EPISODE 261 REVELATION CHAPTERS 8 and 9 "From Bad to Worse"

Well, hello. You've landed on Share the Word podcast at a perfect time, as Pastor Paul Nitz continues to do what he does best, and that's bring the big idea of the New Testament chapter by chapter. And today, the focus is on Revelation chapters 8 and 9. So, do you think it's going to get better or worse? Revelation 8 and 9: From bad to worse. You've probably heard someone tell you, I have good news and bad news.

Which would you like to hear first? Which do you usually choose? Well, by the time we reach chapters 8 and 9 of Revelation, there's only bad news and worse news at this point. Remember, Jesus Himself said, when speaking of this time, Then there will be great tribulation as has not been seen since the world began, or until now, or ever will be again. Many commentators and preachers, when they come to these chapters in Revelation, want desperately to spiritualize them, to imagine that they are merely filled with apocalyptic symbolism. But I'm a pretty strong believer in sticking with the axiom, literal if possible.

We should assume things are being described literally unless there's an overriding reason to believe they are not intended to be. And I take that approach throughout Scripture because once we decide it's potentially all symbols and allegories, it's only our imaginations then become the boundary for whatever we want to say the text means. Subjective interpretations can go wild once we adopt that attitude. So what I believe we should stick to is called the grammatical-historical hermeneutic. Hermeneutic is just a word that means how you interpret things. We should try to arrive at the author's original intent by assuming, unless there's very clear reason not to, what he wrote he intended to be understood in a normal way.

Once you abandon the grammatical historical approach, anyone can teach whatever they want from passages like these in Revelation, and unfortunately, many have. At the outset of chapter 8, John says, Suddenly, all that he's been seeing and hearing in heaven stops, and for half an hour there was silence in God's throne room. I imagine this being like the mood in a courtroom at the conclusion of a very serious trial. The jury has sent word they have reached a verdict. Everyone has been recalled to the hearing room. You can hear a pin drop in there.

But the jury delays, so everyone holds, sitting nervously, awaiting the jury and their verdict. Then finally they file in and are seated. The judge says, As to the first count, murder in the first degree, have you reached a verdict? Another dramatic pause as their decision is passed to the judge, who reads it silently and then passes it to the court recorder, who will announce it. Seconds seem like hours in such a situation. When the seventh seal is broken, for half an hour there was silence in heaven, John says.

That drawn-out dramatic pause, the fear and anticipation of what's coming next. You're hoping for relief from all the tribulation's building horrors. I'm sorry, but there is none coming yet. Things are about to go from bad to worse. There are no time markers in these chapters, but I think with the breaking of the seventh seal, we're now into the second half of the seven years of tribulation and judgment on the earth. These are referred to by many as the Great Tribulation.

When the pause is broken, John sees seven angels assembled who have trumpets given to them. Trumpets were always used for getting people's attention and announcing things. This signals something significant is about to happen. He also sees an angel with a censer, which is filled with incense added to the prayers of God's people. This harkens back to the practice at the Jewish temple when the priest went into the holy place to intercede for God's people. They first filled the room with smoke and incense.

But in this case, the fire from that censer is thrown down from heaven at the earth, which is another indicator, along with feeling and seeing an earthquake, John says, hearing peals of thunder and so on, that bad stuff is about to happen again. As John watches, he realizes the breaking of the seventh seal only opens up several more judgments on the earth and on those who dwell on it. When each angel sounds his trumpet, he tries to explain what he sees happening on earth as a result. The first four trumpet blasts bring ecological disasters for the earth. When the first trumpet sounds, some kind of fire rains down from heaven onto the earth. Sounds almost like what happened with Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament.

It says, This scorched a third of the earth, destroying the trees, the grass, the vegetation. Some speculate this fire may be from volcanoes, which have been long dormant, all erupting around the world at once. He doesn't specifically say what causes it. But according to the Smithsonian, there are 1,300 to 1,500 volcanoes, they estimate, that have been active to some extent over the last 10,000 years. One devastating eruption happened only a decade before Revelation was written at Pompeii in Italy. Volcanoes can cause amazing destruction.

You can only imagine something like hundreds of them, hundreds of volcanic eruptions occurred in one day. It could be as devastating as what John saw after that trumpet sounded. When the second trumpet sounded, something more like an asteroid or perhaps a comet crashes into the ocean with devastating effects on marine life, destroying shipping, resulting in tidal waves, and so on. The boundary God sets for some reason is one third. One third of the Earth's vegetation was destroyed when the first trumpet blew, and now one third of what's in the seas, he says. What would happen if a large asteroid or comet hurtling through space crashed into the ocean?

