Latest / Admonition Podcast / Revelation 15 (Lesson 2) - Aaron Cozort - July 05, 2026

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Revelation 15 (Lesson 2) - Aaron Cozort - July 05, 2026 · Admonition Podcast

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Good morning.
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Good to have a few people back from traveling.
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Uh we are in the book of Revelation.
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We're in chapter sixteen.
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And we are in the section concerning the pouring out of the bowls.
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And so ah
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This is this is one of those sections where we're not going to spend an an extreme amount of time, uh, because if you've read the book of Exodus, you've read most of the uh the
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details that are uh important in the uh the actual playing out of the text, but we'll discuss a number of things.
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But let's begin with a word of prayer and then we'll get into our study.
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Gracious Father in heaven, we bow before your throne, grateful for the day that you've blessed us with, grateful for your blessings that you shower upon us, the opportunities
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that we have to serve you, and the opportunity we have this morning to come together, to open your word, to read the visions that you have placed here, that you gave to your
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servant John, that he delivered to the church, that we might understand both how you have continued to deal with nations and how you
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have fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament down to the very most intricate of ones.
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Lord, we pray that you will be with us as we grow in confidence and knowledge, both in understanding your word, but also in confidence that what you have promised, you will
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certainly fulfill.
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All these things we pray and ask in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Chapter sixteen opens, and as we close chapter fifteen last week, John looked and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven, verse five, was opened.
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And out of the temple came seven angels, having seven plagues, clothed in pure bright linen, and having their chest girded with golden bands.
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Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever.
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I want to make mention of something before we before we pass too far by it.
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Here you have a picture of
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Of God preparing to deliver judgment in the form of plagues like the Old Testament plagues.
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And it's visionary language, and we we appreciate that.
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We've discussed that many times.
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We understand what's going on.
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That we're not supposed to say, okay, well, there was a point in time where there was an angel who took one step and then another step and another step as they walked out of the
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throne of God and then went to go pour.
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That's not the picture.
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The picture is God sends his judgment at the hand of his messengers and his servants.
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Now, if we think back to the Old Testament passage and the text of Exodus, where are we first told concerning the judgment being delivered on Egypt through the hands not of God
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directly, but of angels?
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Where does the text specifically identify that angels are delivering the judgment?
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Say again.
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Uh with the Passover and the death of the firstborn.
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Because if you remember, what is it that is described concerning the death of the firstborn and who, the individual, the messenger of God who was doing that action?
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We're told that it is the angel of the Lord or the angel of death.
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And what was the angel's commission when it went out to deliver this judgment?
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Everywhere where you didn't see what?
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The blood on the doorpost received the judgment.
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But everywhere where you saw the blood on the doorpost, what happened?
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Passed over it.
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So bear in mind that this idea of God bringing a plague by the hand of an angel on a nation in judgment, and God's people who had a mark.
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Identifying them being Passover is a picture that Israel as a nation was commanded to remind themselves of in the Passover feast every single year.
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That's how deep this imagery and this concept that we've been looking at in the book of Revelation would have been for the Jewish Christians, especially, but even for the Gentile
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Christians as they had been taught the Old Testament scriptures by the Jewish Christians.
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That this idea of the angel of the Lord delivering judgment upon a nation.
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And delivering his people through a mark and bringing them through where not a single one of them was touched by the judgment is something that would have been rehearsed year after
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year after year, and they even called the feast Passover.
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The reason I'm bringing this up is the moment that we're introduced to these visionary elements of the plagues being poured out, being poured out by angels, being handed off by
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one of the beasts that's before the throne, indicating this isn't God working directly.
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This is God working through the systems He's already established.
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He's used them for millennia.
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He's using his messengers through his uh representatives.
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To go deliver this.
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God didn't need to go take a vacation from everything else God was doing in order to bring the plagues on Egypt.
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The reason why I'm rehearsing that
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is to demonstrate the true separation between earthly power and God.
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that to bring a nation to its knees, God simply needs to send a servant.
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Not a million of not a hundred thousand of them.
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One.
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To bring the nation of Egypt to its knees one.
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Angel.
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With one job in one night.
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We are to understand the separation, the universal size separation between the power and the authority of a ruler and a government on the earth and God.
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Because they're not even in the same category.
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They're not even in the same arena.
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God's going to send the beast to hand off a plague to seven angels.
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And the seven angels are going to go pour out the plague.
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Have you ever poured something out of a bowl before?
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Like anything?
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How much effort did it take?
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Spend the whole day doing it?
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it's going to take so long, it's going to be so much energy involved just to pour out a bowl.
