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Reading from the next section
of Revelation 9 verses 13 through 21. Hear the Word of God. So the sixth angel trumpeted,
and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar
that is before God saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet,
release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.
So the four angels were released. They had been prepared for the
hour and the day and month and year so that they might kill
a third of mankind. And the number of the mounted
troops was 100 million. I heard their number. And in
the vision, I saw the horses like this. Those who rode them
had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow. The heads of the horses were
like lion's heads. Out of their mouths came fire,
smoke, and brimstone. By these three plagues, a third
of mankind was killed by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone
that came out of their mouths. For the capability of the horses
is in their mouths and in their tails, because their tails are
like snakes having heads, and with them they do harm. Yet the
rest of the people, those who were not killed by these plagues,
did not repent of the works of their hands, so as to stop worshiping
the demons, even the idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone,
and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did
not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornications
or their thefts. Amen Father we thank you for
your word. I pray that as we dig into it
You would help us to understand it and to apply it in a way consistent
And that honors and glorifies you we pray this in Jesus name.
Amen You may be seated Well, we've finally come to the
sixth trumpet, and I do need to speak again about chronology
and timing issues. And I think you will find this
first major point at least mildly interesting. Chronology is not
the favorite subject for some people, but I think this will
be a little bit different. And I do want to make a comment
about my tendency in the past to give you the modern Gregorian
equivalence. I think that's probably been
a mistake because when you read in the literature, it does get
confusing because there are so many different presuppositions
that go into how to convert it. I think they're very accurate
conversions that I've been giving. And I've done it to make it easier
for you, but I think it might cause more confusion than not.
I'm going to try to stick to the Hebrew calendar that was
used by John. and by the Hebrew historians
of the first century, because when you do that, there is an
absolute mathematical precision. I believe there's a precision
with the Gregorian dates too, but there's just too many assumptions
that go into that. So from here on in, what I'm
going to do is I'm going to be probably just referring to the
Hebrew dates. If you want the Gregorian dates, Josh and Tobias
have been working on this massive timeline And I've put up a whole
boatload of new dates on there. But we're going to be trying
to give you dates for almost every passage that's in the Book
of Revelation. And hopefully it'll work out.
But anyway, let's dive into the outline.
Point number one says, the sequence. Revelation has a very precise
chronology. Now, we have been seeing that
point by point in chapters five through nine. We can see it again
here. But because it is constantly denied in the commentaries, I've
got to constantly affirm it. Verse 13 says, then. Now, you'll see in the bulletin
here it says, so. But it's exactly the same grammar
as was translated by the same version, then, then, then, earlier.
And that word indicates a sequence. And while some might want to
diminish the time sequence here and translate it as so or and,
just look at the previous verse. If you've got your Bibles, look
at the previous verse. I don't see how that is possible.
Verse 12 says, one woe is passed, behold still two more woes are
coming after these things. Well those two more woes are
the next two trumpets, right? So trumpet five is passed, it's
finished, and the next Two woes are still yet to come. So I don't
know how so many people can gloss over time sequences like this,
including, by the way, many partial preterists, our own camp. It's
very, very important to note. Then comes John's statement in
verse 15. So the four angels were released.
They had been prepared for the hour and the day and month and
years so that they might kill a third of mankind. And I want
you to especially notice that phrase. prepared for the hour
and the day and month and year. John's chronology follows the
Hebrew calendar, and the more I have studied the chronology
of the events, the more I have been astonished at the details
involved in trying to figure these things out. What makes
it especially complicated when you're trying to convert their
days, which begin at 6 p.m. Ours don't. So you got confusion
there. And then you convert their lunar
calendar to our solar calendar. And there is assumptions that
go into that as well, depending on if you have intercalations. It can sometimes make your head
spin. It's one of the reasons why I'm so thankful that I've
got a calendar program that's taken all of that into account.
and does the calculations automatically for me. Now I have spent countless
hours looking at all of the different viewpoints out there, poring
over the last few years, over the writings and the mathematical
calculations of the calendar experts, and you can understand
why differences of opinion do arise. So I'm planning to stick
to the Hebrew, the Roman, the Seleucid dates of the ancient
historians. And when you do that, you see
that there is just a perfect match with the calendar program. Now without boring you to tears,
which I don't plan to do, I can't really show you the awe, the
wonder, the spectacular nature of the timing of this book. There
are so many cool things in this book that I hope to get into
writing at some point. I can't just bring them into
the end of the sermons, but at least somebody's going to be
interested in them, like I will. But I want to at least give you
a sneak peek, a little bit of an insight on some of the cool
things that I have seen as a result of doing these calculations.
And I'm going to go back to Pentecost, which is chapter 8. And actually,
I'll go back to the first Pentecost in A.D. 30. And I want to show
you some hints on why that is such a pivotal date and why it's
a pivotal date in the book of Revelation. My calendar program
shows that it is exactly 77,777 weeks from Moses burning bush
to Pentecost. Now what is significant of that?
