Revelation 16
Questions answered from Revelation 16
Short answers from Always Ready that cite this chapter
Chuck Smith on Revelation 16
Verse by verse, the C2000 series. Permission granted by The Word For Today.
Verses 1-21
In the fifteenth chapter of the book of Revelation, we had sort of the introduction to chapter sixteen, as we saw the seven angels in heaven who are given the seven final plagues which complete the judgment of God upon the earth. And these seven angels came out of the temple and they were clothed in pure white linen. And one of the cherubim gave to the angels these vials of wrath to pour out upon the earth. And the temple of God was filled with the smoke from the glory of God and it was closed now to man. No man was able to enter in during the time that these seven plagues are being poured out upon the earth. John said,
I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the eaRuth ( Revelation 16:1 ).
And so that awesome command is now given from the temple of God, and these angels are dispatched with the seven final plagues, with which God will smite the earth prior to the sending of His Son to take dominion and control and to rule over the earth.
And the first angel went forth, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the man which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image ( Revelation 16:2 ).
It would seem that God now makes a distinction that this noisome, which literally is a running sore, an ulcer type of a sore that doesn't heal, much like one gets from radiation burns, that God makes a distinction between who that are faithful to Him and those who have worshipped the beast and taken his mark. For the fact that it comes upon those, which have the mark and those that worship his image, does seem that God is now making a difference. We remember when God poured out His plagues upon the Egyptians that God made a difference at that time, and that the judgments fell upon the Egyptians, but God protected the Israelites from those judgments. Though there was darkness over all the land of Egypt, there was light in the camp of Israel. And God made provisions to protect His people. He had them put the blood upon the lentils and the doorposts of their house so that they would not be grieved with the loss of the firstborn, as were the Egyptians when the Lord past through Egypt that night and killed the firstborn of the whole land. God was making the difference between those that were His and those that are not His. And such is the case as this first angel pours out his vial and men break out with these horrible sores.
And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea ( Revelation 16:3 );
Notice that the first angel touches the earth and the second now touches the sea.
and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea ( Revelation 16:3 ).
Just how God is to accomplish this is a matter of speculation. And as we study some of the natural phenomena of the past, we realize that there are many ways by which these things could happen. Immanuel Velikovsky's book, "Worlds In Collision", a book whereby his premise that he seeks to prove is that the planet Venus was introduced into our solar system within the last ten thousand years, within the period of recorded history. And according to his premise, the plagues that came upon Egypt were a result of a near miss with the planet Venus, as it was coming in an erratic orbit into the solar system. And it passed close by the earth, and that the earth was moved from its orbit that it had at that time. You see, they used to predicate time on a three hundred and sixty-day year, and then suddenly we started moving from three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter, for we realized that that is how much time it takes for us to make our orbit around the sun. But it is his premise that this three hundred and sixty-day year was a correct year. Of course, if you figured on a three hundred and sixty-day year within five years, all of your seasons would be totally fouled up. In every twenty years or so, you would be completely off in your seasons. So, the three hundred and sixty-day year must have been an accurate calculation. But the three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter, he does believe that the earth used to rotate in the opposite direction of the present rotation. There are a lot of interesting things that he presents in that book which challenges your thinking, but he does feel that the near miss caused a tremendous amount of debris to be brought into our atmosphere. And that as it disintegrated into our atmosphere, as the meteorites do, they turned into a red dust that fell over all the earth. And as it fell into the waters, it turned them to a bloody red, as the waters of Egypt were turned to a bloody red and made undrinkable. Interesting premise. It is also interesting that one of the concerns that the scientists have today is that of a large asteroid, perhaps getting caught in its orbit within the earth's gravitational pull and being drawn to the earth, and the tremendous devastation that would come if we were to have a collision with an asteroid that was, say, five miles or more in diameter. And presently they are watching an asteroid whose orbit is bringing it, as far as the astronomical calculations go, it is going to bring it into a fairly close orbit. It is about a seventy-five mile wide asteroid, which would do tremendous devastation to the earth, should we collide with such an asteroid. There are several thousand asteroids in the solar system, most of them around the planet Jupiter. There is that asteroid belt there. And they have calculated the orbits of many of these asteroids. Some two thousand of them have an