His Perfect Love

Announcer: What's a better approach to Revelation? A literal or non-literal approach? Let's talk about it now on His Perfect Love. This is His perfect love, the word goes out. It's what real love looks like in truth and fact. This is His perfect love.

Welcome once again to His Perfect Love with our pastor and teacher Matt VanderVen. If you've been studying Revelation along with us, you've probably picked up on the fact that Pastor Matt takes a literal approach to the last book of our Bibles. But not every teacher does. As you'll hear in a moment, some take an allegorical or non-literal approach. We'll present four very different ways of interpreting the scriptures to help you in your study of Revelation. We're in chapter 16 today.

Matt VanderVen: Please open your Bibles to Revelation chapter 16. We have come as far as we're making our way through the entire Bible from Genesis all the way through the book of Revelation. We are now in Revelation chapter 16, verse 1 here this morning. Chapter 16 unfolds the complete wrath of the Lamb through the remaining seven bowls of God's righteous and holy judgment.

Interestingly, the first four bowls are directed in the way of natural occurrences, sort of completing what He started in either the trumpet and/or seal judgments that way. The latter two are going to be directed against the beast and his kingdom. And then finally, the seventh bowl is going to usher in that final judgment to where it is done. The judgment is complete.

What we're going to do as we spend some time here this morning is we're also going to weave in—I've heard over the last several weeks, I've had some people come up to me after service and ask some questions like, "Are there different biblical interpretations?" Normally I don't want to take a topical timeout to go through and teach on the different interpretation of scripture. Instead, what I'd like to do, if you'll allow me this morning, is to weave that into the line-by-line teaching so we get both. We get the line-by-line teaching and then we get different what we're going to call eschatological views.

I want you to understand that because there are people that—I know this might be slightly shocking for some of you here this morning—some people believe we're actually living in the millennial reign. Some people believe that these things were all fulfilled in the first century. There's a lot of different historical and interpretive approaches. However, I believe the best approach to scripture is to allow scripture to speak for itself.

Allow the commentaries, while very well-intentioned by men over centuries and centuries, I believe those commentaries were given to a specific group of people at a specific time through those men. Not that commentaries can't be helpful for us today, but I don't want to open a commentary, read a commentary, and then come in here with a message for you based on what God had given somebody else for a different season, a different time, and a different group of people. Because God wants to freshly move through His Spirit every time His word is opened wherever we are.

We're going to look at preterism. We're going to look at idealism. We're going to look at historicism. We're going to look at futurism. A lot of -isms, right? So just stick with me as we go through this, and we're going to look at that in regards to the seven bowl judgments. I thought that it was proper to be able to bring that not in the seal judgments, not in the trumpet judgments, but in the final seven bowl judgments because ultimately, when we look at what we're going to read here and the devastation that's going to come, I think there's only one interpretive approach that would make any sense in harmony with all of the scriptures.

I think we'll all agree on that together here this morning. Certainly we don't have to divide. If there's somebody here that has a different interpretive approach, we don't have to divide over those things. You can high-five me in the Rapture on the way up, and we'll all just agree then. But I think the reality of these bowl judgments and looking at the scriptures here this morning, I think it's going to make it very clear what days we're living in, the last of the last days. We're going to just read through the whole chapter and then we'll go as far as we can with time permitting this morning.

"Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, 'Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.' So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; every living creature in the sea died. Underline that, please: every living creature.

Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water—that's our drinking water—and that became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying: 'You are righteous, O Lord, the one who is and who was and who is to be, because you have judged these things. For they have shed the blood of the saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. For it is their just due.' He says, 'You have given them blood to drink.'

And I heard, verse 7, from another—from the altar saying, 'Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.' Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch the men with fire. And men were scorched with a great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.

The fifth bowl here in verse 10: now we move from the four that were sort of cosmic disturbances on the earth to now the bowl that will now be poured out on the beast and his kingdom. The fifth and sixth bowl. 'Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.

Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.' And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon. Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, 'It is done!'

And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath.

Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since the plague was exceedingly great.'"

As we saw here, each time one of these judgments goes forward or culminating before the next section—as I said, there's really three sections in this chapter 16 of Revelation. Four are on, again, cosmic disturbances; two are on the beast and/or his kingdom; and the final one is the last one going forward that's basically culminating the end of His wrath that'll come on this earth. The final complete part of judgment that will be poured out.

Each time we see that the response—we're already given the response of many of the people—they failed to repent. They failed to take any responsibility or accountability for their actions, and instead, they continued to do what? Not only just reject Jesus, but blaspheme the name of God. They were mockers of God, not just rejecting, which is horrible in itself, but they began to blaspheme or mock or say these things are not so even unto damnation here.

Very sobering chapter, isn't it? To think about these things. Hopefully you were underlining some of those things that I was talking about because you start to see the totality of this. This is going to help as we bring in the biblical interpretations here.

