Cosmic Judgment (Part A)

When the seals, when the Lord begins to open the seven seals and, you know, he gets to the seventh seal, the seven trumpets and then there's seven bowls of judgment and it's just this barrage of wrath of God on those who hate him and worship whatever else they can find.

Revelation 16 16, and this is under the sixth of the seven seals, and they gathered them together to a place called in Hebrew Armageddon, which is the mount of, by Mount Megiddo. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Isaiah chapter 34 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. In Isaiah chapter 34, it's nice to see we have nice spread of ages here. We have the mature, the middle, and the young ones too. It's out to here from one of the rougher sections of the scripture, Isaiah 1 through 35. It can be difficult to sit through an hour of session a week, but you guys have been doing it.

There's something wrong with you in a right way. Cosmic judgment, that's what we're considering, and the judgment that we're going to get in this 34th chapter is vast. It's characterized by its intensity. It's comprehensive. It's global, and it includes even outer space to some degree. Isaiah has been dealing with the Assyrian threat, but he has also looked beyond as though he had been watching films of or, you know, videos of the future.

They're so detailed and just amazing. But he's not the only one. Zechariah, in the 14th chapter of his book in the first nine verses, he lays it out how God is going to deal with Israel's enemies and save Israel. And of course the church wasn't even a thought of the Jews in those days. And we come to the New Testament, and then the apostles begin to open it up to more than just the Jewish people, but to all of the believers. There is rage in the wrath of God, in his judgment. The Battle of Armageddon is case in point. The wrath slaughters his enemies. It is documented in the book of Revelation, the last days, when the seals, when the Lord begins to open the seven seals, and, you know, he gets to the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and then there's seven bowls of judgment, and it's just this barrage of wrath of God on those who hate him and worship whatever else they can find. Revelation 16, 16, and this is under the sixth of the seven seals, and they gathered them together to a place called in Hebrew Armageddon, which is the mount by Mount Megiddo, that valley there where the final battle will take place. And some of the judgments of the sixth seal are here in this thirty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, but there are other judgments that belong to some of the other seals, kind of thrown in as a bonus. And it is something that, as we're considering the judgment, the wrath, the fury of God, the rage of God on evil in humanity, there are people outside these doors just going about their business thinking that life's okay the way it is without the Savior.

And I say that not to lay guilt on us but to ever keep before us that we want to learn the Bible so that we can use the Bible. And this is God's system. Now, the name of the kingdoms that are associated with judgments are often symbolic. Sometimes they're literal. In the last days, some of the armies that will come against Israel and be destroyed that we read about in Ezekiel, such as Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, they're going to be those countries.

But then there are others there. They represent more that goes beyond themselves. Gog and Magog are just the enemies against God's people, all of them. And in this chapter, Edom epitomizes those who hate Israel, those ancient people. There are no more Edomites today.

There will not be any more Edomites. But they represent because they were known for their natural strength as a people, their arrogance, and their hatred for the Jews. They cheered on the Babylonian judgments against Jerusalem. And Obadiah's book is dedicated to them, judgments on Edom and their behavior. But Isaiah, of course, expands this and says Edom is the poster boy. But it's all of them throughout history that have come against Israel that have garnered the fury of the Lord and bring down the judgment on them. Now, what is said of Edom in Isaiah's day, Jeremiah comes along and says it through Babylon. Well, Babylon was just a tiny little nation at this time under the authority of Assyria. But when Jeremiah comes along 100 years from the time of Isaiah, Babylon is running the world. And he almost parrots some of the things that Isaiah said about Edom, he applies to Babylon. That's because both prophets are saying to us, these are poster boys. It's not just them, but it is them also.

They will be judged as a people for their behavior, but there will be other peoples coming along in history who will behave like them and suffer the same judgment. And Babylon is known for her riches and her sorcery. See, the Chaldeans lived in Babylon, but they were sorcerers.