orbit that at some time is apt to interact with the earth. So, the chances of asteroids hitting the earth are three in a million every year. There have been in the past asteroids that have collided with the earth. The crater that is out there near Windslow, Arizona that is three miles in diameter, they feel that that was probably an asteroid. And they also feel that an asteroid of that size impacting the earth is enough to tilt the earth or push the earth. In other words, if it hit at the right angle, it would flip the earth. And there is a lot of speculation now that the physicists who believe that an asteroid, such as the one that hit in the desert in Arizona there, would have been capable of pushing the earth. So that suddenly, say we were living here in this pleasant Southern California climate, but if the asteroid would hit the earth at the right angle, it could suddenly push us under the Arctic mass of air in just a minute's time. We would be under this arctic air and everything in a moment would be flash frozen. Instead of sitting in this balmy weather of fifty degrees or so, which it will go down to tonight, we would suddenly be in fifty-degree below zero weather and everything would just be frozen. And they believe that's perhaps what has happened in the past and that explains the Mammoths that are frozen in Siberia, who evidently at the time that this catastrophe took place were munching on tropical vegetation. For they in cutting their stomachs open, they found tropical vegetation in their digestive tracks, but suddenly they were frozen in place. And they feel that perhaps an asteroid hit and pushed the earth so that it twisted and an area that was once tropical was suddenly pushed under the mass of Arctic air and frozen in place. So, the change was not a gradual change, but sudden and catastrophic. And so by what means, God is going to bring to pass these judgments is left to speculation, what kind of phenomena, whether it be an asteroid or what, is something that we do not know. Of course, our scientists are so concerned about this that our government and Russia are spending millions of dollars in the research of this program. They are putting up a new telescope on Kit Mountain near Tucson, and its purpose will be just to track the asteroids and to alert the world of the dangers. And there is talk of if it becomes an eminent danger of a particular asteroid coming into our gravitational field, that we would send perhaps a space shuttle on out to the asteroid and try to divert its orbit. Or they have talked about blowing the thing up with an Atom bomb, but on further study of that they realized that we would be colliding with a lot of debris and that didn't seem to be too pleasant a thought. So, it is a major scientific project right now, the protecting of the earth from the possibility of impacting with asteroids that exist out here in our solar system, thousands of them. There are over two thousand that are already charted to, at some point, interact with us here on the planet earth. Who knows? Next year we ought to have an interesting experience as Halley's Comet returns and unfortunately this time around we probably won't be able to see it, as far as seeing the tail as it makes its orbit. They predict now that the orbit will be made outside the sun, or before it gets to the sun, and as it moves away will probably not be visible to the earth. The tail of the comet is caused by the gravitational pull of the sun as it begins to move away. A lot of the debris. It has this million-mile tail of junk, just junk flying through the sky. We will be coming into orbit with that junk that is in the tail of Halley's, Comet and we'll have some interesting meteorite showers. After next year, though, we may not see the actual comet tail, and all. We will probably have some spectacular displays of what are commonly called falling stars, but are debris from space that come into our atmosphere. There are some eighteen thousand meteorites that come into our atmosphere every minute and are burned as they come into our atmosphere. Small particles of space junk God has designed to dissolve, for the most part, as they heat up through friction as they come speeding into the denser atmosphere around the earth. And they, of course, disintegrate or burn out most of the time before they hit the earth. Some of them hit the earth and you have probably seen some of the meteorites that have fallen and hit the earth. But God is going to bring these judgments. By what natural phenomena, we do not know. It could be that God will bring to pass something that man has not yet seen up to this point, but you can be sure it is going to happen. And whatever causes the seas to turn red like blood? We have even seen here, during those years where we have what is known as the red tide, the plankton as it multiplies it gives the water a reddish hue. This is the result of the plankton taking the oxygen out of the water and it is quite deadly to the fish, as the oxygen within the water is depleted by the red tide. It makes for spectacular viewing. Whenever there is a red tide, I love to go to the beach at night and watch the surf, because it looks like neon tubes. When the surf breaks the plankton, which has a lot of phosphorous in it, and as the waves roll, the phosphorous lights up and it looks like neon tubes lighting up in the ocean. It is spectacular to watch, but horrible to swim in. The surfing is bad in a red tide. The water tastes horrible if you happen to swallow it and your eyes really burn if you get water in them with that red tide, but oh, how beautiful at night. So, it could be a massive red tide depleting the water of the oxygen and causing those souls within the sea to die.
