This is a disposable planet, my friend. It was made disposable by sin. You wait till you see what its Creator does to it. He made it. Sin devastated it.
and he'll destroy it. It's a throwaway world now. It's a throwaway universe. The cosmos that came out of the chaos is going back to chaos. And out of the chaos will come a new cosmos.
Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. The numbers were staggering, tens of thousands dead or missing, billions of dollars in property damage, all from the 2008 earthquake in China's Sichuan province. No one anticipated the devastation. No one could.
Earthquakes basically come without warning, except that is for the most powerful earthquake ever, a cataclysm that is yet to happen. Fair warning, then, the next 30 minutes might just provide the information you need to escape that overwhelming catastrophe, as well as other disasters that indicate the beginning of the end. That's the title of John MacArthur's study here on Grace to You. It's a look at Earth's last days, the pre-written history found in Revelation chapter 6. And now here's John with the lesson.
Open your Bible now to the sixth chapter of Revelation. Revelation chapter 6. And we'll be looking at verses twelve through seventeen. And I looked when he broke the sixth seal. And there was a great earthquake.
And the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood. And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up. And every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the commanders, and the rich, and the strong, and every slave and free man, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains.
And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us. And hide us. from the presence of him who sits on the throne. and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come.
And who is able to stand? This particular scene cannot be described. We can make a an attempt at it. And I believe that we should because the scripture outlines six frightening features. And the detail here is given by the Lord in order that we might understand something of the horror of this day.
Let's take the first of the six. And maybe we won't even go beyond this one. Verse 12, I looked when he broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. Stop there. First of all.
He says there was an earthquake. There have always been earthquakes. They come now and then, here and there. Even in the first half of this time of tribulation, the time known as the beginning of birth pains, according to Matthew 24, 7, there were to be earthquakes.
So they've experienced some earthquakes more than they would be used to. But this isn't really talking about just an earthquake. I know that's the way the word is translated, and interestingly enough, it's probably as close a translation as you can get because there isn't really an English equivalent. The cataclysm that comes here as the Great Tribulation has begun, the second half. Is more powerful and more intense and more destructive than all the earthquakes of all time put together.
It is a single massive final event, God's wrath at full operation.
Now, God, at his own discretion, likes to shake the world now and then. He shook it at Sinai when he gave the law. He shook it when Elijah called on him. He shook it when Jesus, his son, was murdered before him. He shook it when he wanted to release Paul and Silas from jail.
And he shakes it now and then through history for his own purposes. But this is more than any earthquake, like even any of those that God Himself did. This is something beyond that. You'll be interested to know that the Greek word is seismos. From which we get the English word Seismograph, which is an instrument to measure shaking.
It means a quaking. A shaking and agitating, but the word earth is not here. The word earth is not here. It would have been better to translate it, and there was a great shaking. Because frankly, it isn't just the earth.
The first thing he mentions is the sun, and then the moon, and then the stars careening out of the sky, and then the sky splitting apart like a scroll, and only then does he say every mountain and island start to move. This is a shaking more than an earthquake. This is a seismos. in the universe Matthew 8. translates the same word seismos Tempest to describe what happened on the Sea of Galilee.
It's a shaking, an agitation, a severe agitation. Joel too. uses this same word. In the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Old Testament, in the prophet Haggai, that small little prophecy, chapter 2, verses 6 and 7, describe the same event. Listen to what it says: For thus says the Lord of hosts: once more, in a little while, I'm going to shake the heavens and the earth.
The sea also, and the dry land, and I will shake all peoples. Earthquakes frighten people. They create phobias, believe me. We constantly are being told about the big one. Out here in California.
We've been told for years that one day we're going to shake right off into the ocean. And we have a A sort of Fear of that. I mean, our population fears that every time there's a little shake. All the appointments in the psychological psychiatric offices go up. as people run there to deal with their phobias and their fears.
But whatever little shakings we experience are nothing to be compared with this. This is This is more erratic. a shaking than anything imaginable. The first thing that John describes is the second element. The sun became black.
