God's Wrath

RV197-02

Total Depravity

The ark therefore stood, first of all, as a testimony to the evil nature of man. Secondly, the ark, with its blood sprinkled mercy seat, also testified to the mercy of God in providing a free grace salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. Since the death of Christ, the sin of all mankind on the cross has been covered. The result is that the way into the holy of holies has been opened to all believers. That was demonstrated by the fact that the curtain was torn open from top to bottom at the point that Christ died on the cross. The whole tabernacle then was a testimony, the Bible says to the person and the work of Jesus Christ in providing saving grace.

From the holy of holies, John sees seven angels come forth, with each of them possessing a divine plague. These seven plagues the final judgments of God upon tribulation humanity for its blasphemy and its evil. The angels are performing a priestly ministry as God's agents, so they're not simply acting on their own. They are on a mission. Also, their clear and bright linen garments, that we read about, portray, on the one hand, their absolute righteousness, and on the other hand, their sinlessness. They also wear, John says, a golden girdle. This is the color which in the Bible signifies the glory of God – the God whom they serve. These angels thus are fully qualified to serve God, and they do so with total dedication and integrity.

So, we come to Revelation 15:7. The bowls are delivered. The four living creatures are cherubim class angels. We have met them earlier in the book of the Revelation, and four of them form an honor guard around the throne of God. They are, in effect, the guardians of God's holiness against the encroachment or the approach of any sin. They furthermore act as God's couriers, delivering His orders to set in motion His judgments against evil.

John says, "One of the four living creatures (steps forward now, and he) gave (something) to the seven angels." He hands something to each of the seven angels. We have now reached a point in human history when God is beginning to make His move against Satan's world system. This is in the future, and it is a high and dramatic moment in the history of the world. Mankind today does not believe that such a point in time will ever arrive. Mankind does not believe that there's ever going to come a climactic point when suddenly God is going to burst out in anger and in rage with unmitigated indignation against what mankind has been doing through all these centuries, and the climax of evil, which will have been reached in the tribulation period. What this angel is doing is now taking the steps. He is, in effect, issuing the angels the final order for their missions.

Bowls

Wrath

He has tolerated. His patience and His longsuffering has exercised itself to the end. And now there is an outburst of pent-up indignation. The wrath here is the wrath of God, who for centuries has been taking the insults of the human race (the race which He has created). He has been taking the indifference, and He has been getting the back of the hand of mankind. And God has been storing up this inward indignation. Since the first human civilization, built by Cain, the divine viewpoint of the Word of God has been rejected in society in favor of the human viewpoint of man's reason.

That is the whole issue today. Whose ideas are best? God's or man's? Is the fall of contaminated reasoning capacity of man capable of deciding what is best for an individual, and what is best for a people? Or do we require something that is a wisdom outside of human reasoning – the wisdom that comes to us from God?

Every human civilization has been built upon the viewpoint of man. From time to time, God raises up a civilization in which there is a great respect for the Word of God, and thus the viewpoint of God is interjected into the laws of that land, and into the conduct of that society. And God is always there in His grace, preparing an opportunity for escape.

It is amazing to realize that on the very day (I guess it was August 3rd, 1492) when Columbus sailed from Pollos, Spain, and out that channel, going out to find what became the new world, was the last day that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had, under the guidance of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priest Torquemada, issued the edict to the Jews that they must leave Spain. Spain was going to be a Christian (meaning a Catholic) country, and nothing else would be tolerated. And the Jews fled, and with them went the backbone of the middle class of Spain. The very day that Columbus was going out that channel, the Jews were going out, fleeing to Muslim countries for haven and for safety.

What did Columbus discover? He discovered a land that eventually would result in the creation of the American society, and of the American civilization, built upon reformation principles – a reformation which had not even taken place yet. Luther himself was two years old when Columbus went out that channel. And at the same time that the Jews were fleeing, God was preparing a refuge for them with this man. And this country, the United States, has been the salvation of Israel through all these years. To this very day, Israel exists only because of the protective care of the United States, which is why God's wrath has been held in such abeyance against us.