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You see, what the scriptures have done is they have taken something that is a truly menial task.
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Something of i it does not require genius to pour out a bowl.
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It does not require great power.
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It doesn't require even a lofty position to pour out a bowl.
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I'm pretty sure that the lowliest servant could pour out a bowl.
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Now, if you wanted to go fight a war, now in your brain you're going, okay, well, we need leaders, we need generals, we need we need soldiers, we need skilled armor, we need we
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need people with the right weapons, we need logistics, we need all of that.
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If we're gonna fight a war, we've gotta have some impressive things.
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You look at the display from yesterday.
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What it were all the social media feeds blowing up with?
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Wow, look at the American military and what it can do.
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For the person in the room who's flown jets before, he can probably tell you just exactly how impressive it is for a jet to stop midair, turn around, fly backwards, then take off
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and go flying again.
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That is a feat.
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God's picture here is not pictured with the impression, we need all of this majestic stuff to accomplish this.
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No, it's seven servants with seven bowls and they're just gonna go pour it out.
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The lowliest servant in heaven could do it.
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It's one thing to read the text.
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It's another thing to go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
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Why?
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Why bowls?
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Why servants?
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Why angels?
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Why is it that the Lord opens, that the temple opens and the tabernacle of the temple is open, the most holy place, the inner sanctuary of God's presence is opened and judgment is
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going to commence, but God doesn't have to move.
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The the the ment God doesn't have to get up off the throne to bring Rome to its knees.
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So who are you serving?
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The God who doesn't even have to get up off the throne to take Rome to its knees, or Rome?
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The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power.
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Just even this is an Old Testament picture.
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There were times as Moses was in the tabernacle and the people were surrounding the tabernacle back when they were at Mount Sinai that events would occur and God's presence
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would come in and it would fill the tabernacle.
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And when it did, you couldn't stay in the tabernacle.
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Moses couldn't stay in the tabernacle.
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The people who were there, and the priests, the Levites, the others who were attending to the things that were around the tabernacle, they all had to leave because they could not
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stand to be in the presence of God manifested in the tabernacle.
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So when you see the picture here in chapter 15 of the doors opening up and smoke coming forth from the tabernacle, this is a picture, an Old Testament picture of
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God's presence being manifested in what is about to occur.
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The smoke filled or the temple was filled with the smoke of the glory of God and from his power, and no one was able to enter the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels
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were completed.
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It is a picture to describe that this judgment is being done at the direct power and authority of God.
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Then I heard a loud voice, chapter 16, verse 1, from the temple, saying to the seven angels, Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.
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So just like in chapter six, we had the opening of the first seal of the book, and then the second seal of the book, and then the third seal of the book, and the fourth seal, and
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the fifth seal, and the sixth seal, and then in the seventh seal we found seven angels with seven trumpets.
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And so inside the seventh seal, seven angels start to blow, and you read you read concerning the sounding of the first trumpet and the second trumpet and the third trumpet
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and the fourth trumpet.
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And then a series of woes in the last three trumpets.
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There's the first woe with the fifth trumpet, the second woe and the sixth trumpet, the third woe and the seventh trumpet, and inside the seventh trumpet is all this stuff we've
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been reading.
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You're still in the seventh woe, in the seventh trumpet, in the seventh seal of the revelation that the Lamb took.
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From the throne of God.
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God's telling you, all the way back, beginning in chapter six, here's what's coming.
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That's John's message to the church.
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It's gonna happen.
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I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen.
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I'm gonna tell you there's gonna be partial judgment that you're going to see as an identification that it's happening.
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Then there's going to be a point when my long suffering runs out, and then I'm gonna deal with this nation, and I'm gonna deal with it completely.
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And it's not going to be with a lot of pomp and circumstance.
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It's just going to be done.
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Isaiah, go ahead and move to the next slide.
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So in chapter sixteen, you have the seven bowls poured out.
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Verse two So when the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth.
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And a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image.
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The plague of boils from the Old Testament.
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You remember in the plague in the Old Testament in Egypt where the plague came upon them and they had boils all throughout the land of Egypt.
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This is just a picture of plague of boils.
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Alright?
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But remember, we've already had partial judgment where a third of this and a third of this was destroyed, a third of this was killed.
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Now these are full judgments.
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You had the warning first, you didn't repent, now you're actually getting the judgment.
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Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man, and every living creature in the sea died.
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What happened in Egypt that accords with this?
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The water of the of of what what body of water turned to blood?
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All right, the Great River, the Nile.
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Now it didn't become like blood, it became blood.
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Now notice the text here.
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The second angel pours out his bowl on the sea.
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And it becomes blood.
