Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #4 of Revelation, chapter 16, and we are going to be reading Revelation 16:4-6:
And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.
I will stop reading there. Once again, this is the judgment on the world. God is sending forth His people, the “seven messengers,” and they are going forth with Christ in the Spirit of God to bring the wrath of God. It is Judgment Day and, therefore, when the people of God share the things the Bible is saying it is as if they are pouring out the vials of the wrath of God.
Here, it says, in Revelation 16:4:
And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.
Let us just think about this. Remember in our last study we looked at Revelation, chapter 8. It said in Revelation 8:8:
And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
The “third part of the sea” is language that points to the judgment on the churches and the Gospel waters within the congregations was turned to blood to indicate that God’s judgment was upon them. No one can drink the water any longer and that was especially in view in Revelation 16:4. God did this to the churches, but it also says, concerning the “two witnesses,” in Revelation 11:5-6:
And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.
The “two witnesses” represent the “law and the prophets,” or Moses (Law) and Elijah (prophets), which is the Word of God, the Bible. So the “two witnesses” ministered within the churches and congregations during the church age. During the course of their ministry which took place for 1,955 years, they had “have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood.” How can we understand that? We understand that when the church age ended (which is described in Revelation, chapter 8) their water turned to blood because it was the judgment of God upon the whole corporate body and their gospel was ruined and there was no more salvation.
But how could the “two witnesses” within the churches during the church age have turned waters to blood? The answer is that the Bible dictates what the true Gospel is and the Bible says, in Revelation 22, verses 18 and 19, that whoever adds or subtracts from the Word shall have the plagues written herein added to them. Therefore, the Word of God all throughout the church age would have turned the waters to blood of any church or denomination that went astray from the Word of God; their waters would have been turned to blood because the Word of God would have judged that church or denomination and they would no longer have had the blessing of God and all their teachings and readings from the Bible would have been turned to blood and it could not have benefited the people.
This is the idea in Revelation, chapter 16, where the vials are poured out upon the sea and upon the rivers and fountains of water; these are the sources of water. God is commanding that the vials be poured out upon them, which indicates that all sources of water in the earth have now become blood and you cannot drink them, just as the Egyptians were loathe to drink of the waters of the rivers. It is not as if they could drink it; they could not because the waters were not drinkable and, therefore, there can be no blessing for a sinner whereby they could become saved.
Let us go on to Revelation 16:5:
And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.
Here, God makes reference to His eternal being with the statement, “which art,” because He is the ever present One. And He “wast,” because He is from eternity past. And He “shalt be,” because He will always be in eternity future; He is the God that inhabits eternity, so the “angel” or “messenger” of the waters is saying, “Thou art righteous, O Lord…because thou has judged thus.” This means the judgment of God upon the world; it is a spiritual judgment and the day of salvation has ended and the light of the Gospel has been put out; the earth is “dark” in a way that has never happened before because there is no possibility of salvation anywhere in the world – not within the churches and not outside the churches; not with the old and not with the young; not with the rich and not with the poor. For anyone still in their sins, there cannot be salvation and, yet, “Thou art righteous, O Lord…because thou has judged thus.”
This is a “righteous judgment,” and the word “righteous” means just what it says; it is right and it is good and proper and according to the Law: “The wages of sin is death.” Yet, God had kindly, graciously, mercifully and patiently put up with the sins of mankind for thousands and thousands of years. We cannot even imagine this because we are creatures that are limited to 70 or 80 years, normally, but generations and generations of sinners have entered into this world and they have all done the same thing: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” There is none righteous, no not one and, yet, this perfect, holy and just God has endured the sins of mankind for generation after generation in order that He accomplish His salvation plan and save all of His elect. So God permitted time to continue. It was necessary that certain “times and seasons” be allowed to unfold in order for God to save each one He intended to save in each generation of mankind that would enter into the world, until the last of the elect would become saved.
By May 21, 2011, which marked exactly 7,000 years from the flood to the very (equivalent) day, “the seventeenth day of the second month,” God shut the door to heaven. It was the last day of the Great Tribulation, the 8,400th day of that period. It was Judgment Day for the world and God turned the waters of the world to blood on that day and it was a “righteous judgment.” Finally, the time had come. Finally, God would no longer be longsuffering with the sins of mankind and now mankind would be judged. It was the official “day of the Lord” and the official Day of Judgment had come. By shutting the door to heaven, putting out the Gospel lights, ending the Latter Rain and turning the “waters” to blood, God has done a righteous and just thing that is being recognized in our verse: “Thou art righteous, O Lord.” There is no unrighteousness in what God has done.
Yet, when some people hear that the door is shut and there is no more salvation, they say, “That is not fair; that is not just. That is not fair for little children or for little babies that are born after May 21, 2011.” But no one can legitimately make that charge. No one can accuse God of doing something that is not right or not just when it comes to the judgment of mankind. God only had a salvation plan available in order to save His elect and since He knows who they are, He could end that salvation program.
