Unwelcome Visitors - Revelation 9:1-12
Revelation 9:1-12 · Vern Peterman · Jun 21, 2009
Revelation (2009), No. 25
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492613713686

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

To get some orientation, we were in the early half of the trumpet judgments that are spelled out in Revelation 8 and 9. And so we took a look at the last part of chapter 8 last week, and today we'll be starting into chapter 9. So this particular part of chapter 9 is the fifth trumpet judgment. And, real interesting, this particular passage is just one trumpet judgment. The passage that focuses on one trumpet judgment.

And, remember last week we had this talking eagle? And it was three, and we say in English, woes, but in the original language it's OI! And so here's this cry of a bird which is calling out for these three Y's. And it's interesting, there's lots of description and detail and even some emphasis by repetition here.

Then the fifth angel sounded and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth and the key to the bottomless pit was given to him. Now, we've read about how the other angels sound the trumpet, and this is no different in that respect. But what is different is that these blasts are from these military trumpets clearly revealed physical consequences from the heavens. So there's this blast of a military trumpet. Remember the kind of way we've expressed it before was the trumpet was saying, charge! So it's actually a military attack from heaven.

And in this case, John sees a star and the question is, is this a literal star or does it stand for something else? And so the rest of the context, however, makes it clear that John's use of the word star is figurative for a personal being and not a physical object, not a physical star. The indicators that this is referring to a personal being are a couple of them here. The use of the personal pronoun he or him in verses 1 and 2 implies that this is a personal being.

In the Greek text, the pronoun him is intensive and personal, and it's repeated as well. And this aster is given a key. Now, stars aren't typically given keys, right? And he takes the key and uses it to open a door. That's consistent with a personal being and not an impersonal object. So, while a lot of these judgments have been primarily physical in nature, this one is different. This judgment is going to involve spiritual beings who come to earth with a particular form and permission.

And what this is, we won't have time to go into it, but what this is, is to go Back here, we're going to be taking some time to lay out what does the Bible teach about angels in order to give some background. Now, let me ask you this question. Why should we take the time to go through what does the Bible teach about angels? Why should we bother with that? Yeah, right?

People are worshipping angels. Yeah, you've got people now who are actually worshipping angels. They're just focusing their worship and attention on the angels. And it seems like that's kind of a craze. I suppose it probably peaked out somewhat in the 90s, but there are people that are still involved in that and doing that. People actually worshipping angels now.

Yeah. Other thoughts? Just a question. Yes. You're saying this John's seeing a star and the star is called Astor. Yes. Does this give rise to some of these people that want to explore the universe to prove there is no God? Explore the universe to prove there is no God? I guess I haven't thought through that particular question. I mean, you're saying it's a personal being.

Yes. So, it could give rise to... Yeah, yeah. It's real interesting what people think about the stars. There are people who are desperate to find some other life out there. And it seems they're willing to spend billions and go to a lot of trouble to try to do that. We've even had special communications out in the space with things from Earth as if there's something out there to listen. I'm not saying there absolutely isn't, but some people have a real compulsion to try to communicate with other beings. So there's those kinds of questions.

Yeah, Art? Are the angels in Revelation to the churches, are they angels or are they messengers, human messengers? This is kind of backtracking, but just to make sure the question gets covered. In Revelation chapters 2 and 3, there is an angel or messenger to each one of the seven churches. And the question that Art's raising is, are these angels there? And actually, the Greek word is angelos, and it could be translated messenger or angel. And the three main suggestions is that they are an angel that's assigned to each church. or that they are just simply human messengers taking a copy of Revelation to each one of the churches, or the third suggestion is that they're the pastors at each one of these churches.

I tend to view it as just human messengers, because there's no indication that each church is assigned an angel, and nowhere do I see that term messenger applied to pastors, and also there's a plurality of elders ultimately, is what scripture lays out. So I believe, and I don't think it's like some hard and fast rule, but I believe it's most likely physical messengers. So, do you have a question? No? Okay, fine. Anyway, that's the quick answer to your question. Okay, let's Let's take a look here.

Looking at this angels, there's another reason for looking at angels and that's because the truth is, well, it's been brought up that there are those who worship angels and Craig is right about that. The reality is there's all kinds of mythology about angels. Lots of it. Including Satan. Lots of mythology. What are some of the myths about angels and Satan that are out there?