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It didn't become like blood.
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It didn't become red.
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It became blood.
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Now, you have friends and family, you have associates at work and people you've known for years.
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Who are going to come to Revelation chapter 16, and they will have been told for decades that every minute detail of this is going to literally, physically occur.
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So much so that the promoters of premillennialist doctrine will say and have said in the past that the water will be turned to blood to the point where there'll be a run-on water.
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There'll be no water left anywhere.
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People start buying up.
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you you you know how uh precious toilet paper was in the early in in the beginning of COVID.
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That's how desperate people are gonna be for Coca-Cola.
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Just to have something to drink.
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Because there won't be any water anywhere.
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Of course, they're quickly gonna run out of that because guess what?
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You make Coca-Cola out of.
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Yeah.
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And I don't know of any industrial process for turning blood back into water to make more coke.
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So the picture that someone comes to and says, Well, I think this is going to physically happen at a point in time is that every sea across the entire planet turns to blood.
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Now hold on for a moment.
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Because what was unique about the day and time of Egypt where it wasn't the sea that was turned to blood, it was a river.
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What's the difference between the function of the sea and the function of a river in the water supply system of this planet?
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All right.
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River transports and is constantly being what?
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replaced.
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Uh i if you've ever spent much time by a river, you'll notice the water doesn't stand still.
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That's a good thing.
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It's because there's water upstream that's gotta go d down to the sea.
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Now if you took the entire Nile River, one of the largest rivers in the planet and it turned to blood, how long think about it, this just from a physical perspective, how long
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would it be blood?
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Until all the blood had flown down where?
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Downstream.
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Till eventually hit the Mediterranean Sea.
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And then it would be replaced by, since only the Nile River was turned to blood, all of the source locations for the Nile River were not turned to blood.
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Therefore, when the replacement water flows through, guess what it is now?
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It's water.
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What happens if all the seas turn to blood?
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Guess what you don't get back from?
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Guess what you don't have a re s a cycle to replace.
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Once the seas which are the reservoir turn to blood, sure you can have evaporation, but you're not ever gonna get back to a point where the seas aren't blood anymore.
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The climate scientists of our planet are constantly worried about all of these glaciers melting and the desalination balance in the oceans changing as a result, the planet
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changing, because we've got uh imbalance in their mind, short-sighted though they may be, of the amount of salt in the water in the seas across the entire planet.
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Because the water that's melting from the polar ice caps is fresh water.
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Now you've got a real issue because they're worried about the amount of salt in the water changing across the planet.
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What if it was all blood?
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You think we'd have a much bigger problem?
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The vision is visionary.
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But what part of the planet is untouched by a sea?
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There is a
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This perspective, this vision is to supply scope.
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When you look and see all the people who don't have the mark of God have boils.
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All right, well, that's all the people.
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That doesn't affect all the animals.
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That doesn't affect all of the creatures.
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That doesn't affect anything except humans.
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What if all the seas turn to blood?
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What does it affect?
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Well, the text tells us every sea creature dies.
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Every single one of them.
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But they're not the only things that are fed, nourished, and maintained by the sea, are they?
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Okay?
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Now we have the third bowl.
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The third angel poured out his bowl, verse 4, on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.
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God doesn't just do the sea.
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Nope.
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Round two of the plague.
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Now bear in mind, in the days of Exodus, it was one plague.
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The river Nile turned to blood.
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It was over.
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Next plague.
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God takes the vision and says, No, no, no, I'm not just touching the ocean faring people, I'm gonna touch everybody.
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And so the seas and the rivers are all sorry, the the rivers and the springs of water, they became blood.
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So even if you could have argued a moment ago, well, you know what, we're gonna we're gonna we've still got a water cycle.
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It's still gonna be able to replace the blood with water, we're gonna s somebody's gonna survive this.
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Nope.
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Not if the s the springs that flow out of from underground have turned to blood.
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Nobody's surviving this.
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If
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We're on hold on to this because this is important.
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If we're on bowl three and the global water supply has become nothing but blood.
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Лет'счя: How long can a human uh survive without water?
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Approximately three days.
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So if bowl three, the water supply on the entire planet is done.
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Uh you kinda end the book pretty much right here.
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Nothing else gonna happen.
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by the way, how are the Christians who have the mark of God going to be untouched by the entire planet's water supply being turned blood?
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They're not.
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I bring all this up and I'm spending the time on it to help us realize what premillennialist doctrine does, what doctrines about the Battle of Armageddon, which we
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haven't even gotten to, about the rapture.
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What they do is they give you one little picture and another little picture, and they never actually put the pictures together.
