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We start this morning with a practical matter. We have on the sheets that I have given you some typist's errors. I think the errors came from the author more than from the typist. But if you will care to look on section four, that is page seven of your notes... where you have listed on page seven of the notes the first trilogy, Signs in Heaven, Satan Frustrated. The biblical references should be eleven nineteen to thirteen one B, not 13:10, but thirteen one B.
I'm sorry, now I'm misleading you again, that's old age. Thirteen one A. It refers to thirteen one A. It refers to the statement in the first half of chapter thirteen, verse one, he stood upon the sand of the sea. So the reference again, eleven nineteen to thirteen one a. Then if you come to the second trilogy situating- situation resulting on earth, Satan apparently victorious. The reference there should be thirteen: one b to fourteen: five.
And then on section five that we started last evening, page eight, The last paragraph for hallelujahs for God's judgment. In number one, by a great voice of a great multitude, the English word multitude is there spelt correctly. That's how it should be. So leave it, but change the word in verse, uh, in sec- uh, number four, by the voice of a great, and an extra letter has somehow crept in, you'll see.
Cross out the first T, if you will. The word is multitude, not muttitude or whatever. And for the rest, it will be helpful this morning if once more you have near at hand, so that you can look at them without difficulty later on, the contents of section three and section five. Now, last evening, at the cost of working you intolerably hard when you were long since overtired by the interesting events of the day.
I made you stay in school late, like all bad schoolmasters, in order to consider, uh, the formal literary construction of section five of the book of the Revelation. We all do- also did some investigations that had the result of showing us that section five in the book of the Revelation corresponds in theme and in much of its formal layout as well to section three of the book of the Revelation. Forgive me for working you thus intolerably hard and late, but it has the benefit this morning that we can proceed at once to study the main theme of this section five of the Revelation, without having to go through the tiresome and perhaps distracting preliminaries of literary study.
Literary study of books like the Reser- uh, Revelation is, of course, very necessary and basic and fundamental. But if we concentrate too much on literary affairs and formal structures, it could be in danger of becoming mechanical, and still worse, as an end in itself. Literary structures are only there in order that they may the more efficiently present the Word of God. And if literary structure gets in the way of our feeling and appreciating and perceiving the impact and the glory of God's holy word, then literary study must, of course, be told to take a back seat.
This morning we come to a passage of scripture that is particularly awesome. In previous sections of this book of the Revelation, when something has been opened in heaven, perhaps a door, perhaps the seventh seal, perhaps the temple of God itself, there is seen some part of the furniture of the heavenly temple. Now, in this section, all pieces of furniture fade completely from view, and we are given to contemplate the very glory of God himself.
The smoke arising and filling the temple from his glory and power. From the God of whom scripture says that he dwells in light unapproachable, whom no man has seen, nor can see. When the greatest saints on earth, such as Elisha, Elijah the famous prophet, was called to the entrance of his cave, and the glory of the Lord passed by. That holy man took his garment and tied it round his face at the awesome experience of beholding the glory of the Lord.
When Moses asked to come and see God's glory, he said, God, there is a place by me here in the cleft of the rock. Come stand here, Moses, and I will put my hand over you while my glory passes by. Or to see the glory of God is a thing almost insufferable for a mere human being. The Lord passed by and proclaimed his name. Thou canst not see my face, said God, thou shalt see my back parts.
To see the glory of God in redemption, this is a marvelous thing, is it not? We rejoice in our Christian privilege, outlined by Paul in two Corinthians three. We all with unveiled face, unlike even Moses and unlike even Elijah, behold the glory of the Lord. Changed into the same image, from glory to glory. To see the glory of God in redemption is unspeakably magnificent.
But to contemplate the glory of God in his judgment, this is awesome indeed. In section three, we saw that what set going the judgments of God upon the world was the prayers of the saints. It was smoke from the incense that was mingled with the prayers of the saints that broke the long silence. It was coals from that censer, overturned and thrown out upon the earth, poured out upon the earth, that gave the signal for the angels to blow upon their trumpets and for the judgments to come.
We deal in section five with a similar theme, but note the difference in the setting. It is not now the prayers of the saints. It is now the innermost feelings, if I dare use the word of Almighty God. It is the innermost feelings, the heart, the character, the holiness of God, that long centuries has put up in infinite patience with the wickedness of men. But now, so to speak, shines forth.
Such is the demonstration of God's heart, holiness, character, righteousness, and truth. Such now as it is revealed is the feeling of God about it all. None can stand in the temple of God until the judgments are finished. The angels come out from the very innermost shrine of the temple. You'll notice that. They come not with censers carrying the prayers of saints. They come with bowls that, in the imagery of the passage, have, so to speak, been filled up in the august presence of God.
What they are pouring out now upon the earth is the reaction of God himself, the expression of his character. In these vials is filled up the wrath of God. It is a thing at once to be said about the, uh, anger of God, the wrath of God. That is his, it, this is his strange, if I may use the term, reluctant work.
We are told that when God came down to speak to Abraham, and the passage is Genesis fifteen, and outlined his purposes for his people, he indicated that though it was his good intention to give them the inheritance of the land of Canaan, he was not going to do it yet. In fact, Abraham's seed would be slaves in a foreign country, and there they would be afflicted year after year after year. And if I were Abram and I had dared, I would say, tell me, Lord, why would you put up with it if you really love us, if you really love my seed, if you have a heart for their cries, their sufferings in Egypt.
Tell me, Lord, why would you allow it to go on so long before you break their captivity? The divine announcement goes on to say, after their suffering, I will bring them out and bring them into this country. Not yet, Abraham, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. Oh, the amazing wonder of the long suffering of God.
Patience with the most execrable and infamous of sinners, and loath to execute his judgment. He will wait centuries, if need be, until the cup of human iniquity is full to the overflowing, and God himself can wait no longer. And it is a magnificent feature of God that he will not be hurried to his judgments by the tauntings of ungodly men. Peter warns us that in the last days there shall come scoffers walking over, walking after their own lusts and openly taunting the Almighty and making mock of him and dismissing his existence, saying, where is the sign of his coming?
For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they did from the beginning of the world. Taunting the Almighty with his long suffering. If they willingly are ignorant, ignorant of the past severe judgments of God on our planet, they serve as a beacon to warn the men and women of succeeding generations. And the reason why God puts up with the taunts of the scoffers who mock him for his long suffering is precisely this, that he is long suffering, not willing that any should perish.
But as Peter warns us, the day of the Lord will come, and who shall abide the coming of his great wrath. I repeat, see the awesomeness of it, conveyed in the symbolism that opens this section with a smoke from the glory of God. As the section begins, so it ends.
Smoke rises at the beginning. Smoke rises from the end. Look at chapter nineteen, if you will, verse 3. When Babylon has been judged a second time, the great company of heaven say, Hallelujah. And her smoke goeth up forever and forever. This is an appalling statement, isn't it?
In the true sense of that word. But forever and forever. The smoke arising shall not be something that God Almighty is ashamed of. This is the outcome of his judgment. It expresses his character. And God's character doesn't change. It will be the same to all eternity. When God judged Pharaoh, Scripture tells us that first, he had patience with him.
And only when, after many a warning, Pharaoh hardened his heart, did God destroy him and turned him into a vessel of wrath. Meaning? A vessel through which God advertises his wrath and lets men and women know what God feels about sin, so that others may be warned. And so it happened. When forty years later, the two spies entered Jericho City to re- reconnoiter what was the psychological state of the inhabitants, and so forth and so on, just before the armies of God marched in to destroy Jericho.
They were housed for the night by a harlot. And oh, how delightful and wonderful is the story of that woman's conversion, how she turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. And what was at the base of her conversion? She whispered to the spies, gentlemen, she said, I know your God is the true God. We've heard here in Jericho what he did to Pharaoh. Our judgments are not only deserved by those who suffer him, suffer them.
