Audio Download

Rev 8:8-9 Part 2 – The Second Trumpet; a Burning Mountain Cast into the Sea

[Study Aired July 14, 2024]

We ended our last study with a review of the first of the two types of ‘the sea’ and the woman who sits on many waters. The first type with which we ended our last study was Babylon of whom we are told:

Jer 51:12  Set up the standard upon the walls of Babylon, make the watch strong, set up the watchmen, prepare the ambushes: for the LORD hath both devised and done that which he spake against the inhabitants of Babylon.
Jer 51:13  O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come, and the measure of thy covetousness.

The second type of the woman who sits on many waters and rules the whole world is Tyre:

Eze 27:3  And say unto Tyrus, O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles, Thus saith the Lord GOD; O Tyrus, thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty.

These are the same two cities who are used to typify our rebellious, proud, carnal-minded old man who exalts himself above the heavens in Isaiah 14 concerning the king of Babylon and Ezekiel 28 concerning the prince of Tyre.

Tyre is the second great type of that beastly organization of men, dominated by a great harlot, which “deceives the whole world, [while] thinking they do God a service.” Where is Tyre situated?

Eze 27:3  And say unto Tyrus, O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles, Thus saith the Lord GOD; O Tyrus, thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty.
Eze 27:4  Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty.
Eze 27:5  They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir: they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee.

How does God deal with the king of Tyre?

Eze 28:18  Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.

This is the same “fire” we read of in Revelation 8:8:

Rev 8:8  And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;

It is this very prophecy which declares the destruction of Tyre and her influence over the whole world.

In its negative application ‘fire’ refers to civil unrest and disobedience and rebellion as in this prophecy by Jotham, the only surviving son of Gideon, also called Jerubbaal:

Jdg 9:16  Now therefore, if ye have done truly and sincerely, in that ye have made Abimelech king, and if ye have dealt well with Jerubbaal and his house, and have done unto him according to the deserving of his hands;
Jdg 9:17  (For my father fought for you, and adventured his life far, and delivered you out of the hand of Midian:
Jdg 9:18  And ye are risen up against my father’s house this day, and have slain his sons, threescore and ten persons, upon one stone, and have made Abimelech, the son of his maidservant, king over the men of Shechem, because he is your brother;)
Jdg 9:19  If ye then have dealt truly and sincerely with Jerubbaal and with his house this day, then rejoice ye in Abimelech, and let him also rejoice in you:
Jdg 9:20  But if not, let fire come out from Abimelech, and devour the men of Shechem, and the house of Millo; and let fire come out from the men of Shechem, and from the house of Millo, and devour Abimelech.
Jdg 9:21  And Jotham ran away, and fled, and went to Beer, and dwelt there, for fear of Abimelech his brother.

The Lord’s ‘fire’ in this case was every man’s hand against his brother concerning Abimelech and his followers in Shechem.

Jdg 9:22  When Abimelech had reigned three years over Israel,
Jdg 9:23  Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech:
Jdg 9:24  That the cruelty done to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come, and their blood be laid upon Abimelech their brother, which slew them; and upon the men of Shechem, which aided him in the killing of his brethren.
Jdg 9:25  And the men of Shechem set liers in wait for him in the top of the mountains, and they robbed all that came along that way by them: and it was told Abimelech.

We will skip ahead to the conclusion of Abimelech’s treachery:

Jdg 9:52  And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire.
Jdg 9:53  And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to brake his skull.
Jdg 9:54  Then he called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died.
Jdg 9:55  And when the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, they departed every man unto his place.
Jdg 9:56  Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did unto his father, in slaying his seventy brethren:
Jdg 9:57  And all the evil of the men of Shechem did God render upon their heads: and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.

All this civil unrest and destruction is called ‘fire’ in the prophecy of Jotham the son of Gideon. Both Tyre and Babylon were destroyed by this same way:

Isaiah 14 concerns the king of Babylon signifying the great harlot who rules the whole earth with her false doctrines. This is where ‘Babylon The Great’ of Revelation 17 and 18 derives the force of that prophecy:

Isa 14:5  The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers.
Isa 14:6  He [the king of Babylon] who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.

Isa 14:13  For thou [the king of Bablon] hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
Isa 14:14  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Isa 14:15  Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
Isa 14:16  They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

The exact same message is conveyed to  us in the form of “the prince of Tyre” in:

Eze 28:6  Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God;
Eze 28:7  Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness.
Eze 28:8  They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the seas.

Where was Tyre located? It was situated on the same ‘sea’ that enriched Babylon. That “sea” symbolizes all mankind upon whom the lying religions of mankind prey and from whom the churches of this world become rich by means of all the “ships” of Babylon and Tyre which ply the waters of the “sea” and trade their smooth deceitful wares there in the isles of the sea.

