We have been going on, post May 21, trying to understand what happened. Actually, we do now understand a lot of things as to the day that we are in, this period of five months, and what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and why God still has us here.
I would like to just do a summary and discuss some of this chain of events, because we are getting ready to get out of Revelation 9. We are going to leave Revelation 9 and go to the Old Testament, mostly, to take a look at the exodus, to look at the accounts of Israel’s stay, their servitude in Egypt, and then their deliverance, as God set them free, and how this relates to May 21.
But before this, I want to just go over some of the things that we have talked about quickly, and then we will move on and start taking a look at Egypt and at Pharaoh and what this represents, and then, finally, the deliverance of Israel.
May 21 was that day of great deliverance for all of God’s elect everywhere in the world, which means that, right now, there is not a single person anywhere in the world on any continent or in any country – China, Africa, India, America, wherever – who is still in their sin and in chains to it, as all of us were. We were “children of wrath, even as others.” There is no difference between the elect and the non-elect, except that God has decided to save one, to free one, and to leave the other.
Therefore, since God has saved all of His elect, not one of them today is still in bondage to sin and in captivity to Satan, even though they may not know this. They may not know this. They might still be committing sin. If you looked at them outwardly, you would not know that they are free, because they just look like they did before May 21; and yet this is all in God’s hands because we do not know.
Of course, since He saved the great multitude, the 200 million, during the “latter rain” period, many of these should be seeing evidence as they go on in their lives that they are a child of God and that they are free from sin. There should be an overcoming of sin more and more and victory over sin; and yet God works differently with people. It could be that God saved them at the very last day on May 20th. Who knows what this person was like; it could have been anyone. All we know is that they would have had to have been outside of the church. This was the one condition. He could not have saved anyone in the church.
We knew this. This was a fact. We knew this, because God had left the churches and congregations and had commanded that people were to come out. This did not mean that if someone had come out that this saved them, but at least if they had come out then they would have been in a position where He might possibly have saved them.
So anyone outside of the church on May 20th could have potentially been saved by God anywhere in the world. This is also because the Gospel went to all of the world. No matter where people were, they heard about this. This is what I would say, because this message certainly went far and wide. This was spread all over the earth so that God’s people heard wherever they were. God saved them and this meant that every single one of His elect was delivered and was saved, without exception.
This is why we are looking at May 21 and we are saying that there was a great deliverance, because this was a great day of deliverance for all of the people of God. This was the greatest deliverance that the Kingdom of God has ever experienced, outside of what Christ did before the foundation of the world as He demonstrated this in 33 A.D. There has never been a more glorious day than May 21 of this year. Just think about this. 200 hundred million people were delivered out of their sins.
How great was it when Israel came marching out of Egypt? How wonderful and tremendous a day that was! We will take a look at how often God makes reference to Egypt, to their bondage and to Israel’s deliverance from it. How many times do you think that the nation of Egypt is mentioned in the Bible?
I just looked at the Strong’s Concordance. There were many columns, so I added up one column and then I multiplied this. I will say that it is definitely over 500 and probably closer to 600 times. This was just for the nation of Egypt, but not for all of the variables of this, like Egyptian and Egyptians and Pharaoh and all of these references. This was just for the word “Egypt.” This is found at least 500 and more than likely 600 times. There are whole chapters in several books that are devoted to Egypt.
If you read the book of Exodus, it is all about Egypt and the coming out of Egypt. We read there of the many laws that were given in the light of coming out of Egypt and of the many feasts of God that Israel was to observe, and these feasts were to be observed because they came out of Egypt. In particular, this was the Passover. The Feast of Tabernacles was for commemorating the wilderness sojourn when they dwelt in booths because they came out of Egypt.
This is just an enormous theme of the Bible. Bondage and captivity is an enormous theme, as well as deliverance from it. This is throughout the Bible in hundreds and hundreds of instances. Basically, the Babylon captivity is a synonym for Egypt. It is another way of saying the same thing. Then God focuses on this in that 70-year period repeatedly, again and again and again.
When we take these two themes, we have Scripture. You practically have the Bible. Sinners are prisoners to sin and to Satan. We are captives. We are bondmen. We are servants. We are slaves. Just do a word search on these things and I am sure that this will keep you busy with more time than we have left for you to check these things out if you were to look at all of these things. And on the other hand, there is the God who saves, the God who delivers, Jehovah.
