Tape 5 by Malcolm Smith The Seven Trumpets

Revelation Chapters 8-11.

Now we are coming to our further studies – let us begin with Revelation Chapter 8. In our first hour tonight we shall be dealing with our third vision of the book of Revelation. You will have noted I hope that these visions run parallel to each other. You don’t begin at the beginning of Revelation and then move chronologically on – there is no chronology in the book of Revelation. You have principles. You can’t say this happened at such and such a time, or this will happen at such and such a time – the only specific time that each vision moves towards is the Grand Finale, the judgement of God, the coming of Christ. The rest of the visions are principles. They are principles that work during the period of time between the first coming of Christ and the 2^nd Coming and in that period in between, these principles work. And so if you want to take a look at that age, that period of time, says Vision 1 well to look at it one way it is Christ walking in the midst of the Churches and for that whole period of time right up until today and tomorrow and endless tomorrows until the end shall come you will always find Christ walking in the midst of His churches, and you will always find churches which fit the description of that Vision of the churches. But then says the 2^nd Vision, if you want to look at it a different way, well you go back and say this all really began with the exalted Lamb of God, sitting upon the Throne and unfolding the purposes of God for mankind, and then if you look at it like that, then you see the white horse of the preaching of the Gospel, the persecution, the economic persecution and all that follows because of that. And in fact as that Vision rushes to an end it says the world of men have got to face up to the wrath of the Lamb in fact everything is shaking and collapsing, the world is falling in ..and finishes. And then it says when that last part of the Vision is the end, but we will not get there yet. It says there was silence in Heaven for half an hour. You want to look at it another way?

Well Vision number 3 and that is where we are tonight, and in a sense it begins again with the 1^st Coming of Christ only on this occasion it does not really bother too much with it. It is there by implication but this 3^rd Vision is seeking to tell us something. We have seen as the Visions unfold that the world has rejected the Lamb of God. God has enthroned His Lamb upon the throne and the world has rejected that Lamb. You may remember that one of the most important prophetic pieces of the Old Testament is Psalm 2 – in fact you should study and memorise it because it is a key, a focus of prophecy in the Old Testament And it says there that even although the nations are raging against God, God has said I will place my Son upon the Throne, and at the end of the Psalm, the Psalmist turns to all those raging nations and says, ‘Be warned all you kings of the earth, kiss the Son lest He be angry. That is Come and worship before the Lord’s anointed – God has set His King in the Heavens and you would be well advised to kiss the Son to worship Him, to acknowledge, to agree with God. And that really is what we are looking at here. The Son has been exalted, the preaching of the Gospel has gone forth, and what has followed is anger, men rising against that Lamb upon the Throne and they have persecuted the Church. Remember the cry of the martyrs under the altar, ‘How long oh Lord, How long?’ Justice must be done. We can never say salvation has finally been manifested until justice has been done. And so, if you want to have a look at that our Vision says, come back and look at it. Man have rebelled against God’s Son, they have rejected the Lamb upon the throne, they have persecuted the Church, men do not get away with that. Trumpets blow, men face God. What do we mean by these trumpets? We find them there in the eighth chapter, if you read them we will refer to them as we go through. What do these trumpets mean? We understand they are symbols, coded message and we have said that wherever we have the code we find that it is broken for us by a reference to the Old Testament. The Old Testament is full of trumpets. Especially in the early part of the Old Testament you will have all the keys you need to unlock the trumpets. Exodus 19.16 – at the giving of the Law on Mt Sinai there the trump of God sounded. It called all men to hear what was God saying. And what was God saying at Mount Sinai? It was the giving of the Law – that is it was a manifestation of His holiness.. Hold that in your mind – when the trumpet sounded men were called to hear – it was a manifestation of God’s holiness. They were to bring their lives up to the ten awesome commandments, and to realise this is absolute, and all men must be judged by that. The trumpet sounded for the Law. In Joshua 6.5. the trumpets blew when the children of Israel went into the land of Canaan and they confronted the city of Jericho. And Jericho had heard the word of the Lord and had been confronted by the Lord but had consistently rejected Him. When the trumpets blew it was a warning inside Jericho that judgment was about to fall upon them. So the trumpets again were associated with the holiness of God. Calling men in the light of that to repent and understand that God will not hold back His judgments for ever.

