In 2016, wildfires destroyed over 100,000 acres in Alaska, 3,559 acres in California, 17,787 acres in Nevada, and 15,401 acres in New Mexico. That totals more than 100 square miles. Many governmental agencies warn this trend is going to get far worse. They are saying we haven’t seen anything yet.

As Chapter 8 closes, an angel is sent from God to announce that three more mind-boggling judgments are about to be released. He begins by saying, “Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth” (Revelation 8:13). Despite how horrible the first four trumpet judgments were, it’s as if he is saying you haven’t seen anything yet. When the fifth trumpet is sounded, an angel is sent from heaven to open the bottomless pit. So much smoke billows out that the sun and air “were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit” (vs. 2). It will be far worse than decades of forest fires in America. Next, an army of demonic forces will be unleashed, serving as God’s agents, to “hurt…only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads” (vs. 4). They are symbolically described “as the locusts” (vs. 3), who will torment, but not kill, the lost for five months. They will inflict so much pain that “men seek death” (vs. 6), but God will not allow them to find it. When the sixth trumpet is sounded, four demonic angels will be unleashed to lead an army of 200 million “to slay the third part of men” (vs. 15). One-fourth of humanity will have already tasted death (6:8). Now a third of those remaining will be killed. Yet for all this, “the rest of men… repented not of the works of their hands” (vs. 20). Instead, they cling to the worship of devils, idols of gold, and…murders, sorceries, and fornication. One would think that all this suffering, sorrow, and pain, would bring an end of man’s stubborn refusal to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. However, sin will have a treacherous hold on these souls. Also, for those who previously understood, but rejected, the gospel during the Dispensation of Grace, a divine blindness will be imposed on them (II Thessalonians 2:11). Their earthly and eternal fate is sealed.

If you know someone who has heard the gospel but refused faith in the Savior, share with them that they will have no opportunity for salvation in the Tribulation. Now is the time to flee from God’s wrath to come while they still can.