EPISODE 266 REVELATION CHAPTERS 15 & 16 "Fire and Brimstone"

Welcome to Share the Word. Once upon a time, there were preachers whose sermons used intense, vivid descriptions of hell and eternal damnation to urge repentance, emphasizing God's wrath and the urgent need to escape punishment. What does this have to do with today's episode? Keep listening. Revelation 15 and 16: Fire and Brimstone. When I was in my twenties at the first church where I served as pastor, fresh out of grad school, one of my tasks, once I settled in, was to pay a visit to past members who, for one reason or another, were no longer attending church, you know, to see if I could encourage them to get re-involved using all my youthful charm and enthusiasm.

In that process, I remember stopping to see a couple named Mike and Bertha. They had teens who were coming to our youth group, but the parents were no longer attending church, and it was my mission to find out why. They were gracious that afternoon. We had a nice visit, getting to know each other, and then, when the time seemed right, or as right as it was likely to get, Mike, I really enjoy having your kids in our youth programs. I hope you and Bertha will consider getting back involved so your family can be united in learning and growing in your faith. Mike didn't say anything, but Bertha spoke up and said, Mike doesn't like the kind of namby-pamby preaching that goes on in churches today.

He likes to hear the good old-fashioned fire and brimstone sermons like we used to hear. That surprised me. I looked at Mike, and sure enough, he was nodding in agreement, like she hit the nail right on the head. It surprised me because I knew lots of people do not want to hear about God's judgment. But that was the first, and I think the last time, too, that somebody told me they wanted to hear more fire and brimstone sermons. But hey, if you're like Mike, you've tuned in to the right episode of Share the Word.

By the way, I'm sure you know what fire is, but what is brimstone anyway? Any idea? The phrase fire and brimstone appears 15 times in the King James Version of the Bible, and although most often it's associated with its first occurrence in Genesis 19, that's where it says, The Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities and the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities, even everything that grew on the ground there. Actually, the most frequent use of the phrase is in Revelation, where it occurs seven times.

For example, in chapter 14, verse 9, John tells about an angel in one of his visions who warned, If anybody worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone. And the smoke of that torment will go up forever and ever. Yikes. Or as brimstone itself, both the Old Testament Hebrew word and the Greek word translated with that term have a root meaning associated with sulfur. Fun fact: Do you know that smells lodge in our brains longer than things associated with any other of our senses? That's true.

And I'll bet you've had the experience of noticing a particular smell that suddenly kind of transports you back somewhere. It's called the Proust effect. Odor-linked memories are very enduring, especially ones linked to something in our childhood. When I hear the term fire and brimstone, it takes me back to a specific time and place and smell from my childhood. Every summer when I was 10, 11, 12 years old, I went to a church camp near Blairsville, Pennsylvania. The final leg of the ride to get there was a winding western Pennsylvania two-lane that passed through an area of burning slag dumps.

Mining was still a major industry in that area then, and these large slag piles all along that road were always burning and giving off this strong, acrid odor of sulfur. Burning sulfur can produce a noxious gas and also burning acid when it's mixed with water. The picture of God raining down fire and brimstone, burning sulfur, is a graphic image of extreme judgment in the Bible. In Revelation, it's associated with the judgments on this earth, the final judgments, as well as the final judgment of hell and the lake of fire for God's enemies. Mike was right then, and he's still right now. You could probably visit a hundred evangelical churches over the next hundred Sundays, churches that claim to believe the Bible is God's very word, the only trustworthy source of spiritual truth, without hearing a single sermon on the coming judgment of God.

Although it's a major theme throughout Scripture, and not just in the Old Testament, there is the impression around that God had some kind of a, you know, mood change between the Old and New Testaments when they were written. But the Old Testament God, he's supposed to be the harsh one and more ready to mete out judgment. But the New Testament God, all full of love and mercy. That's not accurate, actually. Yes, the Old Testament has many explicit passages. Listen, here's Isaiah 13, for example.

Wail, for the day of the Lord is near. It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Then the hands will limp, and every man's heart will melt, and they will be terrified. Pain and anguish will seize them. They will writhe like women in labor. They will look at one another in astonishment.

Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, cruel, with fury, with burning anger, to make the land desolate, and He will exterminate sinners from it. In that day, they will look at one another in astonishment. What a line to describe the reaction of all those who never believed judgment would come. Or how about this from Zephaniah chapter 1? A great day of the Lord is near, near and coming quickly. A day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.