They were heavy into their occult religion and so much so they took over the nation. Not Nebuchadnezzar. Of course, Nebuchadnezzar was killing anybody he didn't like when he had a dream and they couldn't answer it.

It wasn't for Daniel stepping in. Isn't that interesting? Daniel saving the lives of a cultist. There's an evidence of love in the Old Testament, of Christian love in the Old Testament prophet. Well, the animals that we come across in this chapter, they have indicative of meaning too. And you know, what we get when we get to Revelation, God says, I'm going to give you symbols because these symbols endure time. Whereas, you know, names of other places they change, names of people change, you know.

But the symbols do not change. A lion is a lion as a symbol of something ferocious and something that can do much harm as opposed to an ox which is known for its strength and not for its ferocity, though they can be fierce too. Anyway, the animals, the ceremonially clean animals of verse 6 for example, they speak of God's justification in His judgment. But then we get to verse 11 and we have unclean animals and they speak of God's rejection. And so the context will help us out there. So that's a little background to this 34th chapter.

We get to chapter 35, it all changes. It's like a storm stopped and the sun comes out for those of you who like sunny days and everything is radically different at the coming of Christ. But let's go look at verse 1. Come near you nations to hear and heed you people. Let the earth hear and all that is in it.

The world and all things that come forth from it. Verse 2 now. For the indignation of Yahweh is against all nations and His fury against all their armies.

He has utterly destroyed them. He has given them over to the slaughter. It indicates of course the severity of the global judgment that Isaiah saw and he is putting in writing because God told him to. Unprecedented judgment as Jesus said, such as the world has not seen. Verse 2 speaks of rage. Verse 6 speaks of the sword.

Also the sacrifice. Verse 8 speaks of the vengeance of God. Joel, a prophet that may have preceded Isaiah, he writes and he writes in those short three passages, man, he packs a lot into the future and it's not good for the enemies of God's people. He says, I will also gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat and I will enter into judgment with them there on account of my people, my heritage Israel, I've added that, whom they have scattered among the nations.

They have also divided up my lands. You see God is being very protective and the valley of Jehoshaphat, well Jehoshaphat means Yahweh judges and so the name, you know, when he says the valley of Jehoshaphat, he's talking about the valley of judgments. We know to be Armageddon because the Bible expands on it and ultimately, Megiddo, Revelation 16 one, then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.

So you know, you have people talk all God is love and he said, well he is, but he also has a side that is no nonsense to those who hate him. Revelation again, 16, 16, and they gathered them together to a place called in Hebrew, Armageddon. Back to Joel one more time, chapter three, verse 12 to 14, let the nations be wakened and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat.

Well there's your woke people right there. Let them be awakened. For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle for the harvest is ripe. Come go down for the wine press is full.

The vats overflow for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision for the day of Yahweh is near in the valley of decision. It's poetic how he comes out multitudes, multitudes.

It's like the, you know, the charge of the light brigade, you know, volley, thunder, cannons to the left, cannons to the right, but here it is totally spiritual and it's going to happen. The prophets did not live to see, but they lived to preach it. And it's just amazing to me how much we can look back at what they did not see fulfilled. We can see much of it. Isaiah 53, I mean he writes this 53rd chapter, what we call the 53rd chapter, he did not know anything more about Messiah than that. Look how much information we have when we look back. Just phenomenal, the amount of faith that those men carried with them when they penned the scriptures so that we could say, I believe in the word of God.

I believe it is inerrant. I believe in its teachings and its facts. So an interesting part about this verse, to kind of highlight what I'm saying, is looking at verse 2, he says, and I think the translators of the New King James have got this right, he has utterly destroyed them, he has given them over to the slaughter. Well, the prophet is speaking in past tense.

It hasn't happened yet, but so real and sure of it was he that he wrote it in the past tense. And we come along and we say, yeah, we see the whole world lining up for this. We look at the Brook of Revelation, if you lived in the days of carts and buggies and horses, you say, there's no way you could fulfill the prophecies of Revelation. And that's why many of the commentators in the older days allegorized all of Revelation. But we can now come with literal meaning.

