Revelation 16
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Important messages
Chapter 16
1. Then
I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out
on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”
2. So
the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and harmful and
painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped
its image.
3. The
second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of
a corpse, and every living thing died that was in the sea.
4. The
third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they
became blood.
5. And
I heard the angel in charge of the waters say, “Just are you, O Holy One, who
is and who was, for you brought these judgments.
6. For
they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood
to drink. It is what they deserve!”
7. And
I heard the altar saying, “Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your
judgments!”
8. The
fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch
people with fire.
9. They
were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power
over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.
10. The firth angel poured out his bowl on the
throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed
their tongues in anguish.
11. and cursed the God of heaven for their
pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.
12. The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the
great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the
kings from the east.
13. And I saw, coming out of the mouth of the
dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false
prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs.
14. For they are demonic spirits, performing
signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for
battle on the great day of God the Almighty.
Pouring out the bowls of wrath
The time has arrived
for the seven angels to pour out the final bowls of wrath upon the earth. The
time is easily dated in the last 3 ½ years of the Great Tribulation. The empire of
the antichrist has been established and the entire population, except for the
faithful servants of God, has received his mark and are worshipers of the
antichrist image. The angels step out of the heavenly sanctuary (15:6), the throne
room of God, at His command, to accomplish their task.
Bowl 1: The first angel directed the first bowl towards those,
who had given their loyalty and trust to the beast, having been marked, as his
possession, in order to function in his economic system. They had adopted the
new religion of the antichrist and the false prophet, which involved worship to
the world emperor himself, and also an image, constructed among and by the
world population. It breathed and spoke, and demanded the death of all, who
refused to worship it. The plague produced a severe, malignant sore.
Bowl 2: The second angel directed his bowl towards the sea,
which turned to blood, such as would come from a corpse. It would be thick,
congealed and putrid. Every living thing – man, mammals, fish and lesser life -
in the sea died. It effected the whole of the seas, worldwide and everything in
them.
Bowl 3: The third angel poured his bowl into the springs and
rivers, which in turn, flowed into all other bodies of fresh water. These also
turned to blood. Again, it came upon the whole system of fresh water.
There is a heavenly
angel that presides over the element of water and, although his element is wholly
contaminated at this time, he sees it as a just sentence. I mentioned in the
last chapter that society’s humanists, because they glorify men and belittle
God, see His judgments as disproportionate and cruel. Heaven, holding a clearer
and more perfect point of view, sees the justice of it all. F. B. Meyer says: “Our softer age shrinks from such
conceptions of the divine judgments, but it is likely that our standards are
weakened and warped by our daily contact with what is earthly and human. God’s
love is not soft and emasculated, but strong, vigorous, and righteous. Only
when we reach the land of light and glory, shall we understand the true horror
of sin and the inveteracy of human apostasy.”
Warren Wiersbe points
out: “In God’s government, the punishment
fits the crime. Pharaoh tried to drown the Jewish boy babies, but it was his
own army that eventually drowned in the Red Sea.” The angel says, “They have shed the blood of saints and
prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!” They
have manifested their hatred of God, by killing His saints and prophets.
Justice is ascribed to
God, “Oh Holy One, who is and was.” His
holy nature cannot tolerate sin, and all the sin that was and is on earth, will
be brought to last-day judgment. The altar in heaven is personified in the
Greek and confirms, “Yes, Lord God the
Almighty, true and just are your judgments!” I can think of no other altar,
which has won a place in heaven, outside the cross. It was upon that altar that
sin was judged and the full wrath of God was poured out upon the Son who was
made sin. The world has rejected the cross, where the beloved Son shed His
blood, and now it drinks the blood, like the blood of a corpse.
Bowl 4: The fourth angel
turned his bowl towards the sun and a heat wave reaches earth that was never
experienced at any place or any time. The heat of the desert is not to be
compared with the contents of this bowl. The friendly sun that warms and lights
our lives, becomes an enemy. Around the world, human skin was scorched by the
fierce rays unleashed upon it.
We want to learn and establish, in our hearts and minds, things
that are not emphasized enough in churches in our times, as we move through this
final book of revelation. It reveals to us the doctrine of the hardness of fallen
human nature. As this plague falls upon mankind, the result is not a humble and
tender submission to the punishment of God, as we might think should happen,
but instead we see the raised fist of rebellion. Man curses his Creator for
giving him, what he justly deserves. Though created for His glory they refuse
to glorify Him.
How hard is the human heart? Can any of us fathom it?
From the time that Adam and Eve fell to the temptation of the serpent, we have
witnessed its evil. Jeremiah expressed it well: “The heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer.17:9). In the second
generation from creation, Cain murdered his brother. Pharaoh enslaved a nation,
commanded that their male babies be thrown in the Nile, and then again and
again hardened his heart against the judgments of God. It would require a book
to give even small evidence to prove the hard nature of man expressed in the
Old Testament.
