years, is also the length of time that God cares for the woman and the rest of her seed in the wilderness after she flees to the wilderness. And then in chapter 13, the beast arises, and in verse 5 of chapter 13, it says he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for 42 months. So the duration of the beast's blasphemies, the duration of the woman being preserved in the wilderness, the duration of the Gentiles trampling Jerusalem underfoot, and the duration of the two witnesses' ministry are all said to be the same length of time.
A time which I take to be symbolic. The most
indicative of what time this is is the very first reference to it, when the Gentiles will tread Jerusalem underfoot for 42 months. And Jesus has already told us that is from the time that Jerusalem is destroyed in 70 A.D. until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
So my guess is,
and it's an educated guess, that the 42 months represents the time from the destruction of Jerusalem until the end of the times of the Gentiles, which I take to be the end of the age, which ends with the second coming of Christ. I don't think I'm making any leaps here yet. Now, what I'm suggesting is this discrete section, chapters 11 through 13, which talks about this period of time, is a smaller prophecy within the larger prophecy of the book of Revelation.
And that smaller prophecy is introduced in chapter 10. And let me just real quickly go over this, shouldn't take more than about 10 minutes I hope, to go over this chapter. It says, I saw, in chapter 10 verse 1, I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was on his head.
His face was like the sun, his feet like
pillars of fire. Some say this is a reference to Christ. It could be.
It doesn't matter whether
it is or not. The identity of the messenger is not as important as what happened. And he had a little book open in his hand, and he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land.
And he
cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. Now, when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them. And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer.
But in the days of the sounding
of the seventh angel, now that doesn't happen until verse 15 of chapter 11, but in the days apparently leading up to this sounding of the seventh trumpet, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as he declared to his servants the prophets. Then the voice which I heard from heaven spoke to me again and said, go take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth. And I went to the angel and said to him, give me the little book.
And he said to me, take it and eat it, and it will make your stomach bitter,
but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth. And I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter. And he said to me, you must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.
Now this eating of this book is reminiscent of Ezekiel. In Ezekiel chapter 3,
he saw a prophecy written in a scroll, and he was told to eat it. And it too was sweet in his mouth, but later he felt bitterness as a result of it.
This is obviously one of the many allusions to
Ezekiel, or rather rebirths of images from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. But John eats the prophecy, which means it becomes his next assignment. He is now to prophesy again, verse 11.
This little book represents another prophecy, but it's a little one. It is emphatically
a little one. The book that had the seven seals, its size is not mentioned.
It's not significant,
but this book is said repeatedly to be a little book. This is a smaller book, a smaller prophecy. It is not about less important material, but it's not going to take up as much space, as many pages.
It's small. I believe the little book is chapters 11, 12, and 13,
which fall as it happens in the exact center of the larger book. Now I believe that this section, which talks about the 42 month period, the three and a half year period, is talking about what's happening between the fall of Jerusalem, which is what we came to with the sixth trumpet, and the end of the world in the second coming of Christ, which we come to in the seventh trumpet.
This interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpet is the interlude between
AD 70 and the second coming of Christ, which of course we now know has been very close to 2,000 years. I believe it is that period that is symbolically referred to as a three and a half year period. We'll talk eventually about why that number is chosen.
I will not have time tonight to
give everything that I will when we come to chapter 11, and that'll have to be next time. But let me defend my thesis from chapter 10 that this is a transition to another brief section, which is represented as the little book. This little book represents essentially what we might call the church age from AD 70 to the end of the world to the coming of Christ.
I am not aware of any commentary that takes this view, so this is my own opinion, but I don't know any commentator that has anything more reasonable to say on the subject. So let me tell you how I came to this opinion. First, I saw that John was told he's going to prophesy again.
Well,
he's been prophesying all this time. He's got a second prophecy. It is represented by a small book.
It's a smaller prophecy. It is, he said in verse 11, about many peoples, nations, tongues,
and kings, which makes it in contrast to the subject matter of the larger prophecy. The larger prophecy is about Jerusalem and its fall.
This smaller prophecy has a broader
range of interest. It's talking about things happening internationally. The church age is the time where the gospel goes out to every nation, kingdom, and tongue, and therefore this prophecy is going to encompass the world, not just Jerusalem.
All the nations.
This is sort of indicated also by the fact that the angel is said to have one foot on the land and one foot on the sea, and that is stated twice. The land generally represents Israel.
The sea represents the Gentile world, and therefore it suggests that this angel's interests span beyond the boundaries of Israel to the Gentile world as well, and it's stated very clearly in verse 11 that this is true. So this little prophecy, this little book, is concerning international matters, which is no doubt intended as a stark contrast to the larger book, the book of Revelation, which is mostly about the fall of Jerusalem. Now there's something more here, because it says that he spoke, and when he spoke, verse 3, seven thunders uttered their voices.
