Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #15 of Revelation, chapter 8, and we are going to be reading Revelation 8:11:
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
We saw, as we looked at the word “wormwood” in our last study, that God is referring to the Gospel water that is within the churches and congregations; that He will strike it with His wrath, with the Word of His mouth (the twoedged sword) and He will turn it from a pure water to a “bitter” water.
We saw a similar statement and idea in Proverbs 5:3-4:
For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.
Here, with the words “honeycomb” and “oil,” God is basically saying that this woman (even though she is a “strange woman”) has identification with His Word, which is “as sweet as honey,” as the Bible says in some places. “But her end is bitter as wormwood,” it says, because this “strange woman” typifies the New Testament corporate church. And what happens at the end to the churches? Judgment falls upon them: judgment begins at the house of God.
Why is God judging them? It is because they have not been faithful. They have not kept His Law, which they were obligated to do. The churches, for the most part, are under a gross misunderstanding; they wrongly believe that because God deals with individuals by grace (“By grace, ye are saved”), and through this grace and the faith of Christ, He forgives and pardons all his sins. So God could deal with an individual sinner and that sinner, after salvation, still commits sin, but those sins are forgiven – there is no loss of salvation and no loss of the grace bestowed upon that person: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
The churches take that truth (which is only true regarding the relationship between God and individual elect believers) and they apply it in an extremely wrong way to the corporate church body, and they say: “Well, you know, no one is perfect. It is true we have not kept God’s Law perfectly.” They have to admit that, especially when it can be pointed out to them that their church says one thing and another church says another thing; they all disagree and they cannot all be correct, so, obviously, many of them are holding on to falsehood. So they say, “Even if that is true, and we admit we are not perfect, but that is alright because God is a God of grace and we stand by grace.” By doing so, they apply that which is only true of individual sinners whom God has predestinated to save, and they apply it to the corporate institution of the church, and that is not a true application. It is not the case.
The corporate body stands by “works,” just as national Israel, as a corporate entity, was in a works relationship with God; they had to maintain faithfulness to His Word and, if not, God could rightly judge them. Of course, when God decides to do that is up to Him and His timetable, so God put up with Israel until the fruit that He had intended for them to produce came forth. That fruit was the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, the first of the “firstfruits.” Once Jesus came and went to the cross, then God was finished with national Israel, according to His timetable and now He would bring judgment because they were unfaithful. God could have brought that judgment at any time, but He had determined to do it in 33 A.D. God “rent the veil of the temple” to make it known that these (Israel) were no longer His people: “They no longer represent me. They no longer identify with me.”
God had warned the New Testament churches “to be not high minded, but to fear, for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee.” That was a very direct and clear warning and admonition to the New Testament churches not to think they were “above” that judgment which God had brought upon its predecessor and forerunner Israel. Yet, the church was arrogant, just as Israel was overly arrogant and proud, thinking that they were the people of God and, even to this day, they insist they are still the people of God.
The churches, likewise, in their arrogance, have dared to think that they can get away with anything; they can do anything they please, when it comes to the Gospel: they can make it a “freewill” gospel, an easy-as-pie gospel and they think they can get as many people saved as they please; they think they can add to the Word of God, with dreams and visions and tongues; or subtract from the Word of God by many of the Bible versions that are being put out, which just blatantly “cut out” whole sections of the Word of God so that they are not found in some of these Bibles. Churches have placed themselves over the Word of God, thinking they are the authority. After all, they think (incorrectly) that they are “the pillar and ground of the truth,” and we could go on and on.
