The Seven Bowls: Part 1

this can be understood, but what you need to understand is that there's actually four main

views that when it comes to interpreting Revelation in general, but especially the seven bowls,

and these views differ greatly, and each one puts a unique spin on it.

So one of the first ones that we have is the view that's called the historicis, and historicis,

they typically view these things as unfolding throughout history.

Now the thing that you need to understand, anytime you see historicis, you need to just

go ahead and think about the pope, because pretty much every single thing in Revelation

they believe is an indictment against the pope and the papacy in general.

So they're going to read this, and they're going to see this has something to do with

and something to say about the pope.

So the whole book of Revelation is basically an indictment on the papacy.

Personally, I don't hold to this view, but I love where they're going with this, so I

sympathize with them.

Alright, Preterus, anytime you see Preterus, they're the people who pretty much think everything

in Revelation has to do with the events of 8070.

That's when Jerusalem fell, and so pretty much every Preterus believes that everything

in Revelation has to do with the fall of either Jerusalem or the fall of Rome, but they would

say that everything in Revelation is talking about 8070 because they believe the book of

Revelation was written before 8070.

Futurists, that's going to be your easiest one.

They just think everything in Revelation happens at some point in the very, very distant future.

And then finally you have the idealist, and the idealist is basically someone who says,

well, what we read in Revelation, you can find some fulfillments throughout history,

but it's not referring to a very specific thing at the time.

But basically what you're seeing is that the things written in Revelation are cyclical.

They're going to continue to happen throughout history.

So you'll see a fulfillment in, for instance, the fall of Jerusalem, but that's not the

only fulfillment.

You also see something similar in various things throughout history.

I'm not going to tell you where I land on this, but I wouldn't take a lot of work to

figure out where I land on this.

So Revelation 16, 1, then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels,

go and pour out on the earth seven bowls of the wrath of God.

Verse 2, so the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth.

Now here's what we need to note here.

When you're in your Bibles here and you're needing to note what's going on here with

this first bowl, the thing to focus on are the sores that people are going to have on

them and the people who have the sores on them are those who have the mark of the beast

and who worship its image.

So that's who is going to suffer the wrath that's described in these bowls.

Those who have the mark of the beast and those who have worshiped the image of the beast.

And we've talked about the beast and the image of the beast a lot throughout Revelation,

so you should have a pretty good idea of what that is.

But the really the thing to focus on are these sores.

And you say, okay, what are these sores?

They're painful sores.

What does that mean though?

Is it referring to actual sores that are going to be on people's bodies, boils of some sort?

What do these sores actually mean?

And that's where we're going to get into view one, the historicists.

The historicists, so we just, we all read that together, right?

Painful sores are going to come on people who have the mark of the beast and who worship

the image of the beast.

The historicists says, well, brother, this is the French Revolution if I've ever seen

it.

Okay, so they say that this bowl is referring to the French Revolution and they see it as

an indictment against the papacy because the French Revolution was an event in history

that greatly weakened the papacy.

Anybody remember something else that was kind of going on around the same time as the French

Revolution?

Kind of a pandemic in the world?

The plague, right?

And what was common during the plague?

What did you have on you very often?

Sores, right?

And so they see that people had a bunch of sores during the black plague that went all

around the European nations there for a while and they say, painful sores, the papacy is

weakened, that's what this bowl is referring to.

Now let me ask you, let's just all be honest with each other here.

I'll be honest with you, you be honest with me.

When you read Revelation 16, 1 and 2, how many thought about the French Revolution?

Anybody?

It's not really your first thought, right?

I mean, you can see where they're coming from though.

They're piecing it together.

They're saying, I'm looking for an event in history.

This is what it is, but it's just not the natural reading to us.

It's not something that we typically think about.

The sores, they come as either a reference to the effects of the plague or they sometimes

will say it's moral corruption and atheism that became prominent at the time.

So some people say they're literal sores and boils that you get on you.

Other people say, well, that's a way of referring to moral corruption that happens in the world,

especially at that time.

Then you have the Preterist.

So remember, what do we think of when we think of Preterist?

P past 80, 70, that's what you need to be thinking of with the Preterist.

You're divided because some see the bulls as referring to the fall of Jerusalem, while

others see it as the fall of Rome.

