Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #35 of Revelation, chapter 11, and we are going to read Revelation 11:18-19:

And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth. And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.

We are continuing to study Revelation 11 and we come to the sounding of the seventh angel.  The “third woe” has been announced and it is Judgment Day; it is a time of great victory for the Lord Jesus Christ: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord.” 

All those He has saved, typified by the twenty four elders on their thrones, fall down before Him and worship God.  It is a glorious time for the kingdom of heaven; it is a time when God’s people are giving Him much glory and honor and praise.

Yet, we come to Revelation 11:18 and we read that this is not the case with the unsaved people of the world.  It says at the beginning of Revelation 11:18:

And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come…

We can understand that the people of the world do not like to hear about the wrath of God.  They did not appreciate it and they did not like that there was such a major and unprecedented campaign to put the message of Judgment Day right before their eyes and before the eyes of all the nations of the world.  There was practically no place they could turn without hearing about it.  Nothing like this had ever been done before in the history of the world.  For one thing, the technology that permitted this type of mass communication had not been available for most of the world’s history.  It was relatively recent, in the past couple of decades, that the technology existed wherein some faithful individuals could band together in a ministry like Family Radio to accomplish the purpose of sending forth the Gospel message over the last seventeen years of the Latter Rain and to warn the world of the approaching Day of Judgment.  The technology of radio, satellite broadcasting, the internet and many other technologies were made available by God at exactly the time it was needed to reach masses of people in the many nations of the world and the billions of people.

God sent His people forth one final time with that tremendous effort as God stirred them up and moved them “to will and to do of his good pleasure,” and they did carry the message far and wide.  The world could not look away; if they turned to the left, there it was; if they turned to the right, there it was.  If they walked down the street, there would be an individual with a Gospel tract that said, “May 21, 2011, Judgment Day.”  By the time he got to the end of the block, a bus would drive by, plastered with bold letters that said, “May 21 – Judgment Day!”  I am sure he would look away and then when he got downtown, there would be more people that God was utilizing to share that message.  Or, perhaps, he would get off work and drive home and as he drove down the highway, there was a billboard: “May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day.”  It brought great consternation and there was a troubling of mind.  The world functions apart from God by suppressing the knowledge of God. 

They suppress the information written upon their hearts; they distort the information the heavens declare in revealing God; they pervert when they entered into the churches during the time when the churches still had the Spirit of Christ within them; Satan used unsaved people as his emissaries to enter into the congregations and change the Gospel, and so forth.  The world does not operate very well when the true message of the Bible is before its eyes.  It cannot function as the world likes to function – in ignorance and darkness and falsehood.  The world operates in the realm of deceitfulness.  It works for them when everyone is in agreement that the vain things they are pursuing are the only important things: “These are the things we want before our eyes.  We want the glory of men.  We want sports and movies and entertainment.  We want the arts.”  They want all these things that are of no real importance.   The only important thing is the Word of God, the Bible, and man’s relationship with God, but the world pushes this aside, dismisses it and runs from it.  The world hates the light and loves the darkness.

But what happened was there came the “time” when they could not suppress these things.  The will of God was to put it before their eyes – they were to be warned.  God commanded His people to blow the trumpet and warn the people.  No matter what kind of reaction they received, the people of God were obedient to God and they did sound the trumpet to warn the world.  This led man to become angry.  Many people were angry.  They did not like this.  They could not operate in darkness as usual.  They just could not get along with their lives with the light shining so brightly and so consistently and in so many places at once: “And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come.”

Before we move on, I want to talk about one other thing about the nations being angry.  There is an interesting verse that may relate to this.  When we look up “anger” or “angry” in the Bible, what we are going to find, overwhelmingly, is man provoking God to anger.  This is what we find in the Old Testament or New Testament.  The word “angry” or “anger” is most often used in that context.  We also read that God’s anger is kindled toward mankind many times.  It is fairly rare where we read of man’s “anger.”  It is not that men do not get angry, but it is just that God is not interested in man’s anger – He tells us not to be angry or full of wrath.

God says in Ephesians 4:26:

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

This is interesting because in our verse in Revelation 11, the nations were angry.  The nations are made up of men and God, in the context of Judgment Day (which began May 21, 2011) the nations were angry.  But what else happened on that day of May 21, 2011?  It was the end of the twenty three-year Great Tribulation period and the Bible tells us that “immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,” and so forth.  So this means that the verse we are reading in Revelation 11:18, which says that the nations were angry, is being said of the point when the sun was darkened.  Although God is giving us a wise principal to live by in Ephesians 4:26, because we should never allow anger to fester or to “boil” in anger or hold a grudge and be angry for weeks or months or even years.  This is never to be and God does not allow that for His people; we are not to indulge in anger.  This is a good moral principal to live by, but when God says, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,” this means not to respond as the world did to the message of the Bible, in anger against God.  When someone is angry with God, it is not a good position to be in, because when God brought the message that Judgment Day was coming, the right response would have been one of “brokenness” and humility and fear: “Oh, let me go to God and fall on my knees and cry out, ‘Oh, Father, have mercy upon me!’”  That would have been a proper response, but, of course, if someone is angry they are not going to do that and, even if they did, there is no sincerity in it.  Anger is more of a proud and arrogant reaction: “How dare you put this message before my eyes!  How dare you talk to me of a God and a Judgment Day?   I do not even believe in God.  I do not believe in your Bible and I do not believe in these things.”  You see, this was not going to lead in the direction of someone falling to their knees, broken before the Lord. 

So the nations were angry at the point when the “sun” went down or the “sun” was darkened.  Now, maybe we can see when God says, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,” He is saying, “Do not let the day of salvation pass you by.  Do not let the time when there is potential to be saved elapse and for the dark night to come upon you.”  In the night, no man (the Lord Jesus Christ) can do the work of salvation.  Sorrowfully and tragically, this is what has happened here in Revelation 11.  It is Judgment Day.  It is spiritual night and the Light of the Gospel has ceased to shine and the “sun” has gone down upon the wrath of the unsaved of the world.  For man to involve himself in anger and wrath is sin and they are “caught” in their anger; they are “caught” in their sin and they have no Saviour for it.

Let us think about this phrase: “And thy wrath is come.”  We know that Judgment Day is a time when God pours out His anger.  He is “angry with the wicked every day,” we read in the Psalms, because of sin.   Sin is not an innocent thing; it is not something that goes without a response from God.  God had been longsuffering and extremely patient with those that had sinned against Him and transgressed His Law, but none should interpret God’s longsuffering as a lack of concern or that He does not care that man is sinning against Him and His Law.  God has determined there is a “time and a season” for everything and there is a time for judgment, a final judgment of the world which comes to pass as a result of the sins of mankind.  Mankind has continued to sin, so God brought the Day of Judgment to pass; He began judging the world on May 21, 2011, and at that point, He ceased to be longsuffering; He ceased to be patient.  He shut the door to heaven and this is an act of wrath.  It is an act that is performed by an angry God: “And they wrath is come.”

Much of the Bible speaks of God’s wrath to come – a future wrath – and which was off in the distance.  For instance, it says in Matthew 3:7:

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

This was a future wrath, a wrath that would come one day on an “appointed day,” according to Acts 17:31: “Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness,” but for thousands of years God’s wrath was spoken of as something to come in the future.  Remember the wonderful passage in Zephaniah 2:1-2:

Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired; Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of JEHOVAH come upon you, before the day of the JEHOVAH’S anger come upon you. Seek ye JEHOVAH, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the JEHOVAH’S anger.

You see, here is the Gospel call that beckoned men to boldly go to the throne of grace.  There blind Bartimaeus cries out, “Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me,” before the day of anger comes.  There is where men could beat upon their breasts and say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  There, in the day of salvation, before JEHOVAH’S anger was loosed and before the Day of Judgment had arrived and the wrath had come, then one could go to the Lord and seek Him and cry out to Him, day after day after day, and to let no one stop them from crying for mercy.  Then they were doing the proper thing in the proper season.