I will bring distress on men so that they will walk like blind men because they have sinned against the Lord. Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them on the day of My wrath. Then all the earth will be devoured in the fire of My jealousy, for I will make a complete end of it, indeed a terrifying one, of all the inhabitants of the earth. These passages actually are about the very time John is seeing in his visions, the tribulation time near the end of this age, the great and terrible day of the Lord, as the Old Testament prophets call it. But the New Testament sounds the same alarm. The apostle Paul warned in 1 Thessalonians 5, The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night while they are saying, 'Peace and safety,' destruction will fall on them suddenly, like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.

John is seeing in his visions now when this terrible time finally comes, the day of the Lord finally dawns, the stored up wrath of God finally unleashed, blow after blow on a rebellious world. As the writer of Hebrews said, it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We live in troubled times right now. There's a general sense of unease in the air. When people think about the future, most have many worries. It might be from scientists scaring them, telling us about global warming and the destruction of our environment, or the threats of terrorism they hear on the news, or even nuclear war tensions around the world.

Everything just seems to be ratcheting up, doesn't it? Or our concerns may be more local and more personal, like crime in our community, fear for our family's safety, ever-rising prices undermining our sense of economic security. All these are problems caused by man, and men cannot seem to tame them. But there is something far more frightening about the future than those kind of things, something definitely people should be afraid of. John MacArthur commented on these chapters in Revelation, What should stop the hearts of men as they look forward to future is what God will do. God's judgmental anger and fury is a terrifying reality that looms just over the horizon of human history.

On July 8, 1741, a slight, bespeckled clergyman and theologian named Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon in Enfield, Connecticut, that ignited the First Great Awakening in colonial America, a spiritual revival. It was titled, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. His style was far from theatrical. He read from his notes, which he held close to his face because he had bad eyesight. But the content of his message was intense and filled with scripture. He described how fragile life is and how close we are all to what comes after, that is judgment.

According to reports of witnesses there in that meeting that Sunday, Edwards' depictions, in one illustration he described men as though we are dangling by a thread over the fires of hell. The images he painted were so terrifying that people in the congregation started shaking, shrieking, moaning, feeling the enormity of their sins and the real threat of the wrath of God. People were calling out in the congregation, Oh God, save us! They could feel themselves as though sliding right then into hell, one attender reported. The conviction of God's holiness and coming judgment fell on that audience in that normally staid New England church so heavily that the reaction bordered on hysteria. Edwards' sermon had to be cut short as all the clergy and attendants went down among the people to pray for them and comfort them as they begged for God's forgiveness and to be born again with a new heart.

The spiritual awakening that was ignited that day in Enfield spread among the colonies just prior to the Revolutionary War. And is credited with uniting people in a way that had not existed before and creating a reverence for God that profoundly impacted many of America's founders. But somehow, over the intervening years, we have gone from Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God to Joel Osteen's God Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life. Don't get me wrong, not that he doesn't, but moderns tell only half the Bible's story. Most have edited out of their Bibles the holy God who is angry at sin and sinners and whose wrath is being stored up for the day of coming judgment. We're unfamiliar with a God of vengeance who will send down burning brimstone to cleanse the earth, or even the Jesus who is coming with his holy angels, sickle in hand, to cut down his enemies.

When was the last time any of us heard a sermon about that? At the outset of chapter 15, John writes, Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels who had seven plagues, which are the last, because in them the wrath of God will be finished. Thymios, wrath, translated wrath here. It's a very strong word describing an outburst of anger. In this case, God's righteous anger against the obstinate, rebellious sinners still on the earth and their leader, the Antichrist. And John goes on, I heard a heavenly chorus sing, a choir made up of those, actually, the Antichrist has persecuted, terrorized, killed, martyrs in heaven.

Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty. Righteous and true are your ways, King of the nations. Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. The answer is, when these final judgments have been dumped on the earth, there won't be anybody who won't fear God. Prior judgments have been terrible, but these are described as the undiluted wine of the wrath of God.

What's coming will be God's wrath against sin in full force, and it will not be contained. It will not be limited in any way, as was the case with the trumpet judgments earlier, when only a third of the earth was affected, if you remember. The bowl judgments will affect the whole planet. After these things I looked, and the temple in heaven was opened, and seven angels who had the seven plagues came out of the temple, clothed in linen, clean and bright, girded around their chests with golden sashes. And one of the four living creatures gave them seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God. And the temple was filled with smoke from His glory and from His power.