We hear of this threat from time to time. In 2020, an asteroid missed the Earth by a mere 200 miles, very close call in space terms. Similarly, when the third trumpet sounds, John sees a fireball flaming toward the Earth, this time hitting land. He calls it wormwood. Wormwood was a very bitter plant. When this meteor or whatever it is strikes the Earth, a third of the fresh water is fouled and poisoned.

You can only imagine how, when these large objects from space crash into the ocean somewhere, crash into the landmass somewhere, what would result? The earthquakes, tsunamis, the atmosphere clouded with thick smoke, debris, haze for months. When the fourth trumpet sounds, it's hard for John to even describe what he sees. He's doing his best, but these things are obviously unprecedented. Something happens to the light from the sun, moon, and stars, he says. They are diminished somehow again by one third.

Perhaps he means the darkness is over the Earth for a third longer each day than normal. I don't know. A visual way maybe God is saying things are going to be very dark from now on, portending the ultimate destruction that's down the road. Now a third of the earth's vegetation is gone, a third of marine life is destroyed, a third of fresh water is poisoned, and even a third of the daylight appears to have disappeared. John Wolvard notes in his Revelation commentary, I'm paraphrasing him, the first four trumpet judgments affect all of the aspects of our natural world that mankind usually takes for granted: the beauty and benefits of nature, all the green things, the grass, the flower, the trees. Also the value of fresh water, which we drink and use unthinkingly for all kinds of purposes every day.

Even the sunlight that surrounds us, warms and brightens our lives, makes everything grow. All of these common blessings from God will then be severely crippled, so that men cannot mistake the fact that the day of reckoning with our Creator has finally come. Then, John said, I looked, and I heard an angel flying in midheaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the angels who are about to sound. What comes next is now aimed at the earth dwellers, not just the natural world, and this takes us to chapter nine. Imagine it. Then the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth, and the key of the pit of the abyss was given to him.

And when he opened the pit of the abyss, smoke went up out of there, like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. Then out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth, and power was given to them like scorpions of the earth have power. They were told, Don't hurt the remaining grass of the earth or any green thing or any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment for five months, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man. In those days, that is during these five months they are loosed, men will seek death and will not be able to find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.

He goes on, the appearance of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle, and on their heads appeared to be crowns like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. And they had hair like the hair of women, and their teeth were like the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of many horses running to battle. They have as their king over them an angel from the abyss, whose name is Abaddon in the Greek, and also Apollyon. His name means destroyer. At the risk of going against what I've already made the case for, I'll tell you that this is not a falling star.

These are not grasshoppers on steroids. The star is called him. The key is given to him, and he is described as, past tense, fallen from heaven. This, I feel sure, is an allusion to Satan, who in heaven had been called Lucifer, a name that meant light bearer. He was called the morning star before his rebellion and fall from heaven sometime before our world began. Remember Jesus once said in John's hearing, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

This is a being John sees now because he has been given keys, and he proceeds to unlock a pit of the abyss. The pit of the abyss is a real place, perhaps not in our dimension, but a real place. The Bible speaks elsewhere about a portion of the demons of hell being imprisoned there. So what John is now seeing, likely, is Satan being given permission to free a lot of demonic entities for a time in the tribulation. John had seen, or if not seen, certainly heard about locust swarms and how they affected the Middle East when millions of locusts, like a dark cloud almost blotting out the sun at times, and they would come down and just devastate an entire crop. When this happens, this great number of demons is loosed, it's like that kind of plague.

But this is not like when insects devour plant life. He makes that point specifically. They're not to touch any plant life or anything like that on the earth, only torment people, rebellious people, those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. So they cannot touch the 144,000 Jewish witnesses we've learned about, and perhaps also others who have now become believers, but they are free to torment unbelievers for five months. Why do I think John here is not being completely literal? Notice his use of a lot of likes and ases.

They had an appearance like. They had hair like. Their leader was as. That indicates to me he's using similes. He's trying to describe what he's seeing through comparisons. He's doing his best to explain things he sees through the language of his own experiences, the language of his and other first-century world readers, but things which were not really from their world.

So he's drawing on comparisons. Poor example, but it reminds me when many years ago someone explained to me for the very first time how Microsoft Windows works on a computer. He said to me at the time, Think of it like, there's the key word, like. Think of it like a file cabinet in your study. You open a file cabinet, then you open a certain drawer, then you go to a certain file in that drawer, and maybe a file folder inside there and the subfolder inside there. It's like that, he said, as he clicked on Windows folders and opened file after file.

I understood him with that simile. He was drawing a comparison. He was telling me about something I knew and understood and comparing it to something I really didn't understand at all. I think John is doing exactly that. He's doing his best to explain things he'd never seen before in terms his readers would understand. So describing far future things he was being shown to first century readers, it was sort of like this, he says.

