The ninth chapter actually begins with the thirteenth verse of the eighth chapter. After the “sounding of the fourth trumpet and the sun darkened and the moon and the stars, I beheld, in verse thirteen, and I heard an angel”—the word there in the Greek is aetos which is an eagle—flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabitants of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound” (Revelation 8:12,13)! Basically the message is, You haven’t seen anything yet! “Woe, woe, woe.” There are three trumpets, thus three woes in these trumpet judgments, which are yet to sound.
And so the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit (9:1).
Or the abyss, the shaft to the abyss–the bottomless pit. Now for the dead, there are different places to which they are consigned. Before Jesus Christ, everyone was consigned to the grave. And thus the Hebrew word, Sheol, means grave but it is also translated as hell. In the New Testament, the Greek, Hades is the equivalent of the Hebrew, Sheol. The same place. The grave, which according to Jesus in Luke chapter sixteen, was divided into two compartments. One was a place where people were tormented. The other was a place of comfort, encouragement.
And in the sixteenth chapter of the gospel of Luke, Jesus tells of a certain rich man who fared sumptuously everyday and daily a poor beggar was brought to his gate by his friend and he survived on the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. And the poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. Moreover, the rich man also died and in Hades, hell, he lifted up his eyes being in torment and he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus being comforted. And he cried and he said, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to me that he may dip his finger in water, touch the tip of my tongue. I’m tormented in this heat. And Abraham said, Son, remember you in your lifetime had the good things; Lazarus, the evil. Now he is comforted while you are tormented. And besides this, there is this gulf that is fixed between us and it’s impossible to cross over this gulf from one side to the other.
And so Jesus gives the description of Hades prior to His death. In the prophecies concerning the Messiah, Isaiah 61, as a part of the ministry of the Messiah, He was to open the prison doors to those that were bound and He was to set the captives free. Prior to the death of Jesus Christ, there was only a covering of sin, there was not a putting away of sin. It was impossible that the blood of bulls or goats could actually put away a person’s sin. All they could do was to cover their sin. It took the blood of Jesus Christ to put away our sin. So prior to the death of Jesus upon the cross, all men who died went into this place called Hades, which was divided into the two compartments.
When the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign, He said, “A wicked and an adulterous generation seeks after a sign; but no sign will be given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah: For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:39,40).
In the second chapter of Acts when the Holy Spirit descended upon the church and a multitude gathered because of the phenomena that accompanied the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Peter stood up in the midst of them. And he began to preach unto them; first of all, answering the question, What does this mean? Telling them that this meant that God had fulfilled His promise to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh. But then he began to preach to the people concerning Jesus. Seven important points. Number one, the identification, “Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was proved to be of God by the signs and the wonders, which He did: whom you according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, with your wicked hands have crucified and slain. But God has raised Him from the dead: because it was impossible that death could hold Him” (Acts 2:22-24). And then in confirming this statement, Impossible that death could hold Him, we find that Peter now quotes from Psalms which declared, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither will You allow the Holy One to see corruption” (Psalm 16:10). So Peter testified, God did not leave His soul in hell but “this same Jesus hath God raised from the dead” (Acts 2:32).
Paul the apostle in his letter to the Ephesians chapter four said, “He who has ascended [that is, Jesus] is the same one who first of all descended into the lower parts of the earth. And when He ascended, He led the captives from their captivity, and He gave gifts to men” (Ephesians 4:8,9). The prophecy of Isaiah fulfilled, setting the captives free. So when He ascended He led the captives from their captivity as He ascended into heaven. So that now for the child of God, because the way has been made through Jesus Christ, “to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).
Paul the apostle writing to the Corinthians said, “There was a man in Christ about fourteen years ago, (whether I was in the body or out of the body, I don’t know;) but I was caught up to the third heaven. And there I heard things which were so glorious, it would be a crime to try to describe them with human language” (2 Corinthians 12:2-4). No words can describe the glory, the ecstasy of the experience I had.
And so Jesus opened the door to heaven for the saints of God. And now, as Paul said, I find myself with mixed emotions. “Having a desire to depart and be with Christ; which is far better: And yet, I know that I’m still needed around here for a while longer” (Philippians 1:23,24). I’m pulled by both sides. Mixed emotion.
