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Revelation 9, 1 through 12. So the fifth angel trumpeted,
and I saw a star that had fallen out of the sky to the earth,
and to him was given the key to the shaft of the abyss. So
he opened the shaft of the abyss, and smoke went up out of the
shaft like the smoke of a burning furnace. And the sun and the
air were darkened because of the smoke from the shaft, and
locusts exited from the smoke into the earth. And to them was
given a capability, just like the scorpions of the earth have
capability. And they were told not to harm the grass of the
earth, nor any green plant, nor any tree, but only those men
who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And it was
designated to them not to kill them, but to torment them five
months. And their torment is like the
torment of a scorpion whenever it strikes a person. And in those
days the people will seek death, but not find it. They will want
to die, but death will run away from them. Now the appearance
of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle and something
like a golden crown was on their heads and their faces were like
human faces. They had hair like a woman's
and their teeth were like a lion's. They had breastplates like breastplates
of iron and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many
chariots with horses rushing into battle. And they have tails
like scorpions and stingers precisely in those tails. They have the
capability to hurt the populace five months, having as king over
them the angel of the abyss. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon,
while in Greek he has the name Apollyon. The first woe is past,
but two woes are still coming after these. Amen. Father, we
thank you for your holy, inerrant, authoritative word, which was
intended for our good. to build up the church and to
make it more capable to live as you called us to live. So
we pray that as I expound your word that you would give me anointing,
that you would give me unction from on high, an ability to communicate
clearly what you want your people to hear. In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen. You may be seated. You don't have to read very far
in the Gospels before you realize that a great part of Christ's
ministry involved battling with demons, yet strangely, it has
almost no bearing on the ministry of many churches. Now, for some,
it's because of a radical cessationism, which we've already discounted.
We have seen that God intended for the church to actively bind
demons as long as there are demons on planet Earth. For others,
like J. Adams, it is because they falsely
believe that all demons were bound in the pit in A.D. 70 and
there are no demons around anymore. And we saw last week that that
is not true, that there are multiple bindings and multiple unleashings. Others ignore the demonic simply
out of ignorance, but ignoring the enemy does not make him go
away. So this is our fourth sermon
on the fifth trumpet and I doubt I'm going to finish all of the
points today. We probably are going to have
to divide it up because I'm just going to give short shrift to
the last points if I don't. But we'll see. We'll see how
far I get. Now before I even dig into the activities and the
character of demons. My first point is setting an
important context. In verse 4, we are reminded once
again that demons, though they are powerful, are on a leash,
and God holds that leash, not Satan. God is the one who is
unleashing these demons as a judgment upon the nations. We saw last
week that Satan and demons are restricted by a legal and covenantal
framework outside of which they are not able to operate. And
we saw that from the Greek word exousia, which occurs four times
in this chapter. If they are not given authority
to do something, they cannot do it. They know they can get
bound in the pit anytime that God is displeased with them.
And if they don't mind their P's and their Q's, those demons
will be sent to the pit. So they're on a very limited
leash. Now, verse four starts by saying, and they were told
not to. And it goes on to give further
restrictions. God does not unleash a bunch of wild dogs and his
people and and just let them do anything that they want to
do. Now they're on a leash. So don't get so focused on demons
that you miss the point that God is sovereign. Now, earlier
we saw that God used angels, both fallen angels and elect
angels, to bring various judgments, including statism and inflation
and bureaucracy and famines and plagues and turning water into
blood and turning underground water poisonous and killing off
grass and bringing in wild animals and meteorites, etc. Out in Ethiopia,
we saw demons firsthand being able to work with fire and water
and animals and even snakes to try to keep people in line and
in this passage here we're going to be looking at their power
over things like grass and plants and and trees, tormenting humans
physically and emotionally. And when you start looking at
the incredible power of demons, it's very easy to begin to get
the impression that demons are invincible. They are not. God
wants us to remember he is the one who let them out of the pit
in the first place, right? He's the one who unleashed them on
Israel. He alone limits what they can
do and expands what they can do. They may seem like tough
stuff as they come swarming out of the pit. But as this chapter
goes on to describe what they're able to do and what they're not
able to do, they begin to look a little bit lame. They cannot
