I think we all understand the evil that exists in the world. We’re seeing it at a level like we have never seen in our lifetime before in this sort of post-Christian, anti-Christian time of corruption. We are seeing an entire society, an entire globe catapult headlong into gross kinds of corruption and immorality at every level, and the powers that be supporting all of that and taking aim at those who are righteous in the culture. This is exactly what Isaiah talked about in chapter 5 when he said, “Bitter has replaced sweet, and everything is upside-down and inside-out and overturned. The things that we always consider to be good are now considered as evil, and the things that were evil are now good.”

So we understand manifest evil in the world. We understand there’s a battle between good and evil. We as the children of God have been made new creations, and we love righteousness, and we are set against a world that is bent on evil at a level that has never been seen before because evil men get worse and worse through history, as the Bible says. We understand what we see and what we know and what we experience.

But what we might not so readily understand is that beneath the surface in the spiritual realm there’s a massive, massive conflict going on. It’s a conflict that involves holy angels who are ministering spirits sent to minister from the throne of God for the well-being of the saints and carrying out the will of God. And there is another spiritual force, a massive force of fallen angels that we know as demons, who engage themselves in the perpetration and the expansion of everything that is wretched and evil. This is the unseen world.

The Bible gives us a glimpse into that unseen world in a number of places in Scripture. We can, as we go through the Bible, see the activity of Satan and fallen angels in a lot of places, particularly manifest most dramatically during the ministry of Christ on earth. It’s as if that when He showed up, all the demons came out of their hiding, their clandestine places, and exposed themselves when they came face-to-face to Him.

But we have to understand that there are these two mighty fortresses working in the unseen world, spiritual spheres, and all of us are on one side or the other. We either are a companion to God, or a companion to Satan. We are either those who take part with the holy angels in the enterprise of the advance of God’s kingdom, or we are engaged with demons in the expansion of the power of Satan. You’re either a saint or a sinner, and there’s nothing in between. And to doubt this reality is the most momentous mistake that a person can ever make, the most fatal error that you can ever make, because it has eternal consequences, eternal results. You might sort of simplify it by saying heaven is calling you through Jesus Christ and the gospel. At the same time, hell is calling you through Satan and his lies and deception. That’s going on all the time. It’s overt in our society, but it’s also beneath the surface in all the subtleties that Satan can manufacture.

Now, the voices of hell have always been loud enough and alluring enough to charm and seduce the world of sinners who are born into the kingdom of darkness to start with, so that Satan flourishes in his kingdom, and all who follow him, all who are children of the devil, follow his direction, his lead. And so, to one degree or another, every human being in this world is either a part of the kingdom of God and the ministry of holy angels on their behalf, or the kingdom of Satan and the ministry of demons on their behalf. That’s existing even now. We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, Paul said, but against principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies.

You have to understand the unseen world is real, and it is vast, and it is powerful. But again, we don’t see it in our time. The outburst came in the ministry of Christ, and even after that in the ministry of the apostles. But since that time, Satan has been much more covert in his operations, although from time to time, it’s unmistakable to understand what he is doing.

As bad as it is now, as powerful as Satan is, as effective and successful as he is, there is coming a time in the future that will be vastly beyond this era, even at its very worst. There is coming a time when virtually all of hell will come to earth, and there will come demons with inevitable, overwhelming, virtually irresistible power and seduction. They will successfully drown out all the preachers who are proclaiming the gospel and calling people to come to Christ and come to God and come to heaven.

When this time comes, the people who are alive at this time will already have had plenty of warnings—powerful warnings, dramatic warnings, inescapable warnings from those who preach the gospel: the 144,000 Jews who are converted, as the book of Revelation tells us, from two witnesses described in chapter 11, from an angel flying in heaven who will proclaim the gospel across the face of the earth. There will be people converted and saved from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, as chapter 7 of Revelation says, so there will be a force of believers proclaiming the gospel. They will be martyred—many of them, not all of them. Some of them will come under the power of the Antichrist, and he will slay them, and they will be killed for the cause of Christ. But others will survive through that time in the future to enter into the kingdom of Christ when He returns. So the people who are alive at that time—and we’re talking about a time the Bible calls the Tribulation, a seven-year period in the future, the second half of which is called the Great Tribulation.