I said that we would talk about Egypt later, but let us just look at this. We read in Exodus 6:1-3:
Then JEHOVAH said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am JEHOVAH: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.
It is strange that God makes this point here. We can find the name “Jehovah” in the book of Genesis. When the three men came to Abraham, that was Jehovah. It is not that God did not use this name; it is just that He did not emphasize this. He says, “by the name of God Almighty,” and then He says:
…but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.
Is this not strange? Well, maybe this is not so strange. But it was just about two or three years ago that we began emphasizing the name “Jehovah.” This was right before what? This was before the greatest deliverance that the world would ever see.
Before God delivered Israel out of Egypt, He made a point of saying, “My name is Jehovah, but I did not emphasize this before.” He did not emphasize this with us either, even though this has been in our Bibles for hundreds of years. We would say “Lord” every time we saw the name “LORD” for “Jehovah” written in all capitals.
This is what I did all of my life. Mr. Camping also did this all of his life. There were a few exceptions, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Well, actually, I do not know what they do when they come to this word; but there have been certain individuals who would probably have emphasized this. However, for the most part, the Christian church did not. We did not emphasize the word “Jehovah.” But then, right before God freed all of His elect whose names were written “in the Lamb's book of life,” He started having this made known.
Was it just to us? No; Family Radio broadcasts Mr. Camping’s teachings and it was primarily in his teachings that he began, every single time, to say “Jehovah.” This is thousands of times in the Bible; and so every time he came to this word, he said “Jehovah,” and this went all over the world. This teaching of “Jehovah” was said repeatedly, “Jehovah; Jehovah; Jehovah.” Jehovah was going to rapture His people. Of course, this did not happen on May 21; but the idea was one of deliverance. He would save all of His people by May 21, which He did.
So the placement of this statement is interesting, because it is right before God determines to deliver Israel out of Egypt. This statement is not said just anywhere. It is not typical for God to just stop and tell us to hold everything because His name Jehovah is very important and that it is by His name of Jehovah that He wants to be known.
Then after making this statement, He gives instructions to Moses and Aaron. They were to go to Pharaoh and tell him, “Let my people go.” Again and again and again, Pharaoh was told, “Let my people go.”
We know that Pharaoh refused. What should he have done? He should have let the people go. He really should have let the people go. And Pharaoh typifies Satan, so think about this.
Did God really expect for Pharaoh to let them go? This was a command; and so, yes, he should have let them go. Since Pharaoh typifies Satan, did God really command Satan to let all of his spiritual captives go? Yes. Is this a command that Satan could have obeyed? How could Satan let captives go?
When we look at 2 Timothy 2:25-26, we read:
In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
And we read in Luke of the woman who was bowed over with an infirmity. Jesus tells us that she was someone “whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years.”
So how could Satan have let the people go? Well, the Word was going out all over the world that May 21 was Judgment Day, that it was the time when God would save all of His people. Satan was still obligated to obey God, but he did not. Neither does man; there is still ongoing sin. But what Satan should have done is that he should have commanded his emissaries in the churches to stop the opposition, to cease from saying, “No man knows,” to stop resisting all of this information that God was opening from the Scriptures. He should have just stopped the lies, stopped the falsehoods, and he should have let the truth of God free His people, but he did not.
No; he would not let them go. He resisted and resisted, of course, which is just like Pharaoh. Just like Pharaoh, Satan resisted and resisted. Pharaoh resisted until the death of the firstborn. Satan resisted until the death of whom? He resisted until the death of all those in the churches and congregations. The “third part” was slain on May 21.
This is almost a repeat of this historical account in Exodus. Then, simultaneously, there was the command to let the people go, because the deliverance from Egypt of Israel had everything to do with the slaying of the firstborn. So, too, on May 21 when God delivered His people, 200 million at that point, at that moment, this killed, spiritually, all of those in the churches and congregations in the whole world.
Well, I have gone off-course, so let us go back to discuss some things, these things that we have gone over and these recent things that we have taught, these recent chain of events. We were talking about a great earthquake.
If we go to Revelation 6:12-13, it says:
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth…
So there was a great earthquake and then there was the darkening of the sun and the moon becomes as blood, which relates to judgment, and the stars fall. We need to ask when this happened, because a great earthquake was joined with this.
