A Talking Eagle - Revelation 8:8-13

Okay, about today's handout. The front page you might notice is a color printout and that's on purpose. We don't do that by accident. But the other thing is last week people mentioned that there was a chart that they didn't have and so that's the last page of today's handout. I want to bring that to your attention so that you have it.

This is an important chart. We keep making reference to it up here. And it shows in one view, not all the details certainly, but the contents of everything from chapters 6 through 16. So 11 chapters are represented on this one chart. It brings system to it and we keep referring to it because it's so helpful. So at any rate, that's the last page on today's handout. And you can either keep it there if you're collecting these or put it in an appendix. It's noted as an appendix item. So, at any rate, bring that to your attention here.

Last time we talked, we talked about the idea that, okay, here we are reading this scary stuff. Is God's intent that Christians be scared? And one of the conclusions that we drew was that no, it really is not God's intent that Christians be scared. It's God's intent that Christians be aware of what's going on, but that we in fact have our eyes set not on when is the Antichrist going to come and who is he, but our eyes set on the Lord Jesus Christ and His coming.

And I keep telling you, I hope it's today, Because that's the blessed hope. That's what, as Paul wrote to Titus, that is our blessed hope. And we're not sitting, shaking in our boots or sandals or Birkenstocks or whatever you got, worried about these things, okay? And the intent, by revealing them, is not to get us all scared. It's not to turn us into prophecy freaks, okay? It is for us to understand what God's doing and to realize God's in control, God knows.

People will bite their nails and get all nervous about what's happening in the world. And the beginning of this write-up, the top page there, the end of the world, just exactly when is that going to be, is an important next topic here for us to address having to do with our perspective. One of the things I joked about last time is it's not God's intent that we go around with a big sign that says the end is near, right? And let me ask you this, when these things that are described in these chapters, the ones we're in now, chapter 6, 7, 8, 9, when these things begin to take place, will people think that the end of the world is coming? Well, yes, there will be some people who say the world must be coming to an end because things are getting really bad.

And guess what? As the seven-year tribulation period continues on, what's going to happen? It's going to get worse, right? And then they'll think most certainly the world is going to come to an end. Will those people who think the world is going to come to an end, will they be right? No. No. Why?

Yeah, because you've got the thousand-year reign of Christ. As a matter of fact, what's going to happen just when they think it's most certainly coming to an end, that's when the thousand-year reign of Christ begins. So the truth is, though people will be inclined during this seven-year time, probably increasingly, to think the world is coming to an end. The truth is that the end of the world is at bare minimum, 1,007 years from today. And it could be longer. And we don't know how much longer. But when people think it's got to be the end of the world, it's going to be at least another 1,000 years.

So that's one thing. And I've got another question, and I've got to admit to you, I'm jumping ahead a little bit. So you'll forgive me for that? One more thing. When the world, because of the tribulation period, is made a wreck, and Jesus comes, will he come to reign over a wreck? And why not? Won't the curse be lifted? Okay, yeah. There will be a substantial lifting of the curse. Not entirely in every way and degree, but a substantial lifting of the curse.

As a matter of fact, the descriptions of the Millennial Kingdom is a time, especially in Israel, of flourishing abundance. Overflowing prosperity. And what's really interesting there is identified, I think it's about a 75-day period at the beginning of the Tribulation, excuse me, the beginning of the Millennium, of kind of setting things up. And I think there's going to be a lot of rather miraculous restoration to begin this thousand-year reign of Christ.

So, just an important perspective. People are inclined to look around them and to judge the end of the world by how things look, right? And a lot of people, it's funny, some people even seem to like to enjoy getting nervous about things like that. But that's not the perspective that scripture lays out. It's going to get really, really bad before it gets really, really good for a thousand years. and then comes the end of the world. So this is another key and important perspective for Christians to keep in mind.

