The Third Bowl: Freshwater Changes to Blood

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Following these bowl judgments, there will be no way out for the human race to survive on earth except for the person of the Lord Jesus Christ to return to this earth to take charge. When He comes, He will terminate the world government of the antichrist. He will bring to an end the economic system of socialism which will dominate all nations. Remember that socialism is government power redistributing the wealth of producers to non-producers. That's the heart of socialism, and it is done under the terms of compassion, and it is done under the terms of the rights that people have. Finally, Christ will stop all violation of God's laws, which has brought on these plagues in the first place.

In all of this, God will be true to His own character. We must understand, and God the Holy Spirit pauses in the description of these terrible plagues to make it clear to us, that God is right, and God is not unjust in what He is doing. He will remain true to His character so that He does no wrong in imposing these plagues.

The First Bowl

The Second Bowl

The Third Bowl

These plagues dealing with blood certainly must stress in the minds of people the comparison between the eternal life to be found through the blood of Jesus Christ and the eternal death which is to be found here through the blood of the second and third bowl plagues. At this point, we read that the angel with jurisdiction over this freshwater ecological disaster will defend God's action in imposing such punishment. And I cannot stress that enough to you. Anybody who is a resister of the Word of God, and anybody who objects to believing the truth, is going to attack God for being such a mean-spirited person is to do this to people. Yet God's character governs all of His actions.

God is Absolute Righteousness

God is Eternal

So, in Revelation 16:5, we now pick up the exaltation of the character of God in order to make it clear that He is acting righteously in everything that He does. Verse 5: "I heard the angel of water saying, "You are righteous (absolute righteousness), who are, and was." He doesn't say that He is coming, because at this point, He will have come.

God is Holy

God is Absolute Righteousness

God is Perfect Justice

This is pointed out to us. In the New Testament, for example, in John 3:36: "He who believes that the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." Here's a simple statement that there's one way, and only one way, into heaven. That is through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who believe the claim of Christ – that He has covered their sin with His death on the cross, and thereby propitiated God. That's the technical word for having satisfied the justice of God. God's justice is satisfied. He is propitiated. If you trust in Christ and accept His provision, you're going to heaven. And once you accept it and become a child of God, you're born into His family, and that can never be reversed.

However, if you do not believe that, and if you do not want to accept the fact that most of the human race is going to spend eternity in the lake of fire, then the wrath of God abides upon you. Why? Because God is cruel and vindictive and mean-spirited? No, because He is justice. His perfect justice demands that if you reject Christ, you will spend eternity in the lake of fire.

In Romans 6:23, this same concept is pointed out: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." The free gift of God is grace – the free gift of God. Have you experienced water baptism, perhaps as an infant or an adult, as part of your salvation? Do you believe that Christ died for your sins, but that you also require water baptism to bring you into the family of God and into heaven? If so, you're going to hell, because you have added a human work, and thus denied God the ability to give you free grace salvation. That is the only salvation there is in the Bible, and it has to be taken as a gift. You can't add anything to it (behaving; whatever you want to add; or, your good works). As you know, most of the religious systems of the world are based on exactly that. How you behave determines how you get into heaven. That is wrong. It is how Christ behaved when He faced the cross, and your sins were placed upon Him.

So, the justice of God is going to deal with you on the basis of your dealing with the Son: "The Son is the issue, stupid." Put that sign up in your house. "The Son of God is the issue, stupid." If you don't know the connection to that, come and ask Glen Wright, because he's up on all that kind of exotic stuff. This is a God of justice. Absolute righteousness and perfect justice makes Him holy.

So, when Christ paid that price on the cross as the Lamb of God for the sin of the world, He forever satisfied the justice of God against every human being. That's why Romans 8:1 could say, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Those of you who have the King James Bible are probably saying, "Why don't you read the rest of the verse?" Because the King James Bible picks up the end of verse 4, and adds it to the end of verse 1. But it is not that way in the Greek manuscript.

You can just see what happened as some middle-age Roman Catholic monk was copying the Scriptures, and he looked and read Romans 8:1: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." How do you get in Christ Jesus? By trusting in Him as your Savior. At the point of your salvation, the baptism of the Holy Spirit places you in Christ. When you're in Christ, you're forever free of any condemnation. You might say, "Yeah, but sometimes I'm a terrible sinner." That's right. But you're still free of any condemnation from God. You might say, "But sometimes I don't even like God." That's right. As Paul to Timothy, "We may not be true, but He must be true to Himself," and He will not go back upon the salvation He has given you because it's based on what Christ has done, and not on anything that you would do, or have done, or ever will do.

