The Jewish Final Solution to the World's Problem - Revelation, Part 18- The World Ripened for Judgement

[0:00] or a scripture reading that will come later, I'd like you to be prepared to read along with us from Revelation chapter 6. You will find that in your Bibles. We'll be there shortly.

[0:13] And we continue to give our undivided attention to the time yet to be visited upon planet Earth, described by the Bible as the time of tribulation, or the time of Jacob's trouble.

[0:30] It is tribulation, distress, calamity, conflagration, and a host of other destructive negatives in store for the world in general.

[0:43] In particular, it is referred to as the time of Jacob's trouble, because the nation of Israel and the Jewish people will be the principal focus.

[0:56] Although targeted by the Antichrist and subjected to unparalleled persecution, surpassing that of World War II's Holocaust, Israel will emerge triumphant due to the timely arrival of the Messiah they once rejected.

[1:17] And then, all Israel will be saved in accordance with Romans 11.25 and 26. We are, in our Revelation study, seeing these events unfold as they were revealed to the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos 2,000 years ago.

[1:41] This time of universal conflagration is frequently prophesied by all the major prophets, Isaiah through Daniel, most of the minor prophets from Hosea to Malachi.

[1:58] Jesus spoke vividly of this time in his lengthy treatment in the Olivet Discourse, of Matthew 24 and 25, only days before his crucifixion.

[2:13] In our present study, we have arrived at the tribulation period in its very earliest development, perhaps within the first year or two of the seven that it will total, and we find ourselves exploring Revelation chapter 7.

[2:32] It details the sealing and the providential protection of the 144,000 Jews who are called and equipped for a special ministry of worldwide evangelism.

[2:46] Only the divinely provided protective seal will prevent their being martyred due to the intense hostility that will oppose them as directed by the Antichrist and his minions.

[3:03] Despite the fierce opposition, these will be successful in winning many to faith in the true God of Israel, among both Jews and Gentiles.

[3:14] And these will have no protective seal from God as do the 144,000, and many of those won by them will endure persecution and execution at the hands of the Antichrist.

[3:30] Only those receiving the mark of the beast will be able to buy and sell and escape persecution. As unspeakably horrible, even defying description that this time of tribulation will be, some, no doubt, would question whether a divinely wrought conflagration of death and human misery, such as Revelation describes, is worthy and fitting to have come from the Almighty.

[4:05] Is not this the world he has said to have loved? And is not love said to be one of his chiefest attributes?

[4:18] Where is the love? There is a saying among men, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

[4:31] In the tribulation it will be, Hell hath no fury like the deity scorned. The world at large has been scorning the love and sacrifice of the deity for 2,000 years.

[4:51] The fury of the scorned deity has been amassing since the greatest manifestation of love ever shown was presented to humanity on the cross of Christ.

[5:07] God demonstrated his love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This love of God not only continues to be scorned and held in derision, but we see it intensified in multiple ways day by day.

[5:27] And God's fury continues to build. Man's rebellion and rejection of God's love results in man's present condition, described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 2, wherein he says, Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

[6:02] Fast forward to the revelation wrath of which Paul was speaking, to the pitiful plea that is cried out in chapter 6, when the sixth seal is broken.

[6:15] Revelation 6, verses 12 through 17.

[6:43] Revelation 6, verses 12 through 17. I looked when he broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.

[7:18] The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

[7:29] Then the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the commanders, and the rich, and the strong, and every slave, and free man, hid themselves in the caves, and among the rocks of the mountains.

[7:45] And they said to the mountains, and to the rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the presence of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.

[7:58] For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand? And it should be noted that that last verse is a rhetorical question.

[8:17] The great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand? And the answer to that rhetorical question, of course, is no one.

[8:30] No one. This is a form of violence, not visited on earth in such magnitude since the flood that violently destroyed all human life, but those sheltered in the ark of Noah.

[8:51] There are those critical of God using extreme violence as unbecoming to a God who is supposed to be love. How, then, can God justify doing the very same thing he condemned in man when he himself acts in such great wrath and violence?

[9:13] Love said to be one of his chiefest attributes. So, then, where is the love? This is the same kind of argument, of course, that is often set forth by those who oppose the principle of capital punishment.