It was kind of resembled that. When the locust-looking demons are unleashed, it's just like a horde of locusts, and they bring devastation like those creatures do. They torment men like the sting of scorpions, causing tremendous pain and so on. We don't have scorpions where I live. Maybe some of you understand this better, but what I read is that their sting is an intense, sharp, burning pain, like a bee sting but harsher. Depending on the type of scorpion, it can affect your nervous system, causing difficulty breathing, muscles twitching and jerking, vomiting, and so on.

John is apparently seeing demonic entities unleashed on the earth for five months during the tribulation time who are free to torment people, unbelieving people. These judgments are extreme, but never out of God's control, not unlike the plagues that fell on Egypt long ago, breaking the rebellious Pharaoh. But these judgments are worse and global. One woe is past, he hears. Behold, two woes are coming. Chapter 9, verse 12 says.

Have you had enough yet? I have long ago. But things only continue, as I said, to get from bad to worse. Some of what's coming might sound more familiar to us. Then the sixth angel sounded. I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God in heaven, saying, Release the four angels who have been bound at the great river Euphrates.

And the four angels were released, who had been prepared for this hour and day and month and year, so that they would kill a third of mankind. They, they who? Listen. And the number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million. I heard the number of them, and this is how I saw in the vision the horses and those who sat on them. The riders had breastplates the color of fire and hyacinth and brimstone.

And the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions. Out of their mouths come fire and smoke and brimstone. A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents having heads, and with them they do great harm. Again, I don't believe this is John seeing any massive army on horseback. Notice the use of like.

Again, he's probably trying to describe a massive modern army moving, cavalry as we call it today, coming from the east in their carriers with war machines toward Israel. The Euphrates was the border of the east in John's time. Notice, too, the description of the evil angels who will draw them or instigate this. The text says they had been prepared for this very hour and day and month and year. This has been brewing and brewing, and now the time has come for a massive confrontation, apparently east versus west. Many Bible students, assuming that if this is happening in the near future, the only nation on earth that could muster an invasion force the size would be China, with perhaps allies of theirs joining in.

Maybe John's number is hyperbole to suggest what to him looks like an innumerable force. But how would a first-century man try to describe a modern conflict of this magnitude? The most modern war machines, a conflict with tactical nuclear weapons being used or whatever weapons of mass destruction will be in arsenals at this time. I can't help but believe he is watching future warfare here when he describes what soldiers are riding in spewing out fire, smoke, and brimstone, in his words, creating massive casualties. This is the mother of all wars near the end of the tribulation, when a massive army from the east comes to engage the armies of Antichrist. But we'll see more about that in a later chapter.

Surely all of this would have every last person on planet Earth turning to God, wouldn't you think? Some will, but most won't. John concludes chapter nine by saying, And the rest of mankind who were not killed by the plagues did not repent. They did not repent of their murders, their sorceries, their sexual immorality, and so on. Wow. How foolish, hard-headed, and rebellious can people be?

So I have good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first, Tony? Tony says the bad. Get the bad out of the way. Okay. The bad news is this: it's far from over.

Revelation chapters ten and following change the focus with a more close-up lens so the next chapters help us understand in a more personal way, close-up way, what's going on during the Great Tribulation, the final three and a half years. It's fascinating, but it's unnerving and scary, and it does not end well for those on Earth still hardening their hearts against God. But the good news is, the reason John could be shown all of this is because God is in control of history. As wild as things will get, none of it is unforeseen or outside of His sovereign control. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. Remember the first and the last, the beginning and the ending.

He will be standing victorious when all this is said and done. And more good news is, if we are right about the rapture theory, if the day of the Lord dawned tomorrow, these scenes and all these things we've been talking about happen starting tomorrow, no one who is listening to me today need experience any of it, any of the tribulation horrors, because I'm convinced Jesus is coming back to take His own out of this world before these final judgments fall. Have you received Him? Do you belong to Him? If you're unsure, I urge you to turn to God in prayer right now. Ask Him to forgive your sins.

Claim Christ as your Savior. Ask God to send His Holy Spirit into your life in a real way. Then turn your life toward following Him from this day forward. If you'd like to talk to someone about what that means, we're here for you. Just email us at info at sharetheword.org or me directly at paul at sharetheword.org. Our only agenda is to share with you and as many people as possible what the New Testament really says, since we believe it is God's very Word.

Thanks for listening. This is Paul. Thank you, Paul, and thank you all for taking the time to tune in and listen to Share the Word. If you're new to Share the Word, please take a moment and visit sharetheword.org and check out the entire library that brings all of the New Testament chapter by chapter. And I echo Paul's sentiment that we are here for you. You can reach us at info at sharetheword.org or reach Paul at paul at sharetheword.org.

Until the next time, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.