So, the monk reached down and added the words: "Who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit," which completely made Romans 8:1 untrue: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to spirit." Do you see what that says? "Those who do not walk according to sin nature, but according to Spirit." How many of you would like to get up and give us your testimony about how you have learned not to walk by the influence of the sin nature? There's nothing we need around here more than some paragons of sinlessness. Boy, do I get it from the paragons of seamlessness when they hear things in this service that God, at opportune times, has given them the opportunity to hear for their enlightenment, and for what He would like to do with them. And they don't have the brains to know that they have heard truth, because the sin nature always wants to edge itself in between you and God.

So, the point of all this is that when God punishes tribulation humanity, who are disobedient to Him, He does so because He is holy. He is responding to that as per His absolute righteousness and His perfect justice. God, thus, will have done the right thing in bringing these plagues upon these individuals who have been violating the laws of God; the moral code; and, the whole bit.

So, we read, "Holy One, because You did judge these things." God is doing the right thing – the holy thing, in judging humanity for what it has done.

We have our teachers' prayer meetings. I'm back, every morning hobbling my way out to our teacher prayer meetings before school begins. Recently, in one meeting, we were reading about the things for which God is going to condemn humanity at the end times – the reasons for which he's going to bring these kinds of judgments against them. I said to the teachers, after we read that passage, "Run your eye over those things, and tell me how far we have come in these evils." It was startling to all of them when they stopped to look at that, and realized how far we have gone in these evils already today. We're practically there, and God is going to respond in holiness, and He is going to judge eventually with the final judgment of the bowls.

So, in verse 6, we find that the angel is praising God for the fact that the punishment fits the crime: "For they poured out the blood of the saints and the prophets." The word "for" introduces the reason why God brings this third bowl judgment down upon mankind, and why it is a fitting judgment. The word "poured out" means "to empty." Here it refers to pouring out the blood of believers from their bodies by killing them because they will not accept the mark of the beast, and they will not worship the antichrist. The antichrist and his worshipers are going to be guilty of causing widespread martyrdom among God's saints and prophets.

I want to remind you again that the Roman Empire never went out of existence. That was the fourth great empire of Daniel's dream. Babylon passed off the scene; Medo-Persia passed off the scene; and, Greece passed off the scene, but Rome never came to an end. Rome simply broke up into individual nations. Under the antichrist, the Roman Empire will be revived once more in full strength as these nations are brought together in a world government, and I need not tell you that you know very well that this is where humanity is rushing headlong into a one single world unity.

So, the antichrist is going to be guilty of causing widespread devastation in this world because he controls the whole ball of wax. All nations are under his authority, and these people are going to be guilty of killing the saints and the prophets. Who are the saints? The saints are the holy ones. This is an adjective which is used here as a noun, because it's describing a group of people. The Bible tells us that saints are believers. The Roman Catholic Church makes saints out of someone who has performed a miracle, and is considered particularly excessive in good works – more than the good works they need to go to heaven. That's not true.

The people of Corinth was a congregation which was very sinful. You'll find at the very beginning of book of 1 Corinthians that they are addressed as saints. Saints has nothing to do with your conduct. It has only to do with the fact that you are in Christ.

So, these tribulation people who have been born-again (because many will be born-again in the tribulation) have become saints by trusting in Jesus Christ, just as you and I do; just as Abraham did; and, just as all the Old Testament saints had to do to be saved. The usual use of this word in the Bible is simply for believers.

So, in the tribulation, believers are going to come on the scene, and they're going to try telling people the gospel. They're going to try analyzing for people what's going on. There will be a lot of people who have information such that now they will understand. Certainly, there's going to be a backlog of tapes such as Berean tapes that will be in different parts of the world where information will be available to those into whose hands those tapes fall. And you will probably put under the death sentence if you listen to those tapes, or any tapes that explain the Word of God.

So, these people, the saints (simple, born-again people) are going to be under the gun as well as prophets. Prophets is a little more technical term for those who are preachers, the servants of God, those who are delivering the current message of God, like the two witnesses that prophesy for that period of almost three years, and finally are able to be killed, but then are immediately raised by God. These are the preachers. You know very well that even in our day now, it is the preachers that are under the gun.

This was the point of our message from Dr. Dobson that we read in a previous session. It was a splendid presentation. And I'm getting calls about that, interestingly enough, from other parts of the country, as Christians are being alerted that here is a presentation of where we are, and it is the preachers who are being beaten over the head: "How dare you speak like that? How dare you call attention to what government and people in authority are doing to our national destruction? How dare you stand up and call an evil for what it really is?"

Sodomy

So, the people who are preaching, I guarantee you, are going to get beaten over the head, and some of us are going to be done. Satan is not above being able to take his hits at us either. Be prepared for that. God allowed, for His own reasons, to let Satan take his hit against Job, but Job survived. And our business is to be faithful to the message. As Dr. Dobson says, "Get your head above the foxhole." We don't need any yellow bellies in the ministry – not now. Now is the time for sounding off and facing the evil that's there.

