14) What Happens When the Heavens Are No Longer Silent?

A single listener question opens a door to one of Revelation’s most debated timelines: when do the seven trumpets sound, and how does that relate to the rise of the Antichrist? We trace the arc from the seventh seal’s “half hour of silence” through temple imagery of incense and fire, and into a sequence of trumpet judgments that read less like riddles and more like cascading, literal events. Fire and hail, a “burning mountain” striking the sea, and a darkened sky create a world reeling from calamity—exactly the moment when deception finds traction.

From there we pivot to Wormwood. Throughout scripture wormwood marks bitter corruption and false teaching. So when a star “like a lamp” falls and poisons waters, we explore how a luminous arrival could seduce a shaken world. The Antichrist isn’t merely a tyrant; he’s a plausible savior timed to ride chaos, performing signs that blur lines for many—including the well-meaning. Discernment becomes survival. We make the case for reading these passages alongside Exodus, Ezekiel, Daniel, and apocryphal signposts to see how deliverance and judgment move in tandem.

The middle stretch tackles the fifth and sixth trumpets: a restrained host that torments but doesn’t kill, followed by a vast army unleashed once the Euphrates-bound angels are loosed. Faces like men, crowns, and an army numbered in the hundreds of millions point to scale, intent, and divine limits that serve mercy before justice. Finally, covenant color returns with the rainbow-clothed messenger and the New Jerusalem. We frame this not as escapism, but as a miraculous gathering into a real city of peace that anchors hope while the wider world convulses.

If prophecy rhymes, we may be hearing the chorus. Join us as we weigh timing, test assumptions, and press into the only safeguard that holds under spectacle: a broken heart, active love, and personal revelation. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves scripture and big questions, and leave a review with your take on which trumpet you think we’re nearest.

Transcript

Welcome And Listener Question

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Black Swan Rising Podcast, an L10 production. For transcriptions, show notes, and extras, please visit us at the Black Swan Rising Podcast.com. Now, broadcasting across the world from the heart of the American Bible Belt, here is your host, Michael B. Rush.