That one portion of Hades has been emptied, where Abraham was comforting those as they waited for the promise of the Messiah to be fulfilled. There is a second place called the abusso or the pit. It is the shaft that leads into the abyss. It is often called the bottomless pit.
In the case of the demoniac at Gadara, where when Jesus landed with His disciples and they got out of the little ship, this demon possessed man came running in a threatening manner. The demons began to cry out, Jesus, Thou Son of David, we adjure you, don’t torment us before our time. And Jesus said unto them, What is your name? And they responded, Legion because we are many. And so they then began to beg Jesus that He would not send them to the abusso, the shaft. And it would seem that this abusso or shaft is the incarceration of evil spirits. Demonic spirits. Separate from the Hades where men are incarcerated is the abusso where the demonic spirits are incarcerated. And they beg Jesus not to send them to the abusso before their time. And so He gave them leave and they entered into that herd of swine that ran down into the sea of Galilee and were drowned (Mark 5:1-13). You remember the story.
Also the abusso is mentioned in a few other places in the scriptures. We have it here in the Book of Revelation as this angel is given the key to this abusso or place of incarceration for evil spirits. When the antiChrist comes on the scene. In Revelation chapter seventeen, we are told that he comes out of the abusso. We’ll discuss that more completely when we get to the seventeenth chapter. When Jesus returns to the earth to establish the kingdom of God, He comes with all of His saints, Satan is taken and is chained and cast into the abusso for a thousand years. At the end of that thousand year period, he’s released for a short season and is then cast into Gehenna where the beast and the false prophet are.
One day death and hell will give up the dead which are in them to stand before the great white throne judgment of God, Revelation chapter 20. We’ll discuss that more when we get there. Those, whose names are not found written in the Lamb’s book of life, will be cast into Gehenna. And so the next place that we have in the New Testament also many times just translated hell is Gehenna. And so unless you have a concordance, it’s hard to know whether or not the hell that is being made reference to in the scripture is Hades or Gehenna.
Gehenna is different from Hades. Jesus describes it as the place of outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It is the final place of incarceration for evil spirits. The first inhabitants of Gehenna will be the beast and the false prophet. When Jesus returns to the earth to establish God’s kingdom, He destroys the beast and the false prophet with the word that goes forth out of His mouth and they are cast into Gehenna. A thousand years later after Satan’s short rebellion at the end of the millennial reign of Christ, it says, “And he is cast into Gehenna where the beast and the false prophet are” (Revelation 20:10). Not where they were consumed, not where they were destroyed, not where they were annihilated, but where they are. And we read in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Revelation which we will cover at a subsequent time, that “the smoke of their torment ascends from the ages through the ages” (Revelation 14:11). De aionias pros de aionias.
The place of the eternal abode of those who have rejected the love of God that has been offered to them so freely by Jesus Christ. So hopefully you can sort of separate in your mind these different places. It is interesting that when Jesus returns and gathers the nations for judgment and separates them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and to those on His right hand He’ll say, Come ye blessed of the Father, inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you from the foundations of the world. To those on His left He will say, Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity, into Gehenna, that was prepared for Satan and his angels or his followers (Matthew 25:31-41). It wasn’t really prepared for man. It was prepared for Satan because of his rebellion and those that join Satan in his rebellion.
It should be noted and I don’t want to confuse you, there is one further place and that is Tartarus. And Tartarus is the place of incarceration and it’s only mentioned once and that is in Peter, it is the place of incarceration for those angels which kept not their first estate, are reserved in the chains of Tartarus, awaiting the day of judgment. They could be the four angels of the river Euphrates that we’ll get in the latter part of the chapter tonight.
So “when the fifth angel sounds, I saw a star [which I believe to be Satan, one of the angels] fall from heaven: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.” Now back in chapter one as Jesus describes Himself, He said, “I’m the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. And I have the key of death and hell” (Revelation 1:11,18). He opened the prison doors to those that were bound. He has the key.
But now we find Him giving the key to this fallen star, who comes with that key to open up the abusso or the bottomless pit. In Verse two,
When he opened the bottomless pit; there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit (9:2).
