Welcome to a Revelation of Jesus. In this video, we will begin a new series called the Final Crisis, which covers Revelation chapters 15-19, as well as explore the biblical meaning of the wrath of God.
In the previous 15 videos, we have looked at the Cosmic Conflict in Revelation 12-14. Beginning with the birth of Jesus, chapters 12 and 13 take a detour from the Revelation timeline to show that the fearsome events that are prophesied in Revelation are the result of Satan’s agenda to overcome God’s faithful followers and thus prove that he should rule the world because all of humanity has bought into his lawless worldview. But Revelation 14 shows that God’s 144,000 faithful witnesses refute Satan’s claims. They not only stand firm, but take the everlasting gospel to the whole world, resulting in a great harvest of those who will be a part of God’s eternal kingdom.
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This series picks up where the timeline took its detour at the end of chapter 11, with the seventh trumpet. In previous videos, we have seen that the seventh of each series of seven gives a preview of what comes next. The prophetic preview of what follows the seventh trumpet is found in a momentous announcement from heaven. “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet… and the twenty-four elders who sit before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, ‘You have taken Your great power and reigned. The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come. The time has come that the dead should be judged, and You should reward Your servants… and destroy those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:17,18).
We studied this announcement in video 41, and I would encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already. But I want to touch on some key points that will help us get oriented to what is happening in the final crisis. First of all, the elders announce, “You [God] have taken Your great power and reigned” (Revelation 11:17). This verse implies that at some point God, the Sovereign of the universe, laid down some of His great power and let someone else reign.
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To a certain extent, God granted limited sovereignty to Satan from the time he managed to get Adam and Eve to sin. Jesus Himself repeatedly called Satan “The [ruler or prince] of this world” (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11). But at the end of time, Satan will be granted a temporary but much greater degree of authority to do what he wants. I would like to do a little review to show why it will be given, and why, after the seventh trumpe,t God will take back His authority and reign.
In videos 22 and 23 we looked at the sixth seal, which introduces the seven trumpets. The people who have rejected Jesus ask a pivotal question: “The great day of [God’s] wrath has come and who is able to stand?” God begins to answer that question by sealing the 144,000. The seal is a guarantee that they will stand and be ready to meet the Lord when He comes.
As usual, Satan challenges God’s affirmation of His faithful witnesses. He commissions four of his evil angels to release the winds of strife and conflict, which he wants to use to overcome the 144,000. In video 27 we saw that a mighty angel brings a message from God granting the four angels permission to release the four winds, but not until the 144,000 have been fully sealed.
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In the next scene, we see an angel standing at the golden altar offering incense in a golden censer. In video 28 we saw that the censer symbolizes protection from the deadly consequences of sin that the people of this world deserve, and which Satan would like to inflict. The angel throws down the censer, symbolically indicating that God is withdrawing His protection. This allows Satan a period in which he can bring about chaos and destruction, in an attempt to overthrow the sealed 144,000, and prevent them from presenting the Everlasting Gospel to the world. In video 26 we saw that God’s temporary hands-off policy is called “silence in heaven” as God gives Satan a chance to try to prove that he really does rule the whole world.
In the next scene, which we studied in videos 29 and 30, the four angels release the winds, resulting in the first four trumpets. They depict a series of fiery disasters, probably resulting from a nuclear attack, which throw the world into chaos. Revelation 9 calls this the opening of the bottomless pit. Into the midst of this Satan himself appears on earth as “the angel of the bottomless pit,” also called “the beast” in the rest of Revelation. The war increases in intensity with tormenting weapons that to John looked and sounded like an army of locusts. In the sixth trumpet four more evil angels are released, and a massive army with explosive weaponry takes to the field; John says that “a third of mankind [will be] killed” (Revelation 9:15).
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Revelation chapters 10 and 11 tell us that the 144,000 do not sit idly by. In videos 38 and 39 we saw that they enter the fray as “the two witnesses,” with power and authority reminiscent of Moses and Elijah (Revelation 10:3-6). This provokes a fierce attack by the beast. “The beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against [the two witnesses]” (Revelation 11:7). In the cosmic conflict series, we saw that this attack on the two witnesses is the same as the image and mark of the beast that is brought to bear against the 144,000 in Revelation 13.
But God’s followers fulfill their mission. In videos 48-53, we saw that the 144,000, symbolized by three angels, powerfully proclaim the everlasting gospel and warn the world about Babylon and the beast. A great multitude of people from “every nation, tribe, tongue and people” respond, “fearing God and giving glory to Him” (Revelation 13:6,7).
With their mission complete, God presents them as proof that Satan does not rule the whole world. “Here is the patience of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12). At this point, Satan will have had his chance and failed to prove his rulership of the earth. Now will come the time when “the Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was and who is to come [will] take His great power and reign” (Revelation 11:17).
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The prophecy of the seventh trumpet continues: “The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come” (Revelation 11:18). We have seen the angry nations; Both in the seven trumpets and in Revelation 13 the world is ravaged and God’s followers are oppressed by angry nations spurred on by the “prince of this world,” and in Revelation 17 we will see a seven-headed beast with its deadly wound fully healed, supported by ten kings who “will make war with the Lamb” by attacking his followers (Revelation 17:14). But God is not a passive spectator to all of the destruction caused by the angry nations; the seventh trumpet predicts that “[His] wrath [will] come… and destroy the destroyers of the earth” (Revelation 11:18).
This is the flip side of the great harvest that we studied in the previous video; When Jesus returns, He will send His holy angels to gather those who have been faithful to be with Him. But the same passage in Revelation 14 shows that Jesus will also “harvest” those who have rejected Him. “Another angel…called with a loud voice… gather the clusters of the vine of the earth for her grapes are fully ripe. So the angel… gathered the grapes into the great winepress of God’s wrath” (Revelation 14:18).
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Jesus, in His parable of the dragnet, shows that the two harvests require some time to be accomplished. He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind. When it was full, they drew it to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be a the end of the age” (Matthew 13:47-49). We see here that the harvest is a process, and includes evaluation and separation. The statement “they threw the bad away” is what Revelation calls “God’s wrath,” and it too is a process that takes place over a period of time, as we will see In “The Final Crisis” series that we are preparing to study
The whole subject of God’s wrath is confusing and problematic because it is hard for us to reconcile God’s wrath with His love. We have touched on this several times, particularly in video 53, where we looked at the message of the third angel of Revelation 14. There we saw the fearsome warning, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark… he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation” (Revelation 14:9,10).
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If you have not already done so, please check out video 53 because it gives some foundational concepts for our study of the Seven Last Plagues that are the core of the final crisis. The plagues are introduced with an announcement that shows that they are the epitome of God’s wrath: “[John] saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous: seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete” (Revelation 15:1).
Doesn’t it seem strange that John would describe God’s wrath as “great and marvelous?” Perhaps it is not surprising that a distorted view of God’s wrath has been used for centuries to try to terrify sinners into repenting or at least following the rules. Throughout the scriptures, “the wrath of God” is a phrase used to describe the destructive actions God reluctantly has to take against human beings.
Most of the time we do not experience God’s wrath; we simply reap the natural consequences of our intentional or even unintentional rejection of God’s commandments. God’s law is not a threat of what He will do to us if we don’t obey Him; the law is simply a description of how life is – when we break God’s law, we set ourselves up to get hurt.
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But sometimes God Himself has to intervene to prevent the damage that sin is causing, and this is called God’s wrath. For example, in response to the sin of the children of Israel God warned them, “My wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless” (Exodus 22:24). We should not assume from this that God wants to have a quota of widows and orphans, or that He somehow loses control of His temper, or that God wants to make sure that sinners get the punishment they deserve.
The warning simply says that God will kill His chosen people with a sword if they practice certain types of behavior, and in the previous verses, He specifies sorcery, sacrifices to idols, and especially oppression of strangers, widows, and orphans. Since God himself does not wield a physical sword, the practical outworking is that someone will intend to kill them, and God will either withdraw His protection or perhaps He will even facilitate their death.
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Before we start accusing God of cruel and unusual punishment, we should consider that for God to allow or even cause death is not so unusual in a world of sin where everyone dies. In certain circumstances, most people consider death to be a blessing, such as a terminal illness with terrible suffering. And there is no illness more terminal than sin, which causes enormous pain and suffering, not just to the victim but also to the perpetrator, and to the whole society at large.
Considering that sinners keep increasing their measure of guilt, condemnation, and judgment the longer they continue living in sin, the best thing for those who will never repent is to die as soon as possible!
One of the reasons for God’s wrath is to protect His children from their enemies who would like to exploit or otherwise harm them. The Psalmist pleaded, “Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not know You…For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his dwelling place” (Psalms 79:6,7,10).
David, hunted by Saul, wrote, “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God… for look, they lie in wait for my life…Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be” (Psalms 59:1,2,13).[1] Because only God can get the right balance of love for both His children and their enemies, He tells them to let Him defend them—“Do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19).
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Protective wrath is certainly a major factor in the Seven Last Plagues. The context is the closing scenes of the cosmic conflict, in which Jesus has used His faithful followers to snatch a great multitude out of Satan’s grasp. Satan will do everything he can to defeat the messengers and hold on to his prey, as we have already seen in our discussion of the two witnesses, the mark of the beast, and the three angels’ messages.
Just because the cosmic controversy has been settled and Satan has lost his claim to the earth, that does not mean that he will give up trying to at least get revenge on those who have thwarted his will. When the global death decree goes into effect with the mark of the beast, God will have to intervene to protect His faithful followers, and this is called God’s wrath.
But the main end-time purpose of God’s wrath is to bring a total and permanent end to sin and death. “The Lord is the true God…At His wrath the earth will tremble…The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens” (Jeremiah 10:10,11). “Your hand will find all Your enemies, Your right hand will find those who hate You. You shall make them as a fiery oven in the time of Your anger; the Lord shall swallow them up in His wrath and the fire shall devour them” (Psalms 21:8,9).
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Since God must bring sin to an end but “is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), His wrath is always the last resort after every effort to bring about repentance has failed. The history of the Israelites when they went into exile is a case in point— “The Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy” (2 Chronicles 36:15,16).
God continues His efforts to find people to save until it is clear that no one else wants the eternal life He offers. “I sought for someone among them who would… stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found no one. Therefore I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath” (Ezekiel 22:30,31).
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In Isaiah 28 God calls the destruction of sin and sinners His “strange act” (Isaiah 28:21), strange because He is the source of life and it is His nature to bless. “I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies’ says the Lord” (Ezekiel 18:32). To the contrary, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” because the repentant sinner “has passed from death to life” (Luke 15:10, 1 John 3:14). God’s plea has always been, “Yield yourselves to the Lord…and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of His wrath may turn away from you” (2 Chronicles 30:8). “Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die?” (Ezekiel 18:31).
The Bible definitely does not teach that God’s wrath is a way of “getting back at” or “getting even with” those who have displeased him. The idea that God would torment people for eternity as a punishment for a life of misbehavior or for rejecting and insulting Him is a complete misrepresentation of God’s character. Words such as punishment, vengeance, and retribution are indeed used, but these words are simply an attempt to describe in human terms the indescribable attitude of God when He is forced to bring sin and sinners to an end.
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“God keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them” (Deuteronomy 7:9,10). God destroys “those who hate Him” because they would not be satisfied living forever in a universe without sin; in fact they would eventually spoil the harmony of the universe with their sin addiction.
Thus, Paul writes about the Day of the Lord, “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire takingwrath on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power when He comes in that Day” (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9).
The phrase “everlasting destruction” does not mean everlasting torment, but rather destruction that lasts forever. We will have much more to say about this when we study Revelation chapter 20.
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The seven last plagues in which “the wrath of God is complete” only come after the gospel has gone to the whole world (Matthew 24:14) and everyone has had a chance to hear, and either accept or reject it. The old kingdom of this world, ruled by the prince of this world, is almost finished. By the time we get to the final crisis, God will have done everything He can to save those who still stubbornly refuse His offers of grace and mercy. The best He can do for them is to pour out His wrath, to keep them from adding to their guilt by harming His children. Although it breaks God’s heart to let them go, He will not force them to live in a kingdom where they could never be happy.
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This video is one in a series of videos that examine the Book of Revelation from the beginning to the end. If you were blessed by this video, I would appreciate it if you would like it, share it with someone, and subscribe to my YouTube channel; that really encourages me to keep on making more videos.
Besides the video series, I have also written a book called “A Revelation of Jesus” which has additional details.
Order the book “A Revelation of Jesus”
A Revelation of Jesus by David Lackey is available from Barnes and Noble (free shipping), Amazon, and many other bookstores.
ISBN-13: 978-1479603923
