Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #11 of Revelation, chapter 9, and we are presently studying Revelation 9:5:
And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
This is referring to the locusts. God commanded them that “they should not kill” those that did not have the seal of God in their foreheads, but that they should be a source of torment to them for five months. Then it says: “and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man,” and, Lord willing, we will discuss this when we get to that part of the verse.
But, at this time, we want to continue what we began to do in our last study and that is to define the Greek word that is translated as “tormented” in Revelation 9:5. And how do we define a Greek word? Well, we search the Bible to see how God has used this word and we were doing that in our last study. We saw that God spoke of a man that was “tormented” of the palsy in Matthew 8:6. He also spoke of a ship “tossed” with waves and the word “tossed” was the same Greek word, Strong’s #928, that is translated as “tormented” in its first use in Revelation 9:5. We also saw, in Mark 6:48, the disciples were “toiling” to row when the winds were contrary to them. We went to 2nd Peter 2:8 and God pointed out that Lot was a saved man and, therefore, had a righteous soul and Lot lived in the evil city of Sodom and his righteous soul was “vexed” on a daily basis by their wicked deeds.
We saw that God uses this word in a variety of ways, but the common denominator seems to be “discomfort,” or “unease,” or “troubled.” That is a good way of understanding this word. The man with the palsy, instead of being normal physically, he was troubled with that disease. The ship was troubled with the waves and the disciples were troubled in their rowing – there was an increased difficulty which brought “discomfort” and “unease.” Likewise, Lot’s soul was “troubled” by the tremendous evil that was all around him the city of Sodom.
Let us continue to look at this word in a couple of more places. In Revelation 11 there is something that I think will help us a lot to understand how God is using the word “torment” in Revelation 9:5. It is referring to the “two witnesses” that were slain and they were dead in the street for three and one half days in the great city which is called Sodom and Egypt.
First, I want to say this, again, about the “two witnesses,” because there is a lot of misunderstanding about them, as some think it is referring to the true believers. The true believers identify with the “two witnesses,” but they are not in themselves, the “two witnesses.” It is a figure of speech to represent Moses and Elijah – Moses represents the “Law” and Elijah represents the “prophets,” so it is the “Law and the prophets,” or the Word of God, the Bible. The “two witnesses” had their period of testimony in the congregations during the church age; God was blessing His Word throughout that period of almost 2,000 years when He was using the churches as His representatives to the people of the world.
Then came the end of the church age and the “two witnesses” were slain. They were killed. This points to God’s Spirit leaving the congregations and, yet, the Bibles remained there. God did not remove the Bibles from the churches. He did not make sure His Word was completely removed. No – the Bible remained; the “Law and the prophets” remained, but their “witness” was completely ineffective; it was now lifeless, because without the Spirit of God to bless the hearing of the Word of God, there can be no salvation: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” so God must bless the hearing of His word; He must give spiritual ears to the listener. Once He departed out of the midst of the congregations, He was no longer doing that and, therefore, there was “a famine of hearing the words of the Lord,” a spiritual famine in which people were no longer be saved, because the “two witnesses” (the Law and the prophets, the Word of God the Bible) was now “dead” in the midst of the congregations. That condition prevailed for the first 2,300 evening mornings, which is about six years and four months, of the Great Tribulation, from May 1988 to September 1994. During that time God was saving virtually no one in the world. Within the churches, He was saving absolutely no one, but outside of the churches He may have possibly saved a handful of individuals – the Bible allows for that, but it would have been a very small number.
Then after the 2,300 evening mornings, which are typified by the three and one half days that the “two witnesses” were killed, they “stood upon their feet,” but not within the churches. It was the “witness” of the Bible, the Law and the prophets, which God calls the “two prophets” in Revelation 11:10, and the “Law and the prophets” now stood upon their feet to evangelize the world outside of the churches and congregations. This occurred when God began to pour out the latter rain and He abundantly blessed the earth with “water” and knowledge of God began to cover the nations as the waters cover the sea and He saved a great multitude. Again, the “two witnesses,” now known as the two prophets, when they stood upon their feet, were not specifically the true believers, but the true believers were involved with the “two witnesses” by sharing and declaring the things of the Bible; and this enabled the “two witnesses” to accomplish their task during the church age and it was also via the “elect” that the Gospel was carried forth outside of the churches during the latter rain, so the two prophets also accomplished their task of evangelizing the world.