Somewhere on the earth there is a locked shaft that leads into the abyss. When the angel opens it, the smoke arises out of the abyss that covers the earth, causes the sun to be darkened.
And there came out of the smoke these demonic creatures (9:3).
John tries to describe them as best he can. In appearance, the closest thing is like the appearance of a locust. “There came out of the smoke the,”
locusts upon the earth: and they were given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power (9:3).
The scorpions have power to give you a mean sting. In fact, the scorpions that are over in the Middle East they say that the sting of those scorpions is one of the most excruciating pains a person can experience! But the sting of a scorpion is rarely fatal. It just hurts. And so “there came out of the smoke the locusts, these demonic creatures upon the earth: with power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.”
And they were commanded that they should not hurt the grass of the earth (9:4),
So they are intelligent beings. Of course, the grass, the trees, is the usual food for the locusts. They are the things that they attack. They can totally make bare a whole area. They devour all of the green trees, the leaves and the grasses and so forth. But “they are not to attack the grass,”
neither any green thing, neither any tree (9:4);
Back in the earlier trumpet judgments, we remember that a third part of the earth, the trees were burnt up back in the first trumpet judgment. But these locusts or demonic creatures are not to follow the usual habit of the locusts.
but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads (9:4).
Here’s where God begins to make a separation. Back you remember in chapter seven, we saw the hundred and forty-four thousand who were sealed of God in their foreheads that they should not be hurt by the four winds that were being held back by these angels. Now again we see the distinction here where these demonic creatures are not given power over the hundred and forty-four thousand to torment them with the stings. They are those which have the seal of God in their foreheads.
But to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented for five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when it strikes a man (9:5).
So this horde of demonic creatures, they have power to inflict great painful stings upon a man. Because they are spirit beings, you cannot really hide in a basement or close yourself in the inner closet and escape the torment. It is going to be five months of hell on earth as these demonic creatures are inflicting their painful torment upon men!
And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death will flee from them (9:6).
Death will take a holiday for five months. Death isn’t the worst thing. Sometimes living is worse than death! When the body can no longer fulfill the purposes for which God designed and created it, the body can become a prison of pain. I have seen people in states of coma where they are only kept alive by artificial means, resuscitations and so forth. And that’s not living. You say, Is he still alive? Yeah, he’s still alive. But he’s not living. That isn’t living when you’re not conscious of what’s going on but you just lie there and death doesn’t strike. It doesn’t release your spirit.
Can you imagine though when for five months, it will be impossible to die? People will want to die because of the torment of these demonic creatures. Desiring to die. It might be that a person would take a gun and put it on his forehead and blow his brains out but he still won’t die. But he’d have to go around in that condition. It’s going to be horrible. As I told you before and over and over again, you don’t want to be here when this happens!
And the shapes of the locusts (9:7).
And this is again John describing them as best he can,
were like unto horses that were prepared unto battle (9:7);
Or horses that have the armor plate on them prepared for battle,
and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. But they had hair as the hair of a woman, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots and of many horses running to battle (9:7-9).
You’ve never seen anything like this before. John has never seen anything like this before. It is interesting when you go to India, Tibet and many of these pagan countries, when you look at the carvings on their temples, these interesting looking creatures, it is interesting that in different parts of the world separated, you have similar looking carvings and creatures. There is one best explanation and that these are creatures that have been observed in visions by those who were worshipping Satan. And these are visions of demonic beings. Here John describes this particular demonic being. And the sound of chariots, many horses running to battle.
They had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men for five months (9:10).
I was alive during World War II and I was familiar with the B-24s and the B-17s and the gun turret that was in the tail of those bombers. I actually heard a couple of messages in those times on Revelation where the teacher was likening these demonic beings to the B-17 and the B-24. The sting was in their tail. Of course, it didn’t follow all the way through because these stings don’t kill and that’s exactly, of course, what the tailguns were designed to do in the 24s and the 17s. These are not anything that man will create. They are not some type of weaponry that will be created by man in the future. These are demonic beings released out of the abusso for five months to torment the people upon the earth.
And they had a king over them (9:11),
Now it’s interesting there is a proverb that says, The locusts have no king. So that takes them out of the earthly category of locusts. “They have a king over them,”
which is the angel of the bottomless pit [the one that set them free], whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon [which means destruction], and in the Greek tongue his name Apollyon [which in Greek is destroyer] (9:11).
What an appropriate name for Satan, the destroyer. Look at the lives that he has destroyed. All around us we can see lives that have been destroyed. People who have given themselves over to Satan and to the powers of darkness. And how he has ruined and destroyed their lives.
One woe is past; but there are two woes that are to follow. And so the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God (9:12,13),
The horns are always a symbol of power. On the altar what was built, they had horns on each corner because it’s a model of the heavenly thing. “I heard the voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,”
Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates (9:14).
Now there is to be released upon the earth another group of fallen angels, demonic powers. There are some who suggest and it is quite possible that these are the angels that Peter referred to that are in the chains of Tartarus awaiting the day of judgment of the great day of the Lord. That these angels are so fierce, so totally ferocious or fierce, that God for the sake of mankind has kept them chained. And they are being held back until the day of God’s judgment when God will release them and turn them loose upon the earth. That’s a real possibility.
But there are the four angels that are bound in the great River, Euphrates. Babylon was the place of the rebellion against God and the Garden of Eden was somewhere there in the Babylonian plain. It was the source of almost every false religious system, the birthplace of the false religious systems.
And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, to slay a third part of men (9:15).
The Greek language would seem to indicate that they do all of their devastation in just one hour of a particular year, of a particular month, of a particular day–one hour to do their devastation. The other would be thirteen months and one day but it would seem to be that it’s referring to just a single hour of a particular year, of a particular month, of a particular day. They are waiting for that moment.
And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them (9:16).
That’s two hundred million. So it would appear that these four angels are in control of a myriad of demonic beings.
And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and those that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone (9:17).
They’re not like any horse that you know. They are again creatures or beings of a spirit realm, demonic order.
By these three was a third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths (9:18).
In this one trumpet judgment, one third of the earth’s population will be killed! Now, assuming that when the church is taken out of the earth there are four billion people left on the planet, in the first four seals, one fourth of that population will be destroyed, leaving three billion people. By the time of the sounding of the sixth trumpet, another one third of the remaining people will be killed or another billion people, so that the population of the earth will be halved before we are even through with the great tribulation period. As Jesus said, It will be a time of great trouble such as the world has never seen before or will ever see again!
For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and they had heads, and with them they do hurt (9:19).
The thing that really amazes and alarms me is found here in verse twenty.
And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk (9:20):
The worship of false gods. And these false gods are the deifying of various emotions. They are the deifying of various ambitions or controlling influences of a person’s life. Let it be noted that every man has a god. Even the man who claims to be an atheist is only claiming not to believe in the God who created the universe, the God who is revealed in the Bible. But he has a god. Quite often with the atheist, it is his own intellect which in the Old Testament was the worship of Baal.
Many people claim to be atheists because they want to give themselves over to their unbridled sexual passions. And they know that God’s word speaks against that and so they declare that they do not believe in God because it is their desire to follow after their sexual passions. In the Old Testament, that was known as the worship of Ashtoreth.
There are many people who claim they don’t believe in God and the reason why they don’t want to believe in God is because the master passion of their life is pleasure. And they want to live for self and for the pleasure that they can attain in the various things in life. And they are worshipping the god Molech.
In the Bible times, the people were far more honest than we are today. They acknowledged these false gods. Today people don’t recognize or realize that they are worshipping false gods. It’s because we no longer make little images that represent them. But just as true as a person consciously worshipped Bacchus, gave himself over to partying and to drinking and all, so there are people today who are worshipping Bacchus but they don’t have a little idol that represents it. And thus they are totally deceived. They would say, I don’t have any god. I don’t believe in God. But in reality, there is that which is the master passion and controlling passion of their lives and that is your god. People will not give up these things.