So remember, it's either going to be the fall of Jerusalem or it's going to be the fall

of Rome.

They see this as a fulfillment of that because at the time when Jerusalem was sieged, one

of the first things that went was sanitation.

When sanitation went, people started getting a lot of different diseases.

So they had a lot of boils, sores, things like that during that time.

So they see this as referring to the fall of Jerusalem.

Now here you have the Futurist.

Futurist, some point, very distant future.

And they think, typically, Futurists are all about literalism.

So everything has to be literal.

If it says a painful sore, it's going to be a literal painful sore.

They very rarely branch out into symbolism.

So some people do interpret them symbolically, but most people stick to a literal interpretation

and their literal interpretation is that these are going to be the sores and boils that people

get on them as a result of nuclear war.

So basically, nuclear war is going to happen.

The air is going to be polluted because of the toxic fumes, the radioactive fumes, and

then people are going to break out into all different types of sores and boils.

And something you'll notice a lot about the Futurist is when they're reading the judgments

in Revelation, they typically look for some future nuclear catastrophe, nuclear war, things

like that.

So that's what they think.

What does the idealist think about this?

Well, the idealist, as you can read here, they see the trumpets as a warning and they

see the bowls as being a punishment, a final judgment.

So idealists, the trumpets are a warning.

The bowls are a punishment or a final judgment.

Have we heard that before?

Does that sound familiar?

Okay, again, I'm not showing my hand, but it's not hard to figure out.

So idealists typically don't rule out a possibility of like a literal interpretation, but they

do favor a symbolic interpretation.

And they would argue that the sores depict human, moral, spiritual depravity that consumes

humanity basically.

Verse three, all right, the second angel poured out his bowl into the what?

Here's our key word here, into the sea.

And the sea became blood, like the blood of a corpse and every living thing that was in

the sea died.

So what does this remind us of right off the bat?

Here we have the second plague and the sea is turning to blood and everything in the

sea dies.

What does that remind us of?

Yeah, yeah, the plague's in Egypt, right?

But this was the first plague in Egypt.

So I had a chart that I printed out for y'all tonight that I promised you on, then I left

it in my office.

So next week I'll bring it to you.

It's in there.

So yeah, so it's reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt and it's saying that the sea is going

to be turned to blood.

Now again, the question is, well, what does that mean?

Is the sea literally going to be turned to blood?

Is every living thing literally going to die?

You'd be surprised that people read this differently.

So the Historicists, they say that this bowl represents the massive amount of bloodshed

that occurs in naval battles, fought by who?

Here's our key word.

If you're remembering, papal naval forces.

So they say, okay, here we have the sea turning to blood.

This has to be something against the pope and the papacy.

Here's what it is.

It's referring to the massive amount of bloodshed that is spilled during the naval battles fought

by papal forces.

And of course, that's going to reference countries like France, Spain, and Portugal,

which were the only papal countries that had a navy.

And they look primarily to the British defeats of naval forces during the years of 1793 to

1805.

They give a specific date.

These guys get very specific with their dates.

And they claim that descriptions of verse three apply appropriately to the bloodshed

of those naval battles.

So Historicists, they look at this and they say bloodshed on the water.

It's got to be against the pope, the papacy.

So that's going to refer to all the naval battles fought by the papal countries during

these times.

Again, was that your first thought?

I'm just curious.

Anybody, did you go to papal naval forces?

Okay, no Historicists here.

That's fine.

That's okay.

All right, Preterus.

So Preterus passed 8070, followed Jerusalem, followed Rome.

That's where they land.

If you remember your biblical history, the Jews believed that blood made a person unclean.

We know this from the Bible, right?

Everybody good?

And so they largely consider that this plague is referring to the fact that the nation of

Israel as a whole was going to become unclean.

And because of that, they say that that's referring to this bull.

What's interesting though about the Preterus is that there is this little bit of history

here with the Jewish historian Josephus, who was not our pastoral intern.

That's a different guy.

But the Jewish historian Josephus, he records a battle on the Sea of Galilee in which the

Romans massacred the Jews upon the water.

And many Preterus believed that that event was the fulfillment of this bull.

So bull two, sea turned to blood, and they look to an event between Rome and the Jews.

