Monday, September 6, 2021

Darkness Approaching


Revelation is an enigma, a puzzle in the human psyche.  I am drawn to its largeness and promise.  I want to read the comforting passages.  I also find myself hating it at the half-way mark.  It is difficult to endure reading about all these judgments.  I expect you feel the same way.  I rather wonder about that.  I have served eight other churches as Pastor.  In most of them I have begun to preach Revelation, and gotten no farther than the fourth chapter, before moving on to the next church field.  You never know what you're going to uncover with The Revelation!  It seems like it can bite you sometimes!

We must guard against losing hope during these difficult scenes of judgment.  They are not pretty, but, as with all Scripture, the judgments are profitable for our instruction in righteousness[1]

This morning our study continues with a view of the dark side, much worse than Darth Vader and George Lucas' Evil Empire.  This is the Prince of Darkness, Apollyon; this is the Evil Angel, Satan.

The Day When Darkness is Unleashed on the Earth

Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen to earth from the sky, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.  When he opened it, smoke poured out as though from a huge furnace, and the sunlight and air turned dark from the smoke.  Then locusts came from the smoke and descended on the earth, and they were given power to sting like scorpions.  Revelation 9:1-3

Satan is the star that is kicked out of heaven…again.  This time he has a key to the pit (abyss).  His immediate response is what Satan's response has always been -- He heads for his hole in the ground.  Why is the key necessary?  God has had this particularly nasty group of fallen angels under lock and key since before the flood. 

For God did not spare even the angels who sinned. He threw them into hell, in gloomy pits of darkness, where they are being held until the day of judgment. 2 Peter 2:4

In this last day, the earth is going to see the venom of hell released, such as hasn't been seen since God destroyed everything with a flood.  At this point in the Tribulation, God determines that it is time to allow Satan his moment to gather all the forces of darkness.  John describes the appearance of these creatures, let loose from the pit, as locusts.  A swarm of locusts could very well be described as a cloud of smoke.  Vance Havner used to say about the forces of darkness that, like every other creepy, crawling critter, they scatter when the light hits 'em.  Some Eastern varieties of locust have been known to travel in a swarm 100 feet deep, by 4 miles long.  In the Bible the locust is always a ready symbol for destruction and devastation.  Joel (Chap 1 & 2) used this little creature to picture the devastation of these last times.  One preacher quipped:  These woes mark the deepest darkness and the most painful intensity of the Great Tribulation Period....These will be the blackest days in human history.[2]  Evil’s darkness will be allowed to roam nearly unchecked on planet earth.  It will be worse than the pain of a thousand epidemic plagues, scores of demonic Hitlers, or Stalin-like ethnic purges, driven by famine, murder, and all manner of brutality, unleashed like a flood of locusts to cut a path throughout humanity.  

The Devastation of Evil’s Darkness

They were told not to harm the grass or plants or trees, but only the people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.  They were told not to kill them but to torture them for five months with pain like the pain of a scorpion sting.  In those days people will seek death but will not find it.  They will long to die, but death will flee from them!  Revelation 9:4-6

Physical locusts simply eat everything in sight.  In 1951 the regions of Iraq, Iran and Jordan were overrun by locusts.  The swarm ate every green thing there was.  What was a lush and fertile paradise, became a barren desert within hours.  Some 200,000 people died in the wake of the desolate famine that followed. 

But this devastation isn’t about little flying bugs eating the crops; the real target is destruction of the souls of humans who have refused the gift of Christ’s salvation.

The spiritual application of this passage hardly needs to be made.  The darkness of sin ruins everything in sight.  It was sin that gave us murder and all sorts of mayhem on the earth.  Sin originated sickness and death, and according to apostle James, when sin is finished, death is the natural result.[3]

However, in these final days, death will be a release men will not find.  In some way life will be prolonged through a torturous period, where the scorpion-like sting of these locusts (whether it be literal or figurative), will not be directed at plant life.  Rather it is humans without God’s protection who will be the sufferers.  Friend, literal or symbolic interpretation aside, this will be literally hell on earth.

