Fury of Satan!

Revelation 9:13-21

Fury of Satan/6th Trumpet

Revelation 9:13-21, Sixth Trumpet: The Angels from the Euphrates ¹³ Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, ¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” ¹⁵ So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. ¹⁶ Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. ¹⁷ And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulphur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone. ¹⁸ By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed—by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. ¹⁹ For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm. ²⁰ But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent

of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. ²¹ And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Mankind lies between two mighty opposite spiritual spheres, both touching the earth and man directly. Each of those spheres operates to conform man to itself. As he yields to one or the other, he becomes a companion. Either a companion to God or to Satan, Either a companion to holy angels or to demons, Either a companion to saints or to sinners.

To doubt that reality is the most momentous mistake and fatal error that any human being will ever make. Heaven, one of those spheres, is calling to man through Christ Jesus. Hell, the other sphere, is calling to man through Satan.

The voices of hell have always been loud enough and alluring enough to charm and seduce the world. There is coming a day, when the sirens of hell will call with a powerful seduction, so powerful that it will drown out the voice of preachers who are calling people to heaven.

The people in that day who have ignored all the powerful warnings, all the calls of mercy in the gospel. All the offers of grace will see death come upon them as never before. Judgment, fierce and indestructible and in the midst of it they will not repent. The sirens of hell will totally drown out the preachers of mercy.

In fact, they will curse the God of heaven. They will make their choice to become the companion of Satan, demons and sinners forever. This is what this chapter is all about. We have the blowing of the sixth trumpet. The blowing of the sixth trumpet, We have another demon attack such as in the blowing of the fifth trumpet recorded in

Revelation 9:1-11. Remember, we are in a seven-year period in the future after the rapture of the church called the time of the tribulation.

We are in the latter half of that period called the great tribulation. The tribulation time is unfolding for us in seven-sealed manner. There is a scroll which records the takeover of the earth by its rightful ruler, Christ. Each phase of that takeover is revealed as the next of seven seals is broken.

The seventh seal has been broken.

Upon the breaking of the seventh seal, it reveals seven trumpet judgments. We are moving toward the end of that latter half of the seven years, and we are already at trumpet number six. There is only one more trumpet to blow and that trumpet contains seven bowl judgments which are rapid-fire.

We are nearing the end. We are in the seventh seal. The book is fully opened. We are in the sixth trumpet, near the last trumpet which encompasses the seven bowl judgments described in Revelation 16th chapter. When the final bowl is poured out to end the seventh trumpet which is the consummation of the seventh seal, then the Lord Jesus arrives to set up His glorious kingdom on earth, the millennial kingdom.

Trumpet number six, judgment to come upon the world in the end of the age. Remember, by this time there has been a worldwide revival. Many have been redeemed.

Many of the redeemed have been slaughtered and they are already in heaven, a multitude too vast to number, revealed to us in Revelation chapter 7. Some of them are still on earth and they will survive all of this. The Lord will protect them through the slaughter and the judgment, and they will enter into the Kingdom in their physical bodies. So, there are believers all over the earth.

Israel is going to come to repentance and look on Him whom they have pierced and some of them will become preachers, namely the 144,000 and many others. They will be used by God to preach the gospel across the earth. It is in that scene that the seventh seal reveals the seven trumpets, and we find ourselves at trumpet number six.

V 12, One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things. The fifth trumpet was the first of three woes. The first four trumpets had to do with judgment. The judgment is described for us in Revelation chapter 8.

Judgment on the land, sea, the fresh water and the sky. The created universe is judged. The physical universe is judged.

But the last three trumpets are called “woes,” because they are more frightening and fearsome judgments. The fifth one involved a demon horde coming out of the pit and running rampant over the earth and tormenting men to the point where they wished they could die. But they couldn’t, and so they had to endure the torment for five months, demonic torment.

As we come to the second of those woes from verse 13. V 13, Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,

Revelation 8:2, And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.

We see there the seven angels standing before God. They are angels accustomed to being in the presence of God. They have seven trumpets ready to go. Five have been blown. V 14, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”

The release of the demons.