We are so ambivalent now. Down in the depths of our soul there rings our memories now of the Christian heritage upon which our nation was built. But our children who go to public schools cannot hear about that heritage. There are no longer even having any kind of reference to the biblical spiritual motivations that brought about the forming of this nation and the principles upon which it was built. And what has been the result as we have forbidden people to pray on their own in the public school; as we have forbidden teachers to even refer to the Bible; and, as we have forbidden the Ten Commandments to be posted at a public school. The Supreme Court says, "You can't do that now. Now you cannot pray at a school football game or a public athletic event." All of that has been rubbed out.

Recently we had a person who applied to Berean Christian Academy. This was a new student coming in. And on the application form, the parent indicated that the child had been in a Christian school, and had then been placed into a public school. We have these parents who make this decision that public school isn't so bad, and they get so many advantages. They can play football, you know? They can get their brains knocked out in football. That's a great advantage. They have all of these marvelous advantages. So, they go to the public school system. On the application form, the mother said, "It was pure disaster. My daughter was horrified – the vulgarity of the language of the boys and their conduct." And we're talking about grade three. It was so devastating to this sensitive child to be surrounded by the filth of other children. It only established what I've been telling parents, and pounding away at – that the most important problem for you is not the academic level, but it is the playground (the surrounding influence), and it is vile.

All of this is the reflection in children what now constitutes the outlook of adults (their parents). And the parents are reflecting their religious orientation. They are no longer being cautioned that you better be afraid of God. You better have a healthy, healthy respect and a fear of God, or you're on the self-destruct course. And people always have to find that out the hard way.

This is what is behind the statement of John – that God is handing out, through this angel, seven bowls full of His pent-up wrath against a world system that Satan has built, that treats God with contempt, and satanic ideas with dignity. Now, at the end of the tribulation, comes the moment when God's longsuffering with the insults of mankind and its evil has come to an end. Those insults are now to receive His fiery indignation to the full. Remember that in the Bible, the number seven is the number of completion. When a thing has reached its ultimate limit, it comes in a segment of sevens.

So, we have seven bowls, and they're filled to the brim. God is no longer going to hold back any holy judgment of His in any degree. Each angel is now going to deliver His assigned plague, and that assigned plague is going to be immersed in a bowl of God's fiery wrath. The results of each will be more devastating than the previous one. So, the end result on this earth and on mankind is going to be beyond the imagination of the human race. At that point in time, we're not going to hear any snide, human viewpoint remarks from some Donahue type about how God wouldn't exercise this kind of rage and indignation and punishment upon the human race. He's going to do exactly that, for the simple fact that He is God, and He is holy.

So, what we're saying is that we are seeing here, in verse 7, the preview of God's plan to wipe out the proud world system, which is in existence on earth today, which Satan has built through the arrogant and unregenerated mind of man, which will have reached its climax of evil in the tribulation. Man's philosophy reduces human beings to animals rather than to a creature in the image of God. Man's science discovers the secrets of nature, but it does not honor the Creator. It seeks to eliminate Him from His creation.

Man's art is an ugly expression of his old sin nature which vulgarizes the soul of man. The National Endowment for the Arts, here in the United States, is a disgrace. It illustrates one of the things that our federal government does. And you might want to go home and read that list of about 19 stipulations that the Constitution allows – one of the 19 rights that the Constitution gives the federal government. And I'll bet you won't find anywhere in there that it says that the federal government may endow an artist to express his art. So, the National Endowment for the Arts of the United States gives money to people who draw pictures that have the cross of Christ in a bucket of urine that vulgarizes is the person of Christ. This is done with taxpayer money. This is a country that was founded upon the Word of God for a haven of people all over the world for liberty and spiritual enlightenment. We have politicians who say that it's all right to do that. And we have federal courts who look the other way and pretend that the Constitution enumerates that. I'll bet you won't find that as one of the enumerated powers of the federal government.

Thomas Jefferson had it right: "The more active a government is, the more tyrannical it will be." I've been using the phrase, "I want to vote for people who will promise me that they will not do anything in public office to help me solve my personal problems." That is because I know that when they do that, tyranny is just around the corner. Government by nature is power – brute, raw power, exercised over the lives of other people.

So, we have in the face of God, who established the divine institution of government, government becoming itself a tyrant instead of a blessing. And it expresses itself in the support of things like ugly art. Man's inventions are used to make life more comfortable with less dependence upon God. Man's music is a cacophony of noise used to bestir a jungle of uninhibited indulgence of the lust patterns of the sin nature.

