Okay, we're going to study Revelation chapter 9. And again, I guess I feel like it's good to remind ourselves that the book of the Revelation is a very complicated seeming book on the surface when we read it. There's so many obscure things said in it. And so we're moving kind of slowly through here. our efforts to get something of a handle on it. And so I'm trying to throw in some thoughts that I think the answers to these thoughts are really answers to questions that I have had over the years as I have sought to understand the Bible. And if it's been a help to me, I think we're all pretty much alike. And so if it's been a help to me, why shouldn't it be to you? All of us are very similar. Well, we're not similar. We are alike in nature. We're self-centered to the core. We like to believe that our view is the only view that's right. And when we're presented with thoughts that are questionable, as far as our believing them or not, we rely heavily upon reasons, heavily upon evidence before we're going to accept it. And what I have learned over the years is that this nature that is in us in our relationship to one another when it comes to believing people, trusting people, or having faith in people is no different from our relationship to God and how that these elements are necessary for us to have a right relationship with God. And so we're not supposed to have a faith in God that is void of reasons, void of evidence, void of factuality. As a matter of fact, what I have discovered is that our relationship with God is based upon these things, these very things. When I grew to understand that, It changed everything. And all of a sudden, this was no longer a struggle on my part to just believe it without a reason, which is how I was trying to do it before I really got saved. I was trying to believe it without a reason. I was just trying to believe it, but without a reason. And part of the reason I had no reason is because No one ever taught me that it's reasonable. In the churches I'd ever attended, I never had teachers that talked about the fact that this book is written with proofs to convince the readers that what is being said is absolutely true. And I didn't know that. Never heard that before. And so, what I have learned is that God proves himself. We cannot prove God. We don't have to. Because the truths related to God are self-evident truths, which do not need to be proven by man Because the truths related to God are self-evident truths. The proofs and the evidence comes toward us. And God never expects us to believe Him without reasons and without facts. So, this is how we're trying to approach our study of the book of the Revelation. We're not supposed to just believe these things without any understanding associated with it at all based upon what can be known these things that are written here can be understood got intended for him to be understood. But that is not to say that I understand. All of what's here because I did not I'm learning I'm learning and I'm sharing with you some of the things I am learning. Now, as we get into this ninth chapter, once again, I want to go back to something that occurred in the very beginning of time. Because in order to understand what's going on in this chapter, you have to. You have to go back to the beginning. And as we learned in previous messages, you can't really understand the book of the revelation without having a pretty good handle on what the Bible teaches from the beginning as you progress through it. Because here you come to the final chapter, what you might say, or the final book of this revelation that God has composed for us. And so I want to mention something to you that I want you to think about. And it's a question. Why was Satan cast down to earth rather than being confined to the lake of fire from the beginning? Why wasn't he? Well, a good question. That's a good question. Why wasn't he? Why was he allowed to be loose? Why was he allowed to tempt Adam and Eve? Well, I think that it ultimately has to do with the entire message of this Bible. What is your actual perception of God? That was the reason that God left Satan in the world to tempt Adam and Eve. What is, right now today, what is your actual perception of God? How do you think about Him? Do you think of Him as being a good person? Do you have little things that pop into your mind every once in a while that tries to convince you that He's not a good person? Do you find a nature within yourself to find fault with God? I think you do, because I have. I've done it many times. I've done it since I've been saved. Because I've got a nature in me that's bent that way. I've got a nature in me that's the same as in you. So there's no need for us to be here in this room and deny that we have terrible thoughts about God every once in a while, because I know better. I know that I'm no different than you. And I know a lot of times when I read the Bible, my mind goes to work trying to figure out, why would God, you know, say it like this? Why didn't He say it this way, as though somehow or other I'm a better revelator than God? Or when I read about His commanding the children of Israel to go into certain territories there in Cana, when the children of Israel were led out of Egypt. I had to go possess the promised land. He told them to kill everything that was there, living, everything. Men, women, and children. And the animals. Kill them all. Don't tell me that you haven't read the Bible and began to question God because He would say stuff like that. Yes, we have. We've had questions about him. So let's deal with it. Let's deal with it. Let's go to the hard issues, where the rubber meets the road in terms of our relationship with God and why it is that we have such a struggle believing God and trusting God and having faith in God. And I can tell you that the reason is because we do not believe He is as He has revealed Himself to be. That He's a loving God. That He's