This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
I need to do better, I really do.
I need to grow closer to the Lord.
I need to deny myself more and fight against the things that my
pride wants to force me to follow.
I need to be committed to the things that Christ died for.
I need to be committed to the lives that the apostles lived in
my job, in my home, in my neighborhood, in my community.
Can you say the same thing that Pastor Clark just said?
Do you need to do better with your witness for Christ?
Of course, if you answered no, you probably need to listen very
carefully to today's message. We all need to increase our
fervency in sharing the gospel. Why?
Well, this study through Revelation should be a strong
indicator to the answer to that question.
Jesus is coming back, and our job here on earth is to prepare
as many people as possible for his return so that they will be
with him forever. Now here's Pastor Clark in the
Book of Revelation Chapter 9 with today's edition of Living
Waters of Grace. Who would have ever thought on
September 10th, that day we got up that our country would face
what we faced on September 11th, right?
It's still, you look back all these years and, and you see the
events of that World Trade Tower falling and it's almost like,
did it really happened? I mean, I can't believe that
this happened, but it did happen.
And it only took a few people with incredible planning to
destroy those towers and to try to destroy our financial markets
and all those lives that were lost during that time.
In verse 12, it says the 4th Angel sounded and the third of
the sun was struck, 1/3 of the moon, 1/3 of the stars, so that
a third of them were darkened, 1/3 of the day did not shine,
and likewise the night. And I looked and I heard an
Angel flying through the midst of heaven saying with a loud
voice, woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth because
of the remaining blasts of the trumpets of the three angels who
are about to sound. You think about Egypt again when
we go back to God's dealing through Moses with Pharaoh.
And there was three day period of complete darkness in the 9th
plague in Exodus 10. But what's being described here
is an unnatural darkness and it's one of the signs of the end
of the days. And Mark 13, it describes the
sun being darkened and the moon shall not give light.
The darkening of the sun and the moon and the stars portrays A
cosmic catastrophe. We think of what happened during
the crucifixion in Luke 30/23/44.
Now it was about the 6th hour, that's 12 noon.
And there was darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour
3:00 that's the time of Christ crucifixion.
The sun was darkened and the veil in the temple was torn in
2. So we see this judgment of God
that if you could imagine today, you know, I don't know, we get
sunrises, I don't know, probably what, around 6 O clock or
something. And we still have some daylight
up to around 9 O clock. Now days are getting longer that
you cut that by 2/3 and you only have 1/3 of the day that's
emitting lights and sunshine. What that will do to the crops
and the food ecosystem, food markets, it's just again going
to be catastrophic. And again, this is the the power
of God trying to get the attention of a hard hearted
human race. We see the 1st 4 seals that we
studied a few weeks ago. They were identified by horses,
meaning the swiftness of the judgments of God moving upon the
earth during this time of tribulation.
These judgments that we just studied, the first four are
clear enough and the indication of God's desire to get the
attention of the human race. But the X3 are going to be even
worse than the first four. And they're called woes, meaning
intense severity. Now, as time moves on in this
particular book we're studying, as I said, things will get even
more horrendous. And Chapter 9, we're just going
to go through a few verses here this morning.
We'll pick it up again next week.
But I already read the verses. But there's going to be the star
that falls from heaven. And this, this individual is a
person is going to be given a key to the bottomless pit.
Now, what happens to everybody who dies right now, if you're a
believer, the Bible says to be absent in the bodies, to be
present with the Lord. So our soul goes to be with
Christ in his present, but our body is laid in the grave until
the final resurrection, when Christ will actually raise those
bodies out of the graves and will be given new bodies in in
the heaven. That's the final resurrection,
but those who without Christ will go into the place of
holding until that final judgment.
And it's the element of hell, but not to the degree of what
will be experienced at the final judgment.
When the Bible says that whoever's name is not found, and
in God's land, book of life, that book that holds the names
of all those who belong to him, whoever doesn't have their name
in that book will be cast into that final judgment, which is
the lake of fire. But the fallen angels that left
the throne of God prior to the foundation of the earth were
Lucifer, who was the highest created Archangel of God.
His job was to reflect the glory of God.
If you remember, before the heaven, he had an amazing job.
But God creates us with free wills.
And what happened was Satan had the ability, Lucifer at that
time to desire to have the glory that God had.
And he thought, wow, you know, I want to be like God.
I actually want to exalt my throne above the Most High God.
I want to be seated where God's seated.
And so sin was found in him. And so that cosmic rebellion
caused him to be cast out of heaven with the fallen angels
and they were sent down to the abyss to be locked into that
place until this time that we're reading here in Revelation
Chapter 9. If you remember the story and
Luke and not the story, the teaching and Luke chapter 16.
I, you know, I got to be careful.
