Chapter 16:17 – Chapter 17:6

“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!’ ¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ 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. ²⁰ Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. ²¹ 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 that plague was exceedingly great.

“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, ² with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.’ ³ So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

“⁴ The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. ⁵ And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. ⁶ I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.”

Thanks for the emails that I have received over the week. Some of the emails made me think and do some searching; others encouraged me, and some not so much. Either way, the emails are appreciated.

We are going to venture into some interesting information this week. Not long ago, maybe a week or two, the pope and Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb signed an interfaith covenant in Abu Dhabi. Here we have the apostate version of Christianity agreeing and forming an alliance with the Islamic religion. If I recall correctly, the pope stated that they were brothers.

In Daniel, we see a statue some 2,500 years ago that outlined the present and coming ruling powers beginning with Babylon. The final empire was an unnatural alliance, one of clay and iron mixed together, a seemingly forged alliance that seemed to be forced rather than a natural one. Iron and clay do not mix. We just saw that alliance being formed right in front of our eyes. Between these two global religions, they will control between 2.5–2.7 billion people. By the time the Rapture takes its toll on the population, they may control about half the worlds’ population or more.

In Daniel 12:4, we see these harrowing words: “But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.”

Daniel is told that the words of his book were not for him or his time but for the time when knowledge would be increased and when men would “run to and fro.” We are here today. Our knowledge increases in the last 119 years have taken us from an average land speed of 30 miles per hour at the turn of the 1900s to where we can venture into space. At the turn of the century in 1900, the average person was born, lived and died within 30 miles of where they were born. Today we literally run to and fro on the earth. Air travel is just that; we can now take flight from Toronto to Brisbane Australia in under a day – a feat that used to take months just from England when travelling by ship back in the 1900s.

The Last Judgment of the Tribulation, verses 17-21

The words “it is done” can be translated “it is done and will remain done.” There is no fixing this from man’s perspective or under man’s power. God is going to do God-stuff; and man will stand in awe or run in fear or cringe in dismay, but they will not be able to fix it. What God is doing cannot be undone. There is absoluteness in these words. We can think of a similar statement by Jesus as He was hanging on the cross, “It is finished.” The work of salvation was finished. There was nothing more to do at all on the part of either man or God. All man had to do was to put his faith in God’s salvation to be saved. The work had been completed. The next event to follow this 7^th Bowl will be the physical return of the Lord Jesus with the armies of Heaven.

In Numbers 16:20-35, we find an account of men who defied the leadership of Moses. God opened up the earth and swallowed them whole along with their tents and their families. As far as I can tell, this was the first time that an earthquake-like event ever occurred in the Bible. The earthquake that is recorded for us here in Revelation 16 is like no other event ever in history. It divides this great city (the city of the anti-Christ, modern-day Babylon) into three parts. Nations also fall with it, and we are told that the islands flee away and are not found.

This is extremely dear to me as I am from an island nation; Barbados is just a little dot in the Caribbean Sea. But England is also an island, as is Australia; it is an island continent. Imagine how much destruction this will cause. This is a global earthquake, or at least the effects of this earthquake are global. Not only will the islands disappear, but the mountains will be no longer found. God is going to level everything. What a catastrophe this will be; and, oh, what a display of God’s Sovereign power!

God remembers this city, the great Babylon, and His wrath is poured out on her. He then sends hail to fall upon the men of the earth. In Job 38:22, we are told that God has storehouses of hail. We have had some hail here in Canada in my time, some as big as a small marble maybe, but the hail in Revelation 16 is ‘great hail’; we are told that the hail is about one (1) talent. According to www.unitconversion.org, a talent is just over 75 lbs. Can you imagine the damage of 75 lb. blocks of ice falling on the earth and man? The destruction will make the movie 2012 look like a ride at an amusement park.

The men of the earth will blaspheme even more. No repentance here. No remorse. No guilt, just rage at God. They know for sure who is doing this. By the way, there will be no atheists in the Tribulation, at least not towards the middle and then the end; they will defy God with full knowledge of His power and who He is. Defying God can harden your heart so much that you become calloused, even when seeing Him face-to-face, so to speak. You are so hard to the wonders of the Lord that, even with His power and even His person clearly displayed, you are defiant and rebellious.

This is a horrible situation to be in. We see a lot of people in this place today. We see women and men touting their ‘feelings’ over what is right and what is true. They hate the truth and anyone who speaks it; it has become offensive. When the absolute Truth shows His face, Jesus the righteous, they will be just as defiant, and their pride will cost them dearly.

The Judgment of the False church – Chapter 17:1-6

Chapters 17–18 will focus on the destruction of Babylon. This focus will culminate in chapter 19 with the return of Jesus to fight for Israel against the invading hordes of the Anti-Christ and his armies. In Chapter 17, we find some clues to help us to form an idea of who the Great Harlot is.

