Revelation 9

Revelation 9:1-21

THE OPENING OF THE SEVENTH SEAL Revelation 8:1 to Revelation 11:19. WE concluded the last talk by an appeal that men surrender their souls to the Son of Man before the day of His wrath come. “The Opening of the Seventh Seal” will add emphasis to that entreaty. We read that when He opened the seventh seal, “there was silence in Heaven about the space of half an hour”.When the coming birth of John the Baptist was announced to Zacharias, —the priest, whose lot it was to serve in the Temple at that time, —the angel confirmed the promise by paralyzing the priest’s tongue, and when he came out and could not speak unto them, the people “perceived that he had seen a vision in the Temple”. If the dumbness of a single servant of God excited the wonder of the multitude, what a portentous event when every angel in the whole heavenly host shall find his tongue suddenly tied, and turning his dumb eyes to the Father upon the throne, and to the Son sitting at the right hand, shall see them as silent as themselves, and a stillness, like that which must obtain in the deepest depths of ocean, reigning in a world where for millenniums silence has been a stranger. Would it not necessarily mean the awful calm prophesying some unthinkable catastrophe? The effect of this silence would be heightened by the sight of seven angels standing before God, their trumpets at their lips; and augmented still more by the event of another angel bending over the altar, holding in his hands a golden censer in which was mingled the prayers of all the saints, while the smoke of the same went up before God out of the angel’s hand. The very fact that these prayers were being presented would signify the portentousness of the coming storm, and would seem to show that up to the very time when judgment begins—Christ, Heaven’s chief angel, and man’s intercessor, will be pleading with the prayers of all the saints, that the storm of justice be yet a little withheld, and man offered further opportunity to repent.But at the very time while this silence reigns in Heaven, sin increases on the earth.

Calmness there, confusion here; overwhelming anxiety there, riotous indifference here. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets, seeing the increased sin, prepare themselves to sound.THE OF At the blast of their trumpets judgment begins.This judgment will involve nature first.“The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up”, etc. (Revelation 8:7-12). Have you never noticed how when man’s sin necessitates the exercise of Divine justice, God approaches man’s judgment by the way of mercy? He smites first of all the inanimate world, where His blow will fall upon unfeeling grass, trees and flowers, but at the same time prove conclusively His power, and call man’s attention to the occasion of His anger.When Pharaoh hardened his heart and refused to let God’s people go from Egypt, the Lord smote the waters which were in the great river Euphrates, and turned them to blood (Exodus 7:19-21). Afterward, you remember, He sent frogs over all the land, and still later turned the dust into lice, and followed that with the plague of flies; and when the judgment against the inanimate world would not suffice, He brought the murrain upon the beasts and that was succeeded by the hailstorm, which smote the cattle; and that by the swarms of locusts which devoured the crops, and so on. It was God’s attempt to teach Pharaoh and the people, without having to touch their persons with the hand of judgment. And to this hour the Divine method of judgment is always in mercy. Almost every man who sins against God will find himself corrected a hundred times, and in as many ways, before any wrath is executed against his person.

So in the sounding of the trumpets of judgment, when the four against the natural world were finished, and “evil men were waxing worse and worse”, a significant thing occurred. John saw “an eagle”, not an angel, but an “eagle” flying in mid-heaven, saying with great voice, “Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound” (Revelation 8:13, R.

V.)If you will consult your Scripture you will find the saints often likened to eagles (Luke 17:34-37; Matthew 24:26-28; Isaiah 40:31).The announcement is succeeded by the blasts of the fifth, sixth, and seventh trumpets. When the fifth sounds the star falls from heaven unto the earth. That this star is simply the messenger of judgment is evidenced in that it says, “to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit”, etc. Read Revelation 9:1-6. That was the beginning of God’s judgments upon the sinner.

Again, judgment is tempered with mercy; all men are not destroyed in a moment, but only a portion of them; the baser portion we may believe. And in that very destruction the remainder are again called to repentance.