And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and the fountains of waters; and they became as blood ( Revelation 16:4 ).
So, not only will the ocean be turned as blood, but now also the rivers and fountains of water, also. The similar thing happened in Egypt, as you recall, and the water became undrinkable. So, when this happens on a worldwide scale, imagine what this is going to do to man when suddenly all your fresh water supplies are polluted. They are about half polluted now. In this particular plague, the water supplies being polluted is going to be devastating for man. And as the waters are turned to blood and made undrinkable,
Now, later on we are going to have an angel standing in the sun. Here is an angel that God has put over the charge of the fresh waters.
Interesting, these angels. They are going to be interesting persons to meet. I am sort of anxious to meet the angel that God is given charge to watch over me. The Bible says that "He will give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways, to bear thee up at any time, lest you dash your foot against a stone"( Psalms 91:11-12 ). So, it is going to be interesting to meet the angel that has been watching out over me. I want to know what happened to him on a few occasions. He was sleeping on the job or something. But that is all right. I forgive him. I want him to know before I get there that I don't hold anything against him. But it will be fun to meet him.
Now, here is an angel that God has put in charge of the waters. And the angel of the waters declares,
Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus ( Revelation 16:5 ).
It is just sort of right on God. What a perfect judgment! One thing about God is that His judgments are right. And here is the declaration of the righteousness of God's judgment and all the way through this whole period of judgment we find the voices that are declaring the righteousness of God's judgment. It is interesting that though through heaven there comes the continual testimony of the righteousness of God's judgment. This is the thing that many people are concerned about and worried about is will God be fair. Would it be fair for God to condemn forever a man who never had the opportunity of knowing Jesus Christ? Would it be fair for God to condemn forever a baby who died without ever having knowing or heard or making a decision et cetera, et cetera? Whatever God does will be absolutely fair. God will not be unfair. He will not be unjust. You don't have to worry about that. Here, as God turns the fresh water into blood, the angel says "righteous God". That is right on.
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and now you've given them blood to drink; they deserve it ( Revelation 16:6 ).
They have shed so much blood. What a righteous judgment. They like blood so much, give it to them to drink.
And I heard another angel out of the altar say, Amen, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments ( Revelation 16:7 ).
So, the affirmation during the period of judgment of the righteousness of God's judgments.
Abraham, when the Lord announced to him that He was going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham said, "Shall not the Lord of the earth be just?" Shouldn't God be fair? "What if there are fifty righteous people in that city. Would you destroy the righteous with the wicked? Shouldn't God be fair?" The Lord said, "If there are fifty righteous, we will spare the city." "What if there are forty righteous?" "Forty righteous, we will spare the city." "What if there are thirty?" "For thirty, I will spare the city." "What if there are twenty? What if there are ten?" The Lord said, "If there are ten righteous persons, we will spare it for the ten"( Genesis 18:22-32 ). The angels got to the city of Sodom and found one righteous man. So what did they do? They lead him out and they said, "Hurry get out of here. We can't destroy this thing until you are out."
God is righteous. God is fair. The judgments of God are righteous and true. You can count on that.
And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God ( Revelation 16:8-9 ),