We can say, these are helicopters, these are fighter jets, these are bombers, these are drones. We have so much more insight, but what are we going to do with it? Again, back to Revelation 19, and the rest were killed with the sword which proceeded from the mouth of him who sat on the horse, that's the Lord, and all the birds were filled with their flesh, the carnage that will be at Armageddon. There will be too many bodies to bury. Some of it may, well, just, you know, the scavengers are going to feast. So, we get to the tribulation age.

The church age, which we now live in, the age of grace, the age of the church, it's going to pass. It will be eclipsed by the great tribulation period, the time of Jacob's troubles such as the world has never known. The great tribulation is afoot in Isaiah's 34th chapter. We look at verse 3, he says, also their slain shall be thrown out, their stench shall rise from their corpses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.

Well there's a little poetic touch there, so much blood that it, you know, human body can put out a lot of blood. And you have armies, armies, not an army, but armies there being slaughtered. And so, the grave diggers will be over-realmed according to verse 3, sheer volume of the dead.

They were under the satanic power of the beast and the false prophet, and the beat, the prophet's, the Antichrist will have a sidekick, a false prophet who will do lying signs and wonders. And they will be gathered there in an effort to annihilate the Jews, to just finally, we're going to put an end to them. You know, the Nazis had a big meeting on how can we kill all the Jews without bullets?

We can't just shoot them all. We have to come up with a way where we can industrialize the genocide. And the chambers, the gas chambers were one of their approaches to this madness. These were highly educated, formerly educated men.

Most of them are military lawyers, and sitting down trying to figure out how can they perform their genocide in a very economical and expedient fashion. Anyway, Isaiah and John give vivid descriptions of the Battle of Armageddon, Revelation 19 again, verses 19 through 21. And I saw the beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies gathered together to make war against him who sat on the horse and against his army. That's us. We're his army. Then the beast was captured.

I want to see that. I want to see, I'm assuming it's going to be one of those angels, because when you read Revelation, those angels, man, they are fierce. Even just when they cry out with a loud voice, when they grab that person by the neck, and he will be seized. Anyway, it says the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. This is what is calling for the judgment of God.

And the rest were killed with the sword which proceeded from the mouth of him who sat on the horse. And then he adds this in Revelation 19, and all the birds were filled with their flesh. See, that matches what Isaiah said that the scavengers would be too much for them, the carnage that will be there.

So this is just amazing. Looking at the prophecies of the Bible that have been fulfilled, we have no reason to doubt any of this. Verse 4, all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll. All their hosts shall fall down as a leaf falls from the vine, as the fruit falling from a tree. So where he says the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, he's talking about this cosmic impact, likely the view from earth.

I don't think he is saying the sun will be taken away, because then now you've got a science issue which the Bible is not promoting. But he is saying the intensity of it all is going to be just as though the universe is in disarray from earth's point of view. And there will be media showers and there will be phenomenon and things like that taking place. No question, it's a big world.

There are a lot of people on it. All of this is not going to be happening in one city. It's going to be spread out, and it's going to be continuous. The Canadian wildfires weren't even a drop in a bucket to what is coming, and that's just a forest fire, not factoring in all the other things that are going to go crazy. Look what God did with the flood, and where do you think the Grand Canyon came from? Somebody told me, and I have a good source, the Grand Canyon was so scientific, it was started by a cheap guy who lost a penny in the sand, and we're glad he found that penny.

The canyon would be bigger. You've got to see the rich guy digging for, okay, let's go. Verse 5, for my sword shall be bathed in heaven indeed, it shall come down from Edom, and on the people of my curse for judgment. Remember God said if you curse the Jews, I'm going to get you.

