Revelation 16 verses 1 through 7. And I heard a loud voice from the sanctuary saying to the seven angels go pour out the bowls of God's fury on the earth. So off went the first one and poured out his bowl on the earth and a foul and malignant ulcer appeared in the people who had the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image. Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea and it turned into blood like a dead person's. So every living soul in the sea died. Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and the springs of water and they turned into blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying, how just you are, the one who is and who was, the Holy One, because you have judged these things, because they shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. They deserve it. And I heard one from the altar saying, yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, your judgings are true and just. Amen. Father we thank you for your word and as we dig into it I pray that our hearts would not withdraw from that but would be drawn to you and to recognizing that despite our sin which tends to react to your judgments negatively Our sin was covered by the blood of Christ, which also had to receive your judgments. Help us, Father, to appreciate and to glory in the fact that you are a just judge who brings judgments upon the earth. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Well, as I mentioned last week, this section of the book is the turning point of the book where we're moving backwards in the chiasm. And by the way, I'm not the only one who has noticed reversals in the second half of the book. Even some pre-millennialists have noticed the odd fact, and it's only an odd fact on their system, but they have noticed the odd fact that the second half of the book does indeed seem to reverse the order of a number of things that the first half had introduced. Now they don't adequately account for that reversal and they fail to realize that the dates themselves reverse, but they do at least note some reverse order. Now you already know that I've parted company with quite a number of partial preterists, and I am one myself, but I've broken company with a number of them by showing that chapters 4 through 14 smoothly advanced from AD 30 to AD 136 rather than jumping around randomly. And we saw that each part was perfectly fulfilled. But I'm also breaking company with most preterists and seeing a reversal of dates in these bowls. And of course, This is precisely the section that all of the other preterists, without any exception, have had incredible difficulties figuring out what's going on in here. And I believe the reason that they are having difficulties with it is that they're not following the chiastic structure of the book. If we allow God's own structure of his book, his outline, to dictate our exegesis, everything beautifully, perfectly falls into place. Now, in contrast, those who start over again at the beginning of the war and they move forward to AD 70, which is where they have the terminus of Bull 7, they struggle to find any realistic historical fulfillment for some of these bulls, and they are not able to answer the critics. And there are a lot of critics coming out of the woodwork nowadays and criticizing partial preterism. So it's very important that there be an answer. So what many of these partial preterists have done is they have tried to make things work better by taking the bowls out of order, but they have no real exegetical justification for doing so. It's kind of a haphazard out of order, jumping back and forth. And even though they mix up the order of some of these things, they still cannot interpret them literally. So they spiritualize some of these prophecies. They say, Things like, hey, don't expect to find any time in history where 100% of the Sea of Galilee turns to blood and where 100% of the sea creatures die. That's hyperbole. And don't expect to find a time when all the streams and the springs of Israel were turned to blood. And for sure, don't expect to find a time in history when there was an earthquake such as Palestine had never experienced before. Well, I just don't buy that. And as we've seen, said many times in this series, while the events are indeed symbolic of spiritual changes that are taking place, they're still historical events. And so because I need to solidly lay the groundwork for the next few chapters, I'm gonna take most of the time for this sermon in the introduction. And I'll spend just a few minutes on verse one, and then I'll give you a very, very brief overview of the whole chapter. This is such an important chapter that many, many people have stumbled over. By the way, it's a difficult chapter in other systems as well. And so this is one that I have focused a lot of time on. I thought I had it all figured out a couple years ago. And what was it, two or three weeks ago, I'm like, ah, panic attack. I thought there were a couple of things that did not fit. And so I was studying, studying, comparing, arguing with myself. If this was true, then here is all the things that go wrong and back and forth. But I resettled back to where I was at. Anyway, the first thing that needs to be addressed is this reversal of dates. because you really should be skeptical of what I'm gonna teach you this morning unless you