Introduction
As the father of two growing girls I’m going to have to limit myself to one of these stories per year. On Monday morning
Sophie was washing her hands and as she did so read aloud from the side of the Palmolive soap bottle
– “Antibacterial soap … kills germs and monsters!” You can imagine the raucous laughter that broke out when I explained that it said ‘kills germs and moisturises!’
Sophie prefers kills germs and monsters. In fact she wants to put some round her bedroom to keep her safe at night! Well chapters 8 and 9 of Revelation certainly contain enough monsters to terrify a child. Stephen King himself could not come up with a more hideous image than the giant locust with human faces, women’s hair, lion’s teeth. These are gruesome monsters indeed.
For in these two chapters we discover the tale of two monsters. One more obvious than the other. Like a sci-fi movie the earth is laid waste by evil aliens, but out of the flames comes an even more evil beast. Imagine the scene at the end of The
Terminator when Sarah Connor tries to blow up Arnold
Schwarzenegger with a huge petrol tanker. The explosion merely removes his outer skin to reveal the evil robot beneath. The destruction reveals what is really going on.
So too here. All this terrible destruction reveals four things.
Prayer is powerful. Satan is destructive. God is judge, and my heart is hard.
1. PRAYER IS POWERFUL (vs. 1-5)
So firstly, from verses 1-5 of chapter 8, Prayer is Powerful. The utterly astonishing thing about these verses is that they portray the prayers of the saints as the instrument God uses to usher in the end of the world with great divine judgments. It pictures the prayers of the saints accumulating on the altar before the throne of God until the appointed time when they are taken up like fire from the altar and thrown upon the earth to bring about the consummation of God's kingdom.
In other words, what we have in this text is an explanation of what has happened to the millions upon millions of prayers over the last 2,000 years as the saints have cried out again and again,
"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come . . . your kingdom come." John Piper puts it like this: “ Not one of these prayers, prayed in faith, has been ignored. Not one is lost or forgotten. Not one has been ineffectual or pointless. They have all been gathering on the altar before the throne of God .
”
We’ve come across this idea before in chapter 6 – “
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.
They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?
”
And the flame has been growing brighter and brighter and more and more pleasing in the presence of God. And the time will come when God will command his holy angel to take his mighty censer and fill it with fire from the altar where the prayers burn before the Lord, and pour it out on the world to bring all God's great and holy purposes to completion. Which means that the consummation of history will be owing to the supplication of the saints who cry to God day and night. This is an astonishing tribute to the enormous historical importance of prayer.

So in 8:1 the Lamb, Jesus, opens the seventh seal —the last one before the entire scroll can be opened and the end of history unfolded. The result is silence: " When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour ." The next sound that we hear is in verse 5 when the angel of God takes the fire of the altar and throws it to the earth with "peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake."
During this silence what happens? Probably the hosts of heaven stand in dread awe
—dumbstruck, as it were, with what is about to happen with the opening of the scroll. But more than dread and awe is in this silence. Just at this point God wants to show something to John about the role of Christians in all this tremendous upheaval in history. Up till now the breaking of the seals has simply shown the utter, awesome sovereignty of God controlling history and all its cataclysmic disasters and the fate of believers secure in heaven (7:15 –17) and unbelievers crying out for the mountains and the rocks to fall on them (6:16).
But now God has something else to show us. What is our place in all this? Do we have any role to play? Do we make anything happen? Are we only feathers in the wind of providence, and leaves floating on the sea of divine sovereignty?
The answer is utterly astonishing. The saints appear insignificant to men at large. But in the sight of God they matter. Even great cosmic cataclysms are held back on their account. And the praises of the angels give way to silence so that the saints may be heard.
 God Has Preserved All the Prayers of All the Saints
Look at verse 3: “
Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne
.“
Note - it is the prayers of all the saints that have been piling up on the altar. If you wonder where your prayers go and what God does with them, here is one of the answers. They go onto an altar before his throne.

What God Does with All These Prayers
Then when the time is right God does something with these prayers. He sends an angel to mingle heavenly incense with these prayers —perhaps signifying that the hosts of heaven and the prayers of the saints are one, great unified act of worship. In verse
4 that worship ascends before the Lord: " The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand ."
Then something happens which shows that the prayers of the saints are the cause of great historical upheavals as history comes to an end. Verse 5:
“
Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake
.”
These great events: thunder, sounds, lightening, earthquake simply represent the action of God from heaven on the world as the scroll of the end of the age begins to open and the seven trumpets and the seven bowls are poured out. The unmistakable point is that your prayers bring that about.
This is incredible. It should transform the importance we place on prayer. Personal prayer, corporate prayer. Prayer is powerful!
2. SATAN IS DESTRUCTIVE (9: 11)

Secondly we see that Satan is destructive. These chapters are all about destruction and that is apt since the devil is himself
THE destroyer. Satan is the first monster. I’m pretty sure that is who John is referring to in verse 11 of chapter 9 – “
They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon .
” These names mean ‘the destroyer’. After all
Jesus himself said in Luke 10, “
I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven .
” He is the star who has fallen from the skies.
Now, as we have seen before, and as Trevor pointed out last week, there is a circular pattern to the book of Revelation. It is impossible to watch sport these days without enduring endless action replays. So much so that on the odd occasions I watch sport live I keep finding myself looking around to be able to see it again from a different angle. Well Revelation is a bit like that. Each successive vision re-tells the same story, but from a different angle and also moving the story on a bit, usually adding another piece of information.
And here in chapters 8 and 9 a new figure is unveiled; a new character whom we haven’t met yet. In chapter 8 he is ‘Wormwood’ the star who falls from heaven. In chapter 9 he is the same star who is given the key to the Abyss; he is the one who has the power to send the locusts upon the earth. He is the King of destruction, the angel of the Abyss. We might say, the Lord of Hell, the devil himself.

Blame it on the devil?
This is interesting because when we looked at chapter 6 we saw that we can’t just blame all the suffering in the world on our freewill. So can we blame it on the devil?
Well, yes and no. It is he who releases the locusts. He torments and tortures humanity. He is the destroyer. And so it is fair to say that he is the cause of so much evil and suffering in the world. God does not stand behind these events in the same way that he stands behind his goodness and mercy.

God is still in charge
And yet, and yet God is still very much in charge. Did you notice that throughout? So in chapter 9 the locusts are told
– “ not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads .
” They are only allowed to do what God allows them to do.
And then we have the sixth trumpet which releases the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. They are released to kill a third of mankind. It is a terrifying picture. And the fact that Satan only appears here in chapter 9 reminds us that while he is destructive, it is God who is in charge, he is judge.
3. GOD IS JUDGE
As we have seen these terrible events are the result of God answering the prayers of all the saints. They cry out to him for justice, they plead to him to judge the world. And he does.

Warning Signs
Throughout chapters 8 and 9 we read in graphic detail God’s horrific judgment. Although if you look carefully two patterns clearly emerge. The first pattern is that of the third – “
A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up… A third of the sea turned into blood…a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed… The

fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night… on into chapter 9 … Release the four angels who are bound at the great river
Euphrates. And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind .
”
A third, a third, a third. In other words this is a warning, it is not the last judgment. A third is so large and serious that it cannot be ignored, but it is still a minority.
These are warnings. And they are warnings that get progressively worse. That is the other pattern. So the first four trumpets, in chapter 8, all refer to God’s judgment on the earth.
Sure people are affected, but primarily it is about the physical destruction of the planet. Trees and grass being burnt, creatures dying in the sea, water being polluted, darkness and foreboding.
Without being flippant, it sounds like pollution and global warming to me. God has handed us over to our selfish deeds.
Then in chapter 9, with the fifth trumpet things get worse.
Now humans suffer directly. Although the judgment stops short of death. There is torment, but God won’t let the locusts go as far as taking life. And then the sixth trumpet. Things get worse still. A third of mankind is killed. This is awful. Let’s not sanitise it and remove the rough edges. It is raw terror.
So when you put those two things together – the patterns of a third and of getting progressively worse then we see that these are warning signs.
Just like the ten plagues in Egypt. Many commentators have noticed the similarity between some of the disasters here and the plagues God brought on Egypt at the time of Moses. Plagues of locusts, darkness, water turning to blood, and finally a portion of humanity struck down dead.

Will we listen? (Exodus 4: 21-23)
Listen to this commentary from Exodus 4 that the Lord gives about the plagues – “
The LORD said to Moses, "When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Then say to Pharaoh, 'This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son .'" ”
So the wonders, the plagues, were warnings to Pharaoh.
God was calling him to repent, to change his mind, to let the
Israelites go. And this was not just some liberation story. He was to let them go so that they could worship God and him alone. For that is the purpose with which he made each one of us – to worship him. Through Moses, God appealed to Pharaoh to change his mind, but he stubbornly refused to do so. He would not listen, so each time God cranked up the volume another notch. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Will you listen?
And each one of this morning is in a similar position to
Pharaoh. We too are called by God to change our minds, stop being stubborn, and to worship him. But will we listen?
I sometimes hear people bemoaning the fact that it would have been so easy to believe back then. You know back with
Moses, wow Red Sea, ding, doors open, walk through. Or with
Jesus
– who needs Woolworths with the Messiah around?
But we have all the evidence they had. Read through chapters 8 and 9 of Revelation and this time look out of the window. Trees and grass are being burnt up. It’s there, do we

repent and turn back to God? The seas are being destroyed by pollution. Now that we live in Australia I wonder if we’ll ever get to see the Great Barrier Reef, before it’s been completely killed off by our greed and selfishness that is.
And it gets worse. We look at how far we’ve come. We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil. We’ve given it a fair go, and our prosperity increases and yet doesn’t verse 6 of chapter 9 provide an accurate commentary on our age? “
During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them .
” It is estimated that one in six Australian men suffer depression at any given time.
And still we won’t turn back to God. And then, well then death strikes all around us. Grandparents and then parents from old age, friends and children from cancer and disease. But even then, even when our loved ones are rudely snatched from us we do not listen. We pay no heed to the warnings. We ignore God as our judge.
4. MY HEART IS HARD (9: 20 - 21)
And there it is exposed before us. The other terrible monster in this passage. The evil monster of the human heart. That is the most chilling truth we discover here. My heart is hard. Satan is not the only monster here. Don’t blame him for all the evil in the world.
The other monster is just as evil. Look at verses 20 and 21 in chapter 9. After all the destruction and chaos has calmed down this is what is left. After 200 million troops rampaging through the earth, after the locusts, and the plagues from the horses mouths, this is what is left
– “
The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshipping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood-idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts .
”

