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.