2. What is your greatest motivator?
The Trumpets:
What is your greatest motivator?
Text: Rev. 6:9-17

3. What does God as Judge imply?
The Trumpets:
What does God as Judge imply?

4. “This passage teaches us that God’s judgment is painful and terrifying and that only those whom God seals will be protected from His judgment. You can not keep the judgment of God from falling. You cannot protect yourself from it. You are not stronger than the scorpion sting of those locusts, and they are more scary to you than you are to them.”
James Hamilton Jr., Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches

5. 5th Trumpet Star Fallen – Key to the Shaft of the Abyss
Chapter 9:
5th Trumpet
Star Fallen – Key to the Shaft of the Abyss
From Shaft – Smoke
From Shaft - Locusts
Star Fallen
Star = angel (1:20)
Good angel or evil?
Evil Argument: Demon or Satan himself – fallen from sky (12:7-9; Luke 10:18), fallen always seems to represent fallen angel in OT & Jewish writing
Good Argument: Only place where evil angel used to execute will (different than allowed to torment); Would a fallen angel be entrusted with key to his own prison?; Fallen and descending are not far off and could parallel 20:1 or even be same angel.
Given – Again – God’s Sovereignty
Shaft
Part of the bottomless pit = greek = abyss.
Part that leads to the prison itself
In NT – Rom.10:7; Luke 8:31
Who is in control? Christ – 3:7
Smoke
Show of God’s wrath and coming destruction
Connected to Gehenna – Lake of Fire
So dense – darkness results – like 4th trumpet
Joel 2:10,30
Joel 2 – major passage connected to imagery
Locusts
Plague – 8th – Ex.10:1-20
OT – locusts were also used as a warning - Amos 4:9

6. 5th Trumpet - Locusts Locusts = Demonic power Power like Scorpion
Chapter 9:
5th Trumpet - Locusts
Locusts = Demonic power
Power like Scorpion
Told not to destroy vegetation
Torment only those w/o Seal!
Torment = 5 months
Demonic Power
Ascend from the Abyss = like the beast = 11:7; 17:8 NOT JUST INSECTS
Given Power! – Divine Passive
Theme – God’s control – even demonic do as directed
God – using locusts to achieve bigger plan…
God does not command them to do anything – only allows them their evil to express itself. – COME BACK TO THIS THOUGHT
Power = Scorpion
Scorpion = Metaphor for terrible punishment – 1 Kings 12:11,14
Purpose? – Intimidate, demoralize (swarms), and terrorize the earth dwellers
Not to destroy vegetation
Told – Divine Passive
Egyptian Plague – vegetation is focus – here = not normal locusts
Judgment on vegetation – 1st trumpet – Now – humanity who have rejected God.
Judgment on those without seal
7:2,3
People of God = Safe!
Same as Egyptian plagues – Ex. 8:22-23; 9:4,6
Emphasis = God’s mercy belongs to His people! – Rejected – face the wrath
Thus – Demonic powers attacking those who have relished in sin – what the demonic offers.
Sin does not pay off!
James 1:13-15
Evil is expressing itelf! – Rom.1
Torment
Not kill – only torment for 5 months
God’s control
Torment – for rejection of God and treatment of His people (martyrs)
5 Months = Possibly – Life span of locusts, or period when they would appear – between early and latter rain.
Limit on torture = chance to repent?
Torment – harbinger to the pain in eternal torment – 20:10 (same word used)
Despair
Seek death – can’t find it
Further – Desire death
Description – 7-11
Similar to Joel 2
Crowns – “like” – not the same as seen elsewhere, but imitation conquerors
Human faces – most likely – desire to usurp and take image of God away from man (Demonic)
Purpose – To hurt. – Not figurative but deliberate.

7. “The message for John’s day and for our day is clear
“The message for John’s day and for our day is clear. We must help believer and unbeliever alike to realize what is at stake. Idolatry in our society is not so obvious but is just as real as it was in John’s day. By definition idolatry is turning an earthly thing into a god and worshipping it rather than the God of creation. Whatever we place ahead of God in our lives is our idol. Therefore, the modern world is replete with idols: money, possessions, power, pleasure, sex, success, fame, drugs. These are all tools of Satan, and there are countless stories in which these very things have tortured and killed those who pursue them. We must warn people of the cosmic powers in control of this secular world and call them to God.”
Grant Osborne, Revelation
* Terrible Judgment – Call to repent!

8. Be broken before God and not broken by God!
Takeaway Thought.
Psalm 51:17