Perhaps you heard recently that a famous newsmaker and political commentator, 55-year old Tucker Carlson, said that he was attacked in his sleep by a demonic creature. Given that he is a rational man, not touched by religious hysteria, this raises questions. So let's dwell on that topic. A talk on the supernatural by Dr. John Barnett (from Dallas Theological Seminary), who teaches Scripture online from Oklahoma, is focusing on Revelation chapter 9 (and other places), is a worthwhile place to begin. The terrible events listed in his talk are future--but possibly not a far future. We will not "Frank Peretti," or fictionalize it--these statements are backed by the Bible. You may be uncomfortable with the subject, but why not have a willingness to learn more about our greatest enemy and deceiver--and our allies in this upcoming battle--don't you think?
We've all heard of UFOs (renamed UAPs, by the way). If some are real, who are these aliens? Some of what we hear are fakes, but there are real aliens--but they are not what you think.They do not behave as human, so we need a Biblical cosmology, or framework. So, with Biblical backing, let's begin.
We'll start by saying we know they are created; God has created everything. When He is done gathering His own on earth, He's destroying the whole world--and then comes judgement, and then He takes us to our new homes--which will be heaven or hell.
Those aliens that are real are Satan's demons. They made a massive invasion of the earth once, in Noah's day, and created giants (see Genesis 6:4ff, and my blog). God had to put the leaders of that invasion in a prison, likely deep in the earth. The giants were charismatic, and they converted many people into worshiping them. At the flood of Noah, there were only 8 people saved on the ark that weren't demonized (another author believes that this invasion took up to 1200 years of growth in addicting people to sin to accomplish this feat). The entire human race were destroyed (and there were lots of people, since they lived over 800 years then), since they gave themselves over to demons. In Genesis 6:5-6 it says:
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
With those 8, population began again. But sin grew large, too. Lost humanity has alway been fascinated with demons and the dark arts. Many around the globe today worship what they call "gods." But our God, as Scripture says, is the only real God; the rest of the "gods" that are worshiped are demons, created by God as good angels that turned bad. They ultimately can't do what God won't permit. God can restrict them, or allow them to act more freely, to kill people, to tempt masses of people to sin. (I am not saying that they--or God---are responsible for our sin. We have choices.) The word demon has a Greek origin, daemon. It was created there because Greeks, too, felt a world of super-powerful beings. Unfortunately we call their stories Greek "mythology," suggesting they are fables. But did you know that Mt. Olympus, Zeus, Athena, and such all have a kernel of truth, since the giants mentioned in Genesis 6 were influencers, and were even worshiped for a time. There were, and are, super-powerful immortal giants in every country's stories--like Gilgamesh in ancient Iraq and Syria, for example. These were demons.
The apostle Paul basically said "behind every idol is a demon" (I Corinthians 10:19,20). Behind every Buddha statue, behind all of India's 10,000 "gods" idols, behind statues of Mary, lit up in the dark, in poor, rural Latin America--in every culture in this world, they worship demons.
God desires to break this fascination with demons. We need to see how evil they are, and how deceptive they are.
So Revelation 9 begins with how God will allow the pit of the imprisoned demons that I mentioned above, to be opened, and release many of them. They will lead a murderous rampage. First, they will be cursed into a horrible breed of locusts. From Revelation 9:1ff:
Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. 2 And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. 3 Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. ..5 And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. 6 In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.
Unbelieving Man will get a taste of searing torments (which should let them see that God is not just a God of love, but a God of holiness and judgment against those who ignore and rebel against Him). The locusts can sting like a scorpion, repeatedly, for five months. And yet five months is nothing compared to the torture of hell, which is pain for eternity. There will be Evangelists who will speak boldly of the holiness of God in that time, urging people to avoid hell through its only escape, Jesus. But most people, their heart will be hardened by sin. Read II Timothy 3:1-5a:
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power...
