https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=TgrIyqlm4A0
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. St. John the Evangelist. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Okay, so picking up where we left off. I just want to actually situate ourselves in the book of Revelation again, just because it can get a little bit confusing. So we’ve gone through the introductory chapters and we’ve gone through chapters two and three, those different letters to the different churches. Then chapters four and five, we had those visions of heavenly worship. We get to chapter six and seven and the beginning of chapter eight, and that’s the seven seals. And you remember, there was the vision of the seven seals being opened, was broken up with these other visions just kind of stuffed in there, hopefully to lighten things up. And then right as we ended, the seven trumpets were about to blow. And then just to look ahead a little bit, there will be the seven bowls of God’s wrath that are poured out later. And we had talked about earlier how the chronology of the book of Revelation isn’t like a straightforward narrative, right? And what these cycles of seven will do is they’ll show a severe chastisement of the earth and then kind of a final climax of the action. And then like the seventh one will actually be the completion of God’s plan. And then the whole cycle will start over again. It will run through that whole series of punishments. The sixth of everything usually tends to be the climax, the biggest, the worst. And then the seventh is kind of the completion of God’s plan. And so, if you remember last week going through those seven seals, it’s going to look a lot of the same things going on. Now we’re looking at the seven trumpets. So you remember with the seven seals, the first four seals were those four horses. The four horses. And they all kind of go together as a unit. And then seals five and six were different. And then there was a large interlude of other visions before we got to the seventh seal. And that pattern is going to repeat itself with the seven trumpets. So just to let you know what we’re getting into tonight. So let’s move on, starting with Revelation chapter eight, verses six through nine. The seven angels who were holding the seven trumpets prepared to blow them. When the first one blew his trumpet, there came hail and fire mixed with blood, which was hurled down to the earth. A third of the land was burned up, along with a third of the trees and all the green grass. When the second angel blew his trumpet, something like a large burning mountain was hurled into the sea. A third of the sea turned to blood, a third of the creatures living in the sea died, and a third of the ships were wrecked. So if you remember, these first four trumpets are all kind of depicting these natural disasters, which are afflicting the whole earth at the same time. The four horsemen, they were kind of human disasters, right? You had war, civil strife, famine, and death. Those were the four horsemen. And so now we’re getting these natural disasters. So what’s kind of the symbolic link between the two? We’re going from kind of a less severe to kind of a more severe thing. And you can look at the history of the world, and disasters just kind of happen, right? These natural disasters, it’s just a result of the way the universe seems to be fundamentally constituted. And so seeing them as these acts of God can be a little confusing. But I think there’s a helpful way to think about it and how we can think about this symbolism of the end of a world and how the order is breaking down and the chaos is kind of filling in and how human sin and natural disasters can work together. So let’s think about something maybe we don’t want to think about. What if there was a tornado in Wapitan, right? Now we’ve got a fairly well-organized society here, right? I saw people putting fresh paint on the streets today, right? If you go out there on Second Avenue, they got fresh paint on the streets. That means we’re trying to keep things up and orderly, right? The order around here, I’m sure we’ve all got things we can complain about with the city hall, but things generally work here. You call the city, something happens, might not be quick, but things generally work here. So if there was a tornado here, I imagine the sirens would work, you know? So you would have that advance warning to be able to get down into the basement. Maybe we would even get an alert on our phones, alert over the radio broadcast systems or television or whatever it is. So there’s going to be that early warning, hey, get to the basement, there’s a tornado coming. When the tornado kind of blows over, the first responders would probably be as prompt as they can manage, right? They’ve had to wait out the whole thing. I can imagine that people from the surrounding communities would all probably come and try and help clean things up, right? And your homeowner’s insurance, you know, most of that will cover what they literally call acts of God, right? Things that you can’t, and you would expect that there would be a payout from that, you know, that you would have some of that money you invested in your insurance, some of that would be paying back. And all of this, all of this, I mean, it doesn’t make the tornado not bad all of a sudden, but it kind of makes these disasters manageable, right? Wapanton would still be on the map. You know, we wouldn’t just have to abandon and go away. You know, the town was just so utterly flattened by this. You know, there’s something strong and stable about our society that can blunt us from the effects of natural disasters. So you can imagine if it wasn’t like that, right? If the people who are, let’s say, maintaining the sirens, maintaining the