This week is a watershed week; it's election week. And a lot of people are kind of taking the notion well, you know, the election's are really over. You know what? It ain't over till it's over. It is a shame to not be registered to vote and it's an even greater shame to not do it. So you have got one vote and I would cast it and we're even passing out voter's guides, not telling you how to vote, if we did we'd get into big trouble. Believe me, I'm tempted. You can see me afterwards and I'll tell you. But we have voter's guides that basically tell about the candidates, what they're for, what they're against, and about the local issues because a lot of the local things on the ballot you get into the thing and you go, I don't know what these are and so sometimes we skip over them. So this kind of describes who's who and what's what. And you can get those at the information desk after the service. Alright, let's turn to Revelation chapter 9 this morning.

I wish I could say let's turn to Revelation 20; that's where all the good stuff is. But I can't because we're not there. And remind yourself this is a New Testament book even though at times you think it's gotta be Old Testament, it is New Testament. Revelation chapter 9. There's a fable that tells of three apprentice demons that were on their way to the earth to finish their internship and they had a conversation with the devil as to their plans and one demon said, I'm going to go down and tell people that there's no God. And the devil said, well that won't work. Maybe a few stupid people will buy into that one but for the most part people have a deep yearning for God. It's universal. The other demon said, I'm going to tell them there's no hell or heaven, no afterlife. And the devil said, that's not really bright because people will say, if God did make us, He had to make us for something other than just this life, there's got to be more than what's here. The other demon said, I know what, I'll just tell them there's no hurry. The devil said, that's it! Go and you will deceive men by the thousands. One of the greatest delusions that people live under is that we've always got time on our side. And time is so uncertain. We don't know what the marking of our own time is.

Well after the rapture, in the tribulation period, the earth will see cataclysmic judgments in rapid succession. It will be a very short period of time when you really think about all that is going to transpire. In fact, Jesus speaking of the time of tribulation said unless those days were shortened there wouldn't be no flesh saved but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. Well in chapter 9 beginning in verse 13 to the end of the chapter which is what we're looking at this morning, we have yet another attack of demons. It's like demons round two. He's back. And principally there are four who are released in our section. There was once a woman who was having a conversation with her friend and she was the kind of woman who always complimented everyone. She was an optimist to a fault. And her friend noted that and she said, you know, I think you would even compliment the devil. And she said, well, you've got to admit, he is persistent. Well we do have to admit that. He is very persistent. If he doesn't succeed in one venture, he'll come back and try something else. And he does with the people on planet earth in chapter 9.

Sydney Harris once said that if the devil could be persuaded to write a Bible he would entitle it, You Only Live Once. That's sort of the philosophy that people under. You only live once and it seems that there are people during this time that still maintain that philosophy, still holding onto certain things as if to say, well, you only live once. Which is true. You only live once. Which infers you only die once and after this, the Bible says, there is judgment and we see here that judgment is even on the earth. Well let's take it up to speed, especially if you just hopped in and joined us. We have seen what is the takeover of planet earth by its rightful owner, Jesus Christ. In Revelation 4, the Lamb of God takes a scroll out of the hand of God which is the title deed to the earth and He unravels this seven-sealed scroll. And judgments proceed from the scroll and each break of the seal is another phase of this takeover until we get to the seventh seal and when the seventh seal is broken there are yet seven more judgments in rapid-fire succession. The trumpet judgments, or judgments that are announced by the blast of a trumpet of an angel. And the first four trumpet judgments, remember, are natural phenomena. That is, they involve the earth, they involve the seawater and things that live in the ocean, they involve fresh springs of water and they involve the sky. The last three trumpets are called woes. Sometimes that is a reaction when we get into a deep situation we go, woe! Now that's what the angel says as he looks over the earth and says, woe, woe, woe. Those aren't encouraging words for planet earth. They are woe's and we have seen the first woe last week, which is the fifth trumpet and that is where hordes of demons come out of a shaft of the abyss and cover the earth and torment men for five months during this last three and a half years called the great tribulation period. Jesus said there will never be a time like it, there's nothing to compare it to in the past, it is unique, it is terrifying, and we're starting to realize why as we look through the fifth trumpet. And now we come to the sixth trumpet judgment or the second woe beginning in verse 13. And there are four words that describe this trumpet judgment. Four words that form the outline. The word is altar, the second word angels, the third word army, and the fourth word audience. Let's go through it and begin in chapter 9 verse 13 where the first word is noted: altar. The altar is seen.

"Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God". Now this is a strange altar. It talks. I think of the burning bush. What must Moses have thought as he was cruising through the desert one day and a bush started talking to him? Hey, Moses! Over here! Take your shoes off, you're on holy ground. And he realizes it's the voice of God speaking through this inanimate object, a bush burning but not consumed. Well here's an altar speaking. And what altar is it? Well it's the golden altar. And remember the golden altar there were two in the temple and tabernacle. There was a brass altar outside in the outer court where animals were killed, blood was shed, atonement was made. And then there was a golden altar inside, right before the veil of the Holy of Holies. It was on the golden altar that incense was offered and that represented the prayers of God's people ascending to heaven. We have already seen this altar twice so far. Remember chapter 6 there are voices from under this golden altar. These are the saints who have been killed, slain, for the testimony of Jesus Christ in the tribulation. They cry out to God. Then in chapter 8 the altar is mentioned again, this time an angel has this censer, this golden pot, and he has coals in it and he's got incense in it and instead of going and offering it before God it says he hurls it down to the earth in judgment. And now we see the altar mentioned again. And there are horns that are mentioned on this golden altar. Let me take you back in time for just a moment to Exodus chapter 30. You don't have to turn there, you won't have enough time. I'm just going to breeze through it. In Exodus 30 God says to the high priest once every year on Yom Kippur you are to make atonement on the horns of the golden altar. Go to the outer altar and get blood, blood that has been spilled by an animal of sacrifice, and take that blood and smear it on the four corners, the four horns, of the golden altar. Then he was to take incense in his little pot, his censer, and go into that little Holy of Holies and offer it before God which indicates, again, prayers of God's people. Here was the message God was saying: I will hear your prayers but only on the basis of blood sacrifice. And that is a principal that has never changed. God hears prayers but He only hears them on the basis of blood sacrifice. So when we cry out to God, when we pray, when we plead our case before God, it is only on the basis of the blood of atonement, sacrifice opens the way to God. And so a person may say, hey, man, I pray all the time. Yeah but if you don't pray based upon what Jesus Christ has done for you on the cross and your relationship with Him, it's a useless prayer until you make the first prayer that says I admit I'm a sinner, I repent of my sins and I turn to You. That's always been God's principal. Old and New Testament. God answers prayers on the basis of atonement.

That's why Christians when they pray say, in Jesus' name, Amen. It's not a little formula. It's not like, oh yes, over and out. It means more than that. It means God, I come to You, I come before You, not because I'm a nice guy. I don't say, listen, God, listen to me, I do a lot of good things and here's my little list, my performance record. No we say, I come to You in Jesus' name, or because of what Jesus did for me. That's the only reason we have access. And so God is responding to the prayers of the souls under the altar in chapter 6 He's responding to, no doubt, the prayers of the 144,000 Jews during this time. The prayers of all of the believers who are on the earth who are being persecuted and slain and I'm certain that during the tribulation there will be unprecedented prayers in terms of intensity. You know we pray when we're really under the gun. That's when our prayer life sort of ignites, right? It takes off. It's like the little plaque in the principal's office of a public school that said, "In case of nuclear attack or an earthquake or fire, the ban on prayer is temporarily lifted." You betcha! Intense praying during this time. This is the voice of God, I believe, uttering from this altar, answering the collective prayers of all of His saints. Your prayers count. The prayers that you make for your family, for your church, for your country, they matter. They count. God listens to them. there's the story of the king of ancient Sparta who always boasted that he had walls of protection. The great walls of Sparta, he would boast to the enemies and to other monarchs. Well one day a monarch came to visit this king of Sparta and saw no walls around the city and said, where are these walls that you boast of? And the king of Sparta pointed to his well-trained army and said, these are my walls. It was his soldiers; it was the people who protected it, not bricks and mortar. And there is strong protection and God answers the prayers of His saints.

