It's the End of the World As We Know It: The Bowls of God's Wrath, Part 1

With the sounding of the Seventh Trumpet, we see heaven erupt in praise as the earth becomes Christ's.  But what that means is not that He returns at that moment (although we'll explore that option in a little bit), but, rather, we see that God begins to destroy the kingdoms of this world and the leaders who have set themselves in opposition to Christ (see Psalm 2).  In other words, the purging of Satan's Kingdom begins in preparation for the arrival of the Millennial Kingdom.

Now, on a computer screen, this sounds really simple.  In the text, it can be confusing, because after recording the fall-out of the Seventh Trumpet (11:15-19), John turns to a series of visions involving a dragon, two beasts, and the infamous "666" (Chapters 12 and 13), then he turns his attention to a large group of people standing in heaven (14:1-5), three angels making rather dire pronouncements (14:6-13), and some sort of "harvest of the earth" (14:14-20).  The bowls (ha ha!  I keep typing "bowels," and have to go back to correct it!  Sorry if I miss one!) themselves don't even arrive until Chapter 15. So what's going on in these intervening chapters, and how can we know that the Seventh Trumpet precedes the Seven Bowls?  It sounds as if a whole lot of stuff happens in between the Trumpets and the Bowls, including the coming of the Beast.

And there are some timelines that present this.  They present the "Antichrist" being killed, resurrecting, and setting up his kingdom between the Trumpets and Bowls.  This is not a view without merit, but once we dig into the text, I think we'll see that there's reason to view these chapters as a combination of flashbacks/exposition for the remaining portion of Revelation.

I think.

So let's see what's going on here.

The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:

   "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,
    and He will reign for ever and ever."

And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying:

   "We give thanks to You, Lord God Almighty,
      the One Who is and Who was,
    because You have taken Your great power
      and have begun to reign.
    The nations were angry;
      and Your wrath has come.
    The time has come for judging the dead,
      and for rewarding Your servants the prophets
    and Your saints and those who reverence Your name,
      both small and great -
    and for destroying those who destroy the earth."

Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and within His temple was seen the ark of his covenant.  And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm.

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven:  a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.  She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth (11:15-12:2).

We looked at the passage with the woman (12:1-2) in an earlier post, so I won't re-hash all of that, except to say that she (almost) very clearly represents Israel, and her child (12:5) very clearly represents Christ.  In other words, John has seen something that is sort of a flashback, but he's seeing it from the spiritual, hidden realm.  We know that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and rulers of the air and of this dark world, and it seems as if John was given a glimpse into Israel's history from the spiritual realm.  We know that, sometime after Jesus, there has been/will be a "war in heaven," and that "Michael and his archangels [will fight] against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels [will fight] back.  But he [will not be] strong enough, and they [will lose] their place in heaven" (12:7-8).  Satan is hurled down to earth, attempts to make war on Israel (12:13), but she is spared, at which point Satan, in his rage, will go "off to make war against the rest of her offspring - those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus" (12:17).

It is at this point that the text outlines the arrival of "the beast from the Abyss." Understandably so, then, many people place the coming of the Beast at some point after the Trumpets.  Why?  Because, in the text, the Trumpets come first.  But remember, John has flashed back to the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, then flashes forward to an unspecified point in time, and narrates the coming of the Beast.  Because we do not know when all of this happens, to claim that these events are chronologically after the Trumpets is an assumption.  And a bad one, at that.

"How can you say that?  Are you claiming that your assumption has to be right?"

Not at all, because I'm not making an assumption.  How do I know?  Because the Beast from the Abyss is already on earth in Chapter 11, before the Seventh Trumpet ever sounds:

Now when [the two witnesses] have finished their testimony, the Beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them . . . But after three and a half days a breath of life from God [will enter] them, and they [will stand] on their feet, and terror [will strike] those who [see] them . . . The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.  

The seventh angel sounded his trumpet. . . (11:7; 11; 14-15a).

So when John describes the coming of the Beast in Chapters 12&13, he's giving a flashback/exposition of the Kingdom of the Beast that is about to be destroyed by the Seven Bowls of God's Wrath.  Do you follow what I'm saying here?  The Beast is on earth during the Trumpets, having already set up his kingdom, but his reference is only a passing reference (11:7).  The Bowls are specifically designed to upend and destroy the Beast's kingdom (Chapters 15-18).  Therefore, John, having not actually discussed this kingdom yet, steps back and describes its origins (Satan), its structure (Global), its religion (idolatry), and its economy (slavery).

At least, this is the best approach I can take.  Now, to be fair, there is one more possibility, and that's that the Beast was on earth, but he is killed and resurrected after the Seventh Trumpet, and then sets up his kingdom, but as we've seen before, the actual words used in 17:8 really seem to imply that this Beast lived prior to John, was killed by a sword wound to the head, and will resurrect at some point after John.  In short, we're seeing a flashback to the coming of/spiritual origins of the Beast, because the Bowls of God's Wrath very specifically target the Beast and his kingdom, and very specifically set up the world for the final war between the kings of the earth and God's Anointed One (Psalm 2; Rev. 19:11-21).

Now, before the Bowls, there are a few other things that take place.  The first involves the appearance of 144,000 believers; we'll cover that topic in a different post, but just bear in mind that John addresses it here.  The second thing John addresses, which we will cover here, is the appearance of three angels.  The third thing John sees involves a very great harvest of the earth.  Let's look at the angels, first.

Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth - to every nation, tribe, language and people.  He said in a loud voice, "Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come.  Worship Him Who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water."

A second angel followed and said, "Fallen!  Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries."

A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice:  "If anyone worships the Beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath.  He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever.  There is no rest day or night for those who worship the Beast and his image, of for anyone who receives the mark of his name."  This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commandments and remain faithful to Jesus (14:6-12).

The three angels here are announcing the end of the Beast and his kingdom; this much is clear.  What is interesting is that the first angel, quite literally, shares the Gospel with the entire world.  There are those who believe this to be symbolic, and that he represents the Church, but since he is "flying in midair," I don't buy it - I'm not sure we can safely assume that believers will, at this time, be able to hover in the air as they proclaim the Gospel; that's a stretch.  It also ignores the fact that there is a second angel, proclaiming the coming judgments (the Bowls) against the Beast and his kingdom.  The same can be said of the third angel.  If each angel represents believers, then we have the odd situation of three different kinds of believers.

The most straightforward reading of the text lends itself to the idea that these are three, literal angelic beings, flying in midair, and proclaiming the coming judgments.  Remember, the point of all of this is two-fold:  1) God is revealing Himself in order that some may believe in Christ, and 2) God is pouring out His final judgment on earth, physically cleansing the earth from the final Kingdom of the Beast, in preparation for the return of Christ.

Things do get a little sticky with the third angel, who warns people against taking the Mark.  This is superfluous if the Beast has already set up his kingdom by this point, since people will have already taken it.  Verse 13 is also interesting:

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, "Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on."

"Yes," says the Spirit, "they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them."  

If the Rapture has happened already, prior to the Bowls, then . . . who is in the Lord at this point?  I think - and I really am just speculating here - but I think John is seeing several things that are out of chronological order.   Right?  Because by Chapter 11, the Beast is already here.  Chapter 12 deals with the coming of Christ and the expulsion of Satan (two completely different events that are separated by thousands of years of earth history).  Then we have the rise of the Beast (a backwards look from the events of Chapter 11), then we have the 144,000 (who stand with Christ on Mount Zion, indicating His presence in His final, earthly kingdom), then three angels announcing both the coming (and the ending) of the Beast's kingdom (which clearly happens before Christ's kingdom).  Lastly, Chapter 14 concludes with the divine slaughter of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, members of the Beast's kingdom (whose fall was announced, but has not happened yet, narrative-wise, in the Scriptures).

I believe the chapters are, frankly, distracting.  We must remember that the chapter numbers are not in the original text, and that they were inserted quite some time after John wrote this letter, and I believe that Chapters 12 - 14 all deal with the Beast, his kingdom, and its fall, but is not meant to be a narrative of events.  John tells us of the Beast in Chapter 11, along with the Trumpet judgments, and then tells us of the fall of the Beast's kingdom and the coming Bowls of God's Wrath in Chapter 15 and following.  The intervening chapters - again, just speculating - but the intervening chapters appear to be expositional.

Well, that was lengthy, and we never actually got to the Bowls.  But that's okay, because this is not a section of the Scriptures that one can just read leisurely and expect everything to just fall into place.  Now, I fully realize that it has been quite some time since I posted one of these, but that's mostly because I've really been reading the Scriptures and praying about this, because the last thing I want to do is spout off completely inaccurate exposition of the Bible.   But there are also many false prophets who claim that THIS is the year Christ will return, or THIS leader is the antichrist, or THAT event is the Third Trumpet, and so on and so forth.  What I want us to do is be grounded in the Scriptures, so that we cannot be easily led astray by such things.

So I take my time on this, and I pray you can forgive the lengthy delays.  Part 2 is coming, hopefully sooner, rather than later.

Surrender

Lately, I've been struggling with surrender.  The funny thing about surrender . . . it takes giving up, and giving up can be frightening.  In a war, an army surrenders and hopes the victors are lenient - but those who surrender know that are owed no leniency.

I have received a clear path from God, but surrendering, in this case, doesn't sit well with me, because I know it will be painful.  I know that it's the path of most resistance, and I don't want that conflict.  But God has also made it clear that this is the only way to freedom, the only way to obedience, the only way to reconciliation in this particular circumstance, and yet I continue to kick against the goads, hoping to muscle my way out of my predicament (a predicament, I might add, that I got myself into in the first place).  Somehow, I keep trying to prove that my way is better than God's way.

Guess how well that's going?

And so, I stay trapped.  I stay a giant humanoid hamster, running in the same wheel that, no matter how fast I run, leaves me going nowhere.  Just like a hamster, I seem to think that this time, maybe, just maybe, if I run really, really hard, that wheel will make some progress.

My brother had a hamster when we were growing up.  That animal was stupid.  I used to watch it grab a piece of food, bury it in the corner of the cage, immediately run to the opposite corner, and try to find the food that it just buried.  That hamster spent most of his short life looking horribly confused.

So I read my Scriptures every day and, often times, I put them into practice.  I pray every day and, often times, my prayers are filled with way more confession and thanksgiving than requests.  But when it comes to the hard obedience, the obedience that takes dealing with pain, confessing sins we'd rather keep hidden, and accepting the consequences of potentially broken relationships, I'm no better than my brother's stupid, stupid hamster.