In his mercy, he reserves his right to use the exhibition of his wrath on impenitent sinners to lead other men and women in his mercy to salvation, to repentance, and to faith. The fact that the Bible preaches an eternal punishment is not to be ashamed of, still less denied, as now in some evangelical circles it has become popular so to do. If God's judgment is just, then it is something for which heaven will eternally sing their hallelujahs of praise.
We come then to think about the judgments of God as they express the character of God himself. And you should pray for me, my brother. Well, the proper attitude as we approach this subject is to take the shoes from off our feet. We're not now even dabbling with mere literary structures. We are face to face with the awesome, holy character of God. We take the shoes off our feet. Pray for me, my brothers, lest I say something in the course of my remarks that is unworthy of the glory of God or offensive to his dignity.
But some people there are, are there not, who repudiate the whole idea that God would punish anybody. They say we can believe in a God of love, but by definition, a God of love would not punish anybody because punishment is inconsistent with love. These pictures, they say, in the book of the Revelation, are absolutely revolting. People being tormented in the presence of God and of the Lamb.
It is, they say, such a revolting picture of God that we cannot accept it as inspired scripture. This must be some Jewish work, unworthy of a place in the holy canon. Let's look at the judgment. And first of all, who they are that executes them there. For they come out, we are told, seven angels from the innermost shrine. They are arrayed in linen, not only pure, but dazzlingly bright.
And around their breasts they are girt about with golden girdle. I don't know what your taste in dress is. I don't know what color would be your favorite color. But even at the level of sheer colors, white, that mixture of all colors is beautiful, isn't it, is it not? I remember as a little boy standing in a seaside resort in Britain, and there to entertain the English, and they're easily entertained, they had a fountain, you'll say, a beautiful fountain, and there were colored lights all around it that now and again came on, and the water turned blue and took the shape of mountains, and the water turned green and took the shape of waves of the sea, and the water turned red and purple and scarlet and pink and all the colors of the rainbow, and we little English stood open-mouthed.
And at last it turned absolutely pure, dazzling white. And I can remember to this day the wonderful roar of approval that went up from the crowd. The white was so magnificently beautiful. These angels that come out from the temple of God with the bowls of God's wrath are not hags of witches with the pus oozing out of their eyes and their teeth, talons and claws oozing blood. Their clothing is spectacularly beautiful.
But the clothing is only symbolic, isn't it? At the end of this very section of the revelation, we are to read of the Lamb's wife, who has made herself ready, and to her it is granted to be clothed, to clothe herself in linen that is equally pure and brilliantly white. Not some dull white, but brilliant white. And there you have the symbolism explained. Pure linen represents the righteous act, in this case of the saints, but with these angels, representatives of God, the perfect righteousness and justice of God.
The wrath of God is unlike our anger, isn't it? And sometimes we confuse the two. When we think of the wrath of God, we're picturing that emotion that we so often have, muddied, dirted, polluted thing. Those feelings that surge up inside us, all mixed with spite and envy and self-pity and sheer sadism and delight in cruelty all mixed up, and we try to say it's our just anger, but in our hearts we know it's not pure, brilliantly pure white of sheer justice and righteousness.
God's wrath is like himself, absolutely just. There is no pollutant in it. It isn't a form of losing his temper or his self-control. It is an expression of his brilliantly white, beautiful character. And they were girt around their breasts with golden girdle. And of course, the girdle, being so elaborate and seeing so valuable, calls attention to that part of their anatomy.
Angels whose affections, feelings are beautiful and valuable. Praise God for some angels could then really feel. The trouble with our modern world is that in many places we have lost the ability to feel properly. What we take for love and call love very often isn't love at all, but a perversion of that glorious emotion.
We had a court case in Northern Ireland just the other month, and the details were this. There was a soldier and his wife living in the barracks. The soldier became enamored of another woman soldier in the army that wasn't his wife. And they had extensive immoral relationship between the two. The woman who wasn't his wife in the end made friends, apparently, with the soldier's true wife, suggested they went for a walk in the woods.
The woman had prepared a very sharp knife, and when they got into the woods, she took the soldier's wife and slit her throat and killed her. And then she ran out of the woods and hailed a passerby and said there'd been a terrible thing, they had been attacked in the woods. The case came to court. And the jury's ver- jury's verdict was this: it wasn't murder. It wasn't even deliberate murder.
It was simply, you'll say, that he had a passion for the soldier, and love made her do it. When the judge handed out the sentence, it was so small that the murderess herself laughed at the sentence and said it was ridiculously low. She'll be out in a few years, in fact. And the judge wished her well in her future life. And that goes for love. The very notion of love is now perverted in some quarters these days.
But as you see, it has more sympathy with the criminal than it does with the victim. Is love inconsistent with punishment? You may think that this is a modern idea, and that is we look back on the past, and particularly the Bible and the Old Testament, that somehow they were savage times, and the question was never raised then whether love were inconsistent with punishment. Now, of course, the question is raised in the New Te- in the Old Testament itself, isn't it? Pardon me, why for five minutes I turn aside to remind you of the fourteenth chapter of the second book of Samuel, where this whole question is discussed in detail in the form of the story of an incident that happened in the life of David.
It is in that part of Samuel that contains a whole list of so-called love stories, though some of them are funny love stories. And here is the story of one of the king's sons. His name was Absalom. One day he rose up and murdered his brother. And being, of course, aware that this was a capital offense in his country, he fled forthwith into exile, lest the king and his officers should catch up with him and punish him with death. At first, the king was very grieved. But then, as the years went by, you know how it is, other feelings began to surface in the king's heart.
He was sorry, of course, for his son that had been murdered. It should never have been done. But then the other fellow, the murderer, was his son too, you'll see. Um, well, you know, can you keep these things up forever? The murderer's son, his name was Absalom. He showed no signs whatsoever of repenting and truth to tell, he never did repent, not even after he was brought back home. But the king's heart began to feel for Absalom, wonder whether he could not bring him back. And the king's commander in chief, his name was Joab, and he saw the situation, and he saw how the king's heart was running, and he thought up a scheme that might persuade the king to bring back his son Absalom the murderer.
So he got a wise woman of Tekoa, and he had her dressed up in black as though she'd been in mourning for a long time, and he sent her into the king to spin a yarn, you'll see. Can you see the woman coming in? Black, disheveled hair, now and again the tears managing to come down the old face. It's all a put up show, of course. But anyway, there it was, and she came into the king and cried to the king, and he said, what is it, my dear? And she said, king, it's terrible, oh, it's terrible. She managed a sob or two. You see, I had two sons, and the one rose up, uh, and uh, and killed his brother. And please, your majesty, uh, I am a widow, my husband's dead, and I just had two sons, and now one of them is dead.
And your majesty, the people of my town are coming to me and saying, surrender the other son so that we may execute him for the murder of his brother. And your majesty, if they do that, they'll make things doubly worse. I've lost my husband, I've lost one son, and now this punishment business, it's absurd, your majesty, she says. I've had enough grief losing one son, and if they punish him, as they say they must, I shall lose the other son, and I shall be utterly bereft. Oh, king, help me, she said. If you will let them carry on with this punishment business, my lamp will be put out completely. And David, who was a kindly man and had never thought of these things in any deep philosophical manner, he said, well, yes, I see your point, my dear.
Yeah, hmm, mm-hmm. Now you come to think about it, this punishment thing would be stupid, wouldn't it? Oh, hadn't thought of that, you know. I tell you what, my dear, go home. We'll see that nobody touches your son, and you, you can keep him, my dear. And she said, thank you very much. Actually, she said, the king is behaving like that too, isn't he, in refusing to bring back his son Absalom. But anyway, she said, there's another point, your majesty. She said, you'll see, we are as water spilt on the ground, and uh, we can't be gathered up again, can we? So we must learn to accept these things.
