Revelation 15:5-16:21: The Seven Bowls: Part One

Outline

• God’s presence
• God’s judgements
• God’s coming

Introduction

The book of Revelation is a book of judgements, it is a story of how God preserves His people and punishes those who reject Him and persecute the church. The question that every interpreter has to answer in studying this book is: who is being judged? Most would agree that the judgement at the end of the book of Revelation is the last judgement and concerns all people, but what all the other judgements? Who are the seals, the trumpets and the bowls against? Some would say Israel and the city of Jerusalem for rejecting their Messiah; others would say Rome and the Roman Empire for its idolatry and persecution of God’s people; others would say, it is the Papacy and the fall of the Roman Catholic Church being indicated; and others, and here I include myself, would say that all the judgements are repeated perspectives on the same end time judgement. This has led to some very inventive and creative puzzle building. I sometimes feel like the book of Revelation is a junk yard of various spare parts, and as interpreters we go in there and we all make up our own inventions and contraptions, many are amazing but how many actually rebuild what the various parts make up?