Eze 27:8  The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy mariners: thy wise men, O Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots.
Eze 27:9  The ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise.

It is all the lies of Babylon that keep the riches “of the people of many isles” pouring into Tyre and Babylon. Tyre was an island city at the east end of the Mediterranean Sea, and Babylon literally and historically sat astride the great Euphrates River, and it was upon those waters that the wealth of all the nations kept pouring into Babylon. The same was true of Tyre, which was an Island nation just off the coast of Palestine. The holy spirit has seen fit to reveal to us all that these waters signify “peoples and multitudes, and nations, and tongues” who have been deceived and seduced by the merchants of Babylon and Tyre and with the merchandise of those merchants which they sell to those among whom they sail their ships with all their seductive wares.

Rev 17:15  And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

That is the “sea” within each of us. It symbolizes the corruptible flesh which we all are by birth. That is the sea into which this great burning mountain is cast. None of us ever asked to be that sea or to have that burning mountain cast into our flesh to cause us so much excruciating pain. That is why we are told it was “cast into the sea.” The false doctrine of mankind’s “free will” is only one of the items of merchandise that is sold by the “mariners which are in Tyre to occupy [Hebrew: sweeten] thy merchandise.”

Eze 27:9  The ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise.

No one yet has ever freely chosen to “believe a lie and be damned.” Yet when God sends us His “strong delusion” we are incapable of resisting:

2Th 2:11  And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
2Th 2:12  That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

We have all lived lives of condemnation, believing all the lies of Babylon, “until the time appointed of the Father.”

Gal 4:1  Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;
Gal 4:2  But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.
Gal 4:3  Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:

Our next question is:

What does “the sea became as blood” mean?

If we have seen that the ‘sea’ is our flesh and our flesh cannot please God in and of itself, and if we have already seen that the drinking of the wine is the acknowledging of our crucifying of our Lord and His sacrifice and His death for our sins, then we will easily understand that the ‘sea’ within us is the very same flesh with which we are all born and with which we all have crucified our Lord even as we proclaim that we are above doing such a thing. Yet Christ said “Divide it among yourselves… it is shed for your sins.”

Luk 22:17  And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves:
Luk 22:18  For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.
Luk 22:19  And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake [it], and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.
Luk 22:20  Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

We are not above doing such a thing, rather it is within our flesh to do just that. It is only as we acknowledge that we all have drunk of the wine of Christ’s blood in the New Testament that we are granted to look behind ourselves to see that it was our own “sea [which] becomes as blood.”

Understanding that it is our own ‘sea becoming as blood’ does not convert us overnight. After Peter had spent three and a half years with our Lord, after Peter had healed the sick and cast our demons, our Lord still said this to Peter in the very night of His apprehension by the Jews.

Luk 22:31  And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
Luk 22:32  But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
Luk 22:33  And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.

So the sea does not become blood until we are given to acknowledge that blood is the blood of our Lord that we caused to be shed by our sins. That is what “the sea became as blood” means, and until that Truth has been lived as Peter lived it, that sea is not yet become blood and we have not yet “Kept the things which are written therein” (Rev 1:3).

Our next question is:

What does “And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died,” mean?

If we are given to remember that the sea is “the waters of the great deep” before the spirit begins to move upon us, and that “great deep” is simply our flesh with all of its “giants in the land” full of cities which are occupied by giants of which we are told “kill every thing that breatheth,” then we should have no problem understanding that is not accomplished except through the process of judgment upon those “enemies in the land” which are the very same things as “creatures which are in the sea and have life.”

Deu 20:16  But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

Israel certainly did not do this overnight. In fact this is what we are told they did, and this is what happens within us as we “keep the things which are written therein;”

Exo 23:29  I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.
Exo 23:30  By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.

This is repeated in Deuteronomy.

Deu 7:21  Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for the LORD thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible.
Deu 7:22  And the LORD thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.
Deu 7:23  But the LORD thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.
Deu 7:24  And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.

In the end, all sin will be destroyed, but it will not be done all at once. It will only be done but by little and little, by third and by third.

Eze 5:1  And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber’s razor, and cause [it] to pass upon thine head and upon thy beard: then take thee balances to weigh, and divide the [hair].
Eze 5:2  Thou shalt burn with fire a third part in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled: and thou shalt take a third part, and smite about it with a knife: and a third part thou shalt scatter in the wind; and I will draw out a sword after them.
Eze 5:3  Thou shalt also take thereof a few in number, and bind them in thy skirts.

Eze 5:4  Then take of them again, and cast them into the midst of the fire, and burn them in the fire; for thereof shall a fire come forth into all the house of Israel.
Eze 5:5  Thus saith the Lord GOD; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her.
Eze 5:6  And she hath changed my judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that [are] round about her: for they have refused my judgments and my statutes, they have not walked in them.
Eze 5:7  Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye multiplied more than the nations that are round about you, and have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my judgments, neither have done according to the judgments of the nations that are round about you;
Eze 5:8  Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, am against thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations.
Eze 5:9  And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.