Seventh Seal Timeline And Half Hour

Temple Symbols And Censer Cast Down

First Four Trumpets As Linked Catastrophes

Meteor Theory, Sea Destruction, And Dimming

Wormwood, False Prophecy, And Antichrist

Fifth Trumpet: Host From Heaven And Sealing

Sixth Trumpet: Euphrates Loosed And Army Size

Seventh Trumpet, New Jerusalem, And Gathering

Armageddon, Remnant Of Jacob, And Purging

Warnings Against False Gods And Call To Love

Closing, Study Exhortation, And Share Request

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Black Swan Rising Podcast. I'm your host, Michael B. Rush. On today's episode, we are going to start to address some listener questions. And we are going to start with a question from Rick Muir out of San Diego, California. My question to Rick is Rick, are you a descendant of John Muir, who was the father of the national parks in the United States? If so, your grandfather was a stud. Well, what is Rick's question? Well, let's read it. My question: What are your thoughts on the timing of the sounding of the seven trumpets spoken of in Revelation chapter 8 after the half hour of silence in heaven is over? Okay, uh, in relation to the advent of the Antichrist on the scene. Okay, great question. And I'm going to give you my opinion, Rick. And it's very important for you to understand that this is just my opinion. You need to ponder this out for yourself. So let's start by reading verse one out of chapter eight. And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about the space of half an hour. Okay. The he here is the Lamb of God, the only one who is worthy to open this book with seven seals. Now, these these seals in this book, I believe they correspond to each seal to a thousand-year period in the earth's temporal history, beginning with the fall of Adam. Now, if you're taking the timeline of the Bible at face value, the fall of Adam would have happened around the year 4000 BC, which would put the opening of the seventh seal around the year 2000 and the birth of Christ at the meridian of time, which would correspond with the fifth seal. Each of these seals gave a key nugget of information of events that transpired during each of these seals that I believe will be key to understanding the events of the Great and Terrible Day that will unfold during the seventh seal. That is to say, that while these events are talking about historic events, all of these things will be revisited in the seventh seal, and we will see similar things happening again. In other words, these are type and shadows of events that are about to transpire. So that's the context. And then when the seventh seal is open, John observed that there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. Now, this is important. This about is not a definitive word. So this is a approximate time frame. Now, what do we what should we infer by this about the space of half an hour? Well, Peter in the New Testament addressed this issue of the timing of the second coming, because there were many people that you know a lot of the signs for the second coming are generic, like wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes in diverse places, waves heaving beyond their bounds, things like that. These have always happened. And because they were happening back even in the early apostles, just on the very heels of Christ's ascension into heaven, even the saints in Peter's day were thinking that Jesus Christ's second coming was imminent. So Christ, or so Peter taught the saints that one day unto the Lord is as a thousand years unto us. And I believe that when we're looking at the book of Revelation and the timing that is talked about here, that this half an hour of silence should be understood from the Lord's timing and not from our own timing. So if you do the math on this, and by doing the math, I mean you take a thousand years and you divide it by 24, because there's 24 hours in a day, and then divide that by two to get 30 minutes, you come up with a half an hour corresponding approximately with the latter end of the year 2020. Now, because John says about the space of half an hour, that's kind of nebulous. What is about a half an hour? Is 37 minutes about a half an hour? Is 25 minutes about a half an hour? Is 40 minutes about a half an hour? So you can see that this is kind of nebulous, but regardless of how you look at it, it is pointing to an imminent event, something that is not going to happen in some far future day, but any day now. And that's that is my interpretation of this. I think that we are about to see these things. So let's let's continue. And I saw the seven angels which stood before God, and to them were given seven trumpets. And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer, and there was given unto him much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hands. And the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar and cast it into the earth, and there were voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake. Okay, so here we have some symbolism. In the temple in Jerusalem and in the tabernacle of the congregation, uh, in both instances, you had a golden altar that represented the presence of God. You had the four horns of the altar, literally on the mercy seat or the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the covenant that God had made with Israel. Priests would go into the temple and they would light incense before the Holy of Holies. The all of this, the incense, the Ark of the Covenant, the veil that was drawn between the ark and where this incense was burnt, was burned, it's all symbolic of covenants and the prayers of the saints being before the face of the Lord continuously. And here you have the angel who goes and literally takes the coals of that incense and puts it in a sensor and whirls that censor around and casts it down into the earth, which I believe is symbolic of the Lord saying, okay, approximately a half an hour after the seventh seal has been opened up, all fur is the fur is going to start to fly on planet Earth. And the Lord is going to remember the covenants that he has made with the house of Israel. And when the Lord remembers those covenants, the the wicked better gird up their loins, because things are about to get very interesting for them. I think that is what we are supposed to take away from this. And then in verse 6 it says, And the seven angels, which had the seven trumpets, prepared themselves to sound. Now we get to the sounding of these seven trumps. And this begins in verse seven. The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. 