I know my poor son, he got murdered, oh poor boy. But punishing the other chap won't do the murdered boy any good, will it? I mean, the thing is done now. You can't undo it. You might as well try to, um, collect water that's been spilt on the ground, your majesty. Thing is done. He's dead, isn't he? And how will it help him if we go and execute his brother for murder? Who said the king? He was not given to philosophical thought always. You know, he said, I'd never thought of that point before. Doesn't do any good, does it?
Of course it doesn't. Doesn't bring the boy back to life. Oh. You go home, my dear good woman, he said, and I, I, I, I see that nobody touches your, uh, your son that did the murder. No, no, it's all. And then she said, you know, I mean, Your Majesty, he's a religious man, isn't he? And fears God, and this is how God behaves, doesn't he? God never takes away life, now does he, Your Majesty, but he devises means so that those that are banished from him can be brought home. And he said just enough about religious truth in it to conceal the lie. It is the fact, of course, that God devises means so that his banished shall not be permanently separated from him.
That is true. But if we may jump to the New Testament for a moment and ask, what are those means by which it is make, it is possible for God to bring home banished sinners. The means is nothing short than the death of his own dear son. That God might be just. When he justifies the sinner, God laid on his son the iniquity of us all. Of course, it's a bare-faced lie that God doesn't take away life.
The whole of the Bible, from one end to the other, preaches the opposite. Let's come back to a mo- for a moment to the woman's argument. You know that she was so loving, she loved her boys, and uh, she didn't want her boy executed. And first we may test it by having, going having a word with the boy that's now dead. Shall we imagine that? It's difficult, isn't it? Let's imagine running, uh, walking on the street, and and there's the man lying in his blood, murdered, lying on the ground, you see. And we'll suppose just for a moment the impossible that the man could speak to us.
And we say to the, um, boy, hello, what's happened to you? Well, he says, I've been murdered, can't you see? Been murdered. Oh, so you have. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And what are you going to do about it, he says. Uh, pardon? What do about it? What do you mean do about it? Well, it was unjust, wasn't it? I had a right to live. What are you going to do about this colossal injustice? And there's my murdering brother still enjoying life, and there's me here dead. What are you going to do about it? And we say, oh look, of course, with every sympathy with you, you're dead now, aren't you?
But, um, you'll quieten down a little bit, you'll see. You know, that's how it is in life. It's no good crying over spilt milk, is it? It's no good trying to, uh, uh, collect water once it's been spilt. My dear chap, learn to grow up and be adult. I mean, you're dead, aren't you? And now it's done, it can't be undone. You'll have to learn to accept it. That's at least what your mama says. She says she loves you, but she says you oughtn't to do anything to the, your brother. You see, she's just argued to the king that, well, whatever we do to your brother won't help you, will it? So, well, that's that.
You're dead now, and you'll have to accept it. What do you suppose the dead boy would say? Oh yes, I now perceive how much my mother loves me. Oh, isn't she a marvelous woman? No, he wouldn't, would he? True love, because it is love, will never say that sin doesn't matter. If I will get drunk and drive my car when I'm drunk, and I run over your child and kill her, God, if I don't repent, God will have that against me for all eternity.
Why? Because he's a fiend? No, because he's love. And he loves your child, and not just today, he'll go on loving your child to all eternity, and never, never, never, never will true love say. But well, she got run over, didn't she? Well, never mind. Poor man, he got drunk. We should have sympathy with him, really. There would be forgiveness for me, wouldn't there? First, I would repent, and the forgiveness would be bought not by saying sin doesn't matter, but by the love of God that in the person of his son bore the penalty of such an outrageous sin.
Here, what about the older brother? You know, the murderer chap. Mama says he shouldn't be punished. It's love, she says, you see. That wouldn't do any good to, I mean, good to who? This crime of murder, and the more serious thing, the state of the man's heart that produced the murder. Are we to say it doesn't matter? If you really loved him, what would you wish for? That the man be allowed to go on unrepentant, still nursing that foul attitude of heart?
Or would you not say that true love to the man would be that if he can't see he's done wrong, that he should be helped to see he's done wrong? And if he refuses the help and refuses to repent, what would you have God do? Say, oh well, right, our cap, we will agree to differ over this. You're still welcome in heaven, but uh, if you think that's a good attitude and I can't convince you otherwise, well, we'll just agree to differ. That's false too, isn't it? If a man's heart is eaten through, and all our hearts have been.
With evil passions, envy, hatred, lust, cruelty. And we do wrong things, that's bad enough. But what would you have a God of love to do to us? Leave us as we are? Or begin to make us aware, if need be, by very uncomfortable chastenings. That we need to repent and be healed. And suppose sinful men and women refuse God's warning, his preliminary warning, his preliminary judgment, and go on to the great and final judgment.
What would you have God do then? The Bible's answer is that as long as they remain in that attitude, they will be forever conscious of God's wrath and disapproval. Well, now as we return to our topic, we shall see, shall we not, that the judgments here in this section, like the other judgments that have been listed, the judgments that fall under the seals and the trumpets, now with those that come under the vial, do not all happen at once.
It is not one fell swoop finished, but a series of judgments, gradually mounting in intensity, and aimed not simply at destroying for the sake of destroying, aimed at being a voice, aimed, if possible, of leading men and women to repentance. You say some people are destroyed under those preliminary judgments, as you call them. Yes, but not all. We read that so many were destroyed, and the rest of them? By what right will God destroy some and leave the others?
Well, he has a right to do as he pleads. And the God who knows where an individual has got to in their personal attitude to him reserves the right to do with the person like God did with Pharaoh. Having waited long with him, having put him under his chastening rod and pleaded with him by many an uncomfortable circumstance and plague. When Pharaoh got to the point that he would not repent, and admitting he was a sinner, he would not repent. Then God reserved the right to cut him off.
At the rest of men might have a warning and be brought to repentance and to faith. Such are these judgments then, like the plagues on Egypt, and there were nine of them, and only at the end came the tenth, the final judgment upon Egypt. So these plagues, in them is being filled up the wrath of God. But even they are gradual and gradualistic. There are early warnings before there is the final great day of God's wrath.
And now we must proceed as quickly as we may with a deep study of the detailed judgments of God that fall when the vials of his wrath are outpoured. They come in chapter sixteen of the book of the Revelation, and I have listed some of their details for you on your sheet of notes. Let us move at least with some of them to see if we can some of the principles of judgment. You'll see, as we pointed out last night, many of these judgments seem to repeat in a severer form, similar, if not the exact same judgments as come under the blowing of the seven trumpets in section three.
And one of the tasks of the expositor would be to explain why that is. Why is it that these judgments so, uh, resemble, are almost the same in some cases as the judgments under the trumpets? Was it that John was hard up to think of another possible form of judgment, and so he had to repeat himself? Well, we'll dismiss that forthwith. This is inspired scripture, so why the difference? And of course, some of the outstanding differences are that from time to time, in this particular series of judgments, comments are made on their quality. It invites us to think of these judgments then as expression of the justice and love of God.
And we start with the first of them. Verse two: the first went and poured out his bowl into the earth, and it became a noisome and a grievous sore upon men, which had the mark of the beast and which worshipped his image. They remember that this is the first one. This is not the final one. There is time yet for men to repent if they will. Here are men and women that have taken the mark of the beast, and they're gladly taking it, and they're enjoying their limousines and their posh houses and all the rest of it because they have knuckled down under the beast and taken his mark, and can buy and sell and prosper. And the fearful danger is that they will go on like that unless they are made to sense the hideousness of the disgrace that they have committed, not only against God, but against themselves.
The mark of the beast, we had it explained to us last night, is the mark of a mere human being. And for a man or woman made in the image of God, so to demean themselves, so to disgrace themselves and humiliate themselves and wrong themselves. To take the mark of a mere man and bow down at his feet and become his slave. Come, what has, what has become of the dignity of the human spirit that God gave to man?