“Thereof shall a fire come forth into all the house of Israel” is said of those who are “few in number” and who are first “cast into the midst of the fire.” It is from verses such as this that the apostle Peter knew this:

1Pe 4:12  Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:
1Pe 4:13  But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.

1Pe 4:17  For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
1Pe 4:18  And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

Judgment must first begin at us. Judgment is not all at once, but it is little by little. It is by thirds because the spiritual significance of the number three throughout scripture, as these verses demonstrate is, not the number itself or the fraction itself, but it is the process of judgment that we are to keep of the things written therein:

Rev 8:8  And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
Rev 8:9  And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

“The third part of the creatures that were in the sea and had life died,” is telling us that judgment is a process which must first begin at us, the house of God.

What is the spiritual significance of …

The third part of the ships were destroyed?

We have already seen that Babylon and Tyre are both situated on the sea. We have been told that “every shipmaster and all the company in ships… were made rich… by reason of her costliness.” It is obvious that her wealth depends upon her location and her proximity to and her mastery of the sea. Let’s look again at what we are told of the ships of the sea in Revelation 18. These are the same ships that we are reading about here in Revelation 8:9.

Rev 18:17  For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
Rev 18:18  And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city!
Rev 18:19  And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

Eze 27:8  The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy mariners: thy wise men, O Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots.
Eze 27:9  The ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise.

The Hebrew word translated ‘occupy’ here in Eze 27:9 is ‘areb’, and it means ‘to sweeten.’ The wise men of this world’s religions “were in thee to sweeten your merchandise.”

The destruction of the third part of the ships of our sea is merely Biblical language expressing the little by little, one third by one third, process of destroying all the idols of our heart, which has begun as these symbolic seven trumpets sound as we keep the things that are written therein.

Summary

We have covered in this study the six different symbols within this second trumpet. We are reminded that these six symbols are one and all things we are to read, hear and keep within our own earth and our own heaven (Rev 1:3). They are in order:

1) A great mountain. We have seen that this “great mountain” begins to destroy the kingdom of the great image of the beast within us, which is struck on the feet of that image by a stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands and destroys the great image and replaces it and becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth.
2) This ‘mountain’ is burning with ‘fire.’ We have seen that this mountain is burning with fire because it is in the process of destroying the mountain of the kingdom of our old man who is dying daily and being “transformed” by the devouring flame which is the mighty Word of God. We saw that as the mountain or kingdom of the image of the beast decreases, and is being burned with fire,  the mountain of God within us increases till it destroys the kingdom of the beast and becomes a mountain that fills the whole earth.
3) This ‘mountain’ burning with ‘fire’ is cast into the ‘sea.’ We saw that the sea, from Genesis to Revelation, is the symbol of our flesh, and that it is into our flesh that the word of God is cast and begins, “by little by and by little”, by “third” and by “third” to kill and destroy all that is in our sea. We saw that our sea is dominated by the two great types of Babylon and Tyre, which make merchandise of us until we come to see them for the liars and cruel, heartless harlots they are.
4) This casting of the burning mountain into our sea causes the ‘sea’ to “become as blood.” The beginning of this little by little process causes our sea to become as blood. We saw that our sea becomes blood as we become aware of our own hand in the shedding of the blood of Christ in the New Testament, and the fact that we all drink of the cup that was His blood in the New Testament. We have seen that it was shed by us and it was given for our own sins. It is not some strange blood of some strange beast, and it certainly is not the blood of fish, but it is Christ’s blood which turns our sea to blood.
5) When the ‘sea’ “becomes as blood” this causes “a third part of the creatures which were living in the sea to die.” We have seen that the creatures in our sea which must die, are the weaknesses of our flesh along with the false doctrines of Babylon which prey upon the unstable waves of our weak flesh, and the natural desire of our flesh to want to hear only smooth and comforting words. We despise the words of judgment which are these fiery words of our Lord. “By little and by little”, and one third by one third these lying creatures that are in our sea and have life begin to die.
6) Finally the third part of the ships that were in the sea were destroyed when this mountain burning with fire is cast into the sea. We saw all the verses of Ezekiel and Revelation that demonstrate that these ships symbolize those who have made merchandise of us with their smooth sounding false doctrines and their lies. This again, we have seen, is but another way of telling us that the lies we have bought into, while we were in Babylon, and all who sold us on those lies must be destroyed by little and by little, by third and by third.

In our next study, Lord willing, we will see what is the spiritual significance of the third trumpet which we are commanded to read, hear and keep within our lives.

Rev 8:10  And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
Rev 8:11  And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.