Well both were commissions to leaders to form a New Covenant
community. But what an amazing number, 77,777.
Here's a second weird coincidence. It was exactly 77,777 700 weeks from the dedication of
the tabernacle where the Holy Spirit, remember, came down,
fire came down out of heaven, and the Holy Spirit manifested
himself with his people in that first tabernacle under Moses
until the time that at Pentecost, in Acts chapter 2, the Spirit
came down and manifested himself with his people as well. Exactly
77,700 weeks. Why the even number? Well, the
number seven is the number of completion and perfection. Third,
that was an exact number of Jubilee cycles. Jubilee cycle was 50
years, had prophetic significance of bringing liberty. Fourth,
Acts 2 was exactly seven weeks from Christ's death. Okay, that
number seven keeps cropping up. And I'll skip over a whole bunch
of other pretty cool correlations that relate to Pentecost. And
since we're focused on the war of Jerusalem, let me point out
some things that are just too exact to be mere coincidences. Is it by accident that the AD
70 temple was burned on Ab 9, that's a Hebrew month, Ab 9,
the exact same day that Nebuchadnezzar burned the Temple of Solomon? And even more strange, is it
an accident that it is exactly 240,000 days from that first
temple destruction to this temple destruction? Exactly 240,000
days, not one day more or less. That's just too weird to be a
mere coincidence. Is it an accident that this also
happened to be 77,770 weeks after Moses died? Is it by accident that the Roman
armies surrounded Jerusalem in AD 70, exactly 40 years to the
very day that Jesus was crucified on Ab 14 or Nisan 14, two different
names for the same Hebrew month. Is it an accident that this very
day was a lunar eclipse? No, it was symbolizing Israel's
lights going out, the end of a nation. And you can verify
all of this stuff You know, on other programs and NASA, I've
been on NASA's site way too much. But they've got a lot of cool
lunar cycle charts. Is it by accident that Cestius
blew his trumpets of war on the very day that the first angel
blew his heavenly trumpets of war? No. The Feast of Trumpets
was God's warning of judgment for Israel, and that brief war
was the last opportunity that any people had to be able to
flee from Jerusalem. And Eusebius says all of the
Christians took warning. By the way, the Feast of Trumpets
always occurs on Tishri 1. which according to Psalm 81 verses
3 through 4 was always a new moon. Okay, so there's a prophetic
significance to all of these things. Is it by accident that
the second angelic trumpet corresponds with the next festival trumpet
blast at the Feast of Tabernacles? Is it by accident that the third
angelic trumpet corresponds with the next festival trumpet blast
the Day of Atonement? No. There are no accidents. I've got kind of a chart that
outlines all of these different festivals and shows that they
had a prophetic significance of the ending of the old covenant
and the ending of the old covenant temple. There is only one festival
yet to be fulfilled, and that is the Feast of Purim, which
points to the salvation of Israel in the future and even greater
blessings being brought to the Gentiles. But no temple, no temple
at that point. all of the previous festivals
had to be fulfilled while the temple was still standing. Is
it by accident that from Moses' first reading in Deuteronomy,
after the 40 years and the last unbeliever from the wilderness
generation had died, from that time to the time that Titus sells
the survivors into slavery, again after 40 years, is exactly 77,777
weeks. I mean, wow, there is that same
number coming up again. Coincidence? I think not. I think
not. Is it by accident that Jerusalem
fell in a jubilee year? I think not. These are not coincidences. God is following a pattern that
showcases his sovereignty and his mercy to those who have eyes
to see. And so it's not simply a throwaway
phrase, the way many commentaries treat the phrase I just read,
when verse 15 speaks of the timing of these events being down to
the very day and hour. And we're going to be digging
into some really cool stuff on the 1260 days and the 42 months
when we get into chapter 11. But having said that, I do want
to point out that there is a structure that needs to be noted in the
sixth trumpet if we want to be exact in our interpretation.
Most commentators treat chapter 10 verse 1 through chapter 11
verse 14 as two interludes. Now, it is true. They are two
interludes. but they are still during the
time of the sixth trumpet. And you can see that by the phrase
that's given in chapter 11, verse 14. The second woe has passed,
behold, the third woe is coming quickly. They are still part
of that sixth trumpet. So the explanation for the odd
structure is pretty simple. In verses 13 through 21, this
is very important to understand, these verses we just read, In
our chapter, God gives an overview of the entire sixth trumpet from
67 through 70 AD. It's kind of an introductory
summary of what's going to be happening. Then He gives these
two interludes, chapter 10 and chapter 11. He outlines two other
things that are going to occur. during that period of the Sixth
Trumpet. So you can treat these verses
kind of as an introduction. And by the way, that's the only
way that you're going to be able to explain the killing of one-third
of mankind. To my knowledge, one-third of
mankind did not die in AD 67. You have to calculate all the
way up to the beginning parts of AD 70. By the time we get to 69, the
year of the four emperors, there's civil war, there's massive numbers
of Romans and other nationalities who die from civil war and famine
and plague and other means. And so verses 13 through 21 are
going to be covering the next three years right up to the time
right before the seventh trumpet. And then chapters 10 through
11 are going to deal with two topical things that happen in
the same time period. So does that all make sense?
