Amen and amen and good morning and welcome you can be seated

I'm going to ask you to stand in a moment

but I need to let you know that we're actually going to be covering the entirety of Revelation chapter 9

I tried to, but it didn't work.

So this is a chapter that kind of has to be taught at the same time.

It cannot be divided up. So I say that to say this, you might be standing

for a while, so if you don't want to stand, no worries. If you do, stand for the reading of God's

word. But if you want to remain seated,'s fine too we won't look at you

so now john is continuing to write describing what he's seeing

and we're in the trumpet judgments and these are the last three of seven

which are really the worst to come, so to speak.

We're told verse one, the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen,

past tense, from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the abyss.

Then, verse 2, he opened the abyss. Smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace.

The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the abyss.

And out of the smoke, locusts came down upon the earth and were,

notice, keyword, given power, like that of scorpions of the earth.

They were told, verse four, not to harm the grass of the earth or any

plant or tree, which is what locusts do, which means these aren't literally locusts, but only those

people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads remember the 144,000 they verse 5 were not

given power to kill them but only to torture them for five months and the agony

they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man.

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