Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD
www.mycrossway.org
Everything that is happening today and will happen during the Great Tribulation are warnings from God to an unbelieving man that God will one day unleash his judgment and wrath. God has worked over all of the time since the fall of man to call man to repentance because there is going to come a time known as the Great Day of the Lord when His mercy is going to expire and He will end evil and the world’s evil systems once and for all.
Historically, what we have seen is that man’s heart is rebellious toward the things of God and will continue to rebel against God unless there is relenting and the heart is transformed by the saving power of Jesus Christ. If you pay attention to the patterns here in Revelation, including the Bowl Judgements, the goal is to bring repentance.
The Bible is full of great messages of comfort, refreshment, peace, and God’s love. There is so much that is affirming in Scripture, but to all of this is really the opposite. If we understand love, it is because we understand hate. If we understand truth, it is because we understand lies. If we understand goodness, it is because we understand wickedness. If we understand reward, it is because we understand punishment. And God cannot love righteousness unless He hates sin and unbelief. He cannot love truth unless He hates lies. He cannot love goodness unless He hates wickedness. He cannot reward unless He also punishes. So while the Bible is a book of hope, it is also a book of judgment.
Tonight we are looking at Chapter 16 which gives us a picture of the final destruction from God’s wrath at the close of the Great Tribulation. What we are studying tonight immediately precedes the return of Christ. You say, “well wait a minute, the return of Christ isn’t until chapter 19.” This is true, but chapters 17 and 18 go back over the Tribulation from another viewpoint. Not everything in Revelation is chronological, but it backtracks. Chapters 17 and 18 will go back into the Tribulation period and pick up some of the things from another perspective. But chapter 16 really happens immediately prior to the return of Jesus Christ.
I. God’s Command to the Seven Angels
"Then I heard a loud voice from the sanctuary, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.” (Revelation 16:1)
What we have here is the voice of God from His throne commanding the angels to commence with the pouring of the seven bowls. This is God’s judgment and it is by His will these things are happening. The angels are His emissaries to carry out the judgment. As I mentioned earlier, this is based on God’s holiness and perfect character. Twenty times in Revelation we’ve heard the words of God from his throne commanding the exercise of his judgment and the purpose has always been to awaken the sleeping or apostate church and awaken the sinner to repentance.
II. The First Bowl: Malignant Sores
"So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth; and it became a loathsome and malignant sore on the people who have the mark of the beast and who worship his image." (Revelation 16:2)
Now what we must first realize is these terrible plagues can be compared to two other sets of plagues. The first occurred in Egypt (Exodus chapters 7 through 12). The second set of plagues is the seven trumpets which are recorded in Revelation chapters 8 through 11.
Notice there are some similarities and some differences. The first set of plagues was local in the country of Egypt. The trumpets, extended beyond any one nation and covered one-third of the world. The Bowls are not limited to a nation but they cover the whole globe.
Also, the plagues in Egypt involved water turned into blood, frogs, lice, flies, disease among the cattle, boils, thunder and hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaughter of the firstborn. The Seven Trumpets involved hail, fire, and blood, destroying a third of the trees and green grass – hail, fire, and flood, I should say, destroying a third of the trees and green grass. and a flaming mountain cast into the sea destroying a third of the sea, and turning it into a blood-like substance, a third of the freshwater was poisonous and bitter, and then the smiting of the third of the sun and moon and stars brought about darkness. Then demons overrun the world, the loosing of the four angels found in the Euphrates, and the coming of the great demonic army from the east. And then in the announcement of the final victory of God, the seventh trumpet was blown.
Now when we come to the Bowls, they involve ulcerous sores on men, all the sea turned into blood, all the rivers and waters turned into blood, the sun becoming scorchingly hot, the whole world becoming dark, the Euphrates drying up and the pollution of the air and the accompanying terrors in nature, the thunder, the greatest earthquake in the history of the world, lightning, and hail. Now you can see some common features. All three have hail, darkness, blood, and hordes, whether they be insects or demons.
