What Happens When God's Wrath Replaces Grace — Revelation 9 & 11

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. And again, it's good to have everybody back and ready for another half hour. For those of you joining us on television, once again, we like to explain because we know we have new listeners every week. Our letters are constantly saying, I just caught your program last week for the first time. So for those of you that are new, we're just an informal Bible study. We have no underwriters. We aren't beholden to any group. We just feel that the Lord has led us to an opportunity to open the Scriptures, and as I've said so often, help people to see what they really say, not what we think someone else thinks they say, but we just try to help people to read it. I've stressed over and over, when you read, read. But most people don't. They just read, and they skim, and they don't know what they read. So anyway, we're glad you're with us. Take your Bible and follow these Scripture references right with us. And again, we want to announce that booklet number three is now available. Everyone here has already got theirs, so give us a call or write to us, and we'll get them in the mail to you. They've been well received. I'm amazed at how the Lord uses these things. I still feel so inadequate on these, but whatever. It's the Lord's business. Now, Revelation chapter 9, we'll just pick right up where we left off in the last program when we were on verse 15. Now again, we don't sensationalize these things, but these are events that are going to happen. And as we were just talking during our break, see, the book of Revelation is so totally different than almost any other portion of Scripture. You remember when we taught the book of Genesis, we just went verse by verse, chapter after chapter. And you come into the New Testament, you can do the same thing. You can begin with the birth of Christ or the appearance of John the Baptist, and you just take it verse by verse and chapter by chapter. It chronologically just unfolds. Paul's letters, you can start with Romans 1, and you can just teach it verse by verse. When you get to the book of Revelation, you can't do that. It would make absolutely no sense to just simply take the book of Revelation and go verse by verse by verse by chapter. And as I pointed out in our last program, you have to isolate the events and then piece them together. Now, why the Lord is seen fit to do this, I don't know, except for one reason, and that is to make a study. I can't see any other reason for it. He just wants to make sure that it's not so simple that we don't have to study it. So we've been jumping around a lot, and purposely, so that we can keep the continuity of the events rather than of the chapter and verse. So now in chapter 9, verse 15, we've been following the trumpet judgments, or these various events that are going to come on the scene, now one right after the other. How far apart at this point in time? I wouldn't venture a guess, probably six months, who knows. But they're going to keep getting closer and closer together, remember, and then when we get those final seven bold judgments, they're just going to be almost, I dare say, every month a new catastrophe striking the human race. But now in verse 15, where we left off, these angelic beings that God has confined in the area of the Euphrates River are now released. They were prepared for a specific role, and we didn't finish it in the last program, but their role is to slay the third heart of man, or of the human race. In other words, you know, I was thinking the other day, how many million people lost their lives as a result of World War II, under all causes? Fifty million. Fifty million people during the course of World War II lost their lives, that is, civilians and military and everything. Fifty million. That's a lot of people, but do you know that's just a drop in the bucket compared to what's going to happen here? Now the population is running between five and five and a half billion today. You remember back in the seal judgments when we first opened the tribulation by the end of the pestilence and the disease, one-fourth of the population will be gone? Well, that's over a billion people in a matter of two or three years. That's beyond our comprehension, a billion. All right, but now you see within a matter of months the human race is going to lose one-third of the world's population. I mean, it is mind-boggling. And then people can glibly go on their way and think nothing of being caught in these events. Hey, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. But anyway, it's coming. Now I think the way these people will be put to death is in the next verse, verse 16. And the number of the army of the horsemen were 200,000,000. Now those of you who know your circles in math, your zeros, how many is that? Well, that's 200 million. Now remember, there's only one power on earth that brags, and they did again just a few weeks ago. Mao Tse-Tung was constantly bragging that he could put 200,000,000 military men on the field, China, with her one billion of people, can put 200,000,000 of servicemen in the field in any one given time. Now I have to feel that this is what's referred to. I feel that this 200,000,000 man army will be the Chinese along with probably a few of the other Orientals, and they're going to be making their way westward toward the Middle East. Now you want to remember, we're in a period of time when God is now doing the supernatural. And