Pastor Barry's  "Chapter & Verse"  Day 36

February 5;      Revelation 8:6;       246/260(III);        ‘The Seven Trumpets’

Revelation 8:6 So the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

The great tribulation, or the last 3.5 years of the tribulation are about to begin.  In the Old Testament trumpets were sounded as a call to war.  The Lord is about to make war on the antichrist and his forces.  Verse 4 tells us that the prayers of the believers play are role in what the Lord is about to do.  Never underestimate the power or the importance of your prayers.  Severe judgment is about to begin in response to the prayers of God’s people.  Again, in the Old Testament, trumpets were also blown as a warning signal and call to repentance.  The first four trumpets affect the natural world and the last three trumpets affect the unsaved.  The Lord will deal powerfully with those who have rejected Jesus, but it is never too late for them to accept Jesus.  It is hard to imagine, an unbeliever witnessing all of what will be going on and still refuse to turn their life over to Jesus.  The plagues that were sent upon the Egyptians were to not only cause Pharaoh to let the Jews go, but they were a sign to the Egyptians that the God of Israel is God, not the things the Egyptians worshiped.   The Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked and up until the very end, just prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ, the lost can be saved.  Unprecedented times.  Jesus doing all He can to draw the Jews and Gentiles to Himself.  The antichrist doing all he can to eternally separate as many as he can from the Lord.  The best thing we can do as Christians is the work of the Lord, getting as many saved as we can, so they do not have to go through all of this.