As sackcloth. Made of hair. Sackcloth is what people wore to a funeral. Sackcloth was a rough Garment. That you wore when you wanted to mourn somebody.
You put it over you like a robe, and it went all the way to the floor so that none of you was seen. You wouldn't want to draw attention to yourself while mourning the death of someone. Black sackcloth of hair simply means that the sackcloth was woven most likely out of black goat's hair. It was very dark, very black. And that's how the sun will be as black.
as a black mourner's robe woven out of black goat's hair. The upheaval, the shaking shakes everything. And the upheaval is so enormous. That it blackens out the sun. What does blacken out the sun?
Why does the sun go black? Dr. Henry Morrison. wonderful scientist, creationist. Writes this.
The seismos described here is worldwide in scope for the first time in history. Seismologists and geophysicists in recent years have learned a great deal about the structure of the Earth and about the cause and nature of earthquakes. The Earth's solid crust is traversed with a complex network of faults, with all resting on a plastic mantle whose structure is still largely unknown. Whether the crust consists of great moving plates is a current matter of controversy among geophysicists, so the ultimate cause of earthquakes is still not known. In all likelihood, the entire complex of crustal instabilities is a remnant of the phenomena of the Great Flood, especially the breakup of the fountains of the Great Deep.
In any case, the vast network of unstable earthquake belts around the world suddenly begin to slip and fracture on a global basis and a gigantic earthquake ensues. This is evidently and naturally accompanied by tremendous volcanic eruptions, spewing vast quantities of dust and steam and gases into the upper atmosphere. It is probably these that will cause the sun to be darkened and the moon. to appear Blood red. That fits what the prophet said.
Fire and smoke, doesn't it? Blackness and darkness is often associated with judgment. When God judged Egypt, he brought thick blackness. When God came to Mount Sinai to lay down the law, it was shrouded in black smoke. When God judged His Son, you remember on the cross for our sins, from noon till 3 o'clock, the world went black.
And Isaiah looked at this judgment time, and he saw this blackness. It was revealed to him in Isaiah chapter 13 and verse 9. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming. Cruel with fury and burning anger to make the land a desolation. He will exterminate its sinners from it.
The stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light. The sun will be dark when it rises. The moon will not shed its light. Thus I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless.
Down in verse 13, I will make the heavens tremble, the earth will be shaken from its place at the fury of the Lord of hosts in the day of his burning anger. A blackness, a darkness comes over the universe. The third thing that he notes is that the moon becomes like blood. Literally, the text says the whole moon, you have a total eclipse. Whatever it is that causes it, it's vivid.
The blackened sun, of course, then hides the moon because it only reflects the sun. Joel the prophet said, the sun and the moon grow dark. And as I read you earlier, Joel said, God says, I'll display wonders in the sky and the earth, blood, fire, columns of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness, the moon to blood, before that great and awesome day of the Lord.
Now, you understand that when this begins to happen, it affects everything. It affects daylight and darkness. There will be no daylight. It affects plant life, it affects man, it affects the animal world. all the cycles by which animals function.
Plants function, humans function, thrown into total chaos. And then a fourth feature. Out of that blackness, Verse 13, the stars of the sky. fell to the earth. Fiery Balls Come careening out of the darkness.
And I guess you might say, if you remember the fairy tale, Chicken Little Sphere. comes true. The word stars, would you note Asterisk It can refer to any celestial body, large or small. Not limited to what we know as a star. It could be a star.
A star that is millions of times larger than our sun. As some are. It also could refer to an asteroid. Meteor. Perhaps that's the best understanding of it here.
The earth Is going to get showered. By Asterase plummeting out of the sky. Obviously, if that meant stars, It would burn us up long before it ever got here.
So, this is probably an asteroid shower or a meteor shower. Scientists, by the way, have speculated for years what a massive asteroid meteor shower hitting the Earth would be like. the the uh the unbelievable destruction that it would Create. Certainly, the stars are involved as the whole universe shakes and they begin to move out of their orbits. and they begin to function in a random way.