Look at Matthew 24:29:
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven…
When did this happen? This happened “immediately after the tribulation.” When did the tribulation end? It ended on May 21, 2011. It was then that the great tribulation came to an end. Immediately, spiritually, the sun, moon, and stars, the celestial bodies, experienced these things. They were spiritually darkened.
It is interesting what we find in Isaiah 13. We read in Isaiah 13:10:
For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light…
This is almost like they are holding back. They are not going to give their light. We think of a child who is not going to give someone else their toy and holds it back.
Let us look on. It continues:
…the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
The moon is a representation of the Law of God, the Word of God, the Bible. Of course, the Bible is a light. The Word of God is a light. It shines into all of the world.
So when Isaiah says that the moon is going to cause her light not to shine, this is a willful thing. Christ is the Word, and so this is an action by God/Christ to withhold the light. This is the nature of what would happen “immediately after the tribulation of those days.” The sun would be darkened, the moon would not give its light, and the stars would fall.
This is what it says in the two passages that we read, but look at Joel. In Joel, we read about an army of God that is loosed. These are the 200 million or what is referred to elsewhere as the locusts. Both of these are in view because they are one and the same. It also speaks of the Day of the Lord. We read in Joel 2:2-4:
A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run.
This is important. The locusts are shaped like horses; and if you read the account in Revelation 9, it says that the 200 million are horsemen. And so this is describing May 21 and this five-month period.
Then we read in Joel 2:5-10:
Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks: Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them…
This is referring to the locusts, the 200 million. It says again:
The earth shall quake before them…
This is referring to May 21 and the great earthquake. Spiritually, a great earthquake occurred before they were set free.
It continues:
…the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:
Here, again, we see an earthquake and what happens to the sun, moon, and stars. And God locks this into “immediately after the tribulation of those days.”
The sun is God. Psalm 84:11 says, “For the LORD God is a sun and shield.” The moon is the Word of God. This is a little harder to prove, but you can check this out. The moon is that which reflects the sun’s light. Of course, the Word of God gives forth the light of God. The stars are the believers. Daniel 12 speaks of the wise and says, “And they that be wise shall shine as the…stars for ever and ever.” The promise to Abraham was that his seed would be “as the stars of heaven for multitude.”
Are there not a lot of stars out there? Could there be 200 million possibly? I know that there are more than that. But as far as God is concerned, it is like there are 200 million lights that should be shining brightly in the sky right now. They should be shining forth an incredible illumination. The “sun” should be shining in its glory. The “moon” should shine at night. The “stars” should illuminate the night sky. And yet, spiritually, it is all dark. It is all put out.
Notice, again, that “the moon shall not cause her light to shine.” This is a willful action of the moon. And it says here in Joel 2 that “the stars shall withdraw their shining.”
This is not the same exact meaning, but it is like an individual who is planning on entering an election, but then he withdraws. He willfully, of course, and intentionally withdraws. He drops out and does not plan on participating any longer.
In relation to the stars withdrawing, turn to Joel 3. It says in Joel 3:14-15:
Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of JEHOVAH is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.
This is the same word. This is a word that is translated most often as “gather” or “gathered,” like gathering the fruit for the feast. It has this idea.
So the stars are gathering their shining, and I think that the translators correctly translated this as “withdraw”; they withdrew it. But “let your light so shine before men” is a command that the Bible gives, and this has not changed. We are to continue to live the Christian life, to be an example of the believer in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, in spirit, in purity, in all of these things, except for one big way now.
The light of the Gospel has shined in the world. In this way, we are not to do this anymore. We are not to send forth information to people that they are sinners. As we used to teach the Gospel, we would tell others that we are all sinners. If they were sinners still in their sin, we would tell them that today they might be saved, that God might have mercy on them today.
We did say this. We frantically said this leading all of the way up to May 21. We told people that God is very gracious, that He is very merciful, that He might save them, that He could save them, that He might possibly save them. We would tell them to just look at God’s nature, to look at how kind and gracious and loving He is. We would tell them to go to Him and to beseech Him for His mercy while the door was still open. We would tell them that it was still the day of salvation, but we also said that the door would shut on May 21. The door did shut, and so the light of the Gospel’s proclamation of sinners who potentially could be saved today is no longer shining.