What's that? Oh, that's right. You're going to die and become an angel and get wings and have this halo thing. You know, I don't know if the halo becomes dislocated. You go to carpet. I don't know. Anyway. So you've got, yeah, that's one piece of mythology. When we die, we become angels, right? What's another piece of mythology? The bell on the Christmas tree rings. What's that? And the bell on the Christmas tree rings. And the bell on the Christmas tree rings, right?

A lot of the artistry about angels pictures them as little babies, or women, and while scripture makes it clear, Christ's own words, that they're not male and female, as God intended and created them to be, that they are still described and pictured in a masculine form as they take on an appearance here on earth. So, but that's another piece of mythology. How about mythology about Satan? What are some of the myths about Satan? He's red, he has horns, and a pointy tail. And a pointy tail, and what does he hold in his hand? A pitchfork. It's a pitchfork trident kind of thing, right? So there's another piece of mythology.

How about another one, that Satan is or is going to be the king of hell? There's really nothing to say that he's ultimately going to do that. The closest that he comes is the passage we're looking at today where he is given, and by the way it's God who gives him permission, he is given to open up the key to this abyss. What you have on the last page is a chart from our Genesis study, early in our Genesis study.

Demonic beings, fallen angels, appear to have two locations right now, and one part of the demonic beings is assigned to earth. And those were the beings that, for example, Christ encountered and the apostles encountered. The other part of these demonic beings are held in this abyss. And I think, we won't take the time, but if you were to look at the first column, the one that's highlighted in yellow, on this very last page, that will explain why these angels are held in this abyss that is locked up. And these angels have been held in this abyss since what's described there from the time of the Flood. until this moment, not to be released except for these five months in order to torment people upon the earth. Okay. Yes? You know, there's people that go on and on about all the demons and cast out the demons in their house. Yes. Now, aren't there demons that are present There are demons that are present on planet Earth. Yes. Okay, so if I thought one place was the Abyss... And the other is here on Earth. Two places. They're either in the Abyss, which we're reading about in this passage, or they're on the Earth.

Some people get preoccupied with Satan and the demons and all their focus and efforts upon them. I think that's a mistake to get to a place where you end up instead of beholding the Lord, you're beholding Satan and the demons. So that can be an out-of-balance kind of thing. But there are demonic beings, that is, fallen angels here on the earth, and there are also those in the abyss, and that's the ones we're reading about here this morning.

Page 2. There is a text box at the top. It says some biblical truths about angels. All angelic beings were created at once. And this is interesting. There seems to be two categories of created spiritual beings. The first major category is angels and the other major category is humans. Here's all angelic beings were created at once.

How about human beings? How many were created? Essentially it had two and created male and female, and Adam was created just before Eve. And all other human beings, the great majority of them, all just descended from Adam and Eve over time. Here we have billions of human beings now from the two, whereas the angels were all created at once. Why the difference between the two?

Why would we have all these angels created at once? No, they don't procreate. Yeah, they don't procreate, they don't reproduce, so God has to create them. So the picture that we have, we don't have any descriptions that God created some angels and He created some more and created some more.

The indications we have is that they were all created at one point in time. You know, the Bible talks about guardian angels, right? There is some talk of that, although I think some of it is probably over-interpreted, that it's interpreted a little bit beyond what's intended, but there are assignments for angels, and we'll continue to see some of those assignments for angels as we go through Revelation. For example, one of the things we pointed out before was the seven angels, these are the ones who blow the trumpets for these trumpet judgments.

They are neither male nor female, but are represented as males. The presentation on earth is as males, but they are essentially asexual beings. They are beings who have neither male nor female in the ultimate. Now, let's ask this question. How about us, when we're done here? Are you going to be male, female, both? When we're done here on planet Earth and we go to be with the Lord? Pardon? The same gender? Norm's shaking his head. What's that? Human beings? Yeah.

When do we go see the Lord? When we get a new body. Okay, we get a new body. That new body will be as new life. Okay. Here, you read it in your hand. It just says that they are not going to get married, right? That's what Jesus said. He didn't really specifically state whether it was going to be what form. And it just talks about a glorified body. It doesn't really say anything about gender. Let's turn to Matthew 22.