Now remember the souls under the altar that I just mentioned in chapter 6 this is what they cry out to God. They say, how long, O Lord, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth? And remember God says, wait a little while longer until the full number of these persecuted and slain ones come in. you ever feel like giving up when you pray? God, how long is it going to be? How long will You let them get by with this? And then you back off and you think, man, I've been praying this for a long time. Do my prayers even do any good? Why should I bother having devotions? Why doesn't God answer now, immediately? I love what Ruth Graham said about that. She said if God would've answered all my prayers immediately, I'd be married to the wrong man many, many times over. God answers your prayers. I was handed by one of my staff members an article from the evangelical press, it's from Stockholm, Sweden. The article says Spanish businessman Eduardo Sierra stopped at a church during his visit to Stockholm and he found the sanctuary empty except for a casket containing a man's body. So Sierra knelt beside the coffin and prayed for twenty minutes, signed the condolence book, and he left. Several weeks later, Sierra got a phone call from the Swedish capital telling him that he was now a millionaire. Apparently, Jens Svenson, the man in the coffin, was 73 year old real estate dealer who had no close relatives and in Svenson's will he specified, whoever prays for my soul gets all my belongings. He thought, well, you know it's a church, I probably should pray, I do it wherever I go, not knowing that there was a check awaiting him. not that every time you pray you're going to get a billion dollar check. And some people sort of try to condition Christians that that will happen. But God will always hear your prayers and God will answer those prayers. And here we see that happening. Except the voice is not a voice of mercy but of judgment. And in the Old Testament somebody would rush and grab a hold of the horns of the altar often saying if I hold on to this altar there will be mercy but there's no mercy left. The voice is crying out release four angels who are by a river. Let's read the second word that sums up this section. The angels. Verse 14, the voice said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind."

Four angels. Are they good angels? Don't presume that if you read the word angel it means a good guy. It simply means messenger. It can mean good, evil, human, or supernatural, divine. These are four angels. They are not good angels. Never in the Scripture do we read of a good angel ever being bound. Why? They don't need to be. You only bind someone to restrain someone. If you capture an enemy soldier you incarcerate that soldier. You bind a prisoner and incarcerate a prisoner so that person will not be able to perpetrate the crime any longer. It's a restraining thing. And so these angels are fallen angels; they need to be restrained. It's another segment of Satan's force and again, I remind you of Jude 6 that we quoted last week which says, the angels who did not keep their proper domain but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day. By the way, before we even move on, a little p.s. God binds angels. God binds demons. We do not. Now I know that it's sort of a practice among some and it makes people feel very empowered when they say, I bind you, Satan! Well do me a favor next time you do that, bind him permanently, would you? Because though I hear a lot of binding going on, it's like he gets loose really quick. It doesn't seem to last long and God is the One who binds spirits and He has been restraining them for a long time until this future event. Notice the river that is mentioned. There are angels bound at the great river Euphrates. Interesting. I was there 11 months ago. I went to the river Euphrates on the way to Baghdad and then the ruins that are being rebuilt of Babylon by Hussein. And I thought then, and I thought since then, about all that river has meant. The Euphrates River. This was the great river that formed the eastern boundary to the Promised Land. That's what God said. God said your borders will extend to the great river Euphrates. They've never taken that much but that was the original template. It was the Euphrates River that was also the uttermost eastern boundary for the Roman Empire which should interest us because there will be during this time a revived Roman Empire. Now once again, we read the Euphrates River. But there's something deeper than that. You see, this region of the world has been the fountainhead of all weirdness and wickedness from the beginning. It was somewhere in this area of the Euphrates River that the Persian Gulf region that delta formed by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that the Garden of Eden stood at one time. It was that Garden that was infiltrated by evil, the usurper, Satan. It was in that Garden by the Euphrates where the first sin was committed, the first lie was told, the first murder was committed, the first grave was dug. A significant, a problem, area. It was also by the Euphrates that a guy by the name of Nimrod, remember that character in Genesis? He was called a mighty hunter who defied God and he rebelled and started this huge movement of world religion against God, the Tower of Babel. The Euphrates region is the area historically of Israel's most oppressive enemies. Ninevites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Medo-Persians. It was here that for 70 years Israel was captive by the Euphrates River. It's also the fountainhead of all idolatry. Weird spirituality. Pantheism. Polytheism. Naturalistic religions--all came from Babylon. It's the place of the city of Babylon which Revelation 17 and 18 talks about mystery in Babylon, the mother of all harlots, this world economic and religious system. So it's here where history began, it is here where history will have its ultimate end.