In I Kings 1.34 there are many other references to this idea, but specifically here the trumpet sounded when a King was crowned. The sound of the trumpet announced to all who heard it, The King has been crowned. Only a few persons could be there when the crown lighted on the head of the King. Only a few people witnessed the coronation. So that everyone should know when that moment had happened, the trumpets blew so that all those could understand what they could not see. They understood that the King had been crowned. In Numbers 10.1-2 there was a call to worship, when the trumpets sounded all were called to worship God. Similarly in Numbers 29.1 every new year, they were called at that time to repent and they were called to repent by the sound of a trumpet. All those elements are in these trumpets if we are to put in the key and turn it and have these chapters unfold to us. What are the trumpets, what are the principles? And he is telling me that throughout all time God blows His trumpets. That is God announces to mankind the King has been crowned, you did not see it, it happened in the invisible, but the King has been crowned, because of that God calls all men to repent, calls men to face up to their sin in the light of the holy law of God. Warns men that judgment inevitably must come unless they repent. But the King has been crowned, come and worship Him. That is what the Old Testament tells us trumpets are for. John uses that as a code symbol. He says all through time God is blowing his trumpets men who have rejected God and they have to face up to God coming among them, arresting them, blowing a trumpet in their ear, saying Stop, Stop in your tracks, a King has been crowned. Repent, worship.

Now they are not exactly trumpets of nice sounds. When men have heard the preaching of the Gospel and rebel against that preaching, then all that is left is a trumpet with a very harsh sound, and the mercy of God comes with a certain kind of harshness. If you read all about these events that the trumpets bring in if you listen for echoes from the Old Testament, I think you will immediately recognize you have read all of that once before. You read it when you were in Exodus, and in the plagues of Egypt and you will find every one of those plagues are paralleled here. The intensity is different but the idea is still there. Egypt is a perfect example of what we are talking about – Egypt was locked into its idolatry. Egypt defied and mocked the Lord and in so doing turned upon Israel the Lord’s people and persecuted them. Perfect parallel. God has set His Israel among them. God has announced that He is God and Egypt defied that, mocked it and moved in against God’s people. Why didn’t God move in immediate judgment? He didn’t – but immediate judgment was the death of the firstborn. God said, Israel if my first-born, if you will not relinquish my first-born you will have to relinquish your first-born, and that was the judgment. God did not do that immediately. In fact month after month after month went by before He did that. He continually blew a trumpet in their ear – we call them the nine plagues. The tenth was in actual fact the judgment but nine trumpets sounded in their ears. Nine times over God said, won’t you stop in your tracks and listen to me? Won’t you repent, won’t you worship? God is God. Nine times over they hardened their hearts and refused, then came the judgment.

You may recollect in Exodus 4.5. that God called those plagues, the beginnings of them anyway, ‘signs’ – they point somewhere. It is as if God slaps them around the face and says, Look, be arrested by what I am doing so that you may repent. If you were in Egypt during those plagues and you saw that everything you held on to all that you called great was collapsing around you, you were losing in fact all of your gods, you were losing all your sustenance of life everything was leaving you, and you said, God., doing this? That was the goodness of God leading you to repentance. They were trumpets of mercy. The trumpets of judgment were to come later, but they were trumpets of mercy, God calling on the people to repent. It was only at the very end when Pharaoh and the people behind Pharaoh so hardened their hearts that God said you may have what you desire, but even then it was only the trumpets of mercy but it was demons that drove Pharaoh from then on to have the desire of his heart and finally to lose all of Egypt in the sea. It was the trumpets of judgment before that. And so all through history God comes to a people who have rebelled against him, and before final judgment there come the trumpets of God’s mercy, calling them to repentance.