People often ask the question why God permits sin to go on; and why He privileges gross sinners to live, saying that they are cursing themselves and destroying others. Peter has answered that, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).But the five woes will no more suffice to change the course of men whose hearts are set upon sin, than the five plagues of Egypt sufficed to turn Pharaoh’s feet into paths of righteousness. And scarcely will this woe have passed when the sixth angel shall sound. Read Revelation 9:14-19.The man who makes a practice of preaching a gradual improvement in the world, which by the product of evolution, will finally bring in the Millennium without the Master, the Kingdom of God on earth without the King; must find it difficult to interpret what follows, “And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: “Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts” (Revelation 9:20-21). It necessitates the sounding of the seventh trumpet, bringing the end. As Pharaoh went down before the tenth plague, never to rise again, and sinful Egypt was left without a king, so the nations of the world, forgetting God, shall one day hear the trumpet sound that shall unseat every ruler and bring an end to every government, whelm every rebellious people as effectually as the Red Sea buried Pharaoh and his wicked followers. I suppose there are those who regard this as an awful fate for the world, and so it is; and yet, no worse for the unregenerate than the natural death that sweeps its every generation. The end of all sin is awful! But if righteousness succeed judgment, how desirable!Have you ever stopped to think what it would mean to have wickedness removed from the whole realm, one righteous sovereign reigning from sea to sea; and from the rivers unto the ends of the earth? Then jealousies between peoples would be at an end; boundary disputes would cease; unjust restrictions in trade would be lifted; wars of greed and conquest come to an end; slavery and pauperism pass forever; famine and pestilence be obsolete words; the gates of the cemeteries would rust upon their hinges; hearts cease from sorrow; and tears from touching the cheeks of men; the brotherhood of man would find its first open field for exercise; and the Fatherhood of God become a blessed fact, instead of being as now, a theological vagary.

John was not wicked but wise when he prayed for this consummation, and I believe that it is only needful for men to understand the issue, to join in the prayer of the seer.THE OF Going back over these four chapters it is interesting to study the instruments of destruction that will be employed.When God is smiting nature He employs natural forces. Hail and fire mingled with blood burn up the third part of the trees and all green grass; a burning mountain turns the third part of the sea into blood; destroys the third part of all creatures, and whelms the third part of all the ships; the blazing star, —or as the original word suggests, the great light, like unto a lamp or torch, —turns the three parts of the rivers into wormwood, and men drinking therefrom die of the bitterness; while at the sounding of the fourth angel the great luminaries are smitten—the third part of the sun, the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; light is shortened and darkness increased.

If any man imagine that these figures of speech are enormously overdrawn he must be poorly impressed with the power of those natural forces which are eternally subject to the manipulations of God’s mighty hand. If he doubts God’s ability to so loosen the winds and storms of heaven as to make hail and fire mingle with blood, a medium of judgment to a world that had rejected mercy, he has never seen, or even given serious consideration to the reports of a single cyclone. Once in a while God gives us a hint of what He can do with the lightnings of heaven; once in a while God permits us to see what the gentle wind that daily kisses our cheeks—can easily accomplish for the mightiest structures of earth; once in a while God permits a single mountain in the midst of the sea to break its crust and send its flames and lava into the waters while the shock thereof rolls landward a thousand miles. All these things are but gentle warnings, and like the little light that was seen for days by the inhabitants of Pompeii who looked Vesuvius-ward; they speak eloquently to men, pleading that they escape, while they can, from the coming doom. “He who can bind the sweet influence of the Pleadies,” can also “loose the bands of Orion.”But to natural forces He adds supernatural creatures. When men have disregarded the judgments against Nature, and He must punish them in their own persons, He employs agents, not instruments, in the work. These agents“the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. “And they had hair as the hair of Women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. “And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. “And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months” (Revelation 9:7-10). I see no necessity of holding this language to be figurative. The pit is filled with fallen spirits “which kept not their first estate”, and if Satan assumes the form of “a great dragon” and “the serpent”, why should not his subjects and emissaries assume the forms here suggested, —forms of power, forms of intelligence, forms of mighty malignance, forms, the very sight of which, superinduces fear, and speak of tremendous power. We saw in our last study that there were supernatural creatures about the throne who had the faces of a lion, symbol of courage; of an ox, likeness of faithful endurance; of a man, indicative of intelligent action; and of the eagle, speaking of alacrity in obedience.Why then should hell not have its antipodes of these living ones, in the form of infernal tormentors, whose pleasure would accord with their office? Already science is beginning to confirm this suggestion of Scripture. Only a few years ago the most advanced physician among us would have laughed to scorn the present theory of disease, namely, that men’s bodies and even their every drop of blood, was crowded with living creatures and that fever is only the expression of the destructive work of these Satanic myrmidons. If in these days the devil is able to smite men with such a multitude of his servants, as Dr.