Sometimes we say story is that made believe or everything in
the Bible is, is true. You know, Jonah was in the belly
of the whale for three days. You asked me how that can
happen. I don't know.
But have you ever seen the size of a whale's mouth and the size
of a human being? There's a lot of space in there
to be inside the belly of a whale for three days.
It's not a big deal. Unbelieving scientists will try
to make it like a big deal. So you don't believe it.
And if you don't believe that, then all of a sudden they try to
break apart the whole Bible so you don't believe any of it.
But believers in Christ, we have total confidence in the validity
of everything that's written in the Scriptures.
We believe everything from Genesis to Revelation is given
to us by God to help us to know who he is and what his plan is.
But, and Luke 16, it says there's this rich man in hell.
He had it made while he was on Earth, and he treated Lazarus
the Servant like dirt. Lazarus is a believer.
What goes around comes around because when you die, you can't
take your riches with you, right?
And if you don't know Christ, doesn't matter how much money
you have, you're going to suffer in hell forever.
Well, Lazarus, even though he had a tough life on Earth,
didn't have too much prosperity or wealth.
He's a rich man now in the next World, right?
It's just amazing how the roles are reversed.
But the rich man in hell, he says he can see the chasm
between him and where Lazarus is.
It's what we call Sheol. SHEOL, the bosom of Abraham, is
a place where the Old Testament believers and those who died in
Christ prior to the death, burial and resurrection of
Christ were stored or held, place of the peace of God, the
presence of God, but still in a holding pattern.
And then the other side of that was the place of Sheol, which is
this place of where unbelievers are.
And it says that he asked that this man Lazarus would be able
to be sent to him to dip the tub of his finger in water and cool
his tongue. For he says he's tormented in
the flame. And hell is a literal place of
judgement, isn't it? Hell is real.
And and the more we understand the reality of hell, the more we
want to make sure that people we care about and love aren't going
to have to be in that place. Because once you're there, it's
too late. There's no way to get out.
And you know the old phrase, wherever there's smoke, there's
fire? Well, what we see in this abyss,
whenever it's opened up, it says the sun of the air was darkened
because of the smoke of the pit, the place of hell.
And so this great shaft is like this.
Well, and it's this bottomless place, intermediate place of
punishment of the fallen angels and demons until the final
judgement of Lake of Fire. So they're down there, this
waiting for the state that they can be let out to literally make
all hell break loose on the face of the earth.
You think things are bad today? You see the permissiveness of
our society, the lack of respect for the things of God, the
pushing of God out of the school systems and out of the public
places of our nation, almost a crime to confess that Jesus
Christ is the only way the truth and the life.
And we also see the growth of pornography.
You know, my, I have a friend who is involved with the cutting
edge technology of, of Internet development and computerization
of, of our society. You know what drives that the
money that drives the growth of faster computers and capability
to surf is pornography. And he taught that shocked me
when he said, Clark, what do you think?
Where do you think these corporations get the money to do
all this crazy speed and and capability of of all these
things that are in our our homes now?
It's driven by pornography and pornography is rampant today.
Obscenity is is at an all time high and it's increasing the
levels of influence in our culture.
Christianity, The message of the Gospel is getting weaker in
these last days in the sense that these other things are
becoming so much more appealing and interesting to people.
But what is it going to be like when this abyss is open?
You think things are bad now, right?
Literally all hell will break loose.
And so we see that this torture of these creatures, it says
these locusts, these are horrendous beings.
I mean, I, I get freaked out from spiders, you know, and I
can't I, you know, I was in a place one time.
They, they said be careful when you go to bed because we have
scorpions down here. And I'm like scorpions, man, I
want to get out of this place now.
I didn't sleep too good that night.
I left the light on and they said they sort of crawl like her
along the cracks of the, of the room.
So all night I'm like, you know, looking around and putting the
covers up over my head, you know, but the scorpions thing is
like one of the worst heights that anybody could possibly
anybody ever been bit by scorpion in here.
That's why we like living up north, right?
The farther S you go, the more you get exposed to these things.
But they, they, John says the apostle that it's like the sting
of a scorpion, not literally the saying it is a scorpion, but
it's like the sting of a scorpion.
And it talks about these locusts.
Now these locusts can wipe out vegetation in a very short
period of time, as we saw in Exodus Chapter 9 and 10.
But these locusts are very, very interesting because they have
the face of a man, a body of a iron.
They have the body of a horse and they're they're strong like
iron. And so you're trying to
visualize what the really a weird looking thing.
You know, it can fly, it can sting.
What kind of creature is this? And can God make something like
this or of course, but these things are distorted from God's
original creation, right? They're part of the fallen
creation, the the opposite of what God intended.
And that's what's weird that whenever we decide to go our own
way, we become very, the Bible says we're creating the image
and likeness of God, literally we are.
But because what sin does, it distorts that image and it makes
us look like devils and act like devils in our society.