early warning systems, if they weren’t doing their jobs properly, and like nobody could hear the sirens because half of them were broken, and the person who is responsible for sending out those advanced notices, advanced warnings, wasn’t doing their job because they were, you know, lazy or corrupt or something. You can imagine if we didn’t have a decent sense of community, people coming in to help, you know, that solidarity, every man for himself, you know, just on every level, human sin can make a natural disaster considerably worse, right? The more sinful your society is, the less resilience that you could have to recover from any sort of a natural disaster. So sin makes these disasters worse. So we see the way that’s represented in this biblical numerology, right? In the first seven seals, the chapters we just covered, it was like a quarter of the earth, a quarter of the earth, a quarter of the earth. That was how everything was affected, you know, the one off the conqueror, a quarter of the earth. Well, now we’re up to a third of the earth, right? So as this, as these cycles go on, things become more and more severe, frankly, a little bit more frightening. So when the first one blew us trumpet, we have fire and hail mixed with blood. And so I have listed here on the slides the ten plagues of Egypt, right? These natural disasters were actually a manifestation of God’s power. So you can see there, you know, this thunderstorm of fire and hail coming down, that seventh plague, you know, St. John is just calling that to mind. The second one, you know, it seems like in, was it 70 AD, or was it before that, when Mount Vesuvius erupted, over the whole Mediterranean, you know, the sky turned red and there was ash falling all the way into Rome, all the way into the Isles of Greece, you know, so that was a major volcanic eruption, probably comparable to Mount St. Helens. A lot of you would remember that, I wouldn’t, but I’ve seen the video. It’s quite impressive. And so they had this idea of these kind of these cosmic happenings. Now what was the purpose of all of these plagues being directed at Pharaoh and Egypt? To let the people go, right? To repent, I mean, it’s like God has given this message, God has given this message, you’re going to let these people go. The more you hang on to them, the worse things are going to get to you. So there’s this, and all throughout the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament, these natural disasters are always seen as opportunities to return, to repent. So that’s what’s, it doesn’t say that quite yet, but later on it’s going to say that quite explicitly, that all of this is supposed to turn our hearts to repentance. I was in January, I was talking to somebody who’s out of the church and has maybe spent time as an atheist, and I knew this about him, and we were just talking about the times, the coronavirus, all of the tumult over the election, and it’s like, you know, all of a sudden he just says, I think God’s trying to send us a message here, and I’m like, maybe you should go back to church then, you know, that’d be the message I’d take from it, but I didn’t say that at the time, I was just trying to be, you know, hang loose there, but no, no I didn’t, I don’t know, we’ll give it time, God gives us time, we’ll give him time. When the third angel blew his trumpet, a large star burning like a torch fell from the sky. It fell on a third of the waters and on the springs of water. The star was called Wormwood, and a third of all the water turned to Wormwood. Many people died from this water because it was made bitter. When the fourth angel blew his trumpet, a third of the sun, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars were struck, so that a third of them became dark. The day lost its light for a third of the time, as did the night. Then I looked ahead, I looked again and heard an eagle flying high overhead, cry out in a loud voice, whoa, whoa, whoa, to the inhabitants of the earth, from the rest of the trumpet blasts that the three angels are about to blow. So, Wormwood, right, I remember, you can actually buy a Wormwood liquor, and a guy at the seminary, he brought something, it was horrible, absolutely horrible, very bitter, and that bitterness is reminiscent of poison. Apparently, something like an ounce of sap of Wormwood can make like 256 gallons of water bitter, right? This also recalls a passage from the book of Exodus where the people are traveling through, I think it’s the Sinai Peninsula, and they encounter bitter water that they can’t drink, it’s poisonous, so Moses throws a tree into the water and it becomes fresh water that they’re able to drink, another sign of God taking care of them, and this is kind of like the reversal of that, that the water becomes bitter. So, I don’t know what kind of natural disaster that’s supposed to, like I can’t think of a natural analog of water suddenly becoming undrinkable, except maybe like if you’re near a mine and arsenic starts leaking into the ground water or something, but it’s a peculiar one, and then the very last one with that darkness. They do? Okay, and maybe ancient, you know, the people around Vesuvius would have figured that out sooner rather than later, so that’s interesting, thank you. Now, this passage about the sky being darkened, it recalls kind of the ninth plague against the land of Egypt where they had three days of darkness so thick and total that they couldn’t even see each other on the streets, it also recalls the words of Jesus in his eschatological discourses, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from the sky, and it’s really a peculiar thing to say that the day lost its light for a third of the time as did the night, you would expect just like it would be reduced in intensity, which