I have discovered that I am abnormal personally when it comes to modern music, because I find repetitive words and repetitive sounds irritating. I can only listen to something repeated about 30 times, and then it becomes irritating to me. I have that abnormality. Yet, that cacophony of noise and repetitive nonsense is what's called real smooth music. And the people who sing that stuff, and who create it, have in their homes all kinds of gold and platinum records on their walls because a degenerative society has gone and bought those records and made them rich.

God has created loveliness and beauty, and created the quality of music. God put together one human being one time in the history of the human world – one perfect musical human being. The world will probably never see another one like that. Suddenly, everything came together in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That man had, from the age of three, a capacity of creating music that stirs the finest qualities in the human soul.

AIDS

Abortion

With these people, you always have to frame the issue. With politicians, you must always frame the issue, because they have clever, conniving minds that present things that make it sound so right when it is so wrong. You must always fight back to frame the issues. Since the preachers aren't fighting back, who can frame the issues? The Billy Grahams, who have the fame and fortune, are not getting on public TV and saying, "America, there is one great and conclusive issue which you must now face in this election, and that is the continuance of the murder of our unborn children. You cannot before God, as a Christian in good conscience, knowing that you will face him, ever vote for somebody says, 'I'll murder an unborn child, because that's what the people want, and that's what serves my cause.'"

Can you imagine the impact if Billy Graham said that? But since he doesn't, it's left to the comparatively incompetent types like myself, and the unknowns, who have to try to sound the alarm that there is a judgment of God to be faced. This soaking of our earth with blood is a grievous thing, and God is going to bring this nation down for that alone. You cannot kill 28 million babies whose blood screams out for vengeance, and get away with it.

God faces an earth where man's multiculturalism results in the great persecution to exterminate the Jews and to silence Christians, and which will reach its climax in the tribulation. Man worships the antichrist and he blasphemes the name of God which he hates. The nations of mankind will be gathering on the field of Armageddon for the explicit purpose of making war against the Son of God whom they despise.

What we're saying is that God has kept His cool. He has retained His rage. He has held in that inward indignation against all the economic, social, and political institutions of Satan's world system, which in the tribulation will have reached the epitome of their evil in their character, and in the effects of what they do. And God hates all of it.

Cosmos Diabolicus was the Latin word that I was taught in Dallas Seminary by Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer. Cosmos Diabolicus is the diabolical cosmic system – the world system of Satan. We people, who are Christians, and who know the Word of God, move through this system, and we keep ourselves, as much as possible, uncontaminated from it. We protect our children from it, but we're used to this vileness around us. We cringe a little, and we have a double-take when we hear things and see things, but we do not understand how a holy God recoils with complete disgust from this.

So, this is what is in these bowls. This is why the bowls are filled to the brim. God is not being mean. He is not being unjust. He is not being vengeful. He has taken it, and He has tolerated it. And I've just described for you just a few of the things that have existed on this earth, and that are true today, and that a holy God cannot stomach.

One of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God. What God? The god that some man invented? That's the way people think about Him. This is your God and my God.

Eternal Life

Here is the way the Bible speaks about our God. He is not a force. You should not pick up the words of the New Age and of the New Age movies that glorify the force out there, and equate that with being something that has to do with God. God is a person. He is infinite in every respect that we have. We have been made in His image. That is the basic fundamental reason that you cannot kill an unborn child under any condition. You cannot kill an unborn child. We're going to talk more about this in the next session. But I must stress to you that what is in the womb from the moment of conception is in the image of God, and therefore, it is not destined to be a dog, a pig, or a rat. It is destined to be something that is in the image of God. I don't care if you want to believe that the soul enters when the baby takes his first breath. That makes no difference. It is still in the image of God in his destiny. Therefore, there is no condition upon which his life may be taken.

Abortion: The Mother whose Life is in Danger

So, here's this God who is eternal, who has eternal life, and in whose image every human being is made. Deuteronomy 33:27 taught this to the Jewish people: "The eternal God is a dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. And He drove out all the enemy from you, and said, 'Destroy.'" He is the eternal God.

Look at Psalm 9:2. The psalmist, singing a praise to God, said, "Before the mountains were born, or You did give birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." Now we can understand by human reason how something could not have an end. But we cannot humanly conceive on someone who never had a beginning. And that's what this verse is saying: "Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God."