For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven. Are the angels of God in heaven male or female? No. Now, the thing is, it doesn't specifically say they are neither male nor female, except that we know that the angels are neither male nor female. So that's the comparison. The marriage nor given in marriage, that statement is there because I think it reflects the fact that we will be like the angels, neither male nor female. The maleness or femaleness appears to be for this earth. Yeah? And marriage is for this earth as well. And marriage is for this earth. Because what will be the marriage in heaven?

Christ. Christ and the bride. The church. Won't we be like Christ? And Christ is certainly not without gender. We will have bodies like his, however, what Christ himself describes here is basically genderless, because it says, like the angels. Now, exactly how that's going to appear is a good question. What we see presented here on earth among the angels is masculine. but that masculinity does not imply anything other than male in appearance. Nothing beyond that.

Okay, here we got angels were created holy with a time window within which they had the power of contrary choice. What do we mean by that? Angels created at one time were at one point in time all given a power of choice to choose for or against the Lord. They could choose for the Lord, or they could choose against the Lord.

And so what did they do? What happened? A third, as we'll see in Revelation chapter 12, we're not there yet, a third of them chose against the Lord. Now, can you imagine? What I envision is, here are angels, there in heaven with the Lord. And a third of them, this is some kind of spiritual insanity. A third of them chose against the Lord. And I mean, imagine the Lord saying, well, look, if you do that, you realize what's going to happen?

Oh, yeah. We're going to be relegated to planet Earth and we'll have eternity in the lake of fire. Oh, yeah. Let's pick that. Good choice. So here are these angels, a third of them, actually choosing against the Lord. And here's what else is interesting. We as human beings all fell in Adam, but have the opportunity to be saved by faith. Do the angels have that choice? Not now. Now. Isn't that interesting?

The Lord for all these fallen human beings gave the opportunity to be saved by faith. But the angels, so far as anything that's revealed, we have no evidence that they're actually given a choice to reverse the consequences of their decision. I think that shows the power of Satan as a deceiver. I mean, he deceived Eve. Yeah. And he said he's going to become greater than God. Yes. And so he convinced these angels, that he was going to become greater than God, so they chose him instead of God.

We just don't understand the power of the deception. He was created, what does it say in Genesis, as the most powerful and glorious of all angels or something like that? Tremendous power, tremendous There's a passage in Isaiah and a passage in Ezekiel, and we won't go into them, but we'll make reference to them later on here. Yeah, here is a place of great power, basically at the top of the angel hierarchy, and then choosing not, I'm going to do my own thing.

And being able to deceive a significant minority, a third of the angels, to say, hey, that's a good idea. Wow! What kind of spiritual insanity is this? The deception is phenomenal, but on the other hand, isn't that what happened with Eve and isn't that what a great many people succumbed to? And us. Yeah, us human beings succumbed to that massive deception. This huge spiritual insanity to be deceived and tricked about what's true.

Then finally we have this reference to a third of the angels choose God. We'll go into detail in a little bit more when we get to chapter 12, when we'll see that figure of a third of them deciding to choose with Satan. Hey, yeah, that's a good idea. So, okay, so we have this text box shows here all the angelic beings created at once. So let's take a look at page 3 on the handout. How many angels are there? And it's interesting, you go to different parts of scripture and that kind of gets answered in different ways. Not in conflict with each other, but kind of some different ideas. In the end, the number is huge. 10,000s is the number in Deuteronomy 33 verse 2. 10,000s. It doesn't say how many, just 10,000s.

2 Kings 6.17 is a whole mountain full. Enough to fill the mountain.

And by the way, that's a fascinating passage if you ever want to read it. There's more of us than there is of them. Amazing passage. I recommend it by the way. Thousands and thousands and ten thousands by ten thousands is Daniel 7 verse 10. Huge number. And finally twelve legions and one legion is about three to six thousand men. So several different measures.

But the complete answer is innumerable hosts of angels by human ability to count according to Hebrews 12, 22. Isn't it interesting? With us, until a person takes their last breath, there is the opportunity, even after a life of waste and error, there is the opportunity for someone to be saved at the very last minute. Anybody know anyone that's been saved towards the very last part of their life?