The sixth angels sound his trumpet. The judgments are inconceivable up to now and they will get worse. God is judging man with a final flurry of judgment called the day of the Lord. Land, plants, animals, sea, fresh water, sky, and terrifying demonic pollution has already fallen upon the earth.

Hell has already opened up and belched out, as it were, millions of captive demons who had been bound there. Here some more to be released. The voice that follows the sixth angel sounding comes from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God.

“I heard a voice.” In the Greek text it’s one voice. A solitary singular voice is emphasized. Perhaps it’s the voice of the Lamb. After all, He is executing this takeover. It’s time for Him to give His order, time for Him to speak and to judge. The voice is not identified. But the location from which it comes is identified and that tells us the Holy Spirit is laying emphasis there.

It comes from one of the four horns of the golden altar which is before God. John had already seen this altar back in chapter 6.

Revelation 6:9-11 that there was an altar and underneath the altar there were souls praying for vengeance.

They were the souls of martyred believers who had been killed during the tribulation time, and they were underneath this altar, and they were pleading for vengeance. That was a heavenly counterpart to the altar of incense which is the altar symbolizing prayer or petition.

In Old Testament times the altar of incense was where prayers for mercy arose. Now it’s become an altar of intercession where prayers of vengeance arise. Originally a place where people of God would go, symbolically, as the priests took in the incense, and they would there symbolically have the pleading for mercy.

But already we can see that pleadings from that once known as an altar of mercy have become pleadings for vengeance. Again, in Revelation 8 we see that same altar. An angel at that altar filling up his censer with the fiery incense.

Revelation 8:5, Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake.

Now we see that the golden altar which once was where you pled for mercy became an altar of vengeance where you plead for vengeance. Now, not only an altar of vengeance, but an altar of judgment because when the angel throws the fiery coals from the altar, peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake take place.

So, the altar is very important as it begins to unfold in its meaning. This would be a visionary replica that John sees, a heavenly replica of the golden altar of incense described in Exodus chapter 30. In Exodus 30 about the original altar of incense that God prescribed to be placed within the tabernacle.

Exodus 30:1-4, “You shall make an altar to burn incense on; you shall make it of acacia wood. ² A cubit shall be its length and a cubit its width—it shall be square—and two cubits shall be its height. Its horns shall be of one piece with it. ³ And you shall overlay its top, its sides all around, and its horns with pure gold; and you shall make for it a moulding of gold all around. ⁴ Two gold rings you shall make for it, under the moulding on both its sides. You shall place them on its two sides, and they will be holders for the poles with which to bear it.

Exodus 30:6, And you shall put it before the veil that is before the ark of the Testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the Testimony, where I will meet with you. In the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies, was the ark of the covenant. Immediately outside the Holy of Holies the veil that separated men from God. For God was in the Holy of Holies on the outside was a place called the Holy Place, only a priest could go there.

The priest could go into the Holy of Holies only once a year, he could go into the Holy Place every morning and every night. Right before the veil/the presence of God, this golden altar of incense was to be placed, right in front of the veil that separated from the Mercy Seat, the ark of the covenant. Then the priest was to go in there every morning, and he was to burn incense and then he was to go back every twilight, and he was to burn incense again.

Exodus 30:10, And Aaron shall make atonement upon its horns once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonement; once a year he shall make atonement upon it throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord.” Once a year on the altar of incense, the high priest went in and put blood.

The prayers can rise, prayers for mercy, pleadings to God for grace and blessing, but only on the basis of sacrifice. We have access to commune with God and any right to ask for mercy on the basis of blood sacrifice.

Hebrews 10:19-20, Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰ by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, Christ in His sacrifice has created a new and living way, access to God. So, there were two altars then in the ancient tabernacle and temple. One was the great altar outside in the courtyard, it was called the brazen altar, or the altar of sacrifice, the altar for burnt offering. That is where the sacrificial animals were placed and consumed. The bloody place where atonement was made. Based on atonement, the priest would take coals from that altar and take them in and put them on the golden altar, put incense there and prayers would rise. Prayers for mercy, grace, and blessing from God who would grant that because sin had been atoned for.

