Revelation Chapter 8 Verse 1

• And so the seventh seal that had sealed shut the scroll that was taken by the Lamb from the One who sat upon the throne has been opened.  Broken as it were, the debt now prepared to be fully repaid to mankind.  The debt?  Yes if you recall, the scroll that the Lamb is holding has writing on both sides, a parchment of sorts and we looked at how in John’s day, parchments were only written on one side because the papyrus leaves that were pressed together would only have one smooth side, which would be used.
• That is unless the parchment was a contract, a covenant, a title deed or something that carried some sort of responsibility and that responsibility had not been upheld…in other words, the contract defaulted…, then the debt would be written on the coarse side.  And you see God made all things and He saw that all that He had made was very good.  And He gave man dominion over the earth and all that is in it on one condition…of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, don’t eat it…for in the day that you eat it…sin will enter and all that is good will fall.
• And man defaulted.  And sin entered.  And Satan assumed rule over the earth becoming the Prince of the power of the air at the hand of man…and now that last seal, containing and restraining the debt of sin…has been broken.  And so now the consequence of sin is about to show its full force.  And as we read through the seven trumpet judgments, the seven bowl judgments, the judgment of the Great Harlot and the Great White Throne Judgment what we’ll see is a fallen world falling.  And that is precisely the condition of a life left in sin.
• Sin that we don’t deal with, sin that we think is our pet…that we can control…it’s not the case.  Sin exists only to steal and destroy.  It’s not something to enjoy, not something that God understands so we’re all good, it is cancer, fast acting and ravenous.  And as we prepare to step through this horrifying scene of God’s righteous and just judgment upon sin, notice in heaven, there is silence.
• Silence is deafening.  The Four Living Creatures that did not cease to cry out holy, holy, holy…ceased.  The twenty-four elders who praised Him continually…ceased.  All of the angels, the host of heaven standing around the throne worshipping and saying, “Amen!  Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and  honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever.  Amen”…quiet.  All eyes on the Lamb.  For just as He had taken all of the sins upon Himself while on earth, He now is the sole One in all of eternity, heaven, hell and earth that is able to initiate the horrifying reward upon those that have rejected Him.
• Silence.  You will not sing angels.  You will not cry out right now all the host of heaven…because frankly, I don’t want to hear it…my children are lost, earth is fallen, and My heart once again, just as it did as I paid the price upon the cross, My heart again breaks…silence.  All of the Lord’s intense wrath and hate of all sin meets head on with all of the Lord’s desperate love for His children and the pain is deafening.  And the angels prepare to sound the trumpets…
• And recall the trumpets significance in times past…the trumpets were blown to signify the reign of a king, the trumpets were blown to call the congregations together, the trumpets were blown on the year of jubilee when all of the debts were forgiven, the trumpets were blown and the walls of Jericho fell…and now as these trumpets begin to sound, earth and man…fall.

Revelation Chapter 8 Verses 2 – 5

• Now this is most interesting because we see the prayers of the saints rising up before God on the throne and these aren’t prayers of some elite group that have been deemed by man to the honor of sainthood…not at all.  The Bible says that anyone washed in the blood of the Lamb is a saint man…All God’s children are saints, set apart for God through faith in Christ Jesus and notice what we see here is the impact and the power of answered prayers man as the angel takes from the fire upon the alter and literally hurls the prayers of the saints back to the earth!
• For centuries, ever since Matthew Chapter 6 as Jesus sat with His disciples and taught them how to pray, for centuries folks have been praying “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done!  On earth as it is in heaven!”  The answer to those prayers has come!  Those that had died for their faith, the martyrs cried out to God, “how long?”  No longer! 

Revelation Chapter 8 Verse 7

• It’s interesting because Courson suggests that flowing blood, pelting hail, and consuming fire describe what would be the scene in the case of a nuclear holocaust.  That is if all the players fired!  And history verifies that there has never been a weapon system developed that has not been used.  And so it would be an aberration of history, and inconsistency of human nature even, if all the countries that presently have nuclear weapons failed to use them. 
• Currently, according to the world nuclear stockpile report, Russia leads the pack with almost a thousand more warheads then the US.  But the pack also includes, (aside from Russia and the US), France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea.  About 17,000 nuclear warheads in all…and those nukes don’t get raptured!  Everything is falling apart and those weapons are still here…could it be that they are used?
• What John sees here could be something completely different…may not be nuclear at all but the it just astounds me that the fact remains that upon a detonation of a nuke, 250mph winds of fire follow.  In addition, above-ground nuclear tests on the island of Bikini caused the surrounding water to shoot thousands of feet into the air where it froze and returned as hailstones big enough to destroy the equipment intended to monitor it. 
• Here, a third of the trees are burned up.  The land mass of the earth above sea level that contains trees, according to the FAO, Forest Resources Assessment of 2010, was 9.5B acres…or approximately 30% of the earth’s dry land.  Half of that is destroyed.  ALL of the green grass, destroyed.  Can you imagine the catastrophe not only immediately but also the subsequent?  What happens to all of the animals who feed off of the grass? 