Human perception of things are getting really bad so it must be the end of the world is no good estimate at all. The perspective that we as Christians have is not one of, oh, I'm scared and I'm getting scareder. I'm afraid and I'm getting more afraid. Or, things are getting really bad around me, therefore the end is near. None of that is what God has in mind. God lays this out so that we won't misjudge things by the way they look. So, the end of the world, someone says the end is near.

No. You might go around with a sign that says the end of the world is at least 1,007 years away. People will be probably just as puzzled by you with that. But at least it's a clearer perspective than the end is near. Because what we're really looking at is the beginning of the best time that this world has seen since the Garden of Eden could be as close as seven years from now. That would be a hoot to put this sign out in front of the church. The end is not near. The end is 1,007 years away, at least. Yeah, real interesting.

But I bring these up because the perspectives that we might be inclined to get If we don't kind of back off and say, what does Scripture actually say? The inclination is to get sucked into things. And I think there's even a hazard of getting into kind of prophecy fever or prophecy freak mindset. God doesn't want us to be prophecy freaks like we're getting more and more afraid or intense or glomming on to what's currently happening.

God wants us to have perspective. So as we go through these passages, I think that's important to keep in mind here. Our blessed hope is Christ coming. Our blessed hope is Christ coming for us. These things, are they scary? Yes. Are they scary for us? No. This gives us certainty and a perspective and those things could look horribly bleak. In the end, God's in control. God is never pacing the floor of heaven, wringing his hands, and saying, what in heavens am I going to do? That's never God's perspective, and it shouldn't be ours. Alright, let's take a look at some of these slides here. This is one I think you've had in the early distribution of charts.

And we're right in here, the seven trumpet judgments. We're in the first part of it, finishing up chapter eight here this morning. To give us the perspective, we have the syncopation that we pointed out between the heavenly scene and the earthly scene. We're right here. So in terms of this time of the Tribulation and the syncopation back and forth between heaven and earth, we're in the early stages. We're not right at the beginning, but we're in the early stages of this syncopation between heaven and earth. And then here is the chart that's the last page of your handout today. And one that I would suggest is one to kind of keep in front of you because we're right here.

We've finished the seven seal judgments. We've, with last week, looked at the first trumpet judgment. Today, we'll be looking at second, third, and fourth judgments that come out of the trumpet judgments. What you see next is there from chapters 12 through about 1420 talks about prophecies of different kinds and aspects. It's sort of a, not a time gap necessarily, but an information insert in the middle of, between these seven trumpet judgments and the seven bowl judgments, the worst and the last of the judgments there. Anyway, you have this chart now and we'll be looking at that one. Here are the seven trumpet judgments and this matches what you have on the front page of your handout here. this chart here.

And what we're pointing out here is that the ones in yellow highlight are the ones included in today's passage here. Okay. Yeah? In this whole big picture, where does the abomination of the temple occur? Does that occur on this chart somewhere? Let me attempt to answer your question even though we're going to get to that in more detail. So I'll give you the quick answer. You see this chart that you have right here?

The loud voices at the end of the seven trumpet judgments and the seven bowl judgments, that's the halfway point, I believe, between the first and the second half of the tribulation period. That's when the abomination takes place. The Antichrist breaks the treaty and the temple is violated. Yep, right between the loud voices and the boils is the halfway point.

We're going to look more at the timing of these things, so we'll get there in more detail, but for now the quick answer is that. Okay? Yep. And thanks for asking that, because that's one that will come up and we will clarify it with other pieces of information as we get to passages that bring that up. Okay.

One of the things you see about these early series in the seven trumpet judgments is these are all things that come from above. Come from, you know, above the earth. And one of the things that's interesting is as these things come from above, it'll be very clear to people, I'm not in control. Matter of fact, you ever hear, the government ought to do something?

Well, this is going to be something the government's not going to be able to do anything about. It's going to be way beyond anything that they're going to have control. There may be a department. There may be some bureaucracy set up, but this is way beyond what they're going to handle. So, what's that? Oh yeah, we've got departments for all this stuff, but it won't matter much.