reminds us that we’re dealing with highly symbolic images here that we’re not supposed to interpret this super literally, and all of this stuff, you know, coming up to a third, a third, a third, it’s more severe than the seven seals was obviously, but it’s still partial, right? That we’re only, it’s only the plagues, the afflictions, they’re only partial, partial judgment, and this leaves time and opportunity for repentance, right? You know, you can think of maybe all the things you’ve personally encountered, things that have been a real wake-up call to you, things that maybe turned you away from a sin or a bad situation, some of these partial judgments come to us all the time if we’ve got our eyes open and are willing to see it, that there are things that call us back, call us to return back to our Lord. Now if you remember with the four horses, the first three horses all kind of pointed towards the fourth horse, right? So you’ve got war, civil strife, and famine, all of that kind of leads into death, right? Like those are the things that cause death. I think that pattern repeats itself here, that these natural disasters kind of turn the lights out in the world, and there’s this deep, I mean, you hardly have to even explain the connections between light and truth, between darkness and lies or errors, just because we’re such highly visual creatures. It was Aristotle who said that the sense of sight is the most pleasing because it contains the most amount of knowledge into it, and just how highly visibly attuned we are and how difficult it is to do anything when it’s dark, you know? And maybe we lose kind of the sense of that with all this artificial lighting, we can make it daytime whenever we want, but if you had to have a dim oil lamp for your light at night, you had a strong sense of what that does. And so, you know, kind of in this end of the world pattern of this order breaking down, you would expect that getting to the truth would be less reliable, that there would be kind of this darkness, error, you know, first off, with all this war and natural disasters, lines of communication are going to break down, that you’re not going to be able to see things as clearly. Perhaps it’s nobody’s fault, things are just breaking down. And then obviously human evil can very much come into play here where people are kind of out for their own and they’re not willing to tell the truth like they might and are more willing to engage in deception and in lies. So I think this symbolism of the darkness at the end is about that, is that it’s harder to get to the truth, it’s harder to walk forward. All right, and now coming to these woes, right? So in Greek it’s uai and in Hebrew it’s oi. So you could think of what’s the word woe sound like? Woe! You know, that’s just kind of an acclamation of something’s wrong, pay attention to this, right? And like the word, you know, some of these very basic words that we use, they don’t change much language to language, right? You know, oi, uai, you know, why? Woe! You know, they’re never that different. And they’re all, it’s just, pay attention to this. And it says something very interesting, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, right? Do you remember who the inhabitants of the earth are? The ones who have not accepted Jesus, right? Every time that John uses the phrase, the inhabitants of the earth, he always refers to those who have not accepted the lamb who are offering false worship. So what we’ll see with the next three trumpet blasts is they only affect the inhabitants of the earth. They only affect those who have not accepted the seal of the lamb. But there is, so these first four trumpet blasts would affect everybody, right? A third of the earth, a third of the sea, all of that. But there is a sense in which even if you’re having to live through these disasters, if you’ve received the mark of the lamb, that you’re better equipped and better protected against them already, right? That you’ve got that kind of faith. Hopefully you’ve been able to build an arc around you, a system of stability of people that you can trust who will be a worthwhile community around you and who you can help protect and guide. It’s worse if you are outside, if you are not offering up proper worship but are instead engaging in lies and deception. All right, here’s where it gets a little intense. Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. It was given the key for the passage to the abyss. It opened the passage to the abyss and smoke came up from out of the passage like smoke from a huge furnace. The sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the passage. Locusts came out of the smoke onto the land and they were given the same power as scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or any tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not allowed to kill them, but only to torment them for five months. The torment they inflicted was like that of a scorpion when it stings a person. During that time these people will seek death but will not find it. They will long to die, but death will escape them. So these locusts, this plague of locusts that come out of the earth are only directing their attacks at those who have not received the seal. What’s going on here? So the star that had fallen from the sky to the earth, it’s obviously not just a shining ball of light. It’s a person because he was able to receive this key for the passage to the abyss, to everything that we place down underneath. There’s a strong symbolic structure across all cultures that the underworld is a place of chaos. It’s the place where monsters come out of. So this link between water, underworld, chaos, danger, it’s all the same kind of symbolic pattern. There are a number of Greek myths where the underworld