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, 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. 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 a third part of the fountains of waters, and the name of the star is called wormwood, and the third part of the waters became wormw wormwood, and many men died because of the waters, because they were made bitter. And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars. So the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. And behold, I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitors of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels which are yet to sound. Okay, so let's unpack this a little bit. These first four trumpet blasts sound to me like they are related. They happen one after another in quick succession. Now, the first trumpet blast corresponds with fire raining down from the heavens and burning up the third part of the earth. And then the second sound, you have a great burning mountain that is cast into the sea. Now, to me, friends, and I mean you can come up with your own thoughts on this just because I'm thinking this doesn't make it right, but to me, this sounds like a meteor or an asteroid impacting the earth. It's coming out of the blue. And you know, most meteors, they're either rocky or they are made of iron. And if you were to get an iron meteor coming up into the atmosphere, well, it would be heat, superheated, you know, probably seven, eight, nine, uh, ten thousand degrees coming through the atmosphere, which is hot enough to vaporize a lot of the rocky asteroids or meteors. But when you have a big, effectively massive cannonball uh coming towards the earth, what you're going to have is all kind of molten metal fragments coming off of that meteor and raining down all over the earth. And imagine, you know, liquid metal raining on the earth that's you know hitting the earth at 7,000 degrees. You're not going to put that out. It's it's going to start fires wherever it is. And according to John, the third part of the earth is burnt up in this. Now, you'll recall from a prior episode that this is very similar to the siege on Jerusalem when the Romans came in and Ezekiel prophesied that one-third of Jerusalem would be destroyed by fire. This is mirroring that, saying that in the last days, during the great and terrible day of the Lord, one third of the earth will be burned with fire. And this doesn't mean that every single thing is burned up in that third part, but yeah, that these fragments are going to be falling all over and there will be fires that are widespread throughout the earth, potentially in the path of wherever this thing uh comes down in. And according to John, the main fragment, if if we are talking about a meteor, hits the sea, and the impact is so violent that a third part of all sea life is destroyed, and a third part of all vessels in the sea are destroyed. That is catastrophic, friends. That's that's why uh John is saying that a third part of the sea be becomes blood. This, if this is true, uh first you have to ask your yourself, could this happen? Well, just look up at night at the face of the moon. The those are all craters from things hitting the surface of the moon. So, yes, the moon has been hit by meteors, obviously not once or twice or three times or seven times, but dozens and dozens and hundreds of times over the course of its existence. And we have meteors that are coming, if they come from behind the sun, we can't see them until they're here. We can only see meteors that are coming at us towards the sun, because otherwise the light of the sun blinds all of our instruments. So, you know, this this is a scary thing because things like this can happen without any kind of warning whatsoever, if depending on the direction that it comes. And you know, the the first and second angel trumps both seem to be uh tied up with this, and it's that's curious. And in fact, the the fourth one to me also seems to be related because they're saying that the light from the heavens is dimmed by a third part. And in my opinion, this is not happening from some strange phenomenon where the sun, you know, somehow dims by a third. But to me, this is an indication that the atmosphere of the earth will be filled with smoke, and it will be filled to such a degree that one-third of the light of the sun will be reflected back away from the earth, and so things will be dimmer here than they normally would be. And this this is uh likely what is going to cause the blood-red moon that has been prophesied that will precede the second coming of the Lord. So I think that you have the first trump, the second trump, and the fourth trump of the angel all being related to this burning mountain that hits the earth sometime around when the half hour of silence ends. Now you will recall that right after the half half an hour of silence ends, it's not that this burning mountain hits us right then. The thing that happened right after that was that the angel threw the burning coals of the fire of the covenant at the earth. So again, I think that the as far as timing goes, when you look at approximately half an hour corresponding with the latter end of 2020, the fur really did start to fly. That was the COVID uh beginning of the COVID pandemic when things really began to pick up and you had economies around the world shut down. And I mean, we started having a chaos that, if we're honest, really has not abated. It's just kind of been morphing uh from one degree to another, and we go from you know global uh conflict to global conflict. And you know, it even you know, as I'm recording this, we have President Trump levying heavy tariffs on all European nations that oppose his acquisition of Greenland, and you have Canada coming out and saying that they will declare war against the United States if the United States goes in and takes Greenland, and who the heck knows you know what's going to happen here. You know, Trump has been saying that he considers uh Canada the 51st state. You know, obviously the United States uh is not fearful of you know Canada's uh military prowess, but you know, no one in the United States, no