Spinning and whirling around in space as the whole collapsing universe begins to disintegrate. The earth is then plummeted. with fiery balls coming out of the sky. It's analogous, he says, to make it vivid. to a fig tree casting its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.
Fig tree can be covered with figs, and when the wind hits it, they just come down in mass. And where are people going to go? Where are they going to go in the panic of this? all over the globe. Where are they going to go?
Can they escape? Zechariah chapter 14 looks at the same scene. And it says, verse 6: it will come about in a day, there will be, in that day, that there will be no light. The luminaries will dwindle. Verse six.
It'll be a unique day, verse 7, which is known to the Lord. It's not day and it's not night. It's the same time. Then in terms that John can't even describe. Verse fourteen.
The sky was split apart. Like a scroll when it's rolled up. A couple of times in my life, I've had an opportunity to see a scroll. I mean, a really old scroll. I've seen the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The actual ones. In Jerusalem. I have held ancient scrolls. And one of the interesting things about a scroll is that as it's unrolled and rolled and unrolled and rolled and unrolled and rolled, it wears and ages. And as it sits, it dries out.
And it's Frequently the case that when you unroll a scroll And you get it. out at its tension point. Because it's been rolled up so long. and dried in that position, it'll crack. And John says it would be like rolling out a scroll.
and having it just Rip. in the middle and then Roll up. in two separate places. It says the sky was split apart in John's vision, literally, ripped apart. It pictures the whole of the sky.
like a scroll. Held open at tension, and all of a sudden, it's just ripped down the middle, and the whole sky disappears. It's all gone. The stars are flying all over the place, careening. The whole universe is shaking.
No sun, no moon. And the earth is being blasted with Asteroids. meteorites plummeting out of the sky. as the universe breaks up. The heaven that was so familiar to us, is ripped.
to pieces. This is the scene. Certainly, Isaiah again had it in mind in chapter 34. The Lord's indignation is against all the nations, his wrath against all their armies. He's utterly destroyed them, given them over to slaughter.
Their slain will be thrown out, their corpses will give off their stench, the mountains will be drenched with their blood, all the hosts of heaven will wear away, and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll. All their hosts, that's the stars, will wither away. Like a leaf withers from a vine, or as one withers from the fig tree. For my sword, he says, is satiated in heaven. I'm going to strike the heavens.
Why? Because that's been the domain of Satan, the prince of the power of the air. The whole universe is coming down.
So, this kind of a quaking isn't just the earth. He gets to the earth in the sixth feature of it. Verse fourteen. and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. This is hard to conceive.
Every mountain. and island. The whole unstable crust of the earth begins to move and shift. and the faults split and the volcanic gases come out. Dr.
Morris further says, the Earth's crust, highly unstable ever since the great flood, will be so disturbed by the impacting asteroids, the volcanic explosions, and the earthquakes that great segments of it will actually begin to slip and slide over the Earth's deep plastic mantle. Geophysicists for many years have been fascinated with the idea of continental drift. Several have published theories of a past naturalistic catastrophism involving what they call the Earth's shifting crust.
Some such phenomenon may actually be triggered under this judgment of the sixth seal, dwarfing the damage occasioned by all the mighty earthquakes of the past. Those who reside in regions Above such shifting crustal plates, we'll observe the heavens appearing to move in the opposite direction. He says. Everything shaking. Can I stop here and give a word to the environmentalists?
Can I give a word to the Save the Earth group? If you think man has messed up this earth, wait till you see what God does to it. This is a disposable planet, my friend. It was made disposable by sin. You wait till you see what its creator does to it.
He made it. Sin devastated it. And he'll destroy it. It's a throwaway world now. It's a throwaway universe.
The cosmos that came out of the chaos. is going back. The chaos. and out of the chaos will come a new cosmos. The new heavens and the new earth.
Peter wrote about that in 2 Peter chapter 3.
Well, Jesus summed all of this up that we've just seen in those verses when he said in. Luke 21, 11, and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. And when it happens. People will die of fright. They will be scared.
to death. Can you understand that? Of course you can. People are afraid of a lot of things, aren't they? They're afraid of a lot of things they shouldn't be afraid of.
