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The Second Angel
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Second Angel
And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea.
At this writing; our science has mapped about 10% of the 100,000+ meteors and asteroids, that cross paths with our earth orbit.
Here at the second trumpet, is one that our telescopes missed. It’s as large as a mountain; and screams into our atmosphere ablaze, crashing into the sea. Can we even imagine the global video coverage…the complete shutdown of humanity…as we await the moment of impact? An impact sure to devastate a full one-third of the world.
This; on the heels of the earlier mass destructions. A great earthquake, with rolling aftershocks throughout the planet. Fire damage everywhere you look. People dying in huge, sweeping, cataclysmic surges. Truly, as the prophet has said:
The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunken man.
The meteor crash seems plain enough…generating who knows what far-reaching damages. No spiritualizing of the scriptures, will lessen this horrific tragedy. The results of this explosion are three:
1. One-third of the sea became blood.
2. One-third of the creatures in the sea, who had life, died.
3. One-third of the ships were destroyed.
We can make what we will of these in the natural realm. Knowing my Lord, our huge advances in science, mathematics, chemistry and biology, come into play here. One-third of the sea becoming blood is a chemical marvel, involving oxygen levels. One-third of the minority sea creatures (those in who’s nostrils and spouts is the breath of life) is again an atmospheric marvel, involving a change in air mixtures. And one-third of the ships destroyed, could be a far-reaching, calculated shock wave of immense force.
But beyond the natural, neither should we ignore the teaching of scripture on these things. Mountains are, in themselves, a hushed revelation. Ezekiel tells us that God himself, has a holy mountain for a dwelling place. In Micah, Daniel, and Zechariah; God speaks directly to the mountains, as a man would speak to a man. And in Isaiah, the mountains are commanded to break forth into singing.
Actually; throughout the scriptures, God can be found speaking to mountains, and to hills, and to rivers and valleys. We may discount these as God waxing poetic…but at the steep cost, of missing the spiritual teaching here.
Before John Deere, the bulldozer, or the laser-grader, Isaiah prophesied of the coming messiah:
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
But perhaps the most telling of lessons here; is when God spoke directly to this second trumpet burning mountain, over 2500 years ago:
Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain.
These are the spiritual truths of scripture, difficult though they be. Mountains, hills, valleys, rivers…all represent a spiritual equivalent, in the population of heaven. When considering the second trumpet, we may want to reconcile these spiritual truths with our present world.
The burning mountain is cast into the sea. Many expositors believe the sea represents all gentile nations, as opposed to Israel being the land. But again, the sea is first of all the sea. That salty wet stuff that covers most of the earth. This is where the burning mountain crashes. And though we here explore the spiritual reality of the sea, we should never diminish the natural reality, of this terrible global catastrophe.
The sea is a large place; where most of the living creatures have not the breath of life in their nostrils. Long a world of darkness and silence; the sea is an abyss of chaos, estranged from God. Men are caught from the sea, by fishers of men. They are pulled from a land of darkness and endless wandering, where is no breath of life. And they are born again; receiving the breath of life, when Jesus baptizes them with the Holy Ghost.
It is into this sea of humanity, that this burning mountain (which destroyest all the earth) is cast. And the lost and dying…already walking in darkness…know it not.
This sea of people are those same people…in the very next chapter…who will not repent of the works of their hands. Perhaps the houses and cars and TV’s, and gadgets. Despite all the havoc being wreaked around them, they refuse to stop worshipping devils, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they will not repent of their murders, or their sorceries (pharmaceuticals), or their fornication (widespread pornography), or their thefts.
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