Just in terms of a structure, I want you to see where we're
going on this. This is a key stumbling block
for some people, so it's very important that we understand
this. Now the next point says that God is sovereign over this
war that Vespasian brings, and of course we've been seeing John's
been harping on that point all through all of these visions,
hasn't he? God is sovereign. We even saw
his sovereignty in the the weird number correlations that I've
been giving to you, but you can clearly see it again in the first
phrase of verse 13. So the sixth angel trumpeted. Now we have been seeing that
the armies of heaven are far more critical to world history
than human armies are. far more critical. I was reading
again in Josephus this past week and just blown away again by
some of this history. There were three times where
Josephus almost died. Two of those times he was so
surrounded by a mass of Jewish soldiers that even the Romans
thought it was a miracle that he was able to fight his way
through those crowds out to safety again, that the Jews thought
it was a miracle. They didn't know how in the world he should
have been dead. Now Titus attributes the escape
to his gods. Josephus attributes the escape
to Jehovah. But it's clear that heaven's
armies are guiding this war from the beginning to the end of it.
And you could get that just by reading the secular histories.
It's a weird war. It's just astonishing. But it's good to be reminded
we have angels involved in these battles. But it's more than just
angels. The kingdom of heaven as directed
by Jesus Christ is impacting the earth and that is symbolized
by the second clause in verse 13. And I heard a voice from
the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. What
is the golden altar? Well, he's defined it as the
altar of incense in chapter 8 verse 3. Just take a look at that.
Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the
altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with
the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was
before the throne." Now the Jews, they knew exactly what that was
all about because they went to that all the time in their understanding
their theology. But even for us who were not
present at that temple, he's defined exactly what he means.
The golden altar is the altar of incense that symbolizes the
prayers of the saints. So this voice of Jesus Christ
that is directing the armies of heaven is a direct result
of the prayers of the church on earth. Is prayer important?
Absolutely, yes it is. I don't know how you could explain
it to be more important than some of the symbols like this
in the book of Revelation. Now it mentions four horns of
the golden altar, and anyone who is familiar with the temple
rituals would know this is just an incredibly marvelous, powerful
symbol of the mercy of God, the horns of the altar. See what
would happen is there would be a bull or a lamb that would be
slain out in the outer court on the altar, but some of the
blood would be taken and they would go into this a holy place,
and they would smear some of the blood on the horns of this
altar. And what that represented was
that our prayers can have no impact without the the atonement
of Christ and without His prayers. And there can be no mercy apart
from the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's a wonderful
symbol. It may have seemed like the whole
world was falling apart and yet God was answering the church's
prayers and He was being merciful to the church. Now sometimes
judgments against God's enemies are mercies to the church. and
I think we need to see them as that. Don't think that God has
failed you if he starts taking down statist governments in the
next, you know, few years or decades and we enter into financially
tough times. But I do want to spend a little
bit more time on prayer because these chapters really have become
a turning point for the church. The church has undergone incredible
persecution. That persecution ended at this
point It ended because Israel now was so preoccupied with defending
itself against Rome, it doesn't have any energy, doesn't have
any time to persecute Christians anymore. And so starting in chapter
8 verses 1 through 6, the prayers of the saints have been ascending
continually before the golden altar of God. And chapter 8 says,
the seven trumpets started sounding as a result of those prayers.
And here he is saying those same prayers that are leading to the
judgments that are outlined in this chapter. Without prayer,
we have no victory. It's just as simple as that.
Why don't you turn with me to Psalm 76. I think this Psalm
is such a vivid reminder of what must happen to the church worldwide
if we are to see the enemies of the church coming under judgment,
and if we are to see the church emerging once again as a world-conquering
force. Psalm 76, indicates it's going
to require God-centered prayer. In Judah God is known. His name
is great in Israel. In Salem also is His tabernacle
and His dwelling place in Zion. There He broke the arrows of
the bow, the shield and sword of battle, Selah. Now Selah means,
let's pause a bit and think about that, and we should. We should
think, what was that tabernacle? Well, Jesus defines the tabernacle
as being the house of prayer for all nations. Par excellence,
that was what was supposed to define the temple. It was supposed
to be a place of prayer. But I want you to notice that
it was in that tabernacle where God's people are gathered for
prayer that the definitive differences in Israel's battles were made.
The victory was not simply achieved out there on the battlefield.
It was in this house of prayer that God broke the arrows of
the bow and the shield and the sword of battle. But then Asaph
goes on to say that these prayers must be God-centered, not comfort-centered. Our prayers must be passionate
for the kingdom. Consider God to be far more glorious
than our comfort, than the prey, the plunder that we might get
than winning the battle. So verse 4 continues. You are
more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey. The stout-hearted
were plundered. They have sunk into their sleep,
and none of the mighty men have found the use of their hands.