They see this battle on the Sea of Galilee, and they say that's the fulfillment there.

Do you see how people can read things differently, just depending on kind of your own presuppositions

and where you're coming from?

Not everybody is going to read things the exact same.

All right, the Futures.

Here's where we go.

Futures, they see the sea as representing the Gentiles.

Okay?

Everybody got that?

The sea represents the Gentiles, who will now suffer the wrath of God, bloodshed.

So the Futures say the sea is the Gentiles, and they are going to be turned to blood because

they're going to be the ones to suffer the wrath of God.

However, it's fun to note that there are other Futures who are more literal, and they point

to something interesting, there's this very interesting microorganism that's found in

certain waters that when it multiplies, it turns the water a scarlet color in all the

wildlife, all the sea life that's in those areas, they actually die.

And so Futures would look at events like that and see a fulfillment of this prophecy, this

bull in that example there.

They just say it's microorganisms in the water, it's turning the water red, that's what

it is.

What's the idealists say?

I don't want to say the idealists are fence riders, they never come down, but they're

just kind of like, it's not specific, you know?

They understand this bull is referring to the fact that when God judges people of earth,

he often uses the sea as a punishment.

It could just be that simple, right?

Like, revelation is filled with symbols and symbolism, and so maybe it's just as simple

as the fact that God uses the sea as a source of judgment, and you can think of things like

shipwrecks, sea battles, drowning, tsunamis, hurricanes, all sorts of catastrophes happen

at sea, right?

Like the sea is a terrifying place to be.

I don't know if you've ever seen one of those shows where they go out on like a crabbing

boat or something, you've got like a 50 foot wave and you're thinking, okay, well you're

just dead in the water, there's nothing you can do.

This point in the fact that God uses the sea as a source of judgment sometimes, and that

God often does that, and idealists would see that as a fulfillment of this bull.

Others would see this bull as a destruction of the world economy.

Anybody know how we got there?

I did write it out for you.

That's not bad.

I won't do that next time.

So people see this as a destruction of the world economy because if you think about the

ancient world, the sea was a source of their economy.

One of the main sources, that's where they did all their trading, that's where they would

travel for economic purposes to trade with other nations.

So the sea became this valuable economic resource, and so some people would say that when God

is turning the sea to blood here, he's destroying world economies and destroying them in that

way.

I don't know where you fall on that, but it's just something to think about.

All right, Revelation 16, verses 4 through 5.

Revelation 16:4–5

The angel poured out his bull, and this time we're not in the sea, we're in the rivers

and the springs of water, and they also became blood.

And I heard the angel in charge of the waters, which is interesting.

Can we just pause?

This has absolutely nothing to do.

I don't even have it in my notes.

You have all my notes right here, so I'm seeing what you see.

Is this not interesting?

This one little phrase, God is saying there's an angel in charge of the waters.

There are little nuggets like this in Scripture sometimes.

We've talked about them sometimes.

You remember when we had our lesson on Arthur, guardian angels, and we looked in the Bible,

and there's that section in Matthew where Jesus says, they're angels in heaven, and

he's referring to the little children, and you're like, hold on a second, what do you

mean they're angels in heaven?

This is another one of those instances where the Bible just says something and then it

immediately moves on.

There is no explanation.

It's just like, oh hey, by the way, the angel over the waters, this is what he says.

You're like, pause real quick.

What do you mean the angel over the waters?

What does that mean?

It does play into this ancient Jewish belief though that God assigned angels to different

realms in nature, some over the springs, some over the sea, some over the woods, and things

like that.

And that God operated his sovereignty, he sovereignly ruled over the world through placing angels

in the places of authority so that they could have authority from God in those areas.

So that's just something interesting.

I have nothing else to say about that, just something for you to consider.

It says, just are you, oh holy one, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments.

Now this is going to be very important as we read the next verse.

Verses 6 through 7.

So this bull is being poured out on people and the angel says, for they have shed the

blood of the saints.

Now this is important.

They've shed the blood of the saints.

This is the crime that these people committed.

What did they do?

They shed the blood of the saints and the prophets and you have given them blood to

drink.

So you've given them blood to drink.

It's what they deserve.

Notice what God is doing here.

