Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Imagine a third of the world's population wiped out. The Bible predicts that will happen one day. Hear all about it next on Light on the Hill.

There's an expression: if you want to stop digging the hole you're in, put down the shovel. It sounds so simple, and yet when it comes to life, why is it so hard for so many people? Pastor James Kaddis continues today in the book of Revelation. Welcome to Light on the Hill. In chapter nine, we hear of the future judgments coming to this earth, and despite all the torment the people experience, they still won't change. They won't put their shovels down. There's a lesson there for us. Let's join Pastor James as he begins with verse six.

James Kaddis: Verse six: "And in those days shall men do what? They shall seek death and shall not find it and shall desire to die and death shall flee from them." Imagine. We have a whole world that spends a whole bunch of time dedicated to how to live forever. People literally spend their whole lives, their fortunes, everything to their name to be able to live forever.

Can you imagine people taking that same kind of energy, that same kind of desperation, and saying, "I want to die," and not being able to? People want to live and they're not able to do that. But now this is going to be a case where they're going to want to die, but they're not going to be able to do that. And that is an absolutely crazy picture.

Look at this in verse seven: "And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were, as it were, crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running into battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months."

This is really interesting. By the way, when you read this, a lot of people say this is some type of modern aircraft. Matter of fact, I just heard of a commentator talking about how this is a perfect description of a Sikorsky, that this is a helicopter. I had someone tell me that this is an Apache. I had one person who doesn't know what they're talking about who said that this sounds exactly like a description of a Black Hawk. It's like, dude, you've never spent a day in your life around any army equipment because this looks nothing like a Black Hawk.

But the picture is very interesting how you could make a convincing argument that this could be some piece of equipment, when in reality there is no way in the world that this is a man-made item. This is a demonic creature. I'm going to prove that in just a second because I think it's really important to go there and I think it's worthwhile for us to stop and have a conversation about this because there is no way. Let me say this one more time: there is no way that these are man-made items.

There's no way this is a helicopter. There's no way this is an airplane. There's an old commentator who I never heard him or saw any of his or read any of his writing, but Pastor Chuck talks about him, who talks about this being exactly the description of a bomber airplane. Because when you talk about the tail that stings, he's talking about the gunner port that's on the very bottom of one of these bomber airplanes, and he says this is exactly what this is.

Well, I'm sorry, but in World War II, with the crazy effort that was made in order to produce all of these planes because they couldn't keep them in the air enough without having to buy new ones, there's no way in the world that you could manufacture a million airplanes. Really? Just think about this: a million airplanes. Is there any way in the world you could, in a very—let's just say we went to the biggest airline companies in the world and we said, or helicopter builders in the world, and we said, "Manufacture for us a million. One million airplanes." How long do you think it would take for them to deliver that to us?

Does anybody understand the logistics of how that works? It would take not just years, it would take decades to deliver a number that high. Well, we're not talking about a million here. We're talking about 200 million. Imagine 200 million. You couldn't even get 200 million people in a specific area to be able to do something coordinated in a military function. That is physically impossible.

We'll talk about this for a second. We'll talk about some interesting battles that took place with Israel in 1973 when we talk about the Yom Kippur War, and I'll get into that in just a second because it bears some significance with what we're about to read here. But we are definitely talking about demonic creatures. Look at this. It says the shapes were like locusts and they had hairs as hair of women. We get into all this description.

And then it said this in verse 11: "And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon," which basically the translation of those words mean destruction. So you think about it. We're talking about the devil, and the devil is aptly named. We're talking about the fact that he is the destroyer.

In other words, when I say demonic, these are forces that are demonic. They are on the side of the devil, and it's a correct name. In other words, the whole purpose of this king is to destroy. One woe is passed, and behold, there come two woes more hereafter. Can you imagine how ugly this is? Look at what's going on. These creatures are nasty. They're not like just a common everyday creature that you bring out a fly swatter and go bye-bye. That's not the case.

Look at this in verse 13: "And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, 'Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.' And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay a third part of man."

I want everybody to understand this for a second. Just put together the numbers for the massive loss of life that we're talking about here. I just want everybody to really think this through for just a second of how much human life is being lost. Imagine, let's just imagine and let's just be the type of thinkers that are very positive types of thinkers.

Let's just imagine for a second that after the Rapture takes place, with the population explosion that we've had, all the Christians are raptured. That the number that we have of people on Earth, let's just pretend that the number of people we have left on Earth is 4 billion people, which by the way, 4 billion is a very low number. That is undoubtedly not going to be the case. That number's going to probably be closer to 8 or 9 billion.

But let's just deal with low numbers that we can deal with simple math. Let's say the Christians are raptured. There are 4 billion people left on the earth. Christianity is still the largest religion in the world, and I hope it always will be. Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and they're going to catch up very, very soon. But it's important to understand this: if let's assume that when the Rapture takes place, you have 4 billion human beings left on earth. Let's just make that assumption.

We read in Revelation chapter six, the fourth seal that's broken, 25% of the world's population will die with the breaking of the fourth seal. So now you have 3 billion people left. Three billion. And then with this judgment being read to us here in Revelation chapter nine, we have a third of the world's population gone. So in a very short time, half of the world's population is destroyed, completely destroyed. There's only 2 billion left on the earth at this point.

Two billion. Can you imagine how radical the loss of life must be? You think about the insane loss of life that's taking place. And by the way, if that means you've got 2 billion people left on this earth and you have 200 million of these creatures, these like crazy insane creatures, do the math. Just do the math. That means for every 10 human beings, every 10 human beings on this earth, there's one of these little creatures waiting for them.

Think about how insane of a number that actually is. It's absolutely crazy. It's mind-boggling to even think about what that actually looks like. So they've got the king over them. One woe is passed. The sixth angel sounds. We've got these angels being released. And then look at this in verse 15. And by the way, it is interesting the whole reason why they conflate Revelation chapter 16 with chapter 9 is because of a discussion of the word Euphrates and then some of the other things that kind of come into play. But nothing could be further from the truth, and we just leave that alone.

Verse 16: "And the number of the army of the horsemen were ready: two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them." So 200 million. That's the number. Two hundred million. And by the way, I hear this a lot. I hear a lot of people talk about this 200 million man army. Logistically, folks, from what we know, even with the greatest and most modern of technology, it is logistically impossible to move an army of 200 million. That just doesn't even work.

Let me give you a little picture of how impossible it is logistically speaking. Even if you were talking about this being 200 million men, it just doesn't work because imagine the logistics that you have to move around to support the 200 million men. If you have any background in the military or you just have any common sense understanding of what logistics have to look like to support people that is at that large a number, it's crazy.

Think about it like this: if you have an army of 200 million men, it's a literal army of 200 million men. The number doesn't stop at 200 million men. To support that 200 million men, you probably have to have a team of close to 50 to 80 million people. So you're not talking about just 200 million. You're talking about 50 to 80 million, and then on top of that, you have to have enough food to support a crowd that big.

Do you have any idea what it looks like just to drag the food for 280 million people, what that would actually look like? Literally, you're talking about almost the whole population of the United States of America moving around as an army. We are not talking about a physical being here. We're not talking about that type of an army. We are definitely talking about demonic beings. These are demon creatures.

And by the way, if you take those numbers and you even bring a fraction of them into the picture, you create all kinds of problems. When we're in Israel and I got to hear this story being told on multiple occasions, and it is really cool by the way, when you go to Israel and you stand at the very top of the Golan Heights where there's a monument there, you walk into the cafe, you get a really—I always order the really, really big cup of coffee because it's cold up where the Golan Heights is, especially in the time of year that we're typically up there. I mean, it's darn near freezing weather.

I always love listening to our bus driver. I always request Avi because he's just an amazing guy. He served in the IDF during the time in 1973 when that craziness went down the way it did, the Yom Kippur War, and what had happened there. One of the stories that he tells us is the fact that he was literally standing in the same spot, the same exact spot that we all stand.

You can get a good look at the enemy territories from the top of the Golan Heights, and to hear him say this story of what happened and the miraculous thing that took place where God had spared them. But he remembers as a young soldier, just being somebody who's a tank operator, and he's got a group of people that are positioned in a very strategic area and they're not really thinking about war. It's Yom Kippur, it's a big holiday for them.

They're very just in a relaxed place, and all of a sudden they can hear from a distance this insane roaring, and they start trying to figure out what it is that they're listening to. They realize that there are thousands of Syrian tanks that are coming for them, coming for their position. He sees it, and he's just thinking in his mind, okay, and all of his friends are thinking this way: do we have to do the things that we need to do to defend our position knowing that we're going to die anyway because we're all dead?

Like this is not even—we don't even have a chance. Or do we just start trying to figure out a way to get messages to our family to give them our last words and tell them that we love them because no matter what, we're all going to die. So they decided that they were going to do whatever they could to fight back, so they began to get things ready. They knew that terrible things were about to happen, and I'm very much oversimplifying the process of how they gathered the intelligence of what they were seeing and all that, but just for the sake of time.

They start getting ready, and as the Syrians are beginning to approach a decision, or a position where they know for a fact they were going to have the maximum effectiveness in the level of destruction that they knew they could incur upon these IDF soldiers, they hear something that was almost eerie in a way. It was so coordinated that it was eerie.

But they recognized that it was the hand of God that was protecting them. What they actually heard was they heard the sound of all of the engines just shutting off all at the same time on these tanks. Every single one of these tanks, the engines just all shut off at the same time. What Avi and his friends realized was that the tanks had run out of fuel and they were sitting ducks.

By the way, when those tanks don't have fuel, those turrets don't work, nothing works on those tanks. Those tanks are pretty much done. What they actually realized at the time was that for whatever reason, God had opened the door to disable these tanks. It was like going to one of those fish tanks that you can bring your kid to. They just stick the pole in there and they just get as many fish as they want. It felt like that.

It felt like it was just that easy, and they launched all of their artillery and destroyed thousands of tanks. Thousands of them. He talks about the pain that he had felt in his heart realizing that there were going to be hundreds of thousands of children that were no longer going to have their fathers coming home to them, just the feeling that comes with war.

But the idea was they know that God had given them a real in and that this was an opportunity for them to spare their own lives, and of course they did. Now, what they found out later, they didn't know this at the time, was that they did not think logistically. Syria did not think of the intensity of focus that they should have had with respect to the logistics in transporting those tanks over there.

So they made a bunch of errors that would never get made today. For example, they didn't bring the fuel to support all of those tanks, number one. Number two, they didn't understand how to stagger the tanks. For example, you fill up certain tanks at the same time that you fill up others, and that you do them in a position where you can still defend yourself while the tanks are being filled while you're at war. There's all kinds of things that they did not do that they didn't take into account, and they all perished as a result of it.

My whole point behind the story is not only to demonstrate the providence of God upon the nation of Israel and to remind everybody that, of course, if you go on the side opposing Israel, you're going to lose every single time. That's a whole other story. But what's more interesting here is to pursue the understanding that the logistics necessary to move a 200 million man army is physically impossible.

We as mankind have never developed something that works on that kind of level. Everybody tells me, "What about China bragging about their 200 million man army or their 100 million man army or whatever it is?" The thing is, they can brag about it all they want, but the logistics to move an army around like that is impossible. I'm not using that as my case for why these are demonic beings; I use it as my case for why they're demonic beings because God says that they're demonic beings.

But I use that as a case to effectively demonstrate the fact that it literally cannot happen and it's not possible, and God Himself made it clear that that's not what we were dealing with. So again, the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand, and I heard the number of them. So we're talking about again, 200 million. That's a crazy number, but that's a number that we're dealing with.

"And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt."

By the way, a lot of people talk about the fire and brimstone. When you read about this, what came out of their mouth—it says it by the fire, by the smoke, and by the brimstone—and a lot of people say, "Oh, these are descriptive of missiles coming out of a helicopter." Well, he didn't say that it was like fire and like smoke and like brimstone; he said it was fire and smoke and brimstone. So he's describing something that he is very familiar with and he's basically saying this is what's going on, and it's not a pretty picture.

