Revelation Chapter 8 (Part III) The First Angel

 By Odon Bulamba (24th June 2005)



Revelation 8:4
And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.


The chapter 8 starts telling us about what we have been crossing since the 70s (1970) according to scientists. This message is being fulfilled right now but people don’t see it and the only thing that covers it, are the prayers of people like you and me. The more we pray the more the angel holds the incense and puts perfume mixed with prayers but at some stage, God will say: “Enough, I don’t want to continue to receive this glory while people continue to suffer. This must stop. This is enough with the perfume I will change the time”.


Remember what is written in the book of Ecclesiastes, everything has its time. There is a time to eat and a time to vomit, there is a time to dance and a time to sit quietly. For God, it is the same. He has a programme for everything under the sun. He knows you were born yesterday and he knows tomorrow you’ll die. He knows yesterday you did something and tomorrow you will not be able to do it again. He knows when people pray and has heard them for days or months but one day He will end it and tell the angel it’s time to use that censer for another purpose.


Time is up for that censer to give God a nice aroma mixed with the prayers of the saints, and time has come for it to leave God’s Kingdom and shake the world a little bit.


What is a censer?
A censer is like a bowl where you put incense so that it can burn.


And the angel threw it on the earth
So the angel will take the fire from the altar, add it to the censer, take it out of God’s kingdom and throw it down “on the earth” and when it will come on earth, something will happen, lightning and thunder … some people will fear it and others will accept it as a normal thing. Some will explain this phenomenon scientifically, saying: “Something has happened somewhere and it creates this phenomenon. Physics can also explain the normality of this phenomenon according to the atmosphere or the nature”. Many things have been happening over the last 20 years, people can see them but they don’t accept or agree on the cause.




THE FIRST ANGEL


Revelation 8:7
The first angel blew his trumpet, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were hurled to the earth, and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.  Then, one of the angels holding the trumpets will stand up and blow the first trumpet.When the first trumpet is blown, hail and fire will come mixed together with blood.




Question? How can hail and fire mix?


Hail is just water, and fire and water can’t mix together. So, God will do something really strange, something the world has never seen. Usually water represents His Word but this time, He will take transformed water, transformed Word. Hail is not water you just put in your freezer to freeze and become ice. It’s something human beings try to explain geographically, evaporation, condensation and this and that to eventually fall down. But who can really define it because all of them are like small stones, have the same size, and never last on the ground. They melt and disappear quickly. When they fall, no one can count them and they make a specific noise, not like normal rain. It sounds like stones falling together with rain.


The Bible says in Revelation hail will be mixed with fire, and when fire and water are mixed up, they usually produce smoke. Water tries to kill the fire, fire tries to resist and finally, there will be smoke.


When the angel blows the first trumpet, God will try to send His Spirit on people who have been praying under the sun, so that what is written in the book of Joel will be fulfilled: young people will talk about the gospel, old people will have visions and so on. Unfortunately, the world will not accept that and politicians or others in this world will bring up another fire that will fight against the truth. That fire is called today: evolution of science. Whenever they say, God is coming back and his power is among us we can see this and that, they will say: No, this is not true it’s just some experience you can learn and study. Science can explain everything that is happening.

For example, six months ago the Tsunami hit Indonesia, scientists sat down and studied it. They said, “Tsunami comes from somewhere and we can explain it. They explained it to the entire world: it’s not something miraculous but we can geographically explain it. So those who have been told God promised to do things like these at the end of the time want to stop the logic of science. We tell you that Tsunami just exists and it has been there since a long time and we can explain it”.

 When the AIDS started, scientists claimed it was simple, just a matter of studying it and finding a medicine to cure it. But up to now, the virus is still alive. I remember around 1995 a new sickness came from Congo and they called it Ebola. This sickness causes you to die after 3 hours you catch it. Even if you go to the doctor, there is little chance to heal. It is contagious as well. The world said this is just something normal because science can prove it, we will find the remedy. But they forgot God said He would send plagues on you, famine, sicknesses and others.

 Science always makes people think they can explain and find a solution just so that we forget about the realities and promises of our God. So when the first angel will blow his trumpet, people will wander what to do: “There is hail here and fire there who can stop it and win?” It will create confusion between people: sometimes they’ll believe in evolution and sometimes they’ll trust in God and other people will accept both. For example, in a church you’ll hear it’s better for you ladies to become men, and people will do it, or it’s better for boys to drink alcohol and get drunk, they will do it as well.

 This first trumpet will cause things to happen inside the world not out of it and people who have wisdom according to the world will go to churches and teach them, misleading one third of the population living under the sun. They will be lost and no one will be able to come and give them life again. That’s why it’s written the third of the earth will be burnt up, then third of trees and the grass.


Jesus-Christ is the tree and we are the branches in Him. What are the trees that will be burnt? God created us in His image, so we represent Him. He said that you and I will become one, I will live in you and you will live in me. He gave us that privilege of becoming like trees in this world because we control everything around this earth. That day, we will lose the authority that was given to us if we try to mix things up: those belonging to this world and those belonging to the Word of God. God will put some aside because most people of God will leave Him for their own glory.


For example, most preachers will become politicians or when it’s election time some church people will help campaigning and say in churches: Vote Labour! (for example)


This shouldn’t surprise us because it’s time to see the smoke. Remember that smoke destroys oxygen, and smoke tries to put people confusion. For example: imagine that we suddenly see smoke coming from the kitchen, what will we do here in this room? I think the first thing will be to run, leave the building because we know where there is smoke there is a fire somewhere even if we can’t see it. There is a danger. someone might ring the Police and fire fighters will come.


So smoke is a sign of danger.


The church is crossing a danger today: the mixture between the Word of God and the power of this world and this will destroy the grass, and I’m sorry to say the grass is the newborn Christians, the very new ones in the Kingdom of God. They will be completely destroyed because if trees are “burned up” then, trees tell the grass this is the way, follow it, they will follow it, be “burned up” and we can’t avoid that.