11 15 The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.” 16 And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, 17 saying: “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign.
18 The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great— and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”
This is the 7th Trumpet. . . the 6th was in Chapter 9. . . and the next judgment, the beginning of the Bowl judgments, begins in chapter 15
15 I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed. . . .
This is, therefore, the introduction of the end of human history, and the judgment of God. The natural thing for the host of heaven is to praise God for bringing an end to injustice and war and misery and pain and sorrow and hunger and suffering and illness and the reign of Satan. This morning I’d like to focus on the three things Jesus is coming to do
1. Judging the dead
2. Rewarding God’s servants, saints & those who reverence His name, both small and great
3. Destroying those who destroy the earth
1. Judging the dead
In John’s day, there may be many candidates who deserved God’s judgment, including Caligula and Nero. In our day, we don’t have to go far to find tyrants and people of unimaginable evil who’s record cries out to us for a justice beyond this world.
Josef Mengele
(from wiki) Josef Mengele (German: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈmɛŋələ] ( listen); 16 March 1911 – 7 February 1979) was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University. He initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced laborer, but is far more infamous for performing human experiments on camp inmates, including children, for which Mengele was called the "Angel of Death".
. . . . Mengele's experiments also included attempts to change eye colour by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations of limbs, and other surgeries such as kidney removal, without anaesthesia.[17] Rena Gelissen's account of her time in Auschwitz details certain experiments performed on female prisoners around October 1943. Mengele would experiment on the chosen girls, performing forced sterilization and electroconvulsive therapy. Most of the victims died, because of either the experiments or later infections.
Once Mengele's assistant rounded up fourteen pairs of Roma twins during the night. Mengele placed them on his polished marble dissection table and put them to sleep. He then injected chloroform into their hearts, killing them instantly. Mengele then began dissecting and meticulously noting each piece of the twins' bodies.[13]
There are more descriptions, but they are too grotesque to recite in this kind of public meeting.
Mengele escaped to South America and lived there until he died while swimming in the ocean at the coast of Brazil. He was 68.
Mao Zedong
Through various purges, Mao is credited with the death of at least 10 million people.
(wiki) [Other] campaigns took several hundred thousand additional lives, the vast majority via suicide.[176]
In Shanghai, suicide by jumping from tall buildings became so commonplace that residents avoided walking on the pavement near skyscrapers for fear that suicides might land on them.
Through his “great leap forward” campaigns he was responsible for the deaths of another 30 million or more through starvation and diseases related to malnutrition.
We don’t need to go back even a few years in history to see similar evil.
We can look at this week’s headlines:
Suspected al Qaeda linked militants launched simultaneous attacks on army targets in southern Yemen Friday killing at least 40 people. An estimated 30 soldiers were killed and many others wounded when two car bombs exploded at a military base in the town of al-Nashama in Shabwa province. In the town of Maifaa, gunmen killed 10 soldiers. While no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, military officials believe they were carried out by Yemen's al Qaeda affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Two bombs hidden inside air conditioning units at a Sunni mosque south of the Iraqi city of Samarra killed an estimated 15 people when they exploded during Friday prayers.
When such men are judged and punished by God, all of heaven will rejoice.
2. Rewarding God’s servants, saints & those who reverence His name, both small and great
After the outbreak of World War II, which started with the invasion of his nation by Nazi Germany, Kolbe provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanów.[15] On 17 February 1941, he was arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison. On 28 May, he was transferred to Auschwitz as prisoner #16670.
At the end of July 1941, three prisoners disappeared from the camp, prompting SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men to be starved to death in an underground bunker in order to deter further escape attempts. When one of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, "My wife! My children!", Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
In his prison cell, Kolbe celebrated Mass each day and sang hymns with the prisoners. He led the other condemned men in song and prayer and encouraged them by telling them they would soon be in Heaven. Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered. After two weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe remained alive. The guards wanted the bunker emptied and they gave Kolbe a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Some who were present at the injection say that he raised his left arm and calmly waited for the injection
☺
Psalm 73
12 This is what the wicked are like—always free of care, they go on amassing wealth. 13Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. 14All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments. 15If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children.