At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and horse were
cast into a dead sleep. You yourself are to be feared,
and who may stand in your presence when once you are angry? You
caused judgment to be heard from heaven. The earth feared and
was still when God arose to judgment to deliver all the oppressed
of the earth. Selah. Surely, the wrath of man shall
praise you. Can God use the wrath of man,
the wrath of the ungodly, to defeat their own kingdom? Absolutely,
yes, he can. That's what he did in the book
of Revelation. He turned the wrath of the Jews that had been
burning hot against Christians, and he turned it against the
Romans. And he turned the wrath of the Romans that had been persecuting
the Christians, and he turned it against the Jews. And so these
two enemies of Christianity were undoing each other. But even
after the war, God continued to glorify himself with both
Roman and Jewish persecutions. So verse 10 again, surely the
wrath of man shall praise you with a remainder of wrath you
shall gird yourself, make vows to the Lord your God and pay
them. Let all who are around him bring presents to him who
ought to be feared. He shall cut off the spirit of
princes. He is awesome to the kings of
the earth. See, that's the kind of faith that Revelation was
designed to inspire in God's people. Revelation was designed
to help us to look at the events that are around us with new eyes.
And then verse 14 of Revelation 9 gives yet another encouragement.
that shows how God's heavenly armies are more powerful than
Satan's armies. If you are a glass half-empty
kind of a person, you're probably looking at that and saying, oh
man, they're unleashing these hundred million, you know, all
of these demons. What are we gonna do? This is
gonna be absolutely horrible. But if you're a glass half-full
type of a person, you're gonna look at that and say, wow, those
demons have been bound a long time and they couldn't do a single
thing if it didn't suit God's purposes. And now God's using
them against His enemies. And it's something that shows
you that God's angels are far more powerful than their angels.
Think about it. Here's four angels. No, here's one angel that unleashes,
is that the right word? Unleashes, unleashes the four
demonic princes and their millions That ought to inspire awe in
us of the valor of our angels rather than making fear about
the power of their angels. Next, the word Euphrates is also
significant for first century Jews. It conjures up numerous
Old Testament passages of where the enemies almost always were
coming from in the Old Testament. They came from up north. They
came from the Euphrates, and I got a whole bunch of scriptures
on that. And so this has made some commentators, normally it's
futurists, but some partial preterists as well, they've said, well,
this must then be referring to 100 million human soldiers, or
if you take the minority text, 200 million human soldiers coming
from the Euphrates River. After all, in the Old Testament,
if you look at any time they came from the Euphrates from
the north, it's humans that came from the Euphrates, right? But
we're going to be seeing everything about these mounted enemies demonstrates
that they're demons, not simply men. Now, it's not exclusive
of the human armies. The two are tied together. They're
somehow connected. But the focus is on demons. And
so just as verses 1 through 12 show the images in Titus' armies
that pointed to the demons that they worshiped, These were images
on Vespasian's legions that pointed to the demons that they worshipped.
So let's take a look at those demons, at those images on Vespasian's
four legions, and that they are images that can be seen from
a number of proofs. First of all, look at verse 17. It says, and in the vision I
saw the horses. Visions are characteristically
symbolic. Second, the comparative article
hos, which means like or as, not identical to, but like or
as, occurs ten times in this chapter. The adjective homoios,
which means like, is used four times. And the noun homoyoma,
which means similar to or the likeness of, occurs one time. All of those words are pointed
to the fact you cannot take these horses as literal horses and
literal riders. I mean, literal horses don't
have tails like snakes that can bite the heads of snakes on them. These are clearly symbols of
demons. And if you look at the front side, the map of the siege,
you'll see the specific legions used by Titus and Vespasian.
The four new legions, okay, there's two legions that Titus brought
up. The four new legions that Vespasian
brought up were four, Scythia, five, Macedonia, six, Farada,
and 10, and they joined then with 12 and 15. And there were
parts of some other armies that were present as well. But if
you analyze the symbols of those armies that came up, it makes
perfect sense. First of all, verse 17 says that
the horses had heads like lions. Well, the two symbols of Legio
5 were the eagle and the lion, and you can see a coin minted
in honor of that legion with an eagle and a lion on it. Legio
12 from the Euphrates also had an image of the lion on their
standards. Now in this case, it was a flying
lion. And interestingly, the cavalry
assigned with these units had their horses wear head armor
shaped like a lion's head. And I found a surviving specimen
of that in your outlines. So horses literally, literally
wore that symbol of a lion on their heads. So did the standard
bearers. They had a lion, a head on their
head. The symbol of Legio IV was a
flying horse. So what's going on here is the
Roman legions, they're trying to imitate the demons that they
worship as closely as they can, because they want those demons
to give them victory. They want them to protect them.
Now, what about the fire that came out of their mouths and
the tails like a serpent? Well, most commentaries only
focus on the fact that the Romans torched everything, you know,
Jerusalem and the temple. But the imagery of the armies
themselves connects them with the smoke and the fire. For example,
the Chimera God, an example of which I've put into your outlines,
has a head like a lion and a tail like a snake with the tip of
the tail being the snake's head. So you can see the picture there.