But the death of the “two witnesses” points to the removal of God’s Spirit within the churches, and the “two witnesses” standing upon their feet points to God, once again, evangelizing the world through His Word, the Bible, outside of the churches. Once we understand that, we will have a much better understanding of what God is saying in Revelation 11, and we will avoid erroneous understandings that lead to wrong conclusions concerning the “three and one half days” and what period of time that relates to, as well as the end of the “three and one half days.”
It says in Revelation 11:10:
And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them…
This is referring to the “two witnesses” that were slain. Again, that would mean that the Bible has, for all intents and purposes, become ineffective through the witness of the churches because God is not blessing it.
And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.
Now we can get a much better idea of what “torment” is referring to, as God is using it in Revelation 9:5, because, here, it is referring to the “torment” that the people of the world experience when the two witnesses were active in the churches. What kind of “torment” did the witness of the Bible (the two witnesses) bring to the people of the world? Was it some sort of torture? Was it some sort of cruel thing that the “two witnesses” did to the people of the world? The answer is no. First of all, it was nothing physical; it was not putting people on a torture rack or anything like that. It was simply a declaration of the truths of the Bible concerning man’s condition of being a sinner and the consequences of that condition; man is under the wrath of God and subject to destruction or death: “the wages of sin is death.” The two witnesses, as God blessed His Word in the churches, were declaring these things to the people, reminding them that there was a God, reminding them that they had offended that Holy God, reminding them there was a consequence to offending God, reminding them that they were “not their own” and they had responsibility to live their lives according to the dictates of their Creator and not according to their own desires and wants, and so on. The “two witnesses” were just constantly reminding people of what they did not want to hear. Man so wants to be a free agent and he wants to think that he is “his own” and he is not obligated to any other. He wants to live his life as he pleases and God says, “No – you are a creature and you were created in my image and I have given many commandments that you are to follow and you are responsible to obey them. If you fail to obey, there will be negative consequences; you will be punished and, finally, destroyed.”
So this was a source of constant “torment” to the hearers of the world. They did not like this. Or, to put it another way, the Word of God, the Gospel, shined a light into the darkness and man hated the light because they loved the darkness. So that is the “torment.” The light would shine and reveal that they were not as good as they would like to think they were. Is that not true? If you ask people about themselves or if they had to give an appraisal of themselves, they would say, “Well, you know, basically I am a good person.” But what does God say when He gives an appraisal of man? He says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” He says, “There is none righteous, no not one,” and “There is none good.”
Do you see the difference? Do you see how man likes to think more highly of himself? And then God comes to “spoil” everything. Then God comes to speak the truth and it is unpleasant. Man’s response is: “It makes me feel badly about myself and I do not like that. Therefore, I flee from these things. I do not want to hear these things. They are uncomfortable to me. They trouble my mind. They trouble my lifestyle.” There is the “torment.” Remember, in all the verses we looked at, there is “torment,” or a troubling of things, just as Ahab said to Elijah, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel?” Of course, Elijah responded that he had not troubled Israel, but Ahab had done so, but that is the mindset and the perception of the world, that these things from the Bible are a source of trouble.
