Revelation 16:1-7

In this study, we have chosen to slow down our examination of the final bowl judgments of the wrath of God upon the Earth because it takes time to absorb the symbolism behind them, which is the main point of studying the Scriptures. Sometimes we can get a picture of not only what is happening, but why and how, like a journalist should be doing. We won’t comment on what they are actually doing today because not everyone is like that, and we don’t want to cast aspersions needlessly.

The main reason for the slowdown is because of the rapidity of the judgments that are being poured out now, rapid-fire like a machine gun on the planet. What we want to understand are the reasons why and perhaps things we can do to avoid living in such a way as to incur such wrath, if that is possible.

I’m not sure it is possible. God’s wrath, we already know, is against sin and those who insist on committing it, which seems at this point to be almost the entire planet. The church is gone by rescue from the Lord, most of the tribulation saints are gone because of a systematic extermination of believers in Jesus around the world, not to mention the world system that seems engineered to foment rebellion against Heaven itself, with everyone else who is still human caught in the crossfire. We should take a moment to let that sink in. We need to understand how it all started.

In the very beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth from nothing. I am NOT a young-earth creationist, and I do not apologize for that. But before humans existed, there was another kind of order or civilization. Evidence of this seems to be being actively hidden from us, and we are barely starting to scratch the surface of it, but that is not my point. We have known for a long time that at some point, the father of all lies and evil began a wholesale campaign to be a replacement for God Himself. We read about it in Isaiah 14:12-15, which says, “How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, To the recesses of the pit.” Collectively, these are known as the five “I wills” that created all of the spiritual conflict around us today. Spoken by Lucifer himself, it began a war that literally devastated the entire universe. This is reflected in Genesis 1:1-2, which reads, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” When it says that the Earth was formless, it means something kind of specific. It says in Jeremiah 4:23-25, “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was formless and void; And to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking, And all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and behold, there was no man, And all the birds of the heavens had fled.” The words “formless and void” mean “waste and empty.” Some say that was the initial state of affairs at the beginning of the universe, but I think it is more indicative of deliberate destruction because of the text in Jeremiah of great devastation having taken place. It does not say there was nothing. It says there was no light in the heavens. The mountains were shaking. What mountains? There was no Earth. Are there mountains in Heaven? I don’t know, but this seems to indicate it, and that they are living, because they are quaking…in fear. The hills themselves were running around, hunting for cover. I included verse 25 because it says there was no man. All the birds of the heavens had flown away because of the disturbance. This heavenly war that is concluding as we read in the scriptures here in our most recent studies began before this point. Then God set up what we know as all of creation with His power. He made a man to be a groundskeeper and gardener in a very specific location in that creation.

He saw that the man needed some help, so He created a helpmeet for Him. Not just a helpmate. Help MEET. She was his match in every way, complementing him and also helping in his work. God married them together, and they became a family. Then, one day, soon after (we have to think), a serpent came. It is “nachash” in Hebrew and “ophis” in Greek. Revelation 12:9 tells us that Lucifer the Serpent is indeed that great lizard (Dragon) of old who is also called “The Devil and Satan.” This individual made a very lofty and very basic truth claim to Eve: God is a liar, and does not have your best interests at heart. She believed him. She deliberately disobeyed God and ate the fruit she was not supposed to eat. She gave it to her husband, Adam, who was there the whole time. He didn’t want to be alone, so he ate of that fruit. And Humanity fell from the grace of God and into the original sin: disobedience.

Other sins became reality after that, but God judged that sin right away, and He judged everyone involved. It tells us in Gen. 3:14-21, “The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.’ To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.’ Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. ‘Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.’” The Lord said that Satan would be finished by the “seed of the woman,” a veiled first reference to Christ, that women would have a great deal of pain in childbirth and be ruled over by their husbands, and that men would have to work against a cursed creation to be able to live and meet the needs of themselves and any family they had. All of them would now be subject to two deaths. The one that they suffered at their first disobedience to God, a spiritual death, and a physical death at some day of God’s choosing, and would undergo decay of some kind as mortals. As our first parents, they oh-so-generously passed that on to all of their children, to all generations, until the Lord fixes all of creation again. I know, they didn’t have a say in that as the condemned defendants. The sentence had been passed.