we're going to see God sovereignly causing the Chinese authorities to send that army moving westward. And as they do, I feel that they are going to be like Sherman's march to the sea of the Civil War. Remember that one? What did he do? Destroyed everything in their path. And that's what I think is going to happen here. I think this Chinese horde is just going to literally murder and mutilate and ravage the countryside as they're moving toward the Middle East. And of course, at this point in time, there is still one great natural barrier again, and what is it? The River Euphrates. Now you see the various bridges across the River Euphrates today would not even hold a candle to moving 200,000,000 men across it. So we're going to see in a future chapter that God will dry up the Euphrates, it'll be dry as a bone so that they won't need bridges, they'll just simply migrate across it. But as of now, we see this great 200,000,000 man army beginning to move out of the east. And then verse 7, 17, And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and men that sat on them, having breastplates of fire and jazz. And now we were talking about break time. I've thought of it before, and I didn't think of it during our last program, but there is a possibility, and it's not so remote after all, that some of these horse -like creatures or these locusts may be the ancients' way of picturing our modern-day helicopters. And I'd thought of it before, and Alice brought it out, and I said, Yes, that's exactly what I've thought before. In fact, I was reminded immediately, I don't know how many of you watched the television series, I can't remember the name of it, probably a few years ago now, of this super, super helicopter. And you remember its opening scene was it would always come just over the breasts of the hill, and that in itself, you know, would almost give you goosebumps. And the feats that that thing was capable of doing, of course, was almost beyond reason. But nevertheless, these are possibilities. And then verse 17, I've also always taught for 20 years that I think this is the ancient language for probably even tanks. Look at the language. "...breastplates of fire, jafts of brimstone, and the heads of the horses were the heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone." Well, now we know that modern warfare has nuclear shells even for artillery and for tank guns and so forth. And so I don't think we're stretching it too far that this could very well allude to that type of modern warfare. And then with these 200 million men and the weapons of war, they indeed, now verse 18, so by these three, fire, smoke, and brimstone, are the third part of men killed by the fire, the smoke, and the brimstone, which issued out of their mouth. Now I also have to remember, take, you know, you take things scripturally, which of course many times is spirit, but on the other hand, many times it's logical. What percent of the population of this planet live in the Orient? Well, a good part of it, see? I've already mentioned China, one billion people. That's almost a fourth of the planet's people are in China alone. And then you've got India with its teeming masses, its millions, Japan with its millions. And so you see, when you take the whole Orient, and if this mass army of 200 million men is indeed just pillaging every step they take, they could very easily, just by wiping out a good portion of the Oriental population, bring all this to pass. All right, verse 19, their power is in their mouth and in their tails. Their tails were likened to serpent head heads, and many of them do hurt again. You can take it as modern warfare if you want to. And then verse 20, "...and the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not, or changed their mind about the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons." In other words, they're going to continue demon worship. "...that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood. All these idols neither can see, nor hear, nor walk." Now here again, this is unique to the Orient, isn't it? You have more idol worship in the Orient today than any other place on earth. You still have the Buddhas worshiping the idols of Buddha, and the Shintos of Japan worshiping idols, and you take Tibet, all those areas of the East are still under abject idolatry. All right, now verse 21, "...neither repented they, or did they change their mind of their..." Now we're going to take this carefully, "...of their murders, of their sorceries, of their fornication or their gross immorality, nor of their thefts." Now it's an interesting word buried in this little verse that very few people catch, and it's unfortunate that the King James translators or others haven't caught it, and that is the word sorcery, and it is from the Greek word, who knows what it is, pharmakia, I -E or E-I, I think it's E -I, pharmakia, the E-I is pronounced as an I, pharmakia, that's the word out of the Greek translated, sorceries. Now think for a minute, what is the English word that comes from pharmakia? Pharmacy, and what's the main role of a pharmacist? Drugs. Now read it in that light, "...neither did they repent of their murders, nor of their drugs, nor of their immorality, nor of their thefts." What have you got in that verse? The drug culture. You have got the typical drug culture, because wherever you have drugs, as we're seeing in our inner city, what have you got? Murder. Along with their murder, you're going to have constant thefts, because