But these creatures, whatever they are, they're going to
torture all the unbelievers on the face of the earth.
So, you know, people think, well, if I hang out with Satan,
he's my buddy. When I go to hell, I'll be down
there with all my friends. We'll decide I have all good
time. Satan hates us.
Whether you're a believer, an unbeliever, he hates you.
He's not in cahoots with anybody.
All he wants to do is destroy it.
The Bible says he comes to rob, steal, kill and destroy.
That's his whole agenda. So when these demonic beings are
out of this abyss, they won't be able to touch the believers or
the 144,000 or they're sealed with the name of God in their
forehead. No matter what they want to do,
they can't touch them or harm these people.
They're protected by God during that tribulation.
But all the people are on the earth that are unbelievers that
could care less about the things of God.
They're the ones that are going to be tortured now at this time
also because of what's going to happen.
You know, the vegetation isn't impacted by these locusts.
Locusts would normally be going after leaves and trees and grass
and all that kind of stuff, but they're only focused on getting
at human beings. And I can't imagine what this is
going to be like. It says it's going to be 5
months of torture. The despair is going to be so
bad. It says in verse 6, in those
days men will seek death and will not find it.
They'll desire to die and death will flee from them.
It's almost like it's so bad. I want to commit suicide because
I can't imagine anything being worse than this.
They're not even going to have the capacity to end their own
life. The torture is just
unbelievable. Total despair and yet people
still won't turn to God. It talks about the appearance of
these locusts in verses 7 through 10 and their demonic
spirits inside these beings, just like the demonic spirits
that were in the pig. Remember the pigs and, and
whenever Jesus was dealing with them, they, they said cast us
out, the spirits that cast us into the swine.
And so Jesus, they didn't want to go into the abyss.
They said they didn't want to be locked up.
They wanted to have because there's an element of these
creatures still out there in this, in the world and the
society now, but the majority of them are locked up.
But there's an element of demonic spirits on the face of
the earth right now who are actually possessing different
types of beings, human beings, animals, people who are
possessed by the devil, the demon are people you don't want
to run into. Some people think Hitler was
possessed. The way he acted and the way he
lived, it wouldn't, wouldn't surprise me the evil that he
brought upon the face of the earth.
But these creatures are going to be so horrendous.
And this is an interesting thing.
You know, when this book was written, John didn't have the
ability to see technology like we see it now.
But people who served in Iraq and Afghanistan say that when
they read this verse, Christians, these remind them of
these helicopters that look like locusts.
And they make the sounds of many noise and the face of man
driving the helicopter, the potential with nerve gas like I
mentioned earlier, where they're able to spray and the pain that
will begin to inflict a large mass of people on the face of
the earth at that time, that the pain would be so bad that you
can't eliminate it without any kind of medicine.
There's no relief. So all these things are in some
ways aren't clear to us as we read it because we're saying,
well, what that, what does that look like?
What will that be? It can be this actual creature
in the essence of literal exegesis here of interpretation
of what we're reading. And again, it leaves room for
the technology of the modern times to bring these things upon
the face of the earth. So how many want to be here for
that? I pray today if you're here and
you don't know Christ, that this will be one more warning for you
to turn your life over to the Lord and let him save you today.
To let him commend your life and and be your Lord and Savior so
you can be spared from this. I just want to close and I think
about 2-2 words. There's minimalism today and
maximalism. Minimalism is how little so I
have to do to be a Christian. Like is it enough for me?
This would go to church on Sunday and put a few bucks in
the offering plate and not smoke and curse and chew or go out
with girls that do. Is that is that enough to get me
by? That's sometimes how some of us
think, well the gospel is completely different because it
says if any man will follow me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross daily and follow me. Like from Jesus perspective is
if you want to follow me, it's 100 more flat out 100% tilt
toward my Kingdom. That's Christianity.
I think a lot of us, especially in these last days when we
studied Ephesus, the church in Laodicea, Ephesus left his first
love. And Jesus warns them, go back
and do your first works. Be like you were when you first
got saved, in tense, radical, focused on the Kingdom and not
this world. And Laodicea thought they were
intense. And Jesus says they're lukewarm.
He says, I'd like to spit you out of my mouth because you're
neither hot nor cold. And they taught good Bible
doctor and all this stuff. They were, they thought they
were doing everything good. And he says, don't you know
you're naked, poor, wretched and blind?
So the day when I study this stuff, I can say, well, that's a
good study. It's interesting, it's cool,
it's fascinating. OK, what am I going to do the
rest of my life with this stuff? But let's lay it down.
And I'm a prophecy addict and I just like to talk about this
stuff and think about it because it's cool.
But it isn't changing my life and convicting me to become more
focused on God's Kingdom and lost people.