That is known in my circles as “the bad news.” And we are ALL under that same penalty. However, and thank God for this, even back then, He promised to one day defeat the serpent in the passage we looked at. This is called the protoevangelium, the very first promise of salvation in Christ, called the gospel. That is called “the good news.” After seeing what sinful creatures we are, and longing to escape not only the penalty of the judgement of God and His wrath, but the very broken nature of humanity that condemns us to that fate! It says in Romans 10:8-10, “But what does it say? “THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” It is the one single way that we may escape all of the judgment that we are reading about in our studies in Revelation.

With all that said, I broke the text down as follows:

KV1: The Executed Wrath of God

1: Then I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

1-2: Loathsome Open Sores

3: The Seas of Blood

4-7: Undrinkable Drinking Water

First, I must offer my sincere apologies. When I said we were looking at the first three bowl judgments, I had intended to say we were looking at Verses 1 through 7. Inadvertently, though an incomprehensible set of mental gymnastic missteps, I said 1-4. When I realized my error, I was unable to correct it in time. For this, I humbly apologize.

When I referred to these plagues that would be unleashed on Earth and all the sinners that remained, particularly those who had taken the mark of loyalty to the Beast, I said we would compare these with the plagues seen in Egypt at the beginning of the Exodus, a type of sorts of the rescue of the people of God, I did not realize what I was saying or what a big chunk of analysis I was taking on. More on that in a moment. Let’s handle this as we go through the text.

KV1: The Executed Wrath of God

1: Then I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

Right at the beginning, the first verse does not allow any other interpretive reading of these bowls than that they are the completion of the Wrath of God. That these have been compared with the plagues of Egypt is not only appropriate, but it is also incomplete. There is a second set of punitive judgments with which these must be compared, and these are the Trumpet Judgments that we have read earlier in this book. All three are clearly divine in origin and are intended to punish those who are essentially holding believers hostage for illegitimate reasons. There are similarities and differences in all of these judgements, and it seems better to handle these in general terms at the start, so here we go.

The first set of plagues is found in Scripture in Exodus 7-12. These plagues were comparatively fairly localized to a small geographic location. The second set of plagues, the Trumpet Judgments, are found in Revelation 8-11, which we have read fairly recently. These cover about a third of the Earth. These plagues will be literally worldwide, and these will be extremely rapid. All three sets of plagues include darkness, water turned to blood, and an invasion from the east by either insects, demons, or men. My thanks to Dr. John MacArthur for that comparison. This set of judgments will gather all of these things together and completely overwhelm the Earth to the point of complete destruction. That said, let’s get into the specific text, because this starts to come out right at the start.

1-2: Loathsome Open Sores

Much of the detail here is found directly in the text, so I’m just going to jump right in.

1: Then I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

This loud voice [μεγάλης φωνῆς] is coming from the temple. I view this (and so do Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown) as the voice of God, personally directing the angels in their carrying out of their duties in pouring out the bowls of judgment. This is the time of the judgment of all of the earth. One of the commentators rightly points out that this is done at a time that the authority of the beast, and Dragon, and the False Prophet has expired. Does anyone remember what was said right after the seventh trumpet judgment sounded? Revelation 11:15 says, “Then the seventh angel sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.’” We are now past that point in history. The Great Red Dragon has been thrown down to Earth and restricted to that location. Now is the time of the execution and completion of God’s final judgment on all of it. This is seen by all of the worshippers of the beast being considered as objects of God’s wrath (see Rev. 14:17-20). The voice commands: Go and pour out on the Earth the seven bowls of the Wrath of God. In other words, buckle up, here we go.

2: 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 had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image.

The first angel obeys. His bowl is poured out, and the plague begins. The text tells us that it becomes a κακὸν καὶ πονηρὸν, that is, a bad, evil, wrong, and actively evil kind of ἕλκος [ulcer]. In fact, some have postulated that this is where the word “ulcer” comes from. Such sores also afflicted the Egyptians in Exodus 9:9-11. These are the same kind of sores that Job may have had, and Lazarus the beggar in Luke 16. These are swelling, oozing, open sores, and according to all of those references, are very painful to those so afflicted. These sores only occur on people who have the mark of loyalty to the beast and who worship him. That’s pretty specific. Some have postulated that genetics is involved, but I don’t think that’s necessary. God is in direct control of everything and can inflict anyone He sees fit. Here, He is restricting it to those who have taken the mark, those who are perhaps holding believers from participating in buying food and such, like a kind of hostage, to try and make them conform to the rest of the world. Real Christians would know not to take that mark.