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Because they're expecting a great big battle to start being fought here just in a moment or two.
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And the problem is, three days from this point, everybody everything on the planet's dead.
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Терзно батл.
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Or you have to reject the way they interpret the book.
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Doesn't mean you have to interpret it the way I'm telling you to interpret it, but you have to reject the way they're interpreting it.
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Because if this is physical and if it's literal, and if it's scoped to the text exactly as the text says it, which they will argue, that there's an actual 144,000 down to the
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number.
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That there's an actual mark, that the mark's gonna actually be 666, that the mark's actually gonna be on somebody's hand and it's actually gonna be on their forehead, and
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it's going to be a physical thing.
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Фізикл ами, фізика начин і фізика Ізраї.
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Then the problem is come plague three, everybody on the planet's dead.
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I heard the voice or sorry verse uh verse five and I heard the angel of the waters saying You are righteous, O Lord, the one who is and who was and who is to be, because you have
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judged these things, for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink, for it is their just due.
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The angel identifies for us why the picture of the blood is pervasive.
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And the answer is because of all the blood of the Christians that these people have shed.
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And I heard another.
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From the altar saying, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.
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Hold here for just a moment.
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I want you to come over to Romans chapter one, and I want you to notice something.
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Romans chapter one verse eight.
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First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
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For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if by some means now at
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last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you.
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For I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gifts so that you may be established, that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both
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of you and me.
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Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you but was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other
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Gentiles.
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I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and unwise.
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So as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also.
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For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
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For it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
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For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written.
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The just shall live by faith, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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Paul opens his letter to the church which assembles in Rome.
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And he opens it by saying, I want to come to you.
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I want to be in your presence.
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I want to impart spiritual gifts to you.
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And I want to have the benefit of being able to preach and convert people because you are going to experience the righteous judgment of God.
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When Paul quotes Habakkuk 2 verse 4, he is quoting the passage where Habakkuk asks, how God are you going to use a nation like the Chaldean Babylonian nation to judge your people
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and who is going to survive the judgment to come if you use such a wicked nation?
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And God tells Habakkuk The just shall live by faith.
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When my righteous judgment comes.
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Now, if you go back to Ezekiel chapter 9, which we won't for the sake of time, you will find pictures of judgments like this.
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You go back to Exodus chapters 7 through 12, you're going to find pictures of judgments like this.
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You're going to find historical events and visionary events, depending upon which context you're in.
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But the point, every time.
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Із год дефендспи.
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And when God brings his judgment against the unrighteous world, he is justified in that action.
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The angel that comes and pours out the water or pours out the bowl upon the water says, Lord, you are righteous.
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You're not an angry God throwing vengeance every direction.
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The reason we need to spend a moment with this is because we need to be careful.
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that we do not in our own lives and in our own minds and in our own actions describe God as anything other than just and righteous when He establishes and performs His judgment.
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The angel who's before the altar.
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Now remember back to chapter six.
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Chapter six, where did we see the altar?
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In which seal?
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Fifth seal.
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What was under the altar?
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Souls of the saints that were dying.
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They were being killed for their testimony.
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So the angel pours out the waters.
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Pours out the bowl upon the waters, and all the waters turn to blood.
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And when the act is done, the angel declares God was justified.
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And the answer comes back from the angel who's standing with the saints who've been killed.
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And his reply is, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.
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The Christians asked, How long till you deal with this?
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And the angel who pours out the bowl upon the waters says,
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Done.
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And the angel that's with the Christians who've been killed says, you're right, it's done.
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And it was justified.
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Then the fourth angel, verse 8, poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire.
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First bowl comes out and it boils.
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Second bowl comes out and the seas turn to blood.
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Third bowl comes out and all the rivers and the springs of water turn to blood.
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Then the sun gets turned to darkness.
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By the way, that Old Testament Exodus picture.
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Absolutely.
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You have the plague of darkness.
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The sun was poured, or the bowl was poured out on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire.
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Notice it's going to be darkness, but it's going to be darkness and fire.
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Okay, watch this.
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And the men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues, and they did not repent or give him glory.
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Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain, they
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blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.
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Now you're gonna keep being told they didn't repent, they didn't repent, they didn't repent.
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That also is an Exodus picture, remember?
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The plague would occur.
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And Pharaoh would call Moses and Aaron in and say, All right, we're gonna let you go.
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And then Moses and Aaron would leave and Pharaoh would say, We're not letting you go.
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And when Moses and Aaron come before Pharaoh during the plague of the frogs and they say, How long do you want the plague to continue?
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Pharaoh says, Well, one more night.
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Have it in tomorrow.