features prominently. It’s always a place of danger. It’s always a place where things can go wrong in a hurry. So whatever’s coming out of this abyss is going to be an agent of chaos. The abyss is the home of everything terrible. And we’ve got this smoke from the huge furnace and the sun and the air are again darkened so it’s getting even harder to see the truth, right? That we’re being cast into this darkness, another place where chaos can really take its root, being able to see that truth. These are obviously not ordinary locusts. Ordinary locusts will go straight for the grass, right? And these locusts are told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or any tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their forehead. So there was a plague of locusts in the book of Exodus against the Egyptians. They were just ordinary locusts, right? They went straight for the crops of the Egyptians. This is something different. This is something worse. We get this very specific five months. People will note that that’s about the lifespan of a locust. These locust swarms, even when they come after five months they’re done. It’s also a limited time span of suffering, right? That this isn’t going to go on forever. It’s kind of an acute attack here. Now what are these locusts like? Well, I’m sorry you asked. The appearance of the locusts was like that of horses ready for battle. On their heads they wore what looked like crowns of gold. Their faces were like human faces and their hair like women’s hair. Their teeth were like lion’s teeth and they had chests like iron breastplates. The sound of their wings was like the sound of many horse-drawn chariots racing into battle. They had tails like scorpions with stingers. With their tails they had the power to harm people for five months. They had as their king the angel of the abyss whose name in Hebrew is Abedon and in Greek Apollyon. The first war was passed but there are two more to come. Alright, so the most powerful unit in an ancient army was the cavalry, right? That they were fast and they had big horses trained for battle. So you could imagine the sight of war horses riding through the town would be like seeing an M1 Abrams tank roll down Dakota Avenue, right? It’s like there’s not something you would see every day. It’s not something, you know, like that would be a frightening scene, you know? Unless you knew there was going to be a military parade you would think it was the end of the world, right? That everything was falling apart here. We’ve got all sorts of very dangerous imagery associated with these scorpions. They’ve got lion’s teeth. They’ve got iron armor. The sound they make is like the sound of chariots. They’ve got these stingers like scorpions. And then the other thing about locusts is it’s not like you get like 10 locusts, right? Like they come in the millions, you know? That’s how you count them. So in addition to having this utterly frightening appearance, they’re absolutely swarming around you. So you can barely, barely see even more, you know? It’s like the the light just keeps on going out and out and out the farther we go along with it. And then the kind of the most bizarre and unsettling details here. We’ve got these crowns of gold. They’ve got faces like human faces. And they’ve got hair like a woman’s. And you know, whatever whatever this is supposed to symbolize, it’s got something more like a personality than anything else, right? It’s something more like a human being than anything else. The Hebrew word abaddon, that means destruction, and the Apollyon, one who destroys. And so, you know, even though apparently we’ve all received the seal of the lamb, we don’t have to be worried about this. What is their harm? What is it exactly? Is this sting which causes this torment that makes you want to die? You know, and I’m thinking it’s something like fear, right? Or it’s something like some kind of social contagion, right? Something that manifests itself in society, which gives people this enormous anxiety and this panic about them. And something that they can’t escape. It’s something that’s all around them at all times. They can’t turn it off. And it, this, the faces, you know, it comes with this appearance of being able to reason with it, an appearance of somebody real. I can’t help but think of the way that this might be showing up in our times is this constant news cycle, right? I mean, we’ve got access to more information than anybody else in history. And they actually came up with a new word during the coronavirus pandemic. You know what it was? Doomscrolling. Doomscrolling. It’s, you know, you’re not allowed to go anywhere. You’re stuck in your house. You might be all alone. You know, I was living with a couple other priests at the time. You just sitting there on your phone looking at all the bad news that you can find, you know, like who among us wouldn’t be guilty of that? And if you don’t have a solid grounding in faith, right, if you don’t have as your rock Jesus Christ, then when the rains come and the floods come, you’re gonna be swept away with all of it. It was hard enough being a Christian going through all of that, right, of having this firm faith that Jesus has already won and that he’s executing his victory throughout time and space. And so if you really believe that, if you’re really well integrated as a Christian, then that fear shouldn’t be able to get you, right? That you should be, you know, healed, you should be redeemed, you should be marked with the cross such that they’re not gonna be a listing you. They’re not gonna have that kind of panic. Now, I know a lot of times depression and anxiety, they’ve got a strong, maybe a historical element to it. Maybe you had some kind of trauma that comes up. With some people it’s even just