can see it clearly rooted in the scripture. Obviously each angel pours out the contents of one bowl after another in the vision, but does the historical fulfillment follow the same order? That's the big question. Intuitively, we would expect things to continue to move forward. So we ended chapter 14 in AD 136, and we might expect that this would continue to move forward in history till we end up with the fall of Rome in the fifth century. That's the way that Bonson and Moorcraft and most of the older partial preterists take this. Now I wanted to hold to that viewpoint because it seemed intuitively the way that it should go. But it falls apart at many places, and the reason forward progress in this chapter seems the most reasonable to people is because we're not used to, as Westerners, we're not used to thinking in terms of chiasms. We're not used to reading literature chiastically. But I started this series by proving beyond any shadow of a doubt, at least in my mind, that this book is constructed as a chiasm and that it moves forward in A, B, C, D, E structure and then moves backward in an E, D, C, D, A format. So this structure is so critical to understanding the book. So this morning I've given you a lot more detail in your outlines than I normally do. I think it's important that you really think through this because if these 12 points that I'm going to give to you, if you're convinced by them, the rest of the book is easy peasy. If you're not convinced by these 12 points, you're going to have to go back to the drawing board and you're going to have to struggle for the next eternity trying to figure out what's going on here. But I'm convinced they really do flow from the text. Now here's my first reason I give in your outline. One would expect that if there is a chiasm, that it would be natural to assume that everything moves backwards. Not just the themes, but even the dates would move backwards. And there's a precedent for this in biblical chiasms. There are other chiasms that move forwards in time and then move backwards in time. And some are very complicated this way. The book of Daniel, for example, Many commentators have scratched their heads trying to figure out why did Daniel put things so out of order in this book? It's very clear that some of these things happened earlier. Why would he put them out of order? Well, when you see the structure of the book, for a Hebrew, it's no problem. He's working through it chiastically. Now I've put a miniaturized version. I didn't give you the full outline because I didn't want you so focusing on the outline you're not hearing what I'm saying this morning. So I gave you a very simplified version in your outlines again. And you'll see to the right of the chiasm the dates and they're moving forward in the highlighted you know, the yellowed out judgment section. And now in our passage, they're moving backwards. Now, if they move backwards thematically, and I think that is an absolute certainty, then the question is, well, why wouldn't they move backwards in terms of timing as well, chronologically? It's not a definitive argument, but it is a natural one. Second, as I have already mentioned, many commentaries from all schools of eschatology have noticed that there is a reverse order of at least some of the things introduced in the first half of the book. For example, Lowry in his commentary says, John then becomes more specific as to who or what is judged totally. He zeroes in on the antagonists who are judged and dispensed with in the reverse order they were introduced. Very interesting observation. Beal in his massive commentary says, this section may even be intended as a chiastic contrast with chapters 12 through 14 since the evil characters in working their mischief are introduced there in the reverse order. And I could give you a number of similar quotations from commentaries who notice a reverse order. They don't do anything with it. It doesn't drive their exegesis, but they say, wow, it's a very interesting thing. And then they just leave it there. Now, these and other authors sense that things are reversed, and Beal even suspects it may be intended as a chiasm. But because they have not worked out a detailed outline of the book, they've not been able to show how the chiasm of the book drives everything. And I really do believe, without a detailed outline, you're gonna mess up your exegesis. But in any case... It is a chiasm, and even futurists recognize there is a reversal of at least some events. Now I'd say it's a complete reversal of the whole section, and this completely solves the problems with some preterists who invert things. They jump things back and forth in both halves, actually. There's no need to do so. Following the chiasm maintains the sequence where the text necessitates it. Third, In chapter 15, verse 1, the angels holding the bulls are said to be delivering the seven last plagues. The word last implies that at least some of these bold plagues, these judgments, had to be fulfilled at a later time than the plagues that were being given during the trumpet section. Otherwise they wouldn't be last. But most recapitulationists and most partial preterists and full preterists see these judgments as being identical to the historical realities that are behind the trumpet judgments. Now, of course, that's what messes them up in seeing a