It is this golden altar here, smaller than the brazen altar, made of gold, not brass, inside the Holy Place before the veil. Now, this gives us graphic insight into the fact that prayer and worship and communion with God, access to God, a right to plead your case was always connected to atonement.

To make it simple, no person whose sins have not been atoned for has any access to God. Without sacrifice to cover sin, no communion with God is available. Sacrifice opens the way to God. So, the work of the golden altar, the symbolic emphasis of the golden altar was predicated on the brazen altar.

Once a year, to carry that symbolism fully out, the high priest on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, would go into the altar which was golden, and he would put blood on it. So, it was an altar where prayers rose symbolically, prayers for forgiveness, mercy, based upon the fact that sins had been atoned for.

They always knew it as an altar of mercy. But now it has become an altar of vengeance and an altar of judgment.

Here unimaginable to the Jewish reader, a voice comes out of that very same altar where once was mercy. The voice that cries from the horns of this altar is not a voice that says, “I forgive, I grant mercy, I grant grace.” It is a voice that calls for devastating demonic destruction.

God said to the ancient civilization when He said, “My Spirit will not always strive with man.”

1 Kings 1:50, Now Adonijah was afraid of Solomon; so he arose, and went and took hold of the horns of the altar.

There is no mercy left now.

Revelation 8:3-5, Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. ⁴ And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand. ⁵ Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake. Let us know already that this has become an altar of judgment and the terrible scene that we see in this text certainly does confirm that.

Hebrews 10:28-31, Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. ²⁹ Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? ³⁰ For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” ³¹ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

This is the end of mercy. This is when mercy is at its end. So, one says to the sixth angel that the one whose voice comes out of this altar who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”

Who are these four angels who are bound? Never in Scripture it says holy angels are bound.

Why would they need to be bound? The only reason you would bind someone would be to prevent them from doing what you don’t want them to do. Holy angels don’t do what God doesn’t want them to do. We don’t have to bind holy angels to prevent them from doing what they would do against the will of God.

They are bound should make it clear to anyone that they are demons, fallen angels who need to be restrained. This is a perfect tense verb which means that something has bound them in the past with continuing results. They are in a state or condition of having been bound.

So here are four bound demons, fallen angels, they are another segment of Satan’s force. Obviously, Satan doesn’t want them bound. He had like to have his demons running lose all over the universe all the time. The demons didn’t want to get sent to the pit.

They pleaded to Jesus, ‘don’t send us to the pit.’” Satan doesn’t want them bound. Here another group of four that he has bound, reminding us that God controls all the demonic forces. Now these four are apparently in charge of a massive demon horde. Not those on the earth, not those who have been up in space battling angels who now, according to Revelation 12.

Have been cast down to the earth, not those who have come pouring up the shaft of the pit described in the first part of chapter 9.

Here is a whole new horde of demons controlled by these four who are bound by God. Now interestingly enough it says they are bound at the great river Euphrates. If we read Jeremiah 6 there is describing the day of the Lord.

Several times he refers to the Euphrates. When the day of the Lord hits, it is going to involve some action associated with the location of the Euphrates River. Now the immediate question that comes to our mind why are these demons bound at the Euphrates?

Why has God got them captive there? If you look back a little bit in history and we will see the significance might be. It was one of the four rivers of the Garden of Eden. Remember there were four rivers in the Garden of Eden. There was one and of course the one that was pre-flood was different than the one that was after the Flood.

But the original Euphrates was in the place of Satan’s deception of Adam and Eve. It was in the area where Satan first began his assault on man. The river Euphrates has a very interesting history. The river Euphrates begins in the Armenian mountains, some of the highest in the earth, flooded in the springtime with melting snows, it goes down to the Taurus Mountains and down

through the Mesopotamian valley to the Persian Gulf, all the way through that area of the world. The most important, the longest, the biggest of all rivers in western Asia. But it was the place where sin was first known, the place where misery first began. It was the place where the first lie was told, where the first murder was committed, where the first grave was dug.

The Euphrates River was the scene of the great apostasies before and after the Flood. The Euphrates River was the scene of the rise of Israel’s greatest and most oppressive enemies. The area around the Euphrates River was the scene of the long years in which the children of Israel dragged out their wearisome days of captivity.

The Euphrates River was the scene of the rise of those great world empires that oppressed God’s people, Babylon, Medo- Persia. There in that place four great powerful demons, magnets of evil are chained by God. They have in their hands the power to do awful destruction. But God restrains them.

The Euphrates, according to Genesis, Deuteronomy and Joshua, was also the eastern boundary of the Promised Land. It was also the eastern boundary of the Roman Empire which is to be restored and revived at this time under the Antichrist.

It is the place where the city of Babylon is.

In Revelation 17 and 18, both the final form of world religion and the final form of world economy are called Babylon. These could well be the very demons who controlled Babylon of old, who controlled Medo-Persia of old, who controlled Greece of old, who controlled the Roman Empire of old.

Daniel 10:13, But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia. A demon who was leading Persia from the satanic vantage point and Michael had to go and get him out of the way.

Daniel 10:20, Then he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I have gone forth, indeed the prince of Greece will come.

We can see that there were demons associated with these various great empires. With Persia, Greece, Babylon and Rome. It may well be that those four great world empires had four great demonic powers over them. These are they and they’ve been held prisoner.

As Satan had entered Eden and corrupted Eden in that same location, later on in that same part of the world he started

another corruptive influence, the result of which is still going on because it wasn’t drowned like his first corrupt effort. The Tower of Babel, the original Babylon in that same area of the world. Out of that complex of religions that was spawned from the Tower of Babel came this complexity of pagan religiosity that involves astrology, pantheism, polytheism, idolatry, spiritism, naturalistic philosophy.

All that garbage has penetrated all over the world and it was originated at the Tower of Babel. When all of that was scattered and the languages were scattered, they took the religion, the false religion of Babel and populated the world with it.

We see the Euphrates is a demonic area. Even today that area is utterly and totally without any Christian influence. That part of the world is as pagan as pagan gets. It is as anti-Christianity can be. Here are these four demons and they are bound there and that seems to be the focus of their activity in the world. Of course, its proximity to Israel makes it a good launching point for all that they would want to do to destroy the people of God, Israel.

Here are these four demons and the angel blows, and the voice says, “Release them.”

The return of death. Remember, death had taken a holiday under trumpet number five.

Revelation 9:5-6, And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. ⁶ In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.

They tried to die but they couldn’t die. They tried to kill themselves, but it didn’t work. V 15, So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind.

Who released them? God did. God will now use them in the continuing destruction of the world. At the prescribed year in the prescribed month at the exact day and the very hour which God has designed it to happen, that’s when it will happen.

Matthew 24:36, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.

But God knows. He knows the day and the hour of everything. God has His limits and God has His timetable. At the right year in the right month on the right day at the right hour those demons are going to be released and immediately they are going to kill a third of mankind.

When the fourth seal was opened, one fourth of the world was killed.

Revelation 6:8, So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth. Add one fourth to one third you get over half. By now, over half the world is killed, to say nothing of the ones that have been slaughtered in the wars, pestilences, and everything, and the world has been absolutely decimated. Far more than a half of the original population that went into the time known as the tribulation have died. Just the burial of these bodies would be an inconceivable problem.

Here, in a very brief matter of time, one third of the remaining world is massacred. They must just be pushing bodies into huge holes to bury them or burn them. It would take some kind of massive force to kill a third of the population of the world and this is some force.

V 16, Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. Two hundred million. Remember, there are already the demons that have been running all over the earth all along. There are already the demons who have been in space all along and are now cast to the earth.

Then the pit has released a massive demon horde of certainly millions of demons there, and there are still two hundred million more of them that have been bound and are now released, a supernatural demon army. Some suggest that this is a human army.

Some have said it’s going to be the Red Chinese army because in the seventies they did number a few hundred million. Some have said it’s probably the army from the north described in Ezekiel 38 and 39. Those who want to connect it with a human force usually associate this verse with Revelation 16:12.

The kings of the east, the drying up of the Euphrates River so the kings of the east can come. They would say that this is the two hundred million coming from Asia. Certainly, there would be enough people there to make an army that size if the Red Chinese Army in the seventies had two hundred million. The Euphrates River has dried up and these people come marching.