He is making sure that the punishment fits the crime.

Do you see that here?

Here's what they did.

They spilled the blood of the saints and the prophets and so what do they get in return?

Blood to drink.

Their punishment fits their crime which is why the Bible says it's what they deserved.

And I heard the altar saying, yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and just are your way.

So whatever happens next, no one can complain that God is not fair.

No one can complain that this is unwarranted.

Whatever happens next, the Bible says true and just.

This is exactly what they deserve.

God always makes sure the punishment fits the crime.

All right, so how did the historicists understand this?

French Revolution.

Come right back to that.

I know that's where your mind went this time.

You read this, you're like, I'm on top of it.

It's got to be the French Revolution.

And that's where they go for this.

But they would see it, especially a fulfillment in Napoleon's invasion of Italy.

I don't know how much of your history you know, but those wars primarily, they took

place primarily on the Rhine, the Poe and the Alpine streams of Piedmont and Lombardi.

So rivers and streams.

This isn't a sea battle.

This is rivers and streams.

And so here's what they're doing.

Put yourself in the mind of a historicist.

They're saying, revelation, it's written against the papacy.

Probably going to have something to do with French Revolution.

So where do we see this?

And they look to certain events and they find them here in Napoleon's invasion.

And all these affected regions were papal states.

And so they say, that's what this bull is about.

Bull number three has to be about Napoleon.

I don't know which one that is.

It's mine or yours.

I think it's mine.

All right.

We're going to tune that out.

And we're going to talk about Preterus for a second.

So many Preterus see the fulfillment in the fall of Jerusalem, in which part the water

sources were polluted.

And literally there were streams of blood flowing in the streets of Jerusalem at this

time.

Preterus also point out the fact that the judgment falls upon those who shed the blood

of the saints and the prophets, which was one of Jewish people's main sins.

You remember Jesus said this when he came to Jerusalem.

He said, oh Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets.

And then he's going in there and he's going to die.

So this was one of Israel's main sins was that they slaughtered the prophets that God

sent them.

And so the Preterus says, hey, when Rome besieged Jerusalem, it was God paying back the nation

of Israel for this sin of actually slaughtering the prophets.

The futurists, they advocate for a purely literal interpretation, insisting that this plague,

along with the seals and trumpets, would reduce the world's population by 50, which is staggering,

by the way.

But note this.

This would see the deaths of over 3.5 billion people in a short span of time.

And also the pollution of all the drinking water would kill all the remaining survivors

in just a few days.

So if you go strictly literal on this, the world ends very, very quickly in a matter

of days.

And then there's the idealist.

They don't typically commit any specific fulfillment, but they do see specific or fulfillment in

occurrences, which means you can see instances where people are destroyed by rivers and inland

water.

So think about drowning and poisoning.

So it's not very different from the sea.

People would just say, if you're drinking water that's polluted in any type of way, it's going

to have something to do with this judgment upon the world.

If you are drowning in water, that's also a possible fulfillment of this.

But primarily, the idealist view on this is primarily that you see this bowl as an example

of God making sure that the punishment always fits the crime.

And so the empires that make blood run like water can now only find blood to drink in

the place of water.

So that's what I was trying to get at when we were reading these verses together, is

that I think the main point of this bowl is just trying to get us to see that God is a

just God, that he only does what is right and good, and God never dishes out a punishment

that doesn't actually fit the crime.

So what this verse is trying to show us is that God always makes sure the punishment

fits the crime.

We're not going to get far.

But we're on the fourth angel, so let's just look at this one real quick.

The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to do what?

It was allowed to scorch people with fire, and they were scorched by the fierce heat,

and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues.

And what is the final response of the people?

What is the ultimate thing that happens?

They did not repent and give him glory.

Remember God has already sent six trumpets warning people to turn from their sinful ways,

warning them of what's going to happen in the final judgment, telling them to repent.

They've ignored everything.

Now he's pouring out the bowls on the earth, and people are still not repenting of their

sins.

So the historicist, he's gunning for the pope again.

Historicists liken the papal powers to the sun, and they see the weakening of papal powers,

the imperial sun, to be a fulfillment of the sun's darkening.