Prostitution is a symbol of spiritual infidelity. This is a deliberate act. One does not commit fornication accidentally. We find an amazing story in the book of Ruth. In it we find two women leaving the country of Moab with Naomi in Ruth 1:6-18. One daughter-in-law, Orpah, and the other, Ruth, are leaving to go back to the land of Israel. As they exit the city, Naomi tells the ladies to return to their country as she cannot provide them with a husband. Orpah, we are told, returned to her people and her gods (vs. 15), but Ruth clings to the God of Israel, the God of Naomi, and she returns to Bethlehem with her. There she is married into the lineage of our Saviour Jesus.

Here is a great example that the Harlot church made a choice; they could have turned to the God of Israel but they did not. They, in the person of Orpah, returned to the gods of Moab.

This harlot church has global effects; she sits on many waters, she has political power, she is courted by the kings of the earth, and she affects the whole population of the earth or at least a very large portion of it. Later, she is described as a “woman sitting on a scarlet beast.” The idea of scarlet is that of luxury, splendor and a woman of means. Scarlet is the color of royalty and nobility and great wealth. She, as a prostitute (a whore), adorns herself in splendor to attract her suitors. In contrast is the Lord Jesus. In Isaiah 53:2, we find these words describing the physical appearance of Jesus:

“He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him.”

He did not display His majesty, and He was not beautiful so as to attract us to Him. He came as a servant according to Philippians 2:5 and set the example for us. The New Testament church is not supposed to be a whore dressed up to meet the world, but a chaste bride waiting for her husband. She is beautiful to those that are looking for true, and ugly to those that simply want the external trappings of a harlot. Harlots do not look to form everlasting relationships; they use their suitors for profit. And when the opportunity for profit expires, so too do the affections that were once so freely given.

This woman (false church) was covered in the names of blasphemy, constantly adding pagan rituals to further and further take away the power of the Gospel. The Latin phrase ‘extra Ecclesiam nulla salus’ means that outside the church, referring to the Catholic Church, there is no salvation. The current pope said this very thing on June 3rd, 2013.

The very name “Catholic” refers to the universal church. There is no such thing as the universal church. The word that is translated from the Greek refers to the local assembly from within a city. There is a church in each city or multiple churches if the city is quite large. All the saved people are in the family of God, but not in a universal global church. The very wording of the Epistles are they that show that a church or churches existed in a location like Ephesus, Galatia or Rome.

Doctrines like purgatory where the dead wait in transit for their loved ones to pay indulgences to get them out of purgatory into Heaven; transubstantiation that teaches that the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Jesus, promoting cannibalism that is strictly forbidden as is the drinking of blood (Deuteronomy 12:16); even the idea of confession to a priest – these are all abominable practices that put a man in the place of God. We are called to confess our sins to God in 1 John 1:8-9.

Right now, the Catholic Church is engulfed by a pedophile scandal on a global scale. Hundreds or even thousands of trusting families have been devastated by the sexual abuse that the priests have proffered on an unsuspecting and innocent people. This abuse has been compounded by the cover-up that is still going on all around the world. The filthiness has been going on for decades in some cases, and on multiple continents, as the church has moved pedophile priests from one diocese to the next rather than discipline them or have them arrested.

This ‘church’ is also drunk with the blood of the saints. Beginning in the 13^th century, the Catholic Church engaged in inquisitions designed to deal with heresy. Anyone who did not believe like them were targets. Conservative Baptist groups (some called Paulicians) were slaughtered by them in 1160 AD under the order of Henry II. Cardinal Hosius, President of the Council of Trent, said in 1524 that “had the Baptists not been cut off with the knife for 1,200 years, they would outnumber all the Reformers.”

Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has slaughtered those that kept to the strict interpretation of the Bible and condemned all who added to it – as the Catholic Church does all the time. Today, the Catholic Church may appear more civil, but it is not; and when the time comes, it again will step up and be the global superpower that it is. The Vatican is well-funded, it is everywhere, and it already has envoys intertwined in the governments of the world. Catholicism has its foot securely planted in the EU, and it has just added the nation of Islam to its brotherhood. The foundation of the New World Order is forming right before our eyes— in plain sight.

It is this unholy alliance, this bloodthirsty harlot, that God will pour His 75-lb. hailstones on. It is this headquarters in Vatican City that God will destroy with an earthquake and send horror such as has never happened on the earth before. This man, the pope, who wants you to believe that he is God’s messenger on earth, will find out that He is not Jesus. He is just flesh, dust and dirt that has unleashed the wrath of God on himself (whoever may be serving in that position at the time), his network and his cohorts.

We will explore more about this woman next week. For now, we should be eyes wide open. The Bible is playing out in front of us in Technicolor. We can see the end forming right in front of our eyes, covered and cheered by every liberal news outlet. They do not realize that they are cheering the very ending and provoking the wrath of Almighty God.