The problem with that is it’s in connection with the bowl judgments which fit into the seventh trumpet, not the sixth. It doesn’t describe an army of two hundred million anyway, it just says the kings of the east. But they say it could be this same group.

We now know it’s possible to dry up the Euphrates. The Ataturk Dam is in Turkey, one man can walk in and push one button and dry up the Euphrates basically, taking it down seventy-five percent down to just twenty-five percent of its normal flow and do that rather simply.

But I believe the sixth bowl judgment comes later and we will show you why as we move through the book and looks at a different army and that that is the issue of Armageddon. We don’t see this as a human army.

If this was a human army of men and women marching across the land, it would be big. If it were just a mile wide, it would be a hundred miles deep. That’s a lot of people. How could they march and kill a third of the world?

How could they move across mountains and oceans and all of that? Those who see it as a human army when they get into the description that we read in verse 17 and following descriptions of guns and helicopters and jet aircraft and tanks and rockets.

The problem is, he describes all of them like that, so it would have to be two hundred million of those things, those human weapons, human machines. The language is better understood of a demon force, particularly when it’s connected to four demons who are being held back. So, the cosmic war, a war of hell is hitting the earth with all its force.

V 17, And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulphur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone.

The colour of fire is Red. The colour of brimstone, sulphur gas be yellow.

The colour of hyacinth is anything from blue to black. The red of fire, the blue/black of burning smoke and a yellow sulphur gas, the colours of hell, the colours of hell. “And the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions;”

God must represent to him to the demons in some way that he can see them visually. The vision is of these lion-headed beings. That means fierce, strong, determined, stalking their victims to slaughter. out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone.

This is like the representation of the fury of hell. The devastating power that they carry is frightening. The power has an effect. V 18, By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed—by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths.

Can demons kill? Sure, people can kill, and demons are supernatural. The demon-possessed boy in the gospel what did he keep doing to himself? Throwing himself in the fire.

They do it. They kill with fire, burning people to a crisp. They kill with smoke, suffocating people. Of course, that people in fires, many of those who die as many die from smoke inhalation as die from flames. Sulphur gas asphyxiates them, the very gas of hell, the fire and fury and smoke out of the pit. It’s really a frightening scene.

Revelation 14:10, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. Those are the people who worship the beast.

Revelation 19:20, Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.

Revelation 20:10, he devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Revelation 21:8, But the cowardly, [e]unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” Burning, suffocating and being asphyxiated with sulphur gas or gas of some kind. V 19, For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm.

They seem to create devastation in both directions. Again, this is a vision, this is imagery the Lord is representing to him their destructive power in some visualization: horses, lions, serpents. Those are things that he can understand because they are devastating and destructive and powerful things.

It can’t describe men. Since each of the two hundred million are so described, it can’t be describing two hundred million rocket launchers. The sixth trumpet will blow and then this. The release of demons and the return of death.

This is the same world we live in with newspapers and television, with schools and colleges and universities, and

people going to work and doing jobs and trying to eat and live and get married and raise their kids and do the normal things that everybody does. The reaction of defiance. You may say to yourself, “If I were an unbeliever and I were in this situation, I would be converted.”

Fall on your face. But by now, you must remember the people of the world have seen it all. They have seen the furious judgments. They have seen the devastation of everything they treasure. They have seen the evil of Antichrist, Satan and demons.

They have heard relentless and miraculous preaching of the gospel of Christ. They have been given grace and mercy as a gift that they will not take. Some have received and some have died as martyrs, and some have been protected to enter the kingdom alive.

But there is still a mass of humanity that will not believe. Amazing to witness the hardness of heart. V 20, But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they

should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. Rest of the mankind would be the remaining two thirds that were not killed by these plagues did not repent.

Absolutely unimaginable! Repentance is always the issue. If people don’t repent, they perish. Repent of Sin.

Luke 24:47, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

But if they are so hard and they have made it all the way through to this point, they are not going to repent. They didn’t repent. V21, “And they didn’t repent.” It says it twice. When the seventh trumpet blows, and the bowl judgments starts.

Revelation 16:1, Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.”

What happens?

Revelation 16:9, And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.

They did not repent. They blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues, and they didn’t repent.

Revelation 16:11, They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.

Revelation 16:21, And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.

They have reached the point now of resolute hardness. They have yielded to the sphere of hell. They have embraced Satan, demons, death. They literally worship Satan.

Revelation 12:9, So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Revelation 13:4, So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?

They are Satan worshipers. In the end of this vision John identifies five sins that are representative of their defiance. One, idolatry. They didn’t repent of the works of their hands. The idols they make. Their manmade gods. In ancient times, they replicated their gods in wood. He talks about it. Wood, stone, brass, silver, gold idols which can’t hear, see or walk.

They are nothing, they are not alive, but men make their own gods and here they are, and they still won’t turn from their own god. The important point is that those gods can’t cope with what is happening. But they are so resolutely committed to their gods that in spite of the inability of their gods to do anything, they stick with them.

Jonah, who when their gods couldn’t do anything to stop the storm and Jonah’s God did it, they immediately turned to his God. Not this group. This is how deep and resolute their unbelief has become.

Anybody who worships any idol, any false god is worshiping a demon.

Psalm 96:5, For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the Lord made the heavens. You make a little idol, and you decide you are going to bow down to it. Even though it’s wood, stone, gold, silver or whatever, a demon will come along, impersonate the god you think is in that idol, and do enough stuff in response to your homage to that god to keep you hooked to a false idol.

1 Corinthians 10:21, You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons. Idol worship in one sense is worshiping nothing.

It is worshiping the demon impersonating the nothing. They worship the dragon, they worship the beast out of the pit, they worship the demons. This is Satan worship gone wild. We already have it in our world. Satan worship.

This time of the world’s history, idolatry, mysticism, spiritualism, spiritism, all kinds of things that involve Satan and the occult and the underworld, and demons will be in full force.

Evil will be running amuck like never before. People will be deep into it and when judgment comes, they will plunge even deeper into it. The forms of their idolatry will accommodate the unbridled, unrestrained wickedness that’s out of control.

They will be so deeply in love with their sin that they will worship the demons and Satan, who is happy to have them sin to whatever degree they would like. V 21, And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Murder. They have been killing now. They have tasted blood. They have been killing Jews. They have been killing Christians. They have been killing each other for years by now. Violent crime is out of control. Law and order is long gone into history.

You have a wretched society of wicked people who will not respond to God or to the gospel, and they are literally infested with demons all over the place. They have long abandoned any sense of sanity or morality, unbridled worldwide bloodshed. They have tasted blood.

They have murdered and they are not about to stop. The Greek, pharmakeia, from which we get pharmacy, pharmaceutics, drugs. This is a word that is bigger than just drugs, although it literally could be translated drugging’s.

They used to dull their senses which they use to induce their satanic worship. Whatever impure occultic practices they use to get in deep to their witchcraft. Drunkenness, drugs, seances, hypnotism, incantations, mystic mantras, whatever induces their religious experience. Cavorting with mediums, spirits and the deceptions of Satan. They are not about to let go of that.

That, too, will be rampant. We see that coming, don’t we, in the New Age. We even see the murders coming. Certainly, in our society we do. The fourth of the sins which they will not turn away from is immorality, porneia, from which we get pornography.

Sexual sin will go on unchecked. If you think homosexuality, rape, child molestation and bestiality, lewdness, and fornication are going strong now, you couldn’t even conceive of what they would be like then. Sexual dissipation and perversion beyond description.

Then he adds thefts. Honesty will be non-existent. There will be no reprisals left. The world is left wretched, full of immoral killers who worship Satan, demons who are drugged out of their minds by their mystic incantations and drugs themselves, who follow their impulses to destroy and plunder. And nobody can do anything about it.

There is still one trumpet, and seven bowls of judgment left. But our Lord is compassionate. The reason all these warnings are here is for us. The real test of how much we believe of prophetic truth is what we are doing to warn men to flee from the wrath to come.

Though unbelievers may never experience this because they will die before it happens, they will experience something far worse, if we could even imagine such a thing.