What do we understand by these six trumpets. Remember we are not going over this to interpret every detail. Some of the details we will come back to as we get further in the book and we relate it all together. But just get the general picture as that first trumpet that sounds in chapter 8. It tells me in verse 7, the first sounded hail, fire mixed with blood thrown to the earth speaks of the earth, not all of the earth – one third. That is not all. God is not coming in a sweeping judgment, not all, but there is part of the earth that is burned off. The green grass was burned off. You are presented there with a picture. Remember we are getting the whole punch of the picture as we look at it, and we see sinner man meeting with God upon the land that supports his life and he discovers all around him that his very support of life is being taken away. He is meeting with God right there in his own earth. You might remember that in Egypt the whole support of Egypt was the River Nile and that was the first plague that was placed upon them. He took their source of life and turned it into death. That is shed blood, and death ran by them. Their very source of life had been smitten by God’s plagues. Remember also that God smote the dust of the earth – the very earth on which they walked they realised was under the control of God. |Or again He called for the locusts who ate up everything that was green. And they were left destitute. It was God meeting them just exactly where they had their sustenance of life.

The second trumpet blew and it said something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. That great mountain burned with fire. I will not say that everybody would know what that is, but that is a quotation taken from Jeremiah which immediately tells us what that great mountain is. Here 51.32 it says, Behold I am against you oh destroying mountain, who destroys the whole earth, declares the Lord and I will stretch forth my hand against you, and roll you down from the crabs and I will make you a burnt out mountain. That mountain in Jer 51 is the City or people of Babylon, and so when I come to this 2nd Trumpet, God is going to Babylon and saying it is going to be cast down into the sea, dispersed, smashed, gone. Just as Jeremiah said it would . We shall be dealing for a whole hour with Babylon and what it means in Revelation, so just shelve that, file it. But just for the present Babylon is the world system of the Bible. All that is of the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life - people lorded over by Satan. That is Babylon. God said that it is going to be cast like a burning mountain into the sea, finished and gone and we shall see how that literally takes place, and we shall come to that later.

In the 3^rd trumpet it speaks in v. 10 The third Angel sounded, a great star fell from Heaven, burning like a torch and it fell on a third of the rivers, and notice again, not on all the rivers, and on the springs of waters, and the name of the star is called ‘wormwood’ and a third of the waters became wormwood and many men died from the waters because they were made bitter. The star that falls from Heaven. Remember in the first chapter Jesus gave us the key to what a star meant. He said the star is the messengers, the angels that He held in His hands. So the flames that fall down from Heaven here is a fallen messenger, one that fell from Heaven. A spirit messenger that fell from Heaven and fell to the waters. What do waters mean in the Bible. That is the simplest of all, remember in the New Testament Jesus said to the woman in John 4, ‘Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give shall never thirst again’ Obviously he wasn’t standing there with a big bottle of water. Obviously he was speaking of that which both she and us can understand. That where I drink is where my spirit is fed. Remember He spoke similarly, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, and out of him will flow rivers of living water. Water –a transition is made easily of water as being that which comes into my spirit, that which I drink from, I hear are the waters that feed men. That is hear are the philosophies, the teachings that feed men, and it says a demonic angel, a fallen spirit comes into all the philosophies of men whose name is wormwood. Wormwood is very bitter. In Deuteronomy 29 it is called something poisonous, deadly poisonous. Into the philosophies, into the way men think into all the teachings that guide the minds of men there come ideas from the pit. I think if you look over the last few years you probably know more about wormwood water than at any time in history. They have always been there, but today if you only step back, all the waters that are feeding mankind today are bitter, deadly poisonous, you have only to go to any bookstore, everyone of those novels and magazines on the shelves they are waters that feed the souls of men, and they are wormwood, they are bitter, they are deadly poison.

Now notice this, in each case God allows this. The world system does not fall and collapse by accident. Man’s very world on which he stands is not suddenly smashed and broken by accident, and all the filthy, putrid streams that flow into the minds of men do not come by accident. Men have rejected God and as Romans 1 puts it, God gave them up. That does not mean to say he washed His hands of him, rather if you want it you may have it. And that is the worst judgment anyone can ever know, when God allows man to have that which He craves. And so the waters are made putrid and poisonous.