do a thing without God's permission. They're like wild dogs on a leash. Now it's true, you get too close
to a wild dog on a leash, you're gonna get bit, right? And so
last week we saw how we can give legal ground to demons for them
to start influencing us and messing around in our lives. But we also
saw that 1 John 5, 18 makes quite clear that when you guard yourself,
the wicked one cannot touch you, okay? They're powerful. But they're
kept away from believers who have the character of the 144,000. We looked at that portion of
verse four last week. I want you to notice now the
specifics of what these demons are forbidden from doing in the
first part of verse four. It's very interesting. God warns
them not to harm the grass of the earth nor any green plant
nor any tree. Why would he have to warn them
not to hurt the grass and plants and trees? I mean, we can understand
them wanting to hurt human beings, but why would they want to hurt
plants and trees and things like that? Why is it that the demons
Thanatos and Hades relish their newfound liberty to harm the
grass in chapter 6 of Revelation? I believe it is because demons
want to destroy anything that God has made if they get the
chance to do so. And if they don't have the permission
to harm the creation, well, they'll try to harm humans. And if God
doesn't give him permission to harm humans, he'll try to get
humans to worship the creation. But in one way or another, they're
trying to mess up God's plans for planet Earth. Now, back to
that demonic urge to ruin nature. You don't have to read in history
very much to begin to realize that the most demonically, the
nations that are most in bondage to demons have been the ones
that have had the most ecologically disastrous policies. Think of
the animistic hunter-gatherer cultures. They do not steward
the environment like liberals would like you to believe, nor
did the animistic farming communities. Their slash-and-burn techniques
ruined vast areas of territory. E. Calvin Beisner, I think, has
done some wonderful work on this. And he's shown how even with
the American Indians, you know, you've got this illusion that
they were the great keepers of the environment. He said that's
absolute nonsense. They destroyed the environment
and they did not make good use of it, take good dominion of
it. That's one of the reasons why they were starving. Many
times there was an overpopulation. Crowds were not very, very big,
but it was overpopulation. Why? Because they did not know
how to steward the environment. They would stampede sometimes
mass herds of buffalo over a cliff and just cherry pick their favorite
portions, hardly eating any of the animals. So you read his
book, Prosperity and Poverty, or his books on ecology, and
he shows they were not models of stewardship. What about Islam?
Can you name a single Muslim country that has not taken that
country from being very good agriculturally to less productive
land? I can't think of a single country.
Actually, the history of most Muslim countries is a transformation
of good land into desert. Why? We need to understand that
demons not only hate men, they hate everything about God's creation. They hate everything about God's
order, and to the degree that they are given permission by
God, they harm it. And these civilizations, they
illustrate that demonic urge. Can you think of a single communist
country that has not polluted, mismanaged its waters and its
forests and its animals? Colin Grabo wrote an article
for The Federalist titled, If You Think Communism is Bad for
People, Check Out What It Did for the Environment. And the
article points out not only the well-known fact that communism
has butchered hundreds of millions of peoples, they have just brought
untold misery and death to humans, we all know about that. But he
also said, quote, communism's impact on the planet's ecology
has proven consistently ghastly, unquote. When the Berlin Wall
came down, West Berliners were horrified to discover that more
than half of the lakes in East Berlin were either completely
dead or were on the verge of dying. In other words, unable
to sustain fish or other forms of life. 44% of their forests
were damaged by acid rain. Pollution hit all five senses
wherever you went in East Germany. So it is utter hypocrisy for
the modern green movement to claim that capitalism ruins nature
and communism would be the answer. All of the evidence indicates
that communism had demonic attitudes toward ecology. In Russia, 75%
of all waters were significantly polluted with 50% of the entire
water supply being unpotable. You couldn't drink it. I think
the Danube River is a very vivid example. You can find aerial
photos back under communism that show the Danube River running
clean and blue through Germany and Austria. And when it's running
through Hungary, it is black from all of the pollution that
they were dumping into that river. Budapest, once called the fresh
air city, was so filled with smog under communism it often
didn't even appear on satellite photos. The entire city was completely
covered. And the same was true of communist
satellite countries in Africa and Asia. Mugabe took over Rhodesia,
renaming it Zimbabwe, and turned a productive paradise into a
wasteland. His cronies shot massive numbers
of elephants and other wild life game just for the fun of mass
killing, almost exterminating some of the animal populations.
After robbing the productive farms that made Rhodesia the
breadbasket of Africa, the farms and the orchards were so poorly
cared for that they had difficulty feeding their own population.