Just to set it in your mind, the church will have been raptured, the church will be taken out of the world. We see that in the chronology of Revelation. The church is, in the first three chapters, on earth. The church is, in chapters 4 and 5, in heaven. And then back on earth, in chapters 6 through 19, all hell breaks loose in the final judgments that God unleashes on the world.

So the people who are left after the church is gone, some of them, as I said, will be converted. Jews will come to finally acknowledge Christ as their Messiah. People from every tongue and tribe will be saved. As I said, many will be martyred. Some will remain alive and preach the gospel. The gospel will be preached throughout that period of time. But at the same time the gospel is being preached, judgments will be unleashed like never before. And we saw those judgments in the seven seals that started in chapter 6—we won’t go back over all of that—seal judgments.

The seals symbolize a scroll, a title deed to the earth. Christ takes the scroll because He’s the heir to the earth. He unrolls the scroll, and each time He breaks a seal, a judgment comes that is horrendous and devastating. So the people who are alive by the time we get to chapter 9 will have seen divine judgment. They will have heard the gospel being preached. They will have heard calls for forgiveness and mercy and grace to those who will repent. They will see death like never before. They will have already experienced the immediate killing of, essentially, a huge portion of the entire world. Judgment fierce, unavoidable. By the time they get to chapter 9, they will have seen judgment coming relentlessly, without relief, and they will hear the gospel being preached with the same relentlessness. So God will be judging and offering salvation at the same time.

So let’s step into that future period of time by coming to chapter 9, verse 13. And as we come here, we come to the sixth trumpet. Now remember, there were seven seal judgments, and the seventh seal judgment becomes the seven trumpet judgments. The seventh trumpet judgment launches the seven bowl judgments, which carry us all the way to the return of Christ. So in a series of telescoping judgments, seals, trumpets, and judgment by the pouring out of bowls of wrath, we see the unfolding divine judgment of the book of Revelation in the future time called the Tribulation.

But as we come to chapter 9 and verse 13, we come to the sixth angel. And just so you have a bit of a perspective, the seventh seal is opened, and when the seventh seal is opened—back in chapter 8, look at verse 1—the seventh seal is opened. And immediately you have seven angels in verse 2 stand before God and seven trumpets. So the seven trumpet judgments come out of that seventh seal, and each of these seven angels blow their trumpets, and these judgments are unleashed.

If you want to be reminded of those judgments, go down to verse 7 of chapter 8. “The first sounded, there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, they were thrown to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, all the green grass was burned up. The second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed.

“The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters. The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter. The fourth angel sounded, a third of the sun, third of the moon, third of the stars were struck, so that a third of them would be darkened and the day would not shine for a third of it, and the night in the same way.” Devastation.

Then in chapter 9, verse 1, “The fifth angel sounded, and . . . a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him.” This is an angelic being. And “he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. Then out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth, and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth [had] power.” This is the unleashing of demons, depicted. So when you get to the fifth trumpet, you have this unleashing of demons, who are described as if they were locusts.

So we’ve already had an unleashing of demons who had been bound, bound since all the way back in the book of Genesis. So there are millions of demons in the world today. There will be at that time as well. But there will be some who have been bound since the book of Genesis who will be released, increasing the massive size of Satan’s force during the Great Tribulation.

Now that gets us to the sixth trumpet in verse 13. “Sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ And the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released, so that they would kill a third of mankind. The number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. And this is how I saw in the vision the horses and those who sat on them: the riders had breastplates the color of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone; and the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths proceed fire and smoke and brimstone. And a third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which proceeded out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents and [they] have heads, and with them they do harm.

“The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts.” The first unleashing of bound demons came in the first half of chapter 9. The second half of chapter 9, two hundred million more demons are released, two hundred million.

So let’s look at this text, and we’ll start with the release of demons in verse 13. “Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God.” Five have already sounded, and the judgments are inconceivable, devastating everything—everything in earth and sky, land, plants, animals, sea, fresh water, sky, heavenly body, sun, moon, stars. Man is tormented by the unleashing of demons, and he seeks death but can’t find it, as that first barrage of demons brings pain but not death. Hell has spewed out millions of captive demons, and here come even more in the sixth trumpet. Verse 14, “One saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’”

Now we have two interesting points to think about here. First of all is the golden altar, and secondly, the river Euphrates. As we go back to verse 13, these judgments begin with a voice from the four horns of the altar. Literally, in the Greek, one voice, a solitary voice. Maybe the voice of God, maybe the voice of the Lamb of God, maybe the voice of an angelic being, but it is a voice nonetheless, and it comes from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God.

What is the significance of this? Well, we’ve already seen the golden altar twice in the book of Revelation. We saw it back in chapter 6, verses 9 to 11, where some saints who had been martyred during the Tribulation are under the altar, and they’re praying for vengeance. They’re under the altar praying for vengeance. They want God to avenge the enemy.

If you go back to verse 9 of chapter 6, “I saw,” John writes at the fifth seal, “underneath the altar”—that same altar—“souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained.” So this is the martyrs from that period of time. And what are they crying out for? “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” So now we find this altar, which is the golden altar before the throne of God, in chapter 6 is an altar of vengeance. It’s an altar where the saints who have been martyred cry for vengeance.

Now look back at the beginning of chapter 8, it appears again there. Verse 3, “Another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, so that he might add it to the prayers of the saints”—from back in chapter 6—“on the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.” And then the seven trumpets.

In chapter 6, it’s an altar of vengeance; and in chapter 8 it’s an altar of judgment. But what is it referring to? What is this golden altar in verse 13? Well, this is a visionary replica of the golden altar in Exodus chapter 30. The opening few verses of Exodus, we are introduced to this piece of furniture in the Temple and the Tabernacle, a golden altar. It was located in the Holy Place. You had the outer courtyard in the Tabernacle, in the Temple, then you had the Holy Place, then you had the Holy of Holies where God dwelt, according to Exodus, chapter 40. So located in the Holy Place, just before entering into the presence of God, is this golden altar.

There are two altars set up in the Temple. First altar is the—we could call it the great altar, the more familiar altar. It was called the brazen altar. It was called the altar of burnt offering. It was called the altar of sacrifice. It’s the altar where the animal sacrifices were constantly made on behalf of the sins of the people. This altar was outside the Holy Place in the courtyard. This is the familiar altar of sacrifice, and it was just flowing with blood all the time, as priests slaughtered animals every morning and every evening, symbolizing the need for the atonement for sin.

That’s different than the golden altar. The golden altar was inside the Holy Place, smaller, made of gold, not brass. Inside, the golden altar was where the high priest went because he would then take incense from the sacrificial altar, put it on the golden altar, and it would rise as incense to God. What’s the symbolism of that? Prayers for grace and mercy. Prayers for grace and mercy are only possible if sacrifice for sin has been made. Fiery coals from the outside altar, the altar of sacrifice, were placed in the golden altar of incense, symbolizing prayer to God, and the priests did this every morning and every evening.

The symbolism of this is very clear: Access to God, prayer to God, worship of God, seeking mercy and grace from God, communion with God, the right to plead to God were related to the provision of blood sacrifice. Sin had to be dealt with before communion could be established. Before there was grace, before there was mercy, there had to be sacrifice. Sacrifice opened the way to God. So the priests would offer the sacrifice, take from the altar a portion of the burning coals, take them in and place them on the golden altar, symbolizing the fact that prayer could rise to God based upon a sacrifice for sin being made. The book of Hebrews says Jesus, by the sacrifice of Himself, opened the way to God completely and finally.

So the work of the golden altar essentially was opened by the work of the brazen altar. It was an altar where you sought mercy. In fact, in 1 Kings 1:50 it talks about people would literally cling to the horns of that altar, crying to God for mercy. It was an altar of mercy. It was an altar of grace based upon sacrifice. Once the sins had been atoned for, God could deliver the people from the consequence of their sin and show them mercy.