kind of a biological component, right, that their, you know, neurochemistry is out of balance. They might need antidepressants. And so, you know, we wouldn’t want to be kind of oversimplifying our model here and saying that anybody who’s suffering from depression or anxiety is a bad Christian because they don’t trust Jesus enough, right? Like, sometimes, and I won’t say all the time, sometimes that comes from a lack of a bodily health reason or some kind of, you know, acute event here. Something that, you know, psychology is best equipped to deal with. But gosh, you know, how much of it, how much of it could be prevented, could be softened, the blow, if you had that faith, if you acted on this belief that Jesus is already one. That’s as much sense as I can make of this passage. It’s very strange, but it’s something like fear. It’s something like anxiety, you know, which is just all around you if you don’t have that faith, you know, you’ll never run out of bad news to read. So that’s as much sense as I can make of that passage. Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the gold altar before God, telling the sixth angel who held the trumpet, release the four angels who are bound at the banks of the great river Euphrates. So the four angels were released who were prepared for this hour, day, and month, and year to kill a third of the human race. The number of the calvary troops was 200 million. I heard their number. Now in my vision, this is how I saw the horses and their riders. They wore red, blue, and yellow breastplates, and the horses’ heads were like the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur. By these three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that came out of the mouths, a third of the human race was killed. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like snakes with heads that inflict harm. So we get the sixth angel. Again, the sixth in these series is always right before the triumph. So this is where it’s at its darkest. This is where things are kind of at their worst. And we’ve got these four angels, right? So these angels are apparently bound, like they’re being held back by something. So probably fallen angels too. They’re being allowed to do this as a part of God’s plan though, because he has designated the hour, day, month, and year for this. So all throughout the book of Revelation, there’s this tension that we have to live with as Christians of all of these frightening, horrible things happening, and this idea that God is the absolute sovereign, that he is the one who’s guiding the course of human events, allowing these evil calamities to work out for his greater purposes. The Euphrates is kind of the boundary of Iraq, modern-day Iraq. In ancient times, especially in the Old Testament times, that would have been the home of the Babylonian Empire and the Assyrian empires. So that would be the classic place where Israel would get invaded from, right? They would always get invaded from the north. That was also kind of the boundary of the Roman Empire at the time. The Parthians were on the other end. And then we’ve got these colors, red, yellow, and blue. And so as I always say, primary colors, our primary color is bad now. But if you go with a more literal translation, it’s the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, which kind of gives you a… You’ve got the revised standard version there? Yeah. So once again, this is a place where I don’t think the New American Bible gives us the most helpful image, because with the red, yellow, and blue, you just get Superman, right? And that’s heroic colors right there. But the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur is a lot duller, a little more menacing. Now apparently Parthian cavalry would wear these colors when they were out in battle. But it’s really important to see that fire and sapphire and sulfur. Fire and sulfur was what God sent down on Sodom and Gomorrah, right? In punishment for their sin. And smoke rises up from the crater. And a lot of times if you see smoke, it’s got kind of that bluish tint, hence the color of sapphire. And then the death comes from the mouths of these horses. Out of their… And out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur. By these three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that came out of the mouths, a third of the human race is killed. So you can kind of interpret that literally. We’ve got these horses with lion’s heads breathing out fire like dragons. And that’s certainly an image of destruction. But there’s something else going on here. This idea of that which is coming out of the mouth being that which is the most effective destroyers. And then you link that with the tails like a serpent, right? Now where have we seen that before? Not in the book of Revelation. Garden of Eden. And what was his most potent weapon? His mouth, his speech, his deception, his lies. So I can’t help but see kind of in this pattern, starting with that fourth trumpet where the lights start going down. The fifth trumpet where you’re being swarmed around by these locusts. You know, you can’t see anything. The smoke that’s coming out of the abyss is obscuring the sun. And further, fire, smoke, and sulfur. The whole thing just becoming more and more chaotic, more and more obscure, becoming nearly impossible at the end to be able to discern the truth of the matter. But instead being surrounded by lies. And then with the tails as serpents. And John here doesn’t tell us exactly what these tails do, right? They inflict harm. I think a lot of what this cycle is kind of pointing us to is first these natural calamities which destroy the order that was already teetering and tottering because of human sin. And then as a direct result of all of that, the lights start going