Looking back to verse 1, he begins by telling us, "Then I heard a loud voice from the temple." Interesting, last we left off in verse 8 of chapter 15, I mentioned to you to please make a note of this. It says, "The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from His power, and no one was able to enter the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed."

No one was allowed back in that temple, and yet in chapter 16, verse 1, there is a voice. Whose voice is it? It has to be God's, Jesus', because nobody else was allowed in that temple but God, who was in the glory or the Shekinah glory—the smoke that had filled that temple. So clearly we learn a little bit about whose voice that is right at the beginning of chapter 16, verse 1, just by paying attention to the scriptures that are given before us.

He says, "Then I heard a loud voice from the temple," God's, to the seven angels, and He's giving them the divine instruction at this point. God speaking clearly saying, "Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God"—making sure we don't forget back all the way to Revelation chapter 6 whose wrath is this. This is not the Antichrist, this is not Satan, this is not the world, the flesh, the devil—none of those things. This is judgment being poured out to a Christ-rejecting world.

He wants us to see that, right? Do not forget, please, here this morning, this is the culmination of what we have been reading known throughout all of scripture as the third woe. Do you remember we were told about a third woe back in chapter 9? If you just hold your finger here for a minute, if you just go back to chapter 9: "One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things." Then look at chapter 11, verse 14: "The second woe is past. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly."

We have now come to that third woe. Staying in proper chronological understanding and order here, we believe this happens—I say we, maybe some of you don't—but I believe very clearly most of the pastors I know in Calvary Chapel also would subscribe to this: that this is going to come near the very end of the seven-year period, immediately before Jesus' return.

If you look up again on our timeline here, you'll see that Revelation 19 is effectively Jesus' second coming after a seven-year—while the Great Tribulation is occurring on earth, there's a marriage feast of the Lamb. Revelation 19 makes that clear. That's you and I, the church that was raptured out in chapters 4 and 5, meta tauta or meta tauta—"after these things." We read it right at the beginning of chapter 4, verse 1. It's clearly speaking to a catching up of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 16 and 17, all the way through 20 in harmony with 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 right around the end, where it says the church is not given unto wrath, God's judgment.

The church has been removed, which is why God is using angels and all other kinds of things to bring a gospel—chapter 7, chapter 11, even a section of chapter 14—to bring a gospel forward to a lost and dying world even during His judgment so that they have an opportunity to be saved. Because even during judgment, God is merciful. He wants salvation for His people, reconciliation.

Well, this is finally culminating here. I mean, there has to come a point where God says, "Okay, here is the seventh bowl judgment. This is it, the third woe," and that is where we're at. When I read this to you, you're going to understand why this has to happen in a very short sequence before the return of Christ.

Some of you may be sitting here going, "I never heard that before. I never heard that it could even be a week ahead of when Christ returns, and it's got to be pretty close to that." But I think just a cursory reading of what we just read this morning makes that pretty obvious.

What do I mean by that? If I take all the bodies of water and I finish what I started in the seal and trumpet judgments—God will do this, but I mean as a human being—if I went and made everything bloody and everything died, there's no food in anything that's going to come from that. Half of the grass or more has already been taken from the earth. There is no way to feed an animal—calves and different things like that—so there's going to be an extreme famine at that time.

But then if that wasn't enough, we really get—and we'll go through this in more detail—we saw that the waters in verse 4, he says, "the rivers and springs." That's the water you and I drink. That's the water that comes in our municipalities or a well that conditions and cleans that water, brings it through a pump to your home at 60 PSI or greater for most of you, where you turn your faucet on, you turn the shower on, and what comes out of it? H2O, right? Water.

We just take it for granted. Friends, it's all going to be compromised. It's complete. He says the springs and the water, they became blood. It's not drinkable. Do you realize that a human being can't survive really more than three days without a fresh water supply? Even if there was some storage of water or ability to filter out some of these things, the parasites, the bacteria—all of these different things that exist in microbiology all around us that we all kind of get the cooties about, right? Or maybe some of us don't even know it exists, so we don't have the cooties about it. But all these things are going to culminate in that water and we're going to have waterborne illness and sickness—think of listeria, think of all these kinds of things—rampant at that time.

Even drinking water—"Well, I have a filter, I can take and filter." It's blood. It's going to be so thick that the membrane, even the pores, aren't going to be properly—my point is that many, many people are going to die. Had Jesus Christ not returned in a very short period of time, the Bible already tells us there's not a human soul that would be left alive on this earth. That's why it makes sense that these things have to happen in a very short sequence before the bowl judgments being poured out and then Him coming again, because life on earth is not sustainable.

Are you with me? I mean, I'm a literalist. I take these things literally, that Jesus is saying these are the things that are going to happen. If He says there's going to be an earthquake, if He says He's going to turn the water to blood. If I want examples of that, I can go back into my Old Testament, I can read the book of Exodus, I can even go back to extra-biblical history. I can look at Pharaoh, I can look at Egypt, and I can see that God did the very things He told Moses to do.

