Revelation 9:12-21 Part 5
1) Then the fifth messenger trumpeted, and I saw a star having fallen from the heaven into the land, and the key of the shaft of the abyss was given to it.
2) And the shaft of the abyss was opened, and smoke as smoke from a great furnace arose out of the shaft, and the sun and the atmosphere was darkened by the smoke from the shaft.
3) Then locusts came forth into the land from the smoke; and power was given to them the same as the capabilities the scorpions of the land have.
4) And it was said to them that they should do no harm to the grass of the land nor any green plant nor any tree, but only the men having no seal of God on their foreheads.
5) And it was given to them that they not kill them but that they should be tormented five months, and their torment as the scorpion torments when it has stung a man.
6) Then the men will seek the death in these days and will not find it; they will long to die, but the death flees from them.
7) The appearances of the locusts like horses having been made ready into battle; upon their heads as crowns like gold; their faces as men’s faces;
8) they had hair as women’s hair; their teeth were as lions’;
9) they had breastplates as iron breastplates; the sound of their wings as chariot sound from many horses running into battle;
10) they have tails and stings like scorpions, their ability to harm the men five months in their tails.
11) For their ruler they have the messenger of the abyss, the Hebrew name: Abaddon, the Hellenic name being Apollyon.
12) The one woe did go forth. Lo! It comes yet two woes after this.
13) Then the sixth messenger trumpeted. Then I heard one voice from the four corners of the altar of gold before God
14) saying to the sixth messenger having the trumpet, ‘loose the four messengers having been bound at the great river Euphrates’.
15) And the four messengers having been made ready into the hour and the day and the month and the year were loosed in order that they might kill the third of the men.
16) The number of the armies of horses: two myriads of myriads. I heard their number.
17) And thus I saw in the appearance of the horses, and those who sit on them, having breastplates of fire and hyacinth and brimstone, the heads of the horses as lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulphur went forth out of their mouths.
18) From these three plagues, the fire and the smoke and the sulphur going forth from their mouths, the third of the men were killed,
19) for the ability of the horses is in their mouths; and in their tails, their tails like serpents having heads, they do harm.
20) And the rest of the men, those not killed in these plagues, neither repented of the works of their hands that they should not worship devils and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood (which neither can see nor hear nor walk),
21) nor did they repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their fornications nor of their thefts.
1) “And you, son of man, take a sharp sword, (Yahveh said to Ezekiel) take it as a barber’s razor, and pass it over your head and your beard; then take scales to weigh and divide the hair.
2) You shall burn with fire one-third in the midst of the city, at which time the days of the siege are finished; then you shall take one-third and strike through it with the sword, and one-third you shall scatter in the wind: I will draw out a sword after them.
3) You shall also take a small number of them and bind them in the edge of your garment.
4) Then take some of those again and throw them into the midst of the fire, and burn them in the fire. From there a fire will go out into all the house of Israel
5) “Thus says Yahveh: ‘This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the midst of the nations and the countries all around her.
6) She has rebelled against My judgments by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against My statutes more than the countries that are all around her; for they have refused My judgments, and they have not walked in My statutes.’
7) Therefore thus says Yahveh GOD: ‘Because you have multiplied disobedience more than the nations that are all around you, have not walked in My statutes nor kept My judgments, nor even done according to the judgments of the nations that are all around you’ –
8) therefore thus says Yahveh GOD: ‘Indeed I, even I, am against you and will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations.
9) And I will do among you what I have never done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations.
10) Therefore fathers shall eat their sons in your midst, and sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments among you, and all of you who remain I will scatter to all the winds.
11) ‘Therefore, as I live,’ says Yahveh GOD, ‘surely, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will cut you off; My eye will not spare, nor will I have any pity.
12) One-third of you shall die of the pestilence, and be consumed with famine in your midst; and one-third shall fall by the sword all around you; and I will scatter another third to all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them.
13) ‘Thus shall My anger be spent, and I will cause My fury to rest upon them, and I will be avenged; and they shall know that I, Yahveh, have spoken it in My zeal, when I have vented My wrath upon them.
14) Moreover I will make you a waste and a reproach among the nations that are all around you, in the sight of all who pass by.
