Simple Faith

Guest (Male): Do you know when the world will end? Do you know when Jesus Christ will return? No and no. Here's Pastor Bill Henry.

Bill Henry: No man knows the day or the hour. I don't know how plain the Lord has to say this. And even his second coming, God didn't say it's going to be the exact day or whatever after the seven-year tribulation. Is it the last day? Is it a day after, a day before? What is it going to be? He didn't tell us. So he's going to come like a thief in the night, but so too when he comes for us as his church.

Guest (Male): This is Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry from Simple Faith Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, Washington. Today, we'll bring you a study in Revelation chapter 16. Now, this is not a passage of scripture we would necessarily enjoy hearing about, but every word in the Bible is God's holy word, so we can and should always look to every verse in every book for inspiration and instruction.

In Revelation 16, we find the pouring of bowls of wrath, and if there was ever any doubt in your mind about the power of God and the stupidity of rejecting that power in one's life, then these verses should make things crystal clear. Here's Pastor Bill Henry with the details.

Bill Henry: So Revelation 16, we're going to be looking at verses 12 through 21 of the last two bowl judgments. It says, "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.

They are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them together 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 as 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, 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 fell from heaven upon men, each hailstone was the weight of about a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that hail was exceedingly great."

So, if you remember, we're now currently in the midst of the last of the wrath of God to be poured out upon the earth during the 70th week of Daniel, or the seven-year tribulation. We have before us, we've been looking at the seven bowl judgments. Last week we started upon the earth, an earth that has rejected God, an earth that has rejected the cross and Jesus Christ his son.

They've rejected several calls from angels going around the planet, calling people to repentance, and instead they've embraced and are now worshipping Satan, his beast, and the image of the beast. So again, as last week we looked at the first five of the seven bowl judgments, I'm just going to recap them briefly.

The first bowl, if you remember, was foul and loathsome sores that came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image. Now, the second bowl, where the seas of the world are told are turned into blood and every living creature in the sea will die. Then the third bowl will come, and it says all the rivers and springs of water will be turned into blood.

Then we have the fourth bowl, and this bowl is poured out upon the sun and power is given to him to scorch men with fire. And then the last bowl we looked at last week was the fifth bowl where darkness will be poured out upon the throne of the beast and his kingdom, and they will gnaw on their tongues because of the pain. Just gnarly and wicked stuff.

But it's interesting that even we saw last week that in the midst of this, even towards the end, God is still looking for people to repent. At the end of verse nine, here in chapter 16, it says, "And they did not repent and give him glory." And then in Revelation 16:11, it says, "Did not repent of their deeds." As a matter of fact, sadly we see there in verse 11, it says they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores.

And so this is where we come. The world is just being hammered by these things, and yet they still are blaspheming the God of heaven. Now look at verse 12 with me, please. "Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the east." Now, one commentator pointed out about the river Euphrates and the kings from the east coming over first.

It says there's been endless speculation about the kings from the east, with many expositors trying to relate them to some contemporary leaders of their generation. If you take a survey of 100 commentaries of the Book of Revelation, it reveals that at least 50 interpretations of the identities of the kings of the east exist. And so we're not told to try to identify the kings of the east. I'm not even going there.

But we do want to look at the other part of this verse where the great river Euphrates will be dried up. You'll see a picture come on the screen. It's kind of a small picture. We noticed this the last study that the pictures aren't as large as we'd like them to be. The river Euphrates runs up from above Turkey. The headwaters are up that way, and then all the way down through Syria, Iraq, down through Kuwait, into the Gulf there.

So if you go to the next slide, you kind of get a little better picture that this will all be dried up. Another commentator said this about the drying up, while the implication is that the water is dried up by an act of God, which it is. The fact is that dams have also been built across the Euphrates River this century to divert water for irrigation, so that there are times even today when there is little or no water in the Euphrates.

Have any of you guys seen the last couple of years a reel about the miraculous Euphrates is dried up, it's a sign of the times? No, it's coming though. Because it's not continually dried up. I saw this other video of some guy saying this is miraculous water is coming out of the ground in the desert. Well, that happens all the time when you get floods up in the hills.

This isn't something that can be explained away. This will happen and it will be a miracle, but notice why here in our verse: to prepare the way for the kings from the east. This is beginning to set up what we're going to see in a moment, what's called the battle of Armageddon, the war of Armageddon. Most of us here have heard of Armageddon.

But it's the kings of the east. And we're going to see all the kings from all the world, by the way. But the kings from the east will have to traverse over, especially their ground troops, to come against Israel, to come against the Lord as he returns. It's interesting because if you put the next map up, please, you'll see that all these nations basically up into the east, if you kind of look down towards the lower portion of this map on the left, that's where Israel is.