God’s people play a part in this because this is an action that they take. They are withdrawing their shining. The stars are gathering their light and they are not having it shine forth. If we are hoping to find an old “Does God Love You?” tract and print it and go out there on a street corner, we are not doing the will of God at this time. We are not doing the will of God, because our light is not to shine. It is not to go forth. It is not to tell people that maybe they could be saved today. No; but we can tell people that maybe they were saved, that maybe, before the door shut, they were saved. This is a hope and something possible; but, no, not that they could become saved today.
So the great earthquake connects to May 21 and there are other verses that we could go to. Then in Acts 16, we read about this earthquake. Let us read about this.
By the way, I, myself, would not have chosen to go to Acts 16. I did not say, “Hey; let us go to Acts 16 and develop some kind of teaching that we can relate to May 21.” I did not put the words for “great earthquake” in Acts 16. I did not do this, and these are the same two words for the great earthquake, megas seismos, that we have in Revelation 6 and in some other places.
So it says in Acts 16:23-25, speaking of Paul and Silas:
And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely: Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.
This is important because God likens all unsaved to spiritual prisoners. For Paul and Silas to be in this prison and to be singing praises unto God and for all of the prisoners to hear them, which God makes a point of emphasizing, is really indicating that all of the prisoners, all mankind who are in a spiritual prison, would hear the Gospel. When was this to happen? It does not say here, but Matthew 24 tells us, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
So all of the prisoners heard two men; and were we not likened to two prophets who “stood upon their feet” in Revelation 11? These two prophets, of course, are pointing to those who brought the Gospel during the “latter rain” period; and so, in a way, the whole world heard two men, which points to “the law and the prophets.” This is just referring to the Word of God, because they were carrying the witness of the Bible.
But here two men, Paul and Silas, are preaching in a prison and all of the prisoners hear them. How could they not?
Talk about letting your light so shine, can you imagine the prisons of that day? Can you imagine how bad it would have been without electricity, without running water, without the toilets that we have today? Can you just historically imagine these conditions, and then put on top of this that they were prisoners who were to be punished? We can imagine how bad this would have been, how dark and dank it would have been in that prison and how joyless and hopeless those prisoners would have naturally been. Plus, people tend to get even more hopeless and even less joyful at night.
So it is getting close to midnight and in that prison they are hearing the sound of joy. They are hearing the sound of praising God. This was a huge light that was shining. This was huge. Another prisoner could have been all of the way to the furthest side of that prison. What would he have normally heard? He would have heard the sound of tears and sorrow and the moaning and groaning of his fellow prisoners. But, instead, he is hearing rejoicing and praising.
This is a wonderful picture of the light of the Gospel that shined at its brightest right before May 21 in this dark world. Even though the world denies this and surely tries to cover this up, when we get down to it, the description of this prison just does not do justice to the true conditions of this world and how dark this world is spiritually and how hopeless this world is and how joyless this world is and just how miserable this world is for everyone who is out there in the world outside of Christ.
This is the true condition of the world. And if the people would put down all of their technology for one minute, if they would put all of this down, if they would stop watching the television and movies and get off the Internet and the iPods and whatever the modern thing is and just try and be happy for a single day without all of this stuff, they would realize just how true it is that this is a miserable world and that there is no true happiness or joy in themselves or in this world or in other people. They are not going to find it, and so they have to do something to entertain themselves, do they not?
How quickly to you hear that life is boring or that Sundays are boring? How boring everything is! Do you know what is boring? I am sorry to say this, but it is you. It is yourself, the person you are, the person that you are deep-down within, because you have fallen for the lie. You have fallen for the lie and you need a new novel or you need a new game or you need a new movie or you need a new show to watch. You have to put on a comedy so that you can laugh a little bit. But all of this is superficial. It is all external and make-believe. Not one bit of it is you, not one bit of it.
So turn it off, put it down, and yes, pick up a Bible or spend some time with yourself. If you do, you will quickly find out that you are not happy. This is what this world is all about. It is all about covering up this simple fact, and it is much more than this. You are not happy and you are not content. This is not because you do not have money and it is not because you do not have something, a car or a new house or all of those things. We can get bigger toys, but none of this is really the reason.
The cause is that you are in your sin and you need a Saviour. You are a creature designed and created to serve a Creator. This is the only thing that is going to make you content and happy. This will only happen if this relationship is restored by God.