What has become of his freedom? What has come of man's own self-respect. What would you have a God who made a creature and gave him to be in the image of God? What would you have God to do? And that man thus demeans the very image of God in him and bows down to another fellow human being and pays that human being divine honors. And can't see that he's doing anything wrong. The holiness of God decides that the man, these men and women, must be helped to see what they're doing to themselves.
God puts a painful and grievous sore on the persons of the people. It's a personal thing that disfigures the person and is painful and reduces his glory and, uh, uh, and beauty, doesn't it? And is mental. And if possible, the person concerned might sense it's a visitation from God and begin to say why, and through that physical excretion and pain, come to see the moral and spiritual, uh, indignity that they have committed against themselves.
Or would you prefer a God of love to let them go on just as they are and live happily ever after. Uh, there is some commotion going on. Can we have it settled before we proceed? A grasshopper. It's not one of the ten plagues, you may rest with this. There comes a second and a third. The second poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man. Every living soul died, even the things that were in the sea.
And the third poured out his bowl into the rivers and fountains of waters, and it became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, Righteous art thou which art and which wast, thou holy one, because thou didst just judge. They poured out the blood of the saints and prophets, and blood hast thou given them to drink, for they are worthy. Nature said it. Here perfoni- personified Dulce, I heard the angel of the waters say, nature said it. A polluted earth with their blood thirstiness, their wicked persecution, their wholesale massacre of life.
What would you have God do? If they go on like this, they'll be in an eternal hell. It turns the water into blood, and men coming to it with a profound instinct find the whole thing revolting. Now you went to drink blood. What have they been doing? Shedding the blood of millions. You know, some cruel, wicked, evil men that massacre thousands for their political ideals.
Can't see sense. Might it be go- good idea and mercy to them to put them in prison and play them the dying screams of the people they've murdered. And keep them at it for hours until they cannot possibly bear it anymore. How will God wake up people to the enormity of their sin? If they don't come to see it and repent, how can they be saved? And then I heard the altar saying, Yea, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.
Dear old altar. Altars don't normally speak, but John heard this one speaking, and it's all a vision, isn't it? The altar that stands for the redeeming work of Christ. Ah, what things it had witnessed, that altar of innocent lambs had died to the guilty, God's gracious way of forgiveness in Israel. From that we think of the great atoning sacrifice of Christ. The blood of God's own Son shed to buy men and women and redeem sinful men and women. And thus save them from eternal suffering and judgment.
And these beasts have taken men and women bought at the price of the redeeming blood of Christ, and they've shed their blood as though they were cattle. What a fearful perversion of values. To take somebody that God has bought with the blood of his son and shed their blood. The altar itself protests against this hideous perversion of values. The redeeming blood of Christ that God has given to save men and women from eternal loss, will forever protest that God is righteous in judging those who destroyed the redeemed.
We haven't time to do them all. Let's look now at verse twelve. The sixth poured out his bowl upon the great river, and I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits, as it were frogs. They are the spirits of demons, working signs, which go forth unto the kings of the whole world, to gather them together unto the war of the great day of God the Almighty. What strange thing is this, you say? God in league with demons or something, to persuade these kings to come to the great day of God Almighty and to the battle and to be destroyed. Allowing these poor innocent kings to be, uh, deceived.
But wait a minute, who said they were innocent? You now notice that this is getting towards the end of the series. God's great judgments have been in the earth, and in spite of it, these men come. How do they come? They come enticed by demons, and God allowed it. How shall we explain it? Let me borrow a story from the Old Testament. There was an infamous king, uh, in Israel at one stage. His name was Ahab. Well, he wasn't so infamous as he was, uh, decidedly weak.
Perhaps it was his wife Jezebel that was more inf- infamous, but that by the by. He had persecuted the prophets and hounded them. Driven by his wife Jezebel, they had attempted to execute Elijah himself, if you please. They had hounded Naboth, the Jezreelite, to his death simply in order to get his vineyard to add to the king's pleasure gardens, if you please. And God in his mercy had pleaded with Ahab on a number of occasions to plead with him to turn from his idolatry that he has espoused under the influence of Jezebel. And to repent and come back to the true God.
And God in his mercy had demonstrated to Ahab that he was the true God. And in spite of it, Ahab went on with his idolatry. Came a day when Ahab decided that a town that used to belong to Israel by the name of Ramot Gilead, and had been taken by the Syrians, ought to be recaptured. So he had a word with Jehoshaphat, who was the good but sometimes weak-kneed king of Judah, and persuaded Jehoshaphat to go with him on this joint campaign to recapture Aramod Gilead from the Syrians.
And just before the onset of the battle, Ahab thought he had to have a bit of a religious ceremony, you know, and so he gathered all the false prophets there and sat himself upon a throne and, uh, Jehoshaphat upon a throne and inquired of the false prophets what was the mind of the Lord and what should they do, and should they go up to Ramot Gilead to fight it? And the false prophets put on a menagerie. It was a beautiful show. And they said, yes, your majesty, God is with you. Go up and he shall certainly deliver Ramot Gilead into your hand. And Ahab said, good, my man, I'll see that there's a present sent you from the palace presently. When Jehoshaphat leaned over to Ahab and he said, Ahab, old boy, um, it's all nice to have these prophets of Baal here, I'm sure, but isn't there a prophet of Jehovah around anywhere we could consult him?
Prophet of Jehovah, said Ahab. Well, but there is one. I've gone out of fashion, Josaphat. People don't listen to prophets of Jehovah, not nowadays they don't. I mean, there's old stuff, that is. You really want a prophet? Well, there is one. He's actually in prison, you'll say, some pleasant fellow. But if you insist, I mean, I can have him brought. Well, Joshua said, uh, Josaphat said, I think I would like to hear just a prophet of the Lord, if you don't mind, Ahab. So an offer was sent, you see, to to to to to bring this, uh, uh, prophet Micaiah from the prison. And on the way, the officer said to the prophet, he said, now look here, sir, it's not my business to tell you what to do, but I would like just to point out that all the other prophets have spoken well to Ahab, you see.
Well, if if you could find it somehow, I know you must be free to say your message, of course you must, but I mean, I mean, if you could be, if you could be sort of, um, well, tactful, perhaps, you see, and uh, I mean, because if you speak out like you do sometimes very bluntly, you know already what prison is like, don't you? So Micaiah arrived in front of the king, you'll see. And Ahab said to Micaiah, what is the word of the Lord? Shall we go up, uh, to Ramot Gilead to take it? All my prophets are saying, yes, go up, the Lord is with you.
What do you say, Micaiah? And Micaiah said, yes, your majesty, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The Lord is with you, go up, and you'll be successful. Here, said Ahab, don't you tell me. How often have I told you that you are to speak nothing but the truth? Don't you stand there telling me lies. Oh. So he knew it was a lie. When the false prophet said it, he was very glad and rewarded them. Now the true prophet speaks, and he says, that's a lie. Tell me the truth.
Oh, said Micaiah, things have changed around here, haven't they? Uh, uh, you want the truth, Ahab? I tell you the truth, your majesty. I saw God sitting in his council, and all the angels were around, and said, God, who will go and be a lying spirit in the mouth of one of the, uh, false prophets to entice Ahab to his death at Ramot Gilead? And there came forth a spirit and said, I will go. I'll be a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. And God said, you go.
Ahab said, Micaiah, these false prophets that speak to you, it's a lie that they're telling you. And it's a lie that comes from an evil spirit. And Ahab said, glad I called for you, my guy, my boy. No, he didn't. He said, you objectionable creature, you always give messages like that, back to prison with you. And he went up to Ramot Gilead, believing the false prophets, knowing as clear as he knew anything, that it was a lie.