Essentially, all those that have made it painful for followers of Jesus to follow Him are now inflicted with the pain of running, stinking, rotting sores that have no cure. They are now targeted with the kind of discomfort that they have caused for the people of God to simply live their lives. But wait, there’s more.

3: The Seas of Blood

Think of it. Shipping has already been kind of messed up. A certain kind of burning mountain fell into the sea. It tells us that a third of the sea turned to blood because of this. A third of the ships were destroyed. A third of the life in the oceans died because of this. What was a localized phenomenon in a river in Egypt during the exodus of Israel from Egypt had swallowed a third of the oceans, and it is about to go global, to use a phrase.

3: 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.

The second angel obeys. I hardly know what to make of this. The sea turns into blood, like that of a dead man. There is a phenomenon we know as “red tide,” an out-of-control growth of a specific kind of algae that can cause the water to change colour. It doesn’t have to be red, either. However, it does kill all the aquatic life and gives the water a kind of sludge-like consistency. This actually happened in Florida in 2022 and 2023, and I think they monitor for it constantly. Such a tide produces a kind of toxin called “brevotoxin,” a kind of neurotoxin that can essentially short out neural activity in anything in the water if the concentration is high enough. Now I have to ask…when something in the water dies suddenly like this, what happens? It’s okay, I’ll tell you. It rises to the surface and decays. The resulting stench, if you’ve ever smelled this kind of death, can be almost unbearable. I used to work for Fish & Wildlife Ontario. I’ve smelled it more than once. So now everyone has suppurating pustules over every inch of their bodies, and they cannot breathe deeply. Yuck.
I suppose this is one explanation, but it doesn’t have to be this. It could just be the Lord making something into something else. I will be the first in line today to tell you that God can do anything He wants in any way He wants, to anyone or anything He wants, and nobody can stop Him. He can do it in an instant, and doesn’t need to have an angel pour it out of a bowl.
However, there is a symbolism to this. You see, at the time this was written, the Roman Empire depended on sea trade, and much of their food came from the sea. This kind of judgment would simply devastate that civilization. That’s the level of judgment that we are considering. Not just here, but with all of them. Like the first bowl bringing justice against all those who worshipped a false pretender and caused impossible pain to all those wanting to follow the real God, our Lord Jesus and God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, here, on a planetary level, because they starved the people of God with their actions, they themselves will be starved. Not for long, however, because these have to be very near the end. Why? Well, next paragraph.

4-7: Undrinkable Drinking Water

While a person can survive for a while without food, on the order of 2-3 weeks, depending on care, which will be probably in very short supply, I might argue almost non-existent here, one cannot live long without water. We move from 2-3 weeks to 2-3 days. What happens if every drop of drinkable water on Earth is suddenly rendered undrinkable?

4: Then the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of waters; and they became blood.

Argue what you will about vampirism, it doesn’t really exist. Besides, if this is like what happened in the oceans, this is the blood of a dead person, and vampires would seek the blood of the living, not the dead. The third angel obeys, and there is no more water to drink. This has just limited the amount of time for anyone with the mark to 2-3 days of life. I knew this stuff before I took Biology in university. I used to have a credit course in Grade 11 called “outdoor education.” Because my dad raised me on a farm as a woodsman, I knew this before that class. Basically, it was camping for credit. We always camped on the shore of a river or lake. Why? So no one would die of thirst. If it were a canoe trip, we were surrounded by water. We each had a mug that we could dip into the lake for a drink. But what if this had happened then? I cannot even imagine. Add this new stench to the rotting smell of the decaying flesh and the decaying sea life, to the decaying blood and animal life left on earth. While I was writing this, I could remember that gill net we found on Shoal Lake. Olfactory memory is the strongest, it has been discovered. I could almost smell it again, and the bile began to rise in my stomach. It will be like that, only with pain, hunger, and thirst now.
Still, there is that symbolism of justice seen in this, but it is covered in the subsequent verses, so we will comment on them as we go through them.

5: And I heard the angel of the waters saying, “Righteous are You, who are and who were, O Holy One, because You judged these things;

The Angel of the Waters. I see this as a specific angel who is charged with the care of the waters and the life in them. HE feels the need to comment on the symbolic theme of justice here. And ANGEL see the need to comment and praise God for His justice! That should tell you that for all the ages of man on earth, the angels that serve God have been watching, by the way. They are watching now. They do nothing without God commanding them first, and they wait to finally report at the end of their duties. I think this angel’s duties just ended. What does he say about all the death and destruction?
He praises God for His righteous judgment. He says, “Righteous are You, who are and were, O Holy One, because You judged these things!” God is blow by blow destroying the resources that humanity relies on to care for itself by simply removing them as viable options! And He remains HOLY all through this! Why? We will get there. Next verse.

6: for they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink. They deserve it.”

How does the Holy One remain holy through such horrible destruction? As I stated near the beginning this evening, and from what the angel has added here, it is because humanity distinctly and specifically deserves it. All of it. We have earned it for ourselves. I tell you, beloved, we do not see the seriousness of our own sinfulness. We as Christians pick fights with our holy brethren over stupid minor points of doctrine or practice while we say nothing to unbelievers about how this day is coming for them at the speed of sixty seconds per minute! We strain at washing the outside of the cup but drink down the gnats within, served up by the lord of the flies himself. We are all hypocrites! We pretend we are biblical scholars sitting in our isolated ivory towers discussing the finer points of Lapsarianism while people who have never heard the word make their way down the wide, smooth path to hell, all while we try to make ourselves look smarter by using $50 words and making arguments that these words are needed to explain these lofty concepts? But to whom do we explain them? Try each other! When a brother or sister asks what that word actually means, we treat them like they are stupid for even asking the question! We talk about the Puritans and hold them in high esteem, as we should, but are we practicing the same faith they did? Preacher, how about the last sermon you preached? Did you warn the people of their need for the Saviour, or did you simply preach a gutless, spineless, moral sermon that wouldn’t get you kicked out of a synagogue or mosque? Yet another sermon about the love of God for the encyclopedia full of them. Where is the warning? Where is the necessary call to repentance? Where is your SPINE, preacher? Or do you have one? When your brother or sister is in real trouble because some insane individual who is pretending to be the opposite sex hires a lawyer and sues them for hate speech, where are you? Are you working for them so they can throw off the insanity? Or are you, with the crazy person, figuratively executing the judgment of the enemy on them for “not being nice?” No, Beloved. Paul said in Hebrews that He was convinced of better things concerning us. Hebrews 6:9 says, “But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way.” I join Paul in this statement. We are better than this, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. In context, this is speaking of those who abandon the faith, but that isn’t us. Verse 10 says, “For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.”
These worshippers of this false god called the beast have gone so far as to execute real believers, those who belong to our Lord Jesus Christ. They were willing to give up their lives because Jesus gave up His for us, and there are things that are worse than death. We are seeing some of it here.

I know, I got a little heated there. Can you imagine what I was experiencing while I was writing it down? I had to spend a little time after that trying to repent of some of my own issues. No, I won’t be telling you what they are. It isn’t because I’m not accountable, I am, but not to you. I’m accountable to God and to a very few select men who help keep me honest. And if you’re here this evening and you’re wondering if that’s you, stop wondering. I’m not telling you who these men are. But they are men, not boys. If you need someone like that, find them. Be careful who you pick, it’s a pretty big thing. And please, don’t pick me blindly. I’m not perfect either. Pray for me, that I never again become that coward who is willing to say nothing while another human being is going to hell.

7: And I heard the altar saying, “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”

At first, I thought it was the altar speaking. But at this time, who is beneath the altar? It is the martyrs. All of them. Beloved, it is not particularly holy to pretend that you have not been wronged. What is truly wrong is to seek to avenge yourself against those who have wronged you. There are 52 references to vengeance or revenge in the NASB in Scripture. Here is the most important one: “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:18). Our commandment as Christians is even more clear. The Apostle Paul tells us, “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,’ says the Lord. “BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Rom. 12:19-21). All debts of this nature will be repaid by God, no matter how harsh they were to those who were wronged. And God will always remain righteous as He judges, and no one will receive any unjust judgment that is too great or is undeserved. That is hard for me to say, because I must acknowledge I have unjustly hurt people. God forgive me, and help me to make it right where I can, and at least reconcile where possible. But He will judge with righteous judgment. Always.

So far, we have looked at the first three bowls of the holy and righteous wrath of God. We can see that perfect justice is being preserved by a righteous and holy God. Because we have started this list of judgments of wrath, we must take a bit of a break, emotionally, and so we aren’t here until midnight. I don’t want any Eutychus-like behaviours. No one is falling out of windows on my watch. The next study will be verses 8 through 12. I looked twice this time, and I actually mean we are stopping at verse 12. I’m so embarrassed about that; sorry, everyone. And that’s what I saw in the text this time.