We still have these words of hope available to us as we wait on Jesus:

Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

We have begun Live Streaming our Sunday sermons on FB; go to our page at Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church. Check us out; we are currently teaching through 1 John.

Chapter 16: 8-16

“⁸Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. ⁹And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory. ¹⁰Then 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. ¹¹They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.

“¹²Then 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. ¹³And 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. ¹⁴For they are 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.

“¹⁵Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.’ ¹⁶And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon.”

Last week we looked at the first of the three bowl plagues, and saw the wrath of God on the people who had rejected Him and chose to follow the Beast and his cohorts. Just recently we see that the pope has stated the Muslim and Catholics are brothers and sisters. One has to have the same father to be a brother or sister. I have brothers and sisters in the Lord; that is because we have the same Heavenly Father. But, since Islam rejects the Jehovah of the Bible, rejects that Jesus is God and the only means of salvation, rejects Israel, and rejects the Bible, they cannot have the same Father. And as such, they cannot then be my brothers and sisters.

If then, as the pope claims, they are brothers and sisters, who then is their father? If it is not Jehovah, then the only other option is Satan. There are only two options: the Father of Truth or the Father of Lies. There you have it then; the pope, the head of the Catholic church – God certainly is not the head of it – has told us that Islam and Catholicism share the same father. That father is not the God of the Bible. What makes this important is that, with this brewing unity between the world’s largest religions on earth, there is the potential to already have control over about 2.5-2.7 billion people on earth. Let that sink in.

We have seen recently that there are those that have voted to kill babies right up to the event of their birth, and to withhold care from those that survive the attempted abortion. Men and women voting to murder children. How coldhearted and how far from God do people have to be to murder babies? Further, how far from God is the nation who elects them to office?

There is a great genocide coming to the USA and to North America as a whole. Canada will not be spared, I fear. Those of us who believe the truth, love the truth, and teach the truth will be the ones sacrificed in the name of tolerance and “unity.” Christian churches need to prepare the people for the potential for suffering. I am not a prophet; I am simply a very good observer of history. The only way to make a lie come to life and stay alive is to kill those that tell the truth. So, ask yourself this: if truth became a crime, would you be arrested?

Scorched Humans, verses 8-9

We have a bright and sunny day here in Southern Ontario. We have had simply crazy weather over the past weeks. Powerful wind storms, lots of snowfall and ice accumulations have simply wreaked havoc on our roads and our power lines, and people simply want the snow to stop. We are teased to have sunshine as there is still about a whole month of winter to go. But the sun is lovely; it is a sign of things to come in the not-too-distant future.

There will be no such joy with the sun in this occasion. There will be no colorful shorts, dollar-store flip-flops and no poolside bar-b-ques. The sun will scorch men with fire. Extreme heat will descend from the sun and scorch the earth. Remember, these plagues are compounding plagues. The two previous ones affected the water supply – no oceans and no fresh water. Evaporation will be affecting the air quality and maybe change the way the ozone filters the sunlight, maybe even magnifying it. But not long after the water is deemed as useless, the sun will simply get hotter. The people and the livestock on the ground will grow more and more thirsty. We find this prophecy in Joel 1:15-20:

“Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as destruction from the Almighty. Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? The seed shrivels under the clods, storehouses are in shambles; barns are broken down, for the grain has withered. How the animals groan! The herds of cattle are restless, because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment. O Lord, to You I cry out; for fire has devoured the open pastures, and a flame has burned all the trees of the field. The beasts of the field also cry out to You, for the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the open pastures.”

Yes, the day of the Lord has shown up, and there is so much pain and suffering. Sad reality. In stark contrast to what is happening, the Lord offers this promise to the nation of Israel in Psalm 121:5-6:

“The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.”

Israel will have rebelled against the Anti-Christ once he had defiled the Temple in Jerusalem. They would have immediately begun to look for the Messiah—the real one. The One that they had rejected some 2,000 years ago will show up to save them. Unlike the Jews who will be looking for their Messiah, the rest of the people who are suffering will blaspheme God. The word blaspheme is defined in part as irreverence, cursing, profanity with reference to speaking to and about the Lord God.

I see this today in the words of many atheists. They swear against God, and they make fun of God’s people and the Holy Bible. They call into question the character of God and certainly show no respect for Him. These people are not true atheists. True atheists are few and far between. What these people truly are is hardhearted like Pharaoh was in Egypt.

In Exodus 5:2, Pharaoh asks a question: “Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?” Herein lies the rub; most atheists are just rebellious men and women who refuse to submit to God; and as such, it is easier in their minds to say He does not exist. They became hardened to God, and even in the midst of an obvious display of His unmatched power, they curse Him rather than be humbled and obedient.