The division of forestry has a tough time when one-third is torched. And we just moved past that. Something else to bring up here, this is in yellow on the yellow text block here, the seven trumpets in Joshua 6, 4, and 5. Notice here's the middle set of is the seven trumpet judgments. You say, well, remember the figure that we've thrown out?

Seventy percent of the book of Revelation is out of the Old Testament. So Revelation is really a pulling together of Old Testament prophecies with some additional revelations. In round numbers, about 30% of Revelation is some additional revelation. More than two-thirds of it is simply pulling together and giving a sequence and a system to things that were already spelled out in the Old Testament.

What's interesting is I've read some Jewish writings. Of course, they don't believe the New Testament's scripture. But they look with great interest at Revelation. Why? Because better than two-thirds of it comes out of their Jewish writings. So they say, hmm, that's curious. Alright, here's the seven trumpet judgments. And the seven trumpets, where did that come from?

Joshua 6, 4, and 5. Israel went to take Jericho. By the way, here's Joshua. He's leading the Israelites into Jericho. And Jericho is the first of the cities that they come to in Canaan. What to take Jericho by the Lord's command and miraculous intervention and what happens?

The seven priests shall carry the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark and then on the seventh day shall march around the city seven times and the priests shall play the trumpets. It should be that when they make a long blast of the ram's horn, then you hear the sound of the trumpet. All the people shall shout with a great shout, and the walls of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up, every man straight ahead. Okay?

So this seven judgments has already been used to carry out the Lord's will. And what happened to Jericho? Things just sort of slowly crumbled? No. Catastrophic collapse, right? So what is the Lord doing? Taking the same seven trumpets and now saying, we're going to make this a global issue, not just a Jericho issue, right?

And it's not going to be some Jewish priests. It's going to be angels. And we mentioned last week, it's the seven angels. It's one that repeatedly gets called the seven angels and continues on to even the last chapters of Revelation being called the seven angels.

The other thing is these are not musical trumpets, they're military trumpets. They are announcing, you know, not some nice little melody, but CHARGE! Okay? This is the call for military attack. That's what this is. This is not a, you know, here's this nice little tune, isn't that pleasant? No. This is a call for military attack.

Something interesting, too, is All of a sudden, with the church taken out, this symbol comes not from the church, but from Israel. All of a sudden, Israel is back in the picture, isn't it? And we keep seeing that, by the way, as we go through these chapters here. Something we'll look at next week is the next set of judgments. pick from judgments that were put upon Egypt when Israel was being released. So here's another pointing to Israel again with the church out of the picture. Okay, here's verse 8 here. The second angel sounded and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea and a third of the sea became blood.

So this phrase, something like, is something that we have pointed out very early. Remember what we told you, and I said it's a good thing you're sitting down, that interpreting Revelation is a piece of cake. Real easy. And one of the reasons why interpreting Revelation is quite easy is because John often uses this something like or as.

Like or as. He makes comparisons when he's describing something with things that people understand. That's used 64 times in Revelation and about 400 times in the entire New Testament. So, John is using a majority of the New Testament's usage of like or as. The word typically translated something like, like or as. John uses the Greek word hos. He's many times to indicate that he's making comparisons with things he and his readers can best understand and relate to.

So much of what he is describing is not in the immediate realm of everyday experience for people of his time and place, the first century of the Eastern Mediterranean. What he sees, he describes for us as a great mountain burning with fire. Now what is this thing that he compares to a great mountain? We have some items to help us understand. First of all, John says that it is something like.

So does it have to be specifically a great mountain? It doesn't have to be a great mountain, but something like it. When you look at it, you say, well, it looks like a great mountain, but it doesn't mean it's a great mountain. That's comparative language.

The other thing, you get the idea that it's large. It didn't say a little hill, but this thing is big. As a matter of fact, it's really clear John is kind of impressed with the magnitude of this. He didn't just leave it at mountain, it's a great mountain. This comparison with a great mountain reinforces the idea of great size but a mountain would also seem to indicate rock or rock and soil. So what's the material like? It is like you would find on a mountain. Rock or rock and soil.