We're never told what they said, and the reason is
because John was told to seal it up. He was not permitted to write it. The content of the seven thunders, the voice of this angel, which I'm going to identify with the contents of the little book itself.
You don't have to follow me on this, but I'm going to. That what this angel had to say
is the same thing as what he had written, or what was written in the book he was presenting. That was open.
Perhaps he was reading the book. The book was open in his hand, and seven thunders
represent the message that this angel gave, but this message is specifically said to be sealed up, and that is interesting when you consider that the book of Revelation in general is said not to be sealed up, and why? In Revelation 22.10, with reference to the book in general, the book says, do not seal up the prophecy of this book because the time is at hand. Now Daniel, in Daniel chapter 12, was told to seal up his book because the time was not at hand.
When Daniel asked for
more information from the angel, the angel said, go your way, Daniel. It's sealed up until the time of the end. You're going to grow old.
You'll be buried with your fathers. A long time is going to
go on, but in the end of days, then it'll be relevant, so you don't need to know more. Seal this book up.
When a prophecy was sealed up, it was because it did not have immediate relevance.
It had a more long-range future fulfillment. Revelation 22.10 says that the book of Revelation does not have a long-range fulfillment in general.
It is to be the time was at hand,
so don't seal the book, the angel said, but this book, in a sense, is sealed up in contrast to the book in general, which suggests, perhaps, that its prophecies do extend off further into the future than the content and the subject matter of the book of Revelation as a whole. In other words, we have a parenthesis in the exact center of the book of Revelation which answers questions that would naturally come up. Okay, we've seen the end of Jerusalem.
What does that mean? What does that
portend? Is that the end of the world? Is there something relevant to the rest of us in this? And the answer is, oh yes, very much so. After the fall of Jerusalem, there's this period, symbolically called three and a half years, where very important things happen. And they span the time between AD 70 and the end of the world, because it says, Revelation 10, verse 7 says, Now, what is the mystery of God? The term is used, the word mystery is used quite a few times in Paul's writings.
Paul didn't write this,
so it may not be used the same way, but Paul uses the term very consistently of one thing, the church. In Ephesians chapter 3, for example, only one of a number of places where Paul talks about the mystery, and he never means something different by it. It says in Ephesians 3, verse 3, What is the mystery? The joining of Jew and Gentile in the body of Christ is the mystery that Paul speaks about.
And remember, when Paul talks about the end of the age, in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. When the mystery of God is finished, when the church age is complete, then the seventh angel sounds.
In the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he's about to sound,
the mystery of God will be finished. So, I think we have the clues here. I don't know of any other interpretation of Revelation 10 that could be supported from so many cross-references and so many clues.
It seems to me that we are now introducing another segment
of the book that's only short, a small book. It is international in its scope, unlike the rest of the book, and it is to have a more far-ranging future fulfillment, unlike the rest of the book. It is sealed, like the rest of the book is not sealed.
It is about many nations,
kingdoms, and tongues, not about Israel alone. It is spanning the time between the sixth and the seventh trumpet, and it announces that when the seventh trumpet is about to sound, the mystery of God will be finished, which I take to be the church. And therefore, I believe, and there will be more reason to believe this as we go through chapters 11, 12, and 13, because there we will have to use cross-references to figure out what the time frame is we're talking about.
But I've already mentioned, it is the time during which
Jerusalem is trodden underfoot by the Gentiles, another indicator that we're talking about the church age, because Jesus said that would happen until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. So, I believe we're going to come back to the subject of the fall of Jerusalem in chapter 14 and through chapter 19. But in this section, I think not.
In this section, I think we're looking
at something else. And as we come to chapters 11, 12, and 13, and treat them individually, I will defend every point I make from scripture. But this is where we're going, and that's what I understand to be the function of chapter 10, to transition us and to introduce that there's another prophecy John's going to have to give.
And it's different in scope and in time of
fulfillment. Well, that'll have to wait until next time.

Series by Steve Gregg

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"Strategies for Unity" is a 4-part series discussing the importance of Christian unity, overcoming division, promoting positive relationships, and pri
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In this two-part series, Steve Gregg provides verse-by-verse teachings on the book of Amos, discussing themes such as impending punishment for Israel'
Ezekiel
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Discover the profound messages of the biblical book of Ezekiel as Steve Gregg provides insightful interpretations and analysis on its themes, propheti
Job
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In this 11-part series, Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the book of Job, discussing topics such as suffering, wisdom, and God's role in hum
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Steve Gregg discusses the three different views held by Christians about Hell: the traditional view, universalism, and annihilationism. He delves into
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Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the Gospel of Mark. The Narrow Path is the radio and internet ministry of Steve Gregg, a servant Bible tea
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