Now a little note here, a little p.s. again before we move on. This is the reason that serious Bible students keep their antennas up. Whenever anything comes down in Israel or Iraq or Iran, in the Middle East which is always a hot spot on the news, Bible students are looking at that and watching for it because Jesus told us to do that. That's why we're interested that Saddam Hussein has chosen to rewrite the history books in Iraq saying he's a direct descendant of Mohammed the prophet, employ 1,000 men to rebuild Babylon and put a more magnificent palace than Nebuchadnezzar over it. I've seen it. You're not supposed to know about it but I saw it. He calls himself the second Nebuchadnezzar. He wants to be in charge of a coalition with Iraq and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Jordan and of course, Israel, Palestine. He wants to be in charge of that. Well it's in this region that these four angels, great magnates of evil, are chained. And notice the great precision and the restraint. Notice the words they'd been prepared for the hour and the day and the month and the year. I don't know why it's written that way but it comforts me, it kind of shows me that God is right on time. He's precise. God is never, hey, you know, whatever, dude, just, we'll kind of do it in that time frame. He has a specific year and month and day and hour that He releases these and I think He does that with everything. And I take comfort in the fact that God is sovereign and that my life and my times are in God's hands and God knows my months and years and days and hours. I take comfort in that. You know Peter said the Lord is not slow in keeping His promise. Sometimes we say, God, you're late! Response: No. You're early. God is not late. He is not slack or slow, said Peter. He keeps His promise with precision. He is sovereign. You know, we look around at the world and we think, oh man, it's just out of control. It's like God took a vacation, went to another galaxy, and let this thing wind down. Maybe this week really is the time to tell of this illustration. It seems that a newly elected politician went to Washington, D.C. He wanted to get a feel for the city so he stopped by a senator's house, a friend of his, and he wanted the senator to sort of prime him for Washington, D.C. politics. The senator put his arm around the young fellow, took him outside on the back porch overlooking the Potomac River. He said, son, you see that log floating down the Potomac? That's what politics in Washington is like. It's like that log. You see, on that log there's probably 100,000 ants, worms, insects of all kinds. And probably each one of them thinks that he's steering it. He says that's like Washington, filled with power, they think they're in control. No God is in control ultimately. And even these powerful angels that are responsible for a large percentage of human death are restrained by God. He controls history. He restrains them but now He releases them and notice they were released, it says, to kill a third of mankind. Now it doesn't take a brain to figure out what's happening, that already in, I think it was the fourth seal in Revelation 6, when that seal was opened a fourth of mankind was destroyed and now a third of what's left is destroyed so that's 50% of earth is dead. You can only imagine mass graves being dug perhaps, something that we can't fathom. I was in Rwanda a couple years ago and I saw huge holes, mass graves, where there were so many people who died they just carved huge holes and dumped them all in there to burn them or bury them. Remember last week we read that death took a vacation for five months. It's back--with a vengeance. And now half of the population is reduced.

It gets even more frightening and the third word is introduced and that is army. The army is seen in verse 16. These four magnates are not alone. "Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them." He couldn't count them--too quick. He's not going to walk down: one, two, three. He heard the number. Saves time. "And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed". The three plagues mentioned in verse 17. "By the fire and the smoke and the brimstone," reiterated again, "which came out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm." Once these four fallen angels are released on the landscape, they've been chained, they've been bound, they're released, they seem to bring with them a lot of others. 200 million horsemen. Now the question arises: who are these 200 million horsemen? Profound answer. I don't know. It doesn't say. You can only speculate and scholars are sort of divided. Some say it's a human army, which would be very, very big for an army. Others would say, because it's so big and because of the description of these that sit on the horses, it defies human description thus it's got to be some weird supernatural demon. 200 million of them perhaps like what we saw in the last seal. And that is a possibility, it could be purely supernatural, demonic or it could be human. Put yourself in John's sandals for just a moment and think of what it would be like in the first century to get a vision of the future. Let's say the vision involved tanks and planes and nuclear warfare and things falling out of the sky of this nature. When all you know is clubs and swords and shields, to comprehend, let alone describe that, would be very, very, very difficult. If you're to describe weapons that haven't been invented and won't be for 2,000 years. It could be that is what he's describing. He mentions horses. That's what he sees. Could refer to what these people sit on or in for warfare. It says they had heads like heads of lions. Could mean fierce, determined, advancing in their attack like a lion. Verse 16 is their number. It says 200 million. World War II the American side had 12 million troops armed at the height of conflict. Here's 200 million. Now remember John wrote this when there were not 200 million people living on earth. By the way, that is why skeptics laughed at the Bible. Oh, listen! 200 million! This guy must've been on acid or something! See the Bible is unreliable! There's not 200 million in an army! And it's interesting, even back in the 70s, it was widely known that China could arm an army and they said the number, 200 million. Quote, Mao Tse-Tung said in the battle for the world, China will field an army of 200 million. It was Napoleon who looked at China and said, China is a sleeping giant but when she awakes let the world stand in terror. Well there are 1.2 billion people that live in China. And some see this along with Revelation 16, where the river Euphrates dries up and we'll discuss that later, making way for the kings of the east to march across. And they see the two together.