It is burning with fire, being consumed by the fire and is being thrown into the sea. The Greek word for thrown here is being based on the Greek word balo from where we get our English word ball. So here is this big rock-like thing being thrown into the sea.

Some have suggested John is describing a nuclear explosion. But nuclear explosion is too easy to attribute to human origin. That's what people do. Besides, a nuclear explosion looks more like a cloud than a mountain and would not need to be thrown into the sea. In fact, a nuclear explosion would look like it was coming from the sea rather than going into it. Nuclear explosions have not had the consequence of making water look like blood. It's been done in the ocean in some of the early tests during the World War II era.

Others have even suggested that God is actually removing a mountain from the land and casting it into the sea. While this may seem more plausible than this verse describing a nuclear explosion, the text does not say that the mountain is removed. It says what's coming looks like a mountain, but it doesn't say God pulled a mountain up and then threw it into the sea. He says, that's just what it looks like. John rather is saying that it actually is a mountain, rather than saying it actually is a mountain, instead of saying that it's just like a mountain. This understanding also fails to explain why the mountain is burning, unless that's by miraculous means they're already volcanic and molten.

Okay. Page three. Okay. Likely the best understanding is that it's an asteroid or a comet, and when those enter human space, We call that a meteor typically, meteor or meteorite. All the pieces of information seem to fit this understanding. Let me step you through some slides here.

Here are some asteroids photographed from Earth. A lot of them are irregular in shape. A lot of them have craters on them from having been struck themselves. And here is a NASA simulation of what it would like to have one of these large bodies come into, for example, the earth.

Particularly here in this picture where they simulated it striking an area mostly of water. Here's another NASA simulation of what something like that would look like once the penetration had been made. You see a shock wave going out and you see quite a wall of material being thrust up as a ring around there. They've developed formulas for how big this crater would be depending on the size, the density, and the speed. They've even got some variations on it for the angle that it strikes.

Here's another NASA simulation. This is a crater down in Arizona. The Beringer Crater. How many of you happen to see that Beringer Crater? You can drive up to it. It's really quite impressive. Here is a closer shot. I went and saw it on a geology class trip. It's one of about 200 craters of significant size that have been mapped. Closest one we've got is one over in Utah. But this is one in Arizona so that's fairly close. Here's one up in Canada just so you have an idea.

What you see is this ring where it had left kind of a scar has now turned into a body of water with rivers and things around it. Here are places kind of dotting and Some of the more than 200 craters are these space object impacts. They could either be a comet, which is a kind of an icy, rocky mass, or an asteroid, which is more significantly mostly rock material. It's interesting.

This is kept up to date. The Near-Earth Objects Program of NASA actually goes and maps this stuff and you can watch it change every day. They go and map, here's what has hit us in the last week, or almost. And they map out, and I only, this is the stuff that was recent, so this is the 2nd through the 10th when I grabbed it and they keep changing that every week.

Here is the beginning of the list and of course today is the 14th, so you've had four of them that have already gone past their closest point to Earth. And then the one there on the 15th and the ones following are the ones through the end of the month that are yet to come through some fairly close distance to Earth.

Interesting. Back in March, it was reported a rock more than 200 feet wide zoomed past our planet at about 40,000 miles. That sounds like a lot. It's not. In terms of astronomical distance, that's pretty close. And 200 feet might not sound that big, but if it's coming pretty fast, Boy, that's got quite an impact. So it's a good thing it went to slip past us. Currently, the ones they have mapped, nothing is scheduled to hit Earth for a few hundred years.

Let me ask you, could that change? Yeah, how could a change take place in what we have mapped and scheduled and all that? One could collide with another one and throw it off its course. Yeah, we could have a collision or a near movement which would have a gravitational pull and all of a sudden the course is different. So yeah, you could have something like that that's unexpected. We know that gravitational pull works because we have sent out a spacecraft. Yes. That's right. We've swung spacecraft around the gravity of a nearby planet.