It says in the 4^th trumpet that a third of the lights in the heavens stops shining. Darkness or at least a kind of darkness, not total darkness, and here you have the confusion, men can no longer see. Remember that 9^th plague of Egypt when that intense darkness came on Egypt while in Goshen where the Israelites were, it was light. So you have a reminder here - a confusion, a total confusion in the minds of men. They wander, they bump into each other, they don’t know where they are going. It comes from God. He allows it in order that men may suddenly realise the situation they are in. From our perspective you look upon a world covered with confusion when you see the putrid rivers you wonder why don’t people stop and realise what fools they are? It is one of the plainest verses of the Bible in Roman 1 where it says that professing themselves to be wise they became fools. When I listen to the philosophers on the radio sometimes which they put on between newscasts, I shake my head and wonder how one per cent of a brain could ever accept 1 per cent of the nonsense which comes out of the mouths of so-called doctors. When you read of what children are taught in the name of Education, you see darkness and confusion. Why don’t people out there realise that this is what he got himself into? I will turn to God. It is a trumpet blowing in his hear if only he could hear it.

The 5^th, 6^th and 7^th trumpets are called Woes. If that is bad, then says, God, Listen to this. Woe, woe ,woe to the inhabitants of the earth, but the blowing of these trumpets. The fifth trumpet which is the first woe describes a horde of creatures being let loose from the pit. Notice that it says they were like locusts. That again takes us back to the plagues of Egypt.. Locusts. Well there was a plague of locusts if you recollect, and incidentally that particular plague of locusts in Egypt was one of the most significant because it says the locusts came from far, they were blown by a wind, which was telling Egypt God is not only the God in control of Egypt, he controls the whole world, and He brings locusts from way over there, and they come like a great smoke pouring over the land of Egypt. God brought them from afar, it was a momentous plague. In this one John sees a great smoke coming out of the bottomless pit – out of it come these creatures that look like locusts, but, hold it, here are the strangest locusts you have ever seen or heard, for them it was commanded, do not eat any green thing – you don’t touch the green grass. Well, what kind of locust is that that doesn’t touch green, for that is what a locust is. It goes up on the land and eats all that is green in front of it. But here is a plague of locusts which do not eat green. What do they do then? They torment men. Here you have a picture of hordes of demon powers pouring out of the pit, and like locusts who cover the green so these demonic locusts if you will they cover the land of men. Woe indeed to the inhabitants of the earth. They are led by one called Apollion – Destroyer, a terrible picture as they torment men, and men scream, but still they do not repent.

Notice very very clearly, verse 4 of chapter 9 when it speaks of these locus demons that torment men, it says they are not to hurt the grass of the earth or any green thing because they are not real locusts, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. Not every man can be touched either. Many people today would disagree with me on that, argue with chapter 9 verse 4. It says that these hordes of demons that overshadow the world they cannot touch those who have the seal of God on their foreheads, and we have already seen that is the 144000 people who are the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So although we may be in the midst of a demonic invasion, and although hordes of demonic locusts cover the earth, walk straight and tall child of God, you have the seal of God on your forehead, and cannot be touched. So says this vision.

The 6^th Trumpet blows which is the second woe. And it says that the River Euphrates there was given permission for hordes to come across the River Euphrates – what does River Euphrates stand for. In the Old Testament the River Euphrates was the last barrier. The other side of River Euphrates was Babylon, Assyria and whenever they came to invade Israel, always they had to cross the River Euphrates first. So the River Euphrates always became in the minds of the people the barrier between them and those persons who would destroy them. And here comes a great horse across the Euphrates, destruction is on its way, that is what it is saying, but the persons beyond the River Euphrates were not just persons – they were, as we shall see Babylon. What was Babylon is essence? It was all the anti-Christian forces. Anti-Christ is not a New Testament concept- it is only developed in the New Testament. Anti-Christ goes right back to the book of Genesis chapter 10. Anti-Christ is as old as the Bible for as soon as God declared His Christ Satan declared his Anti-Christ, and you have that from the beginning of the Bible, and Anti-Christ was always the other side of the Euphrates, and whenever that was dried up or they came across, then all the powers that hated God were released.