Now, the chimera actually had different shapes. I've just found
one there, but these are a collage of images. According to ancient
legend, the chimera was reputed to breathe fire out of its mouth.
Now, modern people, they look at that, and we just scoff. We
think that's ridiculous. But these guys took it seriously.
They worshipped. They feared these demons. But
fire and smoke issuing forth may also be connected with two
of the gods represented by two of Vespasian's legions, the gods
Zeus and Neptune. The 10th legion's god, Neptune,
worked very closely with Apollo, the demonic king mentioned in
verse 11, and the main animal associated with him was horses,
and both of those gods had lightning and fire associated with them.
In fact, the 12th legion's symbol was the lightning bolt. to connect
them with that. I think I missed that image in
your outlines. The shield of Legio V Macedonia
was fire and smoke. And I've given you an image of
that on one of their shields. And I want you to note just on
that shield the red, the yellow, and the blue. And it's actually
on all of the armor there. Verse 17 says, those who rode
them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur
yellow. And I've given you three pictures
that show those were the typical colors of the legions. It's just
common knowledge. The location of Legio 6 was up
until recently unknown. That's why on that image you've
got question marks up there. But recent archaeological evidence
places them in the Megiddo Valley, exactly where Revelation 16,
verse 16 places them. So that summarizes the four legions
from the Euphrates, how they symbolized the demons that they
worshiped, and those gods or demons had up until now been
bound at the Euphrates. It's a composite description,
just like verses 1 through 12 was a composite description as
well. So what's happened at this point
is Titus has been traveling from Egypt and Vespasian has been
traveling from the Euphrates region north, And they line up
here in the spring and begin an aggressive campaign of war. Now let me give you one more
point before we quit, and that's seen in verse 15. So the four
angels were released. They had been prepared for the
hour and the day and month and year, and here comes the phrase
we haven't dealt with yet, so that they might kill a third
of mankind. Now most partial preterist commentaries
try to get around that statement because it just seems too exaggerated
to them. Was a third of mankind really
killed at this time? If you read the premillennial
arguments against our position, this is claimed to be a slam
dunk argument that partial preterism simply cannot be true. And I'm
not at all satisfied with the answers that partial preterists
have given to date. So I think it's a serious issue
that deserves at least a few minutes of consideration. Let
me first of all discard some lame arguments that you'll find
in the partial preterist camp. Mulholland suggests that all
humanity is divided up into three groups of unequal size. You've
got a group of people sealed by God. You've got a group of
people judged by God. Then you've got a group of people
neither sealed nor judged, but they're given opportunity to
repent. And he says it's not a third of mankind as a whole
that is judged, but it's a third of one of those three groups. But I don't think that that's
what the language here says. It says it's a third of mankind,
not one of three very unequal groups. So I'm not satisfied
with that explanation. Others in our camp apply this
to the men of Israel only. And you can translate, instead
of mankind, a third of the men. And technically, it's possible,
but it doesn't fit two facts. And this is something, again,
that premillennialists just hammer on us, at least in the last year
or two. They've been hammering on us. First, far more than a
third of the Jews were killed. So it doesn't fit that point.
Second, it doesn't seem to fit the context of idolatry of literal
idols in verses 20 through 21. Jews simply didn't worship idols
of silver, gold, wood, stone, bronze, you know, that didn't
speak. They didn't worship those. So it seems much better to take
this as mankind in general within the Roman empire or just mankind
throughout the globe. Now, we have almost no ideas
of how many people lived, let alone how many people died in
China and North America and other places like that in the first
century. So I have no way of saying whether there was deaths
out there. I suspect not. But let me give
you four arguments as to why this is most probably related
to the world of the Roman Empire. First of all, in the parallel
section in chapter 16, verse 14, the demons from the Euphrates,
and it's the same demons here, the demons go out of the beast's
mouth. Who's the beast? Nero. So he's
talking about Rome. He's not talking about China
or North America. Second, he speaks of the kings
at the Euphrates, not the kings of China or North America, the
kings at Euphrates, So that's the second connection that would
seem to indicate it's Gentiles and goes beyond Jews. But Euphrates
is still within the Roman Empire. Okay, so it excludes China. Third,
he uses the Greek term oikoumenes, which is defined in the dictionary
as usually applying to the Roman Empire or the world as an administrative
unit under Rome. And then last, it speaks of them
coming to the land of Israel to wage war at Megiddo. Rome
came to Megiddo China did not. OK? And our passage also speaks
of the demons coming from the Euphrates. And that was the place
where Vespasian's four legions were that he's rounding up, as
well as many of the auxiliary armies. They came from the region
of the Euphrates. And so the point of going through
this is I think it's very important to realize that this judgment
is not just upon Israel. These demons are unleashed upon
the entire Roman Empire, and I'll give you evidence for that
in a bit. It's a covenant judgment upon both. But it still brings
up the question, did one third of mankind in the Roman Empire
die between the years of AD 67 and 70? And I say, yes. Now, futurists will say, absolutely
not. There is no evidence whatsoever
that there were that many deaths. People like Tim LaHaye have recently
gone on a frontal attack against partial preterism. And this is
one of their arguments. Well, I beg to differ with them.