historical fulfillment. It's just not there. There are some who agree with me that the second C and D sections must deal with at least something beyond AD 70. For example, Bonson Moorcraft, Moses Stewart, and actually virtually all of the older preterists say that the word last here absolutely mandates that these have to be after AD 70. At least some of them have to be after AD 70. They don't see a chiasm, so they mess it up by taking it off into the distant future of the fifth century. But hey, at least they're taking seriously this word last. But there is a second implication of that word last. As we will see, the bowls include in them the very last judgments on Israel that the Israel would see as a nation since it ceased to exist as a nation after AD 136. There were no longer any Jewish nation in Palestine. It became a Gentile nation after that time. So these bulls deal with the last judgment that would come upon Israel, but also the last judgment that would come upon the seven-headed sea monster. Now, the sea monster continues later, but the seventh head was what? Vespasian. And we're gonna be seeing that he dies, and so does his son, and Titus and his son Domitian. So these bulls really do include the very last plagues that all the main characters introduced in the first half of the book endured. We can take that word very literally, but that is simply not the case. If you do like some preterists, and recapitulate all of these verses back to the first war against Jerusalem, which was AD 66 through 70. Taking Bowl I back to the first century not only makes a physical identity, a historical identity, impossible, but it makes the word last meaningless. You see, only the trumpet judgments and the bowl judgments were called plagues. There's a parallelism there. But if they're both referring to exactly the same thing, What are these last in comparison to? It makes no sense. These plagues would be no more last than the trumpets were. So I think it's a pretty watertight case for a reversal or at least going with Bonson and Moorcraft and taking it off into the future. Fourth, the first bull must come after 8070 because the people of the land, in other words the land of Israel, have the mark of the beast in verse two. Well, as far as I know, Jews never took the mark of the beast upon their foreheads and their hands prior to AD 70. It was only after the transitional government, the pro-Roman government was established that the mark was imposed on all Israelites. And that didn't happen until after Jerusalem fell in mid AD 70. So at least Bowl I has to come after AD 70. Fifth, the bowls are not identical recapitulations of the trumpets as so many people insist. There's no parallel to bowl one at all. Okay, so trumpet one deals with trees and grass being burned, whereas bowl one deals with these ulcers or these boils or sores, however you want to translate that, being upon the bodies of men. There's no comparison between the two. The main parallel that people point to is Trumpet 2 and Bowl 2 because the Sea of Galilee turns to blood. Okay, yeah, but look at the differences between them. Trumpet 2 has one-third of the Sea of Galilee becoming blood, one-third of the sea creatures dying, whereas Bowl 2 has 100% of the sea turning to blood and 100% of the sea creatures dying. They're totally different events. They're not recapitulating. There's a thematic similarity, but they are different events. Trumpet 3 has waters being poisoned, not bloodied, but poisoned. And bowl three has rivers and springs turning to blood and the Jews being forced to drink blood-contaminated water. Again, thematic similarities, but the differences are very strong. So anyway, if you've got doubt, I just challenge you to type out the verses and compare side by side the trumpets with the bowls, and you will see very, very quickly that there is not a synchronism one through seven. There is similarities, that's why they're in a chiasm, because they're both plagues, right? They both have similar themes, but they do not progress forward in synchronism. Okay, six, there is zero evidence that 100% of the rivers and springs became blood prior to 8070 at any time, and the third trumpet's not about blood anyway. It's about one third of the water being poisoned, And yet this bloodying of all the springs and the waters literally happened in AD 136. It's the only time when Jews were forced to become ceremonially unclean and drink blood in order to survive. And verse six doesn't say that they drowned. That's the way some people take it. It says that they drink blood. Seventh, on a chiastic structure, it makes sense that the first bull will pick up where the chapter 14 leaves off. And on my interpretation, it does. Chapter 14 left off with the fact that blood came out of the winepress up to the horse's bridles for 1,600 stadia. Okay, well, that makes sense of the disease in Bowl 1. It makes sense of the blood in Bowls 2 and 3. And likewise, all three bowls deal with the very last days of Israel. So this fits the Bar Kokhba Rebellion 2AT. Eighth, we have a major problem in verses 18 through 21. If we follow many preterists who see that as referring to the the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The problem is acknowledged by all of these commentaries. There is no earthquake of that magnitude that happened in A.D. 70. So they say, well, it's