true red-blooded American, would support us going in and conquering other countries. So this is this is confusing, this is tumultuous, this is the world being in commotion, which is kind of what we're we're seeing in the the wording of this. But the this, what I'm what I take away from these first four trumpets is that we're talking about something literal here. This is not some figurative burning mountain falling into the sea. This is as literal as the Nile turning to blood and fire raining down from the sky during the events leading up to the exodus of Egypt. In fact, there are many scriptures that relate the events of the last day, particularly the great and dreadful day of the Lord, to the Egyptian Exodus, because the events leading up to the Egyptian Exodus were the great and terrible events of you know the day of the Lord in the perspective of the Egyptians. And Egypt, in fact, you know, in Revelation itself, it relates the world to Egypt during the days of the Exodus. So I think we're talking about literal events. Now let's talk about explicitly Rickmure's question here was regarding to the coming, the timing of the coming Antichrist. And I believe, in my opinion, verse 10 here, this the third angel trump, when you have a star that falls from heaven burning as it were a lamp. That's a different description entirely from a burning mountain. This is a light that is descending from the heavens versus what sounds like a meteor that is dripping fire all over the earth as it barrels and crashes into the sea. This this light descends from heaven, and what does it do when it comes to the earth? It poisons the pure waters, and as a result, men are dying because the waters become bitter. Now, the name of this star is called wormwood. Wormwood, throughout the Old Testament, is you know the code name for false prophecy, because wormwood is a very bitter plant that if it is comes into contact with springs, it will you know ruin the spring. It will make the water bitter to all those that drink of it. And I think that this is what we are to take away from this star that is coming. To the earth and embittering the waters. Now, friends, this is where this conversation turns very weird. Because remember, we are talking about strange things that are not one-off things, but that have happened before. And this is where an understanding of the events of the pre-diluvian world become very important to us because Christ literally told us that the great and terrible day of the Lord is going to mirror the pre-diluvian world. And again, we don't understand a whole heck of a lot about what happened in the pre-diluvian world. But what we do know from the book of Enoch is that the pre-deluvian world had become corrupted by the Watchers. And the Watchers, they came here from another world. Two hundred men descended from the heavens, and they came to Mount Hermon, which is you know just on the Israel-Syrian border. You can see it from the waters of Dan. The two these 200 men descended on that mountain, and they made an oath that they would not let anybody know what they were doing here on earth. And then they began to take wives of the women of Earth, and their offspring were giants. And that's you know strange, I know, but the corruption of the earth became so pervasive, and the influence of the watchers became global. And I believe that this is one of the reasons that if you do a an unbiased evaluation of the ancient world, and you're you honestly ask yourself, why are there pyramids on every single continent? Why across the world in highly seismic zones, do you see this same polyglyphic kind of dis construction wherein these stones are morphed together in a mind-boggling manner that looks like the stones were literally softened, then squished together like marshmallows and then hardened again, like the Inken Walls. You you see those in Japan, you see them in Egypt, you see them, you know, all over the ancient world. And we can't figure out how they did that today, but it's you know ubiquitous in antiquity. It's it's almost like the fingerprints of this ancient watcher civilization that was across the entire globe, and it corrupted the earth to such a degree that the entire world had to be destroyed. Now, according to the book of Enoch, the watchers would return in 70 generations. And 70 generations, if you define in this context, which I believe that the context of this is a lifespan of a human being, you take the average lifespan of a human being before modern medicine, and assuming that they survive childhood, you're you're talking somewhere in the early 60s as the average lifespan throughout the history of the world, which would put 70 generations from the time of the flood and the binding of the watchers to our day, you know, almost exactly. So is it any bizarre coincidence that now we have Congress talking about UFOs in our skies, and we have Chris Bledsoe saying that we are going to have the world awaken to a new era of the divine feminine in April of 2026. And you know, regardless of whether what what you believe about these things, you can't deny the fact that the timing of this is all very strange and it seems incredibly relevant to us today. And again, I talked a little bit about this documentary, The Age of Disclosure. If you haven't seen that, go and watch that, because I believe that that is very relevant to this verse 10, because I believe that this star that comes from heaven as it were a lamp that poisons the waters is the arrival of this Antichrist. And I think that we're talking about an event that could be happening very soon, not in some far distant period of time. But you know, honestly, uh, I would say sometime within the next five years, I believe that you're seeing this take place. I hope that I'm wrong. I don't want to be right, because it means that my life is about to become very challenging along with everyone else's lives on planet Earth. But we know that the prophets referred to the great and terrible day of the Lord as such for a very good reason. And when Daniel prophesied of these things in verse 12 or verse 1 of chapter 12, he said that those days of trial will be worse than any time since there was a nation. I believe that one of the primary reasons that it will be so bad is because of this Antichrist and the lies that he brings. Now, to me, it sounds like this could be a coordinated event. And I