"And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels, "Go your way, pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth." {2}And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth, and there fell noisome and grievous sores upon the men who had the mark of the beast, and upon them who worshiped his image. {3} And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became like the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea."

Well, the Bible tells us that God is slow to anger, it does not tell us He will never get angry, it would seem there are limits. This is the 16th chapter of Revelation and it comes after a long history of human abuse of man's cruelty to man, and of man's destruction of the earth, of his own environment of the foulest evils of man, and finally, at long last, God moves! What could justify God's anger? What could be bad enough to warrant this terrible punishment? Isn't God a kind God? Isn't He patient? Isn't He loving? How is this consistent with a merciful and loving God, that He would have His wrath and He would pour out this wrath upon people and upon mankind?

People want to know. This is one of the most common questions I get asked is, how could a kind and loving God allow this to take place? For me, the modern epitome of evil was Adolf Hitler and the third Reich.

Not long ago, I had just finished watching again portions of one of those movies that dealt with the Holocaust and with the things that were done and the cold rationale of the Nazis as they disposed of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, NO, millions of human lives, as they shot people in the back of the head, as they lined people up six deep to do a little experiment to see how many people they could kill with one bullet, as they jerked children from their mother's arms and threw them onto a heap of dead bodies, as they stood there and tried to burn bodies in pits, as they burned them in the crematories.

We wonder, where is God? How come He lets this happen? Where was He when this was going on? We want God to do something about it. We want Him to stop this type of thing. But when we come to Revelation, we should not be asking the question then, how could a kind and loving and righteous God, do this kind of thing? Because, in fact, this is the kind of thing we want God to do, to evil wicked men.

I think it's important that we understand the central meaning of these terrible events in Revelation 16, and it is terrible. Is it right for God to do this?

In verse four, "The third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and the fountains of waters, and they became blood. {5} And I heard the angel of the waters say, "You are righteous. Oh Lord, which are, and were, and shall be, because you have judged this. {6} For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink, for they are worthy." {7} And I heard another out of the altar say, "Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments."

So God is righteous to judge what he has judged and His punishment is fair. The rationale for the punishment is plain, these men have shed the blood of innocent people. So, "You have given them blood to drink for they deserve it."

There is an important symbolism in justice and vengeance and actually paying back on things that one takes back to the person what he perpetrated on someone else. Maybe you recall the expression, "An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, life for life." It's the whole question of the balance of justice and of judgment.

Now we know that there's a lot of symbolism in the book of Revelation, so we can't be exactly certain how this will play out, but one thing is clear, there will be a just and a balanced retribution brought upon the heads of the men who perpetrate such evil.

But is this a good thing? Is this something that as a Christian I should desire or is it just mere vengeance that I want?

Revelation 16 , "You are righteous. Oh Lord," {5} "who are, and were and shall be, because you have judged this, {6} For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink, because they were worthy," and they deserve it, {7} "And I heard another voice out of the altar say, "Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments."

In the modern arguments about capital punishment, there's a common thread. The idea is that capital punishment is nothing more than just vengeance and that vengeance is unworthy of us, and the desire for vengeance is something that especially as Christians we should be above, we should not be going around wanting vengeance on people. Now it's odd to me, in all of my listening to the debate on capital punishment that this argument is rarely addressed. It's tossed out there, but debaters move right on the questions having to do, well with deterrence and protection of the public. In other words, if we kill this guy, he'll never kill again. By killing him, we will deter other people who might kill someone else. Having the death penalty on the books and knowing you could die for it, if you get caught, is something that will keep people from killing people. The argument rages back and forth on deterrence and all of the rehabilitation arguments and the fact that we shouldn't waste this human life. We should try to save and rehabilitate it and go on.

There is a tacit assumption among Christians and others, that vengeance is a bad thing. Aren't we as Christians supposed to forgo vengeance? Aren't we supposed to do good to our enemies, to bless them that curse us. Yes, we are supposed to do all those things, but have you ever thought that if vengeance is a bad thing, how can you account for God's vengeance?

There is a little short passage in the 12th chapter of Romans. It begins in verse 17 and it's an instruction to a Christian person and Paul says this, "Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men."

In other words, if someone does evil to me, I'm not supposed to turn around and do an equivalent evil back to that other person. That is a wonderful good thing.