But I don't really think that's the point and we could argue and get into little debates about is it demons, is it humans. It doesn't matter. What really matters and what is central to this chapter is what is involved in the next word that describes it and that is the audience. The response of planet earth to all that is happened so far. Verse 20: "But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands". You know that sounds so strange. You'd think, now logically after seeing all this, it should read, and the rest of mankind got on their knees and said, please, God, I'll do anything! But the point is even after hardening their hearts so much, they could not believe. They did not repent. And notice what it says, they did not repent of the works of their hands, "that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk." And if they can't do that, they can't help them. Verse 21: "And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts."

There are five things they refused to turn from and we're going to close with these five things. Now I know this is yet future but as I was reading this this week I thought, gosh, this sounds very current, very contemporary, very localized. And what we read here is simply a magnification of what I think is already a common trend in our world certainly in this culture. God is describing a world that won't repent of these sins. I think we live in a nation that won't repent of these sins. These sort of mark our culture. Let's look at them. idolatry, first of all, verse 20. Man is always driven to worship something. We want some spiritual experience beyond ourselves. Spirituality is popular right now, have you noticed that? It is. It's growing in popularity. America is being a very spiritual nation. You may think it's not--it is. It's just the wrong kind. They're borrowing a little bit of Jesus' love and becoming your own god like eastern mystics and this little reincarnation, I'll kind of throw that in, and they've created a New Age religion which is a pick-and-choose smorgasbord of all of the top ten hits of all the religions put together. They've got their top forty and it's very, very spiritual. But it's idolatry and here, they're worshiping images, it says, statues, images, idols. We know that the Antichrist will erect or the false prophet will erect an image of the Antichrist that will become animated and demand the world worships that image. But when a person worships an idol he's really worshiping a demon, according to this verse and also Psalm 96:5 in the Septuagint version says all idols are demons. That's quite a statement, infers that when a person bows down before an idol, a demon will come along and do enough stuff in response to that homage to get the person hooked and keep worshiping that idol. Well in the tribulation period we know the Antichrist organizes a new religion, a cultic Satanic very profound. And I think we're seeing trends already. In any fashion magazine, it is now chic to wear amulets, skulls, all sorts of occultic jewelry around the neck and around the wrist and around the ankle. I was faxed this week a little article that says the third most popular album in America this week is Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar. This is this week. Popular album Antichrist Superstar. The guy in the group featuring the following messages in their song, quote, "I will bury your god in my warm spit." That's what teenagers are going to listen to--they are listening to it. Another quote from a song, "Let's just kill everyone and let your god sort them out." That sounds suspiciously like this sixth trumpet, does it not? Very, very familiar.