So what is scheduled to hit Earth could be changed simply by some either impact or close to impact. that we're currently unaware of. Are there other possibilities? Yeah. People don't understand. Okay, here was this thing. It's not scheduled to hit us, but guess what? It's coming. And so what's interesting is we actually have a program to watch this. If that program is still in play and still in place, we'll actually have people saying, hey, it's coming, guys. Get ready.

Here it is. So here is this one that just came very close to us, 40,000 miles from, you know, compared to, I mean, because the moon is several times that out. So this is at a distance that's much closer than the moon. And this thing went zinging by just earlier this year. Okay. Here's a little tough to see but kind of a picturing of that when it went by. So it went fairly close. Now here's something else.

This just reported two days ago. It happened actually earlier this year. Here is a 14 year old German boy that was hit by a meteor the size of a pea. It was going however 30,000 miles an hour when it hit his hand. Okay. He got a scar on his hand. You can see the scar. On his other hand, you can see this little pea-sized meteorite, what that was like. And they've repaired the hole, but that's the hole that this pea-sized meteorite made.

And that's apparently the most recent incident happening just earlier this year. The one prior to that was one back in the 50s. A lady was laying on her couch when a meteor the size of a grapefruit came through her roof, bounced off a piece of furniture, and hit her in the hip. So things like that happen.

But we're talking about something much larger, aren't we? Yes. So is that considered an act of God for your insurance? I think so, you know. As far as the legal terminology goes, yes. It's interesting. It's allowable for legal terminology, but you just can't declare it in the classroom, right? Another question. You're talking about the mountain, but how about where it goes? Is that plural? Seas?

Are they referring to the Mediterranean Sea because it's the closest one? Or is it the Black Sea? A third of the creatures which were in the sea had life and died. A third of the ships were destroyed. Well it says it was thrown into the sea. Yes. Obviously it's singular so it has to be thrown into a singular sea, right? Yes. But now it affects more than one sea, right?

Well what's interesting is as you start to look at this, it doesn't say which one it hits. However, Depending on where it hits, if you were to try to model that, other seas would be impacted. Let's say, for example, this hit in the middle of the Atlantic. Would the Mediterranean be impacted? Yeah. If it landed in the eastern Mediterranean, would that impact other seas? Well, yeah. Normally, it doesn't happen that fast, though. I mean, obviously, this is happening very quickly. Yes. So my thought is, maybe it's not something simple like an asteroid, but previously the sky was opened up and they saw the thrones of God and the wrath of the Lamb, right? Previously we saw that, so the sky was opened up.

So this thing, instead of coming from the current physical universe, very easily could be coming from this other parallel dimension or wherever they're at. Yeah, and I think that's something we have to allow within the language here. This is something where you say, well, where did it come from? There are several possibilities. And even when we say, well, within our universe, comet or asteroid are the likely possibilities. Does it have to be one of those?

No. So I think we have to have some humility to say, this is what it says. We know what it says. This seems like within the range of possibilities, but acknowledging even that, that there are things that are described here that we don't have a full explanation for.

Because a burning asteroid would be probably not that much difference than a volcano going off underneath the ocean. And that doesn't affect all the seas. I mean, it takes a really long time for the effect of that volcano that goes off to even affect that particular ocean that it goes off in. I mean, it's pretty risky.

Yeah, how this strikes, where it strikes, all those things, and that's not described. So there's a range of different possibilities in here. We're given some detail. We can kind of make some assumptions and start calculating some things, but the truth is we haven't got the whole picture. Yeah, Mark? What about that mass of sand you were talking about? Yeah.

One of the reasons they equated it to was if one about the size of Long Island were to hit in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, it would set off a wave that would become supersonic within about 30 seconds, and at that point would affect all of Earth.

