Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
Series: Letters from Heaven · Talk No. 7
Seven Plagues of Destruction
Sunday, 03 September 2006
This morning we come to the last of the numbered, parallel sequences of John’s visions, a sequence of scenes of the destruction of the world. In the earlier sequence of the 7 trumpets given chapters 8-11 John saw and described the partial destruction of the world as created by God. There God was revealing his displeasure within history towards the world which had rejected him while at the same time restraining and restricting evil and destructive forces. John gave us images of cyclones, raging oceans, floods, earthquakes, and volcanoes.
Today’s sequence is similar to the earlier one, except that the destruction is now total. What is poured out onto the framework of God's creation is now final in its effects.
This sequence is the end of the succession of earlier sequences. The destruction of the present physical world, as depicted in these chapters, is necessary before the coming of the new heavens and the new earth described in the final chapters of the Revelation. These chapters, therefore, represent the end of history and geography, as we know them, in preparation for God's coming new order. Through these visions of John we stand looking at the end of the world as we know it. Through these seven last plagues God's wrath is complete.
Before he describes these plagues, however, we see the victorious people of God standing beside the sea. Our minds are taken back to the Exodus from Egypt when the Hebrews are on the further, safe side of the Red Sea with their persecutors drowning in the sea behind them. That it is a sea of glass mixed with fire speaks symbolically of it as God's means of judgment. In later chapters this fiery sea will be the instrument of destruction of the satanic persecutor and his human instruments, the beast and the false prophet that we heard about from Neil last week.
God's faithful ones, however, are safe. They are identified as those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and over the number of his name. As Neil explained last week these counterfeits were Satan's weapon used against God's people; the cult of the Roman emperor, the statues of the emperor used for worship and the fact that he was a man pretending to be God.
When we move away from John's immediate situation to our own time, Satan’s counterfeits are civilization without Christ, civilization opposed to Christ and civilization in the persona of its leader in substitution for Christ. Such a civilization imposes great pressure on Christians to bow down before it but to be victorious means to have remained loyal to Jesus regardless of the pain or cost. Christian triumph is faithfulness to Jesus in the face of overwhelming odds and great difficulty.
In the previous sequence these faithful ones stand on Mount Zion singing "a new song"; here they stand beside the sea and sing the song of Moses the servant of God (the leader of the people under the old covenant) and the song of the Lamb (the leader of God's people under the new covenant). John has no doubt that those faithful to God before Christ will be part of the redeemed community; people from both old and new covenant sing one song.
Those who participated in the emperor cult in Roman Asia sang hymns of praise to the pretentious beast-emperor Domitian as "lord and god" and as "ruler of the nations". The song of the faithful-redeemed, however, is addressed to Lord God Almighty, king of the ages, who alone is holy. His deeds, in contrast to those of that evil emperor, are great and marvelous, just and true, righteous. Those who sing are not praising themselves or their own heroism in the face of their privations; they sing only of God.
The eternal gospel proclaims that men and women should fear God, give him glory and worship him who created all things. The hour of his impending judgment had come. The singers announce that the hour has indeed arrived and declare to God that all nations will come and worship before him. In light of what will soon occur the singers ask: “Who will not fear you O Lord and bring glory to your name? When God finally reveals himself who will resist him?”
John then sees a frightening sight. From the heavenly temple one of the four living creatures gave to seven angels, who had come out of the temple, that is from the presence of God, seven bowls filled with the wrath of God. These are the seven last plagues with which the wrath of God is completed. In previous visions it was Satan who afflicted the earth, It was Satan who tormented the saints but now it is God who pours out his wrath. The outpouring of the plagues of God's wrath do not produce the acknowledgement of God you might expect but only cursing of God.
As in chapter eight the first four plagues affect the physical environment in which people live: the earth, the sea, the rivers/springs, the sun. Similarly, plagues five and six affect the people themselves. In this sequence, however, people are affected by what happens to the earth, the rivers/springs and the sun. Whereas in the earlier sequence there was partial destruction, the destruction is now complete. The plagues remind us, once more, of the plagues against Egypt as described in Exodus. In this chapter John draws extensively on Genesis 1 and Exodus 7-11. Sores, blood, darkness and hailstones were directed towards the people of Egypt and now they are directed towards the people of the world.
Although the first plague is poured out on the land it is people who are affected, specifically those people who have the mark of the beast and have worshipped his image. These belong to and acknowledge the leadership of one who rejects the rightful rule of God and his Messiah. They are part of an alternative and rebellious civilization who are living in God's world.
The second and third plagues are poured out on sea and rivers or springs of water which turn to blood. Everything in the sea died as a result. When the citizens of the beast come to drink from the water in the rivers and springs they find only "blood". Since they have shed the blood of saints and prophets these people who belong to the community of the persecuting beast must drink "blood" in the rivers and springs. God's judgments are true and just.
The fourth plague is directed to the sun, in consequence of which the sun was given power to scorch people with fire so that they were seared by the intense heat.
The fifth plague, darkness, is poured out on the throne of the beast and his kingdom, that is, on all government and rule which is against God and which substitutes itself for God. Scorching heat is followed by darkness and freezing cold. As with the fourth plague the people cursed God and refused to repent or glorify him. Shades of Pharaoh in the Exodus story where the might of God displayed through the plagues rather than leading to Pharaoh’s repentance, merely serve to harden his heart.