Move over into the territory of the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 43:13: "Even from eternity, I am He, and there is none who can deliver out of My hand. I act, and who can reverse it?" Even from eternity, I am He." The words "I am" are in the present tense (the word for "being"). This is the most effective description that God can give of Himself. He says, "I am." Jesus said the same thing: "Before Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were, I am." When somebody says, "I am," that's the way that they are claiming to be deity: no beginning; and, no end. They are always in a present state condition.

Notice in the New Testament the statement of 1 Timothy 1:17 (speaking of Jesus Christ): "Now to the King Eternal, immortal, invisible: the only God, be glory and honor forever and ever. Amen.

Then, finally, in our book of the Revelation, at the very beginning of the book, John recognizes the eternity of God in Revelation 1:8: "I am (speaking now of Jesus Himself, identifying Himself as deity) the Alpha and the Omega (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet). I am the beginning and the end." It says, "The Lord God, who is, who was, who is to come, the Almighty." These are human words struggling to describe an inconceivable concept. God has no beginning, and no end. God is eternal. It's important that we understand that that is the kind of person we are dealing with. We are dealing with the eternal God. He's been around a long time. He knows all the ropes, and man can thumb his nose and pretend he's getting away with things. But God is going to crush those who do not see Him.

In the New Testament, we have the statement in John 10 reminding us that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins so that we could share this eternal life of god. John 10:27-28: "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give eternal life to them. And they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of My hand." Here is the grand and wonderful promise that we who trust in Christ as Savior now come into the benefits of God's kind of life. We too become eternal life types. We too have flowing within us a life which had no beginning, and can have no one.

In 1 John 5, we're told that the born-again believer specifically possesses the eternal life of God. 1 John 5:11-12: "The witness is this: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." We Christians now possess not merely the life we were born with, but we now possess God's eternal life, and we get it through His Son by our faith in Him as Savior: "He who has the Son has life." And the rest of the verse tells us that the unbeliever, while he will exist forever, he will not possess God's eternal life: "He who does not have the Son of God does not have life." There it is very clear. Those who have the Son of God (who have trusted in Him as personal Savior), you have God's eternal life in your being. Those who have rejected Him, you will exist forever in the lake of fire, but you will not have the eternal life of God.

This is what transforms you from just being in an animal level type of creature. You have the eternal life of God. You have the power and all the privileges of God flowing through your being. Your whole mentality and outlook in all the facets of your soul are functioning on the breath of eternal life. That's very, very different than what the unbeliever lives on. It is dramatically different.

Now since God is eternal, I must tell you that His laws against sin, and His punishment against the violation of His laws is also forever. It is the eternity of God that ensures that the salvation that we have from Jesus Christ will never be taken from us, and that we will be carried on into that promise of eternal life with Him. 1 Peter points this out in 1 Peter 1:4-5. God's eternity ensures that our salvation will always be there, protected by Him: "To obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time." Protected by what? Protected by the fact that God is always there to do the protecting.

So, the sorry state of human nature is clearly seen from the smug arrogance of finite man, and what he has done in the face of a finite God – a God who took the trouble to inform us, and a God who gave us a Scripture and said, "This is the way I made you to work. This is the way I made all the institutions of society to function. Now do it my way, and it will be well with you. Do it your way, and it's all going to come apart."

Arrogance

Condescension

Smoke

In Isaiah 66:3-4, the prophet Isaiah has a vision that just staggers him. He thinks for a moment that he's going to die because he has a vision of the Holy God. That vision is surrounded once more by the glory and the cloud of God. Isaiah 66:3-4: "And one called out to another (the seraphim angels), 'Holy, holy, holy' (the Trinity) is the Lord of hosts (the Lord of the armies). The whole earth is full of His glory. And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke." There you have a grand historical occasion when the glory of God caused the very temple foundations to tremble. And there was the cloud and the glory of God.

The fiery wrath of God's holiness is what John is seeing now filling that holy of holies in heaven.

Then John makes another dramatic point: "No one was able to enter the holy of holies." No one, not one single person, is able. The Greek word for "able" is this word "dunami." "Dunami" means to have an inherent capacity – just to be able to do something. It's like when you're trying to do something with your hands, and you can't make this thing work. You can't fit it together, and you hand it to somebody else, and they just zip it and put it all together. Then they turn, and they say to you, "Isn't it wonderful to have hands that can do things?" They're claiming "dunami" power (inherent ability) to make a thing work.