In Revelation 9:1, details on what will happen are these: an angel with the fifth trumpet sounds, and an angel (called a "star") falls from heaven and opens the bottomless pit. Pastor Barnett believes this is Satan falling from heaven, and he quotes Isaiah 14:12, but not so. This angel was given a key to open the pit, something that God would not give to Satan or His demons In Revelation 9:11, the names given to the evil angel who led this horrible group were"Abaddon" and "Apollyon." Smoke is billowing out, and eruptions start, like a new volcano. And it darkens the sky. People will be telecommunicating this to all the world through their phones and in the media. This would be an opportune event for the two witnesses/evangelists to be prophesying of God and judgment right there. (They were later killed (Revelation 11)--a risk that all those who speak of God's judgment would likely take). And out of the smoke, the locusts will come. They prey on everybody except those that have the seal of God upon their foreheads (Revelation 9:4). A foretaste of this event happened in Ezekial 9:4, where God protected by this technique some priests, so they could carry the Old Testament Bible to safety--to prevent the Babylonians from burning the Scriptures along with everything else. You should know that all true disciples of Christ today are sealed too (not with a visible mark)--by the Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 1:13). This seal is not to be confused with the often-mentioned 666 mark on foreheads or hands; that was earlier, and will be implanted on those who choose the secular world, or Satan, for protection, then, instead of God. This very big wrong choice binds these people for hell (Revelation 14:9-10).
God has super-angels out there too, ones that didn't rebel against Him. and didn't become demons. Remember, God created all the angels immortal, and knew in advance that some would go bad and help drag some men and women into hell. Though we might therefore want to blame God, the responsibility is still ours for our sins; we always have choices--and frequently choose wrong, and sin. Why He allowed that rebellion of angels to go on is beyond the scope of this paper. Lucifer, who became Satan, and led the rebellion, previously had a prestigious position in heaven. He was a head of worship there. He was a sheltering cherub. Most angels do not have wings, but Lucifer, and cherubs, did--and he would hold his wings above God's head, to reflect all His light and praise back down upon God. He was the first of God's angelic creation (before Man was created), brilliant, powerful--but, even though he observed God and all His glory, he became proud of his position in heaven, and fell in love with himself, thought he would become like God, and betrayed his Creator. Read Isaiah 14 and Ezekial 28.
This, by the way, is another proof that the Bible is inspired by God. A human writer would make Lucifer say, "I will become greater than God." But the real Satan was shiftier; he knew that nobody among God's creation could become greater. Just "like" God was good enough--or, really, bad enough, to think that you could be a god. There is only one God; He is self-existent, He has no beginning. Who else could say that? God is everywhere, all at once (called omnipresence). He can read our minds. All the superiorities of angels are topped by God's superiority. He is more powerful than any angel, good or bad. He is uncreated; He IS. But angels, though they live forever from their creation, had a beginning.
To show the devastation that people will suffer because of these demon invasions, in the fourth seal (Revelation 6), demonic Men will be responsible for killing 1/4 of the population of the earth (today that would be over 2 billion people; compare with World War 2's 85 million killed). But this death number will be matched by trumpet 6's 1/3 of the earth's population killed. In trumpet 6, though, the responsibilty for deaths will be God; in Revelation 9:13-15, He ordered a good angel to release evil angels to lead others to their deathly work. Using today's numbers, after seal 4 wiped out 2 billion, trumpet 6 kills another 2 billion. A total of 50% of the population will be gone, 4 billion. (In the Black Plague, 2/3 of the population of Europe were wiped out, but "only" 25 million people.) Why would God release evil angels to do this massive killing? Perhaps because by doing it we, the readers (and those who experience it in the future) will think more on the subject of our mortality, and on God's demand for accountabilty for sin and judgment. I guess you could call it being "scared out of hell." Well, what works then, could be different than now, since people will be dying all around. We need to think more on our future beyond death. Eternity is more important than this life. Reading or hearing sermons about it helps us to prepare for what's coming.
He now presents a somewhat detailed view of angelology. Angels were created when God was forming the earth, so this preceded His creation of Man (Job 38:4,7; and compare Genesis 1 vs Genesis 2). One-third of the angels decided to follow Lucifer (Satan) rather than God (Revelation 12: The dragon is Satan, the stars are angels. His tail captures 1/3 of them in his orbit). Those 1/3 became demons. II Peter 2:4 tells us that some of their leaders eventually were cast into a prison (called tartarus in Greek). They are still there today, though many of them will be released in the last days, with the door to the pit being opened, as we have discussed.
