Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #22 of Revelation, chapter 18, and we are reading Revelation 18:9-10:

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.

I will stop reading there.  As we have learned from the Bible, God has brought the world, typified by Babylon, into judgment and beginning on May 21, 2011 the fire of God’s wrath began to burn in all the world, spiritually.  Also, at the same time, “smoke” would have begun to rise, so what we are reading about here concerning the kings of the earth witnessing the burning of Babylon relates to the unsaved people of the world.  It is not just the kings of the earth because God speaks of the merchants and the shipmasters; it involves those in the churches, as well as all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth.  They are witnessing the “smoke” of Babylon’s burning.  The fire has utterly burned her and the smoke that results identifies with the judgment of God and this means they are witnessing the judgment of God.

Let us turn back to Revelation, chapter 9, a chapter that deals with Judgment Day, and we will read something concerning the tie-in with “smoke.”  It says in Revelation 9:1-3:

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

Here, God is connecting the “smoke” that comes out of the pit in the Day of Judgment with the darkening of the sun.  We know, from Matthew 24:29 and other verses that it was immediately after the Tribulation when the sun was darkened.  Since the Great Tribulation ended on May 21, 2011, Judgment Day began at that time and God links together the darkening of the sun with the “smoke.”  The fire of His wrath began to burn and as soon as you have fire, you have smoke and the smoke, as it were, rose and darkened the sun.  The sun was darkened according to God’s wrath as He began to pour out His anger.  That is when the smoke appeared as Babylon began to burn and we know Revelation 18 describes Babylon’s fall which also identifies with the time immediately after the Tribulation.  Remember there was that 70-year period that Babylon ruled in the Old Testament and it was 539 BC when they fell in one night and the kingdom of Babylon was taken by Cyrus, king of the Medes and the Persians. 

This chapter is describing the time immediately after the Tribulation and throughout the Day of Judgment and this is when the “kings of the earth” we are reading about in verses 9 and 10 begin to see the “smoke” of her burning.  It is something they are bewailing and lamenting, as it says in Revelation 18:9, they “shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning.”  The Greek word translated as “bewail” is Strong’s #2799 and it is really a word that relates to the finality of death.  When you look up this word, you will find many Scriptures that use it in the context of death.  For instance, concerning a widow woman who lost her only son, it says in Luke 7:13:

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.

She was weeping because of the death of her son.  Then it says in Luke 8:52:

And all wept, and bewailed her: but he said, Weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth.

This account is of a daughter that was raised from the dead.  Her family had been weeping because, normally, when someone dies, there is no more hope for them in this world; they go to the grave.  Of course, Jesus (God in the flesh) was able to resurrect these people to demonstrate the power of spiritual resurrection when He could bring life to people that were dead in their sins. 

We see another demonstration of Christ’s power to resurrect the soul (as He will also resurrect the bodies of His elect when they receive their new resurrected bodies) in the historical account of the death of Lazarus.  It says in John 11:31-33:

The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,

The word “weeping” is our word translated as “bewail.”  It involves tremendous sorrow over death.  This is exactly what God did when He shut the door of heaven and He put out the light of the Gospel through the “smoke” of the pit rising up; that is, it was the wrath of God that put out the Gospel light in this world.  As soon as God did this, He brought the world into the condition of death and, therefore, the unsaved people of the world “bewail and lament” for her.  Remember that verse 8 had spoken of Babylon’s plagues coming in “one day,” and it was “death, and mourning, and famine,” and now the kings of earth see the death of the world.  They see the death of Babylon, so they are weeping. 

Of course, in this case there will be no Lord Jesus Christ to comfort them and to turn their grief to joy because salvation has ended and those that are “dead in sin” will remain dead in sin.  Their physical death is also guaranteed and they will be destroyed for evermore when God finally destroys the earth and all its unsaved inhabitants.  They are guaranteed to be among that number, so death has come to the world.  It is as if the world can “see” it and recognize it.  But, you see, that is our difficulty with this verse, because it does appear from the language used that the world is literally “weeping and lamenting” when “they shall see the smoke of her burning.”  And that is why they are crying, “Alas, alas,” for in one hour their judgment is come.  It appears there is recognition and it seems there is some understanding concerning the judgment of the world.  This is why theologians have developed the idea that mankind will be trembling before God in the Day of Judgment – they will be in terror and there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” as the Bible says.  The word translated as “bewail” in Revelation 18:9 is Strong’s #2799 and it is related to the word translated as “weeping” and gnashing of teeth, in Luke 13, Strong’s #2805.  In Luke, chapter 13, it is the account of when the Master has risen up and shut to the door, and then we find it says in Luke 13:28:

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.

Here, again, we find that God is speaking of the unsaved in the Day of Judgment and He pinpoints the time for us – it is when the door is shut.  They then coming knocking and Christ tells them, “I know ye not whence ye are; depart from me.”  Again, the timing when the door is shut relates to May 21, 2011.  That is the day God shut the door, exactly 7,000 years from the flood.  There is also “weeping and gnashing of teeth” because they “see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets,” and this is language that indicates that they “see” that all of God’s elect have become saved; they are hearing from the Bible that it is Judgment Day and the door is shut and no more people are becoming saved.  Again, we wonder how there can be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” when they “see” all the prophets. 