That was a case with my dad's mother. We would present the gospel to her, and she would just shut her mouth, not respond, just pretend like you never said anything. She wouldn't come back and try to refute you or tell you to shut up. She would just shut her mouth and not respond. That was her way of reacting.

Numerous family members tried to talk to her about it, and in the end, some neighbors that nobody met or knew of before were coming over and helping her because she was going through some serious medical problems. And these neighbors just about three weeks before she died presented the gospel and she listened and responded. I saw her one last time and she had a look on her face I had never seen her whole life long. There was a lady with great pain and not a good medical outlook, had an expression of joy on her face that she had never had in the many decades she'd lived before. Like she was about 87, something like that.

So that was neat. But angels don't appear to be given that opportunity. No opportunity. So their choice at the beginning was their choice forever. Their wills are fixed, is one way to put it here. Angels are not omnipresent and are limited in space. That's one thing.

Remember we talked about the myths that people commonly believe about Satan and the angels? There is a myth going about, for example, and many Christians succumb to it, the idea that Satan is sort of equal and opposite. The opposite part's okay, the equal part isn't. Satan does not have God's characteristics.

He's not everywhere at once. He doesn't know everything. So he is opposite but not equal. As a matter of fact, what we see in Revelation, and we've got several passages there in Daniel, that point out that these angelic beings have a locational assignment to their hierarchy. And actually a limited number of them actually travel about. that typically there's sort of a location assignment. Angels are not omniscient. They don't know everything. Their knowledge is limited. It's interesting, the Lord will give them a command and an assignment. You do this. You carry this out. You do this thing. But the Lord gives them that place.

They don't know everything. They don't know all that's going to happen. better off than angels or satans in what we can do. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, and what are the ways that we are actually privileged above angels or better off? What are some of those ways?

You make a good point. Well, that shows through our thinking process. Okay. I've spoken to a lot of people. Let me suggest something that we pointed out from Ephesians 3 verse 10, when we went through that some years back, is that when God wants to teach the angels about His character, particularly I think His grace, He points the angels to watch us.

You are living and walking and breathing angel college. Because you are the one that God's grace is evidenced in. As believers, and it's amazing, we talked, I think it was a question about guardian angels, but here's the flip side of it. You are essentially professors, unknown, but professors of God's character to the angels. You are angel college. They learn about God's character from you.

Because we have, and you're right Norm, we have expressed to us things as human beings about God's grace and God's mercy that the angels don't know personally. And yet we have the privilege of not only having experienced that, but living that out from day to day. Living by His grace. We can say grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so far as we can tell, the angels do that by watching us.

So in other words, you're saying they cannot be indwelt by God's Spirit where we can. Let me put it this way. I don't know that there's an explicit passage that says that they can be, whereas we have numerous passages that say that we as believers are. So that much is very clear. And the Lord has done things with us. Norm's right.

The Lord has done things with us and given us privileges and honors and blessings as human beings who believe. that the angels themselves don't have and won't have. They are a different category of created spiritual beings. And God has, in fact, dealt with them differently from the very beginning. And they're of a different character. Isn't that what Psalms 8 infers?

That man... Why does God show this grace toward man? Yes. It is amazing, isn't it? It's astounding. And this brings up an important point. My brother has put it this way. God's grace isn't grace unless it's amazing. You don't get it yet unless you're amazed. Once you're amazed, then you get it. Truthfully, it is amazing grace. It's grace that is so phenomenal, it amazes. It amazes.

Angels are not divine, which is why we are not to worship them, and in fact, angels in Revelation who are twice worshipped refuse and push away that mistaken worship of them by John. It certainly gained momentum, and that's one of the things Craig pointed out here, But it was also popular during New Testament times. So it's not new, it's basically a resurrection of something that was around for quite a while. Worship of angels, calling on angels to exercise special powers and that kind of thing. Directly addressing angels instead of addressing the Lord, which was mistaken there.

Okay, let's look at page 4 there. In the paragraph there, right above the box insert there, angels are of an angelic spirit body that allows appearance in bodily form. We will see the fallen angels take on a bodily form in Revelation chapter 9 that is both fascinating and grotesque. We're about to see the description here. Now, before we do that, remember we've still got more things to talk about angels and Satan. this illustration.

