The Battle of Armageddon

Revelation

The Battle of Armageddon

March 10th, 1963 @ 10:50 AM

Revelation 19:11-21

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshiped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.
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THE BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Revelation 19:11-21

3-10-63    10:50 a.m.

 

Now, in these many, many years in preaching through the Bible, we have come to the last, the climactic Apocalypse.  And in our preaching through the Revelation, now over two years, we have come to the last part of the nineteenth chapter of the book.  Last Sunday we left off with verse 10.  This Sunday we begin with verse 11, and in your Bible you can easily follow the text if you will open it to the place, Revelation 19, beginning verse 11:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war.

His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns; and He had a name written, that no man knew, but He Himself.

And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and His name—His pronounceable, knowable, communicable name is called The Word of God.

And the armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations: and He shall rule them with a rod of iron: and He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

And He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together to the great supper of God—

not the “supper of the great God,” [as the King James Version translates it]—to the “great supper of God”);

That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.

And I saw the beast—the Antichrist, the ultimate and apostate enemy, the tyrant of this world—I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth—that gave him their power—and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse, and against His army.

And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him…  They both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

And the remnant were slain with the sword of Him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of His mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.

[Revelation 19:11-21]

 What an unimaginable catastrophe!  And this closes human history.  The title of the sermon is The Battle of Armageddon.

 And the battle of Armageddon is the scene in which the great God and Savior Jesus Christ appears intervening, interdicting in human history [Revelation 19:11-21].  We have read here in the nineteenth chapter of the marriage supper of the Lamb, preceded by the marriage of the Son of God to His bride, who has made herself ready [Revelation 19:6-9].  And speedily, and immediately, after the marriage of the Lamb and after the nuptial supper, immediately the gates of heaven burst open, and there pours out the hosts of glory [Revelation 19:11-14].  As Jude said in verses 14 and 15, “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment in the earth” [Jude 1:14-15].

And immediately after that wedding supper, the gates of heaven are flung open wide, and our Lord appears in glory with His angelic hosts and with His saints [Revelation 19:11-14], and He intervenes in this awful catastrophic holocaust that we call the battle—that God calls the battle of Armageddon [Revelation 19:17-21].  I want you to notice that things do not quietly and gradually merge into the kingdom of our Messiah, but things come catastrophically: they come in blood incarnadine, the whole earth bathed in the judgment of the great day of God Almighty [Revelation 16:14].

 Now, this scene described here in the nineteenth chapter of the Revelation is one that has been prophesied.  It has been foretold all through this Book.  This Book of the Revelation is the unveiling, the presentation of Jesus Christ.  And prophecy in the ancient day and prophecy here in the New Testament, without exception, all says that the end of this world is in a vast, a mighty, an indescribable conflict.  It ends in war and in blood and in desolation.

 And this great battle called Armageddon is described several times here in the Book of the Revelation.  For example, in chapter 11, verse 15, at the sounding of the seventh trumpet, “And the seventh angel sounded; there were great voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever’” [Revelation 11:15].  Then [the Scripture] describes how He reigns:

The four and twenty elders, who sat before God on the throne, fell down on their faces, and worshipped God

Saying, We give Thee thanks, O Lord God . . .  because Thou hast taken unto Thee great power, and hast reigned.

And the nations of the earth were wrathful and angry because the time has come when God should destroy them which destroy the earth.

 [Revelation 11:16-18]

 

That is a reference to that great and final battle!  Now, you find it again in chapter 14.  Chapter 14, beginning at verse 18, and reading to the end:

And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud voice to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.

And the angel thrust in the sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out.

[Revelation 14:18-20]

 You see, the winepress is a figure.  When it is trod in the wrath and the judgment of God, blood pours out.  “And the winepress was trodden . . . and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse’s bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs!” [Revelation 14:20].  A furlong is an eighth of a mile.  Divide eight into sixteen hundred, that’s, that’s two hundred miles!  Blood up to the bridles of the horses!  It is unimaginable!  The world has never read of, it has never imagined, it has never seen anything comparable to this last great battle that shall destroy this apostate humanity.

 Well, there is another reference, in the sixteenth chapter of the Revelation, beginning at verse 12—this is the battle of Armageddon again:

And the sixth angel poured out his bowl upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared to come.