15) ‘So it shall be a reproach, a mocking; a warning and a horror to the nations that are all around you, when I execute judgments among you in anger and in fury and in furious rebukes. I, Yahveh, have spoken.
A third; and a third; and a third…. A prophetic “dramatization” in Jerusalem, right in front of the princes, priests and elders of Israel, to “show” them what is to occur should they not repent.
In out text, verse fifteen, John sees and hears the cherubim commanded to loose the armies of God to kill a third… all prophesied by Ezekiel in the prophetic language of Yahveh.
The armies are vast and fierce – savage and venomous as wild animals; their horses and chariots, covered with bright armor, were daunting – so many that they couldn’t be counted (they were so many that they were like a shaft opening from the north, and pouring out great pestilence). And their weapons of death and destruction stinging and torturing and killing.
They entered a land which had been flowing with water and filled with trees and grass and flocks and herds and crops (truly it had been a land of abundance from Yahveh)… and when they passed through there was nothing left but wasteland and rising clouds of dust and smoke that blocked out the light of the sun and the moon and the stars.
This is what John sees and hears – all from the perspective of the throne-seat of God… and all to take place quickly.
And they would starve and maim and kill without leniency, without compassion, without mercy – predatory and brutal and ruthless. Yahveh had promised that which He had never done before and would never do again.
The famine had left a destitute people which, in turn, provoked a lethal and animalistic pursuit of food (and there was no love or peace left within families or among friends, for they all turned against one another); the torture of plagues was interminable and left complete hopelessness in its wake, as plague after plague swept over Israel from border to border.
And then the killing began. In feral savagery everyone within reach was cut down by the sword; women were brutalized; children and babies dashed on stones; and every walled city put under siege.
Once again, John sees and hears these things, as decreed from the judgment seat, as God’s armies emerge from the Glory Cloud to the north as the wrath and mockery of God floods His edenic paradise. And nothing, absolutely nothing, was left untouched by the “boiling pot” poured out from the North.
We only have one (partially) reliable account of what was about to happen as John looks and listens to God’s decree against Israel. It’s not an inspired account by Word and Spirit… rather it is an eyewitness rendering of what he was able to see; and it is by no means written from our Lord’s perspective or with an eye to His decree. It was only what he could see at a given time and a given point of view.
Josephus’ history is a rather tedious read; however his descriptions of the torment and suffering and slaughters are not for the fainthearted. So I won’t shock you with those. Suffice it to say that the apostle John’s account here in our text of what was about to happen (from God’s perspective and decree) is witnessed (at least what he could see) by the historian when it did happen.
But I will read for you one small section of his account of what took place on the temple mount in Jerusalem. Here’s what he wrote:
“While the Temple was ablaze, the attackers plundered it, and countless people who were caught by them were slaughtered. There was no pity for age and no regard was accorded rank; children and old men, laymen and priests, alike were butchered; every class was pursued and crushed in the grip of war, whether they cried out for mercy or offered resistance.
Through the roar of the flames streaming far and wide, the groans of the falling victims were heard; such was the height of the hill and the magnitude of the blazing pile that the entire city seemed to be ablaze; and the noise – nothing more deafening and frightening could be imagined.
There were the war cries of the Roman legions as they swept onwards en masse, the yells of the rebels encircled by fire and sword, the panic of the people who, cut off above, fled into the arms of the enemy, and their shrieks as they met their fate. The cries on the hill blended with those of the multitudes in the city below; and now many people who were exhausted and tongue-tied as a result of hunger (and thirst), when they beheld the Temple on fire, found strength once more to lament and wail. Peraea and the surrounding hills, added their echoes to the deafening din. But more horrifying than the din were the sufferings.
The Temple Mount, everywhere enveloped in flames, seemed to be boiling over from its base; yet the blood seemed more abundant than the flames and the numbers of the slain greater than those of the slayers. The soldiers climbed over heaps of bodies as they chased the fugitives."
Since Rome was the reigning tyrant of the whole known world (the prophesied fourth-of-four by the prophet Daniel) it had conscripted the armies and horses and chariots and armor and weapons of many nations (all of them then provinces of Rome) in order to eliminate this source of much trouble for the dominion (i.e. Israel). And therefore many of the provinces had contributed legions of troops, all with different “forms” and “looks” making up myriads of myriads of the force that our Lord would draw together against His (now) perverted heaven and earth.