But once the day comes and the wrath of God is being poured into the cup and being given to all the inhabitants of the earth to drink and the indignation of JEHOVAH is upon the people of the earth, it is completely inappropriate and not the proper “time and season.”  It will do no good.  Now is the time when a great gulf is fixed and they that would pass from thence to you, cannot.  Now is the time when those that knock upon the door are turned away by the Lord: “Depart from me, ye that work iniquity, I never knew you.”  Now is the time when the door is shut and nothing will ever open it again.  For a sinner that is in his sins, judgment has come: “Thy wrath is come.”

It is here and it is not off in the future.  Just because God began to bring judgment spiritually does not mean it is not Judgment Day. 

Judgment Day is now and, therefore, all of the multitude of Scriptures and those many verses that people are now going to and saying, “What about this verse?  See how God encourages us here to go to Him and cry for mercy?  Or, see over here where salvation is mentioned, or over here?  What of all these verses?”  They no longer apply.  They have as much application today as all of the many hundreds of verses in the Bible that talk about sacrifices have application today.  Do we offer sacrifices today?  Do all the males go to Jerusalem three times a year?  Do we go to the temple and, with the priests, offer sacrifices?  No, we do not, but there are hundreds of verses that tell us to do that very thing, but the “time and season” for that is past and they have no application today even though you can read about them in the Bible.  God specifically commanded us to do this and to do that and to take this animal and make this offering.  But there is no application today and, likewise, we can find hundreds of verses that seem to encourage people to go to God and, perhaps, he might save you.  But they have absolutely no application for today because the time has come for the wrath of God. 

Zephaniah tells us that the (proper) time was “Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of JEHOVAH come upon you, before the day of the JEHOVAH’S anger come upon you,” and not after that point.  This is the greatest tragedy.  The most sorrowful thing is mankind’s tendency, like Esau, to seek the blessing after it is too late.  After the blessing was given to his twin brother Jacob, then Esau sought it carefully with tears; he wanted that blessing afterwards, the same blessing he had earlier despised.  After the fact and when it was too late, Esau had a change of heart and he desperately wanted God’s blessing. 

It is like the spies that spied out the land and brought an “evil report” which caused the congregation of Israel to murmur and complain and there was great rebellion against God’s purpose to lead the captives into the land of Canaan; as a result, God judged them.  They had spied out the land for forty days, so one year for each day, due to their rebellious report and your murmurings, God required a forty year wilderness sojourn as a judgment against them.  As soon as they heard the judgment of God and as soon as they heard the report of God’s wrath upon them, then they had a change of mind: “Oh, we will go up!  We will go fight, rather than to wander in the wilderness for forty years.”  But did God say, “Okay, I am glad you changed your mind.  This is settled, so go into the land of Canaan”?   No, God did not tell them that.  He told them that if they went up, no good would come of it.  Of course, they went up and they were beaten.  Then they had to begin to fulfill the judgment of God and wander for forty years; there was no returning from that judgment – it had to be fulfilled.  Once God pronounces a judgment, it had to be carried out. 

But that is the nature of man: after the judgment is pronounced; after the door is shut; after the light of the Gospel is out; after the waters had covered the earth as the waters covered the sea; after God’s messengers were everywhere with the warning from the Bible; after the Day of Judgment began, now people want salvation.  Now they want the door to be opened.  Now they want the light to shine again.  Now they want Lazarus to come from Abraham’s bosom with just a drop of water to cool some poor wretch’s tongue:  “Just give us a little hope of salvation, at least for the children; allow for children born during these days to become saved.” 

God’s salvation is done.  It is finished.  The door is shut.  The water that could provide satisfaction to a thirsty soul is gone.  The waters of Babylon are all dried up, in preparation for the way of the kings of the east.  There is no more salvation.