It wasn't like, "I'm going to turn the water blood—okay, get the red food coloring out, and okay, it's blood, right? Yeah, yeah." Like we do with the kids and teach them in children's ministry. "Oh wow, God turned the blood and the wine and all." No, He literally took a stream and it became blood. You're not able to drink that.

So this is very important because we have to make some decisions of how we're going to interpret this here, okay? So if we look at this, I want to introduce you to one of the four approaches this morning, and it's called idealism. Idealism is also called a spiritual approach. Some people use a different term more in our generation, our age: an allegorical approach. How many of you are familiar with that term, "allegorical"? Originally it was called idealism, if you go back in history, you would recognize that. Also it's been referred to as a non-literal approach.

Some would come to these passages and say, "Well, this is not literal. God doesn't mean that the water's actually going to be turned to blood and you can't drink it. He doesn't literally mean that all the fish are going to die." Can I just ask you to hold your finger here and turn to the book of Exodus, please? That's right in the beginning of your Bible. I'd like you to turn, if you wouldn't mind, to Exodus chapter 9. Maybe some of you are familiar with these passages; it's okay if you're not, we'll become familiar with some of these this morning.

Exodus chapter 9, I just like us to look at verse 12. I want us to see something, that this is not a new phenomena. This is something that has already happened in human history once before—not to the extent that it will in the bowl judgments, but this was a literal, actual, historical event that had occurred. Nobody denies this. There's even extra-biblical records of that, Egyptian records and some things like that that talk about how they were chasing the Jewish people—they don't use that term—the Hebrews, a group of people at that time. There's no doubt about those things.

But look at what they responded in chapter 9, verse 12, just like they're going to in the Great Tribulation: "But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not heed them, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses." So they wouldn't repent, they wouldn't write their heart. Now when this says "hardened heart," please don't misunderstand—God's not cooking the books here, so to speak. What He's meaning is He's giving them over to the debased mind and heart. He's not forcing Pharaoh to turn around and make a different decision.

He's allowing Pharaoh to have his own will be done, which ultimately, Pharaoh's heart was to do what? Follow after himself. If you've read this account, you know it wasn't to yield to the one true God; it was to do what was right. He didn't want to release the Hebrews that he had enslaved because he was using them for manual labor to build brick and block and different things like that architecturally and building. He didn't want to free them. He didn't want to let the Hebrews go.

So he turned around and said, "No, I'm not letting these people go." And God said, "Well, then I'm going to call out new plagues, okay? And I'm going to use Moses." This is a man that grew up in Egypt, he was born there and he was taken and he was raised in a palace because it was illegal for the Hebrews just to have certain babies like that. They were afraid, and so they took this little baby and basically ended up having Pharaoh's daughter took him and said, "Okay, you," which happened to be Moses' mother, "you nurse him and we're going to come and we'll put you in the palace," the whole thing. He grew up very nicely.

But then he got to a certain point where he started recognizing his mom being a Hebrew, he started seeing how the Hebrews were being treated and enslaved, and they were being beaten and different things like that. One day he comes and he watches a Hebrew getting beaten real bad, and he turns around and says, "No more." And he goes and he attacks the Egyptian. He actually murders him. And then out of fear, he flees Egypt and goes out into the wilderness.

And that's where he meets his bride and Jethro, who would be his father-in-law. And that's where God calls him. You mean God can use people that have just wrecked their entire lives and sin and murder and all that stuff? Oh, you better believe it. Nobody's disqualified if you have a willing and a repentant heart.

And Moses came back and says, "Well, I'll do it, I'll be available." What did Moses say? "Not me, man. I can't speak. I don't have a—" meanwhile he grew up with one of the best educations you could have had in Egypt at that time. And he says, "Man, I can't do it, I can't speak." And He says, "Okay, well I'll take your brother Aaron, he can be the mouthpiece." But is Aaron really the mouthpiece, or any of that? Moses.

Where God guides, He provides. Where God calls, He equips. It's always been that way throughout scripture. It's been that way throughout everybody's life throughout human history where God calls, He equips. And so Moses finds himself in a place—he's going up with—returns to Egypt and we see in verse 14 of chapter 7, Moses, he goes—Pharaoh's heart's hard, he refuses the people.

So what does he do? He goes out to the water, he takes his rod, he turns around and he puts it and he turns the water to what? Blood. And there's this whole thing going back and forth with the false prophets and Pharaoh's false team, if you will that way, and they try to copy this.

But what I want you to see here is that it was literal. It was water turning to blood. Chapter 17, verses 14 through 25, this was a literal event that happened. There's nobody that died, denied it through human history. It's a miracle, but it was done, right? Just like in Exodus chapter 10, verses 21 through 29, also there was a miracle—if I can say it that way—or a time of darkness that came over the land. Nobody turns around and goes, "No, it was light that whole time." No, everybody knows it was darkness. It was literal. These things happened.