a just God. That He is eternally innocent. Eternally innocent. That He is never tempted man. That He cannot be tempted. The Bible tells us that. God cannot be tempted, neither tempteth He any man. Everything that God has ever done for man has been out of love, because there's no one that could ever love you like Jesus Christ. No one. No one has ever cared for you like Him. And any evil thought that comes out of this evil mind of ours, and evil deceitful heart of ours, which we have by nature, will never undo God's revelation of Himself. And so here is something I learned years ago, and I've been enjoying this ever since it dawned on me. And that is, anytime I'm ever reading the Bible, And I run across something that just doesn't rub me the right way. I have this tendency to question God as to why. The first thing I do is I remember that God is good. God is love. God is just. God is righteous. God is pure. God is eternally innocent. And any thought that I have that conflicts with that revelation is sin on my part. Because I'm seeking to malign his character as he has revealed himself to be. That's tremendously important to understand that. And so, rather than projecting the fault upon God, the first thing that we should do is own the fault as being our own. Folks, we're so profoundly ignorant. We're so small, so weak, so puny. We see the same characteristics in small children and teenagers that's in ourselves as adults. We have teenagers, you know, 14, 15, 16 years old in school right now. They think they know everything, and they've been in the world all of 15 years. Boy, that's smart. Why aren't they in school if they're so smart? Well, none of us are so smart. We're so profoundly dumb. And yet, with this condition, we're going to sit in judgment upon God? And so what then was the fall really all about? And I'm telling you that the entire Bible can be better understood if you understood the issue at the beginning. And the issue at the beginning was, is God really good? Or is God evil? Is He a deceiver? Yea, hath God said? That was the temptation. God knows that in the day ye thereof, you're going to be as wise as He is, and He doesn't want that. Because He's proud. He wants to be on top. He wants you to worship Him because of His ego. And so here we go. And Eve bought it. She bought the temptation. She believed it. And invested her confidence in her own ability to make choices in life. And the choice she made resulted in her death and her influence, the death of her husband. They both died. They destroyed themselves because of a wrong view of God. Now think about something. There were no preachers. There were no missionaries in the Garden of Eden. There was no one but Jesus Christ. And He was there physically. He was there. Call it an Old Testament theophany. He was there. And so after the fall, what did He do? What did He do? I'll tell you what he did. He did the same thing that we're doing today. If there happened to be somebody in this room right now that has a wrong view of God, we're here to get that straightened out. That's what this is all about. That's what coming to church is all about. It's about learning the truth about God. Learning how to believe Him have faith in him and trust him with our eternal soul. That's why we're in here. And so, because there were no churches, there were no preachers, there were no missionaries, no tract society, no written Bible of any kind, nothing written, how did Adam and Eve get saved? because this loving God went to him himself and gave him the gospel, the good news. And the good news was, even though they had sinned and thought all these evil things against him, he was willing to forgive them. And he was willing to assume their penalty of death upon himself. If they would just believe him. Believe what? That he's a good God. A loving God. And that there's no love that would ever compare to his love. There's none like me. He said that over and over in the book of Isaiah. Who is like me? There's none like me. My attributes are incomparable. There's nothing to compare with me in the universe. He wasn't saying that because he's egotistical. He was saying that because it was the truth. God is love. God is good. God is just. All these things are true. So he goes to Adam and Eve, and he preaches to them the gospel. And he tells them what he's going to do. And that is, he's going to go to the Cross of Calvary, and he's going to die in their place as death they deserved. And he symbolized it by going and killing the sheep. And he took the coats of skins. You can't get coats of skins without shedding blood. It was all pre-figure of the death of Christ upon the cross. And he covered their shame, the shame of what they had done, because it was a shameful thing. That's why the Bible uses shame. That's why it uses nakedness as a representation of shame, because there they were. clearly open to the eyes of God. He could see everything. There was nothing hidden. They tried to hide it, but were not successful, because he sees. And so, what happened in the Garden of Eden was, Adam and Eve got reversed in their view of God. It happened. He got completely... They were broken because they saw that they had seen him wrong. They had seen him all wrong. And now they saw him as he really is. And their hearts were broken because they had imagined these horrible things about him. And they saw it as a crime against God, worthy of eternal damnation. Because it was. Because the truth is, when they made that decision, they killed God in their mind. They killed Him. This was not some little sin of taking a cookie out of the cookie jar. kind of thing. This was serious beyond imagination. In their mind, they destroyed him and manifest their lack of need for him altogether. We don't need you. We don't need your life. We don't need you anywhere around for anything. We're all sufficient just like we are. We do not need you. And all of that got reversed. It's