[9:36] And they say, reasoning thusly, that for the state to wantonly take the life of a murderer makes the state no better than the murderer because they actually are committing murder themselves.

[9:51] That, of course, is a completely fallacious argument, has no substance to it. When a murderer is sentenced to execution, it is on the basis of righteousness and justice, not on the basis of whatever it was that motivated the murderer to perpetrate his crime.

[10:11] The distinction is made between righteous wrath and unrighteous wrath. The world, at large, has engaged in unrighteous wrath heaped upon fellow man for literally centuries, in fact, for millennia.

[10:30] When God dispenses his wrath, it will be a righteous wrath, it will be a just wrath, it will be one that is well-deserved and the world more than has coming.

[10:46] Distinction needs to be made because it is a very careful one. The recent closure of the 20th century was marked by being the most brutal of humanity ever.

[11:02] Death tolls via war and other acts of violence resulted in a greater loss of human life than the preceding 20 centuries combined. This is what mankind has done with his so-called enlightenment and advanced technology.

[11:21] Hundreds of millions of people on all continents have suffered death from man's sophisticated intellectuality and advanced learning.

[11:32] The ungodly engines of humanism and communism bathed in atheism have proved what they can do.

[11:43] The world has repeatedly demonstrated its insatiable bloodlust. Romans chapter 1 continues to be demonstrated daily before our very eyes and the stench of it all surely reaches into heaven itself.

[11:58] why God continues to delay his response can only be due to his granting additional time for human repentance. Nevertheless, at a time he has already appointed, the dam of God's long-suffering will break.

[12:18] His fury and judgment will burst forth. death. And such is precisely what this last book of the Bible, the Revelation, is all about.

[12:31] It is as much as God's saying, very well, world, violence, cruelty, and death is what you want, and what you perpetrate, and what you insist upon, dishing out to your fellow humans, even extending to the evil of snuffing out the innocent lives of the unborn, by untold millions worldwide, you would have wrath.

[12:57] Here you are. There was an occasion when in the British Parliament years ago, a member stood to denounce the course of action that Britain was debating.

[13:13] Under discussion was whether Britain should pursue a course of military response to a situation that had developed, and was clearly a threat to the lives and safety of many.

[13:26] The party whose name I do not recall, stood up and delivered a strong admonition away from military action. He concluded his remarks by saying, violence never solved anything.

[13:44] To that, Sir Winston Churchill rose to his feet and stated, I beg to differ with the gentleman that violence never solved anything. It solved World War I, and it solved World War II.

[14:01] Indeed, it did, Sir Winston. There is evil violence, and there is righteous violence. And when evil violence reaches its crescendo, it is time for righteous violence to respond.

[14:18] And this is precisely what God is going to do, and this is why he is going to do it. Revelation 6, we read, How long, O Lord, will you wait before you act upon those who shed our blood?

[14:32] God. That was the actions of evil violence crying out to God, the victims of evil violence crying out to God to visit the evil ones with God's brand of violence that will be a holy, righteous violence.

[14:52] So, briefly, if you will, let's just give some passing consideration to the world as to its moral and spiritual state.

[15:02] What we are to share with you has nothing to do with opinion, has everything to do with well established historical fact. The most populous of all of our continents is Asia.

[15:17] This includes China, Japan, and Russia, plus all the stands that comprise that part of the continent, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkestan, Kazakhstan, and others, and what is not atheistic, and in bold defiance and rejection of God, such as Russia and China, is given over to the false religion of Islam, by far the most bloodthirsty of all religions of all time.

[15:49] Islamicists boast of their love for death and bloodshed, while its apostles of intolerance try to convince a naive world that Islam is a religion of peace.

[16:03] The very word Islam means only one thing. The word means submission or to submit. And of course, the peace comes only after you do.

[16:19] The one to whom we are to submit is Allah, the phony deity of Islam. Islam. Their track record has been repeatedly obvious since the 7th century.

[16:33] Where Islam is a minority, the game plan is lay low, have your babies, and produce them with up to four wives begetting them.

[16:45] Then, when Islam becomes dominant in any area, you are then in a position to force conversions to Islam. Those who will not convert to Islam may live at your pleasure as second class citizens among you, subject to higher taxes and deprived of any privilege accorded to Muslims.