If the churches of our day had “eyes in their heads” and if they could see the warnings of God and see their own sins (and they do recognize to some degree their lack of faithfulness) and the spiritual desolation and their failure, across the board, to keep the commandments of God, then they might not have been so high minded, but they might have feared. But, of course, it is too late now. God came and removed the “candlestick” from the midst of the churches; the Holy Spirit departed from them and He brought judgment upon them and her “end” became bitter as “wormwood.” The Gospel water was transformed from pure water to polluted water which slew men, as Revelation 8:11 says: “Many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”
Here, in Proverbs 5:4, it says, “her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword.” Now let us look at this word “bitter” for a little bit. It is Strong’s #4751 and it is also found in Exodus, chapter 15, and this account is not long after the coming out of Egypt, and we read in Exodus 15:22-25:
So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried unto JEHOVAH; and JEHOVAH shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,
Here, we find Israel came out of Egypt and they had no water to drink for three days. This was all part of God’s testing of them, which He began to do pretty quickly after they came out of Egypt. Remember, the entire wilderness sojourn was for forty years and the number “40” indicates “testing.” Right away the testing begins. There is no water. They had been rejoicing. Without question, they must have been overjoyed with the things they had just witnessed: the plagues on Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. Yet, it does not take much for a man not truly born again to suffer as God applies some “heat” and begins to test that individual. It does not take much time for the unregenerate soul to begin to show itself, and that is what happened after only three days. Why would they think that God would forsake them and allow them to perish of thirst? After all, did they not realize the great deliverance that God had just worked for them? They saw all the miracles. Certainly God would provide water.
Yet they went three days and found no water and when they came to Marah…and, by the way, the word “Marah” is the feminine form of the word translated here as “bitter.” “Bitter” is Strong’s #4751 and “Marah” is #4785; it is a related word and the feminine form. It is the word that is later translated as “Mary” in the New Testament.
And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?
What a lack of faith and a lack of trust, and of not waiting patiently upon God. This is similar in many ways to what happened on May 21, 2011. God saved all of His elect people and He delivered them out of the kingdom of darkness, just like these Jews were delivered out of Egypt from the hand of Pharaoh. God’s elect were delivered from Satan’s kingdom and from the hand of Satan and they came forth out of “Babylon,” spiritually, and all the prisoners were set free. Yet, amongst those that had helped proclaim May 21, 2011 as Judgment Day were a good number that were not saved, just like those that came out of Egypt, the overwhelming majority of which were not saved individuals. Once God began to test us through the nature of Judgment Day, by bringing about a spiritual judgment on the world, it did not take long at all for people to begin “murmuring.” They were, supposedly, those that had been delivered prior to May 21.
You would think they would have been thankful to God for His great salvation, no matter what else was happening; at least, God had had mercy upon them (supposedly) and had delivered them and they were now saved by the grace of God. Why else would they have looked forward to May 21, 2011, if they did not have salvation? They were, supposedly, looking forward to being raptured because God had had mercy on them. But, there was no rapture, as we had thought there would be, but there was still mercy; there was still salvation; there was still the new resurrected soul and the guarantee that at the end (whenever that would come), of being “taken up.” So, why was there cause at all for anyone to murmur? Yet, some did and they quickly turned aside. That is one thing we can learn from these verses.
But we also read here that the “bitter” waters were made sweet when the Lord showed Moses a tree and when Moses had cast that tree into the water; the water was made sweet and the people could drink of it. I wanted to read this because it shows us the opposite of what God did when He brought judgment on the churches. There had been sweet water, which could have been drunk by the people in the congregations during the church age, but then the water went from sweet to “bitter.” But, here, the water begins as “bitter” and then turns sweet. What turned it sweet? A tree made it sweet. Why did God write this? Why did God show Moses that tree? Why would a tree make “bitter” water sweet? It is because a tree was what Christ was crucified upon. The cross was a tree. It was the atoning work of Christ for the sake of His people, from the foundation of the world, which produced the sweet water of the Gospel which could be opened up in this desolate wasteland of a world. The water could flow forth and wherever the water came, as we read in Ezekiel 47, it brought life to God’s elect that were chosen before the foundation of the world to receive the salvation of God. Here, God is showing us that the water, apart from the atoning work of Christ, is all bitter. But when you apply the atoning work of Christ on the cross to the water, you have sweet water which can be drunk and which can bring life.
Let us go to Isaiah 5, as we continue to look at this word “bitter.” It says in Isaiah 5:20:
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil&hellip
Now do we know anyone that does that? Does that sound familiar at all? Is anyone in the world calling evil “good” and good “evil?” Well, yes, it is happening more and more. The world, in its blindness, in its darkened condition, in its foolishness and in its extreme arrogance in thinking that it can determine wisdom and what is right and good, has decided that things such as abortion are a good thing. It is good for a woman to have a choice and, yet, abortion is the killing of a baby boy or girl. If you do not have an abortion, then the baby grows and is born and you have a beautiful, little baby. The world says, “Oh, it is a good thing to have a choice to end a pregnancy.” They call the baby a “fetus” and they use other language to “dress it up” to make it palatable and acceptable to people. They use their worldly language and come up with a worldly morality that calls something that is extreme evil “good.” Anyone with eyes in their head would realize that abortion is not good; abortion is murder; it is the killing of an innocent child.