And again we shall return later to that woe, but now all these things – they do not happen chronologically, but I look across the world and I say, that is this trumpet, that one over there is blowing that trumpet. These do not happen one after another, but they are happening all around us, and it is for us to interpret what we see and hear in the light of what God says. It is a trumpet – will men not hear? When men see the power of Satan in the world, will they not hear? God has allowed man to have what he wanted, at the same time he holds His hand, He has His restraining hand – the devils cannot do what they want, so far no further. God is blowing a trumpet and saying ‘Here, is this what you want?’ Repent, the King has been crowned, worship at His feet. But after all of that the Scripture says Man did not repent. Right there in Chapter 9 and the last verse it says, And they did not repent to their murders nor their sorceries nor their immorality nor of their thefts. They would not repent.

But just a minute. We are just about to hold the 7^th Trumpet. We would have moved right through the Vision then. God says Hold everything, we are going to have a parenthesis. Remember the same think happened with the seals? One, two, three, four, five six, and God said, Hold everything? What was the Hold everything? The Hold everything was, What happened to the Church? You mean going through all that there is still a Church left? The parenthesis of the seals is chapter 7 , God said I will tell you what happened to the Church, I sealed the Church I sealed them, no one can touch them. .I have got my perfect Church. Now we have had one two three four five six trumpets, and someone says, what about the Church? You mean all that’s going on? The power of hell is raging against the Church. What has happened to the Church?

God says, stop, I will show you, and He says first of all says John you come here, - here is a measuring rod, and suddenly on the great cosmic screen that outdoor movie that John was watching, God says, walk on to the screen, go on, and John walks out onto the screen with a measuring ruler in his hand, and God says, measure the sanctuary. There is a great temple I think most of you know what we mean by the temple and the sanctuary - the Temple was the great thing itself, it had the courts, the outer court, the court of the gentiles, and all the massive courts of the Temple. The sanctuary was that which was right in the centre with that which was the Holy of Holies, and that was special, that was the sanctuary. The Greek word for that was the naos – the Holy of Holies, in the Old Testament that was called Mount Zion, it was the inner most part where God was. Now John I want you to walk right over there into the Vision and measure off the sanctuary, that is separated, and take special note John of the Altar there, - which altar was that? It was the golden altar of worship where incense rose to God, and John I want you to notice the worshippers that are in there – mark them off. All the rest of the Court leave it, that is left to the world, all those forces which were pouring over the River Euphrates, that is all the Anti-Christian forces, the world powers, it says that they marched on to the general temple grounds and they were allowed to trample it down, the Temple belonged to them it seemed. But wherever John measured they could not go in there, God said That is my Naos you can’t go in there.

What does it mean? The Church is not as big as it looks you know. The Temple looked very big. God said the world can have it. They are called by the Name of God but they are not of God. It is only the Naos, it is only the sanctuary, that is the real Church. You will note in other parts of the Scripture, the New Testament that all those that are born again are called by the name of the Sanctuary. Do you remember that Paul addressed the Corinthians, both in 1 Cor 3.17 as well as II Cor 2.16 he says, don’t you know that you are the Temple of the Living God, Temple of the Holy Spirit? Temple there is this word Naos –sanctuary. He says, Hey you Christians there in Corinth, don’t you know that you are sanctuary where God lives. You are the dwelling place of God. That is who you are. Ephesians 2.21 says the same thing – that we are being built together a holy temple, naos, a habitation of God by the Spirit. That is who you are. In Old Testament days God pleased His presence to be known felt seen in that sanctuary. When Christ rose from the dead there was a new sanctuary where God is pleased to make His presence known, and Peter says it is made of Living Stones – people who have been vitally joined to the Living Jesus. Now we are the sanctuary of God. Do you understand that. Now God says in the Vision, mark off the sanctuary. The world cannot touch that. Let all the forces come, they cannot touch that. There is a whole lot of others that are called by the name of Church there are millions of others for the courts of the Temple were much bigger than the sanctuary, and so most of the Temple was trampled down by the world. Most of it. Most of what is called by the name of Church is not Church. That is a solemn thing to think about. That was trampled on by the world, that was invaded by the world says the Vision. That is part of the cult church which welcomes the ways of the world. Let them all come in. Any so-called Church –how do you find out if it is real, naos? Or just temple.