It says that someone who is able to do things cannot do this. It is in the imperfect tense, which means this person repeatedly tries. He tries, and he's not able to do. To do what? To enter into. In the Greek language, it says, "Enter," and then it adds another "in" as a separate word to stress going in to the holy of holies. No one is able to enter into the temple.

What has happened? Something dramatic has happened. Something has changed. We are told that there comes a point in time when you cannot go to God anymore. There comes a point in time when the human race has gone beyond the point of no return, and they will not be able to turn back to God. It says that at a certain point in time, God will not be approached. The cloud of His glory will prevent anybody from approaching Him, just as it did the priests in the Old Testament when the cloud filled the temple, until the seven plagues of the seven angels is finished. At this point of time, no one can intercede for mankind. It's a done deed. The day that the door slammed on Noah's ark, nobody could again appeal to God. All those who were outside that vessel now had their access to God totally shut off. The time of grace for all humanity is going to cease here at this point in the tribulation, and no one can in any way stop or mitigate the storm of divine judgment – until something is terminated: until the plagues are finished.

The word is "teleo." Oh, how ironic! This is the word that Jesus used on the cross when He cried out just before He died: "It is finished." This is the same word – terminated. The contract has been concluded in full. This is a word for the completion of an action. It refers here to pouring out on the earth the wrath of God. Nothing is going to stop God now from pouring out His wrath in a maximum way with these seven plagues. This is the point in history where mankind is going to find out that there was a right and wrong. You've heard me say that one of the things about spiritual things is that, in time, we will find out who's right and who's wrong. Well, this is the time. At this point in time, we're going to find out which of these fundamentalists were kooks and which of you liberals were smarties. We're going to find who was what. We're going to discover, finally, the truth.

This is in the passive voice. The plagues are going to carry out the wrath of God for Him. It's in the subjunctive mood, which means that this a potential for great trauma which is going to fall upon all mankind, because people will realize that at this point in time, there's absolutely no stopping of the judgments of God. The party is over. Satan's men, the antichrist and the false prophet, and all those who followed him, are going to be thrown screaming into the lake of fire. People are going to discover that they misread God and His tolerance – that they did evil things in our society, and they operated against the principles of the Word of God, and nothing happened. And because nothing happened, they concluded that it's not important, or that God doesn't care; that He's a deist; and, He's letting us run the show.

However, I remind you that 2 Peter 3:3-9 put that in perspective for us. God does care about evil. His wrath is going to be poured out, but he does give you a chance. That's the great tragedy – that people won't take the chance he gives: "Know this first, that in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking following after their own lusts, saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming forever? Since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation, for when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the Word of God, the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at the time was destroyed, being flooded with water.'"

Was God asleep during the evil of the early civilization? No. God was there, and God brought the Noahic flood, and God took His vengeance. So, don't tell us that things have always continued without abatement, and that evil has never been squelched: "But the present heaven and earth, by His Word, are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved: that with the Lord, one day is as 1,000 years, and 1,000 years is one day." God has got plenty of time: "The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness." The issue is that He is patient toward you: "Not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance."

Yes, God is not ignoring what we're doing. God is not ignoring what we have done to our society. God is not ignoring what we have done to our people. The time of judgment is coming. The United States is a doomed nation, and it has sealed its doom because of its slaughter of 28 million unborn children – a brutal act set in motion by evil men on the highest court of this land.

God cannot be mocked. In Proverbs 29:1, it is stated this way: "A man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy." How do you like them apples? The necks are going to be broken all over the place at that point in the tribulation, because people would not pay attention.

I leave you with Galatians 6:7, Paul's succinct declaration: "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows, that he will also reap." And in the tribulation, at this point in time, no one will be able to intercede for mankind. Nobody will be able to mitigate the wrath of God. And people are going to discover that they receive exactly what they have coming from a just God. To those who have obeyed Him come the joys of His blessing and of eternal life. Those who have given Him their content will receive their eternal judgment and condemnation.

However, you must choose which side you will be on. In the next session, we will go more deeply into the subject of what it means to be an enemy of God. At the end of Psalm 139, a statement is made that all the world recoils from and says, "That certainly doesn't sound like being Christian. That doesn't sound like the way people of God should act." But it's exactly the way people of God should act. Next time, we'll give you the scoop.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1992

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