I think there is evidence. Now, part of the problem is that
secular scholars are all over the map on what the population
of the empire might be. And so your critics can cherry
pick what numbers they want. I've read numerous papers and
books studying the demography of that period. Now, if Gibbon's
estimates for the population of the Roman Empire was correct
in the first century, and he's probably got the highest, he
says there was 120 million people in the Roman Empire. Well, if he is right, far more
than a third were killed. But others have estimated the
Roman population before those times as 83 million, Mauro de
Jones, 70 to 90 million, Michael Grant, 70 million, Balak and
Stein, 50 to 60 million, Finlay, 50 million, Duncan, Jones, and
McMullen, and 39 million, McEvedy. Well, if you're all over the
map like that, it's almost impossible to use demography to prove fulfillment
or non-fulfillment. Now most people say that Rome
probably had about 55 million people, somewhere in that range.
But if any of the first four estimates are correct on the
size of the population, then liberals have no basis for questioning
the inerrancy of Scripture. God said that a third would die,
and that's good enough for me, okay? But because pre-Mills have
recently been bringing this verse up as an objection to partial
preterism, I do want to deal with it for just a few more minutes
and demonstrate there was massive amounts of death that looks to
me very much like it was right in the 33% range. And my chief
source of information is Tacitus, a Roman historian who lived during
this time. When you read through his five
volumes that cover 68 through 70 AD, they were titled The Histories,
not his Annals, but The Histories, you see language that describes
absolute carnage during this period of time. And the carnage
was not just against the barbarians that had revolted. That was bad
enough. But the civil wars had legions
fighting against legions and decimating their numbers. Tacitus speaks of vast numbers
of Roman soldiers being slain. Nor were ordinary citizens exempt.
Cremona was massacred as were other regions. Now you might
wonder, well, how come you don't see a lot of this in the modern
history books? And I've got a hunch as to why
this is the case. I think that many of these establishment
scholars doubt the figures that are given by Suetonius and Tacitus
and some of these other people because they idolize Rome. They
think of Rome as the ideal state that we ought to imitate. And
they also downplay any major significant numbers. It's just
skepticism. They have no basis for their
doubts. For example, on the diminished size of the city of Rome that
I just referenced, Whitney Oates says, on the face of it, this
seems impossible. Despite the fact that the city
had suffered severely from disease and pestilence, we have no warrant
to conclude that the city had decreased in size by over more
than half. We are forced, therefore, to
reject such an interpretation. And my response, looking at all
the evidence, is why? Why are you forced to reject
that? Why do so many scholars dismiss the genocides recorded
by historians as being real genocides? And again, it's only a hunch,
but my hunch is they idolize Rome. For the past 1,000 years,
actually longer than that, scholars have only had praise for Greece
and Rome. Those two empires have been kind
of a model for the modern. So if ancient historians say
that Julius Caesar, and they did, if they say that Julius
Caesar killed a million Gauls in one conflict and he enslaved
another million, it sounds too much like genocide. And a lot
of people just discount that. They think, well, that's just
hyperbole. So they come up with their own figures of 30,000 or
something. When Josephus says that one and
a half million Jews were killed in Israel, the scholars say,
that just can't be. And I'm thinking, well, on what
basis can that just not be? But they discount it and they
say, well, maybe 30,000 were killed. They always bring the
numbers of the ancient historians way down. Why? Because it looks
like genocide. And it was genocide that Rome
was engaged in. Even Christians have idolized
Greece and Rome, but Rome and Greece were demonic to the core,
and there is no good reason to respect or honor those empires.
And I like the way Nick Fields pops this illusion in his 2014
history book that just, by the way, covers AD 69 in the Roman
Empire. That's all it deals with. He
says, historians generally like to encourage us to remember Rome
as a glorious font of Western civilization. I find it difficult
to agree with this proposal. Rather than be dazzled by its
so-called glory, Rome is better seen as that immense monument
of human arrogance. So from here on, abandon any
notions about the glory that was Rome or the noble legacy
it ostensibly left us. And I say amen. By the time you
get to the end of his book, you are sickened by Rome. You have
no respect for Rome. Rome was barbaric in its treatment
of people, and it depopulated a third of the empire. Now, who
all died? I'm going to just try to add
up the numbers for you here. Christians continued to die for
more than a year, all the way up till Nero died on June 9 of
68. As I mentioned in a previous
sermon, the church was almost exterminated, and as much as
the church had advanced around the world, to be exterminated
would have had a huge impact upon the population. Now, if
the Roman Empire was 55 million, as most establishment, we'll
just take the establishment figure, it was probably higher, but if
it was 55 million, And if Christians numbered in the multiplied millions,
as we have already established, then we are racking up some significant
percentages here. OK, let's assume a conservative
figure of 5 million Christians. Well, that would be almost 10%
of the total population. That'd be less if the higher
figures were assumed to be correct. But if the higher figures are
assumed to be correct, automatically a third is proved to be dead. So we're taking the lower conservative
numbers and say, if that's true, then there is approximately 10%
of the empire that's been done in at this point. Jews are the next category to
add to this Holocaust. They continue to be killed throughout
the empire up until early 74. In fact, the lowest figure of
Jews killed throughout the empire that is even remotely credible
is 4 million Jews, which some establishment scholars have been
recently citing. But several scholars have demonstrated
it's actually much closer to the 7 million mark. of Jews that
were killed, okay? If the Roman population was higher,
then the figure would go up as well, because the Jews comprised
approximately 15% of the entire population, 10% in the West,
20% in the East. The Jewish deaths alone would
have comprised over 10% of the population. Now you need to add
the Christians to that, so we're hovering around the 20% mark
already. The German Batavians were slaughtered
in their uprising, and other barbarian uprisings were brutally
suppressed. It's impossible to read through
the five volumes of Tacitus' The Histories without becoming
aware of massive human loss, which, by the way, Fields points
out, was typical of Rome's armies. Life did not mean much to them.