Let us take a look at it from God’s perspective, which is an eternal perspective. He knew who the last individual He intended to save was and when He had saved that individual there are now no more elect. Every individual whose name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life was found and there are no more lost sheep of the house of Israel. They have all been brought into the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, God opened up His Word in the day of wrath to reveal the “righteous judgment of God.” Remember that verse in Romans 2:5:
But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;
So God completed His salvation program when He saved the last of His elect and, therefore, there is no purpose in leaving the door of salvation open. The Gospel was never intended as some sort of “psychological ointment” for unsaved mankind just so they feel better about a possibility of salvation. The Gospel had a very specific purpose to find the elect people that were chosen and that was the only purpose for sending the Gospel of salvation into the world. It was to seek and to save the elect and once they were all saved the evangelization process came to a close. Why would God send messengers overseas with a message to cry out for mercy when there was no more mercy and, therefore, no more salvation? So God ceased doing that and He ended His program of evangelization. The purpose had been accomplished and it was all finished because all that were to become saved had been found and saved.
Now God is making this known and that is the problem. If God had saved all His elect, but He did not make that fact known, then people would not be disturbed. However, God has made it known as part of the “revelation of the righteous judgment” in the day of wrath. We have come to know this in this period of Judgment Day, after the end of the Great Tribulation. We have learned certain truths about God’s spiritual judgment; the elect have been left on the earth to live through it, and so forth, but some people are upset and they make accusations: “It is not right. It is not just.”
Really, it is just like when people would say that “election” was not right and not just; they said that was not fair either because God is not giving everyone an equal chance. This is how some people react and they accuse God when they hear about election because God will only save those certain individuals that were predestinated to become saved. “Oh, I do not like that,” they say, “because that is not fair.” God warns about this kind of thinking, in Romans 9:18-23:
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,
Here, God is saying that He is sovereign and it is His salvation plan. He will save whom He decided to save. When people fight back and argue with God, God simply says, “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy.” He is the Sovereign Lord. It is the very same principal not only with whom God saves, but when God saves. When He determines to save during a set period of time and then He ends salvation on an appointed day which He has reserved as the Day of Judgment, He can do that. And if it be God’s will to allow the world to continue on for a prolonged period of Judgment Day (a very likely 1,600 days from May 21, 2011), then who can argue with God? Who can say that it is not just or right and that this teaching is not good? It is really implying there is “fault” with God’s judgment and they imply there is error and something wrong with the judgment of God; for example, children could be born without the possibility of salvation, or there is a world full of people and God is still allowing 24-hour days to pass, one after another, but without saving any of these people. They make accusation and say, “What a horrible thing that is!”
Who are they to say that? Who are they to argue with the righteous judgment of God? Even in this Day of Judgment, is not God still showing Himself to be a gentle and merciful God? He is kind even toward those that He is planning to destroy; that is, He is not casting unsaved man into hell for evermore, as most churches and congregations erroneously teach. He is not punishing and torturing people with eternal torment. God has no such plan and He never did have a plan to do that. This is a righteous judgment of God and so be it. We do not “shrink away” from this truth because it is what the Bible teaches. God shut the door on May 21, 2011 and He ended His salvation program. This was God’s determination. It was God’s doing. When we read Luke 13:25, where it says, “When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door,” it is the master of the house that has shut the door. It was God who shut Noah into the ark, we read in Genesis, chapter 7. Noah did not shut the door of the ark. God shut him in. And it is God who shut the door in our time, so God is sovereign over whom He saves; “Jacob have I loved, and Esau I have hated.” And God is also sovereign over when He saves; there is a “day of salvation.” There was a “last hour” (the eleventh to the twelfth hour of the work day), as Jesus said, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” That is the judgment of God. The judgment of God is that the work of God is ended. The Jews asked Jesus, in John 6:29, “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” Jesus responded, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” He performed that work while it was “day,” the day of salvation and while the spiritual sun, moon and stars were still in the heavens.
God tells us when those lights of the Gospel will be removed. It was immediately after Tribulation and the Great Tribulation ended on May 21, 2011, after an exact 23 years (8,400 days) and exactly 7,000 years from the flood. God ended the Great Tribulation and He let it be known that this was they day He shut the door of salvation to the world. God used the resources of the most faithful Bible ministry on earth to get that message out to all the world in an unprecedented manner because He wanted people to have advance notice. And they were warned. It is people that knew all about this that now make the accusation, “It is just not right.” But God says in His Word that this is Judgment Day and this is a righteous judgment. There is nothing wrong with it at all, just like there is nothing wrong with “election” when God decides which “vessels” to save. Mankind deserves only destruction and none deserve salvation. So God can decide who to save and when to save. To everything there is a season: there is a time to plant (sowing the seeds of salvation) and there is a time to pluck up that which was planted and to reap in the time of harvest.