God is working to send people “strong delusion” today. He is giving people up to their own lusts, so man is losing sight, more and more, of morality. The Holy Spirit of God had kept immorality in check and restrained, allowing mankind to operate in a decent and moral way, for the most part, throughout the history of the world, until the time of the end. Now, at the time of the end, the Holy Spirit (the one that was “holding back”, according to 2nd Thessalonians 2:7: “He who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way”) is taken out of the way, and now the evil is called “good,” and good is called “evil.”
The Word of God would have prohibited these things by laying down His wonderful and beautiful Law; and His Law is not grievous; His Law is always good. When people say, “Oh, that is a terrible thing to force a young woman to have a baby.” The Law of God says a woman should give birth, if she finds herself with child. The Law of God says that only a man and a woman should marry. The Law of God says a male and female should not have sexual relations before marriage. The Law of God says that a man who is married should not have sexual relations with anyone but his wife; a woman should not have sexual relations with anyone but her husband. The Law of God says it is sinful to fornicate and sinful to commit adultery and sinful to engage in homosexuality. The Law of God says these things and the Law of God is “good” and the world today says, “Oh, no, how archaic! How awful these Laws are. How do you dare say these things? These are evil things.”
No – the only thing that is evil is the mind of man. It is the heart of man that is evil – the heart that is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. So deceitful is the heart and mind of men that they are able to “twist” the good and make it evil. They are able to take the good and call it “evil,” and they are able to take the evil and call it “good.” We are witnessing this in our present time in an unparalleled way.
It goes on to say in Isaiah 5:20:
…that put darkness for light, and light for darkness&hellip
This mainly applies to (false) gospels. When churches say, “Here is the Gospel of God. Here is the wonderful news. God loves you and He has a wonderful plan for your life.” They use “pleasant words” and good words and kind words and loving words, because they are trying to substitute something that is a dark and “evil” thing for something that is light and “good.” God’s Word is always good and the truth of God’s Word is always light, even if it is a hard thing and a difficult truth. It is always the light of the Word of God because it is truth, but the lies are dark and it does not matter how gently it is put or how kindly it is stated – it is still a lie that comes out of darkness.
So, today the light of salvation – the fact that God does all the work in the matter of salvation – and everything involved with that is substituted for man’s doctrine and, therefore, the light is changed to darkness. Now it is darkness that is being proclaimed, not light. Even if the church age were not over, if you look around at the churches, you find congregation, after congregation, that has made the substitution of a “works gospel” for a grace Gospel and, therefore, they are giving darkness for light and there would be no salvation there.
What the end of the church age means is that in those few remaining faithful congregations (by the time we reached the end), God departed from them, also. The fact that they continue to be a corporate church means they are placing darkness for light, as they have their “open door” on the entrance of their church building: “Come in,” they call, “come in and sit with us and we will bring you into the kingdom of heaven. Let us journey there together.” Yet, that is the lie. The truth is, “Come in, come in and sit with the congregation of the dead and remain in darkness with us, for you will never make it to heaven. You will be destroyed and your end will be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a twoedged sword.”
It goes on to say, here in Isaiah 5:20:
… that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
These are all synonymous statements for “them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” This helps us to understand when “bitter” identifies with “evil” and “darkness,” and “sweet” identifies with “good” and “life.” That is the true Gospel; it is sweet; it is all life; and it is good.
The impure gospel – the gospel of men; the gospel of Satan; the gospel that is anything but the true Gospel – is a gospel that is “evil” and “dark” and “bitter.”
Therefore, when we read this awful language of Revelation 8:11, where it says, “And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter,” it is an awful and terrible thing we are reading about what God has done. Remember, He is that “great star” named “Wormwood” that “fell upon the waters.” This is the judgment of God. The churches have lost the Gospel and they have lost the light; they have lost that which is good and they have lost the sweetness of the truth of the Word of God.