In fact, they are begging farmers to come back and reorder these
farms again. Why am I spending more time on
this point? It's because if you understand
the demonic urge to harm God's creation, you will be a better
social critic of the unbelieving political systems that are out
there, including, by the way, including the unbelieving Spencerian
version of capitalism, which was dominant in the 1800s. You
see, Spencerian capitalism is totally different from biblical
capitalism. It was based on evolution, survival
of the fittest, and they were quite willing to destroy the
environment, destroy people, in order to In order to get ahead
and far from being a free market, they were the biggest users of
the civil government to try to club their opposition out of
being a competition to them. So this is really unfortunate
that many Christians, they will defend all capitalism because
the Bible defends capitalism. But you got to realize there
are forms of even capitalism that are demonic. It's God's
blueprints and God's blueprints alone that are safe for planet
Earth. And the point is that demons
want to harm. If they can't harm creation itself,
they'll try to harm God's order. And if God puts limits on that,
they'll try to get, as I mentioned earlier, people to worship the
creation. They will do anything possible
to destroy God's purposes for creation. So when you understand
the demonic behind various humanistic systems, you will understand
why certain people like Al Gore, for example, can pursue such
irrational and harmful policies in America, even after those
policies have been clearly shown to be disastrous. You'll not
be able to talk sense into such people because there is a demonic
blindness that's involved there. When the Soviets were asked why
they polluted their own fishing industry with nuclear waste disposal
and other pollutants, they had no good answer. They just didn't
care. They didn't care back then. It came out that they had been
dumping large amounts of nuclear waste into the Barents Sea for
nearly 30 years. Some areas of the Soviet Union
had so much industrial waste that the washed water was like
sludge. Now, I've read numerous articles that try to explain
this irrational behavior purely in terms of philosophy, okay? For example, there's an excellent
article put out by the Foundation for Economic Freedom that chalks
up the self-destructive ecological activities that you find in country
after country. He just documents it all over
Africa and Asia and Europe. Any country that's held to communism
has been disastrous, but he chalks it up to the fact, well, communism's
a bad philosophy. And there's also the whole problem
of the tragedy of the commons. And that does explain a lot of
what's out there, it's true. Ideas do have consequences, but
it doesn't explain why some forms of capitalism have also had disastrous
consequences. Not to the same degree, but it
can't account for that. Several authors have pointed
out that certain actions of public officials seem to consistently
point to demonic activity behind the scenes. And I believe that
is what the book of Revelation wants us to do. It wants to help
us to see life through new eyes. It wants us to see that regardless
of the visible human point men, regardless of the faulty human
philosophies that are out there, There are demonic beings behind
nations that hate God. But the next point in your outline
shows that it's not as if demons are crazy. You might think, you
know, they're just crazy lunatics. No, they are rational creatures
who have very rational goals. Their goal is to oppose God's
kingdom. That's a bad goal. But all the
steps they take toward that goal makes sense. So when you see
what Satan's goals are, then the policies don't seem quite
so irrational. They seem irrational based on
the human statements concerning their goals. But you can see
Satan is achieving a purpose. Anyway, if you look at verses
four and five, it shows this rationality. They show that demons
are spoken to. They can understand God's commands
and restrictions. They know the legal restrictions
that are in place. They can tell time. So, for the
next five months, they can torment. After that, they're going to
join the other demons in killing. So they can tell time. They are
rational creatures. It's just that their rationality
has been negatively impacted by their fall into sin. And that
demons have the ability to kill humans with or without creaturely
agency can be inferred from God's command that they not kill for
the next five months. It says, and it was designated
to them not to kill them, but to torment them five months.
Why are they commanded not to kill? Because they are driven
to kill. They have this urge to kill.
They want to kill. God would not forbid them to
kill if they didn't want to kill. And actually, the next set of
demons are given the authority to kill one third of mankind. Now, what is hinted at in our
verse here was made already explicit in chapter six, verse eight.
And that chapter showed three ways that demons were able to
kill humans. Let me read that verse because
it, uh, it tells us the specific things that two demonic generals,
Thanatos and Hades, I had previously had authority to do in certain
regions. And I looked and behold a sickly pale horse. And as for
the one sitting upon it, his name is Thanatos and Hades follows
with him. And authority was given to him
over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, and by famine,
and by death, even by the wild animals of the earth. I want
you to notice how these demons killed. First of all, they killed
by the sword, in other words, through human government. And
satanically inspired governments, like communism, have killed hundreds
of millions of people in the last century. And so that speaks
of demons not directly killing. I believe they can directly kill,
but this speaks of them killing through human agency of governments. And this book, by the way, has
a pretty negative view of civil governments that are not operating
under God's law. A pretty negative view. And it
corrects, especially Revelation 13, helps to correct the faulty
view of Romans 13 that many people have, but we'll get to that later.
Anyway, those demons are also given authority to kill by famine.