The word translated bowls there is one for shallow bowls or pans, not something deep to pour slowly from, but shallow to dump quickly from. The final seven judgments will apparently fall quickly, rapid fire, one after the other in the months just before the second coming of Christ. And here's what John saw. When the first angel dumped out his bowl on the earth, it created loathsome and malignant sores on all those who had the mark of the beast who worshiped. When the second angel dumped out his bowl, it was into the sea, and all the waters became like the blood of a dead man, he writes, meaning, I guess, thick, coagulated, so that every living thing in the sea died. Imagine every fish and creature of the oceans floating to the surface, rotting on the surface of the earth's dead sea.

When the third angel dumped his bowl, it was into the rivers and the springs of fresh waters, and they also became blood. And I heard that angel, John writes, saying, Righteous are you, who are and who were, O Holy One, for judging these things, for they have poured out the blood of the saints and the prophets, and so you have given them blood to drink, and they deserve it. And I heard voices from the altar in heaven. These are the voices of those martyred ones, saying, Yes, O Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments. When the fourth angel dumped out his bowl, it was upon the sun, and it was given to it to scorch men with fire, with fierce heat. Nevertheless, John says, they continued to blaspheme the name of God, who has power over these plagues, and would not repent.

When the fifth angel dumped out his bowl, it was on the throne of the beast, the Antichrist, and his kingdom became darkened, and men gnawed their tongues because of pain and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pain and their sores, yet they would not repent. When the sixth angel dumped out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates, its waters were dried up so that the way would be prepared for the kings from the east. I imagine the intense heat wave that had been unleashed earlier will melt the snowcaps, melt the snow in the Turkish-Armenian mountains where the headwaters of the Euphrates form. That would flood the river valley in Iraq, the Euphrates River Valley, but God will dry it up to enable the great army John had seen in a vision earlier to continue their advance on Israel.

I'm speculating now, but the Antichrist has had several years to bring the peace and security he promised, and things are only getting worse. Are the kings of the East coming to try and overthrow him? We're not told. But they are being drawn to Israel in preparation for Armageddon. While at the same time, the demonic entities that possess the Antichrist and the false prophet, the dragon, will enable them to deceive the rest of the world's leaders, their allies, to also send their forces to Israel to support the Antichrist regime. The world's armies will be gathered to Israel by the end of the Tribulation era.

When the seventh angel dumps his bowl, all kinds of calamities will strike the earth at once. An unprecedented worldwide earthquake will shake the planet to its foundations. Islands will dissolve into the bloody seas. Mountains crumble and collapse. Giant crushing hail will fall from the sky. Huge fissures will open in the earth.

Cities will break apart. As he's watching all this devastation, a loud voice, and this is the voice of God Himself, calls out from His throne in heaven, It is finished. It is done, meaning this is the grand finale. This is the end of the world as we've known it. God's long stored up wrath has now been expended. Have you had enough of fire and brimstone now?

If Mike were here listening to all this, would he give a standing ovation, or would he feel sick and confused and shaken at all these images? You see, the truth is, most preachers are not going to bring messages on such parts of the Bible because, frankly, they're too disturbing. We hardly know what to say about them. God's absolute holiness and righteousness aroused because of sin and rebellion, they are being held back now by His patience and mercy. But nevertheless, His wrath is being stored up. His righteous anger is building.

Understand, this has been going on for thousands of years of human history, and this is a crucial aspect of God's character we simply do not understand. Because, I can only surmise this, we are not absolutely holy and righteous, nowhere even close. We have absolutely no frame of reference to even grasp God's hatred of sin and evil. This paradox has had me trying to wrap my mind around it many times. The same God who is absolutely holy and righteous and destined in His divine fury to mete out the kind of devastation on sin and evil as Revelation describes here, is also the same God of great love and mercy that sent His own Son to die for our sins, to make the way of escape for sinners like us. And even as the coming judgments have been falling down, which John has seen, He has still been sending His witnesses, hasn't He?

And angels even to preach the gospel and plead with people to repent and to escape His own wrath. That's such a wild thought. As uncomfortable as it certainly is, these two aspects of God's character are very real. Although we only hear about the one these days, it seems, we only hear about the love and the mercy. But friends, the holiness and righteousness that will drive Almighty God to purge the world and slaughter His enemies is no less a part of our God's unchanging character. The holy angels in heaven know it.

Did you hear them calling out, Your judgments are righteous and true, O God. The people on the earth deserve it. They know our Creator far better than we do. Our God is a consuming fire. I have nothing more I can add to this, honestly, except maybe this exhortation from the Epistle of Jude. Keep yourselves safe in God's love.

Show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. The fire and brimstone are no idle threat, friends. The only safe refuge is the cross of Christ.