not dealing with a physical earthquake. This is a spiritual earthquake that happened. And I agree, it symbolizes a spiritual earthquake that was happening, but it started in 1866, which is when we saw before that everybody saw Christ in the heavenly, saw all of these chariots flying through the skies. That was the date of the most massive earthquake that the Mediterranean had ever seen with every mountain, every island, even the land masses moving by meters. I mean it was a massive movement in the Mediterranean. Now I will grant you that the symbol, in other words the historical event, was not nearly as great a shaking as the spiritual shaking that it symbolizes. that Hebrews 12 talks about, so there is a symbol there, but it was sufficient that it's a perfect symbol of the spiritual shaking. Okay, I guess the point there is that our symbols are rooted in history, on the interpretation of the others they are not. Ninth, the last phrase in verse 17 should not even be translated, it is done. Now my theory can account for either translation, but there is no way that others can account for the literal translation of this word. There's a Greek word, by the way, for it is done or it is finished. It's to telestai. You've probably all heard that word. That's what Jesus said on the cross. It is finished from the Greek root teleo. But the word that's used here, if you look it up in dictionaries, you will see that it is actually an antonym of tetelestai. In other words, it's the exact opposite of tetelestai. What is used here is the Greek word gegonon from the Greek ginomai. Now, if it did mean it is done, okay, we would just say, okay, in AD 66, God gets the ball rolling. He says, it's over for Israel. Okay, I'm going to now cause these judgments to fall. But if this word is translated literally, it fits with God beginning his judgments on the land of Israel in 8066. It's a huge clue to a Greek reader. Hey, there's a reversal going on here. This may be a chiasm. This is one of the clues. The last bull begins the judgments. OK, and it's a hint they should read the judgments that way. Now, I'll just read your outline notes verbatim so that you can follow along. The literal Greek of it is finished in verse 17 is actually it is beginning, gegonem. This word is defined by dictionaries as, quote, to begin to be, to come into existence as implying origin. in the aorist and perfect, and the current word is in the perfect tense, in the aorist and perfect, to have begun to be, to have come into existence. Another dictionary says to be born, origin, to grow, genesis of something. Another dictionary says to come into being, point of origin, entry into a new condition, to become. Another dictionary says birth or genesis. And then there's a dictionary that gives the antonyms or the opposites of this word as pao, to stop, to make an end, dialepo, to leave between or an interval, hesukadzo, to be quiet or still, kapadzo, to cease, to be tired, afiemi, to let go, to cease to be, katapao, to cease, katargeo, to render inactive, and parerchamai, to pass by in regard to time. Now another dictionary that I didn't put into the outline is the exegetical dictionary of the New Testament. It says it means in the literal sense to become, to originate, to come into existence. So the angel is giving the hint that the moment that the last bowl is poured out was the time that the historical fulfillment of each bowl was going to begin to come into existence. When the last bowl is poured out, it was the start of judgments. It would spell the doom of Israel and the seven-headed monster. So bowl seven is not the end, it is the beginning. 10th, seeing it as a reversal makes chapter 16 flow very naturally into chapter 17. It makes things rather choppy on the other preterist approach. And you'll notice that when we get to that chapter. 11th, we've already seen that this is a priestly section. Remember the seals introduced his prophetic judgments. Trumpets introduced his kingly judgments. Well these bowls introduce his priestly judgments. And we saw that the golden bowls were blood bowls used exclusively in the temple. And I believe that they were the bowls used at the seven festivals of Israel. So festivals of Israel, you look in various commentaries you'll see it structures the book. It's really hard to draw that out all the time in sermons but it structures the book. So each bowl represents one of the seven festivals Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles. then we might expect a sequence to follow the order of the festivals. Well, here's the thing. Chapter 14 ended its last judgment just before Tabernacles at the time of the Festival of Atonement, Tishri 10. And there are a number of historical references to that date. A beether fell the day before and the slaughter happened on Tishri 10. But then chapter 15 verse 5 says, after these things, and what festival comes after Tisri 10? Well Tabernacles comes immediately after Atonement. So Atonement is Tisri 10, Tabernacles is Tisri 15 through 21. So we would expect that the next event would start with Tabernacles. Well, Tabernacles is the last festival. So if you're going to follow an order, you're gonna have to go backwards. And so even that is a hint of a backwards movement. And it just so happens that the big events that these verses have a perfect, perfect parallel to, just