Well, how on earth would demons kill by famine? Well, we saw
before that angels do have some power over wind and weather. So it's possible that God allowed
demonic angels to control the weather. That passage also speaks
of plagues. So could God have brought in
some plague to create famine? Yes, that's a possibility. But
that chapter, we also saw that most of Rome's famines were because
of stupid government policies. And today, many famines of the
world are government induced. Could they have brought famine
through insects? I don't see any reason why that could not
have been the case. Psalm 78, verse 49 said that
the 10 plagues of Egypt were brought by angels of destruction. Well, two of those plagues destroyed
crops, hail, locusts. Can angels bring destructive
hail? Yes, they can. Can they bring
destructive locusts? Somehow they can. So that could
be another means that was used, but that they had authority to
kill by famine is very clearly stated. Now, the third way that
Revelation 6, 8 says that Thaunatos and Hades were able to kill was
by using the wild animals of the earth. So can demons possess
animals? Absolutely. Yes, they can. That's
why the legion of demons wanted to enter into the swine in Luke
8. Those were demon-possessed pigs. The history of demon-possessed
animals is a rather bizarre one. Those of you who saw the 1996
movie, The Ghost and the Darkness, probably have a little bit of
a feel for how scary it can be to come face-to-face with demon-possessed
animals. That was the true story, by the
way. Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson and his run-in with
the man-eating lions of Tsabo, Kenya. One of those lions was
called the ghost and the other lion was called the darkness.
Those lions appeared to kill humans just for the fun of killing.
Now you could just chalk it up to You know, something going
scrambled in those brains. But you look at the history of
it and it says, no, you cannot explain that by anything other
than the demonic. There was something demonic going
on, and thus the names that they were given. My parents saw demons
controlling animals out in Ethiopia. One python that was worshipped
in the area would only kill the people that the witch doctor
told him to kill, or would only eat and kill the sheep and the
livestock of the people that refused to bring a sacrifice
to the witch doctor. Packs of demon-possessed hyenas
would allow demon-possessed men to run in that pack without ever
molesting them, but they would attack anybody else that was
not demon-possessed. Would the two female bears that
mauled 43 youths in 2 Kings 2, 23 through 24, be in this category? I won't be dogmatic, but possibly.
They only killed in response to Elisha's curse, and they only
killed those 43 youths. What about the lion that killed
the disobedient prophet in 1 Kings 13, 24? That was a very unusual
lion. It didn't eat anything of the
man, and it didn't even touch the donkey that was standing
there. There was something supernatural that was going on there. In 1
Kings 17 verse 25, it says that the Lord sent lions to kill the
people, and it explicitly says that the reason they were not
able to deal with this is because they did not know the rituals
of the Lord. The word for rituals is mishpat,
and means that they did not know how to exercise God's authority. Very, very interesting phrase. In any case, there are several
hints in scripture of demons killing using the agency of animals. Can demons kill without the use
of agency? I don't see any reason why they
could not. If God's good angel killed 185,000 Assyrians in one
night in Sennacherib's army, that was in 2 Kings 19.35, it
would seem that fallen angels would have the same power if
God allowed them to use it. Now here, this urge to kill is
limited, it's hindered, it's hampered by God from October
31 of AD 66 through March 28 of AD 67. Those demons will then
join with the next batch of demons in the second half of killing
one third of mankind in verse 18. Now some of that killing
happened under Vespasian's armies, some of it happened by famine,
some of it happened by plagues that God sent into Israel and
actually sent throughout the empire. But that demons have
the ability to kill men cannot be questioned. It is so clear
in the scripture. But what's even worse than death
is the torment that these demons bring. Verse 5 goes on to say,
not to kill them, but to torment them five months. And their torment
is like the torment of a scorpion whenever it strikes a person.
Now, this deals with the physical symptoms that can happen with
demon possession. I want to dig into that a little
bit because this is just a remarkable, remarkable description. If you
go to Merck's manual, Mayo's clinic or e-medicine or just
about any of the online medical websites out there They will
give a common listing of medical symptoms for people who have
been bitten by the kind of scorpions that live in Israel I've given
pictures of several different examples of scorpions that are
in Israel and those symptoms are point-by-point matched by
forms of demon possession here are some of the symptoms of severe
scorpion sting and widespread numbness, muscle twitching, unusual
movements of head and neck, difficulty swallowing, a thick tongue, blurred
vision, roving eye movements, seizures, vomiting, excessive
salivation, profuse sweating, difficulty in breathing, high
or low blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, restlessness and excitability,
and inconsolable crying, especially in children. Well, that looks
very similar to the symptoms of demon possession cases in
the Gospels. Scorpion sting is a perfect metaphor
for the physical symptoms of demonic torment. And my own exposure
to demon-possessed people shows all of those symptoms, including
the vomiting and the seizures. Just for fun this past week I
did some reading of emergency case stories of people who have
been because I wanted to see well how do they describe these
stories of people who've been stung by scorpions and One doctor
has said that if he didn't know better He would have thought
that these scorpions stung people were actually demon-possessed
people and those were his own words let me read you one account
of a young child who was admitted to the ER for a scorpion sting
and The doctor assures us that all the symptoms we are seeing
are the effects of the venom. Screaming, thrashing, spitting,
vomiting, eyes shuddering and unable to focus. He points out
how easy it would be to believe in demon possession when you
see all these symptoms exhibited at one time. We have to keep
holding her as we wait for the timer to tell us that it is time
for the next round of medication. She doesn't like the cold feeling
and gets amped up again when the fourth dose is started. That
runs its course and her eyes settle down a little and she
isn't thrashing so much. The vomiting has stopped, although
she is still spitting a bit. We still have to calm her as
we wait for time for the fifth round. The timer is up again
and the fifth dose is administered. By the time the fifth round is
done, her eyes are able to focus again, the saliva and spitting
are under control, and she is still asking to go home now.