The Desire of Evil’s Darkness

The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. They had what looked like gold crowns on their heads, and their faces looked like human faces.  They had hair like women’s hair and teeth like the teeth of a lion.  They wore armor made of iron, and their wings roared like an army of chariots rushing into battle.  They had tails that stung like scorpions, and for five months they had the power to torment people.  Revelation 9:7-10

There is a certain attractiveness about darkness.  But sin is a bait, ever hiding the hook.  Satan's plan is going to look pretty good… at first.  

In our day the whole world seems to have turned to sensuality.  Sex sells everything from booze to vacations.  It buys everything from cheap thrills to political office.  There is always something attractive about the darkness – at first!  Sin always looks as if it will be fun.  It always promises big, but pays off counterfeit!  Just as these locusts look good (hair as women), yet have the tails of scorpions – so sin presents us with something desirable, but will eventually sting. 

My cousin Rick is a year older than me.  When we were pre-teens my mom and dad took us camping.  An Ohio campground was like Eden, complete with a gentle river and plenty of woods; it was a young boy's delight.  We donned our swimsuits, and swam all afternoon near the dam.  Now, that dam had a cement chute that was at a very gentle slope.  We got on it like a slide and plunged down to the water below; we didn't stop for hours.  Climb up, slide down...all afternoon.  It sure was fun!  However, neither of us were aware of the sting in the end.  As we walked back to the campsite, neither of us could figure out why passersby would snicker at the two of us.  When we arrived back at the campsite, my parents pointed out that that rough cement on the dam's chute had worn away the seat of our swimsuits.  Sting in the end, indeed!

Well, something that is attractive, but has teeth like a lion, is nothing more than the wolf preparing for Little Red Riding Hood to walk by.  The darkness always arouses some sort of desire.  An advertisement in a news magazine showed a picture of people who hurled snowballs during a professional football game.  Thousands of snowballs were thrown onto the field, injuring both players and spectators.  According to the report, 15 fans were arrested, and some 175 ejected from the stadium.  Officials say the incident was disturbing because many ejected fans hold responsible jobs: teachers, lawyers, stockbrokers and fire fighters.[4] 

Beloved, if reasonably normal people can get that caught up over a football game, how much more can Satan motivate to the kind of ugliness we read about these locusts of evil’s darkness? 

Darkness has been unleashed on the earth with its devastation and desire. 

And, finally, we see what it produces:

The Dividend of Evil’s Darkness

Their king is the angel from the bottomless pit; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon—the Destroyer.  Revelation 9:11

Abaddon is Hebrew, and Apollyon is Greek, but both names describe the character of the one who occupies the pit…destroyer.  The ultimate result of everything Satan touches is destruction.  Jesus said so:

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.  My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.  John 10:10

There are many people today who do not believe in Satan.  People say, Show me...  Somehow, because you cannot see him, that means to some that he does not exist, apart from the media version of pitchfork and horned guy in the red suit. 

·       Beloved, they couldn't SEE bacteria in 17th century (1666) London.  That did not stop a third of the population from dying of bubonic plague. 

·       You cannot SEE electricity or protons – that doesn't turn off the lights. 

·       You cannot SEE neurons working their way through your head – but it doesn't mean you're not thinking – unless you still believe there is no Satan! 

Today we are typically too well informed to be taken-in by such superstition.  We have been well-educated, perhaps beyond our intelligence.  Many people read a passage like this and go away with their innate skepticism intact and reinforced.  Satan?  Don’t be ridiculous! 

The problem is Satan accomplishes exactly what he desires with that kind of attitude.  When we underestimate the reality of Satanic influence, we make that influence strong.  That is playing with fire!  There are many examples of this in our society. 

In the 1970’s I watched the Phil Donohue show where he was interviewing a preacher.  The subject turned to hell.  Donohue asked if the preacher believed in a burning place of punishment, the devil, and people winding up there for eternity.  I do, said the preacher.  Well, sorry, said Phil, I don’t.  The preacher said, that’s ok; you WILL.

