In Revelation 16, God is pouring out the seven vials, and within these seven vials contain the wrath of God.
Within the wrath of God are the plagues. Throughout the chapter, we will find out that the people will still not repent.
Revelation 16:4 “And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.”
Notice the first one was the sea, the second is within the fountains of waters as well as the rivers. Why did God put blood in them? Because mankind keeps resisting God’s judgment.
They’re going to protect it with their technology, with their water reserve or scientific technology that filters water out. But that water will still turn back to blood, God’s trying to teach and show mankind that “Despite your intellectual achievement and scientific technology, you still can’t get away from My judgment.” He’s trying to humble them.
Revelation 16:5 “And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.”
Notice that there is an angel of the waters, this is not one of the seven angels. If you look back at Revelation 2 and 3, there’s an angel of the seven churches, and when God was speaking to the church, He did not speak directly to the people of the church, He was speaking to the angel. An angel is a representation or representative of an object or person. It’s not just people that angels are going to be representatives of, but it’s all of God’s creation.
The angel is a representative of those water and when God judges and does something, there’s a representative who will know about it. That’s why the angel who received the rebuke of God at Revelation 2 and 3 even though the angel is not at fault, but because he is representing the whole church. The idea of it is an intermediary tool or instrument.
Waters are physical objects that cannot speak whereas angels are spiritual objects that can speak, so the angel which is the spiritual plane, is going to be the one crying out to the Lord ‘Just and true are your ways’ when God judges the waters.
In Revelation 5 and other passages in the Old Testament, it talks about nature practically looking like it’s animated and even shouting and clapping, saying ‘Glory to God in the highest’. There are 2 possibilities for this:
- We’re looking at the spiritual level where it’s those angels that are speaking out
- Because nothing is impossible with God, God could transform that spiritual plane where the angel speaks into something more literal where the object itself is giving praise to the Lord.
God is righteous for the judgment.
God is present tense, past tense and future. He’s everywhere.
God is righteous in that judgment. He is right for punishing people.
We live in a day and age that when people are punished for their iniquity. They see that more as inhumane, to be avoided and negative.
But the Bible, it says that it’s righteous, it has to be done. That’s the reason why every generation gets worse and worse because the punishment is not laid out for people to take things seriously, to face the consequences of their actions.
Revelation 16:6 “For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.”
This wicked world shed the blood of God’s saints and prophets, that’s why He judged them with blood.
Notice that the verse says ‘saints and prophets’, this means that this is for all time, not just during the tribulation.
If the rapture were to happen in 2020, and we reach the year 2027 near the end of the tribulaton, that the world (our next generation) will be held accountable for the blood of all these people? Yes.
Matthew 23:24-25 “Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.”
Jesus held those Pharisees and Sadducees accountable for the sin of killing God’s people from the beginning till the end of Old Testament. Not just the Pharisees and Sadducees, but the whole city of Jerusalem. That’s why the Pharisees and Sadducees got mad at Jesus, ‘We didn’t think about killing anybody, how date you accuse you of killing somebody?’.
But they had a spirit inside them that carried out that murder. That’s why when Jesus looked at them, He said what He said, ‘ye are of your father the devil, the lusts of your father, you will do’. That was proven to be true, those Pharisees ended up crucifying Jesus naked later on.
The Pharisees weren’t aware how wicked they would become because of the spirit inside them. Just like the world in 2027, the next generation is totally blind. Talk to the liberal universities and professors and tell them ‘You’re the one that killed the prophets back then, you’re the ones persecuting Christians today’, and they are going to accuse you. Bu, they have the same spirit that actually killed and persecuted those Christians.
That’s why Revelation 2 and 3 becomes very powerful in opening up your understanding. We know that Revelation 2 and 3 is talking about Roman Catholic church being the enemy system even though it doesn’t directly mention the Roman Catholic church.
Look at the spirit that was behind Jezebel, the idolatry and fornication which ios attributed to Babylon the great. Revelation 17, deifying a woman, virgin Mary.
Balak and Balaam, power in politics and in religion but it’s false, they do it for money.
Nicolaitans, thinking they’re above the laity. That’s the Roman Catholic church, talk to a normal Catholic how to get saved and they’ll say, ‘Talk to my priest’ or ‘Talk to my pope’ because they’re above the laity. They have special degrees, they graduated from schools that you didn’t.
It’s the same spirit in Revelation 2 and 3 that we attribute it to the Catholic.
That’s why in Revelation 2 and 3 we know that historically it’s talking about the local churches of that time, but if we look at the spiritual application, it’s to the church age.
Because when God is speaking to those local churches during John’s time period, He was speaking about the spirit that would be affected during the entire church age. It’s all spirit. When you read the verses, you can see a lot of that which is spiritual in those words matching up to a T to everything that happened to the church age.