Then there were the Roman legions fighting against each other.
fighting against other Roman legions in the civil wars in
AD 69. The best of the best were up
against each other and they showed no mercy to the legions and the
auxiliary armies that supported the wrong or the losing emperor.
Remember that AD 69 was the year of the four emperors and there
was civil war through that whole period of time. Now the Batavians
themselves were an incredibly powerful army. They single-handedly,
without the help of anybody else, completely decimated two Roman
legions, and two other Roman legions joined with them, thinking,
okay, we're going to support the Batavians. Well, the Batavians
lost, which means we got four Roman legions that are in deep
trouble. Tacitus doesn't give us an exact
number of Roman legionnaires that were lost, but he speaks
of, quote-unquote, vast numbers of Roman soldiers who died. whatever
vast numbers adds up to. He also describes huge areas
of territory where the bodies of the Roman soldiers were piled
high. There's at least some percentage
that's going to be added. I don't know if it's half a percent,
1%, 2%, but we're edging above 20%. But noncombatant Roman civilians
also died all through the year 69, the year of the four emperors.
Tacitus' account really turns your stomach when you see how
the Roman soldiers barbarized and treated fellow Roman citizens
that they were fighting against. By the way, you read some of
the early Americans when they're talking about politics. They
cite these kinds of statistics and tacitus saying, this is why
we never want to have a standing army in America because a standing
army can be unleashed upon its own population. All you have
to do is look at the war between the states and you see the carnage
that's produced when a standing army fights against its own Now
I'm just going to give you a tiny paragraph from Fields' history
book on the year 8069 to give you a tiny glimpse. He talks
about what happened to one town for siding with the wrong emperor.
Now they'd already lost many lives in the fight, in the conflict,
but Fields describes what happened to the citizens after the surrender
had happened. He said, in any war, the civilian
caught up in the conflict suffers the most, and the inhabitants
of this affluent town were to be no exception. Despite a show
of surrender, they fell victim to indiscriminate looting, rape,
and butchery, the most frightful forms of soldier license, the
last vices of war. A holocaust of death and destruction
cleaned the entire town. The Flavians were now completely
out of control. They roamed unchecked through
the town, raping and murdering, looting and destroying, and then
they slept drunken on wine and lust and blood. Such was the
rape of Cremona. And by the way, the statements
that Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio Cassius, and others give of the
crazy, crazy behavior of the Romans during this period of
time seems to indicate they were demon possessed. Remember we
saw in the previous verses that those demons were unleashed upon
the Jews and we saw the crazy behavior. Josephus says they're
either insane or they're demon-possessed. One or the other, we say, yeah,
well, the text tells us they were demon-possessed. But it's
the same kind of wild behavior, insane. Mob activities, suicides,
mass killings, torture, all kinds of crazy behavior that indicates,
yes, this judgment was upon the entire empire. And we've not
even touched on those killed by plagues and fires during this
time. R. Bagnell and B. Fryer have poured
over 300 census returns filed in Egypt during the first three
centuries since the birth of Jesus, they tried to come up
with demographic tables, mortality rates for Romans, and their conclusion
was that life expectancy from birth for Roman females was between
20 and 30 years, and for males was between 22 and 25 years. Well, if that was true, something
devastating must have been happening during this time. The huge numbers
of widows and orphans that we read about you know, after this
war. All by itself, that ought to
indicate something massive has happened. So even though we do
not have slam dunk numbers, neither do those who question this verse
being fulfilled. And certainly there is abundant
evidence of mass death that I think shows very credibly an approximation
of the 33% mark. And when we get to chapter 11,
I'll give you evidence of a tidal wave that covered the region
of Lycia and a great deal of Egypt. Tidal waves usually come
as a result of earthquakes. We'll be looking at the earthquake.
