Statesman63
Admin
Posts : 287
Points : 631
Join date : 2010-09-30
Location : Cleveland, OH
 | | Subject: Revelation Chapter 16 (Part 74) (Verses 17 - 21) Wed Sep 04, 2019 8:19 pm | |
| Revelation Chapter 16 (Part 74) (Verses 17 - 21)
I decided to scratch the last Armageddon subpart that I initially intended to write, but we will still be covering most of what I had to say by simply continuing the rest of the chapters. Let’s continue where we left off in Revelation chapter 16. Last time we looked at Revelation 16:16, which says, “Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.” The “they” that is doing the gathering are the “spirits of demons” that are mentioned in verse 14. The demons gathered the nations by their deceptive evil, but God is really the one who is doing the gathering because this scene has been predicted far in advance and God is simply using the demons to accomplish His will. We were told in verse 13 that these spirits of demons were 3 in number, and they came out of the mouths of Satan (the Dragon), the Anti-Christ (the beast), and the False Prophet. So the unholy trinity are the ones who gather the nations together. The purpose of their gathering from their perspective is to annihilate Jerusalem, “God’s dwelling.” The purpose of their gathering from God’s perspective is to completely destroy the strength of the nations in one sitting. The conclusion of this war is described in chapter 19. We will see in Revelation 19:18 that God will not only destroy the kings and armies of the wicked; He is going to completely destroy all of the wicked: kings, generals, mighty men, free, slave, small and great. God allows all of wicked mankind to gather together as one against Him in order to display His great power and judgment, and to accentuate man’s futility to attempt to fight against God.
Revelation 16:17 says, “The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, “It is done!” This echoes Jesus’ words on the Cross, “It is finished.” Jesus on the Cross was paying the payment for our sin debt and fulfilling the Old Testament commandments for us. “It is done,” here in Revelation 16:17 is referring to the fact that this is the last of the 7 judgement bowls being poured out. God will later repeat these same words. In Revelation 21:6, it says, “He [God] said to me [John]: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.’” God has prophesied every major event He is going to do up to the New Earth. At the Cross, He said, “It is finished.” At the culmination of the judgment of the wicked during the Great Tribulation, He says, “It is done.” And finally, at the dawn of eternity just after revealing the New Earth, He again says, “It is done.” We Christians should be able to find great comfort in realizing that God at every stage has everything in complete control and it will be done as He said it would be.
Regarding Revelation 16:17, where the angel pours his bowl is indicative of its affects. In verse 2, the angel poured out his bowl on the land and ugly and painful sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image. In verse 3, the second angel pours out his bowl on the sea, and the sea turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died. In verse 4, the third angel poured his bowl out onto the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. In verse 8, the fourth angel poured out his bowl onto the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. In verse 10, the fifth angel poured out his bowl onto the throne of the beast and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. In verse 12, the sixth angel poured out his bowl onto the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings of the East. So in verse 17, this seventh angel pouring his bowl into the air, likewise affects the air. I believe this bowl affects the air in two ways. The voice of God saying “It is done!” is tied to this bowl that is pour out into the air as if it represents the aura of everywhere. Everywhere God’s plan for wicked mankind is done. God has gathered all of the wicked nations together so that they will meet their end together. Righteousness prevailing over wickedness is done. The judgement of mankind’s wicked, evil deeds is now at hand.
The other way that the seventh angel’s bowl affects the air is described in verse 18, which reads, “Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake...” The only thing that doesn’t work with the “air” paradigm here is the severe earthquake. Everything else deals with the air. These signs of flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake are all indicative of God’s judgement. These are literal signs, as we will see that this is a literal earthquake. When God’s wrath is built up and becomes unleashed, His judgement is often accompanied throughout the Bible by these same signs. For example, Revelation 8:5 says, “Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the Earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.”
This earthquake in chapter 16 is qualified in the rest of verse 18, which says, “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on Earth, so tremendous was the quake.” Revelation chapter 16 is explaining the end of human history on this planet Earth, and this verse tells us that throughout all of human history, this earthquake is the worst. Curious as I am, I Googled the worst recorded earthquakes. Whatever the worst recorded there is, the one we are looking at here in Revelation 16 will be greater. We didn’t start recording the magnitudes of earthquakes until quite late when we developed the appropriate technology to do so. Geology.com says that the largest recorded earthquake had a magnitude of 9.5, which occurred in southern Chile on May 22, 1960. It produced a tsunami which caused massive damage and killed many in its wake and left hundreds of thousands homeless. So this earthquake in Revelation 16 will be at least greater than a magnitude of 9.5. One site (www.geo.mtu.edu [Reference link no longer works]) says that an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 or greater occurs about once every 5 to 10 years. And sciencemag.org says that for each 1 added to the magnitude of an earthquake scale increases the shaking by 10 to the number below it. A 9 magnitude earthquake shakes 10 times more than an 8 magnitude. And incidentally, Zechariah 14:5 and Amos 1:1 speak of a great earthquake that occurred during the days of Uzziah, King of Judah.
Verse 19 says, “The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of fury of His wrath.” “The great city” is called by name in the next sentence: “Babylon the Great.” Revelation 17:18 also mentions “the great city.” It says, “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the Earth.” Chapter 17 relates this woman to Babylon the Great. We will study Babylon more soon, but let us first close out the rest of chapter 16. The great earthquake causes the Great City Babylon to split into three parts. This earthquake was so great that verse 20 says, “Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found.” So not only were we told in verse 18 that this is the greatest earthquake since the Earth began, but we see here in verse 20 that it causes every island and mountain to flee away. Earthquakes can cause tsunamis which will wipe away islands. But I am not aware of any earthquakes that have destroyed mountains (let alone “every” mountain). Babylon is current day Iraq. Iraq has many mountains and mountain ranges, some of which include: Hamrin Mountains, Mount Alfaf, Mount Mar Daniel, Cheekha Dar, Hasar-i-Rost, Kuhe Haji Ebrahim, and Siyah Kayu to name a few. God has been holding back his greatest earthquake, reserving it for this occasion. You recall we covered a similar event with all the mountains within the proximity of an earthquake falling in Revelation 6:14.
God is not done yet. Revelation 16:21 says, “From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell up on men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.” You recall that God gathered all of the kings of the Earth together to Armageddon in verse 16. He then causes the greatest earthquake ever, and drops hundred pound hail stones upon them. Can you imagine a hundred pound hailstone? Many hundred pound hailstones? One will not be safe even in one’s vehicle. I just did a search, and as of today, the largest hailstone ever recorded in the US fell on 7/23/2010 in South Dakota and weighed in at a whopping 1.93 pounds. It was 18.62 inches in circumference. That is a far cry from what God is going to drop on the participants of Armageddon. One cubit foot of solid ice is about 57 pounds. So a hundred pound hailstone will be about 2 cubit feet. One cubit is 1.5 feet, so each hailstone is 3 feet. Interestingly, they didn’t curse God for the greatest earthquake to ever occur—they cursed God because of the plague of the hailstones. Again, they cursed the correct source. They didn’t curse evolution or Mother Nature or Father Chance—they knew from Whom the hailstones really came from. Just like in Revelation 6 where they prayed to the mountains to fall on them, the people in this chapter refuse to repent despite knowing who is causing their plague. In our earlier studies of Revelation 6:16, we saw that they precisely referenced the “Lamb” of God in their rebellion. They had the religion correct of which they rejected. They weren’t rebelling against the God of the Muslims or Jehovah’s Witnesses; they ironically had the correct religion: Christianity. These unbelievers knew the True God that they were rejecting.
| |
|
