Revelation, that's the last book of the Bible. God gave it to us because he knows what's going to happen in the future. I don't know everything about the book of Revelation. Back a long time ago in the Dark Ages, I was teaching Bible in Grace Baptist Church in Wilmington, North Carolina. and I had the seniors for a semester, and I had them for 50 minutes a day for a whole semester, and we made it through the Book of Revelation by the end of the time, so we're not gonna do anything like that at all today, okay? Because when Brother Mark asked me what I was gonna preach on, I said snippets of Revelation, and when Pastor asked me what I was gonna preach on, I gave him some chapters. So you'll see just a number and a chapter verse but not the name Revelation because all the verses are in Revelation. And you're going to have some homework assignments when I'm done so you can see some other stuff that's out there because there's lots of stuff that's going to be there tonight that's on the web. And one of the sites is nasa.gov and space.com. and you can look some stuff up on your search engine as you have time and as you have interest. If you have neither the time nor the interest or either one, it's okay. All right? So we're going to look at a few things and we're going to jump around a lot and it's not necessarily supposed to make any sense except for the section that I'm talking to you with. Okay? Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your Holy Spirit. We thank you for your word, and we thank you that you knew things that would happen in our day and age, and you revealed them in Revelation. And only as we come along in our time can we see these things clearly. We pray that you would open our minds to receive your truth this night. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. There's a bunch of names in Revelation, and we're just gonna fly through these, okay? The lamb is? Jesus Christ, okay? The Antichrist is a beast. Now, he's called a beast, and he's also called the Antichrist, but it means he's against Christ. And during the tribulation period, this guy's gonna have really strong political power, and he's gonna have the power of life and death. And probably I'll get to that part of it next week when I deal with the mark of the beast. because that's included in that, the Antichrist. There's a false prophet, and the Antichrist and the false prophet are two individuals, I think, but they're on the same page, and they're on the same page with the devil. because the devil during the tribulation period is going to have tremendous power and he's going to give his power to these two individuals and they are going to make a mess of the earth. Now there's a bunch of different names for the devil and I'm sure you already know that, but just to review, there's Satan, the devil, the dragon, the serpent, and they all refer to Satan, or the devil, or the dragon, or the serpent. And you see their names used a lot of times throughout the book of Revelation as well. There's a living image. The Bible says that the false prophet and the Antichrist build an image and it comes to life. Some people believe, now we're getting into theory, okay? And you can throw, anything I tell you is theory, you can throw it out, okay? It's real easy to do. Some people believe in theory that this is something that's computer generated. In other words, it looks like a statue, but really it's a computer generated thing that comes to life and looks like a real person. Have you ever seen a robot the size of a person? When I pastored in southwestern Pennsylvania, one of the hospitals that I went to was called University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, connected with Pitt, if you know anything about football. Not Clemson, but Pitt. But they have about eight blocks of hospitals in downtown Pittsburgh. and they have a robot that travels in the hospital by itself from one nurse's station to another nurse's station delivering mail. You can step in front of the robot and it'll stop. It can get on an elevator by itself and punch the button and get off and it knows where it wants to go. And it just does whatever it wants. If it were made in the form of a human being, And I've seen some of those types of things recently made in the form of a human being, but actually it's a computer-operated robotic type of thing. So that may be what happens here for that image to come alive. There are 144,000 witnesses, and these are Jewish people from the 12 tribes, 12,000 from each tribe, who are sharing the gospel in the world that has been devastated from the gospel by Christians being taken out of the world. There are two witnesses. And I'm not gonna get into who the two witnesses are, okay? There's lots of theories there, and you can have your theory too if you want. But then there are two individuals who prophesy for three and a half years. Which three and a half years of the tribulation period, we're not sure, because the Bible does not specify time. When you're dealing with time in the book of Revelation, it may be layered, In other words, one on top of the other, but given to us in the scripture, one following the other, or it may be as Pastor Putnam mentioned in Sunday School, it may be coned or it may be followed. We don't know for sure, but as you read through the various passages of scripture, there's something there. But these two witnesses have tremendous power, and at the end of their witness, they are killed. Now, there's an interesting passage of scripture about them, and I'm only gonna deal with it tonight very briefly, but it says the whole world watched while they lay in the street of Jerusalem for three and a half days. Now, you think about that. How could that have been possible before television and satellite TV? Okay? And I'm sure that most Christians who read that passage of scripture were like, God, you know, If I'm living in New York and news happens in New York and I wanna get it to Miami, Florida, three and a half days isn't gonna cut it, right? Three and a half days isn't gonna cut it, okay? So God knew that we would have television at this time and what happens in other part of the world, I can see within five minutes, okay? So the duck boat goes down in Branson, Missouri. How long did it