The Seventh Bowl: Great Earthquake; the Great City Divided and Babylon Remembered; Cataclysmic Events (verses 17-21)

“Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done!’ 18 And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. 19 Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. 20 Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.”

When the seventh bowl is poured out “into the air,” the voice that “came out of the temple in heaven”—and remember, that is the voice of God—declared, “It is done!” What is in view here? Well, the work of the plagues is finalized, it is finished. In Revelation, chapter 6, verse 12, and again in chapter 11, verse 13, the lightnings, voices, thunderings and earthquakes indicate God’s judgment.

The great city of Babylon, representing all evil, or, perhaps, as we have discussed before, maybe for those 1^st Century readers, they had in view the Empire of Rome, but the great city of Babylon falls, along with “the cities of the nations,” [verse 19]. God gives to Babylon the judgment that she is due.

The islands and the mountains flee away, [verse 20]. Hail, the weight of a talent—roughly a hundred pounds—“fell upon men,” [verse 21]. That simply indicates the great destroying character of this judgment.

So, the pouring out of the seventh bowl is accompanied, once again, by men’s hardened hearts, and “Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great,” [verse 21b].

Well, those are the seven bowls of God’s wrath. I wanted to say a little more about this idea of “Armageddon.” It’s one that, of course, we hear about a great deal. Perhaps, there is not a lot of truth about many of the things that we hear. Let me make a few comments about this.

Various Thoughts and Teachings About Armageddon

What I’d like to do is examine several of the various popular thoughts and teachings about Armageddon. We certainly won’t cover them all, because there are a myriad of them. There, indeed, is a wide variation to this battle and the way this is interpreted.

This is depicted in the Scriptures as a battle between the forces of Satan and the forces of the Messiah—the forces of good against the forces of evil. But, it’s in the details of how it is described and how it is thought of that these popular thoughts and teachings spring up.

First of all, there are those who think of it as a battle between two groups, or nations, which exist today. Those individuals with that point of view endeavor to identify those nations. It is a view that has been around for a long time, and because of that, the nations have been identified, and then re-identified and continue to be identified.

There’s a second view, that Armageddon is interpreted as “the last great battle” during the so-called “Rapture,” immediately preceding the establishment of the “millennial Kingdom of Christ,” as He will reign upon the earth. And the wicked nations, led by the anti-Christ, will come up against the city of Jerusalem, and Christ, with His saints, will suddenly come down and rescue the Jews. According to this view, this battle will literally take place at the site of the Meggedo in Palestine.

A third popular view is referred to as the “Continuous Historical School.” That sees the book of Revelation as a gradual unfolding of the church, or, the pattern of church history. Armageddon is interpreted as being a struggle between the Roman Catholic church and the faithful of the Lord, in which the Roman Catholic church will be completely overthrown. Therefore, this battle would be a future battle. Preterits hold that this is the symbolic representation of the struggle between paganism and the Gospel of Christ, which was fulfilled when Christianity conquered at the time of Constantine and the heathen began to be converted en masse to Christianity. According to this view, therefore, it has nothing to do with the end, but has already been fulfilled.

Others hold that this is a symbolic battle having nothing to do with any kind of temporal warfare. It represents the struggle between all the hosts of wickedness and the Son of God. The context in which this passage occurs would indicate that this IS the final and decisive battle between God and His Messiah and Satan and his angels. Whatever may have been the struggles that have taken place through the ages, this is kind of a climaxing struggle. The dragon, the beast, the false prophet, those who wear the mark of the beast, the harlot of Babylon, all of these are described in the book of Revelation as the enemies of God, as the enemies of Christ. They are the forces of evil. They are aligned against God, His Messiah and those who are His people—His followers.

The message of the battle of Armageddon is that, in the end good will prevail; good will overcome evil; Christ and those aligned with Him will be triumphant in the end. That is the message here of the imagery regarding the battle of Armageddon.