But, finally, the testimony of the “two witnesses” was finished. God had been in the midst of the congregations and He had been the power and the strength that moved the witness of His Word through the churches to the world, so the world could not deny these things; they just reluctantly had to allow this witness to continue; they could not stop it or put an end to it. It was disturbing to them, but they gave reluctant respect; they recognized the witness of the church in their community and it caused them to refrain, to some degree, from the evil in their hearts that they would have more frequently gotten involved in; it put certain restraints upon them and that was also a source of “torment” to the unsaved. But, once God’s Spirit left the churches and He abandoned the congregations, it was as though the “two witnesses” fell down dead, so the Word of God came became ineffective and the people of the world were now able to view the witness of the churches in a different light: it lacked power and it lacked that fear that God’s Spirit brings. So the people of the world no longer feared what the churches were saying. The churches no longer maintained respect in the eyes of the people of the world. They now became a source of ridicule, something to critique or attack in numerous ways, and it says here in Revelation 11:10:
And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another;
You do that when you have conquered the enemy and you have defeated them; they have been taken into your hands and you can do unto them what you will. That is what the world has done with the churches, because not only did the Holy Spirit leave, but Satan’s spirit entered into them and he made it more of a mockery, as his emissaries were in control. If any of God’s people wanted to maintain faithfulness, they had no footing and no support from God Himself because He had abandoned the churches and turned them over to Satan who now ruled as the man of sin, as the beast that rose out of the sea. So God’s people were driven out and there became less and less of God’s people found there and, finally, no “true men” were left in the congregations by May 21, 2011.
You see, now we have a good understanding of “torment” because the two witnesses tormented them that were on the earth and they “tormented” them through the witness of the Bible, the Word of God.
We want to look at just one more verse that contains this word “torment.” It says in Revelation 14:9-10:
And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:
Here, again, we find the word “tormented” in the context of Judgment Day. This is the time when God is taking the cup He had given to the churches for twenty three years and He is now giving the cup to the unsaved people of the world. It is the cup of His wrath and notice that this cup is said to be “the cup of his indignation,” and the ones that “worship the beast and his image” (every unsaved individual in the world) “shall be tormented with fire and brimstone.” So, here, we are told the instrument of the “torment.” There is torment with “fire and brimstone.” This is what God is going to use to torment those that have not the seal of God in their foreheads, as it said back in Revelation 9, verses 4 and 5. The locusts were commissioned and “to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.”
Now, since Revelation 14:10 is describing the very same event, Judgment Day, taking place at the very same that the locusts go forth, we know the locusts are going to torment with “fire and brimstone,” and, actually, later when the two hundred million are loosed and go forth, we read a good deal about “fire and brimstone” being associated with them, as it says in Revelation 9:17:
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.
It is because this is the source of the torment: “fire and brimstone.” What does God mean by “fire and brimstone?” Well, one thing is absolute. One thing is definite. There will be no literal “fire and brimstone” falling in the Day of Judgment. God says in Psalm 11:6:
Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.
Again, since it speaks of the “cup,” Revelation 14:10 spoke of the cup of the wrath of God and “fire and brimstone,” we have a commentary (a parallel verse) that relates specifically to that verse in Revelation. Notice that Psalm 11:6 declares, “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone.” Hold it. Maybe one could understand that God could rain literal “fire and brimstone.” After all, He did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with literal “fire and brimstone.” But will God rain down “snares, fire and brimstone?” After all, what is a snare? It is a trap or a cage that is used to ensnare animals. Is God going to have “fire and brimstone” and these cages drop from the sky in the Day of Judgment? It is obviously, not. And, as God speaks of snares here, it reminds us that God tells us in the context of Judgment Day, in Luke 21:35:
For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.
This reveals that somehow God is going to bring His wrath and His judgment in a way that “traps” or “snares” someone. You know, when someone is caught in a snare, it is not because they were aware of it – it is because they were caught unawares, suddenly and unexpectedly. They were caught by surprise and they did not realize it. We will not get into that at this time, but we have learned that is exactly what God did on Judgment Day. He brought a spiritual judgment that was invisible and He ensnared all the inhabitants of the earth. That is what He says in Isaiah 24:17:
Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.
God has caught, by surprise, Babylon (all the unsaved people). So “fire and brimstone” cannot be literal, according to Psalm 11:6. And notice what God says in Isaiah 30:33:
For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of JEHOVAH, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.
The Bible says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” The Bible says His breath, “like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.” You see, He is the “fire and brimstone.” It is the Word of God because the Word of God is God-breathed and it is the “fire and brimstone.”