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You've got every house in the entire nation filled with frogs to the point you couldn't open a stove without getting frogs jumping out.
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Frogs in your bed, frogs everywhere you can imagine, so much so that when they finally started cleaning up all the dead frogs when the plague was over, the entire nation stank
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from the pile of frogs.
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But the frogs were a god in Egypt.
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And so when asked how long do you want this to continue, Pharaoh said, One more day.
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Don't want to offend the frog god.
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as the people go through the judgment.
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They don't look at the judgment and realize, you know what, we caused this.
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They're not going to be introspective and say, you know what, we need to repent.
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If we would have repented, this would never have happened.
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No, they blasphemed God.
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Saw his fault.
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Verse 12.
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Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared.
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Now you're going to ask the question wait a minute, who are these kings from the east?
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And we're going to get into that a little bit later, so I'm not going to tell you yet.
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But I'm going to tell you it's not China.
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It's not Japan.
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It's not the kings from the Orient.
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But there's an old testament picture here, for there was a king from the east in the Old Testament times who dried up the river Euphrates.
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You read about his conquest and the con the ending of that conquest in the city of Babylon in the book of Daniel, because Daniel read some writing on the wall the night that it
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happened.
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Cyrus, as he led the overthrow of the city of Babylon, diverted the Euphrates River, which ran under the walls of Babylon, so that they could come into the city through the riverbed
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and conquer and defeat Babylon.
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Oh, right.
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That's what we read back in chapter 14.
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Babylon is fallen, is fallen.
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Great city.
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When you find this plague drying up the river Euphrates, it's an Old Testament picture of the fall of Babylon.
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So the great river Euphrates with its water is dried up so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared.
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And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
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So that this this onslaught is occurring, and they've got answers for it.
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They've got reasons to convince people that it's not their sin, it's not their iniquity, it's not their
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their mistreatment of the Christians as to why all this is happening.
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They've got false prophecies, galore.
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For they are spirits of demons performing signs which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty.
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You're going to read that, chapter 19, chapter 18, you're going to find the picture of the great battle.
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Hold on to it.
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But God's reply, Behold, I am coming as a thief.
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Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.
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False prophets start delivering their messages that we're going to be victorious, we're going to win, we're going to conquer.
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You know what, nations, you better be on our side.
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They're threatening their allies.
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You better be on our side.
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You better make sure you're aligned with us because we've always won before and we're gonna win again.
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God says you don't stand a chance.
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And they gathered them together to the place called in the Hebrew Armageddon.
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Now, if you've watched much television, if you've seen many movies, especially from the
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religious quote unquote Christian right in this country.
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Then you might have imagined that the Battle of Armageddon is some great giant battlefield where multiplied millions and millions of people will come and do battle, and the greatest
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battle that'll ever take place will happen in this place called Armageddon.
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Except the Valley of Megiddo, which is the Valley of Armageddon in the Hebrew, is not a big place.
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It is not a place where large armies are ever going to meet.
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It is certainly not the culmination point from a physical perspective of all of the central powers of all of the planet coming to do battle.
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The picture is a picture.
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It's a vision.
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And while Lar Mageddon sounds mm pretty scary in English.
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It sounds like the valley of Megedo in Hebrew.
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And everybody who would have travelled through the valley of Megetta would have been going.
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Really?
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This place?
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Are you sure?
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it's a vision.
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Okay, got it.
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I mean i it it's kinda like when Jesus and by the way there's a connection here when Jesus starts talking about eternal hell.
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But he doesn't use some mystical visionary language for hell.
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He uses the word gehenna.
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And yet Gehenna was the word for a place that everybody in Jerusalem knew about.
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They knew where it was.
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It wasn't some spiritual place that God had prepared for the devil and his angels.
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It was the trash heap of Jerusalem.
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It was the place that Isaiah said, We're going to take all the dead bodies of all God's enemies when God brings Israel back from Babylonian captivity, and we're going to go burn
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them in the valley of Gehenna.
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And the fire of the torment of us burning the body of God's enemies is never going to go out.
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Because God is going to conquer so victoriously, so completely, that we'll never stop piling up the bodies.
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And the worm will never die because he never runs out of food.
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And the fire will never be quenched.
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Now I'm not telling you hell's not a real place.
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I'm telling you Jesus used a picture of a place people could go walk to and say, I get the picture.
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Not that there was going to be some coming day where hell would be located in the valley of Henam outside Jerusalem.
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And we need to have the honesty with the text to do the same thing with the Valley of Meghetto outside of it or in the region of Israel.
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All right?
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Thank you for your attention.
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We're dismissed.