Yeah, I think this may be the one you're talking about. In April 1997, Sandia Laboratories did a 3D modeling of one hitting in the Atlantic. They chose a half mile wide comet impacting the Atlantic Ocean at a 45 degree angle. Calculated the impact would release the energy of 15 million Hiroshima strength bombs. Is that the one you're thinking of? Yeah. This was the modeling done just about a dozen years ago.

And the blast would vaporize up to 1 trillion tons of water, which would form ice crystals that would seriously damage the ozone layer and affect weather patterns for many months to come. Computer data also suggests that the resulting tidal wave would be about 300 feet high. About a height of a football field high coming in and hitting, say for example, the East Coast. Today's weather changed.

Yeah, yeah. This is not the global warming scenario. This is, you know, things getting cold and things getting washed away really big and not enough time to evacuate. Where's that vice versa? You know what I mean? Yeah. The bottom line is if you didn't have some really phenomenal flying vessel, you're not going to get away from this, with this scenario. Yeah.

So you start to look at that. Verse nine says here, by the way, I give on the top of page three, the website. You can just search to your heart's content. You can go there and look every day and look at the meteor, you know, objects that are potentially going to hit the earth and just explore that. So you're, you know, fancy.

But, verse 9, and a third of the creatures which were in the sea had life, died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Now, think of what this is like. There are a couple of impacts. One is food. There are some countries where seafood is a major portion of the food source for the people. And particularly you get into obviously coastal areas. You get into areas where a lot of times there isn't a lot of opportunity to grow a lot on land and so there's a tendency to look to the oceans for food. All of a sudden you, in that area, if that's part of the area impacted, you just suddenly cut off the food supply or greatly diminished it. The other thing you've got is a whole lot of stuff hanging around. What's going to happen to that? Decay. Massive tons of decaying seafood. Yeah, great. Well, and that's the other thing as you start looking at it.

Why did the sea become blood? There again, as we start to look at it, exactly why it's red, I think we've got to look at it and say, okay, it has this reddish blood appearance. I think there is room for that to be a A description of how it looks and the source of the red could be various things. It could be inorganic material because what hit the earth had, for example, a lot of iron oxides in it.

There could be an impact upon algae. There could likewise be an impact on sea creatures and maybe a mixture of those. The reality is we're given some revelation here. We're not given enough to chase down all the technical possibilities with certainty other than to explore them as speculation, if you will. Reasonable speculation or possibilities. Somebody had their... Yeah.

Doesn't it say something in Genesis about the earth giving up the blood that when a person is killed or somebody dies and that blood falls to the to the earth, or some people die in the sea, or the animals in the sea, and all this. This was when Cain killed Abel. So this could almost be like a cleansing process of the earth of blood. Yeah, it doesn't describe it that way, but it could be.

And again, that's where we, as you look at this, we have to say, okay, we have a description here what are the range of possibilities within the description that we have, but also looking at it humbly, it's not appropriate, it is appropriate for me to speculate, it is not appropriate for me to try to go beyond the certainties that I have. Yes? Would one of the points of that mean that it was no longer usable as water because it was contaminated with whatever, so it was no longer Yeah, and we're going to get into something pretty quick here where the fresh water gets contaminated. See, this is something where it's, this is ocean water apparently, and that soon is going to be aggravated when you get fresh water getting contaminated.

So with that, let's turn to page four. Then it says a third of the ships were destroyed. If that number were happening today, something like 20,000 seagoing vessels all at once wiped out. If you were to just count today's significant seagoing vessels. So 20,000 by today's count, if that were to happen today. That's a lot of ships taken out of commission. This is mothballing in mass. We have, for example, stories of the Titanic sinking. Something like the Titanic sinking, it would just be in a list rather than being this big legendary sinking and everybody remembers it. Instead, it would be, you know, that was the day 20,000 ships sank, if it were today's number. And, you know, here's the list. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

One aircraft carrier is saying it has, you know, like 6,000 personnel on board. I mean, oil tankers would that be? Oh, boy. And that's the thing, you know, depending on where this hit, boy, now I got oil slicks, this is a mess. Oil slicks, dead fish, red, oh man, what a disaster. This is, it stinks, I'm hungry, you know.