All angels, good or bad, are supernatural. That means they are immortal, so they are indestructible. They are spirits, so they are invisible--they can't be seen or felt unless they are ordered to do so, or want to show off. They can travel faster then light--but they can only be in one place at a time. If you have a demon assigned to watch you by a higher demon, they might figure out your thoughts--while he can't read your mind, unlike God--he can guess at it by your talk on the phone or in person, and he may even read your journal as you write. Demons will "report you" to a higher demon if you appear to be a dangerous enemy of theirs down the line. They hate it when you pray, give, or speak up for your faith. Satan might develop a program of extreme pressure for your type, to make you break. True Christians have targets on their backs, unfortunately. But there are rewards for them in heaven for persevering in the Lord.
You should be aware that everyone, among humans, at conception (not at birth), has an immortal spirit. Angels are spirits, and their DNA is different from us, who have human spirits. Our spirit means we too will live endlessly--somewhere. True Christians will have a fabulous body in heaven.
Angels, good or bad, don't need rest or sleep, and don't need food. There is a group of angels given the name "cherubim," as I mentioned Lucifer being one. One of them is called a cherub--but they are not babies, despite the classical paintings and the sounding of the word. They have four wings and four faces (Ezekial 1). Two of them fashioned the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant. There are gold images of them on top of that seat. Some have the duty of guarding God's holy places--such as protecting the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:24), and their images were on veils of the Tabernacle.
Another group of angels are archangels; there are likely seven of them, such as Michael and Gabriel. They could appear as flames of fire (Hebrews 1:7 and Revelation 4:5). They lead good angels into battle.
In the future, Satan and his demons will not have access to God as accusers, such as Job 1 says. That's because Michael and his angels will do battle with Satan and his demonic angels. Michael's group wil win, and toss Satan and his angels out of access to be accusers of us to God in heaven (Revelation 12:7-9).
Finally, there are seraphim, other flaming angels. They have six wings (Isaiah 6). There are four seraphims flying around God's throne, endlessly singing of His holiness. Finally, "our" angels are "ministering spirits...for those who will inherit salvation," as Hebrews 1:14 puts it. When a good angel has a message for humanity--and when recorded in Scripture--they are not ghosts--they can bring a message in your sleep. They made rare appearances on earth, when they could be confused as human. The good angels refuse worship. Since their appearances are seldom, if you see one (not because you're on drugs), your best bet is to figure this is an evil angel who wants to tempt you. He may appear as an angel of light, even. The good angels did not do that in Scripture. Best to call on the name of Jesus and He will banish it. A demon can't stand to be around for that Name.
Satan is deceptively known as an angel of light. There is also a group of destroyers, who performed a remarkable feat in Exodus. God allowed the destroyer angels to kill every firstborn among the Egyptian children, even grown children. Keep in mind, Egyptians abused the Israelites as slaves. That killing of the firstborn included the firstborn of animals. God gave the Hebrews a way of escape, by attaching a blood insignia over, and on the sides, of their door. In the shape of a cross. God would "pass over" the Jews who had faith enough to do that. The destroyer angels were sent out overnight, and somehow they found out which cattle, or calves, were firstborn, and did that for Egyptian firstborn too--and killed them all. Except those who did the passover instructions. This was a representation of the crucifixion of Our Lord, whose shed blood enables us to pass over permanent spiritual death because of our sin. I have a blog on that, and how we should reconcile with Jews, since their Passover holiday is a foretaste of our holiday representing the crucifixion and resurrection of Our Lord. Our holidys also have similar dates, after all. In the Jewish calendar, Passover is celebrated on Nisan 14 (early April). Our holiday, however, became Easter, a substitution date to separate us from the Jews. But our "Easter" has pagan, sexual roots. Early bishops did a great job, huh? What Scriptural reference can you find for the bunnies and candy, when it is supposed to be memorializing Christ's crucifixion and resurrection? Christmas has been jerked around, too.