We talk here at Holly Hills about our position and our condition. Our position is the place that we have eternally because of what God has done in Christ. And we are in Christ and He in us. That's our position. Our condition is how we do day-to-day, either living according to that position or not. As a believer, right now, speaking in front of you, I am seated in the heavenlies, and so are you. Okay?

Ephesians 2.6. However, it is possible for me to live in such a way that's contrary to that heavenly seating. I could choose at any moment to live according to that heavenly seating or not. Okay? That's the issue of condition.

What's interesting is Satan has position and condition. Satan does too. And so what we have in this diagram here, in the middle of page four, is Satan's faults. Satan essentially will have three faults. The first one is the place where he chose to try to be like God himself. And the second one takes place mid-tribulation. What happens in the first couple chapters of Job? What do we see Satan doing in the first two chapters of Job? Satan shows up where? In heaven. Satan actually, as is apparent in Job and takes place now, Satan actually has access to heaven.

And matter of fact, one of his present roles, right now, is to show up in heaven and to throw accusations about you and at you before the Lord. Him. He has that access to be able to do that. That's why he's called the Accuser, is one of his names. So here Satan, the Accuser, has access to have That's going to end, and we're going to see that in the middle of the tribulation period, possibly as soon as three and a half years from now. His access to heaven will be cut off. He will be cast out of the heavenly scene, and finally, at the end of the millennium, cast into the lake of fire.

So he has essentially three falls, and that last fall is permanent. All of the falls are irreversible. Satan falls once and decides that he's going to try to be like God. That first fall was not reversible. He can't say, I've reconsidered and I think I'll change my mind. He can't do that. So each of these falls is permanent. We, however, as human beings, are very interestingly quite different. A person basically is born fallen, and by faith in Christ is then raised up. Satan doesn't have that option. He doesn't have that option. Are you with me so far? Okay? Alright. And so now we get to the point elaborating we made before.

Of the one-third of the angels who chose to side with Satan and against God, these fall into two groups, okay? versus the unhindered fallen angels confined to earth who know that they're previously given sentences to be carried out in the future, and fear being disembodied or being sent to the abyss.

In Matthew 28-25, here is the man with demons in him, and he meets Jesus as Jesus gets out of the boat, and he comes up to Jesus and says, You're not going to start torturing me yet, are you? And why? It's because they know who Jesus is, right? They have no question about who He is, and they have no question that some future time is coming where they're going to be cast in the lake of fire and tormented. So the first thing that they come up here in this Matthew passage is they come up to Jesus and say, You're not going to start torturing us yet, are you? And Jesus says, No, not yet.

These are those who are presently on the earth and have the opportunity to do evil things here on earth. They're limited to being here, but they are here on earth. Let's ask this question. What should be our attitude as believers about these demons that are here on planet earth? What should we think about them? Well, I think your answer comes pretty close. Yeah, other thoughts? Sam?

They're under submission to Christ or Jesus. Yeah, what's interesting is even as fallen angels who have already decided to rebel against the Lord, they still must do what the Lord says. And that is true right there when Christ came in His first coming and He got off the boat. And it's true in the passage we're about to look at here in Revelation chapter 9. God calls the shots for what they are allowed to do and not, and even what they must do. Yeah? darkness to the kingdom of light. So when that happens, you're no longer, they're no longer in control of who you are.

They may be able to deceive you and that, but you do not have to, because they've been defeated by Christ. And it's also a passage that shows that Christ is deity, whether people realize it or not. But if you look at the Gospels, it shows that He came the first time, but He's still deity. He's still deity, yes. Now, let's think of it, because Stan has begun to address the question I asked earlier.

What do we think about these demonic beings, these fallen angels? What do we think about them? And the truth is, let's start from what we know. We've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, right? Ephesians 1, verse 3. Can demons do anything to reduce that blessing? Nope. You as a believer, You as a believer are indwelt by the Lord. That's something that's going to come up in our study of 1 Corinthians. Can the demons do anything to change that? Nope. Can't do it. Can't touch it. The end of 1 Corinthians chapter 6, you are not your own, you are bought with a price. The end of 1 Corinthians chapter 7, you are not your own, you are bought with a price. Whose are you? You're the Lord's.