know that this sounds like a massive uh conspiracy theory, but come on, friends, the name of this podcast is the Black Swan Rising Podcast, where the whole point is we are talking about Black Swan events, which are completely unforeseen before they happen. But once they happen and the normalcy bias is gone and the confirmation bias is gone, and we now are able to lay the facts before us and look at them with clear eyes, it becomes obvious that this is what was always going to happen. And I think that when we look back at these verses, we may very well say, yeah, this was talking about a coordinated event wherein an antichrist would time his arrival on the heels of a meteor that comes and causes absolute chaos on planet Earth. And he comes bearing solutions and you know is able to present himself as the savior to a world that is reeling on the heels of a natural disaster of literally biblical proportions. So that is my idea about this. And then when you go to the fifth trumpet sounding, you have this fifth angel who also comes to the earth as a star falling from heaven. And let's just, you know, read some of these verses here. I'm starting with verse one in chapter nine. And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth, and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. Okay, so you have a star coming from heaven, and it is there are people on this star, because one of the people on this star receives the key to the bottomless pit. Earlier in the book of Revelation, we read that it is the Lamb of God who has the keys to death and hell. So the bottomless pit is synonymous with hell. So the fact that this man who comes to earth on this in conjunction with the fifth angel sounding his trump, he receives the keys to hell means that he is given authority from God to send people there, to send the wicked to hell. In other words, he's going to begin wiping out the wicked. And indeed, you read in verse two that he opened the bottomless pit, and there arose a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locus upon the earth, and unto them was given power as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months, and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared into battle, and on their heads were as it were crowns of gold, and their faces were as the faces of men, and they had hair as the hair of women. Okay, so here we have associated with this fifth angel trump, a star like object that descends to the earth, and out of which comes a massive host that is so incredibly numerous that when they arrive and take to the skies, they blot out the sun, as if it were a thick smoke. And we are told that they have the faces of men. In other words, these are people. They're human beings coming to the earth, and they are coming with righteous intent, because they do not hurt the righteous, they only hurt the wicked that have not the seal of God in their foreheads. Now, again, this should remind us of a prior episode where I contrasted these verses with the vision of Ezekiel, wherein he saw these wheels within a wheel that had four men on them, with the face of a lion, an eagle, an ox, and the silhouette of an Israelite's head on them that descended from the heavens and came down and put seals in the foreheads of the righteous in Jerusalem. And the righteous in Jerusalem were identified by those who mourned for the sins of the Jews. In other words, they had eyes to see what was going on and they lamented the wickedness that was taking place. So we should be able to draw the obvious connection here that the this incredibly, incredibly numerous force that is coming is and you know they we are told that there are four angels. So those four angels here, they correspond with these, you know, the four four-faced beings that descended from the heavens. And again, the the four faces correspond with the enzymes of the four camps of Israel. The uh enzyme of the camp of Judah was the lion, the enzyme of the camp of Joseph was the bull, and then you had the eagle and the silhouette of the man's head corresponding with Reuben and Dan. So this is the symbolism here, I believe. I th I believe that you are talking about once the Antichrist arrives, we're not told exactly how long he will be here, but he will be confronted by the house of Israel, a portion, a remnant of the house of Israel that will come to the earth as a star falling from heaven. And again, I'm talking from this from a purely LDS perspective. And Joseph Smith taught that when we learn about uh stars falling from the heaven, coming to the earth, we are talking about fragments of the earth that had been broken off in prior days that are now being restored. So we're talking about the restoration of the lost tribes of Israel in this event, which there are many scriptures that speak of rivaling the exodus of Egypt in wonder and might. Now, when you look at all of the things that are going on here, fire falling from the sky, the sea turning into blood, the death of many people, the deliverance of Israel, that there are clear parallels that are taking place. There are also scriptures that say that when the lost ten tribes return, it will be as on a highway cast up out of the midst of the great deep. And I believe that that great deep is referring to the depths of space. So we have great similarities here that to me suggest that you are going to have, as far as timing, getting back to Rick Muir's question here, I think the timing of these things is eminent. We're talking about something that's going to happen, in my opinion, within the next five years. Again, I I hope that I'm wrong. I would love to be wrong. Things honestly have not been better uh in my life. Uh I I just recently retired. We're doing all kinds of fun things as a family. I you know, I want to believe that all is well in Zion, but I don't. I see the world around me, and I see the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and I I cannot deny that you know we are getting close. Now, there are many people that have said in their hearts, hey, listen, you know, we are not close because there are so many things that have to happen. The gospel has to be spread to you know every nation on the planet before the Lord comes again. And the temple has to be rebuilt in Jerusalem before the Lord comes again. And we have to have the new Jerusalem before the Lord comes again. There's there's