out. You can’t tell the truth. Everybody’s out for themselves. Everybody will do or say anything that they need to get ahead. And that’s kind of like the final collapse of society. The final collapse of any given order. Obviously going to be at its most magnified at the end. But like we said, these patterns repeat themselves across history. I bet you if you go look at any place where the whole order’s falling apart, right before the end, this probably lies everywhere. You guys remember Baghdad Bob? You know, like he was at the end of an order, right? The United States military was coming into Baghdad and he’s like, oh, we’re winning all these incredible victories. American blood is being spilled by the gallons and it was just complete nonsense. Worse than that. You can imagine it’d be worse than that. Lies, though, lies can definitely kill people. There’s no doubt about that. So we shouldn’t, just because it’s not a physical disaster, we shouldn’t underestimate its potency or the danger that can come from that. And now we get kind of an explanation. The rest of the human race who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands to give up the worship of demons and idols made from gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders, their magic potions, their unchastities, or their robberies. So this verse finally explains to us why God’s allowing all of this to happen. It’s all designed for calling people to repentance. And we have to imagine that during this process, God would actually be effective in calling people to repentance. So you don’t necessarily have to say that nobody repented because the rest of the human race did not repent of the works of their hands. You could imagine through this whole process, people would continue to receive the seal, you know, because the Lord is kind and merciful. He allows people to repent. He calls people back to them. So you don’t have to imagine that during the end times, nobody’s going to repent just because of this one little verse. Now what are these works of their hands that they’re being punished for? Well, you can see four of them come directly from the Ten Commandments, right? The idolatry. I’m the Lord your God. You shall not have false idols before me. You shall not make a graven image of me. Murder, the Fifth Commandment, and then I shall not commit adultery, the Sixth Commandment, and thou shalt not steal. That’s out of order. But anyway, and then it slips in this bit about magic potions in there, and that’s really interesting, right? The word in Greek is pharmakia. It’s where we get the English word pharmacy. Yeah, right. So has anybody ever heard this quote before? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Anybody ever heard that quote before? All right. No science fiction fans here, apparently. Right. So you turn on Star Trek, right? Rob is basically familiar, right? How does the warp drive work? It doesn’t matter. It’s basically just magic, right? As far as we know, it basically works, you know? And so even in ancient times, they had this, this, this, so let’s explain it, right? So pharmakia, this word in Greek, it could mean a medicine, right? That’s one way that that’s why pharmacies are the place where you go to get medicine. That’s kind of a common usage of it. But medicine is not something that’s just kind of indifferent, right? And ancient people, they had abortifacient medicines, you know, they could induce chemical abortions. They had contraceptives. Now, none of these were particularly effective or safe to use. Oftentimes, it would end up killing the people who used them. But this, this wasn’t something that was, you know, invented in the 20th century with the advent of modern medicine, the Romans, there was a particular plant that they would use to induce abortions. And in the late stages of the Roman Empire, they drove this plant extinct. We can’t find it anymore. Right? So that gives you a kind of a picture of a society. So this, this, this pharmakia, right, these medicines, you know, sometimes it was just Tylenol, but other times it would be things that would act against the will of God. And, you know, from ancient times, Christians would not participate in abortion. The word pharmakia also means sorcery or witchcraft. All right, so it’s like, what’s the connection there, right? Right. So medicine, medicine is a kind of technology. Now, what do technology and let’s say, witchcraft and sorcery have in common? What do they have in common? Okay, not what I’m looking for. Yeah. Although that’s very often true, especially with as complex of technologies as we have access to now. It’s all about trying to manipulate the world so it gives you what you want. Right? It’s all about trying to manipulate the world such that it gives you what you want. Right? So we’ve got we want light in here, right? Because that little window over there isn’t going to provide light near enough for all of us. And so we manipulate the world by running an electrical current through a tube of contained glass such that the gases inside the tube will ionize and start to give off light, you know? All right. So, you know, that’s a, that’s a technology right there. To ancient people, it would seem like sorcery. It would seem like magic. Right? And that’s perfectly correct because both magic and sorcery and witchcraft and technology, they both have the exact same purpose, the exact same goal to try and manipulate the world around you so that you can get what you want. Now, part of this is inevitable, right? After having been expelled from the garden, we can’t live without these technologies. But they always carry this danger among us. And it’s very clear that the inhabitants of the earth are using these technologies, this pharmacia, these magic potions, this sorcery, this