So a scorpion stang is such a perfect, such an apt metaphor for what
can happen when a fallen cherubim angel starts manifesting in a
person. Now familiar spirits seem to
act a little bit differently, but these warrior demons, they're
pretty vicious. And by the way, demons don't
do this for the whole time that they're influencing a person,
but they do it frequently enough that books on demonology talk
about it a great deal. So that's the physical side of
the torment. What about the psychological
side? We'll take a look at verse 6. And in those days the people
will seek death, but not find it. They will want to die, but
death will run away from them. Now this, too, fits the definition
of the word for torment in verse 5. The Greek word, basanismos,
can refer to severe suffering of body that comes from physical
torture, Matthew 18, verse 34. Or it can refer to the severe
suffering of soul that comes from psychological torture second
peter 2 8 The new testament connects that word torment with demons
at least five times In the in the new testament when they aren't
using their hosts to attack others and to do evil things through
others To others, these demons love to tease and to torment
their hosts. That was true of the demoniac
in Mark 2, a man who dwelt among the tombs and had no rest day
or night, crying out, cutting himself with the stones. And
so there is outward torment on his body, there is inward torment
in his soul. And as we'll see, all of these
descriptions perfectly fit the demonized population of Israel
from late 8066 and beyond. Now, Moses Stewart points out
that John mysteriously changes the verb tense to the future
tense here, and it's an odd construction in the Greek, but he says he
no doubt did it to signify that the torment these demons would
produce would go beyond the five-month period. It was just they couldn't
kill. during that period from October
31 to March 28. But just because the killing
starts after March 28 does not mean they cannot also continue
to torment. They did, and history shows that
they did. Throughout the whole period, Josephus speaks of people
wishing that they could die. They just hated the conditions
that they were in. They were suicidal, and yet they
couldn't commit suicide. And if you read the partial preterist
commentaries, you'll see example after example given of the misery
that the Jews were in. They were tormented in body and
in soul. Now, there are some other things
that we learn from our passage about demons. Both verse 5 and
verse 10 show that these demons persevere in doing the same thing
for five months. Okay, this shows a sadistic ability
to persevere in their rebellious and hurtful ways. They don't
easily tire of their wicked ways. Demons are able to stay focused
for a long time. That's all I'll say on that.
Now, let me at least start the list in your outlines of some
of the characteristics and the powers in these demons. Verse seven says, now the appearance
of the locusts, Now this repeated word, locusts, focuses on the
destructive nature of those demons. And of course, the two names
for the king of the locusts both mean destroyer. Hebrew name is
Abaddon, the Greek name is Apollyon, but they both mean destroyer.
Now some of the modern books on the occult, because they're
trying to suck young people in and make this seem attractive,
they focus on the seductive and the lovely aspects of demonology,
the incredible pleasures that they can give to lure people
in. You may remember that Paul says
that sometimes Satan appears as an angel of light. He doesn't
immediately show his ugly side or scare people off, right? So
he shows a good side. Now, some of these occultists
have said that they have never experienced such intense pleasure
as when the demons were on them. Kubler-Ross was made famous by
her five stages of Greece. Any of you who have studied nursing
probably studied Kubler-Ross, her five stages of Greece. I
cannot believe how pastors buy into that concept. It's not a
biblical concept at all. And they make everybody go through
all these stages, just dragging out the grieving process forever.
Most people do not realize Kubler-Ross was an occultist who taught people
astral travel and out-of-body experiences and how to get intimate
relations with these demonic spirits. She was occult to the
core. But in any case, she describes
her encounters with these spirits as being so enjoyable that if
you were to multiply her most intense pleasure on earth, which
I won't describe here in public, you were to multiply that by
1,000 times, she said it would still be shabby description of
how intense the pleasure was that she experienced with these
spirits, these demons. Yet, She also, on occasion, and
she gives a horrifying description of one of those times, she also
describes these beautiful beings suddenly turning ugly and vicious
and beginning to torment her, terrifying the daylights out
of her. You'd think that would have scared
her off from these spirits. But no, her longing for the intense
pleasure kept having her go back. into this astral travel and all
of this other stuff. She was lured back by the pleasure. Well, John makes clear that demons
are not gods who love you, as the Romans called them. Demons
are destroyers who do not even love the people that worship
them. Destruction is their king, and destruction is their nature.