take you to find that out? Did somebody come riding back on a horse? No, no, no. We found out right away. So this is something that God knew way ahead of time. In the Bible, especially in Revelation, and we're gonna look at a lot of the plagues and judgments, but not all of them. But there are plagues and judgments. The Bible said about the people that lived in the land of Israel before the Israelites captured it, because their iniquity is not yet full. Now, when the iniquity of a nation and a world is full, then you can expect God's judgment, and that's what's gonna happen during the tribulation period. There are two battles. One of them is Armageddon, and one of them is Gog and Magog, and we're not gonna deal with either one of those battles. But God steps into one and he wins, okay? Revelation 1, 17 and 18. God says, I am, I am, and I am three times in the verse. I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore and have the keys of hell and of death. God is the I am from Revelation clear back to Genesis. He is always the I am. I'm going to take you through the churches, but I want you to see He that overcometh, just by themselves. The churches were church ages, but they're also churches that we see in every age. I've heard Pastor Walker mentioned that as well. You can see some characteristics of any of the seven churches in any of the churches' age. At the end of every one of the churches, he says you need to be an overcomer. Now that means overcome the flesh, overcome the world, overcome the devil, or overcome the major sin that was happening at that time, for example, the deeds of the Nicolaitans. Okay? He told him how to correct that which was wrong. You've left your first love. And you need not to do those things. So if you eat of the tree of life, if you eat, if you overcome, you will eat of the tree of life. He that overcometh shall not be hurt by the second death. Smyrna. Pergamos. The doctrines of the Nicolaitans, which I hate. To him that overcometh, a new name. Now two of the churches have this reward for those that overcome, we receive a new name. Thyatira. The problem was Jezebel's doctrine. Sardis. He that overcometh shall be clothed in white raiment. Philadelphia was one of the best churches. And he that cometh overcometh a new name. The second time it's mentioned as one of the overcomers. Laodicea, of course, is the last church. And it says, I stand at the door, and if any man hear my voice. The idea here is there's no large group of people accepting the Lord Jesus as their Savior, but it's like one by one they come. Some of you old timers, not any of us are old, but some of you old timers will remember when we used to give an invitation for salvation The altar had lots of people in it. And today, that doesn't happen anymore much at all. And he that overcometh shall sit with me in my throne. And I think it's rather neat that God says that not only would we be able to be overcomers, but we would actually sit in his throne. Now I need to zip by a whole bunch of stuff so I can get down to where I want to be. We're going to look at the sealed judgments. If you would like to turn in your Bibles to Revelations chapter six, we will begin with the sealed judgments. We're gonna fly through the first three. We're gonna look at the fourth one in some detail. Now we begin to see God opening up judgments during the tribulation period. The first one doesn't seem like a judgment, it seems like a good thing. And that is peace, and that's the white horse. The red horse has to do with war, and of course in every war there's lots of people that die, and there will be lots of people that die during this time. The black horse is famine, and that will be when people can't find food to eat. We're gonna layer this with some other things very shortly. So I want you to keep the black horse, the famine in mind for a little later down the road. The pale horse is death. And in chapter six in verse number eight, it says, I looked and behold a pale horse and the name that sat on him was death and hell followed with him and power was given him over the fourth part of the earth to kill with the sword, with hunger, with death and with the beast of the earth. There are approximately 7 billion plus people in the world today, according to the latest guesstimations. So if we kill a fourth of them with a plague, that means 1,750,000,000 people die in one plague. Now, you know, sometimes you hear people saying, well, I believe we're living in a tribulation right now. I believe we're not living in tribulation right now, because if so, we would be seeing all kinds of disasters and major catastrophes on the earth when you figure out with one plague, one-fourth of the population, 1,750,000,000 people are going to die. Now, why are they going to die? And because of the pale horse, the pale horse is called death. Now, how does that death come? Now, in chapter 6 and verses 9 to 11, you see under the altar the slain tribulation saints. Some people believe the saints will go through the tribulation. The Bible mentions here in this verse the slain tribulation saints. We're going to have an astronomy lesson today, right now. It says there was a great earthquake and the stars of heaven fell onto the earth. Stars can be pretty big. Some planets can be pretty big. And depending on the size of the quote unquote star, or the planet, that's gonna fall to the earth, will depend on what kind of disaster we have on the earth, okay? Scientists have thought about this happening, okay? And that's part of your homework assignment, okay? If you have your smartphone or your tablet with you, please don't go there right now, okay? Please listen, all right? You can go there after I'm done. I'll be done within 20 minutes, okay? We have business meeting tonight. But the Earth could only sustain a certain size of another object to hit it. And scientists have realized this. And NASA has realized this. And the United States government has realized this. And that's when you go do your homework. We're going to take three things that we're going to call stars, even though they're not stars. OK? You have asteroids. Comets and meteors. And in your search engine, not right now, in your search engine type, meteor hits the earth. Comet hits the earth. Asteroid