However, it is true that throughout history it is religious people who have been shedding the blood of God's people. When the Roman Catholic Church was a dominant religion in the Middle Ages, it was in the forefront of slaughtering those who are biblical Christians who said, "No, the church cannot take me to heaven, but only Jesus Christ can. It's a grace gift. What the church is teaching is false."

In the tribulation period, it's going to be the religious people of the tribulation under the false prophet who are going to be doing the killing of the people of God. And the false prophet will approve it, and the antichrist will authorize it. The Lord Jesus Christ taught that the Jews were personally guilty of the blood of the righteous men slain by their leaders. Matthew 23:35 tells us that.

Now, that is a sobering thought. If your leaders shed innocent blood, and soak your land with this blood that cries out to God for vengeance, then you're guilty of it too because you have not done anything to stop it. You have not raised your voice in opposition and in horror. That was a sobering instruction from the Lord. He trying to tell the Jewish people that they were under God's condemnation because their leaders historically slaughtered the prophets of God and treated them most cruelly when these men were telling them the true message of God.

Unbelievers always deeply resent those who condemn their actions by comparing it to God's standards in Scripture. They don't like those who can sound off as the voice of God because they know the Word of God. And it is the soul of liberalism to ridicule and to silence biblical fundamentalists who sound off the truth of God, because that counters their ambitions and their human viewpoint.

Numbers 35:33 is one of those passages that warns us against polluting our land with the shedding of innocent blood. I cannot stress this enough, because this is going to play a major role in the history of our country in the immediate future. God said, "So, you shall not pollute the land in which you are, for blood pollutes the land, and expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it except by the blood of him who shed it." There is no explanation except God's judgment upon those who are guilty for having shed that blood. He's talking about murder. He's talking about a national scale of tolerating the shedding of the innocent lives.

In Israel, this was done by the Baal worship. They had become so attracted to the Baal culture of the Canaanites that they were actually throwing their babies into the fire as an offering to the god Baal. Thus, in our day, the comparable thing is the abortion issue. We are slaughtering the lives of innocent people.

A Donahue program this past week had on it a discussion of the murder of the abortion doctor in Pensacola, Florida, as he walked from his car toward his clinic to perform abortions. An anti-abortionist came up behind him, and shot him three times, and killed the doctor. On the program was a young man, a Presbyterian minister, representing the antiabortion position, and he was faced with about five other people who were pro-abortion. It is very unusual on the Donahue program for the opposition to an evil to have someone to oppose it, and to speak the truth. The immediate attempt of Donahue was to put the minister in a bad light because the minister said that what happened to that doctor was just. It was an act of justice. And, of course, the whole audience groaned because they're all so spiritually perceptive. And the young man was very much poised. He had the police to say, "Let me explain what I mean by that." He was coming at it from a doctrinal biblical point of view.

He said, "This was an illegal act to kill that doctor that violated the laws of God. This doctor has himself been guilty of violating the laws of God with the murder of our unborn children of the abortions that he has performed. So, for him to die for murder is an act of justice." The Bible is very clear that murder one (deliberate, willful, premeditated murder) is to be paid for with one's own life. So, he said, "When I say that it is just, it is just in the sense that this doctor has been guilty of murder himself, and has suffered the penalty that God prescribes for murder: his own life." But he made it very clear that the anti-abortionist this was wrong in carrying out that execution, and that it should not have been done. He wasn't condoning it.

Now that is justice – to understand that the meaning of justice is doing what is fair by the laws of God. And God is going to bring justice upon our society for what we are doing. And very shortly, we will have a law that will be signed by our new president such that the day before a baby will be born, he can be torn apart in his mother's womb and killed, and it will not be considered murder.

So, God's punishment upon tribulation humanity for polluting their land with the blood of God's innocent people is to give them blood to drink since they are so bloodthirsty. The punishment fit the crime.

"For they poured out the blood of the saints and the prophets. You have given them blood to drink. God has given them blood to drink, and now they can enjoy the blood that they were so willing to shed, in so many ways, of the people of God who were trying to warn them and to alert them to where they were going. God's punishment is ironic justice. So, at the end of the verse, God the Holy Spirit leads John to write: "They deserve it." That is justice. They deserve it. If they didn't deserve it, and if they were not guilty of murder, then for them to have to drink blood would be unfair. "They deserve it."

The word "deserve" looks like this in the Greek Bible: "axios," and it means "worthy." That is justice. You're worthy of it. You deserve it. You have it coming.

The Egyptians in Egypt, you remember, shed the blood of the Hebrew male infants. So, God's justice gave them blood to drink in their main water source of the Nile River. God's Holy Spirit leads John to declare that God's blood plague, therefore, is a fitting punishment for the murderous practices of the tribulation humanity. If tribulation society didn't deserve this plague of blood, the holy eternal God would not have inflicted it upon them.

