We come to Revelation chapter 9, and I
have entitled this The Great Plague of Demons.
We've seen all different kinds of plagues to
this point.
As we come to this section, we're dealing
pretty exclusively with demons.
I want to read from verse 1 down
to verse 12, and then I want to
launch right into it.
We are in the midst of the trumpet
judgments, as you recall.
We've seen four of them so far.
And now the fifth angel sounded, and I
saw a star fallen from heaven to the
earth.
To him was given the key to the
bottomless pit.
And he opened the bottomless pit and smoke
arose out of the pit like the smoke
of a great furnace.
So the sun and the air were darkened
because of the smoke of the pit.
Then out of the smoke locusts came upon
the earth.
And to them was given power, as the
scorpions of the earth have power.
And they were commanded not to harm the
grass of the earth or any green thing
or any tree, but only those men who
do not have the seal of God on
their foreheads.
And they were not given authority to kill
them, but to torment them for five months.
Their torment was like, watch for the word
like in here, their torment was like the
torment of a scorpion when he strikes a
man.
And in those days men will seek death
and they will not find it.
They will desire to die and death will
flee from them.
The shape of the locusts was like horses
prepared for battle.
On their heads were crowns of something like
gold.
And their faces were like the faces of
men.
They had hair like women's hair and their
teeth were like lion's teeth.
And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron.
And the sound of their wings was like
the sound of chariots with many horses running
into battle.
They had tails like scorpions and there were
stings in their tails.
Their power was to hurt men five months.
And they had as king over them the
angel of the bottomless pit.
His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in
Greek he has the name Apollyon.
One woe is past.
Behold, still two more woes are coming after
these things.
Now, last time you remember after the first
four trumpet judgments there was an angel flying
through heaven.
Remember that?
And he was crying, woe, woe, woe, three
times.
For the first four woes had taken place.
Now there were three more.
This is the first of the three that
are left to come.
And when we get to verse 12, one
woe is past.
Behold, two more after this.
It is hard to imagine what could be
after this, but there's more.
Now, as we look at this, we see
four things.
We see the opening of the pit.
Very clear.
The unleashing of the demons.
The demonic torment team, as I call them.
And we'll find out how many of them
there are next time.
Although I'll tell you, it's 200 million.
Give you a little forecast on where we're
going.
200 million.
And the king who leads them.
The opening of the pit, the unleashing of
the demons, the demonic torment team, and the
king who leads them.
Let's begin with the opening of the pit.
To begin with, we read in verse one,
the fifth angel sounded and I saw a
star.
Star is biblical language here for angel.
A star fallen from heaven into the earth.
To him was given the key to the
bottomless pit.
This is Satan.
This is Satan falling from heaven to earth.
Sometimes people may ask you, where does the
Bible say that Satan fell in heaven?
I want to tell you right now.
It's in Isaiah 14, 12, Isaiah 14, 12.
You can just turn there real quick.
And we have the account of that.
Isaiah 14, 12.
How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,
son of the morning.
How you are cut down to the ground.
You who weaken the nations.
For you have said in your heart, I
will ascend into heaven.
I will exalt my throne above the stars,
angels, stars of God.
In verse 13, I will also sit on
the mount of the congregation on the farther
sides of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the
clouds.
I will be like the most high.
Yet you shall be brought down to shield
the place of death to the lowest depths
of the.
What does it say?
The pit.
Now, here you see Satan fall.
As as he exalts himself, wants to be
God and he falls from being Lucifer, the
son of the morning, from glory to being
a fallen angel, a demon in Luke 10,
18.
I'll just read it to you.
Jesus said to them, I saw Satan fall
like lightning from heaven.
So this is Satan.
So you see the star who falls from
heaven to earth and to him is given
a key.
This is Satan to him is given a
key to the bottomless pit.
The key comes from its keeper, who is
the Lord Jesus Christ.
He has the key to all things and
he opened the bottomless pit from this point
and releases the demons that are inside.
Now, this bottomless pit, literally the abyss, you
might find it translated other places in your
Bible is the abyss.
This bottomless pit is a prison.
It is a prison where you have demonic
hordes incarcerated.
And you find reference to that in this
chapter, in chapter 11, chapter 17, chapter 20,
and mention of it elsewhere.
