: 3 Plagues Kill Mankind

This is Truth Matters Daily Devotion with Dr. Cheryl Davis. Truth Matters is a ministry of the Truth Project whose mission is to empower men and women in the Christian faith to teach biblical truth in the culture and the marketplace of ideas using the Bible as a sacred trust of truth in sharing the message of Jesus. Learn more about the ministry of the Truth Project at www.projecttruthmatters.com. On today's edition, four fallen angels are released and three plagues kill one-third of mankind.

Here's Dr. Davis. I don't know about you, but this is severe, even more severe than what we've seen thus far. And last in these first set of verses is that they'll have an unscrupulous prince and that prince is known as the angel from the bottomless pit whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon in his Greek name.

It is Apollyon. One woe is past. Behold, two more woes are coming after these things. This is the devil. The unscrupulous prince is the devil, the ruler of all fallen angels. Let's move on to the rest of the chapter in verses 13 through 21 and I'll begin by reading verse 13 of chapter 9. Then the sixth angel sounded and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. So the four angels who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.

Now the number of the army of the horsemen was 200 million. I heard the number of them and thus I saw the horses in the vision. Those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hasteneth blue and sulfur yellow. And the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions. Out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone. By these three plagues, a third of mankind were killed by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails. For their tails are like serpents having heads and with them they do harm. But the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood which can neither see nor hear nor walk.

And they did not repent of their murders or sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. First let's look at verse 13. Then the sixth angel sounded and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God.

This is the demand. When the sixth angel sounded, this really takes us back to the fifth seal in chapter 6 verses 9 through 10. This gets back to the martyrs. Like I said before, we would reference this a number of times, that the martyrs are crying out, how long, oh Lord, how long will you avenge our lives? This is the answer to their prayers in the trumpet judgments. These are the tools of God's judgment.

So let's read verses 14 and 15 again. Saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. So the four angels who have been prepared for the hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. These four angels that are bound at the great river Euphrates are not the four angels of chapter 7 verse 1. These are satanic angels or fallen angels. The release of these angels are similar to the release of the locum of the locust.

Good angels restrain evil as we see in chapter 7 verse 1, but bad angels release evil as we see in chapter 9 here. You've been listening to Truth Matters with Dr. Cheryl Davis. Truth Matters is a ministry of The Truth Project, a North Carolina-based ministry dedicated to teaching biblical truth and sound theology to those inside and outside of the church. If you'd like to listen to these messages on demand, go to projecttruthmatters.com and click on the podcast link. Dr. Davis is also available to speak to your ministry group or church function. She can be reached by email at CherylDavis at projecttruthmatters.com. Or if you'd like to send a letter, the address is Project Truth Matters, Post Office Box 159, St. Paul's, North Carolina, 28384. You can hear Truth Matters weekdays on this radio station at 820 AM and 520 PM for the full-length teaching program on Saturday afternoon at 1230. Until next time, let's all work together to teach a biblical truth, to assist, equip, edify, and encourage one another, and bring the gospel to the world, because truth matters.