lots of things that have to happen and they haven't happened, so the second coming cannot be close. Well, I fullheartedly disagree with that. I believe that the fundamental tenets of Christianity are at their core all supernatural. And when God delivered Israel from bondage in antiquity, he did so through supernatural means. When he delivered the lands of Canaan to Israel, he did so through supernatural means. Now let's talk about God's deliverance of the lands of Canaan into the hands of the Israelites for a second, because that very closely mirrors what happened in the pre-deluvian world, because the lands of Canaan were inhabited by giants, and so was the pre-deluvian world. The land of Canaan had become so corrupted that the Lord commanded that every every man, woman, and child be destroyed, and not only that, that all of their artifacts be destroyed. And you had Achan, who thought that the rules didn't apply to him, and he, from the Battle of Jericho, he saw some cool Canaanite artifacts, and he buried them in his tent. And the next battle that Israel had with the Canaanites, they got their heads handed to them. And Joshua, you know, is mourning, he's in sackcloth and ashes, and he's saying, What in the heck is going on? We just had this miraculous deliverance of Jericho into our hands, and now we're rebuffed, and all the giants are seeing this, and you know, now they'll fall on us and destroy us because of this. What's going on, Lord? I thought you were with us. And the Lord said, I am with you. But you have people amongst your ranks that are not obeying, they are safeguarding the art Canaanite artifacts, and there is zero tolerance for that. And so what happens to Achan and his family? They are taken and stoned, and the artifacts are destroyed. This is this is peculiar stuff, friends, but the Lord was incredibly serious about wiping out the Canaanite influence from the lands of Israel. And you have it when you're reading the book of Jubilees, it said that that the giants came to the lands of Canaan because the watchers returned in the days of Noah's grandchildren and began to corrupt the earth once more. So I think that we're going to see this corruption take place again. And that corruption took place very, very quickly. And you can imagine that if you have people coming here from parts unknown with godlike powers, and they start producing all kinds of evidence, how quickly the world will, you know, go believe those things, and how, according to Matthew 24, even the very elect will be deceived by the miracles and the false prophecies and the blasphemies of this coming antichrist, whose coming is very soon. And the righteous will be delivered through miraculous means. And I believe that that deliverance takes place by the hands of this remnant of Jacob. That is also spoken of in the book of Micah. It's spoken of extensively in the book of Mormon and Third Nephi. It's spoken of extensively in Isaiah. And we just need to have the eyes to see this. It's it's pervasive, it's ubiquitous. Okay, so now here is something that I think is worth touching on. The Lord puts some handcuffs on the remnant of Jacob that's coming and says, Listen, I I don't want you killing people at this point. You know, you're you're going to be tormenting these people, you're going to be trying to prompt them to repent, but you're not killing them yet. Okay. And this goes on for five months. And, you know, this Tormenting is bad. It's so bad that the wicked want to die, but they can't die. And curiously enough, John associates the leader of this group as the destroyer, Abadin or Apollyon, which are just Hebrew and Greek names for the destroyer. And I believe, you know, from an LD, I I know that the the larger Christian world associates this destroyer with the Antichrist. I do not believe that this is referring to the Antichrist, but I believe that it is referring to the leader of this host of Israel. Because in the scriptures of the LDS canon, I'm particularly thinking of 3rd Nephi chapter 22, verse 16. And also, uh frankly, in the book of Jeremiah, the Lord tells us that he has created this destroyer to destroy. And he refers to the destroyer as his own destroyer. And in Joel chapter 2, he refers to this army of this of the destroyer as his army. So I think that these are we're we're referring to the leader of this army. And I know that this is going to sound crazy, but I believe that this leader of this army is going to be none other than John the Revelator himself, who is also John the Beloved, whom the Lord essentially transfigured or translated so that he would not die until the Lord came again. Now let's go to verse 14, and we get to the sixth angel. Now, the sixth angel, this is when the Lord says, Okay, I am well, I'll just read this verse. Say to the sixth angel, which hath the trumpet, loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year, for to slay the third part of men. Okay. Now you'll have to go back to prior episodes where I talked about the prophecies that are included in 2nd Esdras, which is one of the 14 apocryphal books that was originally included in the King James Bible up until the uh turn of the 20th century, when the Church of England decided in their infinite wisdom that it was no longer worthy of being included there. In there, we have a prophecy that the great river Euphrates would dry up as a sign that the house of Israel was about to be restored in its entirety, referring to the return of the last ten tribes. And I believe that this is exactly what the sixth angel is, his trumpet is all about, the restraints being removed from this remnant of Jacob. And now they are no longer going to torment men, but they're going to wipe the wicked out, or at least one third of mankind will be eliminated. And this is the first time that we are given the number of this incredible host. And we read about that number in verse 16. And the number of the army of the horsemen were 200,000,000. And I heard a number of them. Friends, that 200,000,000 is 200 million. Okay? So this force that is coming is vast. Now, this should indicate to us how large the remnant of Jacob that is coming actually is. For a a body, an a group of nation states to be able to have this many soldiers, because you know typically when you're going to war, you're you're not sending every single man. You are sending your the men that are in