Revelation 16
Those who trust in the passing riches of this world are warned in Jas. 5:1-6, “It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!…you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.” Just as now is the day of salvation for those who have received the seal of the living God (2 Cor. 6:2; Rev. 7:3; 14:1), so today is the day of wrath poured out for their persecutors, those who have received the mark of the beast (Rev. 12-14, see 14:9-11), and have not heeded the warning trumpets of God (Rev. 8-11). Their judgment is final, because these plagues only harden the impenitent in their enmity against God and his people, and demonstrate that God’s judgments on them are true and righteous (15:1; 16:7, 9, 11). None escape, and when the seventh bowl is emptied, the greatness of the last plague only hardens them more to blaspheme God during their world’s last day.
16:1. From out of the temple filled with smoke (15:8) the shout of command is given to pour the seven bowls of wrath into the earth, i.e., into a world of men deceived by Satan, and who worship him (12:9; 13:4, 8; cf. Mt. 4:8–9).
16:2. These plagues often mirror the plagues God sent upon Egypt, as well as the warning judgments of the seven trumpets. This first bowl of wrath is poured into the earth, the curse of God upon the ground (Gen. 3:17) now becoming a cancer on the lives of men who bear the mark of the beast, and worship his image. It also reminds us of what the righteous Job was given to suffer in his flesh (Job 2:4-7), but his response was different than Satan had predicted, and different than these men. “I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26). Thus he stands with the victors who stand on the sea of glass mixed with fire, who sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb (15:2-4).
16:3. The second bowl is poured into the sea. As a symbol in Scripture, the sea always represents the restless tumult of the nations. Here (the warning trumpet of 8:8-9 having gone unheeded), those unwashed by the blood of Christ see the false hope of the nations turned to the putrefied blood of death.
16:4. The third bowl is poured on the fresh waters (cf. Ex. 7:19-20; Rev. 8:10-11). “Water is absolutely essential to life. The water of the Spirit is absolutely essential to eternal life. Without it there is eternal death” (Dennis Prutow, In Response, Vol. V, No. 7, July 1996).
16:5-7. Those who see wrath as a contradiction of love, understand neither love nor justice. The angel of the waters exalts the righteousness of God in his judgment. It fits the crime. They have shed the blood of God’s people like water. Let them have blood to
drink (4-6). Shall a God of love not hear his children? (7; see 6:9-10). “…shall not God bring about justice for his elect, who cry to him day and night, and will he delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring justice for them speedily” (Mt. 18:7-8).
“The reprobate receive God’s justice because they deserve it…. Mercy on the other hand is undeserved. Mercy on the basis of merit is not mercy (Romans 11:6). There are…vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy (Romans 9:22-23). Mercy is therefore properly understood against this backdrop of deserved wrath” (Prutow, ibid.). (Cf. Eph. 2:1 ff.).
16:8-9. The fourth bowl is poured on the sun. God, by that grace which is common to all men, causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good (Mt. 5:45). But how different is the effect! “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD gives grace and glory” to the upright (Ps. 85:11; cf. Mal. 4:2). But that which gives illumination, comfort, and healing to them is to those who hate the light a source of burning heat, searing the souls and consciences of the unrepentant. Thus they are forced, against their will, to bring glory to God, for such must be the meaning of the words of v.9 (cf. Ex. 14:17-18; Php. 2:10-11). Their blaspheming of God’s name and stubborn refusal to repent brings glory to God, because they are forced to admit that God is sovereign, even if they do so only in frustration and curses. This glorifies God’s justice (6, 7).
16:10-11. The fifth golden bowl of wrath is poured out upon the throne of the beast. This throne represents the seat of antichristian worldly power, antichristian governments and institutions. Every one of them that has ever existed, no matter how powerful, has sooner or later descended into darkness, overcome by the malignant sores of the human nature of earthy men (cf. v.2). And though they gnawed their tongues because of the pain, they continued to blaspheme God, and did not repent of their deeds.
16:12-16. The sixth bowl of wrath, and the gathering of the nations for the decisive battle of the ages. As before, there is great similarity between this bowl of wrath and the corresponding trumpet warning (cf. 9:13-15). With the trumpets, it was usual for a third of those outside of Christ to be effected, or killed. The trumpet was thus a warning blast to the survivors, but to those killed, it was a bowl of wrath poured out, not a warning, for it is “appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). But the end of history itself does not come until the seventh bowl.
The message of the sixth bowl is that God judges nations and empires as well as individual men. Nations are judged throughout history, and there are many decisive battles. By looking at the last great decisive battle, the sixth bowl applies in principle to them all.
16:12. The Euphrates River marked the farthest boundary of David’s conquests. Thus it represents the boundary between the church and the surrounding nations of the world. “When that border is moved or breached, the world floods the church” (Prutow). When God brought his people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, he dried up the Red Sea and the Jordon River. When the church does not defend her borders against the world, the sixth bowl of wrath dries up the Euphrates, and the world comes pouring across the great river on dry land. A showdown inevitably takes place.
16:13-14. The dragon, the beast, and the false prophet (see chapters 12 and 13), with their unclean and demonic lies and ideologies, are the manipulators that cause the nations to be in an uproar, and the kings and rulers of the earth to take counsel against the LORD and against His Anointed (see Ps. 2). But the Lord laughs and scoffs at them. It is against the Almighty they have gathered themselves together. This is His great day.
16:15. John here inserts a reminder to us of Jesus’ warning to his people. They are not to distract themselves by looking for signs of the end. Such signs are always abundant, but we are not to be misled (Mt. 24:1, 11). Instead, watch and be ready, for the Lord shall come suddenly, without warning, and when no one expects, like a thief in the night (Rev. 3:3, 11, 18; cf. Mt. 24:27, 43-44; Lk. 12:35-40).
16:16. Har-Magedon (Armageddon). “The name means literally Mount of Megiddo. Megiddo is actually located on a broad plain” (Prutow). Several decisive battles were fought on this broad plain between Mt. Tabor and the city of Migiddo, a name that means gather, or rendezvous. “They gathered them together.” See verses 13 and 14 above for the antecedent of they (the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet).
See Judg. 4:1-2, 12-17, 21; 5:19. This is the decisive OT battle that is the clearest type of this final battle of “Armageddon”, but cf. also 2 Chr. 35:20-24. Also, please see Joel 3:9-17 and Zeph. 3:8, which apply the same idea.
16:17-21. The seventh bowl of wrath poured upon the air. Air covers the whole earth like a blanket, so the point here is that with this seventh bowl, nothing that the Lord has not purchased from the earth (cf. 14:3) shall be spared. There will be nothing more left upon which God’s final and eternal wrath can be poured out. Thus the voice from the temple shouts out, “It is done” (15). We are reminded that but for Jesus’ words from the cross as he took our deserved wrath, “It is finished,” this awful final verdict would fall on us. To the glory of his grace alone, God took our wrath upon himself in the person of his own beloved Son. Verses 18-21 show once more the total and complete destruction of all God’s enemies (cf. Heb. 12:26-29). Yet even so, men prove the perfect and righteous justice of God by refusing to repent, and by continuing to blaspheme God (21; cf. 5-7, 9, 11).