The final word on the destroyer angels: When they will be done torturing mankind with stinging locusts, four more of them will be released from the bottomless pit (Revelation 9:13ff), and they will lead a gigantic troop of 200 million killers (are they all men? angels? we don't know--Pastor Barnett is convinced these are all demon angels, not Chinese). This is the group that will kill 1/3 of all the earth's people. Their horses even have the power to breathe fire, brimstone, and smoke. This event is not to be confused with Revelation 16, the Har Megiddo (Armageddon) battle. An actual place in Israel is already picked out for this battle, which is the biggest of mankind. It pits demonized, murderous armies against Jesus Christ and His angel army. Their group is headed by three demons. Guess who wins?
Because only some of the imprisoned angels will be released from the pit, those that stay there are called doomed angels, another "class"of evil angels. Also, Daniel 10 talks about the "nation princes" of angels--the prince of Persia, or the ruler of evil over Greece, etc. There are demon angels that help Satan's chess pieces in his plan of attack on Christ and His people.
What do we need to keep from going out of our minds? To think God's thoughts? To know what He wants us to do? Let us memorize Ephesians 6:12-13, which says:
...we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand....
Evil will run rampant in future days. Think of their power; they could cover Job's body with boils. They started a tornado that wiped out Job's agricultural assets, and killed his children. And how they could move Sabeans to go on a killing spree, killing Job's servants. They will have the power to kill 2 billion people at once, in the last days. Only real Christians that persevere and always stand for the Lord. Even in the face of giving their lives for the Lord, their souls will be saved. Heaven is worth it--consider the alternative, hell. We're talking eternity's decision here, not something to benefit our family for 20 years. True, Satan accuses our sins before God. But real Christians have an Advocate, Jesus Christ (I John 2:1). He pleads His blood on our behalf. We must memorize Scripture like this (and the "armor of God," in verses just after), to not give up hope.
I realize that many of you do not believe in the multiple supernatural events and spirits enumerated here. Or perhaps you don't believe in the prophecies of the future that I've touched on. I assure you, I have only scratched the surface, there are so many. Unfortunately, the secular displays of Christmas and Easter and talks given by compromised pastors never admit that Mary was a virgin impregnated by the Holy Spirit to make it possible for her firstborn son, Jesus, to be sinless. The number of supernatural events goes on with those around her receiving words from angels on what was the infant she possessed, and Joseph heard from angels on how to protect her from Satan, who wanted to kill her and/or the baby Jesus. The world, and perhaps your "church," don't like to dwell on supernatural events, or explain how that has a significant effect in the true Gospel. Many pastors have decided to stay away from the subject, and just concentrate on Jesus and His good works. Unfortunately, there is a devil's lie in doing that. That kind of thinking denudes Jesus of proof of His deity--He was/is God. He was not corrupted with the DNA of men, who were given the curse of carrying around bad DNA, which makes all of us lean toward sin and rebelling against God. Just ignoring His rule in our lives every day means we are sinners, no matter how good we treat people or how often we go to church. Perhaps the few of you who are still reading, are here just out of curiosity. So you will forget all this, and ignore thinking about what happens when you die. Some of you non-believers even call yourself "Christian." A word of warning, if that is your case. If you are a real Christian, Jesus claimed the Bible at that time was His Word. I have Old Testament quotes above, but there are a hundred more, which prophesy supernatural events. God's plan for mankind's future is indeed laid out in Scripture, if you're interested. If you ignore them, and are unprepared for the last horrible days, it follows you are more likely to follow a secular, easy way to obtain food and shelter for your family when the Antichrist makes following Christ a capital offense. Thinking of your family's needs in this world may seem admirable, but Scripture clearly points out that if people don't love God enough to follow His hard commands, they are still on the way to hell for the next world--and their families, if they follow that example. Though you may have professed Christ before, the Bible says that only the ones who persevere in following His commands in those dark days, will attain heaven (Matthew 24:13, James 1:12, Hebrews 10:36, and of course, Matthew 7:21).
May God help you in your search for Truth.
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