If you are not a Christian, the message and study we are covering today is not one you want to hear. Whenever the subject of Hell is mentioned, no one really wants to hear about it, but it is the very reason for the death of Jesus, to keep us out of hell. When we refer to hell on earth, it is God's righteous wrath that He is delivering to a Christ-rejecting world. When you consider it, who wants to talk about hell? Answer: Nobody. Yet Jesus did more than anybody! Who really wants to meditate on the wrath of God? Again really nobody, but its part of God's awesome nature and character.
Did you notice how quickly we got through Chapter 8 in Revelation, this chapter along with others that remain in the book are written as one continuous event like 8 and 9 are. There were not supposed to be separations in them, not will there be when the actual events begin to happen. Make no mistake, we didn't rush through Chapter 8 because we were in a hurry to get through the difficult parts of scripture, but because it is structured that way as is Chapter 9. Each chapter from here on out is getting worse as the judgments from God are getting poured out upon the earth. There is no sugar coating it and that is perhaps why so many churches and pastors avoid teaching on the Book of Revelation.
The only person who this should not bother is the believer in Christ, because they know the stuff we are studying today, they do not have to be a part of. They will be gone and resting in heaven when this happens. If you aren't a believer in Christ, you too, by the time of this message, you too can chose to accept Christ and avoid what is coming. This does not have to be your future! It is your choice.
From here to the end of Chapter 19, we will see gross, dark, judgment being played out upon the earth. We don't mind this kind of gore when it's on the movie screen, but the thought of such things being real, the thought of suffering and judgment and hell, might be real is unsettling.
1 Thessalonians 1:10 ~ " and to wait for his Son from heaven, who he raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath."
This means that Jesus Christ is coming for His church even before this great Tribulation period, and He has to deliver His church into heaven according to Scripture. He will deposit the church into heaven via the Rapture and then the Tribulation Period will begin. This will be the judgment of God brought to the earth. In fact, if you were to walk into any bookstore today, even a Christian one and ask for a book on Hell, they would be hard pressed to try and find you one. It's because it's not popular to talk about Hell. No one wants to talk about it.
As Christians, we can talk about Hell because it is what we will be missing. This is what Jesus has delivered us from and something we should give Him glory for. Yet it is unpopular to talk about Hell, especially by those who are afraid they are going to hell. They don't want to know about it because there is a sense of finality and a sense of fear. Just because you don't want to talk about Hell doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You develop an ostrich movement at that point, burying your head in the sand because you don't want to hear about it, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It doesn't take away from the fact that it is real. God has declared it and he has warned us about it. There are over 600 New Testament warnings alone about hell! It is very real.
All the cults have a few things in common. (1) Jesus is not your God, Lord and Savior and (2) There is no Hell. Now if Satan is the founder of the cults and he is, isn't that a great bit of propaganda? There is no hell! If there is no hell and you die and go into an oblivion, then why did Satan spans cults in the first place? If there is no hell, according to the cults then why do I need to accept anything at all? It's so real that to avoid the logic simply doesn't make sense. Jesus said it is real! Are you willing to pit the wording of a cult against Jesus, who rose again from the dead? Are you willing to gamble your eternity that the cult leader is right and Jesus isn't? Are you willing to gamble with your foreverness, living in a hell, and gamble against the Bible. I hope not!
Revelation 9:1-12 ~ "The fifth angel sounded his trumpet and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down from the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not the harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them. The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of god, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails and stings like scorpion, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon. The first woe is past; the other two woes are yet to come."
Is that not enough to freak you out? Some of Hollywood's finest directors could get ideas from this right? Notice the number of times the reference to the descriptions were prefaced with the words "like?" "Like locusts," "Like human hair" etc. Don't be confused by what all this means. They are not simply locusts with a bad attitude. Did you know that God controls the hands of the locust even today? That locusts generally follow the wind. God moves them from an area or to an area by the wind. The Bible says the locusts have no king but are directed by the wind. We know that when locusts swarm they can cover the sky and make it dark. There is no doubt about that. Sometimes they eat what they see and other times fly right over places they should eat. They are extremely unpredictable. This passage has nothing to do with earthly locusts despite all the commentaries you may have read about this before.
John is trying to describe the greatest plague to have devastated the world during his time and that was locusts. This is going to be similar but it is not the same. Then he goes on to talk about scorpions and again these are not the same as what we have here now. Their pain is worse than anything anyone here has ever had happen to them. When hell meets earth, a creature personality will come.
We are talking about Satan, himself. The Bible refers to Satan as being a he in the male gender, the son of the morning star. If you take a survey, most people will say the Bible is true but that there is no devil. Jesus, Himself, has said the devil is real and if you don't believe he is real, you have truly fallen for his propaganda. Let's get this out of the way right now as well. There is no place in the Bible that says he wears red, has horns and carries a pitchfork and pointed tail. The Bible does say what he is draped in, that he is extremely beautiful, powerful, he is a person, and he is a creature personality, meaning that he has been created.
Revelation 9:1-12 ~ "The fifth angel sounded his trumpet and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss."
Notice the word "fallen" in verse 1, that means passed tense, he had already fallen. This is referring to Satan. Satan will fall from heaven one final time. It will happen during the great Tribulation period. In verse 1 of Revelation 9, this is the first blast of the final three remaining trumpets which we have been warned about in the final verse of Revelation 8 that were coming. This is the first one of the final three that Revelation 8 warned us about. You need to keep this in mind that Satan is real and so are his demons. The Bible says that there are fallen angels and there are demons. There is different wording for both and they both have different powers. Demonic and heavenly angels appear and disappear at will. The New Testament warns us to watch out for strangers because by unknowing we can be speaking with and entertaining an angel as a human without knowing about it.
Satan and his fallen angels can appear and disappear at will. Demons need an idol, statues, animals to manifest their will, a person to possess, and there are no known words in which Satan can possess a person outside of Judas or the Son of Perdition, the Antichrist in Scripture. Demons can enter and leave someone who are not filled or is not under the protection of the Holy Spirit, or own by the Holy Spirit in you. That should be something that scares you to get serious about Jesus if you are an unbeliever. If you are not a believer, there is a vacancy in your body. You have to crawl over the body of Christ to get into hell.
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