so happened that they fell on those festival dates. Okay, I think it's pretty cool. Now, one more confirmation that Bowl One starts with tabernacles is that atonement and tabernacles come right after the grape harvest. Well, Chapter 14 ended with what? The grape harvest. So when you start seeing the structure of the book, the chiasms, and there's other kinds of structures in there as well, interwoven with temple ritual and temple festivals, it just blows you away at the symmetry and the beauty of the way God constructed this book. I love the structure of the book. 12, we will later see that this makes the sores or the ulcers or the boils, however you want to translate that, of verse 11 as literal sores of those who are alive in Rome. not demons, not men cast into hell. Likewise, the throne of the beast, it says, became dark. Well, this literally happened in AD 79 through 80. It was about a one-year period. The other theory tries to say, well, this must be in 68 when Nero died and Nero's thrown into hell and the beast is thrown into hell. And I actually took it that way up until just a few months ago. But hell did not become dark. Okay, hell was already dark. Nor did Satan's metaphorical throne become dark any time during that, you know, pre, before Jerusalem was destroyed. It was already spiritually dark, it didn't become physically dark. So what I'm once again suggesting is that these verses will describe literal events in history that have symbolic significance of changes in the spiritual realm. Okay. A lot of background material, I know, so let's dive into verse one. And actually, verse one's gonna be a bit of background material, too, because it confirms the 12 points that we've just given. And I heard a loud voice from the sanctuary saying to the seven angels, go, pour out the bowls of God's fury on the earth. Now, the first thing I want you to notice is that John heard the voice giving the command and he, when he heard it, he writes it down. So the bowls were obviously poured out in AD 66 when John received this vision. He sees them being poured out. It's important to notice the difference between the order of events within the prophetic vision itself and the order of events during the time when the vision would be fulfilled. Does that make sense? There's a difference between what he's seeing in the vision and what the vision is prophesying is going to happen in the future. We saw in the first half of the book that that distinction was also maintained. One seal after another might be opened up by John in chapter 6 for example. covering a short period of time, but when it comes to fulfillment, the text itself will specify long periods of time that will take place, delays between the fulfillment of what is prophesied in each seal. And let me just give you just a small sampling of the detailed, detailed time sequences that are said to happen when it is fulfilled. Not when John's seeing it, but when it is fulfilled. A little while longer after these things, those who had come out, that's past tense, for about half an hour, five months in those days, one woe has passed, two more woes are coming. The hour and day and month and year in the days of. 42 months, 1,260 days, three-and-a-half days in the same hour, etc., etc., etc. In other words, the timing for the fulfillment side, not the vision side, but for the fulfillment side is incredibly detailed, very specific. But the bowls are quite different. Though the New King James and Pickering both have some then words, as if, okay, this happened, then that happened, it's actually not the word then from the Greek, it's the word chi, the Greek word chi, which we usually just translate as and. And so all it is is a series of timeless snapshots. I saw this. And I saw this, and I saw this. Now you might assume they're sequence, but it's just an and, and, and, a series of snapshots. And interestingly, the lack of historical sequence is so marked, especially when you contrast it with the previous sections of this book. But some premillennialists think that these bowls show absolutely no sequence at all. They're all poured out at the same time. Now, I don't think that's a correct conclusion or a necessary conclusion. One could say that the marked absence of forward sequence is simply because there isn't forward sequence, right? There is a backward sequence in time. The two exceptions are not in the bowl section. They are the first verse of chapter 18, the first verse of chapter 19, and there's a good reason for that after these things, because chapter 17 has taken people all the way back to A.D. 30. So it's a smooth transition all the way back to A.D. 30. But now chapter 18 has to go forward, and chapter 19 has to go forward even further to deal with God's day of judgment in AD 70. But it's very explicitly stated, and it fits beautifully into the chiastic structure. Next, John says that he heard a loud voice. The loud voice shows the urgency of the situation. God is patient with a lot of evil, but there does come a time when evil is so evil that it has to be dealt with. It has to be restrained. And as we'll see, this is definitely the case with the two enemies of the church. Things had gotten so out of hand that God had to trim down their ranks a little bit. And by the way, I'll remind you that judgment is often necessary for the elect themselves to come