Let’s go to the New Testament. God sent His own beloved
Son into the world in love, with the express purpose of saving mankind from his
sin. He was rejected and maligned by His own people and in the name of the One,
whom they claimed as their God, they condemned Him to death and turned Him over
to the Romans for crucifixion. Once again, for the sake of time and space, I
cannot go into more detail.
 |
| Megiddo on the map |
For two thousand years, the millions and then billions of
the earth’s population have turned thumbs down to the offers of the gospel,
while they have approved abortion and the filthy, perverse “rights” of the
homosexual and lesbian. Missionaries and preachers have been persecuted,
imprisoned and laid down their lives. Paul taught us, through the words of the Psalmist,
in our Christian doctrine: “None is
righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have
turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even
one” (Ro.3:10-12, quoting Ps.14:2-3; also 5:9; 140:3; 10:3).
The book of Revelation is now showing us the depths of
human hardness under the extreme pressure of the Great Tribulation. We see men
giving allegiance to God’s arch-enemy and taking the mark of loyalty towards a
Satan-possessed dictator. I comment again on the fourth bowl, in which they did
not repent and give Him glory. Instead they cursed His name. Again, under the
fifth bowl, they “cursed the God of
heaven… They did not repent of their deeds.” After the seventh bowl, “they curse God for the plague of the hail.”
In chapters 17 and 18, we will see them weeping and wailing at the fall of
that murderous, blasphemous prostitute, Babylon. But the worst is yet to come:
After the thousand-year, literal reign of Christ upon the earth – a reign of
peace and righteousness that will even effect the animal kingdom – the devil
will be loosed from his prison. He has been bound in a pit during those 1000 years.
The world’s population will turn from Christ’s reign to follow Satan, “their number is like the sand of the sea.”
Do you understand now why God created hell? What else is He going to do
with immortal souls, who refuse His kind reign and eternal salvation?
Bowl
5: This bowl is intended for the ruler of a final world government and depicts,
in a physical way, the spiritual nature of his world empire… that is, total
darkness. How powerful and painful is darkness! A world-wide depression will accentuate
all the dark effects in the atmosphere of his evil power. It is a time when
political deception reaches its apex, topping even Communism and Nazism. It is
a realm completely governed by lies.
Bowl
6: For the sake of brevity, I have not drawn comparisons between the plagues upon
Egypt and the bowls of wrath in this chapter. If you are familiar with those
plagues, you will easily see that there are many comparisons. I will simply
state that God judgments in Egypt are raised to a much higher power here,
including the plague of frogs. Three powerful evil spirits, compared to frogs, will
influence the nations of the world and a monstrous army will form. The spirits
come from the mouths of the devil, the antichrist and the false prophet. They
influence the earth’s governing forces, towards a final effort to fulfill the
purposes of humanism.
Warren Wiersbe gives us a description of it: “The name Armageddon comes from two Hebrew
words, har Megiddo, the hill of Megiddo. The word Megiddo means ‘place of
troops’ or ‘place of slaughter’. The area is about fourteen miles wide and
twenty miles long, and forms what Napoleon called ‘the most natural battlefield
of the whole earth’. The Gentile nations will look on Armageddon as a battle,
but to God, it will be only a ‘supper’ for the fowls of the air.” Several
battles were fought here in the Old Testament… i.e. Jdg 5:19; Jdg.7:1-25; 1 S.
31:1-13. After the Bible canon was closed, Titus and the Roman army passed
through this area, as did the Crusaders in the Middle Ages. In 1917, General
Allenby used it to defeat the Turks.
15. (“Behold, I am coming like a thief!
Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go
about naked and be seen exposed!”)
16. And they assembled them at the place that
in Hebrew is called Armageddon.
17. The seventh angel poured out his bowl into
the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It
is done!”
18. And there were flashes of lightning,
rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never
been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake.
19. The great city was split into three parts,
and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to
make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath.
20. And every island fled away, and no
mountains were to be found.
21. And great hailstones, about one hundred
pounds each, fell from heaven on people; and they cursed God for the plague of
the hail, because the plague was so severe.
Multiple facets of the last bowl
At this point the Lord inserts a parenthetical sentence,
as a challenge, concerning His coming. The characteristic of His return is as
that of a thief. Because it is, His challenge is towards vigilance and proper
spiritual attire, worthy of the event. Those who heed His warning will not be
caught unawares, that is, His coming will not be as a thief to them. Those who
are sleeping, will be shamed.
Bowl
7: The last bowl evoked a loud cry from the throne in the sanctuary. The
sovereign voice of God can be heard over the deception of the three frogs, the
false prophet, the antichrist, Satan and the fanatic proponents of a humanistic
utopia: “It is done!” He says. I
quote Peter on the Day of Pentecost: “This
Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,
you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Ac.2:23). The worst
intentions and efforts of men and devils, only bring about God’s sovereign
purpose.
Acts of God’s omnipotence are unleashed upon the earth:
Lightning, voices and thunder, followed by an earthquake that surpassed
anything ever measured on the Richter Scale. Try to imagen it! Review the most
devastating quakes in history, all the damage caused and the lives they claimed;
this one will far surpass them all.
I suppose that the ‘great city’ is Jerusalem, divided
into three parts. Zechariah prophesied of an earthquake that would change its
topography (Zech.14:4, 10). Around the world, cities are falling and Babylon,
the one that most represented the earth’s system of religion, economy and
politics, is brought to the center of God’s attention. John will describe its
fall in the next two chapters Towards Babylon now, the wrath of God is
expressed. She has raised “the wine of
the fury of his wrath.” Under the powerful judgment of the final bowl, islands
disappeared into the sea and mountains toppled, while hailstones, weighing a
hundred pounds fell from the sky upon people below.
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