There are some solemn words in Holy Scripture, are there not? The end of this age, when the man of sin exalts himself above all that is called God and is worshipped, God shall send some men and women a strong delusion, that they believe the lie. For they would not receive the love of the truth. What God in his almighty justice is doing, is simply saying at long length, you know the truth, you know what is a lie, and in spite of the truth and my willingness to forgive you upon your repentance, you determine to believe the lie, knowing it's a lie.
Then have your way. That is awesome, isn't it? That same kind of awesomeness was displayed in the life of our blessed Lord Jesus. He took his disciples across the sea once, and they came to the other side, and there was a poor demoniac infested with demons. And the demons told him to go away, and of course he didn't go away. He stood his ground. And he delivered the demoniac, the two of them, in fact, from the demons that hitherto had held them.
And out came the people of the town, and they saw what had happened. Men delivered from the power of the devil, now sitting sane, clothed, and in their right mind at the feet of the Savior. And they saw what had happened. And because it had cost them their pigs, they told the Savior to go. And the Son of God incarnate, who would not go at the bidding of demons, but rescued the men, when human beings told him to go, turn round and went.
Oh, what a God it is. What, what is this God? This you will say about him. He never will turn himself into a tyrant. If men will have the lie, then by God's own decision, they shall have it. But they one mustn't, they must not suppose that the eternity they create for themselves by embracing a lie has got to be an alternative paradise. And how can it be while they still hold to the lie and all the corruption that goes with it.
And finally, and all too briefly, we must look now at one particular judgment. For in chapter seventeen, John tells us, there came one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls and spake with me, saying, come hither, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters. John is invited to consider the actual nature and process of the judgment. What form it took when it fell upon Babylon. Pray, who is Babylon, you say?
I suppose the easiest way to come to an initial decision is to notice the way that in this part of the revelation, Babylon, that unfaithful woman as she is represented, the harlot, is contrasted with the bride of the Lamb. She is therefore the opposite of what the bride of the Lamb is. Protestant theology held that Babylon was another name for the Roman Catholic Church. That surely is a mistake. Babylon was around in this world long before the Roman Catholic Church came into existence. Babylon is the Babylon of the Old Testament.
She is the mother of harlots, not merely one herself, but a mother of. Center of idolatrous religious practice, world fame for being such in the ancient world. She becomes, in the first place, a symbol of corrupt, idolatrous religion. We ought to notice that according to the selection of material, there is not just one, but there are two descriptions of the judgment of Babylon in this section.
And though the person concerned in the symbolism might be the same, the city Babylon, there are striking differences between the two, are there not? The Babylon of chapter seventeen is destroyed by the beast and the ten kings, unmercilessly destroyed. But the Babylon of eighteen, when she is destroyed, the kings of the earth lament it and are broken-hearted over it. So there is a difference, isn't there? The Babylon of chapter eighteen, moreover, is described in terms that are taken from the Old Testament, uh, used sometimes of apost- of of Babylon, but they are more, uh, fully used in the prophecy of Ezekiel of the city of Tyre.
Now, Tyre in the ancient world was a commercial empire. The Tyrians, the Phoenicians, who later set themselves at, set themselves up at Carthage, had built their empire on trade. These were the people that took the lovely vases that the Greeks produced and, uh, sailed them across to the Mediterranean and brought them to the savages in England at the time, you'll see, and persuaded all the housewives that they must have not old broken earthen pots like we produce, but nice, lovely pots like the Greeks produced. These were the merchant men of the world. And you say, what's wrong with that?
Nothing, in and of itself. It was a very interesting empire and raised the standard of living all around the Mediterranean, and of course, in the process made a lot of money, but that's beside the point. And taught people to appreciate beautiful things, artifacts, uh, and all kinds of lovely things, and clothes and shoes and hats and coats and, uh, furniture and what have you. And you say, what's wrong with that? We shall see in a moment. Now, these two women are charged with having used their beauty and the power and leverage that beauty has to perverse and wicked purposes.
In the Antichrist, you see, we look at the male perversion of power, don't we? In Babylon, we look at the female perversion of beauty. I don't know whether ladies know how powerful a force their beauty is, but it is, isn't it? And it is right that they use it in right ways. Uh, the power of beauty can be perverted. And the Babylon of chapter seventeen perverted her beauty.
Famous for her religion. Disloyal to the true God. Inverter, inventor and continuator of idolatry. Mother of all the false religions of the world. She now rides the political beast. Determined to have influence, to control, to use her fascination, so that she governs the rulers of the earth. Not content to wait until her Lord comes to rule the nations, he who is King of kings.
She determines to rule now. And you know, religion is fascinating to some, uh, political powers, is it not? Men who are not religious themselves will very often countenance religion. It's a useful tool to start with. It can bring over to the political government the support of the religious emotions of the people. And anyone who can command the loyalty of thousands, if not millions, of religious people is a valuable asset to any government. Babylon used her beauty to gain power over the beast.
You mustn't suppose this particular beast ever believed her religion, but for a while they lived in unholy union. And in the process, Babylon murdered the true people of God. In cahoots with, joining with the atheist government of her day, she'll do it again. To keep power over the beast. She'll compromise the very truth of God and the truth of his dear son, and if need be, collaborate in the elimination of true and faithful believers, prophets, and Christian workers who refuse to bow down to the beast.
How will God judge her? And when will he destroy her? Come, I'll show you the judgment of the great hall, said John. Would you like to see it, John, my boy? Come and see the judgment of the great whore. Sitting on that beast. Well, what about that then? John, did you notice, uh, where the beast was going, incidentally? The beast comes up from the abyss and goes into destruction. What a fool of a woman to get on top of it. If you're standing in the street one day, my good sir, and a bus comes along and it says I'm going to Berlin, well, if you want to go to Berlin, get on it.
Another bus comes along the street and the destination board says destruction. You would be a fool to get on it, wouldn't you? And she got on it. The beast and the ten horns shall make war with the lamb, and he shall overcome them. Poor fool of a woman. She might have been on the lamb's side, and been a queen at the side of the lamb. No, she was disloyal to him. She wanted to reign now. And she backed the side that will be destroyed.
Mark that it wasn't even the Lord that destroyed her. Ten kings, at one stage in history, chose to come together, to enjoy power with the beast and they'd work with him. And they developed a hating and a loathing for this monstrous woman that sat on their back, and they decided the time had come, and they hated the whore.
And they destroyed the whore, and they ate her flesh, and they burnt her with fire. It was the very politics that she had got on the back of that destroyed her. You say, what, was that an accident? No. But God had put it in their mind to give their power to the beast. And if the beast by himself had risen up against her, she would have had the protection of the ten kings. But when the ten kings decided to give their power to the beast, it removed her protection, and the ten kings and the beast destroyed her.
And who put the idea into the king's mind to give their power to the beast? I did, says God. And she can't complain, can she? When she had joined the beast, if the ten kings now join the beast and side with him against her. Who's the beast, you say, and or what are these all the things about his heads and what have you? There are many interpretations of the beast, and where so many commentators disagree, even if I had the time, I would despair of being able to prove to you my interpretation was correct.
But some little help is available for us in coming to our decision. For if you compare this section two of section five, the part two, with part two in section three, You will see that part two in section three is concerned, uh, with this. The angel is impressing upon John so that he can comfort the heart of the people of God, that their sufferings are not going on forever. The time will at last come, and there's not going to be any delay. It will only be a short time. And those who persecute the, the, the believers will be destroyed. The point of showing John the beast at this stage is the same.
Listen, this beast and its heads. Five are fallen, one is. The seventh will then come, and when he comes, he must exist a little while, and then comes the final phase, and it will all be over. The angel is giving John some kind of a time scale, isn't he? You say it doesn't sound like a very short time scale to me. The other angel said it was only going to be a little while. What are you saying that all that what what? five are already fallen, now there one is, and then, then he's got to have another one come after him, uh, uh, for a little while, and then there's going to be an eighth.
That doesn't sound, uh, very short to me. Well, I suppose it depends what you, how you look at it. We'll say for God, a thousand years is as a day, isn't it? And a day is a thousand years. It doesn't count time as we count. And what is more, God has to consider not only me, the little individual now in my generation, he's the God of the whole history. And the explanation that makes sense to me is that he's the God who's been watching over the successive great world empires that are mentioned in scripture all the way along. He's had the end in sight from the beginning. God has been waiting.
Babylon has been doing her dastardly tricks, persecuting the prophets all these long years, all these long centuries. Why has God waited? Why, in his mercy to many thousands and millions that have got converted and saved in the long centuries anyway. And in the second place, God waits until man's sin comes to a pitch that he's never seen before. Other Gentile governments have persecuted true believers, but they have not necessarily been against religion. And even the latest manifestation of Gentile atheistic political theory was in some places prepared to collaborate with religion, if religion would compromise and do the state's business.
There's coming a time when there will arise a world empire that will be worldwide, anti-God, anti-religion, and in the place of God and religion will institute the religious worship of the state. You say, how terrible. Is God going to allow that? I tell you, my friend, he's not only going to allow it, he's going to use it. God put it into the mind of the ten kings to give their power to the beast, that atheistic crowd, that demonic crowd.
The beast who puts himself in the place of God. What did he do it for? That those ten kings and the beast might destroy Babylon. If Babylon will be a harlot, untrue to the living God and compromise with evil and with an atheistic state. She can't complain if one day God allows a state to arise that will destroy her, root and branch. Finally, Babylon, the commercial Babylon.
You say, what's wrong? We all have to live, we have to do business. You telling us we should go around in sackcloth or something? Shouldn't we have the latest equipment, you know, automatic washing machines and everything else? What's wrong in it? Nothing wrong in it. Beautiful things. But beauty has its dangers. And the tragic danger of beautiful things is precisely this, that when men and women are full of them, it can happen that they have no time for God.
Babylon and the world, affluent, rich, living in luxury with everything you could possibly imagine brought from the four corners of the earth to make life an absolute delight. And she says to herself, I sit a queen, I shall never know famine, I shall never know distress, I shall never know sorrow, I sit as a queen. For whose glory? And for whose benefit is all this love and this beauty? She doesn't want to know about God. She doesn't want to know about his son, Jesus Christ. She's not interested in the purposes of God in the earth.
All the beauty and the there is for her own self-indulgence. And indeed, so determined is she to live her hedonistic, self-indulgent, pleasurable life, that if the saints and the prophets get in the way, she'll have them murdered. Ruthless. And in the end, God judges it. You say, that's serious, isn't it? Isn't that extreme? But wait a minute, my brothers. These things are told us for practical reasons. The figure of speech of a harlot unfaithful to her husband is exceedingly unpleasant, isn't it?
An unfaithful wife. But in the Old Testament, God uses it frequently of Israel. He blessed them with lovely things, a land flowing with milk and honey, corn, wine, everything their heart could desire, and she took these lovely gifts and beautiful things from God. And instead of enjoying them and going back to God and serving him with all the love of her heart, she left God and went after her idol. She became a harlot, says God. And the New Testament repeats the phrase, know you not, the friendship of the world is enmity with God.
You adulteresses, says James. Love not the world, says the kindly apostle, nor the things that are in the world. For if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Lust of eye, lust of the flesh, pride of life. If they take my heart's affections and take them away from the Lord, then these beautiful things lead me into spiritual unfaithfulness.
Not only so, but Paul says to us, I've espoused you to one husband, even Jesus Christ, and I'm concerned over you, my brothers, lest the old serpent corrupt your thoughts from loyalty to the Lord Jesus. It is possible, isn't it, in the pursuit of learning and education, to find oneself in a situation where theories are put forward that impugn the authority and truth of Christ. And what should we do if we want a degree?
We have to be intellectually loyal to Christ. Presently, we have to meet him. So now, when Babylons are judged, we come to the final comment. Hallelujah, says heaven. Babylon's been judged. Now there breaks out another hallelujah. Hallelujah, for the marriage supper of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready. I don't know how weddings happen in your part of the world.
I can tell you a little thing about weddings in our part of the world. They appoint the time when you've got to be there, say twelve o'clock midday. Everybody gathers there. The bridegroom is there, wa- looking around very nervously, and the bride? Always late. One of these days the bride's going to be on time, you know. Hallelujah! The marriage supper of the Lamb is coming, his wife is ready, would you believe it? Oh, thank the Lord for that. His wife is ready. Of course, I know weddings are special occasions. You don't just jump into a pair of old jeans to come to your wedding, do you? No, ladies, you don't, surely.
And well, if you're going to look your very best and beautiful for your husband on the day, well, it's understandable if you're a little bit late putting it on and getting it right and the last curl in place. You'll see, because, um, I mean, uh, he is very important, isn't he? And in the end, the beauty you work at is for him. What would please him? When the marriage supper of the Lamb comes, and we summon to meet the bridegroom. Oh, what would he like? What would he like us to wear?
Not as to our external clothes, but as to our character, the beauty of our character. Listen, says the voice, to her is being granted to be arrayed in fine linen, pure and white. Ah, God likes that. The very angels that came out of his presence to execute his judgment, they were clothed like that. Not a bad fashion to copy, you know. Better than the latest mode in the magazine, actually. Uh, you'll say, if the angels wear it and God was pleased with it, and it expressed his holiness and his abhorrence of sin and his persistence in his divine love and glorious righteousness, then why not dress up like that?
And she dresses herself in linen, pure and brilliantly pure, composed of the righteous acts of the saints. Of course, her basic garments were washed in blood that she had by the Redeemer's own gift. But in all the waiting years, she's been sowing, sowing, sowing, sowing. In a life that hasn't proceeded on the principle first, do I enjoy it, or do, uh, is this pleasing to me? But she's been sowing a character, a life of deeds, with eye on the time when she must meet the bridegroom, and she's hoping when she gets there, the bridegroom will greatly desire her beauty.
And so he shall. He'll take all the lovely garments that his people have woven and stitched in the time of his absence to beautify themselves with lovely deeds and lovely attitudes and loyal faithfulness to the absent Lord, and he'll grant her to clothe herself in it. And oh, what joy there shall be. It's not exaggeration, my brothers and sisters. All the hallelujahs. You just imagine when the bride comes out of the church or wherever it is she gets married, and they're there, aren't they, the photographers with all their cameras to see the bride and the bridegroom. And oh, what the universe will be like when God hangs out his decorations throughout the whole of the universe, and his son comes and presents his beautiful bride, not only for his own heart, but for the admiration of the whole universe for all eternity.
God help us to be beautiful against the day of Christ's coming. Shall we pray? Lord, we have spent long at our studies this morning, and we ask thy grace now, that we may think about these things that thou hast spoken to us, and in the coming days go on to develop them. But above all, that we may take their lesson to heart. For long as our study has been this morning, it and our lives are so short, and the Lord Jesus is coming. We want to look our best when he comes.
Help us, we beseech thee. And if in anything we have been disloyal to him intellectually, emotionally, or in other ways, O Lord, thou who dost give thyself for the church to cleanse us from spot and wrinkle and blemish, or any such thing. Draw near, we do beseech thee, in the intimacies of our hearts and personalities. Point out our faults, that they might be repented of and cleansed away, so that when thou dost come, we may be presented before thee and allowed to clothe ourselves with the righteous deeds that by thy grace we have performed.
So be thy blessing upon us now, we beseech thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. We start this morning with a practical matter. We have on the sheets that I have given you some typist's errors. I think the errors came from the author more than from the typist. But if you will care to look on section four, that is page seven of your notes. Where you have listed on page seven of the notes the first trilogy, Signs in Heaven, Satan Frustrated.