They are coming from the north, the south, the east, and the west by the millions—

And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.

And they are the spirits of demons, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

And he gathered them together in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

[Revelation 16:12-14, 16]

 In the ninth chapter of the Book of the Revelation, in the ninth chapter of the Book of the Revelation, it describes that king of the east:  “And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: I heard the number of them” [Revelation 9:16].  Two hundred million: it is unbelievable, it is unimaginable!  “[He] gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Har-Megiddo,” “the Mountain of Megiddo,” “the Valley of Esdraelon” [Revelation 16:16].

Then, of course, this passage in the nineteenth chapter that describes its end result; now, I tried it at the 8:15 service even to refer to these passages, and having spoken of it for forty-five minutes I still couldn’t even begin to get through, so I don’t have time to read these passages.  I’ll just point them out to you.

 This battle of Armageddon, the great final conflict that dissolves human history and brings an end to the story of mankind, at which time Christ intervenes, coming from heaven in glory and in great power [Revelation 19:11-21], that battle of Armageddon is referred to time and time and time again in the Old Testament prophecies.  The old prophets saw it and they delineated it and described it.  Now, just for example, in the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah: “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah?  He that is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His might?” [Isaiah 63:1].

 Then Isaiah looks at Him, and He is blood red, stained in blood.  “Wherefore art Thou come?  Wherefore is it that Thine apparel and Thy garments are like him that treadeth the winepress?”  Dyed red! [Isaiah 63:2].

 Then He replies, “I have trodden the winepress alone . . . and the blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I stained all My raiment . . . I will tread down the people in Mine anger, and make them drunk in My fury, and I will bring down their strength to the earth,” crush it into the dust of the ground [Isaiah 63:3-6].  There is a battle of the great day of God Almighty.  In Ezekiel, the thirty-eighth and the thirty-ninth chapters, you have that same vast destruction [Ezekiel 38:1-23, 39:1-29].  In Daniel chapter 2, chapter 7, chapter 9, and chapter 11 is that same great holocaust referred to [Daniel 2:1-45, 7:1-28, 9:20-27, 11:1-45].  You have it here in the last chapter, the third chapter of the Book of Joel:

Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up:

Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.

Assemble yourselves . . .

Let the nations be awakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat.

The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.

And the Lord [shall roar out of Zion . . . And the heavens and the earth shall shake: [but] the Lord alone will be the hope of His people.

[Joel 3:9-12, 15-16]

 Then, of course, in the fourteenth chapter of the Book of Zechariah, you have it referred to:

Behold, the day of the Lord cometh . . .

I will gather all nations… to battle . . .

And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives . . . which cleaves before Him . . .

And the Lord thy God shall come, and all the saints with Him.

[Zechariah 14:1-2, 4-5]

A reference to the great battle of the judgment day of God.

 Why, I could just sum up these things together: the armies of the earth, and we’re going to speak of that in a moment, the armies of the earth are assembled in Palestine, from one end of the earth to the other.  The king of the North is coming down; that’s Russia [Daniel 11: 40].  The king of the West is coming [Daniel 7:17, 23]; that is the leadership of the nations of the confederated European states of which we are a part.  This thing of NATO that identifies us in war or in defense or offense, this thing of NATO is not an adventitious providence; this is according to the revealed Word of God!  And the United States belongs to the federation of the West.  We will always be identified with Europe; always, no matter what.  The Lord says that is the Western concourse; an empire.  And we belong to it.

Then the kings of the East shall come, and one of those armies numbers two hundred million! [Revelation 9:16].  Then he refers to the king of the South coming [Daniel 11:40]: that is Africa and all of the dark continent of that vast expanse.  They are converging on Palestine, and it will be a war to exterminate Israel, and it will be a war against one another, and it will be a war against God!