[17:10] And if it pleases you to not merely have them in servitude, you are permitted to kill them in the name of Allah. In any case, obedient Muslims are expected to wage jihad, or a holy war in the name of Allah against all infidels.

[17:31] The chiefest of the infidels that must be brought into Islam and subjection to Allah, the great Satan, the United States, and the little Satan, the nation of Israel.

[17:46] The demise of the old USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, resulted in the breakout of the several satellite nations that the Soviets gobbled up right after World War II.

[18:03] They included East Germany, Albania, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, and others. Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin presided over this massive change that left only Russia to itself.

[18:22] All of the satellites subsequently peeled off. They have opened Russia since then to many mission efforts by Americans who have sent teams to evangelize and train Russian pastors.

[18:45] And there are Americans from our own city and from some of our own churches that have conducted missions to Russia where they have been able to influence pastors in that area.

[18:57] But make no mistake about it, the official politics of Russia remains solidly atheistic and communistic. The same is to be said for China, the world's most populous nation.

[19:13] Despite the advances made in China by capitalism and venture capitalists and opening of China by Nixon and Kissinger, China remains solidly entrenched in both atheism and communism.

[19:32] No other continent has suffered so much brutality and misery as has the continent of Asia with the pole pots of Cambodia's killing fields and Russia's deliberate and systematic starvation of 50 million Russians under Joseph Stalin.

[19:53] So the blessings of technology and discovery allowed by God has not resulted in more humane behavior among mankind, but in less.

[20:04] As stated, the recent closure of the 20th century was marked by being the most brutal of humanity ever. Death tolls via war and other acts of violence resulted in a greater loss of human life than the preceding 20 centuries combined.

[20:26] This is what humanity has produced with its so-called enlightenment and advanced technology. Hundreds of millions of people on all continents have suffered cruel deaths from man's so-called sophisticated intellectuality and advanced learning.

[20:48] Undeniably, it is all played out against the backdrop of how the Apostle Paul describes the last days when perilous times shall come, when writing to Timothy in the third chapter of his second letter, by saying, men shall be ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

[21:11] Doesn't that fit our culture to a T? Ever learning, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.

[21:24] The ungodly engines of humanism and communism, bathed in atheistic evolutionism, have proved what they can do.

[21:34] And while Hitler's philosophy of Aryan supremacy resulted in World War II and the death of 50 million worldwide, 7 million of whom were Jews, put to death simply for being Jews.

[21:52] And while Stalin systematically starved and murdered another 50 million of his own people because they did not fit the blueprint he had laid out for what he envisioned to be the new glorious communist order.

[22:07] And while Japan as well in the Pacific theater, brutally murdered untold numbers of Chinese and other Asians during the 1930s and 1940s.

[22:19] But not to be out done, and while excoriating the Germans and the Japanese for their brutality and the wanton murders of their innocent victims, we Americans who like to pride ourselves on our freedom, compassion, and welcoming attitude toward millions of immigrants over the past 200 years, have created our own anti-human, anti-life holocaust by refusing life to the very ones we ourselves conceived.

[23:07] That sounds like an impossible statement. It is every bit true. Which is the greater brutality?

[23:21] Is it the murder of 50 million innocents in time of war and attempted conquest? Or the murder of completely defenseless innocents in time of peace, justifying their deaths in the name of abortion rights or women's health care?

[23:46] God help us. God help us. God help 20th and 21st century humans have repeatedly demonstrated our insatiable bloodlust, the devaluation of human life.

[24:02] Apart from murder, the evils depicted in Romans 1 continue to be paraded and applauded before our very eyes, and the stench of it all surely reaches heaven.

[24:17] God's righteous anger and wrath poured out upon humanity, as well as the state's execution of murderers, constitutes a violent, worthy, and major smackdown of evil.

[24:36] This is what the book of Revelation depicts in considerable detail, as we have seen, and as we shall see in more detail upcoming.

[24:47] morning. Now, I want to share with you the comments that I had promised from the pen of Dr. Henry Morris, and his remarks regarding Revelation chapter 7, and what is going to be transpiring throughout this world, and it is simply striking.

