Shortly after the greatest of all revivals commences, while earth’s inhabitants are going about their noisy routines, Heaven briefly goes quiet from its normally thunderous worshipful activities. As reported by the apostle John, the solemn silence in Heaven is a prelude to the divine warning judgments about to be unleashed on earth that lead finally to wrath. This time has come urged by the prayers of all the saints in both locales that are fragrant to God. In dramatic fashion, seven trumpets are given to seven angels that blown in Heaven, signal God’s actions to take place and countdown His coming Day of the Lord on the earth (Psalm 34:15, 119:126, 141:1-2; Revelation 6:9-11, 8:1-4).
The angel that had ministered the prayers of His saints before God, now, fills his censer with fire and throws it to the earth. Suddenly, there is a global wonder in the sky of loud noises, booming thunder, fierce lightning and a quake that rattles the entire planet at once! In an instant, God’s response to the prayers of His saints who have waited millennia for Him to act occurs and creates the fitting fear and alarm among humanity very clear “acts of God” should elicit (Revelation 8:5). Quickly recovering from the suddenness of this terrifying event and emboldened all the more, the faithful ratchet up their Kingdom work and warfare and stiffen their resolve to stand on the Lord’s side!
The seven angels prepare to blow (Revelation 8:6). The question of whether there is a God for all but the most cynical in denial is answered after the first four angels sound their trumpets of judgment (Revelation 8:7-12)! These “third” judgments fully demonstrate God’s control over nature and the cosmos as well as His ability to destroy all when and should He desire.9 Thus, as with the plagues upon Egypt, God’s first four judgments are meant to awaken unsaved mankind and their rulers to His superior reality. After graciously giving the unsaved an opportunity to repent and believe the Gospel to be saved (Ezekiel 33:11; 2 Peter 3:9), timeout on the field ends.
With the atmosphere still filled with smoke and the stench of death from decaying sea life, many will be those including non-remnant Jews and professed Christian religionists that willfully harden their hearts against the Gospel like Pharaoh who was not impressed with God’s display of power and resisted Him (Exodus 5:1-2).10 So, in support of His two-fold elect God will repeat another thing He did in Egypt: make a distinction between His people with the mark of the Holy Spirit and those without Him in the first of three woes an angel has warned about (Revelation 8:13). The game resumes with the first and goal attempt by Satan’s team to run its favorite persecution play against God’s faithful and Jews when immediately the fifth trumpet sounds.
Confusion ensues and the play is stopped dead in the backfield as God’s judgment summons Satan to release demonically controlled creatures that painfully sting only those without the mark of the Holy Spirit for five months; members of his own team of deceived mortals (Exodus 8:20-24; Revelation 9:1-12)!11 The pain is so great the unsaved want to die, but cannot do so. The temporary nature of this judgment and woe once more shows God’s grace and willingness to save. Though the faithful continue laboring to restore men, the results are negligible because instead of being humbled by their pain, the unsaved persist in their sins. The sixth trumpet sounds (Revelation 9:13-15).
Knowing plainly who God’s faithful are, Satan’s team is about to blast up the middle on its second and goal murderous play to steam roll into the end zone when reinforcements foretold from ancient times suddenly take the field (Joel 2:1-11; Revelation 9:16-19). The play is turned back by God’s army with a major loss of yards as one third of unsaved mankind then on earth is killed and eternally condemned! Humiliated, nevertheless, the now fully heart hardened remainder of unsaved mankind defiantly refuse to repent from their sins (Revelation 9:20-21). However, they are weary of God’s judgments and are reluctantly ready to concede to another of His demands through the Jews.
In echo of His demand of Pharaoh by way of Moses, God declares to the world rulers of the day as spoken to me and through the passionate insistence of Jews, “Let My people go worship Me at the Temple built on Zion’s hill for that purpose,” (Exodus 8:25-32)! God then calls His second timeout to allow the necessary details of His demand to unfold. Those details include the successful negotiation efforts of the still mortal Antichrist that result in Daniel’s seventieth week and the Temple worship covenant (Daniel 9:24-27). John is told by an angel there will be no more delays in the days just before the seventh trumpet sounds (Revelation 10-11:2). The game resumes with Satan carrying out a third and goal persecution screen pass play intended to harm the Jews in particular.