We are living in a society that refuses to pay attention to God, and we are reaping the dividend of darkness with violence, hatred, plague, war, and every other kind of mayhem.  The Great Tribulation cannot be far off!  Apollyon, the evil angel, who is the King of the Darkness, and her cloud of locusts is certainly not far off!  This world is being prepared for the Great Tribulation.  Everything that is on the news today is leading towards this world accepting Satan's man, the Antichrist as a one world ruler.  It is going to be so natural for folks to accept the supernatural evil as being quite acceptable.  Annually there are hundreds, even thousands of books published on prophecy, spiritism, ghosts, and the like.  TV is saturated with the supernatural and so-called para-normal.  Where is it all going?  I’m not a prophet, so I can’t say with authority, but I can tell you from whence it comes – the pit, the abyss.  Beloved, it smells like smoke! 

What is in store for everyone who rejects the seal of Christ on his forehead?  Listen to the words of another generation...from a preacher of John Wesley’s day.  


Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan who preached a sermon to his congregation entitled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.  This sermon ignited a great awakening in America.  Many thousands came to Christ during that period.  Why?  Because Edwards painted the picture of Evil’s Darkness, and it brought conviction.  It brought so much conviction some ran to the altar before the preacher even finished his sermon. 

Listen to what Jonathan Edwards preached that day.  It’s a little long, but imagine this is 1741.  It is a dark day for peace and righteousness.  There is brutality and murder every day, and you and I are sitting, listening to a sermon in a Presbyterian church.  :

The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons to a conviction of their danger.  This that you have heard is the case of every one out of Christ.  That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you.  There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of, there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up….The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.[5]

This is so ominous, and so true in prophecy’s unravelling; but there is also redemption lurking in the wings.  Somewhere in the overwhelming morass of evil’s darkness, the love of God is waiting to be revealed as salvation’s glory.  Our confession of faith states that when Jesus Christ died, he descended into Hell to preach liberty to the captives.  We love that part about those faithful before the cross being set free.  But we often miss the rest of the story about why Jesus went there.  It was to pay our penalty for sin that Jesus descended into the abyss and lifted the light on Satan’s evil darkness.  Jesus experienced every bit of our judicial punishment we earned with our sin.  It is part of the completed work of Christ’s atoning on the cross and after.  And the darkness of Hell only serves to be a background for how brightly that light shines.  If you tend to notice how dark our world is, and wonder how God could allow such mayhem and madness, remember that darkness is the absence of light.  It only serves to remind us what we’re missing.  Behind what we see as darkness is the dawn of Christ’s coming.  Darkness will give way to light one glorious day!

Darkness is like the worm that inhabits my little garden.  The worm eats my trees and causes my rosebushes to wilt.  But the worm will have a metamorphosis one day.  As a transformed worm, now a beautiful Monarch butterfly, he cross-pollinates all my flowering bushes, making my trees fertile and healthy. 

This speaks graphically as the metamorphosis that occurs when a human soul is surrendered to the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ.  That soul is no longer dead in sin, it begins to live.  Usefulness is born like a cross-pollinated field of flowers, fruits, and all the other beauty God designed.

The darkness we now see is having its day, and Satan laughs loud along with the rest of the unbelieving world.  Jesus descended INTO the darkness the first time He came; the next time He comes He will descend ON the darkness with all the legions of Heaven’s host. 

This is the love of God, unveiled in Jesus Christ, coming in the glorious light.  This is the love of God shed on the cross for you, so you do not have to drop into the darkness of Hell’s abyss with unbelief. 

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved!  

Title Image:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture from The New Living Translation 



[2]J. Vernon McGee, Through the Bible With J. Vernon McGee, Vol 5 (Pasadena, Thru The Bible Radio, 1983), 966

[3] These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.  James 1:15

[4]USA Today, (12-28-95), 1a

[5] Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God…sermon by Jonathan Edwards



 

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