they have to rob and steal in order to support their habit, and then of course, as soon as people get involved in that kind of a wicked culture, then morality means nothing, and so their immorality gets grosser by the day. And so, as much as I am in favor of the so-called war on drugs, it's a losing battle. It's a losing battle, because the world is headed more and more to the drug culture, and remember drugs and demon worship many times go hand in hand. You can hardly separate it, because drugs, you see, model the mind. Demon worship models the mind. In fact, I read here a year or two ago that the communists, before communism fell apart, were actually using satanic worship and demonism to counter the drug culture. Isn't that something? Well, all they were doing was fighting fire with fire. But anyway, it's an interesting verse that as we come toward the end of the tribulation, the whole world will be saturated with the drug culture and all of the evil attendant with it. All right, now that's the sixth trumpet. Now we're going to have to skip clear over to chapter 11 and verse 15 and pick up the seventh. You see what I mean? You can't take it verse by verse or chapter by chapter. We have to follow the events and then come back and pick up what we've had to skip. So now in chapter 11, verse 15, the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven saying, "...the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He, the Christ, shall reign forever and ever." Now put that all together in one thought. What is He going to reign over? Well, the kingdoms of this world are going to become the kingdom of this Christ. And again, it comes right back to what we showed on the board in our last program, that as you come out of the seven years of the tribulation, this is of course the paying off of the curse. It's going to deliver the world from the curse. The earth is going to revert back as it was in the Garden of Eden, and in comes the kingdom. Now the thing that is amazing, you go back to Matthew chapter 4. Now I know Satan is powerful, and I know Satan is wise, but on the other hand you sometimes wonder how he could be so ignorant, don't you? How could he be so ignorant as to think that he can still overcome the Christ? But he'll never give up, of course, until his doom is sealed. But go back to Matthew chapter 4, and let's jump in at verse 8. Matthew 4, verse 8. This of course is during the temptations of Jesus after that 40 days of fasting. You all know the account. You know the Scripture portion. Verse 8 says, "...and again the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of this world." See? Now we're not talking about something out there that's ethereal or invisible. We're talking about the kingdoms of this world. Now from this point in history, when Satan is dealing here with Jesus at the time of his earthly ministry, what great kingdoms have already come and gone? Well, some of the great pharaohs of Egypt, and then the Babylonian Empire, and then the great Medean Persian Empire, the great and glorious Empire of Greece, and now we're at the very epitome of Rome, see? And all these great empires flourished, and they left with their pomp and their circumstance. And now Satan says, now just look back through the centuries of time. Look ahead. All these kingdoms, they're mine. I'll give them to you, see? I'll give them to you, on condition, what was the condition? If you'll fall down and worship me. Isn't that something? Now you see, evidently Satan at that point in time did not understand or did not comprehend that Christ was going to have those kingdoms. They are going to be his, and he's going to one day just simply obliterate them from view, and they're going to blow away like the dust of the summer threshing floor, Daniel says, And he's going to set up his own kingdom, a glorious kingdom. Now can't you imagine what this world would be like if it was totally ruled and reigned over by Satan as it will one day be ruled by Christ? See, Satan is still held in check by God's checks and balances, as we call it. Satan can only just do so much. Now he is the god of this world. He certainly is in control, but he's still under the sovereign God. But you see, when Christ sets up his kingdom, his power is going to be absolute, it's going to be total, and it's going to be glorious. All right, so now then, since we're approaching, come back again to Revelation now, chapter 11, since we are fast approaching the return of Christ to set up his kingdom, here's the language again, and the kingdoms of this world are become, it's almost an established fact, are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Now I don't know if I've mentioned this so much on the program, but I feel as though this thousand year reign of Christ, which is delineated in Revelation as a thousand years, will just simply be the introduction to the eternal. In other words, when the thousand years has run its course on the planet as we now know it back in the Garden of Eden situation, it too will be destroyed, isn't it? It's going to be burned up by fire at the end of the millennial reign, and then as I mentioned last program, in chapter 21 and 22, we have a new heaven and a new earth. But that new earth is again going to be the abode of those who have believed unto eternal life, and again Christ will be all in all, and I think it's just going to be an extension of the kingdom economy. It's going to be an earth of tremendous production, tremendous activity, in other words