So, here, Paul and Silas are in prison and they are singing. Then it says in Acts 16:26:
And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.
We have talked about how odd this was, how strange. There was a great earthquake that caused no destruction. It does not destroy the city of Philippi. It does not destroy the prison. No damage is recorded, none. Apparently, everything is fine. The next day, magistrates are sent to loose Paul and Silas and to let them go. If there had been a great earthquake in that city that had destroyed the city, they would not have been thinking about them.
Just imagine what we saw in Haiti just one day after that earthquake. And, really, that did not even register on the Richter scale to the degree that we would say that they had a “great earthquake.” It was not really even that great, and yet just imagine Haiti the day after. They could not have even found a prison. If they had, it would have been buried in rubble. And they were not thinking about prisoners. They were thinking about all those who were dying and those who were still trapped. They were thinking about all of the enormous concerns that go along with trying to clean up after a great earthquake.
Here, we see none of this. What we see is that it accomplishes only a couple of things. It looses the prisoner’s bonds, their shackles, and it opens the prison doors. And these prisons did not have an electronic box like the modern prisons might have, some electronic device that the guards can use to have all of the doors spring open at once, as well as close them. If there was some sort of electrical short in our day, maybe all of the prison doors today in one prison could spring open. But they did not have these kinds of doors. They had locks on these gates that kept these prisoners in.
So, incredibly, an earthquake shook each of these prison doors and these bonds that were on their hands and their feet, and it only accomplished opening them up. This is all that it did. Of course, we see that this was not natural. This was a supernatural earthquake.
And what are we talking about? We are talking about a supernatural earthquake. We are talking about a spiritual earthquake that occurred, as God said, on May 21. But this earthquake did something that nobody could see, because men, all mankind, are in spiritual dungeons and prisons. They are in the prisons of their own sins and of their own lusts. They are in the prisons of captivity to sin and to Satan. And so God sprung all of those locks. He sprung all of those doors for all of His elect and He freed them all.
We are getting this from the relationship of a great earthquake to a prison and the opening of a prison. And what was May 21? We cannot forget this. It was the last day of the great tribulation, the great tribulation that was historically typified by a 70-year captivity of Israel to Babylon. And what happened on the last day of the captivity of those 70 years? Cyrus made the proclamation to let them all go free. This was a historical precedent.
First of all, we learned from these 70 years. We saw that Nebuchadnezzar was a type of Satan. We learned spiritual truths from these things; but also, the end of this is very important. At the end of this, the king of Babylon, Belshazzar, is killed and a proclamation is issued to set all of the captives free; and so we relate this to May 21 because May 21 was a day of freedom for captives. We can get this just from the historical precedent of this 70-year period.
Secondly, there was a second Jubilee that Mr. Camping has written about extensively in his books. September of 1994 began a second Jubilee period. This began in September of 1994 and went until the end of the 6100 days. We also know that this was the “latter rain.” But a Jubilee is significant because of what we read in Leviticus 25. Some of this is actually written on the Liberty Bell that we have in Philadelphia. It says in Leviticus 25:8-9:
And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.
What was September 7th of 1994? Why was this even significant? It was significant because it was the end of the 2300 evening/mornings and the blowing of the trumpet. This connected to the Jubilee.
The first Jubilee was Christ, who is the essence of the Jubilee, as He sent the Gospel into the world during the church age. It ended at the end of the church age. Then God had a plan to “set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people,” and this was the second Jubilee.
What is a Jubilee? We read in Leviticus 25:10:
And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
So if you were a bondman or a bondwoman, if you were a servant in servitude, you could indenture yourself or your family might indenture you. If you were a son and they were poor, you could go work for someone as a servant, a fellow Israelite, and you would work for them for many years. But when the year of Jubilee came, they were to set you free. However, we do not read about Israel actually doing this. We do not find this, but this is the Law of God and this is what God said should happen. In the year of Jubilee, they were to set them free, and this was a proclamation that was to be made throughout all of the land.
Starting in September 1994, the Jubilee sound went into all of the land, all the way through the 6100 days until the very last day, May 20th of this year. May 20th was the last day, the day right before Judgment Day May 21. Finally, the trumpet of the Jubilee sounded the last call. It was the last trumpet sound in all of the world for all of the captives that they were to be free.
God did this. This is what God did. And we can expect that God saved probably the greatest majority of the 200 million right at the very last day, maybe even at the very last hour; because this is how He tends to do things in the Bible. He saves the best for last.
So not even looking at other things, we find that there was a great earthquake and that God connects it to the opening of the prison. The great earthquake is already connected to May 21. May 21 was the end of the captivity, which is when we would expect the captives to be let free. May 21 was the end of the Jubilee period, which is when we would expect all of the inhabitants of the land to be let free.
We will not get into the exodus at midnight and that the earthquake in Acts 16 took place at midnight. We are not going to get into this now. I already said that we would not get into Egypt and we already talked about it. But what we also learned, especially by the end of the 70-years, was that the king of Babylon was put down. He was deposed. He was slain. He lost all authority.
This led us to Revelation 9, because we wondered about the locusts and we wondered about the language there. People have been wondering if the locusts were the believers or if they were the emissaries of Satan. Who are they?
If we go to Revelation 9, we see that the locusts have authority. It says this in a couple of places. Look at Revelation 9:10:
And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power [or authority] was to hurt men five months.
So this cannot be referring to Satan because he has lost all authority. This means that the locusts are the true believers. The 200 million also have tails. They also are given authority and they are the true believers. They are one and the same.
When were the locusts released? When did God loose them? They are loosed for five months, so this should be pretty obvious that this was on May 21. May 21 to October 21 is five months.
So what we are reading about in Revelation 9 of these locusts, there is no other possible day that fits with this. The locusts came out of the smoke and the smoke came out of the bottomless pit, and this happened on May 21.
There is no question about this, unless you just completely do not believe the timeline. Maybe you did and now you do not. This is your privilege. But I do not know where you are going to go if you do not believe this. There is no question about the timeline. It is perfectly accurate. We do not have to doubt it or wonder about it.
Some people are thinking that since things did not happen like they thought, maybe the timeline is wrong. No; it did happen exactly as God planned according to the perfectly accurate timeline. These things would not be falling into place unless this was perfectly accurate. We could not just conjure this up; like, for instance, what I am going to say next.
The locusts came out of the bottomless pit on May 21. What is the bottomless pit? In Revelation 20, Satan is put into a bottomless pit. This is the same thing that we read about in Revelation 9. Then we read in Revelation 20:7:
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his [bottomless pit],
Did it say this? This is for anybody paying attention. No; it did not say that he would be loosed out of his bottomless pit. It actually said:
…Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,
So we see this word again. The bottomless pit is a prison. The locusts come out of the smoke of the bottomless pit. They came out of the prison – a guaranteed and absolute fact – on May 21.
I did not put this together. I did not do this. How many other things could God have called “the bottomless pit”? He could have called it a lot of things. He did not have to use the word that is in Acts 16. But the bottomless pit is a prison that Satan was put into and the bottomless pit is where the locusts came out of on May 21. We would say that they were loosed.
We keep finding this connection to May 21 when a great earthquake opens up all of the prisons. On May 21, all of the captives at the end of 70 years were released. May 21 was the last day of the Jubilee when it was the last time that liberty was proclaimed to the inhabitants. May 21 was the day that the locusts came out of the prison.
If it ended with all of this, I think that this would be enough, but go to Revelation 9:14-15. It says:
Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels [messengers] which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels [messengers] were loosed…
Then Revelation 9:16 says:
And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.
This is 200 million who were bound in Babylon, in the river Euphrates, and they are loosed. This is happening at the same time.
I am going through this because some people are lost and I do not know why. It seems to be pretty clear what God is saying, which is that May 21 was a day of tremendous loosing.
One individual had a concern that I hope to address today, but I cannot. His concern was how could all 200 million be loosed at once out of prison on that day because, after all, people are saved at different times. Someone was saved years before, someone was saved a month before, and not everyone was saved at once. We are not going to have time to get into this, but maybe next time we will discuss this.
Let us close with a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we do thank You for Your Word. Father, we just ask for wisdom. We pray that You would guide us into truth, that You would help us to be humble and to be in submission to Your Word. Father, we ask for Your blessing, though we do not deserve it in anything that we do. And yet we pray for Your blessing in everything that we do, but only for Christ’s sake. We pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.