called conversion. And I think the question for us this morning is what is our view of God? How do we see God? This Bible is not about learning ever so many verses or coming to church or getting baptized and turning over a new leaf, starting out with new resolutions to be better, to stop doing bad things and start doing good things. This book is not about that. They're what you might call byproducts, as Parris Reedhead would speak of it. They're byproducts of the prime product. The prime product is coming to see Him as He is. He's good. He's a good God. A loving God. And if we could just sit at the foot of the cross and just look up there and see what he has done in view of what we are and the arrogance of our pride to think that we're big enough for this life and what happens beyond death to think that he would die for us when we were enemies is an amazing thing. He's so good. And Adam and Eve believed it. They believed every bit of it. They were converted. Their whole view of God was reversed. And then Adam and Eve go on to have a child. The Lord had told them to be fruitful and multiply. And the first child that was born to them became a cold-blooded killer that went to hell forever. I'll tell you why. He didn't believe the gospel message of Adam and Eve. He didn't believe it. He chose to do like a lot of people choose to do every day. I don't need God. I've got my own notion of what's gonna make me happy. And as Frank Sinatra sang, I did it my way. You come to the end of your life, and you look back over it, and that's your signature song, I did it my way. When Jesus Christ said, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. And here we are at Calvary Memorial Church. And why are we here? What in the world are we doing? I can tell you this, if we come to a meeting like this or any that are held here in this amazing place, it's amazing to me, amazing to many. And we fail to receive what Adam and Eve received and that was a genuine loving personal relationship with the loving God Brother Steve Johnson, the pastor in Sanford, gave me a book about five years ago. It's called The Secret of His Presence. I read it, and like many things, after I read something, I read so many different kinds of books. After a while, they all run together, and I forget that I even read a certain book, and sometimes even buy it two or three times because I haven't realized that I've already got it in the library. Maybe you're not like that, but I'm that way. But the book was the secret of his presence. I lost it, and it finally turned up after five years. And when I picked it up, he questioned whether I had read the book. And I told him, I said, I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't even find the book. And finally, it just turned up. And when I opened it up, I could see where I had underlined different things in it, all through the book. And those things became so much a part of my life. It's written by G.H. Knight. K-N-I-G-H-T. And he was a preacher back at the turn of the century, about 1905 or something like that is when the book was copyrighted. And one of the things that I would never forget, and I've mentioned it oftentimes in teaching, But never really gave credit to who I heard it from because I couldn't even remember. It just became a part of me. And here's what he said. The most important thing you will ever do in your life as a professing Christian is to get alone with God. Alone with God. He said, when I say alone with God, he said, I mean without any distractions from anywhere. And having this discipline in your life that you're going to do this every day. And you're going to have a place where this is going to happen. A place. And you're going to be alone with God. and you're not going to just read your chapter so that you can feel good about yourself and say, well, I read my chapter for the day. He says, that's not what I'm talking about. He says, I'm talking about having a relationship with a person that is really there, that loves us, that has feelings, that has done so much for us. And this is his passion. This is his passion, is to have fellowship with you. And the problem is, you don't really want to have it with him. Because he's not that important. He's not that important. What's important is getting that cup of coffee and taking off to work and the business of the day and the money we've got to make and all of this stuff, which is an absolute waste. Death is coming like a freight train toward every one of us. And in our blindness, we think that somehow or other having that job and and getting that energy thrust or whatever that coffee gives us and going to work and doing our thing that somehow that's going to equip us for what's coming, because we're going to die. If there's anything that we need to learn, we need to learn that without him, We can't do anything right on this side of the grave, and we certainly will be without hope on the other side of the grave forever, according to the messages of the book. We need him. And his yearning, his plea to us is to spend time with him. Why? Not because he's an egomaniac that needs our worship, no. He wants our adoration for the same reason parents want their children to adore them. It's because we love them. And if they'll look to us and love us and appreciate our words and our counsel, then they might survive in this world. Because without that information that we want to give them, they don't know how to survive. And that's why God wants us to love Him. It's why He wants us to worship Him. It's not because He needs anything. He wouldn't be God if He needed anything. And so then we come to the book of Job. Bible scholars say it's the oldest book, really, in the Bible. It predates the writing of Genesis, which is regarded as the Pentateuch written by Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Well, Job supposedly predated that. And if you turn to the book of Job, you needn't do, I'll just read you this. Job chapter 1, verses 8 through 11, here's what we find. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there's none like him in the earth? A perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth, that is, turns away from evil. Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." In other words, Job doesn't love you for who you are any more than Adam and Eve did. He loves you for selfish reasons, for what he can get out of you. Did you know that that's the nature of most of the preaching that goes on in the world today? What can we get out of God? What's the benefit for me if I go to church? If I give to the church, That little seed of faith that we throw out from time to time, if I put a little money in a collection plate, then God will reward me. He'll reward me. He'll bless me with riches. That's a total failure to understand the message of the cross. The message of the cross is we deserve to be cast into hell forever and forgotten by God, never to be remembered again. That's exactly what's going to happen to people who never get saved, who live this life despising God. The practical atheists, those who profess to be saved, profess to be Christians, but in practicality, they deny Him every day. They're practical atheists. In other words, God doesn't soon not exist, for what part he has in our life. And the thought of getting up every day and having that discipline to meet with him and to fall at his feet and worship him because we see the need to do it is not in most people's thoughts, I can tell you that. So the devil comes, and this is the challenge, and it hadn't changed. It hasn't changed in the mind of Satan this view he has of God. And the view that Lucifer had of God was that he's just an egomaniac. He's not the truth. He's a liar. Yea, hath God said, in the day ye eat thereof ye shall surely die. Ye shall not surely die. He lied to you. And Satan is trying the same thing as it relates to Job. Why does Job love you, God? He loves you because of what you've given him. He doesn't really love you. But God used Job as a showcase example of how wrong Lucifer was. How wrong Satan was. when it comes to the genuine believer. He tells him, okay, you test it. You test it. And I'll prove to you that Job loves me for who I am. And that's the question for us today. Do we love him for who he is? Now you may wonder, what in the world does that have to do with Revelation chapter 9? It's because this key that was given to him to the bottomless pit is about Lucifer. And if we don't have this background information, how are we going to understand what's going on here? I'm telling you, we're not. We've got to have this background. We've got to understand what the long war is against God, not only by Satan and the fallen angels, but by man. Man, by nature, hates the truth. He wants his own truth. And we've become very artful at inventing a God. that is merely a projection of ourselves and how we think about things. And that's how deceitful and twisted the human mind is in heart. But you see, we've got to understand that the preaching of another Jesus, another gospel, another spirit, is just an example of how determined we are to worship ourselves and not God. And so all through the Bible, this is what the Bible is about. What do we love most? Do we love God? Is He worthy of that time that He wants to have with us every day? where we acknowledge not only the need for that time that we're going to spend with Him, but that His presence will go with us, that He will be in us and with us all day long. Because finally at last we realize that every thought of the mind of man by nature is only evil continually and because of this we're just a thought away from disaster. We've heard that before. It's the truth. We need the presence of God not to be spiritual. We need the presence of God as an acknowledgement of the fact that we're the furthest thing from spiritual. And we so desperately need the presence of God that without his presence we'll destroy ourselves just like that. Just like that. Takes only a moment of time. Takes only one decision and you're gone. There are things that I could do this week where I would never be able to stand in this pulpit again. There are things that you can do that will destroy you and your testimony the rest of your life. And we're very vulnerable to those things happening all the time, continuously. It will not go away, because the old nature does not go away. But anyway, back to Job. Job... The Lord allowed the devil to destroy everything he had. Everything. But his wife. As Pastor Kelly said one time, the only thing that was left with was a nagging wife. That encouraged him to curse God and die. That's what his wife did. After he lost everything that he had, and he was wealthy. He was a very wealthy man. He lost everything he had and his children. He had all sons and daughters. They all were killed. He lost everything. And Job came through with flying colors. He says, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And so the devil was up against the wall. He says, well, he still loves you for a reason, because I know he's selfish. And so if you touch his life, not the things that he had, but him, himself, if you touch him and take away his health, if you strike him with sickness, he'll curse you. because he doesn't love you for who you are. He'll curse you. And so all of the rest of the book of Job deals with trial number two. The first trial ends in the first chapter. The second trial goes to the end of the book. Why? Because that's the toughest trial. The toughest trial is do you really see yourself as you really are in the eyes of God? And do you really see God as he really is? Do you really? Well, God said at the beginning that Job was righteous and there was none like him, and he was. But the one thing that a lot of times is not presented in teaching is the fact that even though the Lord saves us, He doesn't take away