But in Revelation, there’s a very important difference and that difference needs to be pointed out. It is the difference between that which is partial and that which is total. What you have here in chapter 16 is a gathering of all the horrors and all the terrors that were most severe from all the history of the judgment of God in all the past plagues, only now not partially, but now completely inundating the entire world in total disaster.
Now, the first angel pours out the bowl on God’s command and painful malignant sores appear on men. These are sores or boils that appear all over the body. The same term is used to describe the sores that appeared on the people in Exodus and the same is used to describe the sores that were on the beggar Lazarus in Luke 16:21.
“Yahweh will strike you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors and with the scab and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed. 28 “Yahweh will strike you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart; (Deuteronomy 28:27–28)
Notice in verse 2 it says, “It will be upon the men,” that’s generic for men and women, “who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image.”
"So the angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the earth, and threw them into the great wine press of the wrath of God." (Revelation 14:19)
Here we find in those same people the fruition of that judgment. They chose the beast to worship him. They rejected the warning and they chose the Antichrist over Christ.
Now, this will be the plague with which Yahweh will plague all the peoples who have gone to war against Jerusalem; their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouths. (Zechariah 14:12)
III. The Second Bowl: The Sea Turns to Blood
And the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died. (Revelation 16:3)
We also see this kind of plague in Exodus 7:20-25, and during the Second Trumpet Judgment in Revelation 8:8. This time as the Second Bowl is poured all of the seas becomes like blood and everything in the sea dies.
This could be God causing something known as red tide. John Phillips comments, “From time to time, off the coast of California and elsewhere, a phenomenon known as “the red tide” occurs. These red tides kill millions of fish and poison those who eat contaminated shellfish. In 1949, one of these red tides hit the coast of Florida. First, the water turned yellow, but by midsummer, it was thick and viscous with countless billions of dinoflagellates, tiny one-celled organisms. Sixty-mile windrows of stinking fish fouled the beaches. Much marine life was wiped out, and even bait used by fishermen died upon the hooks. Eventually, the red tide subsided, only to appear again the following year. Eating fish contaminated by the tide produced severe symptoms caused by a potent nerve poison, a few grams of which, distributed right, could easily kill everyone in the world. An unchecked population explosion of toxic dinoflagellates would kill all the fish in the sea. (Exploring Revelation, rev.ed [Chicago: Moody, 1987; reprint, Neptune, N.J.: Loizeaux, 1991], 190-191).
The stench from the dead, decayed bodies would then cause everything in the sea to have died. Dr. Morris writes: “In this toxic ocean nothing can survive, and soon all the billions of fishes and marine mammals and marine reptiles and the innumerable varieties of marine invertebrates will perish, thus still further poisoning the oceans and contaminating the sea shores of the world. The oceans will have effectively completed their age-long function in the earth’s physical economy and will die. As God had created every living soul in the waters (Genesis 1:21), so now every living soul died in the sea. (The Revelation Record [Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 1983], 298).”
IV. The Third Bowl: Fresh Water Becomes Blood
Then the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of waters, and they became blood. 5 And I heard the angel of the waters saying, “Righteous are You, who is and who was, O Holy One, because You judged these things; (Revelation 16:4–5)
Whereas the Second Bowl turns the seas into blood, the Third Bowl turns all the fresh water into blood. What happened in Egypt in Exodus 7:19-21 is now happening all over the world. So here the world is under the judgment of God with painful boils and there is no more clean water.
In Jewish thought, it was thought that the elements of nature were held to be under the jurisdiction of appropriate angels to which Sweet points out, “In contemporary thought, spiritual powers represented and controlled earthly realities. In Revelation 11:6 the two witnesses shut up the sky from rain during their prophetic ministry. Also in Revelation 7:1 “1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind would blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree.” It is a time of incredible drought.
Now some may say this is unfair or too harsh of God. In contrast to the blasphemies coming forth from men (vv.9,11), the angel declares in Revelation 16:6-7 “6 for they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink. They deserve it.” 7 And I heard the altar saying, “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”
God’s judgment is always perfect and just. He is righteous and holy, He is just and virtuous. This is an appropriate response to rejection. It’s not as if they didn’t have an opportunity. That populous bears heavy guilt and has repeatedly and for years spurned the gospel.
never taking your own revenge, beloved—instead leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,” says the Lord. (Romans 12:19)
and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Master, holy and true? Will You not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10)
Then I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered greatly. (Revelation 17:6)
“Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.” (Revelation 18:20)
God always sets the standard for what is true and right. He is the standard for morality. He is the standard for holiness. He is the standard for how we are to live. the righteous and the wicked try to establish their own rebellious standard and it is usually in rebellion against God. So when the world is hit with these incredible judgments, God is doing what is right at the right time and in the right manner.
"After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great crowd in heaven, saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; 2 BECAUSE HIS JUDGMENTS ARE TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her sexual immorality, and HE HAS AVENGED THE BLOOD OF HIS SLAVES shed BY HER HAND.” (Revelation 19:1–2)
V. The Fourth Bowl: The Sun Scorches Man
"And the fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and it was given to it to scorch men with fire. 9 And men were scorched with fierce heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has the authority over these plagues, and they did not repent so as to give Him glory." (Revelation 16:8–9)
The sun since the fourth day of creation (Gen 1:14-19), given the world light, warmth, and energy, becomes a deadly killer. Searing heat will scorch men so that the atmosphere will seem to be on fire. These people will be those, “people who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image” (V.2). This judgment is reminiscent of Isaiah 24:4-6, “4 The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the exalted of the people of the earth languish. 5 The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they trespassed laws, violated statutes, and broke the everlasting covenant. 6 Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and those who inhabit it are held guilty. Therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men remain.”
Have you ever been so hot that you could not find relief? Imagine the situation where there is an explosion in the sun that begins to burn up the atmosphere, or where the earth's natural cooling or insulating properties are damaged or removed. Now add to this the fact that there is no water for relief.
This kind of heat will likely melt the polar ice caps, increasing the water levels of the sea by 200 feet, according to some scientists. Even in all of this, there is no repentance. Verse 9 says they blasphemed the name of God, meaning they know where these judgments are coming from and yet they will not relent. This, for us just points to the fact that humanity loves its sin so much and is so deceived by the Antichrist that “they did not repent and give him glory.” Up to this point, only Antichrist has been described as blaspheming (13:1, 5-6); here though the world adopts his evil character.
VI. The Fifth Bowl: Wrath Upon the Antichrist
"Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became darkened; and they gnawed their tongues because of pain, 11 and they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and they did not repent of their deeds." (Revelation 16:10–11)
In Exodus 10:21-29, God executed his judgment over Egypt with complete darkness. This time, it happens to the Antichrist’s Kingdom. It is best to see the reference to the Antichrist’s throne as a reference to his kingdom, instead of a place where he sits. What is important to know is that the beast will be rendered helpless.
Joel described this time of judgment as “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness… Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the of decision. The sun and moon grow dark and the stars lose their brightness” (Joel 2:2; 3:14-15). Zephaniah described the Day of the Lord as “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness” (Zeph 1:15). Jesus declared in His Olivet discourse that “in those days, after the tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light” (Mark 13:24; Isa 13:10; 24:23; Luke 21:25; Acts 2:20).
What is important to note is that this is the final reference in Revelation that the people were unwilling to repent. The human heart can be so hard. Even today. How many times have your refused to repent or hold onto sin? The sin of pride has a powerful grip on us. What is sad is as bad as this is, hell is far worse.
VII. The Sixth Bowl: The Euphrates is Dried Up
"And the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates, and its water was dried up so that the way would be prepared for the kings from the east. 13 Then 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 spirits of demons, doing signs, which go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them together for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty. 15 (“Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his garments so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.”) 16 And they gathered them together to the place which in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon. (Revelation 16:12–16)
Unlike the previous five bowls, the sixth, like the fifth seal (6:9-11), has no specific assault on humanity but prepares for what is to come. There is also a parallel between the sixth trumpet and the sixth bowl. When the sixth trumpet sounded, four angels bound at the Euphrates were released to lead a vast army of grotesque horses to the slaughter of one-third of the world’s population (9:13-19). The Euphrates marks the eastern boundary of the land given by covenant to Abraham and his seed (Genesis 15:18; Deut 1:7-8; Josh 1:3-4). Yet it also separated the Roman Empire on the east
This isn’t the first time, by the way, in the judgments of the book of Revelation that the Euphrates has been mentioned. Back in chapter 9 and verse 14, the sixth angel who had a trumpet blew it at the appropriate time and a voice said, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” Two hundred million demons were released.
It’s called a great river because, in fact, it is. It’s eighteen-hundred miles long. It runs from north to south. In fact, its headwaters are found in no other place than Mount Ararat. You remember that, don’t you? That’s where the ark ended up. The summit of Mount Ararat is somewhere around seventeen thousand feet. It is snow-capped all year long. The headwaters of the great Euphrates River begin there and they flow downhill all the way to the gulf of the Arabian Sea, clear across the Middle East in what we know as the Fertile Crescent. At some points, it is as wide as thirty-six hundred feet and as deep as thirty-plus feet.
The drying up of the Euphrates River is not a small event. This is the very end, the final judgment of God.
“The holy land has been chosen by God as the stage upon which two crucial events take place. One on a mountain and one on a plain. Mount Calvary and the Plain of Megiddo are the two altars of sacrifice that dominate the history of the world. Both are blood baths. Both are the descent of wrath upon sin. Both are brought about by God’s bitterest foes. From each proceeds a supper: One a feast of remembrance for the people of God, and the other a feast of retribution for the carrion. At Mount Calvary there rang up the gates of heaven a victorious cry, ‘It is finished.’ At the plain of Armageddon there rings down to earth an answering cry, ‘It is done.’” (John Phillips)
It is easy to label the dragon as Satan (12:9) and the beast as the false coming out of the sea as described in chapter 13. This is the first mention in Revelation specifically to the false prophet directly although indirectly mentioned in Revelation 13:11-17.
Frogs are considered unclean by the Bible (Lev 11:10, 41) but these are not literal frogs like in the Egyptian Plague (Exodus 8:5; Psalm 48:45) These are demonic manifested spirits coming out from the Antichrist in an effort to make war with God. I find it interesting that these are spirits to seduce the Kings of the world to make war with God by performing signs (Revelation 16:14). This isn’t anything new, is it?
"Why do the nations rage And the peoples meditate on a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against Yahweh and against His Anointed, saying, 3 “Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!”" (Psalm 2:1–3)
These demons are going out to rally all the kings of the world to make war with God
"Call out this message among the nations: Set yourselves apart for a war; rouse the mighty men! Let all the men of war approach, let them come up! 10 Beat your plowshares into swords And your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, “I am a mighty man.” 11 Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations, And gather yourselves. There, bring down, O Yahweh, Your mighty ones. 12 Let the nations be roused up And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, For there I will sit to judge All the surrounding nations. 13 Send in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the wine press is full; The vats overflow, for their evil is great. 14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of Yahweh is near in the valley of decision. (Joel 3:9–14)
In the midst of the greatest judgment the world has ever known the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself will interject Himself into to give a word before the pouring out of the seventh bowl to assure believers that they are not totally forgotten in the process of this judgment.
Revelation 16:15a “Behold, I am coming like a thief."
The Lord Jesus then reminds us that as a thief comes to steal, Jesus will come just as quickly if we are not prepared. Unlike a thief, however, Jesus will come for those who are not ready. Earlier in Revelation Jesus warned the church in Sardis, “If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you” (3:3).
“Therefore stay awake, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. 43 “But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have allowed his house to be broken into." (Matthew 24:42–43)
"For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night." (1 Thessalonians 5:2)
"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be found out." (2 Peter 3:10)
Then he gives a beatitude. This is one of seven beatitudes in the book of Revelation. “Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his garments lest he walks about naked and men see his shame.” (Rev 16:15). What’s he saying? Well, it’s really very simple. A beatitude is a blessing or a benediction. There are seven, as I said, in the book of Revelation. I won’t go over them. This speaks of being ready. The message is always the same for believers: Be ready! Don’t let your guard down. Do not be deceived. Why? Because you don’t want to be deceived into making war with God. This is where we are left with the end of the Sixth Bowl. All the armies of the world gathered together to make war with God. (Revelation 16:16).
VIII. The Seventh Bowl: It is Done
"Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl upon the air, and a loud voice came out of the sanctuary from the throne, saying, “It is done.” 18 And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder; and there was a great earthquake, such as there had not been since man came to be upon the earth, so great an earthquake was it, and so mighty. 19 And the great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the wrath of His rage. 20 And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 And huge hailstones, about one talent each, *came down from heaven upon men; and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, because its plague *was extremely severe. (Revelation 16:17–21)
The seventh bowl is the final outpouring of God’s wrath on sinners in this present age. After this Jesus will come and establish His millennial kingdom reign. When the Seventh Bowl is poured out, we hear the voice of God shout from Heaven, “It is done!” The seventh bowl will be the worst calamity in the world’s history, the most complete of them all. It is the final destruction of the world system that we are living in now and that which will come to full fruition at the world leadership of the Antichrist.
And the great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the wrath of His rage. (Revelation 16:19)
The literal Greek to English would read, “The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered great Babylon, to make her drain the cup of the fury of his wrath”
Zech 14:4-10 describes this earthquake as Jesus makes his arrival on the Mount of Olives. What shall happen then is that great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. Babylon will be covered at length in chapters 17 and 18.
And we close with the Seventh Bowl with Revelation 16:2-21 "And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 And huge hailstones, about one talent each, came down from heaven upon men; and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, because its plague was extremely severe.
This is really a preparation for the coming of the Millennium. This unimaginable shaking is to return the earth to the way the Lord wants it, so He can come and reign over it. Since Genesis 6, when the earth was split open so the fountains of the deep could gush forward and form the continents and the oceans, since then there have been earthquakes. The tectonic plates, I believe, were formed in the Great Flood, it is their moving that creates the earthquakes. And we’ve always had them somewhere in the world all the time. It’s an unstable earth. It never was designed to be the way it is. God created it perfectly and it didn’t shake. It stayed still until sin caused it to be broken up. The prophet Haggai chapter 2 verse 6 wrote about this. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Once more’ – once more – ‘in a little while I’m going to shake the heavens and the earth.’
The world in its entirety will be renovated. All the cities, islands, and mountains leveled. Those who escape the judgments will then be hit by great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Unlike the first trumpet (8:7) and the seventh plague (Exodus 9:23-24), the force of these hailstones is unimaginable. The Greek term translated about the weight of a talent can also be about one hundred. It describes the most weight a normal man could carry. The heaviest hailstones ever recorded weighed about 2 pounds; these gigantic chunks of ice will be fifty times heavier. This will then add to the devastation caused by the earthquake and crush humanity, who because of the earthquake’s power, have no adequate shelter.
God’s end-time judgment and wrath are inevitable and no one can prevent it or hinder it from coming (Isa 43:13). There is a way to escape this judgment, however, because as believers in Messiah covered by the blood atonement of the Cross, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Those who trust in Christ’s provision and receive His gift of pardon will escape His end-time judgment and His eternal wrath (1 Thess 1:10). These will not have to face judgment on account of their sins were judged when Jesus died in their place on the Cross (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24). In light of this inevitable judgment to come, the warning to all unrepentant sinners is “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 4:7). (Jenkins)