we're not going to sit around getting bored as I've told my classes over and over, we're not going to sit up there just strumming on a harp, that to me wouldn't be heaven, or just sitting someplace and doing nothing but shouting hallelujah, although that'll certainly be part and parcel. We're going to be intensely busy, we're going to be active, and it's going to be glorious. Because you see, God never created us to be idle, did He? No. He created beings like you and I to be active and to be busy. And so when His kingdom, and He rules and reigns, yes, it'll be limited to a thousand years, but like I said, it'll be interrupted for just a short spell, and then we go into the eternal, which will be, I think, based on that same pattern. All right, now then let's go on to verse 16 of chapter 11. And the four and twenty elders who sat before God on their thrones fell upon their faces and worshipped God. Now we've made reference to these twenty elders, twenty-four elders in earlier chapters. Verse 17, they say, "...we give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, who art, who was, who art to come, because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and you have reigned." Verse 18, now here it comes again, Ephesians 2 "...their sins were angry," in other words, in their rebellion, "...and thy," what's the next word? "...thy wrath," see, it's no longer love, mercy, and grace. Now it's, "...his wrath is come, and the time of the dead," and I think that's the spiritual dead, "...that they should be judged, and thou shouldst give reward unto thy servants, the prophets, the saints, and them that fear thy name, and should destroy them who destroy the earth." In other words, God's going to deal with rebellious mankind. And then verse 19, this is an interesting verse. Now these twenty-four elders are declaring that God is over all, He's going to destroy those that have rebelled against Him. It's coming close to the end of this seven-year period, and now verse 19, "...and the temple of God was opened," where? In heaven. "...the temple of God opened in heaven, and there was seen in His temple the ark of His testament," or the ark of His covenant, "...and there were lightnings and voices and thunderings and earthquakes and great hail." All right, come back with me all the way to Exodus chapter 25, Exodus chapter 25. This is an interesting aside, and yet there's a reason for it being here. In Exodus 25, remember that Moses has just brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, and they're gathered around Mount Sinai, and now He's going to give them instructions for building their little place of worship, the tabernacle. All right, Exodus 25, and come down to verse 8 and 9. Exodus 25, beginning of verse 8, and the Lord is speaking to Moses, and He says, "...let them," that is, the children of Israel, "...make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them, according to all that I show thee, after," or according to, "...the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern," or according to, "...of all the instruments thereof, even so shall you make it." Well, a pattern is always a what? Well, it's an original. So where is this original? Oh, it has to be in heaven. Now I'll come back to Hebrews chapter 9. In other words, the blueprint that God gave to Moses and Aaron was simply a pattern, or a blueprint patterned after the original, which is in heaven. And it's that one which is in heaven that we're going to see opened up then in these closing days of the tribulation there in Revelation chapter 11, verse 19. But all right, Hebrews chapter 9. Hebrews chapter 9. You all with me? All right, begin with verse 11, "...but Christ being come, a high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands." You see that? That is to say, not of this creation. Now, King James and some of you others have the word building, but if you have a margin, the Greek word is better translated, creation. In other words, this tabernacle, which was not built with human hands, is in heaven. It's not here on the earth at all. All right, now then if you'll flip back with me to Revelation chapter 11, verse 19. This is what is opened up. "...the temple of God was opened, and there was seen in the temple of his ark the testament, and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail, as God now begins to continue," or I should say, "...his wrath upon mankind." Now, that's the end of the seven trumpets, you remember. We've had all seven of them unfold, one right after the other, after the midpoint. So now we're probably within a year of the very end of the tribulation. Now, I'd like to have you come all the way over to chapter 15. Now, in chapter 15 we're introduced to those final seven judgments called the vials in the King James, or the bowl judgment. Now, the reason they're referred to as bowl judgments, and I guess our time is gone, is picture a soup bowl, a flat, rather shallow soup bowl as over against a Coke bottle. Now, if you were going to pour out the contents of that soup bowl, what would be the time element compared to pouring out the contents from a narrow neck bottle? Well, it's instantaneous, see? So these bowl judgments are not going to be dribbled out, but they are going to be just literally just, how should I put it, it's just going to be indulged, see? And the whole planet will just receive this whole bowl judgment at one quick strike, and that's what you have to remember. Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.