Guest (Male): Pastor James is leading us verse by verse through Revelation here on Light on the Hill. To hear this message again, visit LightOnTheHillRadio.com or OnePlace.com. It's also available through the Light on the Hill app. Light on the Hill is made possible through the generosity of our listeners. If the Lord is leading you to support this ministry, please visit LightOnTheHillRadio.com to donate or you can give through the Light on the Hill app.

I also want to mention the new book written by Pastor James. It's entitled "The Last Book: A Guide to Revelation Part 1." As the world heads toward its final chapter, the Bible has already revealed every detail. The book of Revelation is God's message of warning, hope, and promise to prepare us for what's coming.

In "The Last Book," Pastor James takes us through Revelation chapters 1 through 10 and shows us why we must live wholeheartedly for God, anchored in truth and awake to the times. You can order a copy today at LightOnTheHillRadio.com or Amazon. If you hunger for more Bible prophecy, you may want to seek out Pastor James's videos, live or on demand. Many of them relate to current events and Bible prophecy.

You can access them at JamesKaddis.com. You can also send us your questions about Revelation and Bible prophecy through the website LightOnTheHillRadio.com. We hope to hear from you soon. Here's Pastor James with the rest of today's message from Revelation chapter nine.

James Kaddis: Look at this in verse 20. It says: "And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts."

What a terrible picture that is. Think about this, guys. The whole world is being destroyed by the hands of God, and anybody who's in the midst of that watching it knows that it's coming from God, yet they don't want to repent. Yet their own willful desire to live according to the lusts of their flesh continues on. They continue to literally flip off God.

You know what scares me about what I'm reading? I tell you what scares me more than anything we read about in the past biblical times. In past biblical times, when people worshipped false gods, they made statues commemorating it. They in essence knew very well what they were doing, and they were very open about it and very blatant about it, which I think kind of worked to their advantage because the propensity to repent was a little higher because they knew exactly what they were doing.

But if you go to people today who continue to hate God and continue to worship the idols that they worship, you will realize very quickly that an overwhelming majority of them do not know that they're engaging in spiritual activity. An overwhelming majority of them do not recognize what it is that they're actually doing. Think about it like this, guys: how many of you—and I think most of you will raise your hands—have met somebody that was addicted to drugs?

Keep your hands up. Keep them up. For those of you that have met somebody addicted to drugs, how many of those people that you've met are close to you in one way or another? A good amount of people, right? Most of you still have your hands up. Okay, that's an interesting thing. Most of everybody in this church have run into this. Would it be safe to say that you share with me the same frustration, and that is they know they're destroying themselves, yet they continue to keep doing it?

I have never met somebody on drugs that did not know that what they were doing was destroying themselves, and did not in one way or another express that they wanted to walk away from it. It's funny how that works. But almost every single one of the people that you talk to that are addicted to drugs will not make the connection to what they're doing and something that's happening spiritually. They will not understand the spiritual significance of it.

You go to somebody and you tell them, "You need to stop using drugs. I know, man, I want to stop." But you understand you're participating in witchcraft? "No, I'm not. I'm not into any of that stuff. You're crazy." But you don't recognize the spiritual component of what you're actually doing. In biblical times, they did that stuff and they knew what they were doing, and they kept on doing it.

Here in the United States of America and in many parts of the world, they continue to do these evil demonic things and don't even recognize that they're engaging in the spiritual realm. That's kind of scary. That's what's going to lead to the world that we're reading about right now, where they're going to continue to do the evil things that they do even when they're being judged, because in their own minds, they're not going to convince themselves that God is judging sin and what they are participating in is spiritual activity.

Guest (Male): It's hard to believe with all that's going on at this point in the tribulation, that mankind still refuses to repent. We're going to break away from our study of Revelation, though, for a couple of weeks so we can bring you a special five-part series on the prophecies that changed the world forever. That all starts next time. Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.