Title: Loyalty and War
Contents
Loyalty and War (Revelation 9)
8:13 "And I saw and heard an eagle flying in mid-air, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, besides this, because of the sound of the three angels' fire trumpets." A great bloom of eggplant is beginning. That is, the 5th, 6th, and 7th Trumpet disasters. With the catastrophe of locusts like a swarm of grasshoppers that Egypt suffered and the great war that could be seen as a world war, a war across the globe was foretold.
1. Catastrophe of locusts
First, this calamity was a torment for unbelievers.
Believers can also be disciplined sometimes, but here there is no pain from the locusts of the last days. Verse 4, “He said to them, ‘Do not harm the grass or greenery of the earth or any kind of tree, but only those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. ' Because he said.
1-2, 'a star that fell from heaven to the earth', the angel who receives the key to 'the abyss' here appears to be the angel of Revelation 20:1.
Revelation 20:1 'And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand'. The abyss is Satan's dwelling place, not hell itself.
3-4, 'Hwangchung' comes up from the bottomless pit, so it is the medium of judgment that obtained Satan's spiritual power. It is a disaster of locusts, which are scarier than scorpions. If you are bitten by a scorpion, you will die instantly. It is a locust with more terrifying powers of Satan.
5-6, will not kill unbelievers, they will torture them for 'five months'. Five months is a limited period, but it will be very painful. It's a fairly long period.
7-10, the appearance of locusts is described.
(1) 'Words for war' have a strong momentum of attack and rush
(2) Wearing a 'crown like gold' shows off the power and existence of locusts
(3) 'The face is a man' An irresistible disaster that man cannot prevent
(4) 'Woman's hair' A fascinating look
(5) 'Its teeth are like lions', meaning cruelty and fierce
(6) 'Breastplate like iron breastplate' means robustness and strong defense.
(7) 'The sound of its wings' is the collective movement of locusts
(8) The scorpion's 'tail and stinger' flesh is Satan's poison and evil deeds.
In the midst of suffering, people tried to commit suicide because they wanted to die on their own, but they had to endure the pain of avoiding death. Such is the suffering of hell. Now, people commit suicide out of self-made suffering, but the suffering of God's judgment cannot be solved by suicide. That is the torment you will suffer in hell.
2. The Great War
There are three particularly terrible plagues in the book of Revelation (Rev 8:13 'woe, woe, woe'). Among them, the previous terrible plague of locusts was the first, and now the second, that is, the sixth trumpet disaster.
The calamity foretold by a similar process in Revelation chapter 16 is not the same, but a more severe calamity, and is a prophecy that leads to the destruction of the entire earth, but the calamity shown here in chapter 9 is a war in which a third of the people of the global village will die before that.
14-15, 'The great river Euphrates' is the place on the border between Israel and the Arabs, and it is the place of the great war in Revelation. These 'four angels' are evil angels because they kill people. 4 is a number that symbolizes the four lands. 'That year, month, day, hour', the so-called Last World War. It is a great war that kills one third of the population. It will be the so-called world war.
** Comparison between World Wars 1 and 2 and the Last War **
World War I; 1914-1918 (5 years) 8,418,000 soldiers and 1,300,000 civilians participated in 16 countries,
World War II 1939-1945 (8 years) Participated in 36 countries, 7,860,000 people died,
World War 3? One-third of the world's population will die.
In Roman times, it cost 75 cents to kill an enemy, but in World War I it cost $15,000 per person and in World War II it cost $30,000. It is said that it cost $50,000 per person during the Korean War, and $800,000 to kill one Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.
It is a war that is declared war, and in verse 15 of the main text, the year, month, and day is set and it is prophesied that a war will occur. Just as it was in World War II, it is a sure prophecy of a great war. We see the coming world war as a nuclear war, and the Bible predicted a nuclear war 2,000 years ago (17).
16, when a soldier on a horse said '20,000', it means 200 million in terms of the current number. An army of 200 million goes to war on the banks of the Euphrates. Some commentators see it as China's military.
17, 'The heads of horses are the heads of lions', which is a brave figure and seems to symbolize the current tank. 'Fire, smoke and brimstone come out of his mouth', so it will be several bombings.
18-19, 'A head on a tail' means extraordinary guile and clever operation. It is a very terrifying war in which one-third of the world's people die.
3. Those who do not repent
What scares people more than these disasters is the poison of people's hearts. Even at this time, God wants people to repent. But people do not repent.
20-21, 'Working with your hands', a really sad thing is that we need to be alerted to God's punishment, but people do not repent. Rather, they follow demons and bow down to idols. In this age of science, the world seems to abandon idols and jumbo, but still tries to rely on fortune-telling.
Even in the age of all-knowledge and scientism, the sentiment of those who look at the future of uncertainty is that they do not believe in themselves and live. Only then can they know for sure, believe in Almighty God, come into Jesus Christ, settle their lives, and repent. And it would be better to choose a new and hard way, but why is Jesus persecuting Jesus?
That is Satan's work. If you are an intellectual, judging from these and other experiences, you can't understand why they do not convert to Christianity with historically clear objectivity while blaming that there is a transcendent world and the class that dominates the transcendent world is the so-called world of God.
We have no difficulty in reminiscent of the plague of locusts when we see the current AIDS or newly emerging diseases. Looking at the war in Iraq and war preparations around the world, and terrorism and dangers large and small, we cannot deny the possibility of a world war.
Then we must become repentant people. Even when sickness comes to me, when too heavy a challenge comes to me like a war, we must be reborn as repentant people, seek God, and wait for God's mercy.
This is the positive voice of God pursued in the text. When we encounter God's revelation in history, I pray that you and I will become a repentant people with an immediate response and enter into salvation with grace and comfort.
Source: Cyber Seminary