to salvation. That too requires the sense of urgency. We saw last week that these are redemptive judgments, priestly judgments. They're judgments designed to grow the church, okay? So by judging the nation with devastation, God was preparing the elect to be saved. Without judgment it appears that they would not have come to Christ. So God in His sovereign purposes knows what is needed to draw in the elect. So both the judgment of the non-elect, the redemption of His people show an urgency in this loud voice. And I want you to notice also that the loud voice comes from the sanctuary. Okay, the word for sanctuary is naos, which always, always, always refers to the inner temple, the holy, of holies where God's throne was. Now we aren't told whose voice it is. Is it the voice of Jesus? Is it a voice of an angel? Is it a voice of one of those living creatures who's given the bowls to the angel? Is it the voice of God the Father himself? We're not told, and it really doesn't matter because if this voice is coming from the throne room as a command, it represents the will of God the Father. Okay, it represents His, you cannot escape the conclusion, these judgments represent His will. Now why is that an important fact to take note of? Because most Christians today deny that God is sovereign over the kinds of things that these bulls are going to be dealing with. For example, God sends out the first angel to pour out the first bull, what happens? Disease. Disease happens. And yet countless Armenian Christians insist God never gives disease. One author says, Deuteronomy 26 lists many of the diseases known to man today. They are listed as curses. So if you think God gave you a disease, think again. God does not give disease. Disease comes when you are disobedient to the Word. Well, he's missing the point that in Deuteronomy 6, God's the one who brings the curses, right? Even if he uses means, it's still God who is actively doing it. This author tries to say God doesn't curse anyone. He just allows curses to come. Now, if you doubt that Satan brings curses, or if you doubt that God brings curses, supernatural curses, into people's lives, I would really encourage you to read Robert Fugate's newest book on curses and blessings. It really is probably the most thorough treatment that I have seen of that subject. Very, very well done. But these seven plagues are curses, not just Satan's curses. Certainly Satan can be involved in bringing curses. He can be a tool in God's hand, but they're still sovereignly sent from God's throne, and until a nation turns to God, such curses cannot be averted. Now, Lord willing, next two or three weeks, we'll look at these curses. I think there's a lot that we can learn from them. But to deny that God brings typhoons and disease and wars is actually to deny God's sovereignty. Amos 3 verse 6 says, When disaster comes to a city, has not Yehovah caused it? He is sovereign over everything, and He causes all things to work together for the good of His people and for His including economic disasters, war disasters, disease disasters. I mean, it's the knowledge that he is sovereign that gives his people comfort and faith and hope. I cannot imagine facing the kinds of things these people faced and not knowing that God was sovereign, just thinking, well, these are just things, are things that chance, happened to me by chance. What bad luck. Now, we don't believe in luck, no such thing. The next phrase has been harped on me so many times I'm not going to dwell on it, but it says, saying to the seven angels. These plagues were brought by angels. By the way, good angels, not bad angels. Can God use Satan as a tool? Yes he can, sure he can, but these are good angels. So God sends disease, angels, good angels send disease. And therefore the physical disasters in this chapter, including war, are part of angelic spiritual warfare. We should not look at only the physical side of life we need to realize now there is a lot going on in the heavenlies and that's why we go to prayer about everything. The next phrase says go pour out the bowls. Now I went to great lengths last Sunday to point out that these golden bowls were only used in the temple, were used to hold both incense and blood from the sacrifices, So where the previous sections emphasized Christ's prophetic and kingly judgments, this section represents his priestly judgments. In other words, these are redemptive judgments, which means there is annihilation going on, but there's also redemption going on. There's people coming to Christ. So you would expect the massive turnaround we saw last week. That's exactly what happened. Unbelievable growth of the church. By the early 200s AD, Tertullian, told his opponents, look, we've taken over your cities. We have Christians in the palace, in your army. He listed all of the different civic departments of cities. We're in every area of life. We've taken over just about everything except for your temples. And that was in the early 200s AD and it just continued to grow from there. So judgment should not be feared if it is God's means of clearing away the rubble so that kingdom realities can replace it. God may have to do that to America if America does not repent. But always keep in mind that temple bowls advance redemption for the elect while inflicting judgment on the non-elect. Now the next phrase says