This Greek word for “see” is a different word than our word in Revelation 18:9 that is translated as “see.”  In Revelation 18:9 it is Strong’s #991.  The reason I give the Strong’s number is so you can check it out and look up the word.  By the way, Strong’s Concordance will show you every place this word is found, but in Englishman’s Concordance it goes a step better. In Strong’s, when you look up the word “see” (#991) it tells you that this word is also translated into three or four English words and then you have to look up each one of the English words in Strong’s Concordance to see which one is #991.  But Englishman’s Concordance compiles every place where the Greek word #991 is found, so it really takes away a lot of the work and several steps; you just look up #991 and it shows you the places where #991 are translated.  It is a Bible help book that God has given us that can save us a lot of time.

Anyway, the word “see” in our verse is the word “blepo” in the Greek and it can mean to see something physically, or spiritually, or both.  Let me show you a verse where this word is used.  The word “blepo” is found in Matthew, chapter 13, a chapter in which Christ speaks many parables and He even gives explanation of why He spoke in parables.  It says in Matthew 13:13:

Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

Both the word “seeing” and the word “see” is our word “blepo.”  Here, God is saying that unsaved people may “see” (blepo) and, yet, “see not.”  That is because they can hear the Bible preached or they can read the Bible for themselves and as they see or hear the Word of God faithfully taught, including the deeper spiritual meanings, they still have no understanding because they are not saved; they do not have the Spirit of God within them so they do not understand what they are seeing or hearing, so “seeing, they see not” and “hearing, they hear not.”  And that is the case with every unsaved individual.  This means that they can “see” something and, at the very same time, “not see it.” 

Just think of these people in Revelation 18, where the kings of the earth “see” Babylon burning or they “see” the smoke of her burning.  They are “seeing” Judgment Day, but as we look around at the people in the world, they are “not seeing” with understanding that the world is under judgment, so “seeing, they see not.”  They see it, in one sense, but they do not see it. 

God has given us another verse that I think explains very well how people can “see” something and, at the very same time, “not see” something.  It has to do with the two witnesses in Revelation, chapter 11.  We know the two witnesses are Moses and Elijah (the Law and the prophets) that represented the witness of God’s Word within the churches and congregations during the church age.  Then came the time that the two witnesses would end their testimony and we read in Revelation 11:7-9:

And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.

The word “see” is our word “blepo.”  We went over this verse in an earlier study, but we have never really thought about this passage from this perspective.  The two witnesses were killed the moment God left the congregations and turned them over to Satan in 1988.  The churches still had “Moses and Elijah,” or the Law and the prophets, because they still had the Bible, but it was a dead witness at that point because God’s Spirit was not there to bless the Word of God within the congregations.  This caused the “two witnesses” to become dead in the churches.  This was the case for the world, too, because virtually no one was being saved during the first 2,300 days of the Great Tribulation period.

But the important thing that we are looking at in our verse in Revelation 18:9 is the word “see.”  The kings of the earth “see” the burning and the “smoke” of Babylon in the Day of Judgment.  But judgment began at the house of God at the point of the loosing of Satan and the end of the church age and Revelation, chapter 11, is describing the beginning of the first part of the Great Tribulation when the “two witnesses” were lying dead in the streets.  And God says that “the people and kindreds and tongues and nations” were seeing these bodies lying dead in the streets.  Not only did they “see” them, but there is a reaction.  In Revelation 18, they “see” the smoke of their burning and their reaction is to weep and lament and cry, “Woe, woe.”  But, here, in Revelation 11, the world “sees” the death of the two witnesses in the church and the world has a reaction of rejoicing, making merry and sending gifts one to another. 

Since God’s Word, the Bible, says that this did happen at the time of the Great Tribulation (which is now past), let us ask the question: Did the world ever have precise knowledge and understanding and did they truly comprehend the end of the church age?  Did they know that God’s Spirit had abandoned the churches?  Did they have understanding that the beast, Satan, had entered into the congregations?  After all, it says they saw the bodies, the death of the witness of the Word of God, and then they rejoiced.  Did the world use the language, “The two witnesses that tormented us are dead and now we can rejoice and make merry and send gifts”?  Did this literally happen? 

No, this did not happen, and that is why in the days leading up to May 21, 2011 when the world heard that it was going to be the Day of Judgment, many news reporters turned to the churches and they asked, “These people say that it is going to be Judgment Day, but what do you Episcopalians or you Presbyterians or you Catholics say about this?  You are the authorities.  You are the pastors and the bishops, so tell us.”  And with all authority, the church denominations responded, “No man knows the day or the hour,” and the world went away very contented upon hearing that news.  On one level they were still recognizing that the church is where you go to hear from God.  It was not the case that they recognized the churches were dead and the church age was over.  They did not understand that. 

Even today, you can talk to people in the world and they would still think that if you wanted to know God, you would go to church or they think the churches are still the representatives of God’s kingdom.  They still think that and the churches still believe that and remember that the “kings of the earth” are related to the unsaved of the congregations.  So how can it be that the people, the kindreds, the tongues and the nations shall “see” the dead body of the two witnesses and have a reaction of rejoicing, making merry and sending gifts?  How can that be?  We do not have time in this study to answer this question, but as we answer this question, Lord willing, in our next study, we will also answer how it is that God views the inhabitants of the earth as “seeing” the smoke of the world’s burning.