 And the great rendezvous, the great assembly of those hosts, will be at Megiddo [Revelation 16:14].  That is the battlefield of the world, Megiddo [Revelation 16:16].  That’s where Barak and Deborah fought against Sisera [Judges 5:19].  That’s where Gideon fought against the Midianites [Judges 6:33, 7:1].  That’s where Saul was slain by the hand of a Philistine [1 Samuel 29:1, 31:2].  That’s where Ahaziah was slain by the arrows of Jehu [1 Kings 9:27].  That’s where, that’s where Pharaoh-Necho slew good king Josiah [2 Kings 9:14-37].  And that’s where Jeremiah lamented the slain of the armies of Josiah [2 Kings 23:28-30], there in Megiddo [2 Chronicles 35:25].  And the battlefield there with Druse, and Turks, and British, and Napoleon’s armies, all through the ages; each one of them is a harbinger of the great day of the battle of God Almighty.

 And I want to point out to you one thing about that.  “For these are the spirits.  And to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” in Revelation 16:14. Now, the word “battle,” polemos, polemos, that word is “war.”  We’re not to think of that as just being one isolated skirmish.  The whole earth is plunged into a vast militarism, and there is the spirit and the march and the dread of slaughter, murder, bloodshed, and violence in the earth.  The polemos of that great day of God Almighty, the war, will have many faces, many parts, and the whole earth is involved in it.

That’s why a man who reads the Bible and looks out over this earth today and sees the illimitable, immeasurable preparation for war—why do you think we’re spending billions of dollars to get a man to the moon? Just for the sake of a joyride up there?  No, we are spending billions of dollars and almost bankrupting the illimitable wealth of the United States of America in order to get a man on the moon simply because if we don’t, we’ll lie a prey to those who are able to explore space and send craft over us at a distance of a thousand miles up there in the air, and pinpoint a bomb down on any spot.  It’s a matter of self-defense.  It is a matter of survival!

This whole earth is getting ready for war.  That’s why we spend the money on this space endeavor and achievement.  It is hoping to survive.  And that’s why France is trying to build an independent nuclear deterrent, as they call it—deterrent.

 Man, there’s no such a thing as having arms and not using them.  It never has been and never will be.  Whenever you build a tank, you’re going to use it someday.  Whenever you invent a gun, you’re going to shoot it someday.  And whenever you perfect; listen, when the scientists were trying to split the atom to discover atomic fission, the prophecy was made: “If it is ever achieved, it will first be used in an atomic bomb!”  Was it used in order to manufacture electricity?  Was it?  Was atomic fission and the releasing of the power in the atom used for peaceful purposes?  No, it was used in war!  And the whole earth is getting ready for that holocaust.  That’s why I say, when people read the Word of God and they look at the newspapers, we tremble in the presence of the great God Almighty.

 Now let’s look at the text closely.  First, in the midst of that terrible and awful sanguine holocaust, there is the bursting open of heaven and there appears the Son of God [Revelation 19:11], and He is described;“His eyes are like fire,” burning fire, piercing into the darkest recesses of every human soul.  “On His head were many crowns” [Revelation 19:12], and you could preach a sermon on the diadems that rest so marvelously and appropriately upon the brow of the Son of God.

 “And He had a name written, that no man knew, but He Himself” [Revelation 19:12].  That refers to His essential deity, the incommunicable, unpronounceable, unknowable name of God.  No man can know God.  Finite as we are, restricted as we are, the essential deity of God is something a man cannot enter into, but that the Lord God who is coming! [Revelation 19:13-16].

And I tried to say this morning in the earlier service, and I got off on it and thought I would never get back on my sermon again talking about it, but you are not going to see three Gods in heaven, not three.  Don’t you ever persuade yourself that up there we’re going to look at God number one and God number two and God number three.  No!  No!  There is one great Lord God.  We know Him as our Father, we know Him as our Savior, we know Him as the Holy Spirit in our hearts; but there is one God!

And when this great God—in the Old Testament Bible called Jehovah; incarnate, called Jesus in the New Testament [Matthew 1:20-23];—when that great God comes, it is the Lord God Himself who is coming, whom our eye shall see.  “And the whole earth shall look upon Him, and they who pierced Him; and the families and tribes of the earth shall wail because of Him” [Revelation 1:7].  That’s God!  That’s our Lord Jesus Christ.  “And He has a name, that no man knoweth, but He Himself [Revelation 19:12]. . . And He was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood,” that is, the blood of His enemies [Revelation 19:13],  “. . . and He will tread the winepress with the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God”; the blood of His enemies! [Revelation 19:15].

