REVELATION #37 – The Plagues of God’s Wrath

We are at Revelation Chapter 16. The seven angels with seven plagues:

v1 And I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God into the earth.” (2) And the first angel went and poured out his bowl into the earth; and it became a loathsome and malignant sore upon the men who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image. (3) 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. (4) And the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of waters; and they became blood. (5) And I heard the angels of the waters saying, “righteous are You, who are and who was, O Lord, because You have judged these things; (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.

As we read those words does that remind anybody of anything in the Bible? These angels pouring out these vials and things happening? What about the water becoming blood… What about sores on people… Remember the plagues in Exodus? In fact, Chilton and others have looked at this in depth and there’s a definite correspondence here in a couple of things; actually. The chalices, or bowls, of this part of Revelation, also the trumpet judgments that we went through and then the plagues on Egypt. When you look at it there are sores, then in Egypt there were the sores or boils. The sea becomes blood, the waters become blood, the springs and rivers become blood, so you see there’s this incredible correspondence here. The waters become wormwood, which was a curse. They couldn’t drink it – same as the blood. And so on. If you’re interested you can look at the rest of the plagues there.

Q: How do these relate? You have all these columns there…

A: This is what we’re talking about right here in Revelation 16. The middle column, the trumpet judgments are previously in Revelation, Chapter 8 or 9. The plagues are from Exodus. So when you read through you see this correspondence between these three Biblical events.

            What do you think God is trying to tell us through John with these two judgments and the correspondence between them and Exodus? What might that suggest?

A: That whoever is receiving the wrath is being used by God the same way as God used Egypt.

            Yes. Exactly, that God wants us to understand that there’s a connection here with what went on in Exodus. Of course, what was going on in Exodus during the plagues? What was God demonstrating in the plagues in Exodus?

A: His power.

            Right. His power. He says I’m going to demonstrate my power and my glory through these plagues. Of course the plagues were poured out on the Egyptians, on the unbelievers and His people were saved out of them. Remember that the plagues did not fall on the Israelites. A lot of people don’t realize that. But for instance, the plague of darkness. All of Egypt was in darkness, except for the land of Goshen where the Israelites were. They had light. The same with the flies and the gnats and all of that.

Q: Yes, but remember they had to paint around their doors with blood…

A: Yes on the Passover.

Q: What if you were a believer and you forgot? Or didn’t get the message?

A: Then you would have died. God is very clear about that and you hear me talking about this message over and over and over again. Because God says ‘if you do this, I will do this.’ Or ‘I will do this but you must do this.’ It’s incredible once you get that message when you start reading through the Bible. I’m reading through Deuteronomy right now in my devotionals and it’s amazing to me that people don’t pick up on that because God consistently says ‘I will bless you, but you’ve got to obey me.’ It’s not a one way street.

C: There are strings attached.

R: Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way.

Q: There are conditions attached?

A: There are conditions attached, but what are those conditions for? For our good. You see what we need to understand is we will obey God because God gives us the ability to obey Him. He gives us the faith. He gives us the love, the will and desire to obey Him. That’s what we need to pray to Him for.

C: I guess instead of strings you could say lifeline.

R: Yes. Lifelines, that’s very, very good. Thank you. God requires lifelines. In fact the Bible talks about that we should cleave to Him in the New Testament and the word that is used in the Greek has this idea of tying yourself to something. Like a boat that ties itself up to the pier. So that’s the idea, that should be our relationship with God.

                        So God is saying here “Remember what was going on in Exodus. Remember the judgments of Exodus. Remember that I poured out my wrath on the unbelievers.” We see in the beginning of chapter 16 v1 And I heard a loud voice from the temple, Chilton refers us back to Isaiah 66:6 “A voice of uproar from the city, a voice from the temple, the voice of the Lord who is rendering recompense to His enemies.”  So we see this voice from the temple, we see “Go and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God into the earth.” So we see this idea that the wrath of God is being poured out, I believe again it’s not the whole earth. But it is the land, the Greek word there is gas (pronounced gaes) which normally was restricted to the land of Israel. I think what it’s talking about here is that God is pouring out His wrath upon Israel. Upon the unbelievers in Israel. I say that for several reasons. One is in verse 6 it says: for they (these are the men who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image) they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, If we go back to Matthew 23 verses 35-36, Jesus is talking to Jerusalem. He says in verse 34: “Therefore, behold I’m sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, (35) that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. (36) Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. (37) O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!” So you see in Matthew that Jesus is speaking to the religious leadership in Jerusalem and he’s saying, I’m going to send you prophets and yet you are going to kill them. I’m going to send you saints and yet you’re going to pour out their blood. Here is Revelation we see that they are pouring out the blood of saints and prophets, so God is giving them blood to drink. You see this correspondence then between what Jesus was teaching about what Jerusalem was doing and what’s going on in Revelation.

                        There is another reason why I think we’re talking about the land here. It was pointed out before everybody got here and we haven’t got down there yet, but verse 14 says for they (the three unclean spirits like frogs) are spirits of demons performing signs which go out to the kings of the whole world. There the Greek is a different word. In Greek there was a word gas (gaes) which was used normally for the land of Palestine Israel and there was kosmos (cosmos), which meant the whole inhabited earth. Very clearly there is a distinction between what’s going on in verse 14 and what’s going on in the other verses where they use the word gas.

                        Now, when I hear pre-millennial dispensational people teaching about Revelation, they are saying these plagues include the Christians. I realize there are different camps, the pre-trib rapture and the mid-trib rapture and the post-trib rapture, but if you were a mid or post-trib rapture person, where are the Christians when these plagues are going on? They’re on the earth. What happens to all these Christians when these plagues are going on? Some people would say they’re exempt, but other people are worried about these plagues, all these terrible things that are going to come upon us. But notice what it says in verse 2: And the first angel went and poured out his bowl into the land; and it became a loathsome and malignant sore upon the men who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image That would be the non-believers, wouldn’t it? In fact, it’s very interesting. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that Revelation has already occurred, which is what I believe, or whether you believe it’s still futuristic; when you read Revelation, to my knowledge there is never a case where any of this happens to Christians. It always happens to the unbelievers. Do we as Christians then need to be concerned about all of these terrible things in Revelation? No. They’re not going to happen to us. We need to be concerned to tell other people who don’t know Jesus about it so that they’re not involved. Because very clearly in Revelation it is the unbelievers who suffer all the wrath of God.

C: I was reading a newspaper article and a preacher was saying that Y2K is the fulfillment of this. So I guess all our computers are going to work!

Q: What you’re really saying is that even in their pre-millennial view we wouldn’t have to worry about it.

A: Yes. Even in the pre-millennial view you wouldn’t have to worry about it. Years ago when I believed in Revelation as seven cycles of history recapitulated, William Hendrickson’s view, a careful reading of Revelation showed that the Christians are never involved in any of this. No matter when it happens. Of course, there is the mark of the beast thing, those that are concerned about the computer chip in the hand or the forehead. Again, my position is that a true Christian is going to say “No, I’m not going to accept that.” Okay so you die from not being able to buy food, fantastic, you’re going to be in heaven with God.

Q: Would it be immoral if they had some kind of system, like in grocery stores and your bank account where only you can access it?

A: No, that’s not my position. I’m saying that… if the government required us to do that, I wouldn’t have a problem with doing that because a mark on your hand or forehead is not the problem here. What’s the problem? What does the mark of the beast really mean? It’s worship. It’s ownership.

C: You can put a mark on my hand but if it’s not in my heart, it’s not going to affect me.

R: Right. How many people have you seen driving down the freeway with a fish on the back of their car using their middle digit to signal to people whose driving they don’t like very much? In the first century the government was saying to the Christians, “You must burn incense to Caesar or you cannot purchase goods.” The Christians were saying, “No, we’re not going to do that.” So they were being killed. They were dying because burning incense said in effect, “I worship Caesar as God” and the Christians were not willing to do that.

                        Now, if the government were to require churches to pay taxes. Should we pay taxes? Yes. Jesus says render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. What are taxes used for? Roads, water system, electric,

C: We may not want our taxes to go to that but we don’t have a choice.

R: Exactly. But what did Jesus do? He paid taxes. He paid the head tax. He paid the poll tax and that tax was used to build temples where they were worshipping other gods! But the point here is if the Romans had said, ‘Jesus you have to bow down to this statue of Caesar and call him God,’ what would Jesus have done? He would have said, “No way. I’m not going to do that. There is only one God.” So that’s the thing that we are Christians need to understand.

C: Not to render our hearts. You can take our money, you can take our objects but you can’t take our hearts.

R: Absolutely! You can take our objects, you can’t take our heart.

                        So yes, we should be paying taxes because we receive of those taxes. When I first became a Christian I became really concerned about tithing. Jan and I were talking and she said “We need to tithe.” I said “Well, I’ll be willing to tithe, but I want to make sure the church is using the money righteously.” Jan said “Excuse me. Scripture says tithe. It doesn’t say anything about making certain where the money goes.” Of course, that was Jesus’ position. He did not concern Himself with where the money went. It was the fact that it was required and the government is instituted by God so Jesus obeyed the government as long as He was not required to do anything contrary to Scripture.

C: It’s interesting though that He tells them and the way that He explains it, He really wasn’t obligated to do it. He said do the princes and the kings pay a tax? … the temple, I’m the son of God, I’m the prince. Should I be paying taxes? They didn’t get it.

R: They didn’t get the message, absolutely. But the point is that He obeyed what the government edict was. We should be involved in the government. We should be working to abrogate wrong taxes or to abrogate wrong judgments like abortion on demand and those kinds of things.

C: Yes because you could make a case, that the motivation for taxes is covetousness.

R: The majority of our taxes are redistribution of wealth.

                        So here then we see the plagues being poured out on those people who poured out the blood of saints and prophets, (v6). So God is giving back to them what they have done. It says in verse 6 They deserve it.

                        Then we see in verse 8:  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 power over these plagues; and they did not repent, so as to give Him glory. (10) And the fifth poured out his bowl upon 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.

                        Now again, who is suffering the plagues? Non–Christians. Non-believers. Those who blaspheme the name of God and notice, they did not repent of their deeds. What’s the mark of a Christian? Repentance. Christian’s sin. Christians are in a sinful world, Christians are suffering the effects of their sinful nature, but when Christians sin, the difference is that they repent. What you see here is that these people do not repent. What did we see in Exodus? God is pouring out plague after plague after plague, yet Pharaoh does not repent.

By the way you’ve heard me say this before, what are all those plagues in Exodus…what is God demonstrating in regard to His power? His power over their gods. Every plague in Egypt is a plague against a god of Egypt. The Nile was their main god. When Moses stuck his rod in the water and it became blood, it was saying God has power over the Nile. Frogs, flies, gnats, the first born, all of those were worshipped by Egypt so what God is demonstrating in all of those plagues is “I have power over your gods. I am the only true God.” And what did Egypt do? They refused to repent.

C: He had hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

R: Yep. God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart, absolutely. Scripture is very clear about that. “I will harden your heart in order that I might demonstrate my power in you.’

C: They couldn’t repent because God hadn’t softened their heart to allow them to repent.

R: Absolutely right.

C: I bumped across that and that’s why I became a very staunch Calvinist. When I read that I thought wait a minute, if God can do it there, He can do it to draw people towards Him.

R: Yes and that is very clearly the message that it is God who saves. It is God who changes the heart, or doesn’t change the heart. So what we need to pray is that God would change our heart. I tell people there is no such thing as a seeker service because the Bible says there’s none who seek for God. There’s none righteous, no not one. So what about people that are coming ‘tell me about God.’ Are they seekers?

A: They’re being drawn by the Holy Sprit.

            What’s the precondition of someone who comes and says tell me about this Jesus?

A: God’s already been there.

            Yes, God has already been there. That’s what we need to understand. God has already changed their heart and given them the will to seek Him out. So yes, we need to be open to people coming in to our service, we need to be caring and loving of them, we need to support them, make them comfortable, but we need to realize that they’re not there unless God has brought them there.

C: Like the lifeline. God threw in the lifeline, now it’s your job to grab it and hold on.

R: Right. God has thrown out the lifeline and tied it around you, now you’ve got to keep your arms down because if you throw your arms up and let it pull off, then that’s your problem!

C: The hardest part is man is still completely responsible for his own sin.

R: Absolutely. Man is responsible for keeping his arms down so that the line stays on. Granted God is going to give him the ability to do that.