of God's It's very popular nowadays for people to deny that God gets mad at anything. Liberal denominations are notorious for this. They've even changed their hymn books, taking well-known phrases that deal with God's wrath, like atonement. Atonement means covering over of God's wrath. Well, they don't believe in that, so they removed that. They think wrath was a primitive religion. We've evolved to a much higher state. We don't believe those kind of superstitions anymore. So we would expect that from unbelievers who are headed toward hell. They don't want to think about hell and about God's judgments. But what makes me sad is to see so many evangelicals who teach that God does not have any anger. He's just pleasant all the time. Just never gets upset. Now, a milder view of this is the view that says God never gets mad at believers. But even that is inaccurate. One Bible teacher recently said, first, all believers willfully and deliberately sin. It's in our nature. Second, God does not get mad at us for doing so. In Colossians 1, 19 through 20, Paul wrote that God reconciled all things to himself by making peace through the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for our sins. So let's just sin that grace may abound is really what this amounts to. This teacher is mixing up two things, God's relationship to us as judge and God's relationship to us as father. Now it is true, once we were justified, we will never have to face the wrath of God as judge again. Why? We've been adopted into his family. But does a father get angry at his child when his child slaps his mom? When a child sasses and does something disrespect, yes, of course he's going to get upset with that child and he's probably going to get a licking, right? And so Exodus chapter 4 verse 14, by the way, you guys are familiar with Bo and quite a number of other abolish human abortion people who have been dissing the church of Jesus Christ. I think that's something that will get Jesus Christ very mad at them because what they are doing is they're insulting his wife. They are slapping his wife so to speak. I mean sometimes they'll even make one outrageous statement was that every church ought to be firebombed. This is the kind of stuff that I think needs to make the hair stand on the back of our neck. You just don't do that with Jesus. Likewise, Jesus still gets angry when Christians deliberately sin against him. It is simply false to say that God never gets mad at believers. Exodus 4 verse 14 says, so the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Moses. I think Moses was probably a whole lot more holy than any of us in this room. But he did something that upset God. The anger of the Lord, of Yehovah, was kindled against Moses. In Zechariah 10 verse 3 God said, My anger is kindled against the pastors. Why? Because the pastors were not doing their job of leading the flock and feeding the flock and guiding them into righteousness. It's a kind of spiritual abuse that goes on. Jesus gets angry with that kind of behavior. So it doesn't take much time to find a number of passages that speak of God's anger against Christians, but fury seems to be reserved for unbelievers who have sinned with a high hand. And numerous passages speak of God's fury against his enemies and the enemies of the church. What would you think of a man who did not get furious when his wife has just been raped? I think you would immediately intuitively say there is something wrong with that man. I think you would. God is furious with those who injure and rape his bride, the church. Yet the constant message that I hear from the evangelical church till I am almost sick to my stomach is that God is not angry with the world, God loves the world just the way they are. Really? God loves a murdering rapist just the way He is. I don't think so. I don't think so. Scripture is full of declarations that God is furious with the wicked. Isaiah 34 verse 2 says, Isaiah 63 verse 3 God says for I have trodden them in my anger and trampled them in my fury Their blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my robes Psalm 5 verse 5 says of God you hate all workers of iniquity You shall destroy those who speak falsehood the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man Psalm 11 verse 5 says the wicked and the one who loves violence his soul hates upon the wicked He will rain coals fire and brimstone and a burning wind shall be the portion of their cup for the Lord is righteous he loves righteousness that is the true God the God revealed in the scripture I think the God that many people have made up is such a fake God that he doesn't even remotely resemble the God of the Bible and the modern world wants to tolerate everything ironically though they have an intolerance for something they have an intolerance for an intolerant God his intolerant laws, his intolerant judgments, and any people who agree with this intolerant God. Everything else, they're tolerant of, right? But they cannot be tolerant of that. But again, this scripture could not be more clear. These diseases, wars, volcanoes, earthquakes, and other disasters are a direct result of God's fury. You cannot just blame it on Satan. They flow from God's fury. The last phrase of verse one says, on the land. Go pour out the bowls of God's fury on the earth, which should be translated as on the land. It's