However, two men suddenly appear in the defense; God’s foretold two witnesses His faithful and worldwide Jewry recognize in the familiar plagues they freely bring on the earth to validate their prophetic utterances, glorify God and take out enemy blockers coming against them and Israel. They serve the first half of the seven year Temple worship covenant (Malachi 4:4-6; Revelation 11:3-6). During this period, Satan has trouble in Heaven too since the holy angels have made war against and defeat him and the heavenly hosts of his team; casting them to the earth. In “great wrath,” he presses the screen pass play that is stopped short of the original line of scrimmage by another divine miracle reprise from the days of Moses (Numbers 16:23-33; Revelation 12:1-16, NKJV).
9 I have referenced the judgment of Revelation 8:12 in a number of blogs over the years mostly noting the chaos it will cause when for His two-fold elect’s sake as foretold, God shortens the end time days (Matthew 24:22; Mark 13:20) by making a day sixteen instead of the twenty-four hours humanity has known from creation. Read the July 27, 2014 blog, God Of Order under the category, Instruction, to learn that while this judgment is a blessing to God’s two-fold elect and all mankind because mortal life will be preserved, in the immediate face of its jarring suddenness, the world is thrown into debilitating fear, stress-filled be- wilderment and disorder (Luke 21:25-26).
10 God’s 144,000 elect Jewish remnant will not accept the Gospel either because their repentance and complete conversion by His will awaits Christ’s Second Com- ing (Zechariah 12:10-13:1) lest they lose their mortality required for their promised experience of David’s kingdom restored (Jeremiah 23:5-6). However, they will not be hostile to the Gospel or its messengers who they understand like them, enjoy the Holy Spirit! By the way, this all being true, the teaching that the 144,000 are Gospel evangelists cannot be equally true.
11 The world’s love of fictional horror and hideous monsters to scare themselves is surely behind this judgment too which in perfect and real divine justice, painfully terrifies the unsaved!
Repeatedly warned in Scripture and having had our faith regularly tested by “various trials,” faithful Christian men should not be surprised by “the fiery trial” of persecution that comes because of the Gospel and standing firm in defense of God’s Word (2 Timothy 3:10-12; 1 Peter 1:3-9, 4:12-14, NKJV). Besides adding to the joy of sharing in Christ’s sufferings and anticipated glory, we understand our suffering in these latter days is the beginning of God’s just judgment and testing of ultimately all mortal flesh through which His faithful persevere (Mark 13:13; 1 Peter 3:13-17, 4:15-19; Revelation 3:7-13). No one will accuse God of letting the disobedient in His own house slide, while condemning others.
As has happened historically and is now taking place among our brethren in nations with violent persecution against Christians, husbands and fathers are making tough choices impacting their families. Faithful Christian men love our families! However, as Christ has righteously demanded, our love for Him to the point of death is above all (Luke 14:25-27). Half-hearted religionists blow past this teaching of Christ as if He does not mean it. Yet, He does mean it and before the game is over, many faithful Christian men globally will have faced the choice of being loyal to and doing what is best for their families or Christ and His Kingdom (Revelation 13:11-17, 14:9-13).6
God is plain in His prophetic Word: “the cowardly” will be among those that are found outside of His eternal Kingdom and in the lake of fire (Revelation 21:7-8, NKJV)! Thus, the Lord Jesus warns all up front that would be His disciple to “count the cost” and consider the outcome of the man who makes himself worthless through quitting on his commitment (Luke 14:28-35, NKJV). Having counted the cost and rejected unthinkable cowardice, faithful Christian men as aspiring strong men of God in Christ’s image resolutely continue their walk, work and warfare in His Kingdom cause knowing by faith the good end that God has planned (Hebrews 10:32-39; James 5:1-12)!