Simpson has said, “How much more may this become the case when all the restrictions of this age shall be let loose.”Eventually the Son of Man Himself appears in judgment. One might think that this was a modification of justice and gave the promise of mercy; but not so! On the contrary, the part that Jesus Christ, the merciful, shall play, will prove the consummation of judgment against impenitent men. You go but to the second Psalm and you read words that illuminate all of this Scripture, for even there the Psalmist is speaking of the final contest between the heathen and the Lord of Heaven ; the former shall rage.“The kings of the earth shall set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bands asunder, and cast away Their cords from us. “He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision. “Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure. * * “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel”. No wonder the Psalmist concluded with that cry, “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him” (Psalms 2:1-12). Don’t you remember that George Elliot makes Baldasar put his very life in pawn for the sake of Tito Meleme, the boy who so excited his ardent love? For him he makes all possible sacrifice! But when Tito proved himself unworthy, played traitor, it was that very man who had shown him such mercy and grace, that eventually exercised against him direful judgment.It is significant that this Book of Revelation speaks of the Lamb as one whose wrath shall fill the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the chief captains, the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free-man with such fear that they shall hide themselves from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and shall say to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us * * from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand”!THE DESCENT OF THE SON OF MAN “And I saw another mighty Angel come down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon His head, and His face was as it were the sun, and His feet as pillars of fire: “And He had in His hand a little book open: and He set His right foot upon the sea, and His left foot on the earth, “And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when He had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. “And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. “And the Angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up His hand to Heaven, “And sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever, who created Heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when He shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as He hath declared to His servants the Prophets” (Revelation 10:1-7). Three plain suggestions here:—First the personal Coming of Christ. The strong Angel coming down out of Heaven is Jesus. That is suggested not alone by the fact that He is designated as “the strong Angel”, but by the more definite testimony, “the rainbow was upon Him”.That could never crown another than this minister of God’s mercy. His face was as the sun. That is the same description of the Son of Man given in the first chapter.“And His feet as pillars of fire”. Those are the feet which were described in the first chapter which were “like unto burnished brass.”“And He had in His hand a little book open”, and He was the only One found that could break the seals of the Book, and open it.“He set His right foot upon the sea, but His left foot on the earth”.

The Lord has promised to Him as He had to the Israelites of old, possession of every place upon which He should set His foot, so now He comes to claim the sea and the land as His very own.I should like to talk to you about His rightful inheritance. When He poured out His Blood on Calvary He bought back the sea and the land, as well as the souls thereof; they are His, and when He comes He will claim them to do with them as He pleases.But by far the more important lesson of this tenth chapter is found in the circumstance that His descent will bring an end to the probation period.And the servants who have been wicked and slothful in the Master’s business will find His return to the earth the occasion of their distress; and it will result in their being cast into outer darkness, to “weeping and gnashing of teeth”.Oh, that I could properly impress the object of this probation period!

Oh, that I could burn into the hearts of men the importance of making the right use of it! Oh, that the parables of the talents, the pounds, the wise and foolish virgins, might compel us to attend upon the injunction, “Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh”.Henry Van Dyke says, “This world is not the place of judgment, but the place of probation, in which the good and the evil are working side by side, not only in the same community, but in the same character; and not to be finally separated until they have produced their fixed and final results.” And he goes on to show that while men are wrestling with the question of whether they shall do right or wrong, the trial period continues, the days of life are vouchsafed, the sun still shines and the rain still falls. Man may be deeply sunk in evil and have hope, for God is still saying, “I do not judge thee yet.” How solemn the sweet assurance; but how clearly the fact that God does not now judge, reveals the certainty that God will judge hereafter. If this world be only the place of probation, then beyond it there must be a place of judgment. The sun will not shine forever, and the rain will not always fall upon evil-doers. How precious then, how costly and invaluable is every day and hour of this immortal life, in which the welcome sunlight, the gentle rain, assure us that the upward way is still open to us.