witchcraft in such a way that it participates in these other sins, right? In not offering proper worship to God, in trying to make ourselves God. It’s what all of these kind of, kind of go back to. I hadn’t considered that, mind-altering substances. It would take their mind off God. It could. It would be like trying to access secret knowledge and maybe mysteries of the next world there. So I hadn’t considered that, but that certainly could be contained. I don’t know. I would want to take a closer look at how the word pharmacia in Greek is used. And I, you’re dealing with a simple country priest here who’s got a commentary rather than a Greek expert. So I’m not willing to come down hard one way or the other on that interpretation yet, but that’s, it definitely could be a part of it. Okay. Okay. Now we get a break from the destruction. Then I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven wrapped in a cloud with a halo around his head. His face was like the sun and his feet were like pillars of fire. In his hand, he held a small scroll that had been opened. He placed his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. And then he cried out in a loud voice as a lion roars. When he cried out, the seven thunders raised their voices too. When the seven thunders had spoken, I was about to write it down, but I heard a voice from heaven say, seal up what the seven thunders have spoken, but do not write it down. And so just as we had in the last cycle of seven, right after the sixth seal, we had this break and we looked at the 144,000 and all that stuff. We get another one of these breaks before the final end. So it can seem very chaotic the first time you read through it, but it is a stable pattern. Now we’ve got this angel wrapped in a cloud with a halo around his head, his face is like the sun, and he’s burning like fire. Who does that remind you of? The one who’s seated on the throne, right? He’s described in a lot of the same way. So what we’re talking about here is, you know, it’s definitely an angel. It’s not the angel that’s sitting on the throne. It’s not the angel, it’s not the ancient of days, it’s not the one seated on the throne, but he carries the same kind of power with him. So we’re talking like one of the top angels, one of the big guys. And then he’s got this scroll in his hand, and there’s a debate among biblical scholars and it’s not quite settled. Is this the same scroll here that the Lamb had opened? You know, now the seven seals have been opened. Or is this like another smaller one because, you know, it specifies here a small scroll in his hand that had been opened. And I, you know, that there’s evidence for both interpretations. I tend to think it’s a smaller scroll, not the one that contains the complete plan of God, especially, and we haven’t gotten to the end. We haven’t seen what the destiny of that scroll is. But I tend to think that the more likely interpretation that this is a different scroll than the full one that the Lamb had. And then, you know, John’s about to write down what the seven thunders are saying. Thunder is usually an accompaniment of God’s presence, you know, the thunder at Mount Sinai, and he’s told not to write it down, you know, as there’s this sense that while we get a view of part of the plan, we don’t get the view of the whole plan, right? That we were given just enough of the battle plan in order to carry out our task, our mission, but we don’t get to see the whole picture until the final victory. What you hear in whispers will be proclaimed from housetops. Um, with the angel, with his feet on the sea and in the ground, that’s kind of this universality around it. So God is just kind of reminding John that he’s in charge, but he doesn’t reveal the whole plan here. Then I, the angel I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by the one who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. There shall be no more delay. At the time when you hear the seventh angel blow his trumpet, the mysterious plan of God shall be fulfilled. And he promised as he promised to his servants, the prophets. Uh, so in order to understand this passage, it’s actually really helpful to go back to the old Testament here to, uh, Daniel chapter five, uh, January chapter 12 verses five, uh, through 13. I, Daniel looked and saw two others, one standing on either bank of the river. One of them said to the man clothed in linen who was upstream, how long will it be to the end of these appalling things? The man clothed in linen who was upstream lifted his right hand and left hands to heaven. And I heard him swear who lives forever that it should be for a year, two years, a half year. And that when the power of the destroyer of the holy people was brought to an end, all these things should end. I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked my Lord, what follows this? Go Daniel, he said, because the words are to be kept secret and sealed until the end time. Many shall be refined, purified and tested, but the wicked shall prove wicked. None of them shall have understanding, but the wise shall have it from the time the daily sacrifice is abolished and the horrible abomination is set up. There shall be 1290 days. Blessed is the man who has patience and perseveres until the 1335 days. Go take your rest. You shall rise for your reward at the end of days. And what this prophecy from Daniel is talking about is talking about the events of the book of Maccabees, right? And you remember kind of that story, you know, Alexander the Great sweeps across the whole Mediterranean, east of Greece, conquers these huge lands. And then when he dies, the lands are divided up among his generals because he didn’t leave an heir behind. The Greek kings of this, of who were ruling Israel at the time, tried to