prime fighting shape. I mean, you're you're talking your 18 to 26 year olds, and you're saying that this body of people, that the population of their fighting men is 200 million. Okay, that is a small fraction of the overall population of this body, which is going to number in the billions. This is why Isaiah has these prophecies that speak about nations being born in a single day. Because the the number of you know the lost tribes of Israel when they are returning to earth are going to astound us. Okay. This is the the sign of the sixth angel. And then the seventh angel we we read about in chapter 10. The seventh angel corresponds, he he's wearing uh a robe, he's clothed with a rainbow, and he is the the rainbow is associated with the Lord's covenant to Enoch that the earth would rest again. It's also cor correlates with the Lord's covenant to Noah that the world would not be destroyed in a great flood again. So this the seventh angel is coming to the earth, and he is his clothing represents the coming of that rest to the earth that was prophesied of. And when we read in this additional scriptures of the included in the LDS canon in Moses chapter 7 about the Lord's promise to cause the earth to rest, that promise centers around the establishment of the New Jerusalem, which the walls of the New Jerusalem, if you read in the book of Revelation, are patterned after the rainbow as well. They're multicolored. There's they've got you know twelve different beautiful colors stacked on top of each other like a rainbow, and it surrounds the entire city. And John said that he saw that city descend out of heaven as a bride prepared for its groom. So the coming of the new Jerusalem will be miraculous. It's is going to happen all at once, and when it happens, it ushers in the peace and security of the portion of the world to which it descends. And coming speaking from a purely LDS perspective here, the uh prophecy of the LDS Church, the doctrine is very, very clear on this. The new Jerusalem is going to be in the North American continent. And in fact, pretty much the entire North American continent will be at peace when the new Jerusalem is established. And in fact, we believe that it will be the only nation that will be at peace in this period of time, and that if anyone will not take up their or does not want to go to war against their neighbors, they will need to flee to Jerusalem or the New Jerusalem, which will be the new uh or established on the North American continent. And friends, this is what the larger Christian community, when they are referring to the rapture, again, there are scriptures in the New Testament that Christ says, Listen, you know, before I come again, there will be two people in a field, one will be taken, one will remain, there will be two people in a bed, one will be taken, one will remain. There will be two at the millstone, one will be taken, one will remain. This is like this instantaneous, miraculous gathering. And the greater curr uh Christian community refers to this event as a rapture, and they believe that they are going to be removed from the earth while all of these terrible trials take place. I do not believe that that is what this is meaning. I believe that these saints, these are going to be righteous folks throughout the entire world, in every country of the world, that are going to be miraculously gathered to the new Jerusalem, which will be established upon the North American continent while the rest of the world descends into chaos. This is not Christians being taken up into heaven and now they are living in the resurrected bodies. That's not what this means at all. This simply means that they are going to be taken to the new Jerusalem, which will have descended from the heavens by miraculous means, and you know, they will now be ushered into an incredible state of existence while the rest of the world catches up. The rest of the world is still going to be going through the most trying times that have ever existed upon the face of the planet. And the epicenter of these trying times, we read in Revelation chapter 13, will be centered on the new or on Jerusalem of old. Jerusalem of old will be sieged in what is known as the Battle of Armageddon, wherein the Antichrist, who will have been ejected from North America by this remnant of Jacob that comes. And sorry, I said Revelation 13. This is this is really spoken of in Revelation chapter 11. The this is when you have the three and a half year siege. This incredible gathering of Zion, of the righteous into Zion will have preceded this event. And then there is essentially a no-holds barred, and the wicked will be uh destroying the wicked. The uh the remnant of Jacob, when they kill one-third of men, they don't kill all of the wicked. There are still plenty of wicked. But you know, honestly, when I think when I take read this one-third of all mankind being killed, I think that we are to understand this from the perspective of one-third of the earth will be purged from all wickedness. And if you look at the landmass of the earth, North and South America comprise one-third of all the inhabitable landmass. I'm not including Antarctica because Antarctica is not inhabitable at this point. But you take all of the other landmass, North and South America comprise one-third of all of the landmass. So I believe that this purging by the remnant of Jacob, every single wicked person to the last man, woman, and I don't think that children below the age of eight are, you know, can be considered wicked. I think the Lord will attribute that wickedness to their parents, but you're going to have wickedness swept from North and South America. And that will be in preparation of the establishment of Zion on those two continents, while the rest of the world is going to go through complete and utter chaos. So, Rick, this is a very long-winded answer to your question. I hope that this gives you what you were expecting. Again, this is these are my thoughts on the matter. I don't speak for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am just telling you from my own pattern recognition when I go through the scriptures, there is the preponderance of the evidence suggests that this is what is going to happen. Now, you know, as Paul said, you know, we all look through the glass darkly. We don't see things clearly. But the days are coming when we will see them