These are the ones with whom Israel had made treaties (all of their neighbors – Rome included); these are the ones whose idols and philosophies and cultures Israel had gladly received and incorporated – in outright mockery of the Words of Yahveh. These are the ones with whom she had fornicated – prostituted herself – in order to gain their favor. These are the ones from whom Yahveh had promised Israel’s protection should she worship Him alone and obey His Words and refrain from corrupting the land which reflected the glory of His heaven.
The colors of the various armies of Rome’s conscription were hellish indeed; and so were the horses, for they breathed out every loathsome and disgusting thing from the shaft of the pit. It’s how God mockingly perceived His armies (for these are the very ones for whom Israel had “uncovered her nakedness”. The scene here is stunningly vivid! God’s mockery of Israel’s mockery.
It is a fierce, hostile and demonic force; and it belongs to God. It is gathered together by the four cherubim at the command from the trumpeter at the Throne-seat; and it is in response to the prayers of the martyrs for God’s vengeance on their persecutors. And everything John sees here is a divine mocking of Israel’s mockery of God and His Word and His Anointed One.
We are reminded of what Moses had warned Israel about, should they turn away from Yahveh. In verse thirty-four of Deuteronomy 28 he told them “you will be driven mad by the sight of what you see”.
That certainly corresponds to previous statements here regarding the “insanity” of rebellion against God and mockery of His Word. In essence that insanity is demonstrated by the creature telling its Creator… ”I’m not going to be what you made me to be”. Independence from one’s Creator is a delusion… in fact it is self-delusion, since there would actually be no “thought” had God not made us in His image. Even all thought begins with Him. So, the self-delusion of independence from God and His Revelation is a psychopathy in and of itself. Not to mention being further “driven mad” by God’s mockery of man’s delusionary independence! You see, mockery of God brings mockery from God. So it’s insane self-delusion, and it’s self-destructive to provoke God by being disaffected from His Lordship. So why would a creature wish to be self-destructive??? It’s insane!
But we need to hear, once again, the horrors to come, decreed by God through Moses, should Israel turn from God and proceed in her own self-deception and her own self-destruction.
Here it is from Deuteronomy chapter twenty-eight. And as you listen, see if you don’t hear everything that John is seeing and hearing here in Revelation nine… all of which our Lord promises is coming quickly!! It’s all decreed and prophesied.
First in this passage (which we’re not going to read) comes the blessings of safety and the abundance of everything should Israel acknowledge her Creator and obey His Law-word. Then (where we pick up reading) comes the curses of the Covenant should she mockingly assert an illusionary independence. Here is a small portion of the curses decreed in the case of Israel’s rebellion:
45) "All these curses will come, pursue, and overtake you until you are destroyed, since you did not obey Yahveh your God and keep the commands and statutes He gave you.
46) These curses will be a sign and a wonder against you and your descendants forever.
47) Because you didn't serve Yahveh your God with joy and a cheerful heart, even though [you had] an abundance of everything,
48) you will serve your enemies Yahveh will send against you, in famine, thirst, nakedness, and a lack of everything. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
49) Yahveh will bring a nation from far away, from the ends of the earth, to swoop down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you don't understand,
50) a ruthless nation, showing no respect for the old and not sparing the young.
51) They will eat the offspring of your livestock and your soil's produce until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, oil, young of your herds, or newborn of your flocks until they cause you to perish.
52) They will besiege you within all your gates until your high and fortified walls that you trust in come down throughout your land. They will besiege you within all your gates throughout the land Yahveh your God has given you.
53) "You will eat your children, the flesh of your sons and daughters Yahveh your God has given you, during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you.
54) The most sensitive and refined man among you will look grudgingly at his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children,
55) refusing to share with any of them his children's flesh that he will eat because he has nothing left during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you in all your towns.
56) The most sensitive and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her refinement and sensitivity, will begrudge the husband she embraces, her son, and her daughter,
57) (begrudge them) the afterbirth that comes out from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything [else] during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you within your gates.
58) "If you are not careful to obey all the words of this law, which are written in this scroll, by fearing this glorious and awesome name— Yahweh, your God –
59) He will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses.
60) He will afflict you again with all the diseases of Egypt, which you dreaded, and they will cling to you.
61) Yahveh will also inflict you with every sickness and plague not recorded in the book of this law, until you are destroyed.
62) Though you were as numerous as the stars of the sky, you will be left with only a few, because you did not obey Yahveh your God.
63) Just as Yahveh was glad to cause you to prosper and to multiply you, so He will also be glad to cause you to perish and to destroy you.
You see, from God’s perspective (here in our Revelation text), He’s now bringing the curses of the Covenant, decreed by Yahveh, inspired through Moses and revealed to Israel. And He brings them in great mockery of Israel’s idolatry (as is evident in the last verses of chapter nine here in the Revelation).
For all through the prophetic Word of Yahveh, God’s “heaven and earth”, the edenic paradise called Israel, this people was called to repentance. From the time she was “freed” from Egypt and baptized in the Red Sea, this people was called to repentance for her profanation of the name of Yahveh and for her defiling of the land with her perversions.
Josephus bears eloquent testimony to her apostate nature. Here’s what he wrote:
“These people laughed at the laws of God. And as for the prophets, they ridiculed them as the tricks of jugglers; yet did the prophets foretell many things concerning the rewards of (obedience) and the punishments of vice which, when this people violated, they occasioned the fulfilling of all those very prophecies belonging to their country.”
Israel would not repent, even after the drought and the pestilences and the plagues… all called forth as the Lamb of God loosed the seals of the scroll. And now the mighty voice of God has trumpeted six times (the seventh yet to come), and John sees that this people still refuse to repent (last two verses of our text).
John hears the prophetic accounting of the materials used in the making of idols… gold and silver and brass and stone and wood. And the psalmist in Psalm 115 records Yahveh’s ridicule of them… His mockery:
“They have mouths but they can’t speak;
They have eyes but they can’t see;
They have ears but they can’t hear;
They have noses but they can’t smell;
They have hands but they can’t feel;
They have feet but they can’t walk;
They can’t make a sound with their throat.”
Then comes the very important last verse:
“Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them.”
Jeremiah, in chapter two (echoing the last verse of that Psalm), says that Israel “has gone after worthlessness and has become worthless”. Equally reflecting the Psalmist, Hosea said that Israel’s idolaters “became as detestable as that which they loved”.
And John, here in our text, summarizes all of Israel’s mocking sins against God and His Law-word for which they still would not repent… all beginning with idolatry. Then….
Murders: the murders of all the righteous from Abel to Zechariah; the murder of the Christ; and the persecution and murders of our Lord’s elect, marked and sealed of the twelve tribes who He came to seek and to save. And….
Sorceries (John says): causing their sons to pass through the fire, consulting mediums and astrologers and magicians, necromancy, and witchcraft. And her….
Fornication: a word that the apostle John uses twelve times in connection with Israel’s hostile defiance of Yahveh’s lordship over all His creation. Twelve times! Fornication is defined in God’s Law as including, but not limited to, adultery. It includes all sins with a sexual focus, for sexual activity of any kind outside of the bond and covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is perversion; it’s called fornication in the Scripture. And Israel (John writes) would not repent of all her fornication. And then….
Thefts: these are crimes of mockery against God and His Word… often connected in Scripture with heresy, insubordination of God’s authority, and apostasy. The righteous and the weak-and-defenseless are common subjects and targets of theft in God’s Word. And our Lord Himself anathematized the princes, priests, elders and lawyers of Israel for their oppression of the poor, for they were easy prey for the wolves. And it is to be noted here, that not once did Yahveh ever condemn Israel for the fact that there were poor; but only for the fact that Israel’s princes, priests and elders had caused many to be poor, and had been predators on the poor for their own benefits.
Throughout the “last days” – 30AD to 70AD – the seals of the scroll were loosed and the trumpeter had sounded the voice of God from over His Mercy-seat. The alarm was not heeded. And this people became even more hardened in their impenitence.
God’s armies were gathering to the North. And since Israel would not repent, she persisted in her eschatological folly – that no matter how she acted, no matter how insanely perverted she was, that no matter how militantly Israel acted against her own best interests, God would save her and bring her back into the original glory and abundance that she had under David and Solomon. And then she would rule the world from the temple mount. Problem was, the Anointed of God, Messiah, Jesus the Christ, required faithfulness and lawfulness from her (that’s point one); and (point two) His Kingdom, clearly prophesied all through the Scripture, was completely different from Israel’s distorted expectations.
And the great armies of God were being gathered to the North… at the great river Euphrates – Israel’s original northern border.
As we leave this text now, I want to brief you (and I promise that it will be brief) brief you regarding some of the recent history within which our Lord’s Church has persevered and advanced toward the fullness and completion of His Kingdom (a fullness, in space and time, prophesied throughout Scripture). As in all other times, it has persevered through great peril.
For a relatively brief period in our recent history, all the Christian Church had to worry about (it seemed) was a single, soulless (but militaristic) ideological movement at the borders and shores of many nations. It was, indeed, militaristic and seemed able to jump from one culture and nation to another so easily that it put terror into the hearts of most Christians, especially in the western world.
But it was soulless; and it was alien to the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ; and, in fact, alien to the nature of man in God’s image. Its ideal, the equality of men necessitating economic justice, proved a façade.
In the end there were many who wept for joy as the Berlin wall was literally torn to pieces by the very sort of common men and women who had, only a generation or two earlier, fought to establish the new world order that this alien ideology stood for.
But what we all seemed to have forgotten (or maybe only a few realized it in the first place) was that this period between 1906 and the mid 1980s was a social aberration (a very serious one), some sort of a “tourniquet” to stem the real world’s far older struggle.
That “aberration” was called communism. And do not be led astray… communism is not just a political idea; although hardly recognizable, it has a “theology”. And its eschatology formed an eighty-year “abatement” of the far-deeper Theological struggle.
Communism is much, much more than merely competing views of how to handle the wealth of men; it is philosophically equipped to handle that and everything else! It was a well-formed political system with its own defined eschatology. But its time of expansion was limited. It had to go “underground” for a time.
Now it has reared its ugly head again here thirty years later in a somewhat less militant (and more egregious) form; but, as before, it will serve to take the world’s attention off the deeper and far-more-serious struggle for the Church.
During communism’s intrusions into Christianity’s western strongholds, the best philosophical and Theological and political minds were redirected from the more important struggle; and they were (most of them) convinced in their own minds that this new affront to Christ’s Kingdom was the epitome of evil. And therefore the more serious struggle was left pretty much unattended. That was a grievous error.
The still famous 19th century social commentator and author GK Chesterton once said of the militant anti-Trinitarianism which swept away the ancient Christianized eastern Roman empire in the seventh century, that it arose not just by the sword (although in all respects it was brutal), but upon a deep rooted sigh of relief from the empire! The web of indebtedness and unjust laws and brutality which tentatively held together the Roman ecclesiastical empire was something which this new world system promised to sweep away. And to many this seemed a worthwhile trade (a compromise). Men tore down a different wall that day; but perhaps with a passion similar to those who tore down the Berlin wall.
What most people saw when the Berlin wall fell was the rotting corpse of soviet communism. But what they DIDN”T see was the rising specter of the ancient foe of the Trinitarian west (which at that time was a debased Church which was, with the passing of time, ever more apostate in its own right)!
Fiery embers, long tramped down by communism and the soviet armies, flared up almost immediately with the Soviet’s demise. And the very best minds chose to ignore it… or to think it simply the rising up of nationalisms.
But at the very heart of all these flare-ups lay the fourteen or fifteen hundred year old militant anti-Trinitarian movement which has always had in its culture the resilient drive to conform all the world to its own image – by any means!
And we were wrong to ignore it; and we were wrong to think that it would go away. We were wrong to assume that Islam was being used by communists when, in actuality, it’s the other way around! We were wrong to think that if we sold them western gadgets they would forget their militancy. We were wrong to think that if we were nice to them they would like us. We were wrong to think that secular pluralism would be more to their liking. We were wrong to think that some ideology of the “brotherhood of man” would cause all men to live in peace. We were wrong to think, as some, that dark-skinned camel-drivers could not be “players”. And we were wrong to think that our watered-down, apathetic Christianity could go on unopposed by this militant anti-Christianity!