impose Greek ways on the Jewish people, trying to destroy their civilization. They destroyed, you know, kind of the temple as much as they were able. They were forcing people to offer sacrifice to the gods. And so this was kind of a big shock to their system. This was kind of the pattern of an end of a world there. And, you know, Daniel in this prophecy hears part of this plan, right, of how God is going to resolve this, you know, trouble that they’re in at this time. But he, it’s sealed up until the end of time, you know, it’s sealed up in the seal. It hasn’t been revealed yet because Christ has not come. The final victory hasn’t been made manifest yet. And so when we get to the angel saying, there shall be no more delay, the mysterious plan of God shall be fulfilled as he promised to his servants the prophets. Like this is one of those prophecies that he’s fulfilling there, right? Going back from the time of the prophet Daniel, talking about the times of the Maccabees, you know, showing how Jesus, the lamb who was slain, is the one who is going to fulfill these prophecies. Then the voice that I heard from heaven spoke to me again and said, Go take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land. So I went up to the angel and told him to give me the small scroll. He said to me, take and swallow it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will taste as sweet as honey. I took the small scroll from the angel’s hand and I swallowed it. In my mouth it was like sweet honey, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. Then someone said to me, you must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, and tongues and kings. So it’s really interesting. We’re kind of at the halfway point of this book, right? And John is getting commissioned again, right? And you know, you can imagine maybe wanting a little bit of encouragement after having seen all of this. Like this is, you know, some heavy stuff that he’s dealing with. This bizarre stuff about the scroll is actually a reference to the book of the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel chapter 2, verse 9 through 3. It was then that I saw a hand stretched out to me in which was a written scroll which he unrolled before me. It was covered with writing front and back and written on it was lamentation and wailing and woe. He said to me, son of man, eat what is before you. Eat this scroll, then go speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat. Son of man, he then said to me, feed your belly and fill your stomach with this scroll I am giving you. I ate it and it was sweet as honey in my mouth. And he said, son of man, go now to the house of Israel and speak my words to them. So that’s where we get this imagery from. And this is idea, you know, we’ve got this kind of funny idea about prophecy in the modern day. Like this idea that the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you won’t even know what’s going on. It’s basically just using your mouth as like a physical organ to speak through and you’re not really involved in prophecy at all. It’s just like, you know, God’s, you know, grabbing the controls and it’s just manipulating you. And it’s not really the biblical view of prophecy when we get this image of eating the scroll. When you eat something, it becomes a part of you. You assimilate it into yourself. So the prophet isn’t necessarily one who’s getting voicemails from God. The prophet is one who has allowed God’s word into them, has assimilated it into their very being. And then out of that fullness comes this word that he gives to the world, right? Out of this fullness of the word that’s been filled up in him, he’s able to speak the word that God has given to them. And so that’s simultaneously a delightful and kind of a painful thing, you know? A lot of times when I’m studying, when I’m, you know, reading about our Lord, reading the Bible, reading good books about him, that’s quite a delightful thing for me. I’m a reader. I like to study. I like to learn these things. It’s oftentimes a lot harder to deliver, let’s say, the hard word to people, right? That could be kind of a very unpleasant part of my job. It’s not one that I look forward to. It’s one I kind of have to, you know, grit my teeth and get through. If I’ve got to deliver a homily that I know some people might not like, or if I’ve got somebody in my office, a couple, I might have to tell them something they don’t really want to hear. That’s this dilemma with God’s word, is that it simultaneously is delightful to you, and then it’s also bitter. It’s also something sour. Now, the reason why I thought the small scroll that the angel hands him isn’t the scroll that the angel opens, that the lamb opens, is because, you know, we don’t get the whole word to us. We don’t get the whole of this imagery. We only get that portion which we’ve been given, right? So, you know, there’s nobody besides Jesus himself who’s the head of the whole church, right? The pope, you know, even though he’s the highest one on earth, he’s still on earth, and he’s only on earth for a time and a season. And then, you know what they say in Rome, right? What do you do when the pope dies? You make another one, you know? So, none of us are given the whole word, right? We’re given what we’re needed, when we need it, and we’re able to deliver that, just that scroll. So, that’s why I lean towards this small scroll that the angel’s holding is not the whole master plan of God’s salvation, but John is only being given what he is to deliver to us. That being this book of Revelation, which is good and very necessary for us, but it is not the entirety of God’s plan. There’s still more that needs to be filled in, and we will be continue filling it in next week. Thank you for your time and attention.