And usually. Commonly. Normally. They're not afraid. of the one person.
they should be afraid of. Romans 2.5 says, That sinners are accumulating. are accumulating. Sinned. That someday is going to feel the wrath of God.
And those who have never feared him. We'll fear him then. But you don't need to be afraid. We don't have fear, we are Christians, do we? Because we have escaped the wrath of God.
We have been delivered from the wrath to come. Through Jesus Christ. We're not looking for this wrath. We're going to be caught up to be with the Lord before it ever hits. Amen.
Amen. Okay. If you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You will escape. The wrath.
to come. Fear him. Who, after he has killed, has the authority authority to cast you. Into hell. Yes, I say.
fear him Let's pray. Lord, this is so powerful.
So Frightening. And yet the world is so deceived. This kind of truth often rolls off without even a conviction. May it not be.
Okay. May they feel the terror of the Lord. And may they know that there is a God of wrath and vengeance. who is someday going to hit the deceived world with reality. And then it's too late.
And may folks know that they only have their lifetime. To come to Christ. to escape the wrath. To come. We thank you.
that we as Christians are waiting for Christ to come from heaven. Jesus Who delivers us? from the wrath to come. We thank you that we're looking for Christ. We don't fear you anymore.
as a God of vengeance and a god of wrath. Because we put our trust in Christ. Who has felt your wrath for us. On the cross. May we first of all be thankful And secondly, may we warn the world as those dear saints will someday who lose their lives.
Because they stand for the gospel. Help us to be willing in our time. to warn Sinners of your wrath. Make us faithful, Christ's name. Amen.
That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University, showing you the terrifying future days that will mark the beginning of the end. That's the title of John's series, The Beginning of the End, here on Grace to You.
Now, John, with what you said about the breaking of seal number six, the cataclysm that it launches, some listeners may wonder what, if anything, we can read into natural disasters that make headlines nowadays. As a Bible scholar, do you ever interpret major earthquakes and similar current events in light of biblical prophecy? Not in a specific sense. Because we understand that when our Lord in the Olivet Discourse, for example, talked about disasters when he talked about Earthquakes, when the book of Revelation talks about earthquakes, the context of those discussions is eschatological. that in the last days, in the Future, just before the Lord comes, these things will specifically happen.
And it gives great detail in the book of Revelation about the nature of these kinds of earthquakes, cataclysms in the sky, etcetera.
So we're really talking about a period of time in the future, eschatologically, that is known as. The time of tribulation the time of great tribulation. My understanding of Scripture is that this time with all of its cataclysmic disruptive earth-altering events. occurs after the rapture of the Church. That's what we call a pre-tribulation rapture.
The tribulation comes before the Lord sets up his kingdom, the rapture comes before the tribulation, so that those specific prophecies related to those specific cataclysmic changes in the world. occur after the church is taken out. The rapture, the church then being a signless event that could happen at any moment.
So earthquakes happening before the rapture are not the ones that are being described in the book of Revelation. You want to be very careful doing sort of headline exegesis and reading the headlines of any period of time into the Bible as if they were direct prophecies. Thanks, John. And friend, one day, maybe sooner than you think, one day the current events in the world will be the fulfillment of end times prophecy. How can you best prepare for what's ahead?
John's current study, The Beginning of the End, can help. Download that study from our website today. All five messages from the beginning of the end are available free of charge at gty.org. In fact, all of John's sermons from more than 56 years of his pulpit ministry are free in both MP3 and transcript format.
So start downloading today at gty.org. And friend, just a reminder about the impact you make when you support Grace to You financially. Every week of the year, John MacArthur's Bible teaching is available on television, over the internet, and on these daily radio programs. And we're reaching communities like yours near and far. If you'd like to partner with us in this global ministry, call 800-55GRACE or go to our website gty.org.
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Now on behalf of John MacArthur and our staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace TU television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378, and then be back here tomorrow for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
