Series on Revelation
II The Viewpoint
D Cycle Four, The Seven Bowls
4 The Punishment
Text: 16:18-21
Introduction
We know the Gospel is about God coming down to us. Bible history is replete with visitations, but of course the one we all know the most about is when the Son of God became incarnate and assumed a human nature. He did this in order to take our place, our punishment, and deliver us from sin and death. But while this is surely the most important visitation to us, it is only one among a multitude. God talked with Adam in the Garden of Eden. God walked with Enoch. God visited Abraham and Sarah in he appearance of a human form near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. God spoke to Moses face to face, and he also spoke to Jacob. It is of great importance that we understand that God visited His people, not only individually, but corporately. In The camp of Israel the tents of the Israelites were erected around the tent of God, The Lord literally dwelt in their midst and his presence was signified by the “Shekinah” which was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He also went before and behind them in this form to lead and to protect. These are all visitations of grace and mercy. They are saving visitations. However, God also visits men in judgment. This goes on throughout the Old Testament as Israel is warned repeatedly by the prophets of the visitations of judgment that are coming because of the nation’s sin and idolatry. There is a pattern to God’s visitations. The visitation in mercy goes before the visitation in judgment — and the interval may be long or short. Joseph was given to Egypt in mercy, and by him God made it the granary of the whole earth. But Joseph was forgotten, mercy was slighted, and then Moses and the plagues were sent. Jesus was given to Israel, their Messiah was sent, and healing was dispensed, and covenant blessings were brought to the door. But Jesus was rejected, and desolation and misery followed. The world was given the message of the atoning death of Christ and forgiveness through its saving virtue, but that being slighted, the same death of Christ shall be visited in judgment upon the world, that is guilty of it. Payment must be made. Retribution must come. Justice must be satisfied. Thus here in our text we view the final visitation. God comes down and His presence in judgment is accompanied by the rumbling, the rupture, rending and rage.
I The Rumbling
We sue the word rumble in the modern vernacular to describe a run-in, dispute, fracas, or brawl. Here we have the ultimate rumble when God confronts his enemies. We read in verse 18, Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. In Exodus when the Lord sent hail upon the Egyptians in the final plague he thundered. At Mt. Sinai when God came down to deliver his commandments in Exodus 19 the thunder and lightning frightened Moses and the people. In Job 36:32 and 33 we read, He fills his hands with lightning and commands it to strike its mark. His thunder announces the coming storm; even the cattle make known its approach. The coming storm of judgment is announced in the fury of God’s thunder and lightening. We live in Florida near Tampa, the lightning capitol of the United States and the storms are nearly always announced first by thunder and lightning. In II Samuel 22 David celebrates the defeat of God’s enemies in a song saying that he scattered His enemies with great bolts of lightning. Psalm 29 celebrates the powerful voice of the Lord and there we read in verse 3, The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters. Clearly, the presence of God is announced in the thunder. When Isaiah describes the coming of the Lord to judge His enemies he says in 29:6, The LORD Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire. In the book of Revelation no less than ten times before this chapter thunder is associated with the coming of the Lord. The point is that it is impossible for God to be present and to speak without thunder and lightning, and that is because of the fact that His holiness is confronted with the dreadful fallen sinful creation in which we live.
II The Rupture
Verse 18 has mentioned the accompanying severe earthquake and proceeds to describe it as follows, No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. Earthquakes occur when God marches out to the holy war, and also the day of the Lord brings a shaking of heaven and earth. We are told the earthquake is severe, and the Greek word is great, and then we are told that it was tremendous, a word variously translated great, mighty or vast. We are familiar in this day and age with earthquakes and their measurements as well as by the damage inflicted. The largest earthquakes in historic times have been of magnitude slightly over 9, although there is no limit to the possible magnitude. The most recent large earthquake of magnitude 9.0 or larger was a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan. Although half a million earthquakes occur every year most of them are too minor to be a cause of alarm. However in a serious quake as many as 830,00 people have perished. The damage from these mega-quakes is colossal. It includes floods and tsunamis, landslides, avalanches, and soil liquefaction, and fires and ruptures in the surface of our planet. Now imagine an earthquake far bigger than any ever experienced and earthquake that is the mother of all earthquakes. This is what we are talking about here. Since thousands of people die in lesser earthquakes every year, it is hard to imagine anyone surviving this judgment. Daniel described this prophetically in 12:1 as “A time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then”
III The Rending
The next development in this symphony of disasters is the rending described in verses 19 and 20, 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 the fury of his wrath. Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found. There was actually some foolish apocalyptic speculation that Saddam Hussein of Iraq who is now dead, was attempting to rebuild Babylon and this fit into some futurists’ ideas about Revelation. However, the name Babylon the Great already occurred in Revelation 14:8 and is the symbol of the anti-Christian world power that persecutes God’s people. It is a force that will exert its power until the end of time. Long before John’s time, Babylon had ceased to be a world empire, and throughout the centuries it has never been able to rally again under the formal political name of the Babylonian Empire. The point of this vision is the destruction of the world system that promotes idolatry and deceives men into believing lies. In ensuing chapters Babylon will be explained more fully, but for now it is sufficient to note that it is blasted to pieces. The centers of the anti-Christian empire fall apart and disintegrate. So extreme is this explosion that not only the cities of the pagan world empires are divided and fall, but even the islands flee away and the mountains vanish. It means that everything on this old earth is changing instantaneously; indeed the time for the last judgment has come when the face of the earth is transformed and God is seated on the great white throne. Paul speaks of resurrection in the twinkling of an eye in I Corinthians 15:51 and 52, Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. Thus it is also for the resurrection, the renovation, the transformation of this present world into the world to come, a new heavens and earth in which righteousness dwells.
IV The Rage
The final outpouring of wrath ends in rage but it is not one sided. In verse 21 we see the rage of God, hut also the rage of unrepentant mankind, From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible. This is reminiscent of the plague visited on the Egyptians recorded in Exodus 9:22-26, Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that hail will fall all over Egypt—on people and animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt.” When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields—both people and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were. The result was about the same, Pharaoh initially relented, but then he changed his mind, hardened his heart and would not let the people go. God was angry with Egypt and in our text he is angry with all unrepentant sinners in the world but they do not repent either. They cursed God. Sinful people frequently blame God for the vicissitudes of life. The sinful kings of Israel were angry at the prophets of the Lord when displeased with their pronouncements. Jonah was angry with the Lord over the repentance of Ninevah. Also, There are hundreds of references to God’s anger in the Bible and in fact after his own people left Egypt and were led through the wilderness, in Psalm 95:10 God tells us, For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.” And the Lord declares through the prophet Isaiah in 34:2, The Lord is angry with all nations; his wrath is upon all their armies. He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter. Thus the anger of God comes to fruition here in these words, From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.
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