There is an interesting book written by Dr. Lorraine Day, who was the chief surgeon at the hospital in San Francisco for many years. The book is on the subject of AIDS and she describes in the book some of the practices of those in the homosexual community and how the AIDS virus is spread by them throughout their community. And she spoke about how that these people will engage in dangerous sexual practices that threaten their lives. But their passion for the excitement and all of this type of relationship exceeds, she said, their passion for life itself! Here are people whose passion for these various gods that they have enthroned in their lives exceeds their passion for God.
And when these demonic spirits bring their destruction and torment to the earth, rather than repenting, rather than falling on their faces and begging God for forgiveness, they refuse to repent of their horrible practices, their worship of these devils and the idols of gold and silver and brass!
Neither did they repent of their murders, or of their sorceries, or of their fornication, or of their thefts (9:21).
Paul the apostle speaks about their storing up wrath unto the day of wrath because of the hardness of their impenitent hearts. And it’s tragic how people are so entrenched in their evil that they refuse to repent, to change, to give it up.
As we move on in Revelation and we’ll get this when we get to the sixteenth chapter, in the fifth vial that is poured out of God’s judgment upon the earth, “When the fifth angel,” Revelation 16:10, “poured out his vial.” And this is further on now. This is when they’ve experienced even more of the judgments. “He poured out his vial upon the seat of the antiChrist and his kingdom was full of darkness, they gnawed their tongues for pain and they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pain and their sores and they repented not still of their deeds.”
Now here are their tongues paining and rather than using their tongue to beg for mercy, to ask God to forgive them, instead they’re using their tongues to blaspheme God because of the pain and the sores and they still refuse to repent of their deeds.
You see, what happens is that when a person hardens his heart to God, to the things of God, when a person is involved in the worship of other gods, he can get to the place where his heart becomes so hardened that there’s no place for repentance! And he becomes like the Pharisees of whom Jesus said, “Therefore they could not believe” (John 12:39). They get beyond the place of repentance. Like the Pharaoh who hardened his heart over and over again as the plagues were coming upon Egypt. He would, it seemed for a time relent and say, Yes, you can go. As soon as the plagues would stop, he’d hardened his heart and refuse to let them go. Until finally we read, “And God hardened the heart of Pharaoh” (Exodus 9:12).
A different Hebrew word is employed there, God made firm or stiffened the heart of Pharaoh. He had hardened his heart over and over. And there are people who are hardening their hearts over and over again. They don’t seem to realize the danger of hardening their hearts to God and the things of God. Because you can harden yourself to the extent that repentance becomes impossible! And thus rather than repenting, blaspheming God because of the consequences of their sin.
Isn’t that interesting over and over we see it. People who have lived godless lives, blasphemous lives. People who have given themselves over to idolatry in many different forms, when some calamity comes into their life, they want to immediately blame God. And they get upset with God that God would allow this to happen to me.
Years ago when we were pastoring in Tucson, Arizona, a lady came to our church whose husband was a captain in the Air Force. And so I made a house call one evening to meet him. He met me at the door and when I introduced myself, he immediately began to curse me. And to say that I was not welcomed in his house and just basically told me to get out. So his wife, of course, was behind him and she was crying and upset that he would treat me this way. But he said, I just brought my little girl home from the doctor and she’s been diagnosed with polio. And he had an older little daughter who had had polio and was in the braces and so forth. And he said, Don’t tell me that God is love. I don’t want to hear it. My father was a minister and I know all about that and I’m not interested. Don’t try to talk to me about God.
And I said, Have you been serving God? Have you submitted your life and dedicated your life to serve God? And he lit off a few oaths as he answered, No. And I said, It surprises me that if you haven’t been serving God, you want to blame God when the tragedy comes into your life. What does God owe you? If you’re not His child, if you’re not serving Him, what does God owe you? Well, he lit off a few more oaths and I left.
But it is possible for people to harden their hearts. And that’s a dangerous thing. When the Spirit of God is speaking to your heart and calling you to repentance. To harden your heart against the voice of God is a dangerous thing indeed!