So all these nations to the east, and I believe this includes Russia, will come down. They might not have to traverse the Euphrates, but all these other countries definitely will. And we see this is the beginning of the Ezekiel 38 and 39 war that's been prophesied. We also see that Daniel writes about this as well. We see in the next picture where the kings will be coming from. If you can go back to the other one, please.

You'll see that they're coming from all over. Rosh, Magog, all the way over from Put. But those that will have to cross over the Euphrates, it will now be dried up. So you see once again, they'll be coming over and then they have to go west, and they'd have to come across the Euphrates. Once this is dried up, it will be basically in preparation for one last war, if you will, upon the earth.

Remember, at least those of us who are older, and I wasn't alive then, although it may seem like it, but in World War I, they called it the war to end all wars. Sadly, it wasn't the war to end all wars. Even as we see today, there's still wars happening. But this will truly be—I don't even like to call it a war because as we see, it's not really a war, even though the nations will come to do battle.

A lot of your commentators say that this is basically a world war. Basically, when I hear world war, I'm thinking about nations fighting against other nations. But that's not what's happening here. It will be all the nations of the world, and they will come, and they will go into the valley of Megiddo like we'll see. Their route is going to be the staging area there in Megiddo, and then they're going to come down and attack Israel as we're going to see in a moment.

So it's not a world war, and even their purpose in attacking Israel isn't really Israel. It is to attack God Almighty himself and wipe him off the map. We can imagine how that's going to end. Verse 13, kind of an interesting thing here. It says, "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."

Now, you might see a word there that helps us understand that we're not to take this verse literally. Does anybody see that word? If you'll notice, it says spirits like frogs. So again, John is, as he's explaining this, trying to explain what he's seeing. These are spirits that they're not frogs, but he's trying to describe them. They're like frogs. And so again, we know that they will come out of, notice, the dragon, Satan, the beast, who is the false Christ, and then the false prophet, who will be heading up the false one-world religion at the time.

So they will come together and send out these unclean spirits or demons, fallen angels. And we don't even have to guess why they're being sent out because look at verse 14. "For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them together to the battle of that great day of God Almighty."

Think about this. So these three demons are sent out by these three false imitations of God, a false trinity, if you will, and they will go about the earth. They'll take on some form. We don't know what type of form. We don't know if it's going to be a human form or some kind of frog-like or demonic form. But we do know that people will be able to apparently see them and to hear them, for we're told here that these demons will perform signs before all the kings of the earth and the whole world.

Now, what's interesting at the end of verse 14, we're told again why: to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. These angels will perform such miracles that the kings of the earth, all the people of the world, will have such faith in them. "Oh man, look at the miracles. We're going to be able to now take on God. We can take the Lord on." And so they're going to gather all the people of the world.

Remember, at this point, most of the world is longing for revenge against God. How do we know that? Because they continue to blaspheme him, even as these things are happening. And they already tried to rally, if you remember, behind the beast of Satan and his image back in Revelation 13:4. It says, "So they worshipped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying, 'Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?'" Guess what? That didn't work out.

So now these three spirits, these three demons, will go out, fallen angels, and they'll again perform these miraculous signs that will convince the leaders of the people of the earth to bring all of their armies. They'll give them the chutzpah to stand up and try to take on God. It's pretty crazy, but the interesting thing is that we read about this in Psalm 2. In Psalm 2, verses 2 and 3, we read this:

"The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, 'Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.'" So what's God's response? "Oh no, what am I going to do?" No, look at verse 4 as it continues in Psalm 2. "He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision. Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure."

I mean, that would be like a group of ants coming up to you and saying, "We're going to smash you." And you just look at them and you're like, "What are you talking about?" They're gone. It's even a stranger picture than that because they're not even like ants to the Lord compared in that way. Now, it's interesting, though. Remember how we just saw that the river Euphrates will be dried up?

The kings of the earth, now that we see, the kings of all the earth are now going to bring their armies and they're going to come to make battle, but where are they going to go? Well, Satan knows where they're going to go because he reads his Bible. And Satan knows where the Lord is going to return. He reads in Zechariah chapter 14, verse 4. It says this:

"And in that day His feet," talking about Jesus, "shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley. Half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half shall move toward the south." So now we know he's going to gather the armies of the world together. He's going to stage them, and we're going to see in just a moment where.

But now we almost see in verse 15, there's almost this little sidestep. Notice in verse 15, "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." So all of a sudden, in the middle of this, in the middle of the last bowls of wrath being poured out upon the earth, the Lord is now encouraging the saints who will be alive then.

Remember, the church has been raptured at the beginning of this 70th week of Daniel, the seven-year tribulation. The church, we're gone. We've been taken up by the Lord. But there's going to be this huge revival. We call it a revival, but just a huge coming to Jesus during the tribulation, where just countless numbers of people are going to come to Christ. Isn't that glorious to hear?