The biblical references should be eleven nineteen to thirteen one b, not 13:10, but thirteen one b. I'm sorry, now I'm misleading you again. That's old age. Thirteen one a refers to thirteen one a. It refers to the statement in the first half of chapter thirteen, verse one: he stood upon the sand of the sea.
So the reference again, eleven nineteen to thirteen one a. Then it'll come to the second trilogy situating- situation resulting on earth, Satan apparently victorious. The reference there should be thirteen one B to fourteen five. And then on section five that we started last evening, page eight, The last paragraph, for hallelujahs for God's judgment.
In number one, by a great voice of a great multitude, the English word multitude is there spelt correctly. That's how it should be. So leave it, but change the word in verse, uh, in sec- uh, number four, by the voice of a great, and an extra letter has somehow crept in, you'll see. Cross out the first T, if you will. The word is multitude, not multitude or whatever. And for the rest, it will be helpful this morning if once more you have near at hand, so that you can look at them without difficulty later on, the contents of section three and section five.
Now, last evening, at the cost of working you intolerably hard when you were long since overtired by the interesting events of the day, I made you stay in school late, like all bad schoolmasters, in order to consider, uh, the formal literary construction of section five of the book of the Revelation. We although also did some investigations that had the result of showing us that section five in the book of the Revelation corresponds in theme and in much of its formal layout as well to section three of the book of the Revelation.
Forgive me for working you thus intolerably hard and late, but it has the benefit this morning that we can proceed at once to study the main theme of this section five of the Revelation, without having to go through the tiresome and perhaps distracting preliminaries of literary study. Literary study of books like the Resor- uh, Revelation is, of course, very necessary and basic and fundamental. But if we concentrate too much on literary affairs and formal structures, it could be in danger of becoming mechanical, and still worse, as an end in itself.
Literary structures are only there in order that they may the more efficiently present the word of God. And if literary structure gets in the way of our feeling and appreciating and perceiving the impact and the glory of God's holy word, then literary study must, of course, be told to take a back seat. This morning we come to a passage of scripture that is particularly awesome. In previous sections of this book of the Revelation, when something has been opened in heaven, perhaps a door, perhaps the seventh seal, perhaps the temple of God itself, there is seen some part of the furniture of the heavenly temple.
Now, in this section, all pieces of furniture fade completely from view, and we are given to contemplate the very glory of God himself. The smoke arising and filling the temple from his glory and power, from the God of whom scripture says that he dwells in light unapproachable, whom no man has seen, nor can see. And the greatest saints on earth, such as Elisha, Elijah the famous prophet, was called to the entrance of his cave, and the glory of the Lord passed by.
That holy man took his garment and tied it round his face at the awesome experience of beholding the glory of the Lord. When Moses asked to come and see God's glory, he said, God, there is a place by me here in the cleft of the rock. Come stand here, Moses, and I will put my hand over you while my glory passes by. Or to see the glory of God is a thing almost insufferable for a mere human being.
The Lord passed by and proclaimed his name. Thou canst not see my face, said God, thou shalt see my back parts. To see the glory of God in redemption, this is a marvelous thing, is it not? We rejoice in our Christian privilege outlined by Paul in two Corinthians three. We all with unveiled face, unlike even Moses and unlike even Elijah, behold the glory of the Lord. Changed into the same image from glory to glory.
See, the glory of God in redemption is unspeakably magnificent. But to contemplate the glory of God in his judgment, this is awesome indeed. In section three, we saw that what set going the judgments of God upon the world was the prayers of the saints. It was smoke from the incense that was mingled with the prayers of the saints that broke the long silence.
It was coals from that censer, overturned and thrown out upon the earth, poured out upon the earth, that gave the signal for the angels to blow upon their trumpets and for the judgments to come. We deal in section five with a similar theme, but note the difference in the setting. It is not now the prayers of the saints. It is now the innermost feelings, if I dare use the word of Almighty God. It is the innermost feelings, the heart, the character, the holiness of God, that long centuries has put up in infinite patience with the wickedness of men.
But now, so to speak, shines forth. Such is the demonstration of God's heart, holiness, character, righteousness, and truth. Such now as it is revealed is the feeling of God about it all. None can stand in the temple of God until the judgments are finished. The angels come out from the very innermost shrine of the temple. You'll notice that. They come not with censers carrying the prayers of saints.
They come with bowls that, in the imagery of the passage, have, so to speak, been filled up in the august presence of God. What they are pouring out now upon the earth is the reaction of God himself, the expression of his character in these vials is filled up the wrath of God. It is a thing at once to be said about the, uh, anger of God, the wrath of God.
That is his, it, this is his strange, if I may use the term, reluctant work. We are told that when God came down to speak to Abraham, and the passage is Genesis fifteen, and outlined his purposes for his people, he indicated that though it was his good intention to give them the inheritance of the land of Canaan, he was not going to do it yet. In fact, Abram's seed would be slaves in a foreign country, and there they would be afflicted year after year after year.
And if I were Abram and I had dared, I would say, tell me, Lord, why would you put up with it if you really love us, if you really love my seed, if you have a heart for their cries, their sufferings in Egypt? Tell me, Lord, why would you allow it to go on so long before you break their captivity? The divine announcement goes on to say, after their suffering, I will bring them out and bring them into this country. Not yet, Abraham, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
Oh, the amazing wonder of the long suffering of God. Patience with the most execrable and infamous of sinners, and love to execute his judgment. He will wait centuries, if need be, until the cup of human iniquity is full to the overflowing, and God himself can wait no longer. And it is a magnificent feature of God that he will not be hurried to his judgments by the tauntings of ungodly men.
Peter warns us that in the last days there shall come scoffers walking over, walking after their own lusts and openly taunting the Almighty and making mock of him and dismissing his existence, saying, where is the sign of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they did from the beginning of the world. Taunting the Almighty with his long suffering. If they willingly are ignorant, ignorant of the past severe judgments of God on our planet, they serve as a beacon to warn the men and women of succeeding generations.
And the reason why God puts up with the taunts of the scoffers who mock him for his long suffering is precisely this, that he is long suffering, not willing that any should perish. But as Peter warns us, the day of the Lord will come. And who shall abide the coming of his great wrath. I repeat, see the awesomeness of it conveyed in the symbolism that opens this section with a smoke from the glory of God.
As the section begins, so it ends. Smoke rises at the beginning, smoke rises from the end. Look at chapter nineteen, if you will, verse 3. When Babylon has been judged a second time, the great company of heaven say, Hallelujah, and her smoke goeth up forever and forever. This is an appalling statement, isn't it?
In the true sense of that word. But forever and forever, the smoke arising shall not be something that God Almighty is ashamed of. This is the outcome of his judgment. It expresses his character. And God's character doesn't change. It will be the same to all eternity. When God judged Pharaoh, Scripture tells us at first, he had patience with him.
And only when, after many a warning, Pharaoh hardened his heart, did God destroy him and turned him into a vessel of wrath. Meaning? A vessel through which God advertises his wrath and lets men and women know what God feels about sin, so that others may be warned. And so it happened. When forty years later, the two spies entered Jericho City to re- reconnoiter what was the psychological state of the inhabitants, and so forth and so on, just before the armies of God marched in to destroy Jericho, they were housed for the night by a harlot.
And oh, how delightful and wonderful is the story of that woman's conversion, how she turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. And what was at the base of her conversion? She whispered to the spies. Gentlemen, she said, I know your God is the true God. We've heard here in Jericho what he did to Pharaoh. Our judgments are not only deserved by those who suffer him, suffer them. In his mercy, he reserves his right to use the exhibition of his wrath on impenitent sinners to lead other men and women in his mercy to salvation, to repentance, and to faith.