We spend our time, our effort and our money mollifying and ameliorating the “differences” between men which cause them to be brutal to one another. Some call that “being politically correct”. And in doing that, we ignore the history. From the Middle East into Europe and Africa and Asia and the Americas, the history negates and rejects the attempt. The “politically correct set” attempts, in earnest, to have men of all political and theological and ideological persuasions to live together in peace and brotherhood.
But we have at our doors, and in our midst, right at this moment, a viable and resilient challenge to everything the west has valued historically; and an uncompromising enemy to orthodox Christianity. We have people willing and eager to die to destroy anything and everyone which does not conform to what they believe. They really would like to kill us, and then for the Christian Church to go away forever! And they have become very adept at using the “system” (whether democratic or communist) to their best benefits.
And, you see, western secular pluralism doesn’t naturally produce a people with something to die for! Secular humanism doesn’t produce uncompromising militant religion.
These people swept up not only the ancient middle east and its billions; but also held Europe as far west as Spain, and northern Africa, and who possessed the lands of eastern Europe and to the Steppes of Asia. They produced great art, grasped and employed cutting edge science and technology, handily defeating the armies of the west again and again.
Today their descendants are sweeping south ever deeper into Africa, east into Asia as far as western China; and they possess growing power and influence in all the major cities of the West. And their brutality and militancy knows no boundaries. Millions have been slaughtered – simply because they were Christian, or simply because they would not convert from whatever they were to Islam. (As far as the recent French riots are concerned, this is by no means the first time that French blood has been shed by Islamists.) They’ve shed the blood of men many times the numbers of those by Maoists and Stalinists and Nazis – having been at it since the early 600sAD.
In my opinion the Church must look full in the face what has become of Christianity in the lands which this violent conquering force has long held; or even what is becoming of it in the lands it has recently conquered (or is attempting to conquer).
Old communism merely succeeded (as I said before) in driving the Church underground. But this older enemy sets up a system in which the Church is diminished (or outlawed) either by social and economic forces… or by brutal force itself. In the end what remains of the Church is a ghetto of disenfranchised, alienated people sometimes tolerated – sometimes not. Certainly when a whipping boy is needed it isn’t so tolerated.
Paranoia is indeed something to be mistrusted; but so is an ostrich-like and simplistic myopia towards the greatest challenge to the Christian Church (and, by extension, to the West). And this challenge isn’t the relatively bumbling challenge of communism, but the full-orbed, deep-rooted challenge of a foe which fully intends to defeat and replace the faith once delivered to the saints with its own anti-Christ, anti-Trinitarian and occultic religion. And it will attempt to do so by whatever means it has at its disposal.
Some few individuals may espouse (verbally) a “live-and-let-live” attitude; but Islam is not merely a terrible perversion of God’s Revelation. But it is a MILITANT perversion. There is no backing away from it. They truly believe that Islam must conquer the world and establish a universal caliphate under sharia law.
However, as prophesied by Yahveh through the prophet Daniel, the fifth great Kingdom would be set up in the midst of the fourth; and never again would there be a world-wide rule by an earthly tyrant. The One Who received all authority in the heaven and on the earth is its Ruler. And His rule is over all things in the creation until all His enemies are under His feet. As Daniel said, His rule would be everlasting, and His Kingdom over all; and the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the water covers the sea.
This is the Word of God. The Church – the Church that belongs to Jesus the Word of God Incarnate – is the earthly, visible representation of His Kingdom. And we are to “faith” in His Words. He reigns; and He reigns forever. The text of the Revelation is the inauguration of His reign. It’s what we’re reading and hearing about.
We may suffer (as many in Church history have done before us); and that suffering may come from the imposition of some ungodly and unbiblical economic system… or it may come from a militant occultic religion. But trust Him! They cannot win. He just laughs at them… just as He laughed at Israel’s mockery here in the text of Revelation chapter nine. Our Lord will not be mocked! His Kingdom will persevere; all efforts against Him are temporary. All nations will bow to His Lordship. That’s a promise from Him to us!
Our job is to fight… to fight with His Word. As He said, “as you are going, make disciples of the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all My Commandments. And, LO! I Am with you to the end of the age.”