16When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply
17till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.
(from persecution.com) Lin Xingiao Lamb was one of the best-known leaders of the Chinese house church movement. . . . Lamb was born in 1924 in southern China. As the son of a Baptist pastor, he preached his first sermon at age 19.
When the Communist Party took control of China in 1949 under Mao Zedong, Christians were forced underground or forced to submit to Party control. Those that refused were interrogated, arrested, tortured, imprisoned or even killed. Samuel Lamb became one of the best known of these persecuted church leaders.
[Xingiao] was first prison in 1955, when he was sentenced to serve 18 months. He was imprisoned again in 1958, this time receiving a 20-year sentence. Part of his sentence was spent serving forced labor in coal mines, where working conditions were deplorable and many prisoners died. Lamb would later talk about how God preserved his life even in the midst of such dangerous work. [in Korea I heard a message by a pastor who had the chance to talk with Xingiao-He described an event when he was so overwhelmed with the tortures-being forced to stand on a stool 4 feet high, without sleep for hours. Every time he would fall asleep he would fall. He was forced to stand again-by the time he was returned to his sell he was covered with bruises from injuries of falling-without the guards striking him. He told God he couldn’t take it any longer. The next day a guard, mocking him, reassigned him to cleaning up the latrine-every day he had to move human excrement from the back of the latrine to a pit he had to dig. At first he questioned God, then he realized because he stank so horribly, none of the guards wanted to be anywhere near him, so the torture stopped. And the time of shoveling feces was wonderful time alone with God. So he sang every day his favorite hymn “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear the Son of God discloses. And He walks with me and He talks with me, and he tells me I am His own. The the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”]
“Before I was arrested, my church had only 200 members,” he told Voice Of the Martyrs workers on one visit. “After I was released from prison the first time, I found the church had grown to 900 members! Then came the confiscation of [books and equipment in] the church. Before the government confiscated our church, the church numbered 900 members. After the confiscation, the church had grown to 2,000 members! Persecution good for church!”
Lamb often talked about the millions of people coming to Christ in spite of the persecution and the communists efforts to close down churches, saying, “More persecution, more growing!” Pastor Lin died on August 3 in Guangzhou at the age of 88.
3. To destroy those who destroy the earth
Evidence of the degradation of the earth (caused by human behavior)
1. Global Warming –a Cellist illustrates the change
2. Increasing local disasters –two from headlines this week
CATEGORIES: FEATURED, NATURAL HAZARDS, WATER
POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 AT 10:53 AM
LAST UPDATE 3:29 PM BY: HEIDI KOONTZ, MARISA LUBECK, JENNIFER LAVISTA
Widespread Flooding and Landslides Hit Colorado
Floodwaters and resulting landslides from historic rain events across Colorado over the last week have taken eight lives, destroyed 1500 homes, and left more than 300 people still missing. While the rain has subsided for the time being, devastation is prevalent along the urban corridor from Denver north to Fort Collins.
ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) - Looting broke out in the flooded Mexican beach resort of Acapulco as the government struggled to reach tens of thousands of people cut off by flooding that had claimed at least 70 lives by Wednesday.
Stores were ransacked by looters who carried off everything from televisions to Christmas decorations after floodwaters wreaked havoc in the Pacific port that has experienced some of the worst storm damage to hit Mexico in years.
Tens of thousands of people have been trapped in the aftermath of two tropical storms that hammered vast swathes of Mexico. More than 1 million people have been affected. Acapulco's airport terminal was under water, stranding tourists.
3. The 6th Great Extinction-
Aside from these indicators that the earth is now entering an age of destruction because of the activities of humans, we have developed weapons capable of destroying all life on the planet several times over-all that would survive a nuclear holocaust would be rats and cockroaches. This capacity to completely destroy the earth has arisen only in the past century. This is, therefore, the first generation capable of destroying the earth-yet more evidence that we are living in the last days.
So this is good news. I've heard some argue that rejoicing in God's judgment is somehow unChristian. Yet, this is what the Bible teaches. When Jesus comes to judge the earth, there will be great rejoicing, thanksgiving, and praise in the courts of heaven.
(Halleluia chorus)