Chapter 8 Verses 8 – 9

• Is this a meteor?  I don’t know?  Could be a mushroom cloud…could be Planet X…whatever it is, John says that it was like a mountain, lit like a torch and it was thrown into the sea and a third of the sea became blood or became hima in the Greek which is literally…”blood” or also could closely resemble blood.  And a third of all the living creatures of the sea died.  Incalculable destruction.  Immesurable death and decay and stinch.  Precisely the final effect of sin upon the earth.  Precisely the destination of sin in the lives of you and me.  And all these animals.  Nemo, Moby…all innocent, but gone, racked into yours and my sin…man if we could only see what our sin is really doing…and where its really taking us…
• 75% of the earth, covered in water.  One third of the water on the earth is contained in the Atlantic Ocean.  Interestingly enough, one third of the ships afloat today…are in the Atlantic.  Could this be a specific site where the firing and detonating takes place?  Could be.  Or…could be a rock hurled from heaven.  Either way, however you want to play this out…you end with what John saw here in verses 8 and 9.
• Isn’t that enough?  Uncle uncle the earth cries but sin is just getting started!  We don’t have our pet sins under control…they are lurking man, waiting for the right time to blow and when they do…great is the fall…the trumpets continue.

Chapter 8 Verses 10 - 11

• How is it that a great star falling from heaven can affect the rivers and springs of fresh waters all over the planet?  I don’t know.  But how is it that the sin in your life affects people you don’t even know…it does…sin is like the telephone game…it just spreads and spreads and spreads.  One person is lied to and they make their decision based on a lie they were given.  That decision leads to someone else’s action.  Someone else’s action leads to an event involving many and during that event…strife, envy, more lies, more bad decision, more worship of the creature rather than the creator…and you’re at home kicking back watching AFV!  Man, the reach of sin is devastating and its beyond knowing…
• And so too this star, interestingly called “wormwood,” ‘apsinthion” in the Greek…in Russian, “cherynobyl” and it affects the waters, turns them bitter and kills many. 
• We’ve seen “wormwood” in other places of the Bible too.  Amos said in Amos 5:7 that the wicked turn justice into wormwood and Solomon warned that immorality might seem pleasant, but in the end, it produces bitterness like wormwood (Proverbs 5:4). 
• You may recall that after the Israelites traveled through the wilderness for three days without water, they dove right into the first pool of water they encountered.  You find this in Exodus Chapter 15.  But they soon discovered that the water was “bitter.”  They called Moses and to fix the situation, God told Moses to cast a nearby tree into the water and when he did, the water became sweet.
• It’s interesting that it is a tree that makes the water sweet.  The tree is always a picture of the cross in the Bible.  When you add the cross to the bitter water of your life, of your heart…the result will always be sweetness.  In this passage, however, just the opposite transpires when the cross is rejected…the water of bitterness remains.  And here we have a Christ rejecting planet man and the waters are turned bitter…killing many.

Chapter 8 Verse 12

• So many have read this part of the scripture, coupled it with the other trumpets and have arrived at a picture of a “nuclear winter.”  What is that?  Well think of this.  When Mt. St. Helens erupted, the dust that shot into the air made the sky hazy for weeks.  Imagine what would happen if thousands of nukes were launched.  If a nuclear exchange of any magnitude took place, the sun would not shine through, the stars would not be seen and the night would be pitch black.
• Scientists say that if a nuclear exchange took place in the summertime, the high temperature on the west coast of the US would be about 15 degrees.  Why?  Because the sun is blocked…crops wouldn’t grow, more starvation would ensue…that is what is known as a nuclear winter.  And I think that is feasible, especially in light of what we have already seen but I also see that God and the holy host of heaven…man they are claiming payment upon the debt of mankind…the debt that this remaining world would not allow Jesus to pay…and so we don’t know exactly what John saw…but what he saw was the sun, the stars and the moon…struck…even by sin.
• Oh the deep dark reaches of sin man…

Chapter 8 Verse 13

• So an angel breaks ranks man…struck with grief and terror over what is occurring on the earth…as men struggle, women suffer and children starve…all because of unrepentant, unchecked, unstopped…sin.  And what the angels say, in other words is, “man, the worst is yet to come…the last three trumpets, which all affect mankind directly, are worse than the first four, which struck the earth generally.”
• And we’ll see next week as the next three trumpets blast, the judgments upon the earth indeed are more devastating because not only are they directed towards man specifically but they are supernatural.  The last three bring about great demonic activity and the continued horrifying affects of unrepentant sin are seen.