The sixth plague is poured onto the great river Euphrates, which dries up and provides an easy access for the kings of the East. Rome's dreaded foes the Parthians came from Mesopotamia. Their mounted troops were prodigious horsemen capable of firing bow and arrow at full gallop. The Euphrates, unlike the Rhine and Danube, Rome's frontier to the north, provided no natural barrier to the East. It is noteworthy that the sixth trumpet which would destroy a third of mankind summoned myriads of cavalry from the Euphrates region. John is sensitive to the great dread people at that time had for these hordes from the east. Not only that, there was a widely held belief that the Emperor Nero would return from the dead and come from the East at the head of great armies to recapture Rome. As the first and greatest persecutor of Christians this was a fearsome prospect for Christians.
Again there is an interlude before the seventh bowl is poured out. Issuing from the mouths of the evil triad, the dragon, the beast and the false prophet, were frog-like evil spirits which perform miraculous signs. Whatever they are, and John doesn't elaborate, these have the appearance of true miracles as from God. They serve to influence and persuade the kings of the whole world to gather for battle, apparently in the belief that each is invincible. These demonic spirits gathered the kings for battle, on the great day of God the Almighty, at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. This Armageddon takes its name from Har (Hebrew for mountain) and Megiddo, a fortified hill on the edge of and overlooking the Valley of Jezreel, scene of many a great battle in antiquity, located as it was on the main north-south, east-west routes through Palestine. This sixth plague is the horrendous, demon-inspired battle in which mankind will be destroyed by the kings of the whole world. How striking it is that the Dragon destroys his own, warranting the name given him earlier, Apollyon or Abaddon the "destroyer" (9:11).
John quickly reassures his Christian readers with words of Jesus “Behold I come like a thief!”. “Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed”. In calling his readers to watchfulness, as Jesus did, John is encouraging them that Jesus will come thief-like, unheralded, and that they have nothing to fear from Armageddon.
Now many people, particularly the cults, make a big thing of the final battle of Armageddon. But in fact it only receives this one mention in verse 16 of chapter 16 of Revelation. And what follows is not a mighty battle where the forces of evil have their final confrontation with the forces of good. No what happens is the seventh angel pours out his bowl, a loud voice is heard from the throne, surely that of God crying out "It is done". We are immediately reminded of the dying words of the Lord Jesus who in regard to the work of salvation which he had come to do cried out "It is finished."
God says "Done" and the lightning, thunder, earthquake which follow splits great Babylon into three parts and destroys the cities of the nations. Creation disappears at God's command, just as it had appeared originally in Genesis at his word of command. Now when God speaks it is all destroyed. Every island fled, great mountains could not be found, and great hailstones bombard people who still did not repent and still they curse God on account of the plague of hail.
Even when it is "apocalypse now", when human and natural disasters engulf us, still we do not turn to our creator in acknowledgement. We call natural disasters “Acts of God” and when they happen rather than turning to God in repentance and faith people curse God. At times of catastrophe and disaster, people need to hear the prophetic word, the eternal gospel, because it is only the gospel and the declaration of God's purposes being worked out that makes sense of what happens in the world.
Of all the sequences in the Revelation this one is the most apparently "prophetic" of the age in which we live now. So much of this chapter strikes a chord with us today. The pollution of earth, rivers, sea and sky have reached near-apocalyptic dimensions, as the rise of the conservation movement bears witness. Mankind is faced with a diminishing ozone protection with attendant cancer perils from radiation. The so-called "greenhouse" effect brought about in part by the over consumption of fossil fuel could soon bring massive flooding to huge and arable tracts of the low countries of the world, accompanied by large-scale displacement of peoples and drastic undersupply of food and in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union there is still the fear of nuclear holocaust. Armageddon and apocalyptic are parts of the every day vocabulary of the present generation.
By all means let us as Christians march in the streets, demonstrate and protest. But above all let us not be people of despair, as many others around us are. Let us remember Jesus’ words "Behold I come like a thief.”
The destruction of the "old heavens and earth" are now completed, clearing the way for the new creation of God. The message these last plagues, the seven bowls of God's wrath, is that there is no future for us here in the old order, in the city of mankind, Babylon, this world. The theology of Rome, which said an "eternal city" could be built, is wrong. It wasn't eternal, any more than the civilizations which preceded and which have come after, are eternal. They rise, then fall; they come, then go. Secular humanists, Marxist and others who believe a Utopia on earth is possible are also wrong, according to the Revelation. And they are wrong for the very simple reason that earthly rulers are corrupted by power and deify the power by which they are corrupted. Above all they will not acknowledge that the Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered. Nor that the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and that he, the Lord, will reign forever.
The eternal gospel of God's eternal kingdom is unpalatable to the kingdoms of humanity and for this reason evokes such ferocity and hostility. Politicians, kings and idealists cannot bear to hear that "fallen, fallen is Babylon the great", that there will be no paradise on earth, not now and not ever, however hard people work for it. They
cannot accept that neither mankind nor society is perfectible in the old order. Yet this negative side of the gospel, the other side of the good news as I called it in today’s notice sheet is as much a part of the gospel as that which declares that Jesus has saved and that he is Lord and those who follow him will go to heaven.
Let us pray.