John did not want his readers to be fooled About the nature
of these beings you do not want to mess around with them and
I've seen some homeschoolers messing around with the Edges
of the occult and gothic dressing and reading books on the occult
playing games on you do not want to mess around With the occult
they're flirting with incredible danger What's that Just keep on preaching. OK. OK. Next, he reminds us of their
power and speed by likening them to horses prepared for battle. And just that metaphor alone
is a scary metaphor. But yes, these demons are very,
very fast, very powerful. He goes on, and something like
a golden crown was on their heads. Now, crown is an image of dominion
or rule. And even though they are destroying
true dominion, they cannot escape from this inbuilt urge to rule
or to take dominion. But when that urge, we need to
realize this, when that urge for dominion is unleashed from
God's law or is in hostility to God, nothing good comes from
it. So what does demonic rule look
like? It looks like a lot of the rule that you see out there
in the world. It promises liberty and delivers anything but liberty.
These demons move people to dominate, subdue, intimidate, abuse, put
down, control, oppress, and in other ways they invert the true
and the godly urge to take dominion. And I think what an apt symbol
that something like a crown really is. Can patriarchy be distorted
by the demonic? Absolutely. Yes, it can. We have
seen some horrible abuses in the patriarchal movement that
rival the demonic nature of feminism. Can God's institution of civil
government be distorted and harmful? Yes, it can. Can church rule
be distorted and harmful? Yes, it can. Deotrophies in 3
John is an example of abusive leadership. Both feminism and
hyper-patriarchy distort the dominion that God has built into
us. So we need to understand, demons
are always trying to distort God's image in us. They're always
trying to distort or ruin the creation itself. try to either
imitate in a bad way, taking you tangentially off, or directly
attack what God has us stand for. Now, in the last phrase
of verse 7, we once again see an image of rationality when
it says, their faces were like human faces. Okay, the New King
James says, like the faces of men, because it's the masculine
in the Greek. But the male image is distorted
when it says they had hair like a woman's. So faces like men,
but hair like women. Why? Commentaries vary on their
explanation. Vine's book suggests that Satan
required the long hair as a sign of 1 Corinthians 11.10's submission
to Satan, not caring that it would turn male creatures into
females. Homer Haley's commentary agrees.
Others have different suggestions. Some suggest that the long hair
is a symbol of a woman, and Satan is simply trying to do the opposite
of everything that God stands for. Others suggest that these
demons were the cause of homosexuality in Titus's armies, and the transvestitism,
and the homosexuality that suddenly developed in AD 66 and beyond. Way late AD 66, actually it started
in AD 67 probably. at least the reports of it. So
they pit it to that. Massingbird Ford said, quote,
the demonic character of the locust is brought out by mixing
both species and sexes, unquote. So there are various explanations.
I won't be dogmatic, but what is common to all of these explanations
is that they point to a demonic distortion of the created order. They turn everything upside down. And by the way, since it's in
the text, I might as well comment on it. It is clear from this
passage that God intended women to have long hair, not men. He intended men to have short
hair, not women. Now this was clearly stated in
first Corinthians 11, where Paul says this. Does not even nature
itself teach you? And by the way, when he appeals
to nature, he's not appealing to something out there. He's
appealing to the created order with Adam and Eve. Does not even
nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is
a dishonor to him? But if a woman has long hair,
it is a glory to her for her hair is given to her for a covering. And this is not something unique
to the New Testament. Ezekiel 44, 20 commands the priests
to, quote, not let their hair grow long, but they shall keep
their hair well trimmed. God's ideal bride, on the other
hand, is described in Ezekiel 6, 16, 7 as being raised by God
to have long hair. So God himself is modeling that.