Can the demons do anything to change that? No. See? If you start going through this, demons, are they present? Yeah. Matter of fact, you could, I think, rightfully say, this planet is infested with them. Can't they hinder them? That's the thing. As you look at it, it is not as though they can have no influence. They can have an influence.

But there's no reason for us to allow it. and they cannot change anything that God has made to be true of us. give us a bad to try and tell the Lord, to deceive the Lord, and how he can even have a relationship with him because he can't stand to look upon sin. Isn't this interesting? You've asked a very important question. Why would the Lord continue to have Satan around?

Why not just say, look, you made a bad choice. You're going to the lake of fire. Right now, you're done. Don't pass go. Don't collect 200 denarii. Nothing. At least stay out of my house. And the door is shut. Don't let it hit you on the way out. All those kinds of things. You can truly say He is toast. The Lord could say, hey, you're done. You're done right now. You're not coming back. There's a one-way valve on this pipe and you're out of here.

And the Lord could have done that. But here's something interesting. He didn't. And why would the Lord still allow it to be true that Satan has access, for example, to accuse us? To do as he did with Job, where Satan comes and says, hey, can I do this and that and the other thing? And the Lord says, sure, go ahead. Why would that be true? Yeah. Then add on top of that that God is omniscient. Okay, yeah. So why is He even needed? Here is what is interesting.

In the case of Job, what did the Lord allow Satan to do? Test. Allowed Satan to test him. It is ultimately, Satan ends up being used as an instrument ultimately for God's glory because Satan cannot do anything that the Lord has not given him permission to do or has not directed him to do. Isn't that amazing? So, Satan has ill intent. There's no question about it.

But whatever Satan carries out is ultimately going to be carrying out something for the Lord's glory. He has permission and can only do it with permission. Otherwise, he wouldn't even bother going to heaven, he'd just do it. Instead, he has to ask permission of the Lord.

So it's one thing is that it still continues to show God's sovereignty and authority and power. There's something else that comes from this. And when you, as a believer, resist Satan, what happens? Yeah, that is a part of our spiritual growth. So oddly enough, while at first it might look like, heaven sakes, this is a bad thing. In fact, what the Lord's going to do is He's going to turn it into a good thing. He is going to use what Satan intends to reveal to grow us.

Here's something else. Satan is the accuser. How many times does his accusation stick? None. How's that for a really good record? Okay, let's go to court. What kind of record do you have? Oh, about zero to ten million. Maybe that's too low a number. But every accusation that Satan has falls flat on its face. And so every accusation ends up pointing to the complete adequacy of Christ's death on the cross. Jesus said, no, sorry, I took care of that one. Every single one. None of Satan's accusations, even given the name of accuser, none of them stick. None. Zip. Nada. Yes. But he can interfere with fellowship. Yeah.

He cannot change or disrupt our relationship with the Lord. He can disrupt our fellowship with the Lord, if we allow Him to do so. As we resist Him, and that's spoken of twice in the New Testament, as we resist Him, that is the Lord's opportunity provided for us to grow. Spiritual growth. Yes?

Would you say that our sin nature is more Actually, yeah, a lot of people will attribute this or that thing to Satan. Remember we said he's not omniscient, he's not omnipresent. He can't do things without God's permission. What is really the greater influence in the life of believers and the greater threat is the sin nature. Because the sin nature is something that still is with every single believer until they go home to see the Lord face-to-face. So that's actually, you're correct, a greater threat to the believer.

We have three of them, the world, the flesh, and the devil. The devil is not omniscient and not omnipresent. He's not everywhere at once. And also in the churches it said, hold on to what you have. So that kind of indicates that you can lose your rewards through deception. Yes. And cause you to lose things that you actually have earned. Yes. And that's the urging of John in his letters. Don't let loose of the rewards that you already have. Don't let those be lost, but claim them, grab them.

The rewards, by the way, are not a selfish thing to be hoarded, but are in fact an eternal capacity to glorify the Lord. The other category of angels are those that are chained and imprisoned angels being kept in darkness of the abyss, or the pit, as it's sometimes called, awaiting the carrying out of their final judgment. Except for these five months of release here in Revelation chapter 9, except for the five months of release, these beings that are held in the pit, or the abyss, are stuck there the whole time. They don't roam the earth. They're not free to go about.