But when you come to the book of Revelation, there is a dramatic change. We see the golden altar again in chapter 6, but it’s not an altar of mercy; it’s an altar of vengeance. It’s an altar of vengeance. The saints are praying for vengeance on sinners. And now in chapter 8 it becomes an altar of judgment, an altar of judgment where violence takes place, as the angels throw down the censer and unleash the trumpet judgments.

Just mark that this is a horrible time in human history, when the altar of mercy and the altar of grace has been turned into an altar of vengeance and an altar of judgment. Terrible. This is the end, when there’s no more grace and there’s no more mercy. The implication is that God’s appointed way of salvation has been totally and finally rejected. The wickedness of the world has risen so high that even the place of mercy becomes a place of vengeance and a place of judgment.

With that understanding, we come to verse 14, and the sixth angel who had the trumpet is told, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” Now who are these angels? Well, they’re not holy angels because nowhere in Scripture are holy angels ever bound, ever. These are fallen angels who are bound. We already met some like that in the first half of chapter 9, those who were bound in the time of Genesis and had been bound all the time since Genesis until the future Tribulation when, according to chapter 9, they are released.

Well, here are some more of those bound demons, and the perfect tense in the Greek means they have been bound for a long time. That is their condition—bound demons, fallen angels, another segment of Satan’s force. And apparently, each of these four bound demons has an army, because the armies that are with them in verse 16 are in the plural. Who are these, and what is the meaning of the river Euphrates? These are demons who have demon armies that have been bound, going all the way back to some ancient time around the river Euphrates.

We know there are demons who have been free and work throughout all of human history. We know there are demons who were thrown out of heaven. We know there are demons who, in chapter 9, as I said, came up out of the pit. But here is a new force of two hundred million of them set loose. But why are they bound at the great river Euphrates? That seems like a very important note, and it is. Why are they bound in that place?

Well, that is the area of the Garden of Eden. Of course, it was one of the four rivers of the Garden of Eden. So it was the place of Satan’s deception of Adam and Eve. It was the place where Adam was tempted and fell, and the whole human race with him. It was the place where the first assault on God and man took place. The river Euphrates rises from sources near Mount Ararat in Turkey. The Euphrates flows more than seventeen hundred miles before emptying into the Persian Gulf, the longest and most important river in the Middle East. It figures prominently in the Old Testament, starting in Genesis chapter 2, as it was part of the topography of the Garden of Eden.

It was near the Euphrates that sin began—that the first lie was told, that the first murder was committed, that the Tower of Babel was built, the complex of false religions that has since spread across the world. The Euphrates was the eastern boundary of the Promised Land, and Israel’s influence extended to the Euphrates during the reign of David and Solomon. The region near Euphrates was also the central location of world powers, ancient world powers—Babylon, Assyria, and Medo-Persia. So it’s a very important place. It could be that the demons who basically ran the empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Medo-Persia may have been bound at that time, and have been bound along with their armies ever since then. It is the river Euphrates, again, over which the enemies of God will cross in the future when they engage in the battle of Armageddon.

So it’s like the focal point of all evil. And God bound some demons and held them in captivity there until this future time, along with their army of two hundred million. As bad as the world is, it’s not as bad as it could be if two hundred million more demons were set loose. Just think of that. It’s right at the place where the Tower of Babel initiated pagan religion, the very place where pagan religion today is still headquartered.

What do I mean by that? The Middle East is still the home—and going east from there—of the major false religions of the world: Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, Shamanism, Animism—on and on and on and on you go. It’s still the focal point of Satan’s counterfeit religions.

So there’s some demons and their armies bound there, and in the future, they will be released. For what purpose? Verse 15, “The four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released, so that they would kill a third of mankind.” Now they’re going to unleash death. Back in chapter 9, the first barrage of demons were not permitted to kill anyone—chapter 9, verse 5—only to torment them for a period of time. Now they’re given the power to kill.

Who has prepared these? It says they were prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year. God. He’s the one who bound them. He’s the one who released them. He’s the one who will use them as agents of His judgment. God will use them in the continuing destruction of the world before Christ returns to set up His kingdom. And the day, the hour, the month, the year has been established, and so has the number. Verse 16, notice the number: two hundred million. And then John says as he looked to the vision, “I heard the number of them,” as if to say, “I’m not guessing.” At the precise moment, they will be released to kill a third of mankind. That’s the thirteenth mention of one-third of something in connection with trumpet judgment.

Now back in chapter 6, verse 8, under the fourth seal, a fourth of the earth was killed. Since then, many more have been killed in the terrible judgments. But this slaughter will take a third of those in the world that are left. Unimaginable in a brief period of time; the pileup of bodies will be inconceivable. I can’t imagine how they would even begin to dispose of billions of people. This is a force to kill like nothing in history. And there’s no power on earth that can withstand this because they are operating as instruments of God’s will.

Verse 17 gives us a description of them, as John sees them as if they were horsemen, armies. He’s not talking about literal people or armies, but rather these demons. But he describes them in terms that obviously God used in the vision. The vision gave him a picture of “horses and those who sat on them: [and] the riders had breastplates the color of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone; and the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths proceed fire and smoke and brimstone.”

John’s just telling us what he saw. He looked at them and he saw fire and hyacinth and brimstone—red, blue, and yellow, the colors of fire. Red, obviously the color of fire. Hyacinth, which is blue, the deepest color of the hottest fire. And brimstone is yellow like a sulfuric gas. It’s as if hell arrived on earth.

And in describing their heads like the heads of lions, he is demonstrating that these demons are fierce, strong, determined murderers come to slaughter. “And out of their mouths proceed fire and smoke and brimstone,” and those are the three things that kill a third of the population of the world. And it doesn’t describe exactly how that occurs. We can only say what the Bible says. But the people will be killed by the fire, the smoke, and the brimstone that these demons generate: asphyxiated by the hellish, fiery arrival of hell on earth, burned, suffocated with smoke and gas.

And what about the description of their mouths and their tails? Simply to say that they have one function, and it comes from every angle, and that is the function of death. They do harm. They do harm, they do deadly harm. So the sixth trumpet will bring the release of demons and the return of death.

And then this passage closes in verses 20 and 21 with the reaction of defiance. “The rest of mankind, who were not killed,” that are still alive—that means the two-thirds that remain when the one-third are killed—“the rest of [them], who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent,” did not repent. Even with that, they didn’t repent—which means they could have repented, which means the gospel is still being preached in the world. God is still communicating the offer of forgiveness, but they don’t repent.

This is the most severe warning in Scripture. To any person who thinks that there’s not an urgency about coming to Christ, you might be able to figure out the truth when you’re in the Tribulation and not have to do it now. When you get into that particular part of God’s plan, you may be among those who have no capacity to repent, like the two-thirds.

You would wonder, Why wouldn’t they repent? Why wouldn’t they repent? What have they seen? They’ve seen unbelievable judgment. They’ve seen false peace, and then war, and then famine, and then death, and then the destruction of their entire earthly environment and the destruction of the sky as they know it. They’ve seen the whole of the human race begin to disappear, a fourth of them being killed, and others being slaughtered. They’ve seen the demons harming people and making them so sick they wish they were dead. Everything is chaos and disorder.

At the same time, there will be many who believe the gospel, chapter 7 says, from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, and Israel will be saved. So they’ve also met believers, some of whom are martyred, some of whom will survive to enter into the kingdom when Christ returns. But by the time you get to this unfolding, they are so hard-hearted. Two-thirds of them, the implication is, could still repent, but they, in a proleptic way, it says, “They didn’t repent.” They didn’t repent.

Repentance is always the issue. Back to the gospel of Luke, chapter 24, verse 47, the Great Commission, tell people to repent for the forgiveness of sins. They won’t have anybody to blame but themselves for their lack of repentance.

It gets worse under the—if that’s possible—under the bowl judgments. If you go over to chapter 16, the final judgment of all the judgments, the final bowl judgment, the seventh judgment of the three categories, huge hailstones, a hundred pounds, come down from heaven upon men, and men blaspheme God. They still don’t repent as judgment escalates and mounts.

