Chapter BY Chapter

Now, combine that with the sting of a scorpion coming from each of these creatures.

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Here are some descriptions of scorpion stings:

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“I got stung 3-1/2 days ago on the top of my left foot in my yard in Anthem. Slight pain and numbness which moves around to different areas, also last night 3 days after the sting, was my worst time as my right arm was very numb and I had a weird taste in my mouth that I never had before plus cold sweats which woke me out of my sleep. I also felt weird sensations at times especially after laying down at night plus twitching in my left leg then numbness in my right foot, I am 240 pounds. Not fun and good luck, call poison control for advice.”

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“I was stung late one night and it was horrible. I immediately tried to take an aspirin for the pain, but thought the milk I was taking with it was spoiled as it felt as though it was soaked in a cotton ball. With each heartbeat it was as if I were being stung again, and numbness began creeping up my leg. I finally went to the ER but had to wait quite a while to be seen by anyone. Meanwhile, I could not even drink water as it felt like wet cotton. When I was finally seen by a doctor, my bp was almost 200. I was given an injection and I remember the doctor telling my husband to look at my tongue as it was flicking incessantly back and forth. I then needed another injection before the doctors felt that I was going to be okay. The entire right side of my body was numb for about three months and then it gradually subsided with my foot being the last part to regain full feeling. Hope I never get stung again.”

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“I was sleeping on my side when I woke up to a tingling in my nose. We captured the scorpion later on in the evening at the foot of the bed and I took it to an expert, who identified it as a bark scorpion. I was absolutely panic stricken from the pain and the thought that this thing had been crawling on my face, not to mention how or why the heck it stung me just inside my left nostril. The intense pain lasted 2 hours. Even though I was told by poison control to ice the area I could not have anything touch it. This was followed by a few more hours of severe pain. This was followed by a strange pulling numbness at the site down toward my mouth. Now 11 days later there is still some residual uncomfortable feeling in the area, but I survived and i am sure I will be fine.”

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“15 hours of excruciating pain on foot. Got bitten walking on driveway with flip flops on. Two and a half hours later face went numb, arms went numb and I couldn't read. Ended up in emergency. Top of my ears were numb. Slurred words and could barely drink with swollen mouth. I was a level 3 and level 4 was the level you needed the anti-venom. Was observed for 3 hours left the hospital. Was in agony for 15 hours. Regained most of my vision by second day. No more pain or numbness. Two and a half days later toe still numb. Just glad the pain and tingling is over.”

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“We use to live in the Tucson area and our house must have invaded a nest of scorpions, because we were each stung 4 to 6 times. It was like a bad wasp sting lasting a couple hours and relieved by ice packs. Now we live in the hills north of Sun City and we have lots Bark Scorpions. I was stung on the upper thigh getting into bed 4 times before I could get up and out. The severe pain lasted about 20 hours; it felt as though someone had set worms of hot coals under my skin, wiggling, hot and painful. After 20 hours it was bearable and after 36 hours the pain was gone, but the numbness stayed for about two weeks.”

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Now imagine a swarm of flying scorpions that covers the earth and they don’t eat any vegetation.  All they do is go after people.  Instead of the pain lasting for 3 days or 2 weeks, this is going to last for 5 months.  It will hurt so bad that those that are bitten will wish death on themselves.  But they won’t be able to die.  They only way to avoid this plague is to have the seal of God on your forehead. 

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How do you get the seal of God on your forehead?

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(Accept Jesus Christ as your savior and testify for his sake)

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In order for the Israelites to avoid the 10th plague in the Exodus, they had to splatter the blood of the Passover lamb on their door lentil.  In order to avoid this plague in the book of revelation, one must accept the gift of The Lamb of God’s blood that he shed for all of mankind. 

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Now John gives a more detailed description of the plague locusts.  They will have:

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1. An appearance like horses prepared for battle.

2. Heads that look like they have a crown of gold on them.

3. Long hair

4. Teeth like a lion’s teeth.

5. Breastplates like breastplates of iron.

6. Noisy wings making it sound like horses rushing to battle.

7. Tails and stings like scorpions.

8. A king over them – the angel of the bottomless pit who is named “Destroyer.”

 

If you see one of these, you know you are in The Great Tribulation.  I think the thing that is scariest other than their scorpion sting is the teeth like lion’s teeth – they are carnivorous!  So, if you see one of these, repent and accept Jesus as your savior.  It is your only way out of this plague.

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Well, that was the first woe.  Two more woes to go!

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The sixth angel blows his trumpet and then four angels that are bound at the river Euphrates are released.  These angels were prepared for this by the very hour, day, month and year.  God has this whole plan of history mapped out by the hour. 

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They are released to kill a third of mankind.  They are going to do this through an army.  The number of their mounted troops is 200 million.  Not 200 million foot soldiers, but 200 mounted troops.  The horses of the mounted troops are very peculiar.  They have:

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1. They have breastplates that are orange, purple, and yellow.

2. They have heads like lion’s heads.

3. Fire smoke and sulfur come out of their mouths.

4. Tails like serpents with heads, which also wound.

 

This is why people in The Great Tribulation should repent as soon as they see the locusts with scorpion tails.  After that their chances of survival go down by 33%.