Luke, 2nd Peter, Jude, etc.
But here we see that this is a
place of imprisonment for demonic spirits.
And we read that he opened the bottomless
pit and it spewed forth smoke as of
a great furnace so that the sun is
darkened.
The whole air is filled with it darkened
because of the smoke of the pit.
So you picture in your mind those billowing
clouds of volcanic ash, whatever it is, is
coming out of this furnace from the center
of the earth.
And then out from it come these locust
like demonic creatures.
They are, in fact, demons.
Now, before we go any further, I want
to take some time to focus on this
place and who is in there.
This bottomless pit is a prison spoken of
in the Bible more than you might think.
And its inmates are spoken of in detail
in the Bible.
Turn in your Bible to Jude.
I want to talk about the demons that
are chained up inside the pit so that
we can have some insight into who these
locust creatures are.
Because they're not locusts.
They're not locusts.
So I'm asserting to you that there are
demons and I'm going to show it to
you in Jude, chapter 6.
Hang a left from Revelation, you'll plow right
into Jude.
Otherwise, you'll miss it.
Hang a left from Revelation to Jude, chapter
6.
Your Bible doesn't have chapter 6?
What kind of Bible is that?
I'm just kidding.
There's no chapter 6.
In Jude, verse 6, we read the angels
who did not keep their proper domain.
So we're talking about angels who did not
keep their proper domain.
So you understand we're talking about demons.
But left their own abode.
He has reserved an everlasting chains under darkness
for the day of judgment.
So there are angels reserved in chains under
darkness somewhere.
And they are angels who didn't keep their
proper domain, left their own abode.
They did something drastically wicked to be chained
up in a place when other demons are
allowed to roam around.
Verse 7, he gives us an example of
what they did.
As Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around
them in a similar manner to these.
In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah having
given themselves over to sexual immorality.
And here's the key phrase and gone after
strange flesh.
Are set forth as an example, suffering the
vengeance of eternal fire.
So Jude is talking about fallen angels who
did something so desperately wicked that it's described
as leaving their own abode.
Caused them to be put in chains of
darkness reserved for the great judgment day.
And it had something to do with going
after strange flesh as the people of Sodom
and Gomorrah did.
Well, what happened there?
Turn in your Bible to Genesis 19, verse
1.
We'll find out Genesis 19.
Just to give you a quick backdrop on
it, three men appeared to Abraham when he
was in the door of his tent.
They conversed with him.
Turns out one was God.
Two were angels, but they are definitely in
the appearance of men.
Then God talked with Abraham and he said
he was going to judge Sodom.
Abraham bargained with God.
And when it's all done, we find the
two angels go down to Sodom and God
doesn't.
He won't even go there.
He disappears.
He will not go there.
But he sends two angels to destroy it
and agrees to get Lot and his believing
members of his family out.
So in Genesis 19 to 19, one, we
read, then the two angels.
Now they are on the earth as men
at this point in time.
The two angels come into Sodom in the
evening.
And Lot was sitting in the gate of
Sodom.
When Lot saw them, he rose to meet
them and he bowed himself with his face
toward the ground.
Now, verse four, before they lay down the
men of the city, the men of Sodom,
both old and young, all the people from
every quarter, everybody.
They all come gathering around the house and
they called to Lot and they said, where
are the, what does it say?
But we know they're angels, right?
But obviously they are human enough that the
young and the old and everybody from every
quarter comes out and says, where are the
men who came to you tonight?
Bring them out to us that we may
know them.
And the King New King James is a
very soft word for something that is very
graphic and wicked that we may know them
carnally.
The men obviously are two angels.
Definitely they are in the form of human
beings.
Definitely.
Ask Lot, you know, he could tell you.
So Jude 6 describes angels who did not
keep their proper domain, but went after strange
flesh.
That is to say, here you have men
going after angels.
Jude 6 is talking about angels going after
men.
The same, it's just the opposite, it's just
the same only different.
It's the opposite.
So you with me?
So same kind of bizarre, wicked thing.
In this case, it's the angels going after
the men.
So these angels, Jude said, are imprisoned in
chains under darkness.
Peter, go to first Peter chapter three, verse
18.
I'm having you flip back and forth across
the Bible, not to torment you, but because
I'm following a train of thought, a chain
of thought, because we're going to go back
to Genesis again.