the old nature. Conversion does not involve the old nature. The old nature that you were born with, that loves the world and the things that are in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, which is not of God, but is of the world, is going to continue with you until the day you die. And there's a reason for it. The Lord wants you to be able to prove every day that you understand the message of this book. that you and me are the problem and not Him. That's the reason for it. That's the whole reason for it. And are we going to demonstrate every day by dying daily that we are the problem and not God because God is good, God is loving? Or Are we gonna turn it around and exalt ourselves and diminish God? Bring Him down to our level to make Him the evil one, the one that's really at fault. This is what the whole Bible is about. And if we don't understand these things, we're not ready to go into Revelation and really get a handle on what's going on here. I'm telling you, this has got to be understood. We've got an old nature that is deserving of hell. It's deserving of death, and not just death as the world thinks of it. You put somebody in a box, put them in the ground, that's the end of them. No. The death the Bible speaks about is everlasting death, is eternal death. It's eternal consciousness. and internal state of destruction god calls the second day so like a fire there's a man so including Billy Graham there for a time tried to mitigate or soften the language of the Bible when it comes to the like a fire he was ash is hail literal fire. Is it a little far. And he sort of stumbled over that. Brother Jim spoke about these things the other night excellent message. And a lot of people Peter LeBret. He used to be the son of school teacher right here. In this church and He's the one that made the mistake of asking me to be the Sunday school teacher after he felt like he couldn't remember stuff anymore. He got old. He lived to be over 100. But he told me in his own home that he struggled continually with what the Bible says about hell. And he had bad thoughts about God because of it. And he wrestled with it. I went to see him 10 years later, 15 years later, he was still struggling with it. He struggled with it until he died. He's not struggling with it anymore. And I believe Pete LeBret was a saved man. I believe he's with the Lord right now, enjoying his goodness for all eternity. I believe that. Don Boyes. Yeah, I saw that. Well, see, here's the thing that a lot of people need to understand. You need to get this now. You will make people mad if you go out here and you're not careful about who you're talking to and you say something critical about Billy Graham. Because he has been exalted to a level where it has actually become politically incorrect in the churches to be critical of him. But listen to me. I think it was Nehemiah. It was either Ezra or Nehemiah, one or the other. Spoke about Solomon. there was none so glorious as Solomon in his reign. There was none that would ever live on the face of the earth that had the wisdom of Solomon. But those men, those prophets, and I'm sorry, I can't remember which one it was, Ezra or Nehemiah, said, in warning the people about marrying unbelievers in Cana. Women that were not of their own family. He said, this is what Solomon did and how in his wisdom he was led away by silly women into adultery. And the worship of Molech Now folks, listen to me. We can't exalt man. No man. I don't care who he is. Anything that we are, any good that we have ever done, all glory to God. Not to a man. And I don't care what man it is and how glorious his life. No man is exempt from falling and making colossal mistakes. And when the Lord has elevated you to a place where you can reach hundreds of thousands of people around the world, it's a foolish thing to not think that Satan is at the door seeking through that influence, because it's massive, to destroy many. And he does. And so, I tell you something, when I come in here and I teach from the Bible, I'm not up here to make friends. I don't care what people think about me. The thing that I'm concerned about is what people think about the Lord. That's the only thing that matters. I can be wrong. Certainly can. Wrong about many things. But the Lord is never wrong. And I can say things that are wrong. But you have the opportunity to go to the Scriptures, like the Bereans, and search the Scriptures to see whether these things I'm telling you are so. And then take the Bible as your measure, as your guide, for judging all things. We're supposed to judge all things. And so, I think we ought to be very thankful for one thing of Brother Jim's message the other night. Because it takes a measure of boldness to go out here and say things that conflict with the way the world generally thinks about things. And the world's view of what it means to be a Christian I would remind you to go back and read Matthew 23, and how unchrist-like, if I could say that the way I... and convey what I'm really trying to say, the way he spoke was so unchrist-like by the world's understanding of Christ. But he rebuked the Pharisees, called them blind guides, whited sepulchers, Vipers, snakes, he called them. He said, you go out and make one proselyte, and when you do, you make him two-fold more the child of hell than yourself. And so, you know, well, our time is gone. I just noticed here our time is gone. We've got to stop. So, next week we're going to come back to Revelation chapter 9, and hopefully if we can remember these things, we're preparing ourselves for what we're fixing to look into here. So, let's pray. Father, thank you for this time we've had. Spare us from a misunderstanding of things that are of human origin. Help us, Lord, to see you as you are. And to spend that time with you that you deserve to have every day. That time is spent alone with you. To the end we might know you. We pray in Jesus name, amen.