So you start to think about this, it's amazing. Verse 10 there, the third angel sounded and a great star fell from heaven. Similar thing, burning like a torch, and it fell on the third of the rivers and the springs of water. So here's where we talk about fresh water. You know, we've got an interesting phenomenon in our era, and that's the rise of bottled water. And they'll say this water comes from this spring, or when I was over in Uganda, they'd get water from Sipi Falls, you know. And you get these various bodies of fresh water. What do you do when all those things go bad? How many of you are interested in drinking red Perrier? Not so much, right? Something that gets into the water supplies. Something else to clarify here. because this passage brings up the question.

The Bible brings out three places called heaven. Two of them have to do with this present world and the other is the heaven that we think about. One is the atmospheric heavens. It reigns from heaven. This is the atmospheric heavens. It's this world, right? The stellar heavens, Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God. This is outside the atmosphere, out into space, everywhere from our solar system out into the galaxies. And then the third is the place where God dwells. Your Father in heaven, for example, there in Matthew 5.

So those are the three heavens of Scripture. You will hear everybody hear of seventh heaven or seven heavens and that kind of thing. The places where that comes from is Jewish mythology cooks up seven heavens. Medieval mythology also has seven heavens. And the Islamic teaching of seven heavens. And a modern TV show about a family of a pastor who doesn't seem to know the first thing about scripture. That's the other place it comes from. So that's where it comes from.

Scripture, however, speaks of these three heavens. The first two, atmospheric and stellar heavens, are of this physical realm. The third one is the realm where God dwells here. Did Paul say he went up to the third heaven? Yes. He was taken up to the third heaven. That's right. This is the one place where God dwells. Because they also use the word paradise. This is the third heaven, the heaven where God dwells. Because the word paradise is used three times in the New Testament.

One, thief on the cross. Today you'll be with me where? In paradise. The next one is the passage you talk about where Paul writes, I was taken up to paradise. And then the third one shows up in Revelation. And that is in the new heavens and new earth. And there's the paradise that's promised for believers. So that's the three places where it's used.

But in each case, this is the place where God dwells, not this atmospheric heavens or the stellar heavens. So in the Greek, they have like the other heaven and then the same type of heaven, right? heaven of that type? When he talks about the third heaven, the first heaven is what?

This is the one we're breathing. This is where the birds fly and where the rain comes from. That's the first one. The second one is the stellar heaven. And then the third heaven is where God dwells. Those are all different types. Yeah, the first two, the atmosphere and stellar heaven, are this present universe. The third heaven, where God dwells is not this present universe, physical universe. The first two heavens we can study using airplanes and balloons and telescopes and things like that. The third one, the only way we can study it is the scripture. That's the only way we can study it. Human beings have no way to do it. You're not going to find anybody, you know, get a Ph.D. in astronomy because they studied the third heaven.

OK. The idea that there are three levels of spiritual heaven comes from Joseph Smith. He says that there is a terrestrial heaven, a telestial heaven, and a celestial heaven. But that's all his concoction. That's not in the Bible. Okay. Verse 11 there at the bottom of page 4.

The name of the star is called Wormwood, and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters because they were made bitter. The star is called Wormwood, and it causes one third of the fresh waters to become bitter like the shrub called Wormwood. None of the five species in the Mediterranean actually are toxic to the point of death.

But I think the point is that it describes the terrible bitterness. Anybody ever tasted wormwood? I've actually taken a fair amount of it this year because it's one of the things that helps you keep from getting malaria or helps cure it if you get it. So I've taken a fair amount of it this year, but never before. It is bitter.