Sin revealed
This is the main point of the passage and we must not miss this. All this terrible stuff happens and everyone carries on as if normal.
God has sent them all these warnings telling them to stop sinning, and it makes no difference at all. They just shrug their shoulders, act as if nothing had happened.
Don’t be distracted by all the explosions and destruction going on in the scene. Keep your focus on what God is doing. You see we read this and, in our day and age, we zero in on God’s judgment. We read this and think – this is terrible, how can a God of love cause all this destruction? How can punish people like this?
It seems so cold, so indiscriminate, so unloving.
When I read these verses I find them hard to stomach because it seems as if big, powerful God is mercilessly obliterating weak, helpless human beings. You know it’s like watching some kind of horror movie where the evil monster attacks some helpless child. There is a disproportionate use of force. So God’s over here and he’s got machine guns, and bombs, and nuclear warheads and he’s raining them down on a poor, defenceless child. It feels like that doesn’t it when we read this stuff.
And yet pause at verse 19. Let the smoke clear; the fires to burn down; the noise to quieten. What we see is that humanity is no defenceless child. No, once it has all calmed down mankind just shrugs his shoulders and gets back to sin. Gets back to what we love the most
– idolatry, murder, the occult, sexual immorality, theft.
The work of their hands. It’s such vivid description. The fire is raging, the tidal wave is coming, but they won’t let go, of my

preciousssss! Like the people of Herculaneum when Mount
Vesuvius erupted. Preserved in igneous rock we can still see today the forms of people clutching money and jewellery.
This is the real horror. This is the bit even more distressing than God’s judgment – our sin. The hardness of our hearts. And the thing is that it is just so evidently true. Even without the Bible it’s all there. September 11 th – American churches were full for weeks afterwards. Didn’t last long though. The horror of the
Tsunami on Boxing Day 2004. Have we learnt anything? Has anything changed about the way we reacted to Burma or China just this month?
When we read this we are supposed to be shocked by the apparently rough justice of God. It is supposed to be awful. But if you can’t get beyond that it is because you haven’t yet faced the mo nster within. You haven’t yet grasped the true horror of your own sin. How black your heart really is.
People tell me that they reject the notion of hell because they think its emotional blackmail
– turn or burn is no choice at all!
Isn’t it? You way, underestimate the sinfulness of human nature my friend. Many of us really would rather die than surrender our lives to Christ the king. We love sin too dearly, we hate God too fiercely.
Did I just say that? Hate God. Yes. We know that he is our rightful
King and we despise him for it.

Christ slays the monster
Yet despite all this there is hope. More than that, great news.
Although the monster is great, Jesus is greater. He is the hero who slays the monster for us. He is worthy to open the scroll. As we saw last week those protected by God, those with the seal of God, are the servants of God – they have washed their robes in the blood of the lamb.
And how do we do the same? Well, we learn the lesson of verse 20 for a start. If the rest of mankind did not repent, then we need to do the opposite. Indeed, when the Two Witnesses appear in chapter 11 it is telling that they are clothed in sackcloth.
Sackcloth is an outward sign of repentance
– of confessing your sin before God and changing your mind about Jesus, accepting him now as your king, surrendering your life to him in obedience.
What a contrast – the rest of humanity did not repent, the Two
Witnesses did.
That’s what God wants. “
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life .
” The only thing preventing us from receiving that love and that life is our own stubborn hearts. Although this morning we have seen what a real barrier that is. I can see it in my own heart. That is why there is no smugness here, no selfrighteous condemnation. This is what we all deserve. I plead with you, cast yourself on God’s mercy, do the equivalent of sackcloth and ashes, turn to Christ.
Inside your outlines you can see what I’m suggesting as a response to this passage. A day of prayer and fasting on Tuesday.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about then please read what I’ve written there first. This is not compulsory for all, merely a practical way to apply Revelation 8 and 9. Come along to the prayer meeting on Tuesday morning at 7.15am. Don’t eat any breakfast or lunch and use the time you would be eating to repent and to pray.
Then break your fast with dinner at night. Well that’s what I’m going to do and I invite anyone else who wants to do to do the same!
(Repentance + Prayer)

The destruction reveals that:
1. PRAYER IS POWERFUL (8: 1 - 5)
(9: 11) 2. SATAN IS DESTRUCTIVE
3. GOD IS JUDGE
4. MY HEART IS HARD (9: 20 - 21)