Well notice that John was told to watch very carefully when he measured off the naos, he was told to look at the altar and the worshippers. The altar, that was the golden altar where incise of worship was constantly ascending to God, worshippers would be clustered around that, all worshipping God – you don’t know whether a man is in the naos by the fact that he goes to Church. You know he is in the naos because of a living relationship between his spirit and God, and there flows from him to God worship. It is worship says this Vision that shows where a man stands, and that company of worshipping people who have been born again of the Spirit of God and are flowing unto God, that company cannot be touched, but many others who name the name of God who name the name of Christ but they aren’t in the temple. They have been invaded by the world and they have welcomed the world and they have been trampled by the world. Solemn words.

David as he was coming up to Jerusalem with the Ark, he got so excited, so thrilled, so joyous that he actually, danced and leaped and praised God and spun around in the air and sang songs and remember when he got home that night he was met at the door with a look that could kill the dog dead. His wife Michel, said you have made a food of yourself, acting like a peasant, now what has gone with Michel, she was raised in the Covenant Community, she could discuss God as well as any, what suddenly threatened her? She was threatened by a man praising God. Anybody can talk about God but let a man praise Him as if He is really there, and the Temple gets uptight. Worship also reduced King David to the level of a Commoner, because peasants praised God and David had to put off his kingly robes to praise God. Praise reduces every man to become a creature before God, there is no hierarchy. There are no royal robes now, there are only praises, and God said if you want to find the naos find the people who worship God and know He is really there, and are reduced to the level of a creature, hopelessly dependent on the grace of God, you have found the Church. That true Church cannot be touched. It is surrounded by the false Church –immediately surrounded by the false church, that is the Temple area, and out there is the world, the city which we are going to see is called Sodom, Egypt and Jerusalem. You are surrounded on all sides, but you cannot be touched. Cannot, cannot, cannot be touched. It has been measured off. However, there is another aspect to the Church – if I look at the church at the worshipping naos, the sanctuary, I don’t care come hell or persecution, can’t touch it.

But there is a side of the church that can be touched, and the Vision suddenly changes, in chapter 11 and we see two witnesses. I have heard more about these two witnesses, we know more about these two witnesses than the FBI know about the 10 most wanted men. If this is a book of symbols, then obviously whatever it means it does not mean two witnesses. Two witnesses is a symbol, an idea and the Bible makes it very clear to me, very plain. Once you understand the Bible, the keys are hanging up just waiting to be taken off the hook. Look at these two witnesses, put them together as one symbol, two witnesses who prophecy, they are dressed in sackcloth, fire comes from their mouth they have the power to turn water to blood and to strike the earth with plagues. And they are called the two olive trees, two lamps who stand before the Lord in all the earth.