Paul then says, {18} "If it's possible, as much as lies in you, live peaceably with all men."

I'm glad he put the "If it's possible" there because sometimes it's not. Then Paul said this, {19} "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves."

Now there, see, there is the commandment from God, coming through Paul, that says, we are not supposed to be interested in vengeance. Well no, it doesn't say that. What it says is, "We should not avenge ourselves." Listen to the verse as it reads in its entirety, "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," says the Lord.""

Oh! Well then, the reason why I should not exact vengeance on someone else, is not because vengeance is bad, but because it's not my right. It's not for me to do, it is not granted to me to be the one who executes vengeance. The truth is, there's not a word in the Bible to condemn vengeance as such, only the exaction of private vengeance.

Think about it, if someone kills someone who is dear to me, and I go and I kill him, I have killed someone who is dear to somebody else, and that somebody else may come back and take my life away, and then someone who loves me may go and take their life away, and then what do we have? Then we have a vendetta. We have a family feud, not the kind that goes on television but a blood feud, that sometimes get involved with families for generations and involve the lives of dozens and sometimes hundreds of people.

In fact, whole nations have gone to war for vengeance and some people may even say that the death of all the Japanese who died in Hiroshima, died because of a lust for vengeance on the part of the American people.

But remember, the Bible does not condemn vengeance, only the pursuing of personal vengeance. The reason, because vengeance belongs to God alone.

Now what you also need to realize though, is that vengeance is the heart and core of any system of justice. Without vengeance, there is no justice. Now this is not an Old Testament / New Testament argument.

Now someone may want to come along and tell you, "Well, in the Old Testament you did vengeance but in the New Testament you don't!

Well, Paul's statement in Romans was in the New Testament, but he was quoting the Old Testament. He said "It is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay," saith the Lord." (Deuteronomy 32:35, Romans 12:17-19).

So here in the New Testament Paul is quoting the Old Testament, he saw no difference in the requirements. Back in Leviticus in the 19th chapter and verse 18, God says this, "You shall not avenge." So the ancient Israelite was as much commanded not to avenge himself as any Christian.

{18} ""You shall not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself" I am the LORD."

My goodness, could anything be more New Testament and that? "You shall not bear a grudge, you shall not avenge, you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Well I guess when Jesus came along and told us to love our neighbor as ourselves, He wasn't necessarily coming up with a new idea was He?

Then there is Luke 18 and verse 7, "And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night to Him, though he bear long with them. {8) I tell you, He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?"

Now what Jesus is saying here is simply this, vengeance is a function of justice, but justice belongs to God, and God alone has the wisdom, the insight to really direct that justice and that judgment upon the heads of men, and it is not for us to go out and avenge ourselves, it is for us to take it to God and ask God to avenge us, to do it for us, to do what needs to be done, to execute judgment.

And so Jesus says, "God will avenge His servants." And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will He find people, who are willing to wait on Him. "Well, how long will I have to wait Lord? This evil was done to me today, why can't it be avenged tomorrow?" Well, it will be, but it may be a tomorrow a little further along in the future than you might prefer for it to be.

The statue of justice pictures a woman holding a pair of scales and wearing a blindfold. It depicts the two fundamental principles of justice, one, the scales must be balanced and two, they must be balanced without respect of persons. It doesn't mean that justice is blind, only that justice does not look at the people who are putting the weights in the scale and say "Well, this person is more important than the other. I will make judgment this way or that way." The scales must be balanced and they must be balanced without respect of persons.

Some time ago I read of the story of where, a young boy, I say young boy, he was probably in his late teens. He was old enough to be working as a clerk at a convenience store. He was working there one night, taking money for gasoline and for a quart of milk and what have you, and some guy comes into the store, sticks a gun in his face and says, "Give me all the money!" The kid ran the cash register open, gave him all the money and stood there with his hands up. The hold up man, who was a year or two older than the boy standing there, put the gun to his face and shot the kid dead, right where he stood. He did not have to, he was up there on the security camera anyway, so he was not getting rid of any witnesses. It was just a cold and calculated murder. The kid was brought to court. I thought to myself, "What if I were on the jury, I'm sitting back there on this jury and I've seen the facts of the case. I know he is guilty, I know he did it. I know he did it maliciously. I know he did it deliberately, no questions and I know that the law of the land, and in fact, the law of God calls for the death of this 21 or 22-year-old shooter, who is sitting in the courtroom alongside of his lawyer, wearing a turtleneck sweater and looking very normal.