 “And His named is called . . .” [Revelation 19:13].  This is the pronounceable name.  This is the communicable name.  This is the name by which we know Him.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” [John 1:1].  And He became incarnate, “and we saw His glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” [John 1:14], and that is the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 “And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it shall He smite the nations” [Revelation 19:15].  He doesn’t need to strike.  He speaks and the thing is done.  For example, even in the days of the humility, even the days when He was condemned and rejected of men, they came to arrest Him, and the Lord said, Whom do ye seek?”  And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.”  And He said, “I am He.”  And they all fell to the ground [John 18:3-6].  Even in the days of humility, the iron guard of the Roman and of the Sanhedrin and of the temple could not stand even in His presence, even in the days of the humility [John 18:6; Philippians 2:7-8].  Then think of what it shall be when He comes in glory and in power with the hosts of heaven with Him [Revelation 19:11-14].  Why, the scene is indescribable!

 “And He shall rule them with a rod of iron: and He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” [Revelation 19:15].  This is the day of judgment.  “He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” [Revelation 19:16].  Wouldn’t you like to stop and preach a sermon there?  “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”  When the magi came from the East, they said, “Where is He that is born the King?” [Matthew 2:1-2].  And when Pilate crucified Him and they nailed Him to a tree, he wrote a superscription above saying, “This is Jesus of Nazareth [the] King” [John 19:15].  And I want you to know whether He is born in a manger [Luke 2:7-16], or whether He is nailed to a cross [Matthew 27:32-50], or whether He is coming in power with the clouds of heaven [Revelation 1:7], He is a King.  He is a King; “And on His head were many diadems” [Revelation 19:12].

 Now, we have the, we have the presentation of the saints that come with Him.  “And the armies which were in heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean” [Revelation 19:14].  We’ve already been introduced to them.  They are the righteous; this white linen in which they are clothed, that’s the righteousnesses of the saints, it says over here in verse 8, the righteousnesses of the saints [Revelation 19:8].  God’s tried, chosen, and faithful people follow their Lord out of heaven [Revelation 19:14].

 Now, how did they get up there?  How did they get up there?  That shows you how when you interpret this Bible correctly every little incidental detail will fit.  You see, at the fourth chapter of the Revelation the church, God’s sainted people, were all taken up to glory [Revelation 4:1], and here in the nineteenth chapter, when the Lord Jesus comes, these glorious ones, these shining ones, they come with their Lord, having already been up there with Him and married to Him [Revelation 19:6-9].  There they come with Him out of the bursting gates of heaven [Revelation 19:14].

 Then we have the opposition, these that are warring against Him, and this is the most unbelievable thing in this earth!  These that oppose God, and oppose His Christ, and oppose His church, and oppose His truth, who are they?  “I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth with him . . . and the false prophet” [Revelation 19:19-20]. They are leading this blasphemous opposition to the Lord God—this beast over here, listen to his invincibility and listen to his immortality.  “He had a deadly wound that was healed:  and all of the world wondered after the beast.  And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast?  Who is able to make war with him?” [Revelation 13:3-4].

We have an invincible and an immortal leader!  Look at him, our great Führer, our great Il Duce, our great commander-in-chief.  Look at him, look at him!”  And the whole world will wonder after him, worship him.  You get a little taste of that in history.  Think of a people adoring a murderer like Hitler.  Think of that!  Think of a people adoring a reprobate like Mussolini.  Think of a people who have to go through a revolution just to dethrone the memory of a bloodthirsty tyrant like Stalin!

All of these things are just little earnests.  They are just little types.  They are just little harbingers.  They are just little portents.  They are just pictures of that awful, ultimate, final tyrant who will come and will say, “I can deliver the world.  Look at me!  Look at me!”  And they follow him.

 And by his side is this false prophet.  He knows everything.  He has all of the answers.  He is infallible.   And there they are.  And here they are.  They are the product of a godless government.  And they are a product of a godless religion.  And there they stand.