The fact that the Bible preaches an eternal punishment is not to be ashamed of, still less denied, as now in some evangelical circles it has become popular so to do. If God God's judgment is just, then it is something for which heaven will eternally sing their hallelujahs of praise. We come then to think about the judgments of God as they express the character of God himself.
And you should pray for me, my brother. Well, the proper attitude as we approach this subject is to take the shoes from off our feet. We're not now even dabbling with mere literary structures. We are face to face with the awesome, holy character of God. We take the shoes off our feet. Pray for me, my brothers, lest I say something in the course of my remarks that is unworthy of the glory of God or offensive to his dignity.
But some people there are, are there not? Who repudiate the whole idea that God would punish anybody. They say we can believe in a God of love, but by definition, a God of love would not punish anybody because punishment is inconsistent with love. These pictures, they say, in the book of the Revelation, are absolutely revolting. People being tormented in the presence of God and of the Lamb.
It is, they say, such a revolting picture of God that we cannot accept it as inspired scripture. This must be some Jewish work, unworthy of a place in the holy canon. Let's look at the judgment. And first of all, who they are that executes them there. For they come out, we are told, seven angels from the innermost shrine. They are arrayed in linen, not only pure, but dazzlingly bright.
And around their breasts they are girt about with golden girdle. I don't know what your taste in dress is. I don't know what color would be your favorite color. But even at the level of sheer colors, white, that mixture of all colors, is beautiful, isn't it? Is it not? I remember as a little boy standing in a seaside resort in Britain, and there to entertain the English, and they're easily entertained, they had a fountain, you'll say, a beautiful fountain, and there were colored lights all around it that now and again came on, and the water turned blue and took the shape of mountains, and the water turned green and took the shape of waves of the sea, and the water turned red and purple and scarlet and pink and all the colors of the rainbow, and we little English stood open-mouthed.
And at last it turned absolutely pure, dazzling white, and I can remember to this day the wonderful roar of approval that went up from the crowd. The white was so magnificently. These angels that come out from the temple of God with the bowls of God's wrath are not hags of witches with the pus oozing out of their eyes and their teeth, talons and claws oozing blood. Their clothing is spectacularly beautiful.
But the clothing is only symbolic, isn't it? At the end of this very section of the revelation, we are to read of the Lamb's wife, who has made herself ready, and to her it is granted to be clothed, to clothe herself in linen that is equally pure and brilliantly white. Not some dull white, but brilliant white. And there you have the symbolism explained. Pure linen represents the righteous act. In this case of the saint, but with these angels, representatives of God, the perfect righteousness and justice of God.
The wrath of God is unlike our anger, isn't it? And sometimes we confuse the two. When we think of the wrath of God, we're picturing that emotion that we so often have, muddied, dirted, polluted thing. Those feelings that surge up inside us, all mixed with spite and envy and self-pity and sheer sadism and delight in cruelty, all mixed up, and we try to say it's our just anger, but in our hearts we know it's not pure, brilliantly pure white of sheer justice and righteousness.
God's wrath is like himself, absolutely just. There is no pollutant in it. It isn't a form of losing his temper or his self-control. It is an expression of his brilliantly white, beautiful. And they were girt around their breasts with golden girdle. And of course, the girdle, being so elaborate and seeing so valuable, calls attention to that part of their anatomy.
Angels whose affection, feelings are beautiful and valuable. Praise God for some angels who can really feel. The trouble with our modern world is that in many places we have lost the ability to feel properly. What we take for love and call love very often isn't love at all, but a perversion of that glorious emotion.
We had a court case in Northern Ireland just the other month, and the details were this. There was a soldier and his wife living in the barracks. The soldier became enamored of another woman soldier in the army that wasn't his wife, and they had extensive immoral relationship between the two. The woman who wasn't his wife in the end made friends, apparently, with the soldier's true wife, suggested they went for a walk in the woods.
The woman had prepared a very sharp knife, and when they got into the woods, she took the soldier's wife and slit her throat and killed her. And then she ran out of the woods and hailed a passerby and said there'd been a terrible thing, they had been attacked in the woods. The case came to court, and the jury's ver- jury's verdict was this: it wasn't murder. It wasn't even deliberate murder.
It was simply, you'll see, that he had a passion for the soldier, and love made her do it. When the judge handed out the sentence, it was so small that the murderess herself laughed at the sentence and said it was ridiculously low. She'll be out in a few years, in fact. And the judge wished her well in her future life. And that goes for love. The very notion of love is now perverted in some quarters these days.
But as you see, it is more sympathy with the criminal than it does with the victim. Is love inconsistent with punishment? You may think that this is a modern idea, and that is we look back on the past, and particularly the Bible and the Old Testament, that somehow they were savage times, and the question was never raised then whether love were inconsistent with punishment. Now, of course, the question is raised in the New Te- in the Old Testament itself, isn't it? Pardon me while for five minutes I turn aside to remind you of the fourteenth chapter of the second book of Samuel, where this whole question is discussed in detail in the form of the story of an incident that happened in the life of David.
It is in that part of Samuel that contains a whole list of so-called love stories, though some of them are funny love stories. And here is the story of one of the king's sons. His name was Absalom. One day he rose up and murdered his brother. And being, of course, aware that this was a capital offense in his country, he fled forthwith into exile, lest the king and his officers should catch up with him and punish him with death. At first, the king was very grieved. But then as the years went by, you know how it is, other feelings began to surface in the king's heart.
He was sorry, of course, for his son that had been murdered. It should never have been done. But then the other fellow, the murderer, was his son too, you see. Um, well, uh, you know, can you keep these things up forever? The murderer son, his name was Absalom. He showed no signs whatsoever of repenting, and truth to tell, he never did repent, not even after he was brought back home. But the king's heart began to feel for Absalom, wonder whether he could not bring him back. And the king's commander in chief, his name was Joab, and he saw the situation and he saw how the king's heart was running, and he thought up a scheme that might persuade the king to bring back his son Absalom, the murderer.
So he got a wise woman of Tekoa, and he had her dressed up in black as though she'd been in mourning for a long time, and he sent her into the king to spin a yarn, you'll see. Can you see the woman coming in? Black, disheveled hair. Now and again, the tears managing to come down the old face. All a put up show, of course. But anyway, there it was, and she came into the king and cried to the king, and he said, what is it, my dear? And she said, king, it's terrible, oh, it's terrible. She managed a sob or two. You see, I had two sons, and the one rose up, uh, and uh, until his brother. And please, Your Majesty, uh, I am a widow, my husband's dead, and I just had two sons, and now one of them is dead.
And Your Majesty, the people of my town are coming to me and saying, surrender the other son so that we may execute him for the murder of his brother. And Your Majesty, if they do that, they'll make things doubly worse. I've lost my husband, I've lost one son, and now this punishment business, it's absurd, your majesty, she says. I've had enough grief losing one son, and if they punish him as they say they must, I shall lose the other son, and I shall be utterly bereft. Oh, king, help me, she said. If you will let them carry on with this punishment business, my lamp will be put out completely. And David, who was a kindly man and had never thought of these things in any deep philosophical manner, he said, well, yes, I see your point, my dear.
Yeah, hmm, mm-hmm. Now you come to think about it, this punishment thing would be stupid, wouldn't it? Oh, hadn't thought of that, you know. I tell you what, my dear, go home. We'll see that nobody touches your son, and you, you can keep him, my. And she said, thank you very much. Actually, she said, the king is behaving like that too, isn't he? In refusing to bring back his son Absalom. But anyway, she said, uh, there's another point, your majesty. She said, you'll see. We are as water spilt on the ground. And uh, we can't be gathered up again, can we? So we must learn to accept these things.
I know my poor son, he got murdered, oh poor boy. But punishing the other chap won't do the murdered boy any good, will it? I mean, the thing is done now. You can't undo it. You might as well try to, um, collect water that's been spilt on the ground, your majesty. The thing is done. It's dead, isn't