But to cover much of Egypt and to cover all of Lycia, that must
have brought enormous amounts of death. Cathy just doesn't
tell us how many died. But you've got to add figures like that
to the death toll. I'll give you just one more example
of statistics that we have. Though the evidence is disputed,
and I want to say that. it could be interpreted different
ways. There is evidence that the city of Rome declined in
its population tremendously between AD 14 and 200 going from 1,250,000
in AD 14 to 570,000 around AD 200. that would be a reduction of
the size of the city by 55% in less than 200 years. Now, we
don't know how many of those died, if any of them died, during
these next three years, but those are the kinds of statistics that
the skeptics have got to take account for. And I think they
point strongly in favor of the partial preterist argument. And
to those who are still skeptical, I would point to the fact that
there was a far worse reduction of the population under later
emperors that nobody contests. It's impossible to contest because
it's so well documented. So if that's the case, to dismiss
this smaller number of one-third as being ridiculous when they
do not have a shred of concrete evidence is simply skepticism. It is not an argument. Tacitus
is definitely on our side on this debate. And that's all I'm
going to say more on that question. But do let me end with five concluding
applications. First, we've seen you can absolutely
trust the numbers and the statistics of the Bible. The calendar statistics
alone ought to make you realize that the Bible is inspired in
the narrative, even if you weren't convinced of that already. But
we can trust the Bible completely and implicitly. Second, God is
never late. We sometimes think he is, even
this past week as I've been snowed under with presbytery work and
other things. It's this temptation. Kathy was
commenting on that to me. Phil, you're being a little bit
nervous, fearful here. God is never late, and we've
got to keep reminding ourselves of that. The saints in chapter
six who were praying for judgment the previous year may have thought
that he was late, but he was not. God was prepared down to
the hour, day, month, and year. We can trust Him to be there
when we need Him. Third, we cannot trust civil
governments to do what they have promised to do, especially if
they are led by unbelievers. Book of Revelation makes it unmistakably
clear that civil leaders can be easily moved by demons. Even
if they want to fulfill their promises, they are limited in
what they can do, which means, fourthly, that we should not
entrust too much power to civil governments. Now, the Apostle
John will more fully address that issue in the second half
of the book, which describes civil governments as what? As
beasts. And what are those beasts? They're
demonic beasts. They're demonic. In doing that,
he's just following the book of Daniel, which describes the
demonic King Nebuchadnezzar as having, get this, quote, the
heart of a beast, unquote. Daniel 4, verse 16, and the beast
that Babylon was described as being like, was a winged lion. It was their god. It was their
demon, right? That was the beast. It was their
demon. So for this government to be described as that beast
was to be described as that demon. The demon holds sway over Nebuchadnezzar. And Daniel 7 verse 24 describes
the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar in these words. The first beast
was like a lion and had eagle's wings. I watched till its wings
were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the earth and
made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man's heart was
given to it." So that shows the Christianization of Babylon where
it's becoming rational. Once Nebuchadnezzar was converted,
his empire is no longer described as a beast. In other words, no
longer is it demonic. The only other government in
Daniel not treated as bestial and demonic was the kingdom that
Messiah was prophesied to establish. What's the point? The point is
we should desire Christians in office. Whatever good intentions
an unbelieving politician might have, 1 John 5, 19, read it,
it says, he's under the sway of the wicked one. The whole
world lies under the sway of the wicked one. He can't touch
believers who guard themselves, but he's under the sway of the
wicked one. This was a truism in early America. They would
quote David's statement, he who rules over men must be just,
ruling in the fear of God. Listen to what the first Chief
Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Jay, Providence
has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the
duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian
nation to select and prefer Christian rulers for their rulers. When
you once take the demonic into consideration, voting for an
unbeliever does not make sense. Now just think about it. If even
a compromised Christian like David can be moved by Satan in
1 Chronicles 20 something verse 1, wherever the census was, I
think it's 21 verse 1. If even he could be moved by
that census, think of what Satan can do in moving other politicians. My last application is that we
should bring our prayers before the throne of grace and seek
God's mercy for His church. These kinds of culture battles
will ultimately be won by spiritual warfare alone. And when we're
praying, I think it's good to keep in mind that the ultimate
goal is righteousness exalting every nation in the earth. That's
the image that's given in the last chapters of this book. It's converted nations. And so
pray, make wise use of the golden altar of incense. Amen. Father,
we thank you for the warnings, for the encouragements, and for
the descriptions that are given in your Word for our spiritual
warfare. And I pray that we would take
them seriously, that the Church of Jesus Christ would be stirred
up to recognize that of the increase of Christ's kingdom and of peace,
there is no end, and that as Christians refuse their duty,
their region, yes, may have the candlestick plucked up, but other
regions will follow in the battle. And, Father, may we join ourselves
to the church militant and see victory after victory as we lay
claim to Your provisions that are given in Your Word. We pray
this in Jesus' name.
Sixth Trumpet, Part 1
Series Revelation
| Sermon ID | 12418834386 |
| Duration | 56:10 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 9:13-21 |
| Language | English |
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