The one exception is an interesting exception. It's the Nazarite
vow in Numbers chapter 6, which explicitly makes a reversal of
that shame. Well, that's exactly what 1 Corinthians
11 calls the long and the short hair. It's a shame issue. In
other words, it's not a sin issue. It's a shame issue. It's an etiquette
issue that God is talking about. It's an order issue. And I find
it interesting that it was only after Nebuchadnezzar was demonized,
remember for those seven years, that his hair grew long. OK,
and he ate like grass like an ox again, showing two ways that
demons sought to distort the creation order. And I'm not saying
that women who wear short hair or men who wear long hair. I've
got a friend who wears hair down to his waist. I anyway, I won't
get into that, but I'm not saying that they're demon possessed
or even influenced by demons. Not at all. I'm just saying that
God does have etiquette as well as ethics. Okay? So there's an
order. There's what? Propon is the Greek
word. There's something that's proper
and there's something that's improper for certain situations. That's etiquette. It's not dealing
with ethics. So I would say it's not a sin issue, but it is an
ethics issue. It's something God does not want
us to be in shame perpetually. So anyway, I can't neglect that
phrase since it's right there in the text. And you can be Bereans
and see if you agree or disagree with me on it. Verse 8 goes on
to say, and their teeth were like a lion's. This is yet another
symbol of destruction and devouring that was so appropriate to how
the Romans and the Jews operated after March of AD 67. The Romans were ghastly in their
demonic behavior. The three armies of Jerusalem
were particularly destructive. They ended up actually burning
up all of their produce. Why they did that, I have no
idea. They burned all their grain in the city that had been stored
up and would enable them to endure, you know, seven years of war.
But they destroyed it all. It's a totally irrational behavior. And they were ravenous and going
from house to house and plundering. The next phrase said they had
breastplates like breastplates of iron. Now, why would they
need breastplates? I mean, we can't harm those breastplates,
but I think good angels can. Presumably, they needed this
protection from the attack of good angels. So these demons
are on guard. They know they cannot let their
guard down for a moment. As many times as they have been
ambushed by God's forces, they are cautious. So they put on
armor. The next phrase says, and the
noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with
horses rushing into battle. This gives the imagery of a massive
army, Israels being invaded by spiritual hosts who are going
to battle. Now, of course, the church escaped from Jerusalem
and went to the little kingdom in Pella, so there's no church
present who was able to hinder this army. The Israelites are
easy pickings, and it appears that even Josephus thought that
the whole population had become insane or demon-possessed. That's Josephus saying that.
And by the way, some of the descriptions of Titus given by both Roman
and Jewish historians show that he clearly was a demon-possessed
man as well. He certainly had hatred for God,
for Christians, and for Jews. Let me read to you what Titus
did when he entered the temple in AD 70. And I'm skipping ahead
here, but I think it'll at least give you a little bit of a feel,
a picture of the irrational hatred that Titus had for God's order.
This Jewish account says, he entered the Holy of Holies and
with his sword slashed the curtain. Through a miracle, blood spurted
forth, and he thought that he had killed God himself. He brought
two harlots, and spreading out a scroll of the law of God beneath
them, transgressed with them on top of the altar. He began
to speak blasphemies and insults against heaven, boasting, one
who wars against a king in a desert and defeats him cannot be compared.
to one who wars against a king in his own palace and conquers
him." So he's saying, God, who warred in the desert, he can't
be compared to me, who defeated the king right in his own palace.
So that's demonic. Now moving on, verse 10 says,
and they have tails like scorpions and stingers precisely in those
tails. Now this speaks of the capability
they had of spiritually poisoning the people. The whole nation
was in the paroxysms of scorpion stings. And we've already dealt
with what that looks like. You don't want to be in a region
that's given over to those kinds of demons. Verse 10 reminds us
a second time, they have the capability to hurt the populace
five months. And literally it says they have
the authority to hurt the populace five months. Who gave them that
authority? It's God. It's God who is sovereign. They're
on a leash. Sometimes God extends the length
of the leash, other times he makes it shorter, but God is
sovereign. Verse 11 reminds us that there
is a kingdom of darkness with a king and with authority structures
under that king, having as king over them the angel of the abyss.
His name in Hebrew is Abaddon while in Greek he has the name
Apollyon. You don't have a king without a kingdom Okay, but we
saw in a previous sermon that Satan is more powerful than Abaddon. So if Satan is the Emperor Here
is a king over one jurisdiction within Satan's kingdom that somehow
that jurisdiction has been robbed from Satan. Why? Because he was
in the pit, right? So praise God, there are huge
hits that Satan's kingdom has taken. Now, I'm not going to
dive into all of the structures of demons, but I will at least
list them for you as summarized by various experts in demonology.
Satan's at the top. Then comes thrones or kings.
Then comes lordships or dominions. Then comes principalities or
archi. Then comes authorities or exousia. Then comes powers or dunamis. Then comes world rulers or cosmocrateros. Then comes wicked spirits and
angels. And the wicked spirits would
be the fallen cherubim. that torment people, and the
angels would be the familiar spirits, or those that Satan
used to send messages. But the point is, there is a
kingdom, it is well organized, and its goal is to overthrow
Christ's kingdom. Everything we stand for, they
stand against. And if the church is not prepared
to resist Satan's kingdom, we lose ground. The only way these
demons can be bound to the pit is when the church stands in
the authority that Jesus gave us. Well, verse 12 ends by saying
the first woe is past, but two woes are still coming after these
things. Third woe is the, the second
woe is the end of this chapter and on through the chapter 10.
