He is a Murderer from the beginning
I'm getting ahead of myself here only because I lost all my notes for Revelation 9:1-12 but will get my act together and put that on hopefully soon. I'm skipping ahead, so I can continue with the next two sections. This section is Revelation 9:13-21. Here's the text:
13Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, 14saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” 15So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. 16Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. 17And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone. 18By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed—by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. 19For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm. 20But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. 21And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
So we start off this section with four angels about to be released. We see they are bound and will be released to kill. We also can see by the text these angels have been prepared, for just this time in the future, to be set free to wreak havoc upon the earth.
The Greek lends itself to this passage in the perfect tense meaning they were set aside long ago bound and continue to be bound and prepared right up until the time God releases them. We are not told why only four angels or who they are even. Perhaps the reason has to do with the four compass points on the earth meaning the release of these four angels will have a worldwide affect. In that case, none will be safe on earth. The whole planet will be affected.
So the question begs to be answered. Are these good or bad angels? The hint is that they are bound. What reason would there be to bind up a good angel? Demonic angels can be referred to as angels. We see here they are set free by Christ himself. Their location is the Euphrates. For those that remember, we know the Euphrates ran through the Garden of Eden and is located still in the modern country of Iraq. They will come from the place where Israel will fear.
We see they are set loose to kill 1/3 of mankind. How many is that? We've seen already in 6:8 1/4 of the population was killed. Here it's 1/3. This equals 1/2 of the world to be affected. Using today's stats this would be 3.3 billion dead. Imagine the impact this is going to have. One half of the planet's population will be gone.
Through all of this we see God's mercy and grace. Yes, it's very evident even here in the midst of this death and destruction. Because God is slow moving in his anger and wrath, he at first spared 3/4 and then 2/3 of the earth's population. Now after all this 1/2 of the population is still alive yet to make their decison for or against God. He doesn't totally wipe them out as he could.
So here we have demonic forces about to be released, but even now with demons all around us to take us down, we have to remind ourselves that we still have opportunities and freedoms we take for granted. There will come a time when all that will end. A day will come when all freedoms and opportunites are lost, and it's finally finished.
We see, looking at v15, that this day has been prepared even down to the hour, date, time and year. This is preordained, set up and appointed by God for this exact time. God will say one day that it's enough. God will say mankind, as we know it, will be gone. Satan's army will be utilized in this endeavor when given the opportunity. They will be allowed to do this and will seize the opportunity to do so. Until then they have no power. We read in John 8:44 Jesus speaking of Satan. He said:
"You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it"
Satan and his legion of demonic angels will be allowed to do their thing but even then they will be limited by one third as seen here.
In v16 we see a description of an army. These four angels will be like four generals in charge of 200,000,000 almost the size of the population of the United States. To put this in perspective, the entire WWII allied forces were about 70,000,000.
So the question put to us now is, is this literal or symbolic? Well we always want to look for the literal sense first if we can. Could this be a literal army of Satan's? John wrote that he "heard" the number. He didn't count them. Could they be human or are they demonic?
Think about the logistics in feeding and transporting a human army this large. Is it even feasible to think about moving this large amount of human soldiers?
There has been some thought thru the years that this army could be made up of Chinese and later it's been thought to be a Muslim army. This would be quite the Holy War a Jihad of all Jihads if it were the case.
None of this can be sustained. We can only wait and see what this will be in the future if we are still here. I take this as literal. These are horses with some sort of demonic riders killing as they ride through the earth. Notice here they are allowed to kill but when the 5th Trumpet was blown the scorpions were not allowed to kill. What we are seeing here, as I said earlier, is the intensity is increasing with every unrolling of the scrolls and blows of the trumpets.
These horses have riders with tri-colored breastplates. Imagine 200,000,000 horsemen with bright colors such as fiery red, hyicinth blue and sulfur yellow. These colors symbolize plaques. Sulfur when it burns gives off a blue tinge. So here we see the colors represented and are called plaques in v18 killing 1/3 of all mankind left on the earth:
Red: Fire
Blue: Smoke
Yellow: Brimstone; sulphur
We see a scary description of these horses. They have a head like a Lion and out of their mouths come, fire, smoke and sulphur. It sure sounds like Sodom and Gomorrah with all this fire and brimstone description.
Job describes a Leviathan in 41:18-21:
18His sneezings flash forth light, And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.19 Out of his mouth go burning lights;
Sparks of fire shoot out. 20 Smoke goes out of his nostrils, As from a boiling pot and burning rushes.21His breath kindles coals, And a flame goes out of his mouth.
What is Job describing? It's a dragon like creature he starts off describing back in 41:1. Perhaps Job foreshadowed this creature that we're seeing in Revelation now, and maybe John is going back to his knowledge of the the OT in describing what he's seeing here. One thing to keep in mind is that Satan is called the dragon and from what we're reading here, it seems as tho his army is a likeness of the ol' dragon himself.
In v19 with all the speak of tails, and serpents it seems to bring us back to the Garden of Eden remembering the serpent there bringing death and destruction to a most perfect state of being. We read earlier in this chapter 9 of the locusts. While they are allowed to do harm, they are also instructed not to kill. So once again we see God is turning up the heat a little bit more as he is in complete control.
Back in Luke 10:19 Jesus was giving instructions to the 70 disciples he sends out. He said this:
“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. "
Perhaps God is giving the 144,000 sealed ones we read of earlier power over all this.
We see by continuing on in Rev 9:20-21 those who don't die still will not repent. Nothing new here even when the heat gets turned up. We talk to people about Jesus today, and they don't get it. God has ripped our hearts open. He's done heart surgery on us. We're excited to tell others about this, yet they walk away unaffected and do not hear or see what we are trying to tell them. This has been going on since the dawn of time, so why should we be surprised? More on this in the next session.
We can grow up in church as faithful attendees. We can learn all the scriptures serving others and still not repent of our sins. We can try and earn all the brownie points we think we need to gain entrance to heaven yet we're only fooling ourselves if we don't lay our sins down at his feet. God wants our heart. He wants us to realize no matter how religious we are it doesn't matter. He doesn't want our religion. He wants us. He wants the personal relationship that religion can't offer. This cannot happen until the heart is broken like an egg; spilled open. Only then will we realize what he's done for us. Until he broke me in two, I didn't get it either.
Nothing matters until he touched my heart. I deserved hell and he gave me mercy. The word of God changes me everyday. There is more to the word of God than just reading a bible. The impact of His word hits like a ton of bricks as it chips away bit by bit finally breaking to bits a cold stoney heart. He then replaces this heart of stone with a new soft clean heart. One that is solely committed to Him and His ways.
Notice tho, they did not repent. Instead they continued to turn to their idols. They exchanged the truth of God for the lies of the evil one. There is a connection to worship and behavior. We see here:
Worship ................................................. Behavior
Demons and Idols....................................Murder, sorceries, immorality, theft
Exodus 20:3 says: You shall have no other gods before Me.
This is being violated in the grossest of ways. Here we see they are worshipping demons and odols. Today we make ourselves idols. We worship self. We are #1 in our lives. We need to look good, eat good, feel good. We need our esteem fully realized. They also will be lovers of selves in the end times. There is nothing new under the sun.
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