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It is by these plagues that a third of mankind will be killed.  It appears to be a fiery or chemical weapon, and very devastating.  This is a very horrifying way to die.  A fire will first burn and peel away the epidermis - the thin outer layer of skin. After five minutes under a flame, the thicker layer of skin - the dermis - shrinks and splits open, and fat begins to leak out.  A body on fire can sustain its own flame for a long time. Your body fat (which starts leaking once your dermis cracks) can serve as a fuel source for the fire. Clothing can act like a wick and feed the fat into the flame. Under these circumstances, a body can continue to burn for up to seven hours.  The most severe burns cause so much damage to your nerves that you are no longer able to feel pain.  The next thing that happens is the thermal decomposition of vital organs or body parts. Essentially, organs that you need in order to live get destroyed by the heat or the flame itself.  People who are on fire scream and for those who have witnessed it, it is almost unbearable to hear the person suffer. 

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Here are some first-hand experiences about being on fire:

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"The scariest part was the odor of burning flesh and the hard reality that that was my very own flesh," Jeremiah recalls. "Then I smelled some acrid smoky smell, am guessing it was from my clothes burning coupled with a choking smell of the burning petrol. That was followed by an unpleasant sulfurous-like smell; very disconcerting. ... And then it finally settled on some kind of sweetish porky smell, which, ironically, was the most nauseating.  To make matters worse, as I thrashed around in agony, the fire slowly started to consume the oxygen around me, effectively starting to suffocate me.  Breathing in the superheated air, felt like cooking my mouth, throat, and lungs. This continued for two to four minutes. If that doesn't sound like a long time, try experiencing it while on fire. Or just stick your hand in a pot of boiling water for that long. It seemed like years.” (Jeremiah was set on fire due to mob justice for a false accusation of stealing)

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“Suddenly I felt a cold liquid running over my head.” Said Souad.  “Then, I was on fire. I slapped at my hair. I screamed. My dress billowed out behind me. Was it on fire, too? I smelt the petrol and ran, the hem of my dress getting in the way. Did he run after me? Was he waiting for me to fall so he could watch me go up in flames?  There were women, I remember, two of them, so I must have climbed over the garden wall and into the street. They beat at me, I suppose with their scarves. They dragged me to the village fountain; I felt the cold water running on me and I cried out with pain because it burnt me too. I heard women wailing over me. "The poor thing . . . The poor thing . . ." I was lying in a car. I felt the jolts of the road. I heard myself moan.”  (Souad was burned because of an attempted honor killing because she got pregnant out of wedlock)

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“There were women, I remember, two of them, so I must have climbed over the garden wall and into the street. They beat at me, I suppose with their scarves. They dragged me to the village fountain; I felt the cold water running on me and I cried out with pain because it burnt me too. I heard women wailing over me. "The poor thing . . . The poor thing . . ." I was lying in a car. I felt the jolts of the road. I heard myself moan.

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“A minute or so after firefighter Johnson worked himself into his shelter, the first wave of heat and flame and noise swept over him. It lasted about five minutes. The shelters did their jobs well, deflecting most of the fire's radiant heat. He and the others left their shelters to put out some spot fires and to burn other areas of brush to better protect themselves. Another wave of fire was coming, and they knew it would last much longer. They covered themselves once more. Embers and chunks of debris rained down on Johnson's shelter. From inside, he tried to knock them off while constantly shifting his weight to keep his shelter edges pinned down. He heard nearby trees burst into flame with a whoosh. He tried to peek out of the shelter, and smoke and hot air poured in. He thought about his year-old son, but mostly he thought about his missing crew member. How would he explain to her parents that he had let their daughter die?  The firefighters had packed close together, which reduced their overall exposure to heat and put them near enough to talk to one another over the roar of the fire. They tried to calm a frantic crew member who wanted to run, which has happened, several times—convinced he'll burn to death, a firefighter in a shelter figures he would be better off trying to outrun the flames, or just getting the inevitable over with more quickly. During the 1990 Dude Fire near Payson, Arizona, during a burnover that lasted 15 minutes, firefighter Curtis Springfield called out to his colleagues, “I can't take it anymore.” He then broke out of his shelter, sucked hot air into his lungs, and died. The Dude Fire killed five other firefighters who left their shelters or hadn’t fully deployed them. Four firefighters who stayed under their shelters during the burnover survived, most with minor burns.  During the Little Venus Fire, after the flames passed through Johnson's deployment site along the creek, the heat ebbed and the smoke cleared. Forty-five minutes after the second wave of fire hit them, the nine firefighters emerged from the shelters to find one another relatively unscathed, with only a few minor burns. The tenth firefighter had deployed her shelter in a rocky streambed, and although she had faced a more intense wall of flame, she, too, was unhurt.”

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The means of this judgment is truly horrific.  This time, God uses a human army with horrifying weapons to destroy people.  The fact that this army is using fire shows that their intent is not to destroy military targets, but rather human lives.

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Now we come to the reason that God is doing all these plagues:

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“The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.”

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This is a two-fold reason.  First, God is sending plagues to get people to repent.  Second, God is sending plagues to end the sinfulness of mankind.  Back in Genesis 3:22-24, God took a measure to make sure that a man could not go on sinning forever.

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“Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.  He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”

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God nearly wiped out the human race in Noah’s time because of the wickedness of mankind.  Genesis 6:5-8,

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“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.  The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.  So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

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God gave Sodom and Gomorrah a warning too. Genesis 19:12-14,

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“Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place.  For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”  So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up! Get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.”

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God also was set to wipe out all the Ninevites, but they repented.  Jonah 1:1-2,

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“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

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Jonah 3:6-10,

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“When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.  This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:

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“By the decree of the king and his nobles:

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Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink.  But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.  Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

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When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.”

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In the same way during the tribulation, God is ending the lives of all those that do not repent so that mankind cannot continue perpetually passing on sinful living.  He is also giving them a chance to repent.  It will be their last chance. 

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God’s Judgment in the Last Days: