Living Waters of Grace, March 27, 2026

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

I need to do better, I really do.

I need to grow closer to the Lord.

I need to deny myself more and fight against the things that my

pride wants to force me to follow.

I need to be committed to the things that Christ died for.

I need to be committed to the lives that the apostles lived in

my job, in my home, in my neighborhood, in my community.

Can you say the same thing that Pastor Clark just said?

Do you need to do better with your witness for Christ?

Of course, if you answered no, you probably need to listen very

carefully to today's message. We all need to increase our

fervency in sharing the gospel. Why?

Well, this study through Revelation should be a strong

indicator to the answer to that question.

Jesus is coming back, and our job here on earth is to prepare

as many people as possible for his return so that they will be

with him forever. Now here's Pastor Clark in the

Book of Revelation Chapter 9 with today's edition of Living

Revelation 9 · chapter mention

Waters of Grace. Who would have ever thought on

September 10th, that day we got up that our country would face

what we faced on September 11th, right?

It's still, you look back all these years and, and you see the

events of that World Trade Tower falling and it's almost like,

did it really happened? I mean, I can't believe that

this happened, but it did happen.

And it only took a few people with incredible planning to

destroy those towers and to try to destroy our financial markets

and all those lives that were lost during that time.

In verse 12, it says the 4th Angel sounded and the third of

the sun was struck, 1/3 of the moon, 1/3 of the stars, so that

a third of them were darkened, 1/3 of the day did not shine,

and likewise the night. And I looked and I heard an

Angel flying through the midst of heaven saying with a loud

voice, woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth because

of the remaining blasts of the trumpets of the three angels who

are about to sound. You think about Egypt again when

we go back to God's dealing through Moses with Pharaoh.

And there was three day period of complete darkness in the 9th

plague in Exodus 10. But what's being described here

is an unnatural darkness and it's one of the signs of the end

of the days. And Mark 13, it describes the

sun being darkened and the moon shall not give light.

The darkening of the sun and the moon and the stars portrays A

cosmic catastrophe. We think of what happened during

the crucifixion in Luke 30/23/44.

Now it was about the 6th hour, that's 12 noon.

And there was darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour

3:00 that's the time of Christ crucifixion.

The sun was darkened and the veil in the temple was torn in

2. So we see this judgment of God

that if you could imagine today, you know, I don't know, we get

sunrises, I don't know, probably what, around 6 O clock or

something. And we still have some daylight

up to around 9 O clock. Now days are getting longer that

you cut that by 2/3 and you only have 1/3 of the day that's

emitting lights and sunshine. What that will do to the crops

and the food ecosystem, food markets, it's just again going

to be catastrophic. And again, this is the the power

of God trying to get the attention of a hard hearted

human race. We see the 1st 4 seals that we

studied a few weeks ago. They were identified by horses,

meaning the swiftness of the judgments of God moving upon the

earth during this time of tribulation.

These judgments that we just studied, the first four are

clear enough and the indication of God's desire to get the

attention of the human race. But the X3 are going to be even

worse than the first four. And they're called woes, meaning

intense severity. Now, as time moves on in this

particular book we're studying, as I said, things will get even

more horrendous. And Chapter 9, we're just going

to go through a few verses here this morning.

We'll pick it up again next week.

But I already read the verses. But there's going to be the star

that falls from heaven. And this, this individual is a

person is going to be given a key to the bottomless pit.

Now, what happens to everybody who dies right now, if you're a

believer, the Bible says to be absent in the bodies, to be

present with the Lord. So our soul goes to be with

Christ in his present, but our body is laid in the grave until

the final resurrection, when Christ will actually raise those

bodies out of the graves and will be given new bodies in in

the heaven. That's the final resurrection,

but those who without Christ will go into the place of

holding until that final judgment.

And it's the element of hell, but not to the degree of what

will be experienced at the final judgment.

When the Bible says that whoever's name is not found, and

in God's land, book of life, that book that holds the names

of all those who belong to him, whoever doesn't have their name

in that book will be cast into that final judgment, which is

the lake of fire. But the fallen angels that left

the throne of God prior to the foundation of the earth were

Lucifer, who was the highest created Archangel of God.

His job was to reflect the glory of God.

If you remember, before the heaven, he had an amazing job.

But God creates us with free wills.

And what happened was Satan had the ability, Lucifer at that

time to desire to have the glory that God had.

And he thought, wow, you know, I want to be like God.

I actually want to exalt my throne above the Most High God.

I want to be seated where God's seated.

And so sin was found in him. And so that cosmic rebellion

caused him to be cast out of heaven with the fallen angels

and they were sent down to the abyss to be locked into that

place until this time that we're reading here in Revelation

Revelation 9 · chapter mention

Chapter 9. If you remember the story and

Luke and not the story, the teaching and Luke chapter 16.

Luke 16 · chapter mention

I, you know, I got to be careful.

Sometimes we say story is that made believe or everything in

the Bible is, is true. You know, Jonah was in the belly

of the whale for three days. You asked me how that can

happen. I don't know.

But have you ever seen the size of a whale's mouth and the size

of a human being? There's a lot of space in there

to be inside the belly of a whale for three days.

It's not a big deal. Unbelieving scientists will try

to make it like a big deal. So you don't believe it.

And if you don't believe that, then all of a sudden they try to

break apart the whole Bible so you don't believe any of it.

But believers in Christ, we have total confidence in the validity

of everything that's written in the Scriptures.

We believe everything from Genesis to Revelation is given

to us by God to help us to know who he is and what his plan is.

But, and Luke 16, it says there's this rich man in hell.

He had it made while he was on Earth, and he treated Lazarus

the Servant like dirt. Lazarus is a believer.

What goes around comes around because when you die, you can't

take your riches with you, right?

And if you don't know Christ, doesn't matter how much money

you have, you're going to suffer in hell forever.

Well, Lazarus, even though he had a tough life on Earth,

didn't have too much prosperity or wealth.

He's a rich man now in the next World, right?

It's just amazing how the roles are reversed.

But the rich man in hell, he says he can see the chasm

between him and where Lazarus is.

It's what we call Sheol. SHEOL, the bosom of Abraham, is

a place where the Old Testament believers and those who died in

Christ prior to the death, burial and resurrection of

Christ were stored or held, place of the peace of God, the

presence of God, but still in a holding pattern.

And then the other side of that was the place of Sheol, which is

this place of where unbelievers are.

And it says that he asked that this man Lazarus would be able

to be sent to him to dip the tub of his finger in water and cool

his tongue. For he says he's tormented in

the flame. And hell is a literal place of

judgement, isn't it? Hell is real.

And and the more we understand the reality of hell, the more we

want to make sure that people we care about and love aren't going

to have to be in that place. Because once you're there, it's

too late. There's no way to get out.

And you know the old phrase, wherever there's smoke, there's

fire? Well, what we see in this abyss,

whenever it's opened up, it says the sun of the air was darkened

because of the smoke of the pit, the place of hell.

And so this great shaft is like this.

Well, and it's this bottomless place, intermediate place of

punishment of the fallen angels and demons until the final

judgement of Lake of Fire. So they're down there, this

waiting for the state that they can be let out to literally make

all hell break loose on the face of the earth.

You think things are bad today? You see the permissiveness of

our society, the lack of respect for the things of God, the

pushing of God out of the school systems and out of the public

places of our nation, almost a crime to confess that Jesus

Christ is the only way the truth and the life.

And we also see the growth of pornography.

You know, my, I have a friend who is involved with the cutting

edge technology of, of Internet development and computerization

of, of our society. You know what drives that the

money that drives the growth of faster computers and capability

to surf is pornography. And he taught that shocked me

when he said, Clark, what do you think?