You just put this down as an axiom in human history.  When a people, when a nation turns aside from the truth, and when they turn aside from God, and when they turn aside from obedience to the mandates of God—you just put this as an axiom in history—they turn to the most unimaginable untruths that mind could think of.  They don’t turn from God and the revelation of God and the Word of God and the blessed Christ—they don’t turn away from God into great other truths and into great other revelations and into great other moral and spiritual obediences, but they turn into damnation, and into oppression, and into hell, and into all things evil and sordid and bad and terrible.

There’s no exception to that in human history, and you’re looking on it today.  Anywhere you will find a government that repudiates God and a people that say no to our Lord, you look at that government and you look at that people.  They are in the morass and in the miasma of misery.  And that’s where these stirrings of revolutions and war come from.  You’re not going to have any trouble with a great Christian nation or a godly people.  These terrible things come out of the evil spirits that find lodgment in the hearts of people who repudiate God.

 And that’s this beast and that’s this false prophet [Revelation 19:19-20].  Now, how in the earth do you get all of the people over there?  How do you get them together?  Why, you wouldn’t ordinarily find that great concourse of people in Palestine.  You wouldn’t do it.  There’s nothing human in it.  How do they get there? [Revelation 19:19].

“I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon and the beast and the false prophet.  They are the spirits of demons, working miracles, who go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them together to a war of the great day of God Almighty.  And he gathers them together in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon” [Revelation 16:13-16].  That thing wouldn’t ordinarily happen, but when men give themselves to vile filth, dirt, and rejection, and blasphemy, and atheism, when men give themselves to that, then they open their heart to the spirits of evil and the malicious lying of these demons.

That’s why I had Dr. O. D. Martin lead you in the reading of the passage of the Scripture this morning, “God shall send them a delusion (these that reject God, God shall send them a delusion), that they should believe a lie” [2 Thessalonians 2:11].  And to them a lie is more truth than truth itself, and atheism is more real than God Himself.  And these evil spirits gather these millions and millions and uncounted millions together at this great judgment day of Almighty God.

 Now, in the moments that remain, let us speak of the inevitable, and certain, and final and invincible Warrior Christ and His triumphant victory.  Just over like that, just over like that!  Isn’t that a strange thing?  You would think all these men, my, what power they have! And these great nations, what power they have; and these vast armies, what power they have!  Why, one angel, one angel, how many angels?  One angel from God, just one went out over that vast camp of the Assyrians under Sennacherib, piled up there against the people of the Lord, and old Hezekiah the king down on his face and down on his knees, crying to God for help [2 Kings 19:14-19].  The Lord, looking down, said: “I see your tears falling on the pavement of the temple.  And I hear your prayers.”  And God sent one angel, just one.

When Sennacherib woke up the next morning for as far as his eyes could see, thousands, and thousands, and thousands of thousands of corpses were his arm [2 Kings 19:20-35].  Just one angel, just an angel; don’t you ever be persuaded that God, who lives in heaven and who looks down on this earth, don’t you ever be persuaded that He is about to be overcome.  “He that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh, shall laugh:  the Lord shall have them in derision” [Psalm 2:4].  These little Napoleonic crackpots said big things against God; “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall hold them in derision.”

 Now, look how the battle is fought: “And the beast was taken” [Revelation 19:20].  God just went down there and just snatched him.  He just grabbed him!  He just did like a big cat with a mouse.  Just shook the living daylights out of him!  Shook the daylights out of him, the Lord did it.  Just grabbed him; that’s what it says here.  “And the beast was taken, and the false prophet,” with all of his infallibility and all of his answers, he was taken [Revelation 19:19-20].  The Lord just took him.  And He just cast them into the lake burning with fire and brimstone [Revelation 19:20].  And a thousand years later in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Revelation, there they are still alive in the lake of fire and brimstone [Revelation 20:10].  Isn’t that something?  Now, that’s the way the Lord does.  He has always done that.

 Now, when the, when the woman fell, He talked to her.  Remember that?  Eve, He talked to her [Genesis 3:16].  And then He turned to the man and He talked to the man [Genesis 3:17-19].  Didn’t He?  Man, He never asked the serpent anything.  He never said anything to him except just cursed him [Genesis 3:14-15].  There are no extenuating circumstances, and there are no mitigating details.  When an apostate who rejects God stands in the presence of the Lord God Almighty, there’s nothing to be said, nothing to be said.  It’s over just like that.  It is decisive and final.