Going back to this idea of Satan and Heaven, one thought I had was that he wants to expose Satan for what he is. Isn't that called the truth? Right? Yeah, that's called the truth. And what is Satan, the deceiver? And that's right. Satan's about deception. The Lord's about the truth. Yeah.

That's a very basic, you know, fundamental thing to look at. Satan's all about making things look other than the way they are. Trying to get you to see things other than the way they are. And trying to get the world to see things other than the way they are. The Lord is all about the truth. Yes.

And C.S. Lewis said that's exactly why he likes to have himself viewed as a red person with horns and a pointy tail because nobody's going to believe that such a thing exists. So that's good for him because it's really hard to expose something that nobody believes in.

Yeah, if you see it, Satan is this guy that shows up in cartoons and he whispers to people off their shoulder with this little guy, you know? And Satan is this guy that shows up at costume parties. But not anybody who would take seriously or, you know, consider it as a threat. So, yeah, I think Sidothos also made the valid point that the two great dangers about Satan are giving him too much credit and too little.

It is not perceiving him and taking him seriously, or the other thing is taking him too seriously. Those are the two errors that we can fall into. I noticed at the very top of the first page a typo. It's not verses 1 and 2, it's 1 through 12. So with that, let's take a look at verse 2.

He opened the bottomless pit, and the smoke went up from out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. Then out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth, and power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. This passage describes Satan as opening the bottomless pit. the abyssos, where we get our word abyss.

You probably don't want to go there. It's not a vacation spot. Once this pit is open we see the word smoke used three times. Smoke three times. Smoke comes out of the pit and John compares it to the smoke of a great furnace. Here this word great again, huge, massive. This isn't some little furnace, it's big. And it appears that the atmosphere is immediately darkened with the smoke. Now here's what's going to happen. We're not going to have time to finish this, so I'll let you read through the rest of it. Let me do go through these slides. Here is to give you an idea of what this might sort of be compared to.

Here are some pictures of modern locust swarms. Where the locusts go out and basically they darken the sky because of the density and number of them. I've never personally seen one that's this bad, but apparently they can get that bad. And even as you see in one picture, it almost looks like the sun's going down. And here's an example of one. This is from about five years ago. And here's these people trying to drive in the middle of this locust swarm. And it almost looks like the day is done. Here are some pictures to put together. Here's the scorpion sting, which is a part of the description that's in the passage. Here is a locust. And then here is an artist's depiction of what these beings, as they're fully described, might look like.

But can you imagine, if you've ever been through some kind of an insect or some other pest infestation, you know how you want to just close all the doors and windows and get away from the swarm? Can you imagine? Well, so much for camping trips this summer. Not so good. It's awfully hot, but these crazy critters bite through the screens and so we'll just have to keep the doors closed and the windows closed. Because once they get in here, it's awful. And I don't know when we're going to get out and go to the store and get some food. Because that's going to be not very nice.

Here is the full part of the artist's depiction of the abyss and the smoke coming out and these creatures coming out. Here is another artist's depiction of these creatures and human beings being subjected to the stings. Basically it's five months of stinging all but the 144,000 who are described in Revelation chapter 7 and 14. Those are the ones who are preserved from this stinging. Here's another artist's depiction of what that would be like.

One of the other interesting things, and we're going to see this farther on as we get into chapter 16, but there are At least half of the plagues against Egypt show up in these plagues upon the earth, these judgments upon the earth, and this is the first of them. Locusts, which was against the Egyptian god Serapi, shows up here in Revelation 9, 1-12. So that's the first of five of the judgments that show up in Revelation that are like the plagues upon Egypt.

Okay. Now, since we're running out of time, I'll leave it to you to finish up the rest of it. I think you'll be able to pick up on it. We got some real good discussion and some good comments. Thank you. And so let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, we do thank you for what you've revealed to us, and we thank you for the comforts that we do have, that what we have in you cannot be taken away, that this is a time when we will be with you and not here on planet Earth, and that in fact we have every reason to take great comfort in all that you've done and promised and accomplished for us. We look to you now to bring these truths home to our hearts.