Darkness in the Dark Kingdom, verses 10-11

Have you ever been to somewhere that is so dark it is almost as if you can feel it? Well, the Anti-Christ is about to feel that. God will cover the Prince of Darkness in darkness. The irony is almost funny. In Exodus 10:21-22, we see the plague of darkness that God sent to Egypt:

“And the LORD said unto Moses, stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.”

This darkness will cause pain and suffering so much so that the people afflicted by it will feel pain and gnaw their tongues. It could be the loneliness that they are feeling. It could be the terrors of the night. Imagine what the drastic change will be from the scorching heart of the sun to tangible darkness. The temperature drop may be significant, and there may be pain associated with this. One commentator mentioned that the loneliness may offer to them a glimpse of what Hell will be like. There will be no partying in Hell no matter what the songsters of Satan have made it out to be.

Remember that these men who serve the Beast are still ailed by a putrid sore that is very, very painful. For some time, there has not been water to wash and clean the sore. Compounded by that, the sun was scorching them and now darkness. God is displaying His awesome power, and they know that it is God. Make no mistake; the Anti-Christ, the Beast and the inner circle of their power know exactly who is doing this. They are powerless to stop it and made to look like fools for defying the King of the Universe. But they will not repent; they will continue to blaspheme God. Satan knows his fate, and he simply wants to take as many humans as possible with him. That is his end game.

Frog Spirits to the Deception, verses 12-14

Egypt also had a plague of frogs. The Romans regarded the Euphrates as a barrier between them and the invading armies of the east. But with the Euphrates dried up, the armies of the east like China and India can now move west and invade. The dry riverbed of the Euphrates gives them about 1,800 miles of dry land to move west with. Then the ‘frog’ spirits go out to deceive the nations into fighting Israel—and really fighting God.

Imagine that God has protected Israel like He did during the days of Pharaoh? The hot sun has not scorched them, their livestock eat in lush green pastures fed by God, there is no darkness there in Israel, and now their enemies are jealous and angry. These ‘frog’ spirits go out to put on a show for the kings of the earth and convince them to join the Anti-Christ in war against Israel.

A long time ago, another king named Ahab had a similar situation. The Lord was done with him; he had exhausted the Lord’s kindness and patience along with his wife Jezebel. We find this account in 1 Kings 22: 19-23:

“And he said, hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. And the LORD said, who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him. And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so. Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee.”

Ahab ended up going into battle, and he did not even wear his kingly robes; he was dressed as a normal soldier. An archer shot an arrow but did not aim it at Ahab, and that arrow hit Ahab, who died from the wounds. God is using these lying ‘frog’ spirits to set up the final war at Armageddon. Somehow these spirits will get the armies to join the Anti-Christ to invade the sacred land of Israel. God’s land. Please make note that it is God who is drawing them to the battle. He is the one in complete control, just like He was in control of the arrow that struck Ahab.

Now in verse 15, God tells the Jews as they see this brewing fight – this invading and marauding army of millions – that they (the Jews) are to be assured that He is coming; they will not be abandoned by their loving King to be razed by this ungodly brood of reprobates who dare challenge the Almighty God. He is coming, as far as the invading armies are concerned, like as a thief in the night. The Anti-Christ and his armies do not expect that Jesus will show up and fight for the Holy Land. But Jesus’ return will no longer be a surprise to the Jews; He has told them He is coming back. They are now looking for Him ever since the Anti-Christ defiled the new Temple.

It is to the rebellious masses that Jesus will appear to be a thief who steals victory from them, surprising them when His armies split the eastern sky over Israel; and they will realize that they have pushed God too far, and He is coming to engage them in an unwinnable war ‘face to face.’

In Matthew 24:15-28, Jesus specifically warned the Jews not to be looking for Christ in physical places, and don’t follow anyone who says He is in the room or out somewhere. He knows that, once the Temple is defiled, they will be actively looking for the Messiah to come back. He promises them that He will be back; and as such, His return will not be a surprise for them. It will be a surprise for their enemies.

The Right Garments, verse 15

One must have the right garments to be accepted by the Lord. No, this is not about pants, skirts and ties. It is about salvation. One must have the garment of Jesus’ righteousness covering our/your sins, and then God will accept you. If you try like Adam and Eve to make your own garments, you will be found naked and thus rejected by God. Whether Jew or Gentile, Jesus is the ONLY WAY. In Ephesians 4:20-24, we see these words:

“But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

Notice the use of the words “put off” the old man and be renewed; “put on” the new man. We cannot cover our sins with human effort and ingenuity; you must have Jesus. From Adam to the last man to walk the planet, the answer is Jesus, Jesus and Jesus. All else is nakedness and being rejected by God.

Are you clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ? If yes, then rejoice. If not, repent; Jesus is coming soon.

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca