Revelation 16The Seven Bowls of God's Wrath

With the seals and the trumpets the vision took time: there was great ceremony, descriptions of the visuals for each opening, pauses and interludes … but not with the bowls. Earlier there were commands for each seal and for some of the trumpets. Now it’s one command for all seven: “Go, pour out the seven bowls.” Boom, go. The bowls will happen quickly.

The point is this: there will be an acceleration of events in the last days. We’re still looking into the spiral helix and seeing things repeat, but the circles get smaller and smaller: the action gets tighter, the delays are less pronounced, the timing is more severe and dramatic and tight. The wrath here is speeding up toward the conclusion.

One of the things we look for as we get closer to the end is cataclysmic events coming closer together: wars on top of wars, earthquakes and natural disasters on top of natural disasters.

The tables discussed: Have you seen final events speeding up toward Christ’s return? What does that mean for you?

These people enjoyed economic freedom (the mark of the beast, two chapters ago), but God is taking away their health and ease and comfort, like they took it from believers. God is basically taking from them what they were taking from His people. And again, wrath only affects the enemies of God: the sores break out “on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.” Believers, those who are full-in with Jesus, will not be affected by these sores.

The wrath on the land echoes the first trumpet (8:7), which was much less severe. This one hits like Job’s sores (Job 2:7). You’ll see a lot of correlations with Job in this chapter, and lots of parallels with the plagues on Egypt. This is parallel, escalating wrath, just like looking through the spiral helix, culminating in the end.

When this happened in Exodus 7:14–25, only the Nile River was affected. At the second trumpet, a third of the sea was affected (8:8–9). Now it’s the entire sea: greater, catastrophic!

Blood “like that of a dead person” is thick, congealed, a sludge-like substance. This will immediately wipe out seafood as a source of food and money for the world, and everyone on earth will feel the loss economically. (Some of you are thinking, “I didn’t like seafood anyway.” It’s fine!) A lot of trade is done through shipping, too. So first they lose their health, and now they lose their prosperity. The peoples on earth get to watch their grip on power get demolished piece by piece.

From the room: it’s striking that the world’s billionaires have huge ships, some like floating islands with a thousand people on them, and they don’t realize the sea will not hold them. Their money and treasures aren’t going to matter.

“Lord God Almighty” echoes Amos 3:13 and 4:13, and it is used seven times in Revelation (1:8; 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:7; 19:6; 21:22). It literally means “Lord God all-powerful,” omnipotent, all-ruling: the Lord God who holds all the power. In the Greek it’s pantokratōr. God is being called this directly before His power is about to be displayed.

Then there’s “the angel in charge of the waters,” and his rivers and springs have just turned to blood. If this were a rebellious angel who took ownership of his responsibility more than he worshiped God, he would have been horrified, and against the judgments. But this angel sees the big picture and understands what is at stake.

Which brings us to the next point: justice and truth will require wrath. God being consistent with Himself necessitates that He brings wrath on wicked humanity. You don’t understand the cross of Jesus, or how bad your own sin is, if you would accuse God of injustice in this moment. God’s justice demands this action. All of the injustices of our world throughout history demand this action. We just have to trust God that He’s doing it at the right time, and giving the most people the opportunity to repent.

You can see from the text how many opportunities humanity will be given just in the last breath of time: seven seals, seven trumpets of warning wrath, and now seven bowls, all of them still opportunities to repent. People could still repent at this late hour and be on the right side of God at the end of time.

In the last chapter it was sung, “Just and true are your ways” (15:3); now it’s “true and just are your judgments.” Your ways, how You go about things, and Your judgments: both are overlapping and important truths for every believer to embrace.

“Blood to drink” echoes Isaiah 49:26, where God says of Israel’s oppressors, “they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine.”

The Canaanites were blood drinkers; it was part of their idol worship and ritual sacrifice, which is one reason God prohibited it in the law. (And we know about bacteria now: we should not be drinking blood!) But here He says, well, you’re going to have to now.

The tables discussed: How do we see God’s perspective more? How can we be on God’s side? This is key for the last days: when these things hit, we have to be on God’s side.

A table asked: if you get the mark of the beast, can you still repent? “It seems like no.” There are opportunities to repent at this time, but what Scripture shows (and it’s hard to tell if this is 100% or sweeping across all groups) is that the people of earth do not repent from that point on. Could believers still witness to them? He would sit with the many who think the return of Christ for the church would already have happened by then, but it’s possible to see it both ways. In Revelation there’s no indication of repentance after that point.

The scorching heat of the sun will be much less mitigated by our atmosphere: skin disease, burns and fires will all increase instantly. And the people respond knowing that God is in control of these plagues, but refusing to turn. Everyone will know that God is doing this. No one is shown to be unclear as to who is doing these things. The divider is simply whether you blame God for wrongdoing, or you believe that God is justified in what He is doing.