Then I got a problem, right? So is it enough just to be saved
and saved from what? Is there any cost to you and me
to follow Christ? Well, some people say salvation
is a gift. It's free.
You don't have to do anything. You just receive it and believe
it. Yeah, that's the beginning
stages of what salvation is all about.
Because you can't buy it. It's a gift, but it it's a cost
once it comes into your life because your life isn't yours
anymore. Whether you realize it or not.
Your life doesn't belong to you. And what makes you and me
miserable every day after we become Christians is we still
want to run our lives like it belongs to us, don't we?
Many times I want to do it my way and do this, and I don't
want to do that, Lord. And we argue with the Lord and
we fight and sometimes we get involved in things we know
better, but we we just do it because we're proud and we want
to do what we want to do. But Jesus says if any man will
follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and
follow me. So that's the cost.
What's it mean to deny myself? It's different for all of us.
But you need to ask the Lord yourself personally.
Lord, how can I deny myself more?
To honestly follow you. What's my responsibility as I
study this with you and teach it?
What's my responsibility to you and your responsibility to me
and to other people, especially people who are ignorant of
what's in this book? What's my responsibility?
It's to tell them. And when I study this book, I
ask myself what's occurring in my heart regarding my spiritual
temper, temperature with God. You have to ask yourself today,
are you hot with God or are you lukewarm with God?
You have to ask yourself that really every day.
Am I really focused on what God wants me to be focused on, or am
I doing as little as possible to be focused upon what He wants me
to be focused upon? So where's your heart today when
you think about these things? I would pray that it's where
mine is. I need to do better, I really
do. I need to grow closer to the
Lord. I need to deny myself more and
fight against the things that my pride wants to force me to
follow. I need to be committed to the
things that Christ died for. I need to be committed to the
lives that the apostles lived in my job, in my home, in my
neighborhood, in my community. And today, if you drive through
southwest Greensburg, the majority of homes have cars
parked in front of them, and they're not in any church today.
And they need to hear this because if they don't and they
don't come to Christ, the judgments, if they're still
living on earth, will fall upon them.
And if they're dead, it's too late and they'll be in hell
forever. So there's still time to do
something about these issues that we're studying about South
practical things. Come on Thursdays when you can
and pray for an hour. Pray for the city, pray for
yourself, pray for your. It's a sacrifice.
Well, I'd rather work around the house or I'd rather watch TV or
I'd rather be involved in some kind of athletic event.
Well, there's nothing wrong with that, but there's elements of
what is it? You're going to press in more
for God for right Wednesday nights.
There's Bible studies here for young people and older people
and, and you know, commit yourself to the word of God and
sacrifice your time, sacrifice your finances for the sake of
getting the gospel out to other people.
How much should I give? Well, that's between you and the
Lord. But figure out ways that you can
give more of yourself, your time, your treasure, and your
talent. Because if we study these things
and we're just listening, but we're not doing what it says,
then it's hypocrisy, right? For all of us, including me, all
we have to do is say, Lord, how can I press Ed?
How can I get closer to you? What practical things can you
show me that I can possibly do in order to walk closer with
you? Lord, just think about those
things this upcoming week with your own time with the Lord.
Just say, Lord, speak to me about what it is I can do
personally to be more committed to your ways.
And it's not about looking what this person's doing or what that
person isn't doing or what, what is it that I'm supposed to be
doing? And if you do what you're
supposed to do, everything else will take care of itself.
Amen. We are digging into the Book of
Revelation here on Living Waters of Grace.
Pastor Clark is tackling this challenging book as we try to
discern the messages that are within its pages.
There's so much imagery and at times you're not always sure
what's literal and what's metaphorical.
At one point there's a reference to an adulterous woman riding on
a beast, and as someone else mentioned, at one point it
almost sounds like a rodeo from hell, and in actuality it kind
of is. You learn about the downfall and
demise of a sinful and rebellious world, falling down
in worship to someone who is the anti hero, the enemy, Satan
working his insidious ways into the minds of fallen people.
It's sad and it's heartbreaking, but it's a classic story of good
versus evil. Thankfully, we know how this
story ends. Jesus wins, Jesus reigns, and
evil is conquered once and for all.
We pray and trust you've received Jesus as your Savior,
but if you haven't, don't wait until the events in Revelation
become what's happening on the streets.
None of us wants you to be there at that time.
Instead, we'd love for you to be with us in heaven as we
celebrate the marriage supper with Jesus as his bridegroom.
To get a better understanding of where we are in the Book of
Revelation. To listen to any messages before
or after this one, you can find them at our website,
calvarychapelonline.com. That's it for today's edition,
but we hope you'll want to hear Pastor Clark teach more from the
Book of Revelation. It can be exciting to think
about the future for believers, but it can feel a bit harrowing
for those who don't believe. Come hear more next time on
Living Waters of Grace.