Third woe is at the end of chapter 11. And then in chapter 12, you
go back to 80 30. But in any case, the last phrase
indicates there was a perfect historical sequence in these
chapters. Every detail of this section was fulfilled between
October 31 of AD 66 and March 28 of AD 67. The one exception
is the future tense indicates that these demons would continue
to bring torment beyond that five month period. The only thing
that was restricted for five months was the killing. During
that time, they were 100% restricted to torment. Well, did the torment continue
after the five months? Yes, it did. You don't have to
read much of Josephus or the other historians before you just
shake your head at the irrationality, the demonic changes that came
upon the whole population of Jerusalem. And I'm just going
to end with one quote from Josephus that could be multiplied many
times over to illustrate the demonic at work. Now, this particular
quote shows the transvestitism that characterized the Jews during
this war. Speaking of the zealots, Josephus
says, with their insatiable hunger for loot, they ransacked the
houses of the wealthy, murdered men, and violated women for sport. They drank their spoils with
blood. And from mere satiety they shamelessly gave themselves
up to effeminate practices, plating their hair and putting on women's
clothes, drenching themselves with perfumes and painting their
eyelids to make themselves attractive. They copied not merely the dress
but also the passions of women. devising in their excess of licentiousness
unlawful pleasures in which they wallowed as in a brothel. Thus
they entirely polluted the city with their foul practices. Yet
though they wore women's faces, their hands were murderous. They
would approach with mincing steps, then suddenly become fighting
men, whipping out their swords from under their dyed cloaks.
They would run through every passerby. Those who ran away
from John had an even more murderous reception from Simon, and anyone
who looted the tyrant within the walls was killed by the other
outside the gates. Every avenue of escape was thus
cut off for those who wished to desert to the Romans. So these
demons were pretty effective instruments of judgment in God's
hands. Next week, we're gonna pick up at verse 13, and we're
gonna show what happened after the five-month period, but hopefully,
what we've covered so far will motivate you to not take anything
for granted. For sure, don't see anything
as being neutral. We are either for Christ in everything,
or we are against him. If demons see even the smallest
chink in your armor, They will take advantage. That chink in
your armor could be prayerlessness, or bitterness, or gossip, or
rebellious spirit, or letting the sun go down on your anger.
But as I mentioned last week, if we daily confess our sins
and walk in dependence upon Christ, no matter how immature or how
weak we may be, Satan cannot have access to us. We need not
fear him. But everything we have seen should
caution us about thinking that we can reason rebels into non-rebellion. If there is demonic involved,
they're going to stick to their guns no matter how much evidence
that you give to them. It's just the way that it works. And we
have seen this happen over and over again. When you are up against
a brick wall in your family, in your work, in your culture,
Do as Gary Duff tells you, start praying. There is no substitute
for prayer. He keeps emphasizing that because
the Bible keeps emphasizing that. Try prayer. It might involve
inviting some friends to do some prayer walking around your place
of work, your place of business, asking God to tear down every
high thing that's exalting itself against the knowledge of God.
You don't want these things hindering your speech from being able to
penetrate through. It might involve inviting some
of your friends together for a political prayer meeting. and
praying the imprecatory Psalms. It might involve bringing covenant
lawsuits against Satan for the damage that he's already done
in some believer's life. But let's stay together, let's
hang together, no matter what differences we may have. Let's
be like David's 400 men stuck together, and let's commit ourselves
to doing some serious damage to Satan's kingdom. Amen? Let's
pray. Father, we thank you for your
word. We thank you that it both humbles us warns us, but also
lifts us up and encourages us and gives us faith. And I pray,
Father, that even though there is a horrendous enemy that stands
against us and everything that your kingdom stands for, that
greater is he who is in us than he was in the world. We're so
thankful, Father, for the power of your Holy Spirit indwelling
us. We're so thankful that you give
authority to even the youngest members of our church to be able
to resist the devil so that he has to flee. And I pray, Father,
that we would not become too preoccupied with the demonic,
but at the same time help us to know our enemy and to be able
to effectively fight against that enemy. I pray that you would
bless your people, that you would encourage their hearts, that
you would fill them with your joy. And I pray this in the strong
name of Jesus.
Fifth Trumpet, Part 4
Series Revelation
| Sermon ID | 1241883578 |
| Duration | 52:32 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 9:1-6 |
| Language | English |
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