clearly. But if it is not going to happen exactly like this, I think it's going to happen to something. What happens is going to rhyme with this. It will be similar with this. It's not going to be wildly different from this, I don't think. And again, as far as the timing of this, I really think that you're going to see these things happen within the next five years. Again, I desperately hope that I am wrong and that all is well in Zion. I just retired. Yeah, I want to just have, you know, relax and have an incredible time in my retirement, but I just honestly don't think that's in the cards. I I'm hoping for a wonderful retirement, but I think that all hell is about to break loose. And that was herald with the silence in heaven, ending with the angel throwing down the burning coals to the heaven to let the earth know that now is the time that the Lord is remembering his covenants that he made with ancient Israel, and that Israel will be restored in the flesh upon the earth, and that that restoration is going to come at the expense of the wicked. And you have a choice. Get on board with the Lord and his covenants, worship the true and living God, or be swept off the face of the earth. The choice is clear. Now, before I close, I need to hammer on the fact that ancient Israel had a long and storied history of creating false gods or false versions of God and worshiping that in place of the true and living God. They did this with Baal. Baal simply means the Lord. Baal was the God of the Canaanites, and they worshiped the Queen of Heaven. And we have a version of Baal that is worshipped by a great many Christians today who believe that they can do whatever the flip they want, and as long as they profess the name of Baal with their lips, they are saved. But the Baal that they believe in is not the true and living God of Israel, because the true and living God of Israel demands that people worship them not only with their lips, but with their hearts. In fact, it is he he requires a broken and contrite heart from his disciples. He also tells us that his the tale tale indicator of one of his disciples is that they will love their fellow man. They will not be filled with hate. He says that all of the laws and the prophets can be summarized by that. That and that by this shall men know that ye are my disciples, that ye love one another. Not that ye love those that love you, but that ye love even your enemies. So, friends, that is what we need to be working on. We need to be striving to have our hearts filled with love. And friends, I am the biggest hypocrite in the world when it comes to having my heart filled with love. This is something that I am striving to pray to the Father with all the energy of my soul that my heart will be filled with this love because it is not always filled with this love towards my fellow men. Oftentimes I want to bob my fellow men over his head and take him over my knee and spank him. But that is not what I should be doing. I need to be far more kind than I am right now at present, and I pray that the Lord will help me with that. I need to be far less judgmental than I am at the present. I think that all of us need to be far more generous with each other and liberal with our forgiveness than we are, because we are not deserving of God's grace. He just gives it to us freely. And the stipulation is that we must forgive others freely if we expect that God will forgive us uh freely as well. So I've I've gone on long enough. We will keep going through some listener questions on future episodes here. I want to make this podcast about the things that you want to learn about and talk about. Again, you can reach me by anywhere you listen to podcasts. I'm talking Spotify, I'm talking, you know, Apple Podcasts, you know, things like that. Those will typically have a little icon where you can text me and you can text me your questions in that regard. Otherwise, you can email them to me. And I'm getting a lot of questions, and you know, uh, but I I don't want to just give you really quick onesie, you know, one two-second answers. I believe that you're asking these questions because you really want to understand what I'm thinking in depth. And that's that's what this episode was about, uh, answering Rick Muir's question. And I welcome these kinds of questions because I know where one person asks the question, there's you know thousands of others that want to know the answer. So this is uh all I've got for this episode. I hope that you are making the study of the Lord's gospel a priority in your life, that you are seeking to educate yourself about these things, that you are not outsourcing your spiritual education to your religious leaders and expecting them to tell you everything that you need to know. That is a incredibly dangerous approach to take. It did not work well for the Jews when they went to someone else and said, Hey, give me your opinion. Is this Christ fellow the Messiah that we've been looking for or not? They had to rely on the still small voice and listen to that and get answers directly from God, not from other men. Other men are very likely to give you the wrong answer. So please seek to be taught by the Lord. That includes not listening to me. You know, you should only listen to me to the extent that what I have said has been. Witnessed to you by the Holy Ghost in your hearts and act on the promptings that come into your mind as you listen to these things and write those promptings down so that you remember them. If you're like me, uh you sometimes you have the mind of a squirrel, and as soon as you see the next shiny object, you've forgotten. And I find that writing things down uh is a great way to expand my memory on these things. So, friends, um until next time, keep seeking, for they that seek shall find. God bless.

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You have just finished an episode of the Black Swan Rising Podcast, an L10 production, hosted by Michael B. Rush. For show notes, transcriptions, and extras, please visit www.theblackswanrisingpodcast.com. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button icon and send it to your friends and family. This will help to ensure the continued publication of future content. Michael thanks you in advance for sharing and looks forward to seeing you next time. Until then, keep seeking, for they that seek shall find.