C: Actually I meant more in the sense that God is the one that chooses yet we’re still, if we go to hell we deserve it.

R: We deserve it, absolutely. It’s still our responsibility, it’s still our wickedness.

C: When I was struggling with this issue, I liked the analogy of the police officer that three cars are speeding at 100 mph in a 50 mph zone and he pulls over one car and the guy says, “Why did you pull me over, those other two guys were going even faster than me?!” And the officer says, “Were you or were you not violating the law? And am I or am I not just in citing you for this violation? If I choose to be kind to these other two, does that change the fact that you broke the law?”

R: Of course that’s Paul’s message in Romans 9, who are we to judge God? See God pulls over one and gives him a ticket, and lets the other two go. That’s God’s choice because God is creator. We don’t have the right to say to God, ‘why did you let those two go?’ Because God created us and Paul says, can’t God create some vessels for dishonor and some for honor out of the same lump of clay? It’s his choice.

C: Like Pharaoh who was obviously created for dishonor.

R: Right. But even in that he was created to honor God, to give God the glory. What we need to understand is that all of this in some way that we may not understand gives God the glory, even to bring it back to the lesson of Revelation. Even the plagues that we see here. Where they blaspheme God even in the midst of His wrath and did not repent! What Jody was pointing out before the class started is that even in this judgement, what are we seeing when God over and over again pours out these plagues on people who don’t believe in Him. What is that a demonstration of, other than His wrath? His long suffering! His mercy! He’s giving them an opportunity to repent! They refused to repent, just like in Egypt. Over a period of time He poured out the plagues and they had an opportunity every time He did that to repent and follow God, and they refused to do that.

C: Those of us who are Christians are saying ‘Wow! What power! What magnificent power, how holy You are!” instead of saying “You lousy God!”

R: Exactly. That’s what the unbeliever says.

Q: What about when we were talking about the throne of the beast, when we were talking about Satan in verse 10, does that repentance affect him as well? It says they did not repent.

A: Yes. Who are the beasts in his kingdom? You’re equating the beast here with Satan. But who is the kingdom of Satan? Non-believers. Jesus says to the Pharisees, you are of your father the devil. He is the prince of the power of this heir, this world. So what is being talked about here is not fallen angels, I don’t think. Remember it says men were scorched with fierce heat; and they (men) blasphemed the name of God … and they (men) did not repent… and they gnawed their tongues because of pain, (11) and they blasphemed the God of heaven… I think what it’s talking about here are unbelievers. Men who were unbelievers, who are following the beast, who have taken upon themselves the mark of the beast and the number of his name, rather than taking upon themselves the name of God.

Q: If verse 6 is indicating the Jewish leadership, it’s interesting, the way I’ve always understood it – the beast of Revelation and all that – is the beast is …[tape cuts out]… specifically Nero. They pour out the wrath on the beast and his kingdom, are we now in the Roman empire that he is speaking of there?

A: Remember what was going on in Palestine during this time. When we look at church history, we see that the Jewish people were, in the Old Testament God calls them very stiff necked, they refused to bow before anybody, including God. The problem with Rome was that Rome normally came in and subjugated a people and that country then paid taxes to Rome and worshipped Roman gods. The Jews were so adamant about not worshipping Caesar that the Romans actually allowed them to continue their worship service, which normally they didn’t in other countries. They actually allowed the Jews to continue to worship at the temple and they were only required to pay the poll tax to Caesar, the temple tax was something that was internal. So what you have here is the Jewish political religious system in effect, but over that you have the power of Rome. Now, what happened when Christ and His followers came along is that the Jews saw that as a threat to their system. Remember that the Pharisees said that it was better that one man should die than that we should lose our good deal with the Romans. So they were working in conjunction with the Roman government, and that’s what we see in church history, that’s what we see in this period of time when Revelation was going on. That the Jewish leadership was persecuting the Christians because they were not doing what the Jewish leadership expected them to do under their theology, what they thought Scripture taught, and they were concerned because these people refused to bow down to Caesar and they were concerned that Rome was going to come in and destroy their system and subjugate them completely. So then you have Nero working in conjunction with the Jewish leadership.

C: In fact they said we have no king but Caesar.

                        So the beast then, yes Nero was the head, but working out through him was the Jewish leadership in Judaism.

Q: Explain to me since this relates to Exodus, explain to me why in Exodus those plagues were literal and why these are not.

A: Because in Exodus, when you read it, it’s not talking about great signs, it’s not talking about I had a vision, it’s not talking about I was in the spirit, it presents it as simple historic fact. Whereas in Revelation, John says “I saw a great sign… I saw another great sign… I saw a third great sign… I had a vision… I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day…” The whole premise of the book of Revelation is this is a vision that God gave John and when we look at parts of the book of Revelation, for instance the dragon flying around in the sky, that very clearly to me is not something that is literal. I don’t think there are any pre-millennial dispensationalists out there, or not very many of them anyway, who would say they expect to see a great winged beast flying around in the sky.

C: There’s no book in your Bible bookstore of all those writers that would say…

R: None of them are saying ‘this is literal in that way.’

C: And all of them agree that the plagues on Egypt were literal.

R: Right. All of them agree and that these plagues some would say are literal, some of them would say that they’re not.

C: It’s interesting because when I presented this to an assistant pastor the first thing he did was go to Revelation and say ‘so I suppose a third of the earth is burned up’ and then he shut the book, handed it back to me and walked away.

R: The other thing is that when you look at for instance, a third of the earth being burned up, and then it says half of the earth was burned up, I don’t remember the quote exactly but they don’t jive. So it must be talking about something symbolic.

Q: So the only purpose in using this is just to relate it to Exodus?

A: I think what Jesus was doing through John was reminding the Christians, look what God did in Exodus. The whole point of Revelation, remember, in my mind, is that God is writing a letter of comfort to Jewish Christians.

Q: But wasn’t it also saying that this is going to happen again if you don’t repent?

A: It did — to Israel.

Q: But what happened? He’s warning them this stuff’s going to happen, something’s going to happen here, so what happened? Besides the destruction….

A: A great tribulation greater than anyone has ever seen and which has not happened since. In the destruction by the Roman army of the whole of Palestine, particularly Jerusalem. Again, when you read the historical documentation by Josephus of the terrible things he witnessed, he was personal witness to these things, it was incredible stuff. So I think very clearly that there was terrible wrath poured out on these people. That blood literally flowed in the streets in Jerusalem and in places like Masada, and that’s what it was referring to. That these people refused to repent even though God was doing all of this in the land.

Q: You’re saying Matthew 24 is literal because it’s also presented as historical?

A: No. Remember I said that things like the sun going dark in Matthew 24 is a quote from Isaiah which talks about God’s judgment upon Babylon and that we know from historical fact that those judgments occurred. So when it talks in that apocalyptic language about the sun going dark and the stars falling from the sky, it’s not talking about literal events, it’s talking about the terribleness of the judgment of God.

C: But it is interesting that there are famines, there are earthquakes, the  Philippian jailers… so interspersed there is literal historical things.

R: Yes and we know from Josephus that there were things like earthquakes going on. It talks in Revelation about hailstones of 100 lb. weight falling on men. Josephus tells us that when the Romans besieged Jerusalem they initially were using the catapults with stones about 100 lbs. weight and they were painting them white, initially. So during the night as they were coming in, they looked like big hailstones. They were falling on men. Well the Jews, because they were painted white, could see them coming and get out of the way so basically they were laughing at the Romans, then the Romans decided not to paint them anymore. Then they started killing a lot of people. Josephus tells us those kinds of things.

                        Yes, there are literal things we can know and to answer your question, I think we go as far as we can according to Scripture and no further. If it says there was a great earthquake and we can prove historically that there was a great earthquake, then we accept that as historical fact.

C: I have a problem though because it always seems the determining factor for what was literal is something that we can find happens historically.

C: Well you can find it Biblically. You can look into Acts 16 and there is a tremendous earthquake. You talk about famines, you can read in the epistles where Paul talks to them about famine.

R: We know Biblically and historically that there was a great famine during Paul’s time, after the time of Jesus. So we can pull all these things together.

Q: Yes but isn’t this book written after Paul wrote his?

A: Probably. This book was…

Q: If you’re going to use that reasoning you could say when you come to Exodus…

C: No we’re talking about what Jesus said in Matthew 24 that there will be famine, there will be earthquakes,…

                        We’re over time so we can talk about that afterward if you like.