[25:12] Bear with me, what he has to say is very, very significant. I trust you'll give it your undivided attention. The seventh chapter of Revelation is interposed between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals on the great scroll, and thus does not necessarily participate in the chronology of the preceding and following chapters.

[25:35] chapters. On the other hand, it begins with, And after these things I saw, which seems to indicate that its events do not begin until after the great earthquake, described in Revelation 6, verses 12-17, which Gary has just read, when the sixth seal was opened.

[25:58] The termination of the chapter, however, seems to anticipate eternity, so that to some extent, it represents an expository digression given for John's encouragement and ours, just prior to the breaking of the last seal and the resulting judgments of the seven trumpets.

[26:17] As a whole, therefore, the chronology of Revelation 7 seems to pick up right after the earth convulsions of the preceding chapter. Though it also looks back to the beginning of the seven-year tribulation period, it looks forward to the end of the great tribulation, judgment, and even to the eternal state in the new earth.

[26:46] John says, After these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

[27:04] Now, you've got to keep in mind that John is being provided a vision. I do not believe that this requires actual angels to be assigned to these spots, doing what it's said that they are going to be doing, holding back the wind.

[27:23] Although they may be there, it isn't necessary that they be witnessed as being there, because angels are spirit beings. I am satisfied that as spirit beings, they may come and go around us at will, and we wouldn't even know it.

[27:37] We are not aware much of what they're doing, and we cannot see them unless they choose to materialize, as is in the case of some instances in the Bible, when they did take on a human form.

[27:49] But at any rate, these angels are responsible for this, and it is a delegated, it is a delegated responsibility that the Lord gives to these angels to carry it out.

[28:01] And as we related at the outset, throughout the book of the Revelation, we find a tremendous proliferation of the activity of these spirit beings, these angels.

[28:15] I do not know if they have been as active all along, only unseen and unknown to us, or if it is because these desperate times call for desperate straits, and we've already related to you how profoundly physical the content of Revelation is going to be, as opposed to the spiritual that characterizes the church age, the dispensation of the grace of God.

[28:41] In many ways, this is going to be a reversion to the Old Testament and to the four Gospels, where Israel was walking by sight, as opposed to the church walking by faith.

[28:53] There is a huge difference there. John continues, Dr. Morris continues, saying, After he had seen these things, the judgments under the first six seals, John saw another amazing situation.

[29:06] There, standing on the four corners of the earth, he saw four mighty angels holding back the four winds of the earth. This verse has long been derided as reflecting a naive, pre-scientific concept of earth structure, one that supposedly viewed the earth as flat with four corners.

[29:31] However, it is the same word, gonia, in the Greek, which is translated four quarters of the earth in Revelation 20 and verse 8. In terms of modern technology, it is essentially equivalent to what a mariner or geologist would call the four quadrants of the compass, or the four directions.

[29:57] This is evident also from the mention of the four winds, which in common usage would of course be the north, west, south, and east winds.

[30:09] Parenthetically, accurate modern geodetic measurements in recent years have proved that the earth actually does have four corners.

[30:22] Well, how about that? These are protuberances standing out from the basic geoid, that is, the basic spherical shape of the earth.

[30:38] The earth is not really a perfect sphere, but is slightly flattened at the poles. Its equatorial bulge is presumably caused by the earth's axial rotation, and its four corners, quote unquote, protrude from that.

[31:00] The meaning of this verse, however, is undoubtedly that the angels located in four different key positions on the earth, perhaps one at each pole and two at opposite ends of the strategic equatorial diameter, are able to control the great atmospheric circulation which governs the winds of the earth.

[31:27] This verse offers a remarkable insight into one of the abilities and functions of God's mighty angels. As created beings, they are not omnipotent, but they do excel in strength, Psalm 103, 20.

[31:44] In obedience to God, with great wisdom and power, they are able to comprehend and control to some degree the systems and forces of God's natural creation.

[31:57] When John first saw these four angels in particular, they were already engaged in the remarkable labor of restraining the great wind systems of the earth, keeping the winds from blowing on either land or sea.

[32:12] The circulation of the atmosphere is a mighty engine, driven by energy from the sun and from the earth's rotation.

[32:23] The tremendous powers involved in this operation become especially obvious when they are displayed in the form of great hurricanes, blizzards, and tornadoes.

[32:36] These winds of the earth make life possible on earth through the hydrologic cycle, transporting waters inland from the ocean with which to water the earth.

[32:49] Yet, the angels, only four of them, had turned off this gigantic engine. This situation had apparently existed for some time before John noted and recorded it.

[33:04] It presumably ties in with the great famine which the world was experiencing under the judgment of the third seal in Revelation 6, verses 5 and 6, and was part of the means by which God was miraculously supporting the judgment called forth by his two witnesses in Revelation 11, that there should be no rain on the earth for the first three and a half years of the tribulation period.

[33:34] without earth's wind systems on the earth, there could be no rain. Waters evaporating from the oceans would simply rise up into the higher atmosphere, eventually to spread out as a high vapor canopy around the earth.

[33:53] The atmospheric disturbances caused by the bombardment of meteoroids or asteroids under the sixth seal may have occasioned the precipitation of some of these vapors, or they may simply have driven them further upward.

[34:09] Furthermore, the volcanic activities accompanying the global earthquake must also have emitted vast quantities of water vapor, spewing them into the upper atmosphere.

[34:23] Both phenomena would contribute to the reestablishment of some of the waters above the firmament. It mentioned in Genesis 1-7, which had formed the earth's primeval thermal vapor blanket before the great flood.

[34:39] In the meantime, a great calm prevailed in the lower atmosphere of the earth. No breezes blew on the land, no leaves rustled in the forests, no waves broke on the shores.

[34:56] earth's primeval Then John said he saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God, and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea.

[35:15] Still mightier angel appeared on the eastern horizon. Some have suggested this angel could be Christ himself. We do not know. Now, slowly like the sun, the angel ascended from the east, and as he ascended, called out in a great voice, loud enough to reach the four angels stationed at the four quarters of the earth.

[35:40] The four angels, restraining the winds as they were, had the power to hurt both the earth and the sea. The drought which they were generating would eventually dry up the rivers and lakes and scorch the trees and grass, leading finally to widespread suffering and starvation.

[36:05] But this great angel from the east, though rising like the withering sun, had a message of grace for the servants of God. Therefore he came bearing the seal of the living God.

[36:18] Nature of this seal is not specified, except that it was to identify certain special servants of God. These servants were to be protected thereby, not only from the immediate judgments, but from later judgments of God on the earth, as in Revelation 9-4.

[36:37] They evidently had a special ministry to fulfill, and were to be protected at least from physical judgments sent by God, until that ministry was accomplished.

[36:48] This was analogous to the protection of the ancient Israelites from the physical judgments sent by God upon the Egyptians in Exodus 9-10-11.

[37:01] The Holy Spirit is called the seal of God, at least during the church age, assuring every genuine believer that his soul will indeed be preserved safe in Christ until the day of final redemption.

[37:14] He is omnipresent, of course, and will still be sealing new believers in this way, even during the tribulation period. This may be, at least in part, the meaning of this work of the angel.

[37:28] This particular sealing, however, while no doubt incorporating the salvational sealing of the Holy Spirit, clearly had a further purpose, the actual physical protection of those who were sealed, preventing God's judgments on the earth from destroying them with the wicked, saying, in verse 3, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.

[38:02] And the implication, of course, is once that is done, and everything breaks loose. After the judgments under the sixth seal, the earthquakes, the stars falling, etc., there was thus to be a brief respite on the earth.

[38:24] This would give God's enemies an opportunity to recover from their fears and to rationalize their experiences naturally.

[38:36] Can't you just see them doing that? Can't you just see the intellectuals of that day coming up with their solutions and their answers as to what has happened, and to be able to explain it all in complete naturalistic terms?

[38:55] They are so good at that. And that's what they'll do. Enabling them to rationalize their experiences naturalistically.

[39:07] fixing them more firmly than ever before in their wickedness. Its main purpose, however, was to give those who had come to believe in God an opportunity to understand their new faith, to study his word, and to realize the cosmic significance of the events through which they were passing.