a reference to Israel. So Israel was the focal point of God's judgments because even when they impacted Rome, It still flowed from the influence of Israel. Israel rode, she's the harlot that rode the beast, influenced the policies through her occult machinations and through her banking and other involvements in politics. I don't have time to get into that this morning, but we'll see in upcoming sermons that even the judgments on the throne of the beast are somehow related to the land of Israel. Now let me end with a very brief overview of this chapter. Now these bowls are poured out, they prophetically show what these same angels will do in the future to both Rome and Israel. First three bowls focus on the total end of Israel. Now that automatically rules out AD 70 because Israel did not end as a nation in AD 70. Jerusalem did, the Temple did, the Old Covenant did, But the beast from the land, in other words, the pro-Roman Israeli government continued to rule Israel and continued to persecute Christians for the next 66 years. But these three bowls spell the absolute end of the beast from the land, and it's a grouping of three disasters symbolized by a similar grouping of three festivals, and all three describe events that resulted from the Bar Kokhba rebellion. I'm not gonna get into the symbolism today, but if you want a quick and dirty list, Bowl one refers to the festival of tabernacles in 81-36. It was the disease that resulted from the bodies and the blood that accumulated after the disaster of chapter 14. And 15 verse five hints that the first bowl will be after these things. It is. It's just like a week after, but disease kicked in rather readily. Then it flows backwards. Bowl two occurred just a few days earlier on 89. of 80, yeah, of 80, OB 9 of 8136. Bowl 3 was eight days before that on OB 1. Now, some books, by the way, date the fall of Bithyr in 135, some date it in 136. There's debate on that, and so you might see some, but it doesn't really matter. It's the ending of Israel at Bithyr. Now we move to God dealing with the seventh head of the sea beast. So the first three bowls deal with the end of Israel. Next two bowls deal with the end of the seventh head of the beast. And you had a quick succession of disasters that befell Rome in a one... just around a one to two year period, 8079 to 80, but most of it happened just in one year. Seventh head of the beast, Vespasian, died in 8079. Mount Vesuvius erupted, unleashing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. That's a lot of heat. 100,000 times the thermal energy of Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. By the way, it just so happens that Titus' armies were vacationing in Pompeii when this went off and they were all killed. And there were a whole bunch of other civic leaders from Israel that were vacationing there too. God knows how to orchestrate these things, you know, to put an end to his enemies. There was another Agrippa, the son of Drusilla and Felix. Massive locust plague darkened the skies, then disease struck the entire empire, killing off an estimated 10,000 Romans a day. It was an astonishing death purge. The city of Rome during that period was ravaged by fire for three days, killing almost as many as the AD 64 fire under Nero. And once again, the Temple of Jupiter and Pantheon and Pompeii's theater burned to the ground. So bowls four through five are a fitting grouping to summarize the ending of the seventh head Vespasian and God's pronouncement of the imminent end of Titus. He would die within a year. Then Bowl 6 shows the miraculous crossing of the Euphrates in 8069, leading vast armies to decimate Israel and then using these armies to decimate Rome in the year of four emperors. And Bowl 7 takes us back to 8066 where it all started and God signaled the massive destructions that would follow with signs in the sky, signs on the earth, and the beginning of three factions fighting for control of Jerusalem. So that's the bird's eye view. And by the way, even this grouping of bulls is in a ABBA format. Surprise, surprise, another chiasm. So it's Israel, Rome, Rome, Israel is the way that all falls out. Now the only last admonition that I would give in addition to the applications I've already given is that you can trust God during tough times. That includes his sovereign control over disease, verse two, over pollution, verses three through seven, over global warming, verses eight through nine, over volcanoes and pain, verses 10 through 11. Some people freak out. What if a volcano blows up under me? Or what if an earthquake opens up under me? God's in sovereign control over those things. You can trust him. Over armies and demons, verses 12 through 16, over earthquakes, storms, social disruption, verses 17 through 21. And knowing that God is sovereign brings incredible stability to the Christian's life. So I would encourage you to be a witness to the post-modern church, which has fallen so far from the scriptures. Be a witness to them, be a witness to the world that you really do believe that God is sovereign and that he brings redemptive judgments. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, and even the most complicated portions of your word do have applications for our lives, and I pray that we would grow through our study of your word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.