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A Time to Kill
Revelation 9:13-21
July 5, 2020
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
The sermon starts around 30:30 in the audio file.
Or, Unrepentant and It Feels So Fine
The information age in an election year is apparently like a 24-hour truck-stop kitchen, something is always getting dropped in the fat. Some of the information/data torrent is worthwhile, and I’ve tried to sift and skim and sort through a lot over the last few months, as have many of you. For a few months I got out of my regular reading routine, but a while ago I realized that I needed to add some fruits and fiction back into my diet because consuming so much fried covid was giving me indigestion.
Based on the strong recommendation of Glenn, I started an 1883 story by George MacDonald called, The Princess and Curdie. I’m only about halfway through it so far, and just tasted for myself the meat that Glenn had teased in front of me. But I’ve enjoyed it, and I wonder if Andrew Peterson didn’t get some of his ideas for the Wingfeather Saga from it. Anyway, there’s a part that pictures a reality among mankind that has been sped up among us these past months, and a part that will be even more dramatic in the final days.
all men, if they do not take care, go down the hill to the animals’ country; that many men are actually, all their lives, going to be beasts. … They do not know it of course; for a beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast the less he knows it. … To such a person there is in general no insult like the truth. He cannot endure it, not because he is growing a beast, but because he is ceasing to be a man.
Men are turning into what they will be. Some are turning into beasts, and one of the symptoms that cannot be separated is that the more beastly a man becomes, the less aware and sensitive he is to being a beast. Most jerks aren’t lying about being oblivious to their impact on others, the oblivion is part of the Platonic ideal of jerkness.
Sin causes sinners to be satisfied in their sin. Sin causes sinners to be surprised at the idea that their sin could be their problem. Sin, which destroys them, is their “precious.” Like a fool ground in a mortar with a pestle (Proverbs 27:22), the folly won’t be squeezed out no matter how hard you press.
In the sixth trumpet judgment, a multitude of demonic death-dealers come to earth and the ones who don’t die conclude: This is fine. They won’t quit their love of other gods, they won’t quit doing what is gutting their souls. It is part of the second woe, worse than the first, and not fine.
Similar to the locusts straight from the pit in Revelation 9:1-12, we read John’s announcement of judgment, a description of those who cause the destruction, and a summary of the response.
The Moment of Release (verses 13-16)
For the first time, the angel who blows the trumpet initiates further action for himself.
13 Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”
The voice from the … golden altar is probably the angel we met at the altar in chapter 8 who presented the prayers of the saints to God (8:3-5). The four horns or knobs symbolize strength, like the horns or antlers on a fighting animal. So one angel blows the trumpet, and the altar angel commissions the horn-blowing angel.
”Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” The number of angels is similar to chapter 7 and the four angels who hold back the winds of destruction, though those angels were at the four corners of the earth. Similar to earlier in chapter 9, havoc is released, though the Euphrates River is not a gateway to the abyss. These four angels and the army that follows them are not known in other apocalyptic literature, but they are known to God.
That they are bound indicates that they are [...]
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By Trinity Evangel ChurchRevelation 9:13-21
July 5, 2020
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
The sermon starts around 30:30 in the audio file.
Or, Unrepentant and It Feels So Fine
The information age in an election year is apparently like a 24-hour truck-stop kitchen, something is always getting dropped in the fat. Some of the information/data torrent is worthwhile, and I’ve tried to sift and skim and sort through a lot over the last few months, as have many of you. For a few months I got out of my regular reading routine, but a while ago I realized that I needed to add some fruits and fiction back into my diet because consuming so much fried covid was giving me indigestion.
Based on the strong recommendation of Glenn, I started an 1883 story by George MacDonald called, The Princess and Curdie. I’m only about halfway through it so far, and just tasted for myself the meat that Glenn had teased in front of me. But I’ve enjoyed it, and I wonder if Andrew Peterson didn’t get some of his ideas for the Wingfeather Saga from it. Anyway, there’s a part that pictures a reality among mankind that has been sped up among us these past months, and a part that will be even more dramatic in the final days.
all men, if they do not take care, go down the hill to the animals’ country; that many men are actually, all their lives, going to be beasts. … They do not know it of course; for a beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast the less he knows it. … To such a person there is in general no insult like the truth. He cannot endure it, not because he is growing a beast, but because he is ceasing to be a man.
Men are turning into what they will be. Some are turning into beasts, and one of the symptoms that cannot be separated is that the more beastly a man becomes, the less aware and sensitive he is to being a beast. Most jerks aren’t lying about being oblivious to their impact on others, the oblivion is part of the Platonic ideal of jerkness.
Sin causes sinners to be satisfied in their sin. Sin causes sinners to be surprised at the idea that their sin could be their problem. Sin, which destroys them, is their “precious.” Like a fool ground in a mortar with a pestle (Proverbs 27:22), the folly won’t be squeezed out no matter how hard you press.
In the sixth trumpet judgment, a multitude of demonic death-dealers come to earth and the ones who don’t die conclude: This is fine. They won’t quit their love of other gods, they won’t quit doing what is gutting their souls. It is part of the second woe, worse than the first, and not fine.
Similar to the locusts straight from the pit in Revelation 9:1-12, we read John’s announcement of judgment, a description of those who cause the destruction, and a summary of the response.
The Moment of Release (verses 13-16)
For the first time, the angel who blows the trumpet initiates further action for himself.
13 Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”
The voice from the … golden altar is probably the angel we met at the altar in chapter 8 who presented the prayers of the saints to God (8:3-5). The four horns or knobs symbolize strength, like the horns or antlers on a fighting animal. So one angel blows the trumpet, and the altar angel commissions the horn-blowing angel.
”Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” The number of angels is similar to chapter 7 and the four angels who hold back the winds of destruction, though those angels were at the four corners of the earth. Similar to earlier in chapter 9, havoc is released, though the Euphrates River is not a gateway to the abyss. These four angels and the army that follows them are not known in other apocalyptic literature, but they are known to God.
That they are bound indicates that they are [...]