But how long for you and me; how long shall this time of hope endure? Who can tell when the night cometh?The eleventh chapter is given to the testimony of the two witnesses and to the beginning of the Millennium reign.THE OF THE TWO Three questions I want to raise with reference to these witnesses and let the Scriptures answer them; three statements I want to make with reference to the Millennium reign; then we shall leave these four chapters with you, trusting that God may instruct you out of them, and if any one be without Christ, make them the means of his conversion.My first question is, Who are these witnesses? Various and conflicting answers have been given to that question, and upon careful consideration of these, I am compelled to select that one put forward by Dr. Seiss, namely, that Enoch and Elijah are the two witnesses who shall return to the earth and “prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth”. I maintain this substantially for the same reason which he assigns. First of all Enoch and Elijah are the only ascended saints whose bodies are subject to the first death, they having escaped that by translation. In the next place Enoch and Elijah were both famed when they were here in the world, for the word of their testimony to an unbelieving generation.

But far above and beyond all these considerations is the fact that the Scriptures promise the return of Elijah, while the Apocryphal Books and the ancient fathers always associated with his coming, a similar ministry for Enoch. After John the Baptist was dead, Christ still affirmed, “Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things”.

And even in the time of the Acts, Peter referred to this restoration or restitution, as associated with the Second Coming of the Lord (Acts 3:19). It is also significant that when Elijah was in the world he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and “it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months”, and here it is prophesied that when he shall come again he shall “have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy”—three years and six months.Dr. Dowie declared himself to be Elias, but he didn’t shut the heavens for the space of three years and six months!What is the object of these two witnesses? is my next question. The text answers that. The very fact that they were witnesses shows their object; and the additional fact that they are spoken of as the two olive trees and two candlesticks, reminding one of the vision of Zachariah, “a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof: and two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof”. The Prophet asked, you remember, “What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof”? and again, “What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves”?

And the answer was, “These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth”. And how much that antediluvian world needed the burning and shining light of Enoch’s life; and how much degenerate Israel, and drunken Ahab and his hosts, had the same need.

And how truly it might have been said of these men of the olden times, as of John the Baptist, “They were burning and shining lights.” And how wonderful the mercy of God that will bring them back again to witness with greater fervor; to speak forth more luminous truth when we shall be coming into the end of the age.My third question is, Why were they slain? I believe the Scriptures clearly indicate the reason: the beast that cometh up out of the abyss cannot endure to have faithful men live. There are those who think the time of persecution is over; but if so, only because the time of faithful preaching is so far passed. You bring back an Enoch to the world and nothing but a new translation would save him from crucifixion. You bring back to the world an Elijah, and an Ahab will be found in some new potentate.I have just ridiculed Dr. Dowie’s pretentions of being Elias, but I am profoundly convinced that the hate of the world against him was not because of his assertions; not because of the pompous pride which he put on; nor because any man proved him to be dishonest in his business methods, but more largely because he uncovered sin.If any man imagine that civilization has brought us to the point where the witness of a new Elijah and a new Enoch would be acceptable, he does not understand his own mind, nor has he ever seen the pictures that the Scriptures present of the times to come. He that would live godly in Christ Jess must suffer persecution.The verses that remain touch the subject ofTHE REIGN What comfort! After hearing this judgment; after witnessing the writhings of the earth; after looking upon the smitten sea; after having beheld the very luminaries of heaven partially blotted out; after having heard the moans of men who sought death without being able to find it, and desire death, only to see their decease flee from them, what blessing to turn from it all, and look full into the face of Him who is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, and who shall reign forever and ever. No wonder the four and twenty elders which sit before God on their thrones, fell upon their faces and worshiped God saying, “We give Thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast”; and mark you that they did not say, “and which is to come” as heretofore, for lo, He is present already, and has taken the great power and is reigning. With that reign is associated resurrection and rewards for God’s own. He will not forget them. When He comes it will be the day of victory for them— everyone; and all their rewards, their joys, all the glorious prospects of Millennium here, and ages on ages beyond, spent in the rapture of His presence, and in the benediction of His praises, in the sweetness of His service, in the salvation of His everlasting power, shall be in exact accordance with the promise of His Word, for lo, “the Temple of God was opened in Heaven, and there was seen in His Temple the ark of His testament”.

Blessed Vision! That ark contained the will and testament of God toward His own. Happy is the child who has laid up in some place of safe keeping the will of a wealthy father, reminding him every time he turns toward it that it is to him a pledge of all the property mentioned therein, and that the justice courts of the earth will grant his claim, in accordance with the provisions thereof.“With faltering footsteps, I will journey on, Watching the stars that roll the hours away, Till the faint light that guides me now is gone, And, like another life, the glorious day Shall open o’er me from the empyrean height, With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light.”