 Now, John doesn’t see the battle.  John doesn’t see it.  He didn’t see the marriage of the Lamb.  He doesn’t see the battle here.  He just sees the angel who stands in the sun, stationed up there in glory, and he calls for the fowls and birds of the heavens to come.  And that’s all John sees [Revelation 19:17].

The actual war itself and how it’s fought he doesn’t see, but he sees that angel with that awful, awesome announcement; the fowls of the earth come, and there the earth bathed in blood, and the vultures [Revelation 19:17-18]—you know, there are only three places in the Bible that word translated here “fowl” or “bird” is used: in Revelation 18:2, and twice here, once in verse 17 and once in verse 21 [Revelation 19:17, 21].  That’s the only place you’ll find that word ornen, and I suppose it refers to vultures, calling the carrion-eating birds of the earth to come.  And there are the great men who thought they were bigger than God, and there were the wise ones who thought they knew more than God, and there were the apostates who rejected the very idea of God; there they are, food for the buzzards, carrion for the vultures [Revelation 19:18].  Oh, the end of those, the end of those who refuse our great Lord!

 I close with this Psalm.  Psalm 2 is a picture of what we have been talking about today.  The second Psalm, “Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?  The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against, you have it translated here, His Anointed” [Psalm 2:1-2].  What’s the word for “anointed” in Hebrew?  “Messiah!”   What is it when you translate it into Greek?  It is “Christ!”  These apostates, they gather themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ, saying, “Let us do away with Them” [Psalm 2:2-3].

 I saw a—in the day when it was published—I saw a cartoon taken out of one of the newspapers in Russia.  Down here were the churches, all broken up.  And there was a ladder up there in heaven.  And there was a workman with a big hammer, and he’s climbing up that ladder into heaven.  And up there in heaven was God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  And he was taking that hammer and getting ready to bash Their brains out.  And then the caption down there in Russian, that I couldn’t read, but a Russian told me what it said, “Having destroyed all of this God business in the earth, they are going to destroy it in heaven.”

 The kings of the earth and the rulers take counsel against the Lord and against His Anointed saying, “Let us cast Them out.  Let us cast Them out” [Psalm 2:2-3].

“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.”  Shall laugh.  “The Lord shall hold them in derision” [Psalm 2:4].

 Man, it would be a gruesome thing to preach but if a fellow were to preach on the humor of God, the laughter of God. “Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure . . . I have set My King upon the holy hill of Zion” [Psalm 2:5-6], an irrefutable, invincible, unmovable, unchangeable decree of Almighty God.  Christ shall reign over this whole world and over all of the hosts in heaven.  “Then shall He break them with a rod of iron; then shall He dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” [Psalm 2:9].

 Then He makes the appeal, and it’s my appeal, and then I have to quit.  “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings”—listen you rulers of the earth—“and be instructed, ye judges of the earth”—listen, ye judges of the earth.—“Serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling.  Kiss the Son, lest He be angry . . . but a little.  Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him” [Psalm 2:10-12].

 It’s no light thing when a man says “No” to God.  It is no triviality, it is no minutia when a man faces the judgment of the Lord God Almighty.  Oh, ye judges and ye kings and ye souls in the earth, kiss the Son, bow down before Him, love the Lord Jesus, trust in Him.  Blessed are all they that commit their soul destiny to the Lord Christ [Psalm 102:12].

 And that’s our appeal to your heart today.  You somebody you, “Today, the best I know how, I give my heart and life in the care and keeping of the blessed Jesus, and here I come.”  “Pastor, this is my wife and these are our children.  All of us are coming today.”  One somebody you, a couple somebody you, out of this balcony round, there’s a stairway at the back, at the front, and on either side, and time and to spare to come.  And on this lower floor there’s an aisle by every one of us.  Into that aisle and down here to the front, “Pastor, I give you my hand.  Today, I give my heart and life and destiny and forever to the Lord God.  I do trust in Jesus, able to save me, now and forever.  Here I come.  Here I am!”  However the Spirit of God shall open the door and shall lead in the way, make it today.  Make it now!  Make it now, while we stand and while we sing.