So the historicist, even though the verse says that the sun is going to scorch people,

they interpret that to mean that the sun is going to be weakened and darkened, which seems

the opposite of what the verse is saying, but this is just their interpretation.

They're free to it.

And they would say that this has to do with the pope losing a lot of power.

He was called the imperial sun, and so that's what they see here.

The preterist, of course, he's going to see the sun as a symbol of mighty political power,

or possibly religious leaders, and the tyranny of these leaders and how they terrorize the

people is how the sun is able to scorch the people.

And alternatively, some have seen this as referring to the Gothic and Vandal kings who besieged

Rome.

So a couple different people believe in different things.

Futures are split on this, but it all comes back to Rome, in the fall of Rome, and what's

happening there.

The futurists, as you can see from my picture here, they interpret this with the sun representing

ultimate government, which means that Satan, the ruler of this world, will severely harm

and oppress the people of the world.

However, other futurists who prefer, remember, a literal interpretation believe that this

verse, in this bowl in particular, are referring to atmospheric changes due to nuclear war

or to solar flares.

So again, when they see the sun is scorching people, they say that is nuclear war, that's

radiation from nuclear war, or that's possibly sun flares, solar flares, that are affecting

the people of the earth in many different ways, causing them to be burned.

Then there's the idealist.

They, again, try to avoid any specific fulfillments, but many idealists see fulfillment in cases

in which people die due to exposure to the elements, people perishing in deserts without

water, cancer due to sun rays, and heat exposure, things like that.

So again, if you're noticing what the idealist does, he's saying, I'm not seeing one particular

fulfillment, but I'm seeing examples throughout history of how this kind of a thing occurs.

Where do we see the sun scorching people, people dying of things like that?

It's possible that this could refer to instances like we just mentioned.

One point the idealist bring up is that the sun, which God intended to be a blessing to

the world, now in a fallen world has become a curse to the world.

Do you all notice that switch there?

God created the sun and he created it to be a blessing to the people of earth, but now

in a fallen world, the world is such that the sun, which was meant to be a blessing,

has now become a curse to people.

So I think the idealist is trying to get you to see this is the nature of living in a fallen

world.

This is the kind of thing that we can expect in the type of world that we live in.

I don't have time for this, but I do want to just read it with you real quick.

The fifth angel, he poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast.

Here's your homework.

If you all want homework, I'm going to give you some homework.

All right, I'm going to read this and then here's your assignment.

I just want you to guess what you think each one of the groups would think about these

two verses.

That's all I'm going to ask you to do.

Fun little exercise for you.

Remember, you've got historicists, you've got preterists, you've got futurists, and

you've got idealists.

Just a fun little Bible study for you.

Revelation 16, 10 through 11, the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast.

So I'm going to circle or underline some key phrases.

Make notes of this for your homework.

I'll take it up next week and grade it.

And its kingdom was plunged into darkness.

All right, so we have a throne of the beast.

We've got a kingdom.

We've got darkness.

And people gnawed their tongues and anguished and cursed the God of heaven for their pain

and sores.

They did not repent of their deeds.

Don't read that.

That was the answer.

All right, so here's your homework assignment.

I just want you to read these two verses and then I want you to try to guess what you think

each one of the four groups would read or how they would interpret these verses, particularly

the phrases, the throne of the beast and what that refers to, the kingdom of the beast,

what that refers to, this darkness that people were plunged into, and also the pain and sores

that they experienced.

I think I've made this real easy for you because there are some answers right off the bat that

you should just be getting.

They're like, I know it's going to be about the Pope, probably the French Revolution.

I know it's going to be about this.

There's some easy answers, okay?

But just have that little homework assignment and we'll finish studying the seven bulls next

week.

This will be our most in-depth study we do of Revelation.

I'm not going to do this with every passage because we don't have the time or the patience

to go through every single verse of Revelation and show you all four views every time.

So when we come to a section like this, which is highly debated and if we're honest with

each other, it's not easily understood, right?

The seven bulls, they're not easily understood.

I think it's helpful to put different views in front of you to show you that different

people who are very smart, who have more letters after their name than my name does, okay?

Very qualified people, they come down on different answers for these things.

And I think it's wise for us to consider different possibilities as we read Scripture together.

All right, Michael Stevenson.