That’s true of Satan and the demons: they know exactly who God is; they simply do not submit to Him. Our task at the end time is to be those who submit to God. Those who look at the judgments of God and say, “You’re wrong, God,” are the ones under judgment, the ones who will line up for military action against God in Revelation 19. There are two feasts there: you’re either invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb (19:9), or you’re on the menu for the great supper of God, where the birds eat (19:17–18). You want to be invited to the first one.

“Who had control over these plagues”: this verse, among many others, shows that God is not in control of every bad thing that happens on earth. He was in control of this wrath, which demonstrates conversely that He was not the one controlling or pulling the strings on lots of other action in the book: the action of the beast and the dragon and the prophet and the evil people of earth. Saying that “God is in control” like a puppet master will inevitably end up blaming God for wrongdoing in your life personally. The Bible shows a dramatically different picture.

And sometimes not randomly or indiscriminately, because the enemy sometimes has a plan, when his will is involved.

If God’s perfect will were being done on the earth, why would we have to pray for it? Jesus taught us to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). We wouldn’t need to. That command only makes sense in the present reality, where God’s perfect will is not done on the earth. God’s kingdom hasn’t fully come on the earth, so His will isn’t fully done here. When His kingdom comes (Revelation 19: it’s coming!), then His will will be done on the earth. That’s what we’re praying for.

Theology that blames every tragedy on God is extremely damaging and unbiblical: “It was God’s will,” or “It was an act of God.” That only ends at nihilism, hopelessness and bitterness toward God.

But see God’s mercy here: these people are still given opportunity to repent. They need to turn from their emotions against God, change their mind about God, and act in a way that is pleasing to God. Repentance is a change of heart, mind and direction (like Bible quiz says). Repentance is the first step; glorifying God is step two: they “refused to repent and glorify him.” Repentance and giving God glory go hand in hand. Repentance without giving God glory is just feeling sorry for yourself. That’s not going to please God: repent and give God glory! This is consistent throughout Scripture.

This is wild, because at the interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets (11:13) an earthquake in Jerusalem takes out a tenth of the city, and the survivors give glory to God. But with the earthquake that shakes the whole earth, the people do not give glory to God. So there is now a major contrast between these two earthquakes.

“The throne of the beast” is the authority that Satan, the dragon, gave to the antichrist (13:2). Now that authority is muted and plunged into darkness.

Like the plague of darkness on Egypt, this is a palpable, felt darkness, a darkness that can almost be touched (Exodus calls it “darkness that can be felt,” Exodus 10:21). It’s not just a matter of the electricity going out, which he believes it will: the sun will go out on this nation too, and all their devices will stop working. Imagine that in the modern world! This will bring their economy and life as they know it to a halt. Again they refuse to repent and turn from their actions; instead they feel sorry for themselves and curse God.

The plagues here are compounding quickly. They still have the pains and sores from the earlier plagues; they don’t have safe water; their skin is hurting; their economy is halted; and the darkness is closing in on them. They take Job’s wife’s option: “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9), instead of taking Job’s option, who “did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22).

The tables discussed: Think of a time when you did not understand circumstances in your life. How did you get back on God’s side? How can someone do that? (“I’ve been there,” he said. “I’ve been in those times where it didn’t make sense.”)

The Euphrates River goes from the Persian Gulf through Iraq, Syria and part of Turkey, then stops short of the Black Sea; it looks like it made it all the way to the Black Sea at one time, but part has dried up (and lots of it is drying up now). The bottom line is that the river separates Israel from many worse enemies who hate them and want to destroy them, like Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, all the other “stans,” and of course China. This river drying up would enable an easy land invasion. So it’s preparing the way for the kings from the East, which echoes Isaiah 11:15 and 41:2.

The four winds were also held at the River Euphrates (9:14), and the four winds there represented nations who hated God’s people. They were being held, then they got released; now the river dries up and those nations are released. So this is the spiral helix repeating and escalating with more clarity: the armies are coming!

Here’s a mini-interlude, like we saw after the sixth seal and the sixth trumpet in a much bigger way. These are deceiving, miracle-working demons: “demonic spirits that perform signs.” They come specifically from the unholy trinity: the dragon (Satan), the beast (antichrist) and the false prophet.

Their focus is not on the whole of humanity at all. Their focus is only the world leaders. They know that if they can deceive the world leaders, they can gather those leaders’ military forces, and that is exactly what happens. These demons are messengers from Satan, the antichrist and the prophet, to convince world leaders that they should gather their militaries to oppose God Himself. This gathering of the nations for battle against God echoes Deuteronomy 32:43; Jeremiah 25:31; Joel 3; Zephaniah 3:8; and Zechariah 14:2–5. And they do so at Armageddon …

That word is very culturally accepted: it’s understood as something ominous, maybe the end of time. There are movies and books about it. Throw it out there, like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and people understand it. They don’t necessarily know where it comes from, but this is where it comes from.