What do they cling to? Why wouldn’t they repent? Well, we’re told they wouldn’t repent. Go back to verse 20. “They did not repent of the works of their hands.” That’s a phrase used often in the Old Testament to describe idols, because idols were made by men’s hand.

There are five sins representative of these defiant sinners. They choose hell. They choose demons. They choose death. They choose Satan. They choose sin. They are worshippers of Satan. They have the mark of the beast. They worship the Antichrist. They worship the dragon. They are completely engulfed in control by Satan and two hundred million additional demons.

And so there are five things that mark them, five sins. One: idolatry. “They do not repent of the works of their hands”—that’s idols they make—“so as not to worship demons”—which is to say, idol worship is demon worship. An idol is no one; it is nothing, but a demon will impersonate the idol that the sinner creates, and he winds up worshiping demons. They “worship demons, and the idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.” They’ll be completely committed to demon worship in forms of idolatry.

And secondly, “They did not repent”—verse 21—“of their murders, their murders.” Murder will be rampant. There’s so much death going on, so much death. God is killing people in judgment. Antichrist is killing people in persecution. The world is running amok in evil. It’s completely out of control. They’ve been killing the Jews. They’ve been killing believers. Violent crime is completely out of control. It’s a worldwide bloodbath. The angry population of the world—and they will be angry—will turn that anger on each other, and they’ll kill those in their own family. So their sins will be idolatry and murder, and they will not be restrained from those sins, even in the midst of judgment.

The third sin is “sorceries,” verse 21. It’s the word pharmakeia, their druggings—drugs, drugs. They’ll be engulfed in drugs, drunkenness, drug-induced stupors, to make the horrors of their life, perhaps, tolerable to some extent. People take drugs today because they can’t tolerate life as we know it. Think of what life then will be like and how they’ll head for the medicine cabinet to escape the horrors of that reality. They’ll cling to their drugs, their hatred, and their demon worship.

And then the fourth sin, in verse 21, is immoralities. That’s the Greek word porneia, pornography. That’s going to be the worst of all times. The whole remaining population of the world is engulfed in worshiping demons, in murdering, in drugs, and in pornography, sexual sins without restraint—rape, child molestation, pedophilia, homosexuality, bestiality—every conceivable and inconceivable expression of sexual evil.

And then at the end of verse 21, a fifth: theft, stealing. Honesty will be nonexistent. Property rights will be ignored. I look at the world around us, and I see foreboding realities of this already: demon worship, rampant crimes of murder, drugs, immorality, and theft. We’re getting a little taste, even in America, of life like this in the future. Only then it’ll be global, and they won’t turn.

So, what do we say to all of this? Well, I want to say this first of all, Ezekiel 33:11. Listen, “‘As surely as I live,’ declares the Sovereign Lord, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked.’” Did you hear that? “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die . . . ?” God is saying, “You don’t have to die. Turn! turn! turn!” God finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

How does this apply to us? Well, the real test of what you believe about this is how you respond to it. And since this is true, our response should be to warn people to flee from the wrath to come, right? And that’s what I was trying to say last Sunday, when we talked about what the church is in the world to do is not to rearrange the politics. We’re in the world to warn of the wrath to come.

The church will be taken out of this world. We will be taken to glory, to the marriage supper of the Lamb, to dwell with the Lord forever in bliss and joy, and that is offered to anyone who puts his or her trust in Christ. Turn, turn from your sin, repent, come to Christ, so that you don’t end up in this setting of judgment and the hopelessness of clinging to sins without the possibility of repenting. If this is true, and it is, and we believe it is true, and we do, this defines what believers are in the world for. We’re here to warn of the wrath to come. Jesus did that, the apostles did that, all faithful believers do that as well. That’s our calling as we proclaim the gospel. Let’s pray.

Our Father, we thank You again for giving us the revelation of the future so that we understand what is to come. We have no excuse not to be captivated by the urgency of warning people of these horrors. Give us the faithfulness, the boldness, the clarity in love to warn and to call sinners to repentance and faith in Christ. Amen.