You're going to get upset with me if
I tell you that we're following a chain
of thought.
That's why we're going the way we are.
There's a method to this.
First, Peter 318, we read for Christ suffered
once for our sins, the just for the
unjust, that he might bring us to God
being put to death in the flesh, but
made alive in the spirit.
So Peter is saying that when Jesus died
on the cross and his body was then
dead, he wasn't.
And he went somewhere and he did something.
Now, what he did was he went and
he heralded his triumph.
That's what the Greek says.
He heralded his triumph to spirits who were
in prison, in prison.
Verse 20 tells us who they are, that
Peter is talking about the Jesus went and
heralded his triumph to who formerly were disobedient
when once the divine long suffering waited in
the days of Noah while the ark was
being prepared in which a few, that is,
only eight souls were saved through the water,
the flood.
So Jesus went and heralded his triumph to
spirits who were in prison, who were spirits
that were formerly disobedient.
When were they disobedient?
They were disobedient in the days of Noah
to such an extent they are put in
this prison.
You follow?
OK, now go to the days of Noah
in Genesis chapter six and we'll find out
exactly who these demons are and what they
did.
Genesis chapter six.
This is the only way to arrive at
the proper interpretation of who these locust like
creatures are in the bottomless pit when the
key is given to Satan and he opens
it.
Genesis six one.
Now it came to pass when men begin
to multiply in the face of the earth
and daughters were born to them that the
sons of God.
Notice the contrast saw the daughters of men.
There's a contrast here.
Sons of God saw the daughters of men,
that they were beautiful.
And so first they saw, then they took.
They took wives for themselves of all whom
they chose.
This is wide scale.
And the Lord said, my spirit will not
strive with man forever, for indeed, he is
flesh.
Yet his days will be 120 years.
So here, sons of God is a phrase
in the Bible used to describe angels.
You find it in Job chapter one, chapter
two, chapter 38.
It is a term used to describe angels,
sons of God.
It's held in contrast here to daughters of
men.
Then when that happens, a verse to God
immediately responds, you see the response, my spirit
will not always strive with men.
You move down to verse five and you
see the Lord saw the wickedness of man
was great in the earth and that every
intent of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.
And then you read on and you come
to the flood.
But I want you to see there is
an immediate reaction to verse two from God
and it leads to the flood.
In verse four, there were giants on the
earth in those days and also afterwards, when
or during the time.
When the sons of God came into the
daughters of men and they bore children to
them, sons of God, in contrast, the daughters
of men, they bore children to them.
Those were the mighty men of old, the
men of renown.
We are now at the most hotly debated
passage of Scripture in all the Bible.
And some have argued that the sons of
God here are the sons of Seth, who
cohabitated with the daughters of Cain.
Others suggest they were perhaps human kings wanting
to build harems.
But the passage puts a strong emphasis, as
I've showed you on the angelic versus the
human sons of God, daughters of men, and
the New Testament, as I showed you, places
this account in the sequence of other Genesis
events that have fallen angels.
We saw that already in Jude and in
first Peter.
And so we got here.
So here in the time of Noah, we
have these fallen angels and I showed you
the angels as men in Genesis with lot
on purpose, fallen angels and they cohabitate with
the daughters of men.
And the result is the flood.
What was going on here?
What was going on here is Satan was
producing an unnatural union with demons and women
of the human race that violated God's ordained
order of human marriage and procreation.
And what the devil was trying to do,
get this, is bring about an unredeemable race
of human beings.
That's why the flood.
And that's why when only eight believe and
survive in the flood with Noah in the
ark, it's because the rest of the human
race was demonized to the extent that Satan
was seeking to make the human race unredeemable.
Because don't forget, in the garden, when man
fell, God rushed in, found them hiding, pulled
them out, clothed them.
But even before that, he announced the prophecy
of the Messiah, the savior of the world
to them.
Genesis three, 15 and the doom of Satan
on the spot and the salvation of the
human race.
Therefore, overthrowing on the spot by by forecasting
prophecy, everything Satan had just done.
So God promises a redeemer, Satan, then goes
about here to seek to bring about among
the human race, a demonized race of people
that serve him that are unredeemable.
It's a brilliant plan, and it didn't work
because of the flood that wiped them all
out.
So whether the demons inhabited the bodies of
human beings or whether they somehow appeared on
earth in the bodies of human beings like
the angels and Sodom, either way, they blew
it.
They blew it in a horrendous way and
they caused the flood and then caused these
demons to be incarcerated in the bottomless pit.
When other demons are allowed to roam around
until the end, the lake of fire, these
are chained up for a reason, and this
is the reason the Bible gives.
It's very tightly woven argument and you can
search it out on your own.
In fact, I encourage you to because the
longer you search it out, the more it
will solidify what I've just told you.
You can search out all the other angles
and all the other arguments and lines of
thought.
This is the one that makes the most
biblical sense, and it's the one that enables
you to understand who the demons are in
the bottomless pit in Revelation, chapter nine, verse
one.
So why don't you turn back there?
Do you remember when Jesus went to Gadara
and there was the man there who was
possessed with a thousand demons, a legion, and
he cast the demons out and they begged
him.
They said, do not send us to the
abyss.
Remember that now, you know what they were
talking about.
They know those demons know there is a
place that demons who do the very worst
things get sent to and that they're face
to face with the son of God.
And he has the power.
He alone has the power to send them
there.
Don't send us to the pit before the
time they understand everything we're studying.
And that's why you see those kinds of
comments on the part of demons in the
New Testament with Jesus interacts with them back
to Revelation nine.
Now, you understand that the demons inside the
bottomless pit are the most wicked demons there
are in existence.
The other ones are allowed to roam free.
Then you realize when you come to this
fallen angel, given the key, Satan, to open
the bottomless pit and they come out, it
is as if somebody is to give you
an analogy as if somebody went around the
world, opened all the prisons and let out
the most vicious, perverted, wretched criminals in the
entire world.
And they were free to roam around the
earth and do anything they wanted to to
anyone.
That's the picture, the worst of all, the
demons are now free.
So the opening of the pit.
Now we come to the unleashing of the
demons in Revelation nine, three through six, and
we have John's description of the demons, they
are as locusts out of the smoke.
Locusts came up on the earth.
And to them was given power as the
scorpions of the earth have power.
So picture that cloud of smoke billowing up
into the atmosphere and then out of that
smoke, it's spewing these creatures and the number
I already gave you, which is further in
the chapter.
It's in our next study.
Out of that comes all these creatures resembling
locusts.
They swarm out of the abyss like a
plague on the earth.
These demons are given a form.
They are inside the bottomless pit.
We cannot see angels, we cannot see demons
normally.
Right.
That's basic.
They were seen in Genesis and Sodom, so
they took on a form here.
They take on a form that suits what
they're going to do.
And we find the description as we move
through here.
Now, why locusts?
Well, John, you must remember, John is writing
this.
And he is writing, looking at what he
sees and he has to use his own
frame of reference.
So he's a swarm of these creatures come
out and he describes them as locusts.
And in that part of the world, a
swarm of locusts and their destruction would be
very familiar to John.
And reading the Old Testament, you have locust
plague described in Joel, different places in the
Old Testament, the locusts as referred to in
that part of the world is very common.
I read that in 1889, there was a
swarm of locusts over the Red Sea that
covered 2000 square miles.
So when John describes them as locusts, our
minds go immediately to a grasshopper.
Or if you've traveled the world, you've been
to the Mediterranean areas, you may have eaten
French fried locusts.
John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey.
And you may have gone big with your
falafel and your bag of big bag, big
coke and a big bag of fried locusts.
I've seen them.
I never buy them.
But you see them bagged up there like
French fries.
So your mind may go to that.
I don't think that's so much the part
John is going to as he is the
part that locusts come in swarms and they
do huge amount of destruction.
And you find that in so many places
in the Bible.
But these are not ordinary locusts in any
sense of the word.
This is a demonic horde.
These are demons.
So the description of the demons as locusts,
the protection is interesting here in verse four,
they were commanded not to harm the grass
of the earth or any green thing or
any tree.
Those are the things that were harmed last
time.
Remember, in the first four blasts of the
trumpet, the first four trumpet judgments.
Now they're told don't touch them.
But you can only touch those men who
do not have the seal of God on
their foreheads.
So that tells us there are some who
will be protected and that would be those
with the seal of God on their foreheads.
Who are those people in the book of
Revelation?
One hundred forty four thousand.
So here we see, looking back to how
we looked at the hundred forty four thousand
is literal with a literal seal of God
on their head to enable them to preach
the gospel, survive, live and go on into
the millennial kingdom.
You see, as you read on, that's the
right interpretation.
It fits.
So you come here.
These are real people, the real seal of
God, and they are not allowed to touch
them as they are preaching the word of
God.
They're protected.
However, anybody that doesn't have that seal on
their forehead.
And I would assume that other believers at
the time are sealed as well.
Anybody that doesn't have that seal on their
forehead, they they can go ahead and harm.
That is every Christ rejecting individual.
So there's protection for those that are the
Lord's believers, especially the hundred forty four thousand.
Then there is the affliction from these demons,
which is really repulsive to even contemplate.
Verse four, they were commanded not to harm
the grass of the earth and anything, any
tree or the men that do not have
only the men that do not have the
seal of God in their foreheads.
Verse five, they were not given authority to
kill them, but to torment them for five
months.
And their torment was like the torment of
a scorpion when it strikes a man.
They were commanded not to kill.
You know, that tells me that they have
the ability to kill.
They have to be told not to kill.
When Satan attacked Joe, many of his servants
died.
They have the ability to kill.
They must be told here not to kill.
Imagine they've been imprisoned since the time of
Noah.
When they get out, they're demons, you know,
they want to kill everybody in sight.
God has to tell them and put a
limit on them.
You cannot kill.
They can torment, but they cannot kill.
That is the mercy of God to give
these people one last chance to turn to
Christ.
Because really, if you add it all up,
you get down to this time during we're
now into the last three and a half
years on Earth.
If you add it all up and how
many have died so far, at least around
half the human race has died.
So God has a limit.
Half the Christ rejecters on Earth have died,
roughly speaking, looking at all the numbers we've
seen so far.
So you cannot kill them, but you can
torment them.
And the torment lasts for five months.
It's amazing to me, the first four trumpet
judgments, we saw the limits God put on
the judgments.
One third, one third, one third, one third.
Our God is a precise God.
His economy of effort has no waste.
There's nothing sloppy about it.
He is always in control.
He was always precise.
And so here there is a limit, five
months.
A limit you cannot kill, a limit you
can afflict and torment for five months.
And the torment that lasts for five months
is likened here to a scorpion sting.
Verse five, like the torment of a scorpion
when it strikes a man.
I don't know if you've ever seen anybody
get stung by a scorpion or if you
have.
It is one of the worst things that
can ever afflict a human being here.
It says their torment is like the different.
So it's not they're not scorpions, they're not
locusts, they're demons, their torment is like the
torment of a scorpion.
It lasts for five months.
So it has all of the emotional agony,
all of the sharp, excruciating pain, but it's
beyond it.
So what would it be?
I'll tell you what it is.
It's gross, it's demon infestation.
Not just demon possession, demon infestation and all
of the torments that come with it so
that these demons afflict you.
Let's take the mystery out of it completely.
What happens to people in the Bible when
they are afflicted by demons?
Look in the New Testament, you find Legion,
who we talked about earlier.
There was another man there as well, lived
in the caves.
Anytime they put clothes on, they rip the
clothes off, put chains on them, they break
the chains off because of the agony.
They were in almost supernatural strength and then
screaming insanely and cutting themselves.
That is the torment of demon possession.
When Jesus came down from the Mount of
Transfiguration, the disciples were there.
They were trying to cast out a demon
from this boy.
His father said from a child he's been
demon possessed.
The demon throws him into the fire and
throws him into the water to drown him
all the time.
I'm rescuing him all the time.
The torment of demon possession to throw you
into fire or water to drown you, to
make you insane, to cut yourself, to you
bleed, to shriek and moan.
In the Old Testament, when King Saul rebelled
against God and turned away from him, he
became demonized.
When David used to play the wonderful music
to him, he became demonized.
He started throwing spears.
He tried to kill David.
He committed mass murder with the priests.
He went insane, demonized, insane, mass murder.
Then he committed suicide.
So you look at what happens when people
are afflicted by demons in the Bible.
It's very clear.
Demonic torment with imagine a human being not
just being demon possessed or demon oppressed, but
infested with demons.
Legion had one thousand.
He had demonic infestation, the filth of it,
the torment of it, the agony of it.
It is so horrific that men, it says
in verse six, in those days will seek
death and they will not find it.
They will desire to die.
And death will flee from them.
Let me just stop here for a minute.
When people today, when you're witnessing to them
and you say, receive Christ, he loves you.
Behold, he stands at the door of your
heart.
He knocks.
He wants to come in, have fellowship with
you, save you, give you new life.
And people say, you know, I'm not ready
for him now.
And I know the rapture will come and
the tribulation will come and I'll give my
life to him in the tribulation.
Are you willing to face demonic infestation to
trade that in for whatever would hold you
back from Christ now?
It's appalling to contemplate.
And yet you see the goodness of God,
the goodness of God.
Today is the day of salvation.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll be
saved.
You don't have to go through this.
People will go through this.
And their unimaginable attempts at suicide will fail.
Imagine jumping out of a 20 story building
to commit suicide and you hit the sidewalk
down below and you don't die.
Imagine seeking to blow your brains out with
a shotgun.
The brains go all over the wall and
you still are alive.
I don't know how it's going to be,
but I do know that suicide is at
the end of demonic torment.
We find in the Bible men will seek
to die and death will flee from them.
So tormented five months like this and they
cannot get away from it.
That's the point.
The torment is inescapable.
You can't get away from it.
So we've seen the opening of the pit.
We've seen the unleashing of the demons that
are inside and what they're like.
Now let's go to the whole team.
I call it the demonic torment team in
verses seven through 10.
Here is a detailed description.
They are shaped like horses ready for battle.
The shape of the locusts was like horses
ready for battle.
This is a picture of a war horse
in John's day.
War horses were trained.
They were trained for battle.
So when they were suited up with the
armor they wore, they're very heavy.
And when they were lined up, ready to
charge, they would stomp their feet.
You see them, you know, in the movies
and they snort and they're ready.
They're ready to go.
They're they're very defiant.
They're very strong.
They're very battle smart.
And that is the picture of these demons
here that form this army like horses prepared
for battle.
War horses.
And then you read in verse seven that
on their heads were crowns of something like
gold, crowns of something like gold.
What is that?
Well, the Greek word here for crown is
Stephanos.
It is the victor's crown used of generals
coming back from war in those days.
They would be given the victor's crown when
they came back triumphant.
This is to say that they were the
victor's crown.
That is to say nothing can stop them.
They will triumph in what they are sent
forth to do.
You cannot stop them.
They're invincible.
Then you read they have the faces like
men, faces like men.
Why does it say that?
Because these are not locusts.
These are not helicopters.
These are demons that are rational beings.
Once they were glorious angels.
They have faces like men because they are
rational, intensely rational, and they can think so.
They are faces like men.
And then they have hair like women's hair
in Jeremiah.
Jeremiah described locusts as having kind of like
a bristly hair on them.
These have hair like like women's hair.
In the Bible, the woman's hair is her
adornment.
She can fix it up.
Women do become more alluring and so on.
This speaks of their ability to be enticing
and alluring.
In other words, when Satan lures you in.
He always makes it beautiful.
He will entice men to their doom the
way he always has.
And it will be very appealing.
That's the point.
Very appealing.
So that they will be enticed to their
doom, to their involvement with these demons in
their teeth and are like lion's teeth.
They rip and they tear with great fierceness.
And verse nine, they had breastplates like breastplates
of iron.
John would be thinking of a soldier's armor
in his day.
And thus they are.
You cannot harm them.
It is iron like armor.
You cannot harm them.
In other words, you see one of these
or a thousand of these coming at you.
You pull out your pistols and start firing.
That doesn't even affect them.
You throw down your guns and start running.
They catch you and start afflicting you for
five months.
You cannot do anything against them.
You cannot escape their torment.
And that is the picture of the armor.
There's no weapon man has that will stop
them.
And then they had tails like scorpions and
there were stings in their tails and their
power was to hurt men.
Five months, tails like scorpions.
And so they have this ability to torment
men.
Then finally, we come from the demonic torment
team here.
We'll see more about them next time.
There's a king who lead them, leads them.