God said to Noah, “My Spirit will not always strive with man” (Genesis 6:3). In that declaration, there is a blessing and there is a curse. It is a blessing that God’s Spirit does strive with man. What a glorious thing that God is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9)! And the only way you can perish is by your deliberate, willful rejection of God’s offer of salvation. If those who despised Moses’ law were put to death because of the witness of two or three persons, “of how much worse punishment do you suppose the person will be accounted worthy who has trodden under foot the Son of God?” In a way, you have to tromp over the body of Jesus to get to hell. He stands in the way. “Who have counted the blood of His covenant, wherewith He was sanctified, an unholy thing, and has done despite to the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29).
God’s spirit has been speaking to your heart and calling you to repentance and calling you to the higher life and to the better life. And yet you harden your heart to that. It’s a blessing that God’s Spirit does strive but there is also that warning, “God’s Spirit will not always strive with man.” There comes a time, there comes a place in a person’s life, where as with Jeremiah, he said, “Leave them alone, don’t pray anymore for their good. If you do, I won’t hear you” (Jeremiah 7:16). What a tragic thing!
Whereas you read in Romans chapter one, “God gave them up” (Romans 1:26). When God gives up on a man and God gave them up to their vile affections, to come to that place where God’s Spirit will no longer strive, there’s no place for repentance, and that will be the condition of these people here in the sounding of the sixth trumpet with all of this devastation, all of the death around them, they will still refuse to repent of their worship of these other gods, of their fornication, of their murders, of their idolatry, of their theft.
The Bible says, “Behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). “Call upon the Lord while He is near” (Isaiah 55:6). “Call upon Him in your youth, lest the evil days come in which you say, I have no pleasure in them” (Ecclesiastes 12:1). The psalmist said, Don’t harden your heart as in the days of provocation. When the children of Israel hardened themselves to what God wanted to do and thus had to remain in the wilderness until that whole generation passed away. Warnings for us to receive the grace of God, the love of God and the forgiveness of God while it is available. And so God warns.
The Book of Revelation is a warning to each of you. You don’t have to be here when the trumpet judgment comes. You can be with the church there in heaven with our Lord, around the throne worshipping the King. You don’t want to be here. That’s for sure.
Father, we thank You for the blessed hope of the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who when He comes will change our vile bodies that they might be fashioned like unto His glorious image. And this corruption will put on incorruption and this mortal will put on immortality. And we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. Lord, our hearts yearn for and long for that day when You shall come and receive us unto Yourself that we might be with You where You are there at the throne of God. And so now Lord we pray that tonight Your Holy Spirit will speak once again. We realize that there are those here who have hardened their hearts. We don’t know how close they might be to that final “no” to You–the final rejection of Your Son. The final rejection of Your love. For they’ve stepped over the line and there’s no return. Father, help them. Help them, Lord, by the power of Your Holy Spirit be transformed. May they say “yes” to Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.
The pastors are down here in the front tonight to pray for you, who would like to accept Jesus Christ. No longer say no, but repent of your sin and ask Jesus Christ to be the Lord of your life. Because you see, everybody has a god. Jesus said, You can’t have two gods. You cannot serve God and mammon. But you are serving God or mammon. Either Satan is the lord of your life or Jesus is the Lord of your life. If Jesus is not the Lord of your life, Satan is the lord of your life. You are under his control. You are in his camp. But he’s no friend. He is the destroyer and he is destroying you and wants to bring you to complete destruction. But Jesus said, I have come that they might have life and that more abundantly. And He’s come to give you life tonight and it’s yours for the accepting. And I would encourage you as the Spirit of God speaks to your heart that you’ll make your way forward as soon as we’re dismissed. Spend time with one of these pastors who are here for the purpose of praying for you this evening. Helping you to find life in Christ.
May the Lord be with you and may the Lord bless you this week. May it be a wonderful week of growing closer to Him. And as the days become darker, surely the hope of the Christian becomes brighter. It can’t be long. The Lord’s going to come and take us out of this place. Even as God delivered that righteous man Lot, so will He deliver His people for God knows how to deliver the righteous; but to reserve the ungodly for the day of judgment. And so as Jesus said, “When these things begin to come to pass, just look up. Lift up your head, for your redemption is getting close.”

Edited & Highlighted from “The Word For Today” Transcription, Pastor Chuck Smith, Tape #8248
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