Now the symbolism there is so simple, two witnesses all the way back in Deuteronomy it begins to talk about that – nothing new – it says that in the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be established. That is that no testimony is a valid testimony until confirmed in the mouth of at least two witnesses. So two witnesses is a shorthand symbol for saying a perfect and complete testimony to truth. Two witnesses is a symbol – it is not two witnesses, an idea, it is shorthand and it says two witness means the perfect, complete testimony to the Truth. The Church is not only a worshipping community, the Church also is the perfect witness of God to truth on the streets of this world. You can’t touch the worshipping community, but you can touch its public witness, that is why the two witnesses are killed. If you look at the Church in one aspect, it is the sanctuary, all the powers of communism, Red China, Black Russia, where you will, they cannot touch it. There is a tremendous Church in China today. You can’t touch the naos. The sanctuary in China today is as strong as it has ever been. But they sure done a job on the two witnesses. The public testimony of the Church in China is silenced. But the Church isn’t. Follow this through – Who is the Church at witness? It says they prophesied – what is prophecy. Prophecy is to speak on behalf of God – prophecy is not to foretell the future, it is to speak for and on behalf of God. It is a word of wisdom which foretells the future. Prophecy is to speak forth on behalf of God, so here is the Church, its perfect witness speaking on behalf of God, and it goes on and says they are dressed in sackcloth.

A cursory reading of the Old Testament will tell you that whenever a person repented, they always wore sackcloth. So here is a Church and it stands in its public before the world and it does so in repentance, over against a world that is very unrepentant – a world that has heard the trumpets but refuses to repent, and standing in the midst of an unrepentant world is a Church whose very lifestyle says, we have repented. We have yielded to God, we have responded to Him and now are speaking forth on His behalf. Notice that it says that their doing that tormented the people who are on earth. On the one hand the world itself is tormenting the world. The hordes of demons that the men wanted in the first place and got what they wanted are tormenting men, but set down among them, a Church whose very lifestyle says they have repented of sin, and who now speak forth on behalf of God, that torments men too. Men are tormented by truth and they are tormented by lies, and still they will not repent. It says fire came out of their mouth. The word of God is like a fire which consumes the enemy. That is an idea which runs through the Old Testament.

You will also find that they were able to shut the sky. Who shut the sky in the Old Testament? Elijah did. What does that mean, does that one mean that one of them was Elijah? No, no, no. That is telling us that as Elijah stood in a world that had rebelled against God and refused to repent – as Elijah stood in the midst of that world he was a man who was the very incarnation of repentance, and he spoke forth on behalf of God, and he was able to prove his words by works., so the Church stands in a similar world with power and can prove what they say. The Church, the whole Church is an Elijah.

It also tells us that they are able to turn water into blood. Who did that? Moses.. That doesn’t mean to say that another one is Moses, it means there is another way of looking at this Church, that as Moses stood with a congregation which didn’t half believe him against a world a world government that hated him and his God, and Moses stood there, the testimony to truth in the middle of lies, even so the Church stands, the perfect testimony to truth, in the middle of a world that is set against God..

And it says these are the two olive trees that stand before God in all the earth. Do you know where that comes from? Echo, echo, echo. Ever read Zechariah, Zechariah Chapter 4, remember these words, It says behold a lamp stand all of gold with a bowl on top of it, seven lamps, also two olive trees by it, one on the right side of the bowl and the other on its left side. We have already talked about that seven-branched candlestick, and that is the Church, the Church in its mystical relationship to Jesus. And standing beside it is another symbol, two olive trees which stand before the Lord in all the earth. The Church in all its power and witness. And this is the World of the Lord saying ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord of Hosts’ And it says, ‘What are you oh great mountain? This mountain stands before – it has got to go, because there stands before it the perfect witness which speaks with all the power of God and none can resist it. It would do well to study Zechariah chapter 4 and realise that it is telling us here that these men who are the symbols of the Church, that the Church which is able to stand in the middle of that world and speaks with power is one that is receiving the oil of the Holy Spirit, helpless in itself, totally dependent upon the Lord, speaking forth on his behalf.