Next, they refuse to turn from murder. Now think about it. They've been killing Christians during this time, Jews, each other. They've got the taste for blood. They can't quit. They won't turn from it. And I think that the tribulation will simply be a massive proliferation of what we're already seeing now in this world. Every 24 minutes in our country somebody's murdered. Murder affects one third of all households in America, directly or indirectly. 200,000 Americans will be murdered this year. It will proliferate. Jesus said as it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the coming of the Son of Man. And if you look back at the days of Noah it says violence covered the face of the earth. That was one of the things. Next on the list mentions sorceries and I've called that drugs because the word sorcery, or witchcraft, is pharmacea, we get our term pharmacist or pharmacy from it, and a literal translation of this verse is druggings. Having to do with drugs. Because, in ancient and modern times, sorcery and witchcraft is always connected with drug usage because drugs intertwine fantasy and reality. And you can't really distinguish between them. Dr. Henry Morris, a scientist in Southern California, shows the relationships between drugs and the occult and he says, "Stupefying and hallucinatory drugs have been associated with sorcery and witchcraft for ages, yielding to their users strange visions and hallucinations which they could interpret as oracles for the guidance of their clients. Also, they divested their users of the control of their own minds, making them easily available for possession and control by evil spirits." I know this by personal experience before I was saved, as I've often told in my testimony. There is a link between drug use and the occult. Next, immorality is mentioned. The word in Greek, pornea, we get the word pornography, fornication, it's a general banner term for any kind of illicit sexual relation other than what God has ordained. They refuse to turn from it. Now think of how bad the world is now in terms of this. The world--we're pushing the envelope, right? Sex education in the schools. What we're telling kids today in schools is so different. What we're allowing on prime time television, how we rate movies. And if you think it's all bad now, imagine the tribulation. If you've ever read the Attorney General's report years ago on pornography in this country and what's going on now, imagine they adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, pedophilia that will happen during that time. I think we're seeing a preview today of coming attractions. Malcolm Mobridge, a great thinker from England, who's now in heaven, was very blunt when he looked at western culture and he said, "The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of our longing and the image of fulfillment." He's right. In western culture, he's right. Now try to imagine the world when the church is gone out and is not protesting sex education in the schools and abortion and immorality in government. Very, very, very heightened. Finally, thefts are mentioned. They didn't want to turn from that. Honesty will be non-existent. There will be no reprisals. Remember seeing the videos of the L.A. riots? Stores were looted, TV's were taken, appliances, food, just people massively swarming in these buildings to get what they could, no conscience at all. They didn't say, I can't take it, it's not mine. They refused to turn. What is interesting in this list is that I think it describes rampant crime without just retribution. No justice system involved. The justice system I think will become so debunked. The ACLU will so redefine what civil rights are, criminals will be given such victim status, that crimes will not be punished anymore. And I think we're seeing trends of that. In fact, J.A. Sies said capital punishment will be eliminated in the great tribulation period for any crime. Except one--what's that? Being a Christian. That is the only crime that will be executable by capital punishment and we read about that here as well. And again we're being set up for that. I was channel surfing yesterday and I can't really spend, you know, more than maybe 12 seconds on a channel. I need a little holster. And what got my attention was MTV. They were interviewing the new group, I don't even remember the name, what caught my attention and why I stopped is this was the new group and the icons of all the kids and one of the group members had a t-shirt with bold printing across it, "Christianity is stupid." Role models, heroes. Now what if you were to run around and say Islam is stupid or any other, Judaism is stupid, you'd be jailed. You'd be taken away. Christianity is stupid. That is the growing sentiment in our country more and more. Now question when we read this chapter is so what? What does this have to do with me? I mean this is yet future. I'm not going to face this stuff. This is some time in the future and the tribulation. This has nothing to do with me. I've got to pay rent, I've got a husband or a wife. I don't need to be concerned about this. And whenever I hear that kind of response, I think of what King Hezekiah said to Isaiah the prophet when Isaiah said, king, after you are gone this nation is going to suffer great judgment. And you know what King Hezekiah said, well at least there will be peace in my day. I don't have to worry about that. That's going to come later. Is there a message in Revelation 9 for Christians? Oh yes. There's a missionary mandate in Revelation 9. You get a chance to peek at what the world is coming to in the future. It ought to motivate us, shouldn't it? Knowing therefore, said Paul, the terror of the Lord we persuade men. Vance Havner said, "The real test of how much we believe prophetic truth is what we're doing to warn people to flee from the wrath to come. To believe the solemn truths of prophecy and then make our way complacently through a world of sin and shame is not merely unfortunate, it is criminal." You've heard it before. Any Christian who does not evangelize will fossilize. It's true, isn't it? You'll dry up. What is the purpose if not to warn the world? You say, well I'm not an extrovert. You don't have to be an extrovert to witness. You just have to care for people. that's all. So there's a missionary mandate here for believers but there's also a salvation mandate if you're a non-believer. If you're not a Christian this morning, there's a mandate for you. It says they did not repent. Jesus said unless you repent, you'll likewise what? Perish. It was the first message Jesus preached in His ministry. Repent. It was the first message John the Baptist mentioned. He repeated it often. And it seems to be the last message that the church is heralding today. Repentance is the issue. Now let's turn that around. It says they repented not. Well may it be said of us, and they did repent of their sorceries, of their immorality, of all of these things that are listed here. There's an old Jewish proverb that says repentance is a key that opens any door. It is the key that unlocks the door of life. When you are willing to say, Lord, enough is enough in my life. I turn my life to Jesus Christ now. I want to live for You now. I turn in repentance to You. That's the mandate.