Where do you think these corporations get the money to do

all this crazy speed and and capability of of all these

things that are in our our homes now?

It's driven by pornography and pornography is rampant today.

Obscenity is is at an all time high and it's increasing the

levels of influence in our culture.

Christianity, The message of the Gospel is getting weaker in

these last days in the sense that these other things are

becoming so much more appealing and interesting to people.

But what is it going to be like when this abyss is open?

You think things are bad now, right?

Literally all hell will break loose.

And so we see that this torture of these creatures, it says

these locusts, these are horrendous beings.

I mean, I, I get freaked out from spiders, you know, and I

can't I, you know, I was in a place one time.

They, they said be careful when you go to bed because we have

scorpions down here. And I'm like scorpions, man, I

want to get out of this place now.

I didn't sleep too good that night.

I left the light on and they said they sort of crawl like her

along the cracks of the, of the room.

So all night I'm like, you know, looking around and putting the

covers up over my head, you know, but the scorpions thing is

like one of the worst heights that anybody could possibly

anybody ever been bit by scorpion in here.

That's why we like living up north, right?

The farther S you go, the more you get exposed to these things.

But they, they, John says the apostle that it's like the sting

of a scorpion, not literally the saying it is a scorpion, but

it's like the sting of a scorpion.

And it talks about these locusts.

Now these locusts can wipe out vegetation in a very short

period of time, as we saw in Exodus Chapter 9 and 10.

Exodus 9 · chapter mention

But these locusts are very, very interesting because they have

the face of a man, a body of a iron.

They have the body of a horse and they're they're strong like

iron. And so you're trying to

visualize what the really a weird looking thing.

You know, it can fly, it can sting.

What kind of creature is this? And can God make something like

this or of course, but these things are distorted from God's

original creation, right? They're part of the fallen

creation, the the opposite of what God intended.

And that's what's weird that whenever we decide to go our own

way, we become very, the Bible says we're creating the image

and likeness of God, literally we are.

But because what sin does, it distorts that image and it makes

us look like devils and act like devils in our society.

But these creatures, whatever they are, they're going to

torture all the unbelievers on the face of the earth.

So, you know, people think, well, if I hang out with Satan,

he's my buddy. When I go to hell, I'll be down

there with all my friends. We'll decide I have all good

time. Satan hates us.

Whether you're a believer, an unbeliever, he hates you.

He's not in cahoots with anybody.

All he wants to do is destroy it.

The Bible says he comes to rob, steal, kill and destroy.

That's his whole agenda. So when these demonic beings are

out of this abyss, they won't be able to touch the believers or

the 144,000 or they're sealed with the name of God in their

forehead. No matter what they want to do,

they can't touch them or harm these people.

They're protected by God during that tribulation.

But all the people are on the earth that are unbelievers that

could care less about the things of God.

They're the ones that are going to be tortured now at this time

also because of what's going to happen.

You know, the vegetation isn't impacted by these locusts.

Locusts would normally be going after leaves and trees and grass

and all that kind of stuff, but they're only focused on getting

at human beings. And I can't imagine what this is

going to be like. It says it's going to be 5

months of torture. The despair is going to be so

bad. It says in verse 6, in those

days men will seek death and will not find it.

They'll desire to die and death will flee from them.

It's almost like it's so bad. I want to commit suicide because

I can't imagine anything being worse than this.

They're not even going to have the capacity to end their own

life. The torture is just

unbelievable. Total despair and yet people

still won't turn to God. It talks about the appearance of

these locusts in verses 7 through 10 and their demonic

spirits inside these beings, just like the demonic spirits

that were in the pig. Remember the pigs and, and

whenever Jesus was dealing with them, they, they said cast us

out, the spirits that cast us into the swine.

And so Jesus, they didn't want to go into the abyss.

They said they didn't want to be locked up.

They wanted to have because there's an element of these

creatures still out there in this, in the world and the

society now, but the majority of them are locked up.

But there's an element of demonic spirits on the face of

the earth right now who are actually possessing different

types of beings, human beings, animals, people who are

possessed by the devil, the demon are people you don't want

to run into. Some people think Hitler was

possessed. The way he acted and the way he

lived, it wouldn't, wouldn't surprise me the evil that he

brought upon the face of the earth.

But these creatures are going to be so horrendous.

And this is an interesting thing.

You know, when this book was written, John didn't have the

ability to see technology like we see it now.

But people who served in Iraq and Afghanistan say that when

they read this verse, Christians, these remind them of

these helicopters that look like locusts.

And they make the sounds of many noise and the face of man

driving the helicopter, the potential with nerve gas like I

mentioned earlier, where they're able to spray and the pain that

will begin to inflict a large mass of people on the face of

the earth at that time, that the pain would be so bad that you

can't eliminate it without any kind of medicine.

There's no relief. So all these things are in some

ways aren't clear to us as we read it because we're saying,

well, what that, what does that look like?

What will that be? It can be this actual creature

in the essence of literal exegesis here of interpretation

of what we're reading. And again, it leaves room for

the technology of the modern times to bring these things upon

the face of the earth. So how many want to be here for

that? I pray today if you're here and

you don't know Christ, that this will be one more warning for you

to turn your life over to the Lord and let him save you today.

To let him commend your life and and be your Lord and Savior so

you can be spared from this. I just want to close and I think

about 2-2 words. There's minimalism today and

maximalism. Minimalism is how little so I

have to do to be a Christian. Like is it enough for me?

This would go to church on Sunday and put a few bucks in

the offering plate and not smoke and curse and chew or go out

with girls that do. Is that is that enough to get me

by? That's sometimes how some of us

think, well the gospel is completely different because it

says if any man will follow me, let him deny himself and take up

his cross daily and follow me. Like from Jesus perspective is

if you want to follow me, it's 100 more flat out 100% tilt

toward my Kingdom. That's Christianity.

I think a lot of us, especially in these last days when we

studied Ephesus, the church in Laodicea, Ephesus left his first

love. And Jesus warns them, go back

and do your first works. Be like you were when you first

got saved, in tense, radical, focused on the Kingdom and not

this world. And Laodicea thought they were

intense. And Jesus says they're lukewarm.

He says, I'd like to spit you out of my mouth because you're

neither hot nor cold. And they taught good Bible

doctor and all this stuff. They were, they thought they

were doing everything good. And he says, don't you know

you're naked, poor, wretched and blind?

So the day when I study this stuff, I can say, well, that's a

good study. It's interesting, it's cool,

it's fascinating. OK, what am I going to do the

rest of my life with this stuff? But let's lay it down.

And I'm a prophecy addict and I just like to talk about this

stuff and think about it because it's cool.

But it isn't changing my life and convicting me to become more

focused on God's Kingdom and lost people.

Then I got a problem, right? So is it enough just to be saved

and saved from what? Is there any cost to you and me

to follow Christ? Well, some people say salvation

is a gift. It's free.

You don't have to do anything. You just receive it and believe

it. Yeah, that's the beginning

stages of what salvation is all about.

Because you can't buy it. It's a gift, but it it's a cost

once it comes into your life because your life isn't yours

anymore. Whether you realize it or not.

Your life doesn't belong to you. And what makes you and me

miserable every day after we become Christians is we still

want to run our lives like it belongs to us, don't we?

Many times I want to do it my way and do this, and I don't

want to do that, Lord. And we argue with the Lord and

we fight and sometimes we get involved in things we know

better, but we we just do it because we're proud and we want

to do what we want to do. But Jesus says if any man will

follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and

follow me. So that's the cost.

What's it mean to deny myself? It's different for all of us.

But you need to ask the Lord yourself personally.

Lord, how can I deny myself more?

To honestly follow you. What's my responsibility as I

study this with you and teach it?

What's my responsibility to you and your responsibility to me

and to other people, especially people who are ignorant of

what's in this book? What's my responsibility?

It's to tell them. And when I study this book, I

ask myself what's occurring in my heart regarding my spiritual

temper, temperature with God. You have to ask yourself today,

are you hot with God or are you lukewarm with God?

You have to ask yourself that really every day.

Am I really focused on what God wants me to be focused on, or am

I doing as little as possible to be focused upon what He wants me

to be focused upon? So where's your heart today when

you think about these things? I would pray that it's where

mine is. I need to do better, I really

do. I need to grow closer to the

Lord. I need to deny myself more and

fight against the things that my pride wants to force me to

follow. I need to be committed to the

things that Christ died for. I need to be committed to the

lives that the apostles lived in my job, in my home, in my

neighborhood, in my community. And today, if you drive through

southwest Greensburg, the majority of homes have cars

parked in front of them, and they're not in any church today.

And they need to hear this because if they don't and they

don't come to Christ, the judgments, if they're still

living on earth, will fall upon them.

And if they're dead, it's too late and they'll be in hell

forever. So there's still time to do

something about these issues that we're studying about South

practical things. Come on Thursdays when you can

and pray for an hour. Pray for the city, pray for

yourself, pray for your. It's a sacrifice.

Well, I'd rather work around the house or I'd rather watch TV or

I'd rather be involved in some kind of athletic event.

Well, there's nothing wrong with that, but there's elements of

what is it? You're going to press in more

for God for right Wednesday nights.

There's Bible studies here for young people and older people

and, and you know, commit yourself to the word of God and

sacrifice your time, sacrifice your finances for the sake of

getting the gospel out to other people.

How much should I give? Well, that's between you and the

Lord. But figure out ways that you can

give more of yourself, your time, your treasure, and your

talent. Because if we study these things

and we're just listening, but we're not doing what it says,

then it's hypocrisy, right? For all of us, including me, all

we have to do is say, Lord, how can I press Ed?

How can I get closer to you? What practical things can you

show me that I can possibly do in order to walk closer with

you? Lord, just think about those

things this upcoming week with your own time with the Lord.

Just say, Lord, speak to me about what it is I can do

personally to be more committed to your ways.

And it's not about looking what this person's doing or what that

person isn't doing or what, what is it that I'm supposed to be

doing? And if you do what you're

supposed to do, everything else will take care of itself.

Amen. We are digging into the Book of

Revelation here on Living Waters of Grace.

Pastor Clark is tackling this challenging book as we try to

discern the messages that are within its pages.

There's so much imagery and at times you're not always sure

what's literal and what's metaphorical.

At one point there's a reference to an adulterous woman riding on

a beast, and as someone else mentioned, at one point it

almost sounds like a rodeo from hell, and in actuality it kind

of is. You learn about the downfall and

demise of a sinful and rebellious world, falling down

in worship to someone who is the anti hero, the enemy, Satan

working his insidious ways into the minds of fallen people.

It's sad and it's heartbreaking, but it's a classic story of good

versus evil. Thankfully, we know how this

story ends. Jesus wins, Jesus reigns, and

evil is conquered once and for all.

We pray and trust you've received Jesus as your Savior,

but if you haven't, don't wait until the events in Revelation

become what's happening on the streets.

None of us wants you to be there at that time.

Instead, we'd love for you to be with us in heaven as we

celebrate the marriage supper with Jesus as his bridegroom.

To get a better understanding of where we are in the Book of

Revelation. To listen to any messages before

or after this one, you can find them at our website,

calvarychapelonline.com. That's it for today's edition,

but we hope you'll want to hear Pastor Clark teach more from the

Book of Revelation. It can be exciting to think

about the future for believers, but it can feel a bit harrowing

for those who don't believe. Come hear more next time on

Living Waters of Grace.