So, when God brings upon us whatever He brings upon us, you must understand that He is absolute righteousness, and that He is the holy one, so He is perfect justice. Whatever He brings, He brings under that restriction and context. Israel's ancient oppressors learned this lesson about God. Isaiah 49:26 alludes to this. The prophet says, "And I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh. They will become drunk with their own blood, as with sweet wine, and all flesh will know that I the Lord am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob." God told Israel, "Those who shed your blood, I will give them blood to drink." Certainly, in modern times, we have had no more classic example of that than in Nazi Germany of World War II.

The Altar

The altar stood out in the court in front of the Old Testament temple where the Mosaic Law was carried out (relative sacrifices). What were those sacrifices on that altar supposed to do? They were there to satisfy the justice of God. They were there to temporarily deflect the wrath of God against sin until the Savior were to come, and die, and pay for that penalty. So, we have an altar here once more that's pointing up to us the justice of God – His fairness.

The Plea of the Martyrs

God says, "I have not forgotten you," as these voices cried out from this altar of sacrifice in heaven." God said, "I'm going to take care of it. There are other believers who are yet to join you in martyrdom, and then I will act."

This altar, of course, is personified here. It's talking as if it were a person, and it speaks again in defense of the plagues that God is bringing on tribulation humanity. But the voice that we are told that John hears may actually be that of all these martyrs that we read about as being under the altar.

We have the response to this declaration: "I heard the altar saying, 'Yes,'" relative to God's judgment of the blood plague. "Nai" is the Greek word for "yes." It expresses agreement with the words of the angel of the waters. The altar voice adds it's testimony to the fact of God's absolute righteousness and His perfect justice in imposing the bowl plagues.

Deity

The Supreme Being

Jude verse 25 stresses the same thing: "To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, and now, and forever. Amen:" "To the only God." The word "only" here refers to God in the sense that He is a unique being. God is a unique being.

God is Unique

What God the Holy Spirit is getting to here is that you better have a sober evaluation for who it is that you're dealing with here. Who is it that is speaking to us? Who is it that is taking action in the tribulation? And who is it that acts with His holiness – perfect righteousness and justice?

In 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, we have this pointed out. The context of the background of this passage is, in the New Testament world, here in the city of Corinth, whether Christians should go down to the local temple, where people have brought meat as an offering to the idol gods, and when they're through with the offering ceremony, they hang the meat up on a hook for people to come by and purchase. And those who are very devoted to their gods bring good slices of meat. So, the question was that it bothered some Christians that other Christians, when they went out to buy meat, they considered the temple the best butcher shop in town, which it was. And they would go and buy the meat hanging on these hooks, which had been previously taken off of the altar, which it had been a sacrifice to some idol God, behind which indeed is always a demon. It bothered some of those people.

Paul says, "In 1 Corinthians 8:4-6: "Therefore, concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one." These idols are dumb, lifeless objects. They are no power. The power that they have comes from demons, and demons are no power for God. There's only one Supreme Being, and that is the Creator God:

"For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on the earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God – the Father from whom are all things, and we exist for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him." There's only one God. There is God the Father that he refers to here, and there is God the Son. God the Son did the creating work, and God the Son, through whom we exist, meaning that He holds creation together."

So, here we have the one Supreme Being in the universe, and Paul says, "It's OK to eat that meat because that act was insignificant. If there is no God out there besides the true God, they have wasted a good slab of steak. Go ahead and buy it, and enjoy it."

However, he says, as the passage goes on, "If some weak Christian is going to get all upset about it, and it's going to hurt his spiritual life, don't buy it. At least don't buy it when he's watching you. And don't serve it when he comes to visit at your house." This is the same problem for you people who are not pig eaters. You go to somebody's house, and the dinner is ham. Or even worse, if you've been in the hospital, they keep slapping pork at you, until you start raising a fuss that you are not a pig eater, because of the contamination, and the parasites, and the worms that are in pig meat at best, and the hazard of eating it.

So, what are you going to do if somebody invites you over, and this is what they put in front of you? This has happened to me. Paul says, "Don't make an issue." And I don't. I just eat the pig meat. Then I hit the vitamin bottle and a little water with a teaspoon of cider vinegar. I put two teaspoons in and really knock it dead, and you'll be basically back on your way.

This is what Paul is talking about. But you must be a strong, mature Christian to take that in stride. Some of you are, and some of you aren't. And you must act accordingly with one another.

The altar calls out for justice from a holy God who is going to do that. And the response is, "Yes, indeed. You are doing the right thing in these plagues, Lord God, the only God in the universe, the unique god, the Supreme Being. He alone is the eternal one."

Lord God

Dr. John E. Danish, 1992

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