[39:28] A great multitude of new believers had emerged, even in the fiery furnace of affliction. The ancient prayer of Habakkuk was being answered, O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of thy years.

[39:44] In the midst of the years make known. In wrath remember mercy. Habakkuk 3.2 In particular, was this to be vital for the preparation of a very special group of God's servants.

[39:58] They were to have a key role in witnessing to the world in the latter years of the tribulation period, and then in the millennial age to come. They must both be prepared spiritually and then protected physically if they were to accomplish their important ministry.

[40:16] They must, therefore, be sealed in their foreheads. This unusual procedure is perhaps partly in reference to the special instruction and understanding they must acquire in their minds.

[40:30] The forehead, perhaps, includes a cryptic reference to the brain's frontal lobe before they can be effective witnesses and leaders in the years just ahead. They would need a concentrated time of study in the scriptures and in their significance to an understanding of God's great purposes in creation, redemption, and the current cataclysmic judgments.

[40:52] When and how is all that going to take place? And it's just a Wiseman opinion, and that's all that it's worth, but I suggest that it will be incorporated into that period of the seven churches that will be in Asia Minor, that will be in existence at that time.

[41:09] And if these come into being as a result of the Russian invasion of Israel, along with its colleagues, along with its allies in Revelation, I'm sorry, in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and the absolute, utter, and total destruction of that advancing army, that in and of itself will have such a tremendous impact upon the people of Israel, where they will see that this invading horde of enemies has been virtually eliminated from Israel.

[41:47] Without Israel lifting a hand, God has done it on their behalf. And that will set the stage for a massive Jewish awareness of the true God of Israel being exactly who the Bible says he is.

[42:05] And they, as a nation, will begin turning to him in droves. And it will be out of that number that these 144,000, I believe, will come.

[42:19] Dr. Morris continues. The seal, however, may also imply an actual physical mark on their foreheads, identifying them to all who would encounter them as God's special servants under his special protection.

[42:34] This procedure would soon be blasphemously imitated by the coming world dictator, the beast, who would require all his followers to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads.

[42:49] Revelation 13, 16. Ultimately, however, it would become a wonderful badge of identification and unity for all the saints throughout eternity. When?

[43:00] His servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads. Revelation 22, verses 3 and 4. Now, exactly how the angel will affix the seal to their foreheads and what the insignia will be are not revealed, nor is it indicated just how the recipients of the seal are to be selected.

[43:21] There was, however, a somewhat parallel instance in ancient Israel during the time of God's angry judgment on his people as they were being sent into captivity.

[43:31] All in Jerusalem were to be slain, except those upon whose foreheads God had set his mark. The latter were the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that had been done in the midst thereof.

[43:47] Ezekiel 9, 4. Jerusalem was to be destroyed for its wickedness, except for those who had cried out against its wickedness. Possibly, this will be the criterion in the future judgment as well.

[44:04] Multitudes will turn back to God during these first years of the tribulation period. Especially will this be true in Israel, where the remarkable deliverance from Gog, that is Russia, will have had a traumatic effect on the whole nation, even before the period of judgment begins.

[44:26] Many such believing Israelites will go further, believing in Christ as their Messiah and Savior. They will soon begin a forthright witness for him, seeking to lead their countrymen and indeed the world to accept him before it is too late, in the manner of Psalm 2, verses 10 through 12, and Romans 1, 16.

[44:48] It is probably such as these upon whom the Lord, through the angel, places his seal. And then we are told in verse 4, the number of them which were sealed, there were 144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel, 12,000 of each of those tribes.

[45:10] And there is much more, but I will conclude this for now. This is from the pen of Dr. Henry Morris, and I have read you extensively, but I could not find anything to leave out.

[45:26] So I just included it. Thank you for your patience, and I appreciate very much your consideration. I will entertain any questions or comments that you may have now.

[45:39] And it would be best if you could perhaps, I wouldn't say that it's required, but it would be preferable if you could limit it to what we've talked about here, or Revelation 6 or 7, and we will do our best to give thoughtful consideration to your questions or comments.

[46:00] Anyone? Okay. Mike Elfers has a question or comment. Is there any indication in Scripture that indicates that Israel will suffer losses during the Russian invasion, or will it be totally miraculous?

