0906 THE WOES

SEPTEMBER 6 = REVELATION 9

THE WOES

The previous chapter ended with an eagle calling out in a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth!” Four of the seven trumpets have sounded to this point, and the final three are the three ‘woes’ that the eagle just announced. (Viewer discretion advised.)

Trumpet #5: The symbolism is complicated. It involves a star that had fallen from the sky, who opens the shaft of the Abyss, which releases smoke and locusts. The locusts are there to torture those who did not have the mark of God on their foreheads. People are in torment for 5 months. “During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.” That was the first woe.

Trumpet #6: Four angels who are bound at the “great river Euphrates.” These angels have the power to kill. “And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.” A third of mankind was killed by these horses and riders, through fire, smoke and suffer that came out of their mouths.

This is a brutal time to be living on earth, and it was soon to come in the days of John. Several of the images that John describes sound like they could be first century attempts to discriminate between the saved and the unsaved. But put into our day, I could see John trying to describe Huey helicopters by describing them as locusts, or as the horses being weapons of modern warfare. It doesn’t really matter whether they are manmade or that they are actually locusts and horses, as he describes. Either way, you and I now have been warned by earlier generations, and about the truly final years of mankind on earth.

The destruction of a third of mankind is mentioned for a second time. Which means by this point that over half of the population has been wiped out, either by punishing armies or by more natural means.

It seems pretty unmistakable that these are acts of judgment from God against the earth. But for some of us, even when we are facing God’s judgment, we still refuse to change.

“The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.”

I find it hard to imagine anyone being so hard hearted that in the midst of all this torture, they still refuse to repent. 

On the other hand, I guess it is happening already right now! People have Bibles, access to religious programming, churches, freedom of religion, and much more. Yet we choose to become agnostic, to live selfish lifestyles, to become angry toward God. We hold on to Humanism, or self-made spiritualism,  or whatever system of doubt we choose. On the other hand, we turn around and blame God (the One we claim we don’t believe in) for our troubles. They are the reason we cannot, or do not, believe.

And that last paragraph is the story of human history, in all its ugliness. God, have mercy on us all. Amen.