Well, this is it. Verse 6, the sword of the Lord is filled with blood. It is made overflowing with fatness, and the blood of lambs and goats, and the fat of the kidneys of the rams. The Lord has a sacrifice in Basra, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. Now again, Edom, the poster boy, Basra was the principal city. That factors into the end. We'll come to that later on in Isaiah also, but where he says my sword is bathed, it is soaked.

This has to happen. He uses the clean animals in connection to the Jewish ceremonial rites to say this judgment is justified, is justified, and it is necessary. But now we come back to Edom, not Eden, the garden, but Edom, which speaks of the descendants of Esau, Israel's ancient, inveterate enemy, the Edomites. They're singled out here in verses 5 and 6. Now of Isaac and Rebekah's twin sons, and they only had these two, these two boys, Esau was the firstborn. Edom means red, and Esau is known to have been red, red haired, red skinned kind of thing.

But Esau is the firstborn, then Jacob, and according to the consistent interpretation of illustration and images inscription, expositional consistency, we have this from 1 Corinthians 15. The spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. Well, Edom was the natural. I mentioned to you they had natural strength.

They were arrogant. They did not have the need for God that the righteous Jews had. And it is that way with us. We're born in a natural person. The natural man is lost in their sins. It's not until they become spiritual. They are born again. Jesus said, you must be born again.

You have to get away from being a natural person, born in iniquity, to becoming a forgiven person, born of the Holy Spirit, and filled with the Holy Spirit, basically. The Edomites, again, these descendants, nicknamed red, the descendants of Esau, nicknamed Edom. That became their identity. Now Rebecca, when she was carrying these two children in her womb, she was aware that something wasn't right. It was a war. I mean, you know, you talk about the baby kicking. These two were just like in karate class. And so we read about it because these two natures couldn't, they could not reconcile with each other.

And symbolically, that's what the lesson is from this. Genesis 25 verses 22, 23. But the children struggled together within her. And she said, if all is well, why am I like this?

She had to be miserable. And so she went to inquire of Yahweh. And Yahweh said to her, two nations are in your womb. Two people shall be separated from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other.

And the older shall serve the younger. And so the Arab world, Esau, part of that, they are, you look at the Middle East today and Israel is flourishing, he's powerful. He doesn't have the oil fields.

He has the water. But you know, even this week, there's been some attacks. And now Israel is using drones to take out the boogeymen.

You got to like that. They just have the sheer hatred for Israel. They enjoy this hatred. You look at a little child, you see a cute little child. They see a Jewish child, they want to kill it.

I remember working in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for a long time and there's a large, but that time may still be the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. And you'd see the buses, the school buses going to the Shiva's, the Jewish schools and all these cute little kids. They had little David Locks and little beanies on.

They all seem to have glasses on because they were future accountants. You can't say something like that about other races. The Jews go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be five dollars. But it's not an anti-Semitic statement but they're just so cute. And you look at them, and I was a Christian, and I said, why are people just not bothered by harming these children? Satan. Satan has filled them, and God is calling it out through Isaiah. This key unlocks, interpreting this chapter, understanding who Edom is, her beginnings, the symbols that accompanies Edom, Esau and Edom. So the recipients of judgment are not limited to Edom, it's inclusive of all those who hate the Jews to this very day.

You would put Nazi Germany, you've got to make that distinction because not all Germans are Nazis, but Nazi Germany hated the Jews. Well, whoever supports Edom sides against God to this day. Going back to Genesis 12, you side against Israel, if you hate Israel, you come against Israel, you're coming against God. And the hatred climaxed between the Jew and the Edomites when, as Obadiah 11 tells us, and I'm going to read Psalm 137, when they cheered on the destruction of Jerusalem. Psalm 137, verse seven, remember, O Yahweh, against the sons of Edom, the day of Jerusalem, who said, raise it, raise it to its very foundations, destroy it, get rid of it. We hate it. And that is going on.

It's funny, the Muslims have done what they could to destroy any of the Israel, the Jewish history. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new additions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross Reference Radio.