[46:22] Reading as carefully as I could from Ezekiel 38 and 39, it appears that the massive loss will be limited almost exclusively, if not exclusively, to the invading armies.

[46:36] And the text makes it very clear, and we'll have to spend a little time on this. We've dealt with this to some degree in the monthly class that meets on a Tuesday, once a month.

[46:48] We've spent a little bit of time on this, and I'm trying to avoid duplicating things from that class to this class. But the nature of it is such that we will have to give a little time and consideration to the Russian invasion because it's going to be very critical.

[47:03] And by the way, as I pointed out, I really do believe that this could take place any time. We may well be here. This could very well precede the rapture of the church. This thing could happen before this year is out, this Russian invasion.

[47:18] I'm not saying that it will, but I'll say this, it wouldn't surprise me if it did. And the result of that is going to be the absolute annihilation. Not only of the Russian invading forces and their allies, but the homeland of Russia, many, many, many miles removed from Israel, is going to be devastated by fire.

[47:50] Russia is a big country. I don't know how much of it's going to be devastated, but the homeland is going to be impacted severely. And this state has been a cradle, along with red China, has been a cradle of atheism for the better part of about a hundred years.

[48:11] Yeah, about a hundred years. Russian Revolution started under the Bolsheviks in 1917. And where are we now? 2017. And the very first tenant of communism is there is no God.

[48:26] And then they go from there. So, from my reading and understanding of Ezekiel 38 and 39, this is going to be an absolutely horrendous devastation.

[48:38] I don't know how it is going to come about. I don't know whether it's going to be nuclear. I do know that it is going to take the Jewish people seven months to bury the corpses of the enemy left behind.

[48:55] The text makes that very clear. Seven months to bury the dead. And during that time, the enemy that invades is going to undergo a massive period of confusion that will result in their turning on each other.

[49:18] And they will all perish there on the mountains of Israel. And the Jewish people will virtually lift no hand to do anything about it.

[49:29] But they will immediately get the message that it is the Lord God Jehovah, the God of our fathers that has delivered us. And that will set the stage for a massive turning of the nation of Israel to the true God of Israel.

[49:45] A question in the back that Gary has. Larry? Sorry, Terry has. Okay, if that's going to happen before the rapture and Russia's going to be destroyed...

[49:57] I say it might. I don't know. Yeah. Well, if it does and Russia's destroyed, then how does Russia recover for Armageddon and have enough people to come down from the north?

[50:12] We don't know that they will. It's entirely possible that they will. But we don't know that they will because Russia is not said to necessarily be involved. It just says... God says that he will gather all the nations.

[50:23] And I take it that it will be all the nations that are available, all the nations that are going to participate. And they are coming for an entirely different reason. The reason that...

[50:34] The reason for the Russian invasion... And read Ezekiel 38 and 39 makes it quite clear. They are coming to take a spoil. Now, I don't know what the spoil is. I don't know if it is oil or not.

[50:45] And I don't know if you've heard about the discovery of oil. But we are told by the experts that there is off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea just off the coast of Israel a confirmed...

[51:04] by petroleum geologists a confirmed deposit of oil that the Jews never knew was there until just maybe five years ago.

[51:16] And they said that this thing is huge. It is greater than the oil reserves of Iran. whether Russia is coming to take that or the natural gas or to harvest the Dead Sea which is reported to have over a trillion dollars worth of chemicals in it much of which is potash and other things.

[51:41] Whether they're coming for that I don't know. But it says they are coming to take a spoil. And they will be opposed by some other Arab nations but not militarily only diplomatically they will be opposed and that will stop nothing and they will come in but they will suffer a complete annihilation there on the mountains of Israel.

[52:06] And that is just... But when the nations are gathered together for Armageddon they are not coming to take a spoil. They are coming to absolutely eliminate the whole state of Israel to completely annihilate them.

[52:22] And it may well be because there had been some nuclear activity that Israel would have dared to use nuclear energy.

[52:34] I don't know. I do know this and I've heard Benjamin Netanyahu say it. We do have nuclear capability and if we perceive that our existence as a nation is severely threatened we will be forced to use it.