Now it says that the beast – you have not met the beast yet – he comes on stage on the next scene. He is just put in here, because remember we are going along and we have nearly come to the end of this Vision, and we double back to the beginning again and discover who the beast is. But the beast, let me anticipate is world power. And this world power puts the two witnesses to death. It describes the city where they were put to death as Sodom, mystically it is Sodom, it is not Sodom, it calls it Sodom to let you know what it is. What was Sodom? Sodom was all manner of sexual perversion. What was Egypt? Egypt was the great power, government. There was also the city where they crucified the Lord, that was Jerusalem. What does Jerusalem stand for in the Bible? There are two Jerusalems in the New Testament, one is the Jerusalem where they crucified Jesus, that is the Jerusalem in the Middle East today, the other Jerusalem is always called the Jerusalem which is above, or the New Jerusalem, and the one below where they crucified the Lord is always termed apostate religion. So who put the public witness of the Church to death? All the lust and greed for immorality, government power and apostate religion, for they are all in the same caboodle. They are all one together, and they have a merry time rejoicing. The Church is still there, they can’t touch the naos, but the witness to truth has been silenced.

And you can understand a lot of things that are happening across the world today in the light of that. Elijah thought that when the public witness of the Church was put to death, then the Church was finished. Elijah thought that – do you remember when he cried ‘There’s nobody left but me Lord’? The Lord said Of course not. Elijah thought he was the only remaining public witness, now he has been silenced by Jezebel, and he thought it was all over, if I can’t talk, then it’s finished. God said, not at all, not at all, I still have 7000 who have not bowed the kneed to Baal. No one has touched the naos, no one can. You look across the world, you say, where is the Church in Vietnam, where is the Church in Cambodia? Doing very nicely thank you very much – nothing wrong with the Church there at all. Probably stronger than the Church in America. Its voice may be silenced, the witness is laying in the street.

And as we come to the end of this parenthetical vision, it says, that the same way the world treated Jesus they have now treated the Church. They slew Him, the greatest judgment that can ever come upon a country or a city is when the Church is silenced, when the only speaking voice of God on earth has been silenced. Then man has cut himself off from the only way of hearing God speak, and they are making merry. The same way they treated Jesus, they have treated the Church. However, God treats the Church the same way as He treated Jesus. And it says that they were raised again. And of course the Church wherever it lives certainly lives in the mighty power of the Resurrection, that is why I saw that the Church in Cambodia is probably stronger than the one here. And also this anticipates the final day, where it speaks of the Light of Colossians 3.1 – that if Christ is our life, then when He shall appear, then we shall also appear with Him, that the same glory of the resurrected Christ is the glory of the resurrected Church. Both got the same treatment, both get the same treatment. You get the same idea contained in Philippians 3.21. That this vile body of our humiliation should be changed to be made like unto His glorious body. It is the same idea as in I John 3.1, ‘Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the Sons of God. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but when He appears, we shall be like Him’ Things aren’t what they seem to be. The Church seems to be battered, mutilated, shut up, put under ground. That is why this book is a blessing to all who read it, because you might just be underground, kicked in the mouth and shut up. And you suddenly realise the naos has not been touched. I am still alive unto God, they can’t touch me.

Then he says we come to the 7^th Trumpet, Woe, woe woe to the inhabitants of the earth. It is the 3^rd Woe. But the announcement is rather old as far as the Church is concerned, because it says that the Kingdom of the World has become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He will reign for ever and ever. The Church knew that ever since the resurrection, that is what the Church has been trying to tell the world all this time, that is what the trumpets have been all about – a King has been crowned. Worship Him, but the world missed it, deliberately, by choice, and so in the final announcement of that the Church is described as moving into an ecstasy of worship. For the world that is woe. We have often heard it said, often out of people’s ignorance, if it is not out of ignorance it is out of foolishness, they have said, The only hope of the world is the return of Jesus. That is rubbish. When Jesus comes that is the hope of the Church, not the hope of the world. The worst thing that could ever happen for the world is that Jesus returns. Woe, woe woe to the inhabitants of the earth. When the world hears what we know that the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ, the 7^th trumpet has another story which we reserve for another time, but let it be understood that only the Church went into ecstasies of worship, the world collapsed into horrors of woe. And so the end of that 3^rd Vision of Revelation, and I trust that you have seen what its trumpets, its measured sanctuary, its two witnesses and its 7 trumpets mean.

The original set of 12 tapes can be obtained from Malcolm Smith's web site.
They are suitable for group study.

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