hits the earth. And see what you get. This is one of the pictures. Now, the question is, at what speed is it going to hit the Earth? We know that some comets, for example, Halley, flies at 130,000 miles an hour. If something 130,000 miles an hour smashes into the Earth, there's going to be an earthquake, okay? A really big earthquake. And all the kind of things that happen, and it depends on the size of the heavenly object that the Bible calls stars. It depends on its trajectory and what angle it hits the earth. And it determines its speed, how fast it's traveling when it hits the earth. One of the sites that I visited said, what if something's traveling at the speed of light, 185,000 miles an hour? Okay. If it's the size of a school bus and it hits New York City everything from Boston to Washington D.C. is vaporized. That'd take out a lot of people, wouldn't it? So that's when he's talking about a great earthquake in the stars of the heavens. I'm gonna read verses 12 through 16, excuse me, of chapter six. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood. We'll get back to that part of that verse in a moment. And the stars of heaven, notice plural, fell to the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken as a mighty wind. Now imagine this, a fig tree which has ripe figs on it, and it's shaken by a great wind. Let's say a wind burst. Is there gonna be one fig that falls to the ground? Or is there gonna be a whole bunch of figs that fall to the ground underneath the tree? What he's saying, when the stars of the heaven fell to the earth, It's gonna be like a fig tree, and there's gonna be a whole bunch of things hit the ground. And the heavens, verse 14, departed like a scroll when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their place, and the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and all the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man hid themselves in the dens and rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. "'For the great day of the wrath is come "'and who shall be able to stand.'" Back to verse number 12. If a comet, an asteroid, or a meteor hits the earth, we know from history of those things occurring that it can black out the sun and the moon for a period of time. In other words, you wouldn't be able to see it because there's so much debris in the air, so much dust. When one of those things hits the Earth, it kicks up a whole lot of dirt. And although a lot of those big rocks are actually on fire, so when it goes out, it sets fires on everything around about besides the initial burst. NASA has come up with an idea if we see a really big asteroid coming in, we have a plan. You know what the plan is? We have a nuclear device that will go out and shoot it down. They said there's only one problem with that. If we go out and shoot it down and we just break it apart, then we're going to have a whole bunch of little lower things coming in and it's going to be spread out over a wider area, sort of like, and the stars of the heaven fell to the earth as a fig tree cast on a timely fig, right? That would work. They have a bunch of other kind of theories, and you can look at them if you want, okay, about what to do when we see something like this coming in that we know is going to cause major destruction and major death issues in the world. This is a picture. You know what it is? No, I don't know what it is. taken from Saturn. These are the rings of Saturn, and Cassini, a space probe, was sent out, and they were going to fly it between the rings of Saturn, and they took a picture of the Earth. See the Earth? It's a really big deal, right? It looks small from that distance, right? Is it small? No, it's not really that small. When they're looking, and they are watching, the government is watching, and NASA is watching for what they call near-Earth objects, so that we have proper warning time, sort of like warning time for a hurricane. And the problem is, if something's way out there, And it's behind something and we really don't see it until the last minute because this is the size of the earth. This is an actual picture of the earth that NASA took and all you see is one little white dot. So smaller stuff. Because if something the size of the earth or the moon, our moon would even crash into us, it would totally demolish the planet. So it has to be something smaller than that, even though in the Bible, in this passage of scripture, you see them referred to as stars. Because we look up at the sky and we see a star and we say it's little, But it isn't little. If you can see it from here, it's not little. And so the same thing is true of comets, asteroids, or meteors. They may be able to see it in time. They may be able to do something about it. Some of them say we could hit it with a laser and break it apart. They're thinking about ways to turn it so that it wouldn't actually crash into the earth. And I know this stuff sounds like science fiction, okay? But that's why I'm telling you, that's your homework assignment, okay? You can check it out, okay? I didn't come up with this thing off the top of my head, okay? Verse 15, excuse me, last part of verse 14. And every mountain and island were moved out of their place. So when it crashes, whatever these stars are that God creates for this purpose to judge the earth, whatever these stars are, when they hit the earth, I mean, it really rattles the place, okay? We haven't seen any earthquakes like this. Have you ever lived through an earthquake? I've been through a few. I remember we were in Peru. The missionary said, come out of the house quick, Mal, come out quick. And I'm like, yes, out in the street. And that's nothing compared to what's going to happen when these, quote unquote, stars, asteroids, comets, meteors hit the Earth. Verse 15, and the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens, and the rocks, and the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, follow us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lord Jesus Christ. I changed the word lamb, okay? Some of these scientists have said that the only safe place if we're gonna have an asteroid strike or a comet strike or a meteorite strike is to be inside the earth because then you would be safe from the blast