[52:50] Well of course. Absolutely. Why not? I mean what have you got to lose at that point in time? And it could be that that would be something that would trigger the hatred and the violence of the rest of the world and that they would amass because these armies are going to gather in the fields and the plains of Megiddo up north is the most glorious expanse of a battlefield that you could ever imagine.

[53:17] They said that the emperor Napoleon looked over the Armageddon battlefield and licked his chops and said what a marvelous place for a battle. Well the battle isn't going to occur there but the armies are going to mass there and then they are going to march south to Jerusalem and the king of kings is coming from the north.

[53:38] He's coming from Petra and Basra and they will clash they will meet there in the valley of Jehoshaphat which is the same as the Kidron Valley and there the onslaught will take place and Christ will slay them with the word of his mouth.

[54:02] The text reads about a sharp sword going out of his mouth isn't going to be a sword with a hilt on it and a double edged blade but it's symbolic of the power and the effect of the spoken word of Christ.

[54:18] Word of God is sharper than a two edged sword and he is going to simply speak the word and the word that brought all into existence will be the word that will decimate that enemy.

[54:33] So they'll be coming for an entirely different reason. Did I see another comment or question? Okay, Bill, our visitor up here, the young man's coming with the microphone here. Yeah, that was interesting about the, when we concluded I guess the sixth chapter there and talked about there'll be a rest.

[54:55] I wonder, it makes me think of what Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 2, 11, 12 and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion. That they should believe a lie that they all might be damned who believe not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

[55:12] And that amazes me to see that in the comments that you were bringing forth this morning because the orchestration of the way this works out is just, it just, I mean it blesses me as a believer but you know I thought about those comments.

[55:26] Does that make any sense at all? Sure, absolutely. There's going to be a dovetailing of just a whole host of things that many of them as we read them and see them we just kind of see them as an isolated incidence.

[55:40] But as has been mentioned, God is a great orchestra conductor and he is able to pull all of those loose ends and those things that seem to us to not be very significant.

[55:53] But he is able to pull them all together and some of those not so significant things will turn out to be key factors and very strategic because the God of the universe is putting this thing together and he quite well knows exactly what he's doing.

[56:10] He knows what to do and when to do it and with whom to do it and he will accomplish all his own good pleasure. It is just, it is just mind-boggling really. And we're just given these things in bits and pieces and snippets and snatches in different places throughout the scriptures.

[56:27] but believe me, time is coming when they'll all come together and it will fit like a hand in a glove and we'll be looking at a portion and say, man, I never would have made a connection between this and this and that but here it is, you know, and there it is.

[56:45] It will be undeniable and it will be something that the Almighty had in mind all along but it was just hidden to us. Anyone else before we dismiss?

[56:57] Well, I really appreciate your patience for my just reading that material. I thought that I'd have a better chance of getting through it with my voice because sometimes when I just preach from notes and I'm not reading I get excited and extend my voice beyond that which I should and then it starts just leaving me and going into laryngesis.

[57:22] So, thank you for your kind patience and thank you for your interest in our ongoing studies of the Revelation. We will continue this the Lord willing and my goal originally was to take was to take a chapter a week.

[57:39] That's gone by the wayside. But anyway, we'll still we'll still work on it and thank you so much. Would you stand please? Father, unto whom much is given shall much be required and we recognize that it is good to know things but it also makes us more responsible for the things that we know.

[58:03] So, we ask that you will that you will impress upon each and every one of us the importance and the necessity of having an open heart and an open mind and walking in the spirit and being willing to do and to be whatever you would have us be or do in what we believe might very well be the last days.

[58:28] We could we could very easily be one of the most strategic generations that has ever come along and we want to be able to make the most of it.

[58:39] So, we think of those outside of Christ. We think of the privileged responsibility that we have to reach them with the gospel. We just want to know better and more ways of doing it.

[58:50] We see people who are just as lost as we were lost before we came to faith in Christ and it is the joy and the salvation and the peace that we have in him that makes us want to share it with others and we look to you for better and more effective ways of doing that.

[59:11] Thank you again for the glorious gospel of Christ. The world's never seen anything like it and never will again. How that he who knew no sin was made to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

[59:28] Oh, how we bless you for that truth in Christ's wonderful name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.