Demonic Invasion from the Bottomless Pit - Part 1

Jim Scudder, Jr. (0:04)

The person that does not accept Jesus Christ in this life according to the Bible will be separated from God forever and ever in hell. Well, that's a good way of putting it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_2 (0:22)

Welcome to InGrace with Jim Scudder, the senior pastor of Quentin Road Baptist Church in suburban Chicago. He is the author of Raindrops in the Desert, co-author of The Spiritual War Against Israel, and co-author of Evangelism Made Simple.

Jim Scudder, Jr. (0:40)

Hi, this is Jim Scudder. Thank you so much for joining us again here on InGrace. We have a new week here on this Monday, September 21st, and we will be once again talking about Armageddon's Dawn. It's a verse-by-verse study of the Book of Revelation, and my title today is Demonic Invasion from the Bottomless Pit. I tell you, when you read the Book of Revelation, it is incredible. It's jarring, it's frightening, it's scary, but also you can see glory, you can see glimpses of what it's going to be like when all rebellion, all sin is finally put down and gone away. And that will be wonderful. But until that day, we do have demonic forces at work. And what we're going to read in Revelation 9 today is the fifth angel, the fifth trumpet sounds of the second series of judgments. The first seven judgments were seal judgments. The seventh seal was opening another series of judgments, the trumpet judgments. And the fifth trumpet sounds, and it's the star falling from heaven to the earth. It's to him, given the key to the Bottomless Pit, the abyss. And he opened the Bottomless Pit and there was smoke out of the pit, and a great furnace, and the sun, and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And we're going to talk about this, this demonic invasion. Why would God do this right now? And it all has to come down to the way that God has the plan for the end of the world as we know it. So we're going to get into this in just a moment. I'm glad you're with us for this study. If you want to get the prophecy chart that has all the information on this Revelation series, we have it for free. You can contact us right now by going to ingraceradio.com, ingraceradio.com, or call us at 1-800-78-GRACE.

If you make a gift of any amount, we'll of course send you the prophecy chart, which is free, but we'll also send you a book called Spiritual War Against Israel, Defending Biblical Zionism and Understanding Israel's Place in God's Prophetic Plan. I would love to send you these resources that will help you understand the end times and Israel's place in God's plan. Again, the number is 1-800-78-GRACE, 1-800-78-GRACE, or you can go to ingraceradio.com.

We're going to talk about a serious subject, so I want to get the humor out of the way at the beginning, right? There was a politician, and I hesitate to give you this story because we have a fine politician in the crowd today. Senator Dan McConkie is here, a friend of mine, good man. So this is not Senator McConkie. This is some other politician. And I don't even think of you as a politician. He's just a good Christian guy that's helping with good laws in our state. Anyways, so there was a politician that was having surgery. And when he woke up, they had him in a recovery room with the curtains drawn. And he was surprised because the surgery wasn't supposed to take that long. And he wondered why the curtains would be drawn because it shouldn't be nighttime yet. So we asked the nurse, why would the curtains be drawn? He said, is it nighttime? And she said, no.

Believe it or not, there's a fire in a building next door, and we didn't want you waking up to think the surgery was unsuccessful.

And we laugh and we chuckle because that's funny, but what we're gonna deal with today is something that is absolutely not funny. It's something that is quite serious and quite horrible. We're studying Bible prophecy. We're studying the Book of Revelation, one of the favorite topics that I get to study and deal with, because it's so interesting to know that the Bible has been accurate in predicting the future. And there's a lot of people that have tried. We had a meteorologist here. He had been with the National Weather Service for 30 years, and he's the only one I've ever heard, the only weatherman that I've ever heard, that admitted that they got it wrong a lot. I said, isn't that refreshing?

He wasn't a TV weatherman. He was the real thing. He knew everything about the weather, but predicting the future is impossible unless you are outside of time, and then you know what the future would be, and you say, does that mean God causes the future? Sometimes it does, but he also has allowed us to have a free will and make decisions, and they're legitimate decisions. You legitimately can decide. We're not puppets, we're not robots, and that's what is unique about the way God created us, to have that free will.