Verse 11, they had a king over them,
which says, again, they're not locusts.
Proverbs 30 says the locusts have no king.
These are not bugs.
These are demons.
They have a king over them.
The angel of the bottomless pit, whose name
in Hebrew is Abaddon.
But in Greek, he has the name Apollyon.
He's been around for a while.
He's got even a Hebrew name and a
Greek name.
Old Testament, New Testament.
He's been around a long time.
Some interpret this to be Satan.
I don't, because he says right here, it's
the angel of the bottomless pit.
Satan is not associated with the bottomless pit
until he is locked there during the thousand
year reign of Christ.
He is associated with in the Bible, which
on Ephesians, he is the prince of the
power of the air.
So this is not Satan.
This is one of his high ranking demons
who's been incarcerated here over all these.
He is one of his top generals, if
you could put it.
Satan's demonic hordes are very, very organized.
And this is the king that is over
them when they are set free to do
one thing during this time, and that is
to hurt men.
That's it.
One thing to hurt men in judgment.
So you read all of that and then
you read in verse 12, one woe is
past.
Behold, still two more woes are coming after
these things.
Oh, my.
Jesus said, pray and ask God that you
would be counted worthy to escape all these
things that are coming on the earth.
Do you?
I do.
Now, I believe I'm saved.
If I don't know whether I'm saved or
not by now, I'm all messed up because
I've been a Christian for a long time.
I know that I'm saved, but I still
pray to the Lord because he said to.
And I say, Lord Jesus, if you come
today, I pray that you find me worthy
to snatch me off this earth and take
me with your church to heaven when you
come in the rapture, because I don't want
to stay here one millisecond longer than I
have to.
And I don't want to get any closer
to these things than I have to.
This is frankly close enough for me.
In fact, I strongly recommend you read a
few psalms before you go to sleep tonight.
Seriously, read some really nice ones, because maybe
even skip ahead in Revelation to read about
heaven, because otherwise you may have some creatures
flying around your dreams that you don't want
there and you're never going to see them
anyway.
The reason is, is because we love Jesus
Christ and the only reason we love him.
It's because he first loved us.
I thank God I can read these things.
I know the future of planet Earth.
I know what is coming.
And it is so good to know that
beyond this, my God, who sets the five
month limit on these demons.
He's the same one who I read later
in Revelation is going to take Satan and
all the demons and throw them into the
bottomless, into the lake of fire, bottomless pit
only for a thousand years, lake of fire
where they would be tormented forever and ever.
The Bible says we will look upon him.
The deceived and accused, the brethren, and we
will marvel.
And I thank God I will not be
put in there with him.
Because hell was created for Satan and his
demons, not human beings.
You have to willfully follow Satan to go
where he goes.
You have to love darkness rather than light
to be put into the darkness forever.
And if you love Jesus Christ, who is
your savior and he is your king, you're
going to heaven and you'll be there forever
and ever.
And just think, James said that this life
is as a vapor that appears for a
little time and then it's over.
Can you imagine what heaven's going to be
like?
It's going to go on and on and
on, and there will be no night there,
no tears there, no pain there, no demonic
torment there, no bad weeks there, only joy.
And here in this life is the quest
for fulfillment that sort of slips through our
fingers.
We seem to have it and it's gone
there.
There will be only fullness of joy, fulfillment
in what God has designed for us in
the beginning as he fills our lives with
himself.
This light affliction does work for us an
eternal weight of glory.
That's where we're headed.
But in the meantime, we're to be teaching
every man and warning every man of the
things that are coming on this earth.
And it's a joy to do it because
there are so many out there that want
to know Christ.
When you talk to them about Christ, they
want forgiveness.
When you offer it, find them, let the
Lord lead you to them.
And he will.
Father, thank you for leading us to Jesus
Christ.
Thank you, Lord, for the marvelous truth that
is here before us.
And thank you for the hope of heaven
that is stretched before us forever.
Lord, may we be filled with your presence.
May there be as much of heaven in
our souls through the Holy Spirit as we
can contain in these days.
May we bring with us a sense of
your heavenly peace and your heavenly joy everywhere
that we go and every person that we're
with.
And we will give you all the glory
as you keep us busy about the things
of your house until you come.
For we ask these things in Jesus name.
Amen.