They are also praying for their needs during the course of the game and its end with the arrival of Christ and God’s Kingdom to earth (Matthew 6:9-13; Acts 4:23-30)! Such prayers will become more fervent as the world intensifies its hatred and violently presses its offensive drive down to first and goal on our two yard line. Exhausted and globally worn out on the field; our bench depleted to the lowest levels in history due to injuries, the apostasy (Matthew 24:10; 2 Thessalonians 2:3a) and game ejections to captivity and death, prayer will be all that our team has left before an imminent score and irrecoverable defeat by Satan’s team. But God true to His promises answers their prayers!
The prayers of His faithful are more than enough to have left when it concerns God! For the Lord Jesus taught us how our heavenly Father values persistent prayer (Luke 11:5-13). So, on the heels of those desperate, impassioned and persistent prayers offered by His faithful at the very end of credible hope, our God answers and intervenes as He did when Israel in oppressive, Egyptian bondage could bear it no more (Exodus 2:23-3:12). He will use the first of three timeouts to stop play; dispatching four mighty angels to cause the earth’s four winds to temporarily cease blowing on that historically unprecedented day as I wrote in a previous blog (Revelation 7:1).7
Rising from the east, another angel bearing the Holy Spirit--who is the invisible, living “seal (mark) of the living God”--cries out to others designated to harm the earth and sea not to do so until ‘“the servants of our God’” are sealed (marked) on their foreheads (2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Revelation 7:2-3, NKJV). Prophetically reminiscent of the event in Ezekiel Nine, 144,000 Jews as the foretold elect remnant of God are marked for protection from harm by His judgments or otherwise up to Christ’s Second Coming (Isaiah 1:9, 10:20-23; Zechariah 13:7-9; Revelation 7:4-8). For among the Jews in much travail as well, prayers will have been going up asking God to deliver (Psalms 10, 44, 144; Isaiah 51:9-11)!
Acting for the sake of His great Name, the Jewish patriarchs, Gospel cause and prayers of His faithful (Ezekiel 36:16-32; Romans 11:11-15, 25-36), God marks the elect Jewish remnant outwardly with the Holy Spirit and launches a second, final and complete fulfillment of Joel 2:28-32! His faithful will be set ablaze again and their strength renewed whether gasping for air on the field, injured on the bench or languishing in captivity (Isaiah 40:27-31; Acts 4:31). Under heavy conviction of the Holy Spirit, many vacillating believers will repent, be revived and take their place with the faithful. Too, the unsaved not yet hardened into sin will repent and be restored in vast numbers through the Kingdom work and warfare of the faithful along with God’s initial plainly seen works of power to follow.
Truly, with mighty wonders greater than the August 21st solar eclipse as warning judgments, God will exalt Himself a second time before the rulers of this world as He did when He brought Israel out oppressed by Pharaoh at first (Exodus 6:2-8; Isaiah 11:11-12; Jeremiah 16:14-15, 23:5-8; Ezekiel 20:33-38)! Meanwhile, as I write in my book, the global revival will be the greatest ever in history in terms of scale and souls coming to Christ! However, I also soberly warn it will not return the world back to some idyllic past. This brief moment is only the beginning of the end and preparation for the faithful to endure the darkest days ever; days that will see Satan’s team finally score with their invincible player, Antichrist, who martyr’s more faithful than anyone before him (Revelation 7:9-17).8
6 A very inspiring film to watch highlighting this point is The Robe with Richard Burton from the 1950s.
7 Read the March 16-23, 2014 two part blog, The Prayers Of The Saints, under the category, Bible Prophecy, for an understanding of why rapture does not come during the event I am discussing here and more detail about it along with others I describe which immediately follow.
8 Read the October 23, 2016 blog, Revival For Seeking Saints, under the category, Bible Prophecy to again appreciate why repentance and revival are absolutely essential among professed Christians even now! Also, learn more about the “night” referenced by that blog in a teaching on CD entitled, The Night Is Almost Here! available in the Strong Man Store.
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