Now, I know today people are talking all the time, "Oh, there's going to be this great revival." And I pray for that. I still long for that, I pray for that, I want that. But what we're told is going to actually happen in the Bible in the last days, if we're in these last days, is a great falling away. And it's described for us in his word very clearly.

And yet we see, though, in the time of the tribulation, this great coming to Christ. So there's all these believers that are alive at this time, and so the Lord's going to encourage them through his word as they're opening their Bibles and saying, "Wow, what's happening?" And they'll open their Bibles and all of a sudden they come to verse 15, "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."

Notice he says first, "I'm coming as a thief." Now, this is referring to his second coming, that when Jesus Christ comes that second time to rule and reign upon the earth. And we're going to come on this later on in the Book of Revelation, and it's glorious, by the way. It's wonderful. As we come to that, we also need to understand that when he comes the second time, he will come as a thief in the night.

They'll know generally again when he's coming, but they won't know the exact day or the exact hour. So they're always to be ready. Now, it's interesting because Jesus told his church these same things when he was giving us the signs of the times before these things would happen. And he also said, "Look, be ready because I'm coming as a thief in the night, even for the church."

The rapture of the church will come at a time that no man knows the day or the hour. Many today have made false predictions of when this would happen. Several years ago, not even that long, I think it's just been a couple of years ago now, maybe two or three, but Harold Camping made another date. He set another date, and this was at least the second or third time that I know about.

And so a friend of mine, who's a Calvary pastor, contacted his ministry and said, "Hey, are you sure this is going to happen on this date?" "No doubt this is going to happen." He goes, "Okay, well, do me a favor and sign over all your ministry's property, all your ministry's money over to our church. So when you guys are gone and if we're still here, we'll be able to make use of it." He didn't do that.

Why not? Because he knew. And so God obviously—Jesus didn't come because no man knows the day or the hour. I don't know how plain the Lord has to say this. And even his second coming, God didn't say it's going to be the exact day or whatever after the seven-year tribulation. Is it the last day? Is it a day after, a day before? What is it going to be? He didn't tell us.

So he's going to come like a thief in the night, but so too when he comes for us as his church. In Matthew 24:42, it says this: "Watch therefore." "Watch therefore" literally means stay awake. How many here are awake, looking for the return of Jesus? Stay awake, man. Stay awake, woman, because I'm telling you what: Jesus tells us this because we're going to have the tendency to want to fall asleep. Amen?

Dude, who doesn't want to turn the news off? I don't want to hear this anymore. I don't want to see the wickedness anymore. Amen? "Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore, you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not expect."

And so even with the rapture of the church and the second coming of Christ, there's going to be this sudden event where Jesus comes as a thief. And so even in a future time, Jesus is warning those believers, "Hey, it's going to come. You remain ready. Be on guard. Be on watch." And even today he tells us, "Be on guard. Be on watch."

Now, how many of us—are you prepared for if a thief breaks into your house? Do you have maybe stuff in your drawer, nightstand? A flashlight, other things that might go bang in the night? Anything like that? I mean, I don't know about you, but we kind of prepare a little bit. But imagine if you knew, "Hey, tonight, you don't know what time, but you know there's a thief that's going to break into your house."

What would you do? Would you break into your pajamas? I'd have my shoes on, I'd have my clothes on, I might be laying on top of the bed. I'd have a flashlight and maybe something else in another hand. Protect my family. But you see, that's what he's talking about here back in our text. "Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame."

If you know a thief's coming, you're not going to jump up—you might have to—but that's what he's saying. You don't have to go unprepared and show your shame. No, you're one who's ready. Now again, he's saying this to them that are coming in the future because remember, the Bible's not disappearing with us when we go. When we're raptured, the Bibles are staying here, praise God.

And so the believers that are going to be able to open up and they're going to say, "All right, what's next? We just saw the sea turn to blood. What's coming next?" And they'll open this and all of a sudden they're going to get this word of encouragement. "Hey, look, Jesus is coming quickly. Be ready." And even today, be ready, beloved in Christ, for Jesus is coming soon.

We look at the state of the world today. We look at Israel. When Israel became a nation, May 14th, 1948, that prophetic clock all of a sudden just starts ticking. And we see over the last 70 years plus, all the fulfilling of prophecy that's happening before our eyes. And we've talked about this many times. We can talk about lawlessness increasing. It's crazy how the lawlessness is increasing, not just here in America, but all around the world.

We see the great falling away of the church before us, these signs that Jesus said to be looking for. And he said, "When you see these things begin to happen," what'd he say? "Look up, for your redemption draweth nigh."

Guest (Male): This has been Simple Faith with Pastor Bill Henry from Simple Faith Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, Washington. Today, we brought you a message from Pastor Bill's series in Revelation. It's our sincere hope and prayer that you've been blessed by the words you heard from Pastor Bill today.

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