“Look, I come”: Jesus declares this seven times in Revelation (2:5, 16; 3:11; 16:15; 22:6, 12, 20).

“Like a thief” echoes Matthew 24:43; Luke 12:39; 1 Thessalonians 5:2–4; 2 Peter 3:10; and Revelation 3:3. The Day of the Lord will come like a thief according to five different New Testament authors! Jesus says it in Matthew and Luke, Paul says it, Peter says it, and John says it twice.

Verse 15 is a practical prophetic instruction interlude where Jesus reminds us again to be ready! This points again to the point of the book of Revelation: be ready for Jesus’ return! He stops the action and says, hold on, you’ve got to be ready. This interlude is similar to the letters to the churches in chapters 2–3, and to other interludes throughout (1:8; 13:9–10; 14:13; 22:12–13, 16, 20). Jesus is coming like a thief, a repeat of His own statements. Therefore: 1. Stay awake, and 2. Remain clothed. What is John saying here? (He’s not tempted to run around naked!)

1. Stay awake is likely a reference to the Garden of Gethsemane (and John was there): the sleepy apostles, and Jesus’ command to “Watch and pray” (Matthew 26:41). Staying awake is prayer-filled spiritual watchfulness. Other Scriptures point to spiritual awakening as well (Isaiah 51:17; 52:1; Romans 13:11; Ephesians 5:14). In Ephesians, Paul parallels Christ’s resurrection with each believer’s spiritual awakening: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

2. Remain clothed again refers to the teachings of Jesus: “stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). So this is spiritual clothing through the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit. It could be a similar image to the armor of God Paul talks about in Ephesians 6:10–18, also for power, for spiritual warfare, for prayer. There’s a smaller version of God’s armor or clothing in 1 Thessalonians 5:8; 2 Corinthians 6:7; Romans 13:12–14; Colossians 3:12; and 1 Peter 5:5.

Clothes that cover shame were already offered in the letter to the church at Laodicea: “white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness” (3:18). All the themes of this book started in those letters. That’s referring to purity before God, and he believes the same is in mind here. Clothing that covers shame is like being clothed with Christ (Galatians 3:27; Romans 13:14): instead of seeing our sin, when God looks at us He sees the righteousness of His Son Jesus, paid for through His death on the cross.

The tables discussed: Stay awake and remain clothed are ways to remain ready. How can we do these things, and what are other ways we can remain ready for the end times?

“It is done!” is a definitive statement, repeated in Revelation 21:6 at the end of everything. It echoes the statement of Jesus on the cross in John’s Gospel (same author!), “It is finished” (John 19:30). This signals the completion of the warning wrath of God on mankind. The only thing left is the defeat and destruction of all opponents of God, coming in chapter 19.

“Lightning, rumblings … thunder … earthquake” parallel Sinai (Exodus 19:16), God’s throne (Revelation 4:5) and the seventh seal (8:5); the seventh trumpet has a similar storm (11:19). And now the seventh bowl: at all three of the sevenths you see lightning, rumblings, thunder and earthquake. It’s a big moment. Each of the wraths culminates in a moment the earth recognizes, but this is the biggest …

This earthquake is bigger than ever, part of the wrath. Jeremiah warns of this level of earthquake at the end of time: “But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath” (Jeremiah 10:10). So does Nahum: “The mountains quake before him and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, the world and all who live in it” (Nahum 1:5).

There is nowhere to escape from the earthquake: “every island fled away and the mountains could not be found.” You’d think you could escape to places like that, mountains of refuge, but you can’t. At the sixth seal (6:14) all of these safe places disappeared as well: the spiral helix, repeating and pushing toward culmination.

Then bonus wrath: hail. Like the plague of hail on Egypt (Exodus 9:23–25), but dramatically more severe. Hundred-pound hailstones would leave craters in the ground and kill or destroy anything they hit.

Again, no repentance: they curse God like Lot’s wife. This is the last chance to repent, and they don’t take it. This is now the third time the people of earth curse God in this chapter (16:9, 11, 21).

From the room: it’s going to be really hard to be a Christian then, but God is faithful, and testing is like gold to Him: you’re being purified. And we need intimacy with God, a meeting of the minds: ask Him, “What’s on Your agenda today, and how can I be part of it?”

Another shared how, alone at a church piano she couldn’t play, she played “I Surrender All” over and over and gave God her whole life; years later the same tune became a new song, “Come, Lord Jesus, come.” That’s the prayer, the heart cry of the book of Revelation. It’s where it ends in chapter 22 (22:20). It’s getting faster. We’re getting there!