and if the place didn't collapse on you, you would at least be able to survive. Verse 17, for the great day of his wrath has come and who shall be able to stand Have you ever heard somebody say to you, where is God? Not knowing that the long suffering of God leadeth thee to repentance. That's where he is. Is God upset by all the horrible stuff that's going on in the world? Yes, he is. Do you think he's gonna have to apologize to the people of Noah's day for destroying the world because of their wickedness? No. Do you think he's going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness? No. Is the wickedness of the world full? Yes. The seventh seal contains the seven trumpets. Chapter 8, verses 1 through 2. And these are called the trumpet judgments. Now, these may be layered with the stars, comets, asteroids, meteors, falling to the earth. Because when something like that hits the earth and the debris goes up and it comes down, then it's going to burn up or cover up all the grass and all the trees. A mountain burning with fire. Now we can say that this mountain burning with fire is a meteor. Maybe it's not. But it's a large thing that is going to hit the ocean. A great star, wormwood burning, fell from heaven upon a third of the rivers and fountains of water, and men died of the waters. Do you realize that in a lot of places in our country as well, our water supply comes out of the rivers? And that's where they get it, and they treat it, and they put it in city water, and then you drink it. And men dive the waters. One third of the sun and moon and stars are smitten so that they are darkened, for there is one third less day and one third less night. So you have, perhaps, the effects of the comet, the meteor, their asteroid hitting the earth and kicking up all this dirt that darkens the sun, moon, and stars so that there is a third less of them, of course, that would create famine because your growing season would be chopped down considerably. Now, after you've done your homework about a meteor, asteroid, or comet hitting the earth, then you have to do one about it hitting in the ocean. This is a picture of their conception of something like that hitting the ocean. Well, if you're on the ocean, you're going to have a really, really big wave. I mean, it's going to be a tsunami like we haven't seen. And it depends on how far it is from a coastline. And we don't know the answer to that question. But probably any ships in the area or any critters in the ocean, when something like this hits, depending on what it's made of, what it's consistently is, is going to destroy all that stuff. So your second assignment is what happens if a comet or meteor asteroid hits the ocean? OK. Chapter 9, verses 13 to 21. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, which is before God, saying to the sixth angel, which had the trumpets loose, the four angels, which are bound in the great river Euphrates, and the four angels were loose, which are prepared for an hour, a day, a month, and a year, to slay a third part of men. So the first thing, the pale, the horse of death, 1,750,000,000 people. One third of what's left, 1,750,000,000 more people. You know what that means? In those two plagues, where the combination of all of those plagues You're talking about decreasing the population of the earth by almost 50%. You think people would repent, don't you? You think they'd say, God, we've had enough. But they don't. They don't repent. It says, and they repented not. They just cursed and blasphemed God because of the plagues, because they were extremely severe. I'm trying to keep track of my time. When you look at stars in the Bible, and we know that they're falling to the earth, to me, it makes sense. And you look at how the government is doing its best to be able to mitigate anything that they see coming in to protect us from it. And I appreciate that. But when God decides it's going to hit the earth, they're not going to be able to stop it. Do you understand that? No matter what kind of plan they've got, no matter how well planned it is, and no matter even if they've tried it and they have tried it before and hooked up to a meteor, they have tried it. But when God has decided that those things are going to hit the earth and those things are going to kill billions of people, there's not going to be anything they can do to stop it. Because it's going to be an act of God. And I believe that part of what they're going to try to do to stop it is actually going to make things worse than if they just let it do its thing by itself. There's things we don't know that John saw. And they're called the seven thunders. and he hears, sees the seven thunders, and he listens to what they say, and he's ready to continue writing, and God says, wait, don't. Don't write. Seal them up, write them not. So there's a lot of horrible stuff that's gonna happen to the earth that we really don't know about because God said to John, don't write it down. Seal it up. Review, and then I'm done because we have business meeting coming up. During the tribulation period, you and I as children of God are gonna be in heaven. The earth is gonna experience horrendous disasters that's gonna kill billions, and hundreds of millions of people because God has designed it and God has directed it and God will accomplish his purpose just as he always has and always will because he is God. And God is done with the wickedness of the earth and the direction that it's going. And during the tribulation period, the earth is gonna experience the kind of judgments which we would not believe that it could possibly happen except it's written in his book. Homework assignment, OK? I know you don't like homework assignment. What if an asteroid on your search engine, what if an asteroid, a comet or a meteor hits the earth? What if an asteroid, a comet, or a meteor hits the ocean? Check those things out. Next week, the Mark of the Beast. Now, here's your next assignment. And you're going to look at it before I look at it with you. But they have something today called Verichip. V-E-R-I-C-H-I-P. OK? You got that? V-E-R-I-C-H-I-P. It's called Verichip. And they have developed something that they can put into your hand right here, and it'd be like getting a shot. And they got you.