As a matter of fact, even just taking a capsule, you can taste the bitterness in your mouth. If you took it outside the capsule, you'd really taste it. But the idea is that you have this profoundly bitter water, this water that tastes really bad, and it's toxic too. That's the picture you get here. Water you don't want to drink because it tastes awful and water you don't want to drink because if you force yourself to gag it down you wouldn't come out of the process alive. Water that's that bad.

So what happens when all of a sudden all the water nearby goes bad? What are you going to do? Get real thirsty. You suddenly have, at a bare minimum, a humanitarian crisis. You've got all these people, they're still alive, but all the water for hundreds of miles is terrible. It's like people, you ever read or hear situations about people who get out on some life raft and drift out in the ocean for some period of time? There's water all around them, but guess what?

They better not drink it. It becomes a situation like that. You may have water right there, but you don't want to drink it. That'll be a serious mistake. But that's the kind of desperation that people will find themselves in. If not the toxicity, the dehydration will be a hazard to the people.

Okay, verse 12. The fourth angel sounded and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck so that a third of them would be darkened and the day would not shine for a third of it and the night in the same way. The judgment brings a limitation upon either the extent of the light during a portion of the day and night or a reduction in the percentage of the light getting through to Earth. Perhaps this will be a strange eclipse or perhaps it will result from atmospheric particles from the prior two judgments we've looked at this morning.

Either way, this is a real disruption, right? It increases the demand upon what will be no doubt be a severely strained supply of fuel. It will increase the time in which mankind lives in darkness as well as decrease the heat coming from the sun. We are not told how long this goes on.

Think about this, what happened to the first trumpet? A whole bunch of wood gets burned up, right? What would you, if things went dark, what would you use to try to make things lighter? Burned wood, right? But it's, already a lot of it's burned. And you say, okay, things are dark, so what do we do to turn some lights on? I mean, you can imagine it's noontime and we're trying to turn lights on. Why? Use electricity. How are you going to generate electricity? Like coal, oil, you know, fossil fuels, things like that. How did you get it there? Maybe by ship? Well, I mean, you start looking at it, this thing is problematic. At least by anything we can envision. This is beginning to be a problem. How about if you just settle for everything being dark?

Yeah. Plus it depends on what part of the earth you're on, whether it's cold or it's warm or it's hot. Hopefully you aren't on the cold side. Yeah. Well, if you're used to Alaska, it won't matter. Yeah. But I get the picture. This isn't folks up in Alaska saying, well, it's always darker this time of year. But instead, I can remember in Uganda, here you are on the equator. Things are pretty light. The sun's up there. But what happens when it just gets dark? And it's noon time. So that gets to be rough. It gets very cold. Yeah, it becomes dark and cold.

And let me tell you, the folks in Uganda are not used to cold. One thing when we were on the road, we noticed that mining was a matter of cold back in Wyoming, out of Montana. And then they would send the water back down the center part of the pipe to re-process the slurry so they could send it down that way. That way it wouldn't get cold because it didn't have enough cold mix to provide the heat.

We've run out of time. Let me just read verse 13 and I'll leave it to you to follow through on that. rest of the write-up. I looked and I heard an eagle flying in mid-heaven. By the way, which heaven is this? You got three of them? Which one is it? The eagle flying? The first one, right? This is atmospheric heaven.

Saying with a loud voice, woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound. You guys, it's dark. We've had some real tragedies here. but woe, woe, woe. Interesting. Woe, woe, woe. That literally the Greek is OI! OI! OI! Because they didn't say woe like we do, right? OI! OI! OI! So here's this eagle crying out, you know?

Amazing. Okay, let's pray. Florida, as we look at this, what a time. And yet we do ask that you'd keep us in the perspective that you intend for us to have. This is the dark before the dawn. This is a time that is not for us to bite our nails about or stay up at night. But it's a time that will come to pass, perhaps soon. And we're thankful that as we'll be singing about here shortly, that you're faithful, faithful through it all. And we thank you for your faithfulness. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.