Would I, as a member of the jury, be prepared to give him 10 years? Life? The electric chair? Death by injection?

Well, I know what ought to be done, but I will tell you, I can understand how hard it would be to do it, but I have to think about the parents of this boy who was killed, who were in the courtroom, every day of the trial, of this hoodlum who had killed their son. They were there every day and I think what the parents might want to know, well, put yourself in their shoes, if you could, and ask, "Just what value does this justice system place on the life of my son? What is my son's life worth? What's it going to take to balance the scales? This killer has taken the young life of a kid who was bound for college. A smart kid who might have gotten scholarships. Who knows, this kid may have been the one that ultimately found a cure for breast cancer. Who knows what he might have been and what he might've done for the world, of what this stupid fool who blew his head off, for money, or for fun, what that killer took away from society as a whole. What shall we do? Give him life in prison, or will he be out on parole in what eight years?

Here's my question, will your son come back to life in eight years? How about 28 years of a prison term? Or when, he goes out on parole, will it bring your son back to life so that there's a balance between your son being dead for eight years and this kid being in jail for eight years?

You know any system of justice must place a value on human life, and we've got to say, just how valuable we think that life is!

In the Old Testament, if a man stole a sheep, he had to restore it, depending on the circumstances, two sheep for a sheep, or three or four. He had to actually give it back, and if he didn't have anything, he was sold into slavery and the money went to pay back the owner for what was stolen from him. In other words, this justice system placed a value on sheep.

What's the value of a life of a man? Well, the Bible says, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life." It's a funny thing, in the argument on capital punishment, how often the people who are opposed to it, are opposed to it on biblical grounds, at lease they seem to be, when in actual fact the Bible seems to have no problem whatsoever with capital punishment.

Well understand this, any system of justice must place a value on human life and to let a murderer off with eight actual years in prison says, "that a human life is worth eight years." Any system of government that will not, or cannot balance the scales of justice without respect of persons is impotent or corrupt, and it does not deserve to survive. Think about that for a moment!

Paul has some what to say about this question and it goes on from personal vengeance, in the way a little bit from God's vengeance and deals with how do we make it in this world?

In the 13th chapter of Romans, and I'm beginning in verse one, "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God."

You may not have known it, but the expression "the powers that be" made it into our language from the King James Bible.

"The powers that be are ordained of God." What he is saying here is that the civil government under which you live, and in Paul's case it was Rome, mind you, so let's not talk about whether or not it was a godly system of government. The government of Rome, according to Paul, was ordained or designated or permitted or legitimized, if that's the word you want, by God. In other words, civil government is legitimate in the eyes of God.

Verse 2, "Whosoever therefore resists the power, resists the ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation or judgment."

Now that is a sobering thing and we already know that we ought to obey God rather than men, but most of the time, when we find ourselves in conflict with the government, God doesn't care. God doesn’t mind that we obey the government. The government says "Thou shalt not kill," just like God says, "Thou shalt not kill," so if you kill, the government is probably going to exact your life and God will not stop it and God won't mind.

In fact, it's a central part of justice, that here is a government that says a human life is worth a human life.

"Whoever resists the power," now there is a funny thing about this too, that you ought to know, there are those who think that the book of Romans was written sometime after the burning of Rome, and when Rome was burned, a lot of Christians who believed that Rome was Babylon and hated Rome and everything that Rome stood for, were actually seen rejoicing and celebrating, maybe even a little dancing in the streets at the time the city of Rome was burned. A lot of people saw that and talked about it and before long the rumor was going around that the Christians were actually involved in the burning of Rome, and so predictably, a lot of Christians were rounded up and a lot of them lost their lives, over that little indiscretion, perhaps and there are those who think that when Paul wrote this, that he was trying to tell these people, "Don't get involved in civil disobedience, don't get out there and put yourself against the civil government. It is a legitimate authority in the eyes of God."

"For rulers," Paul said in verse three, "are not a terror to good works, but to the evil."

And by and large that's true. I mean, where are you going to go in government to find a civil ordinance against good works? What government is against you taking a meal over to a hungry family and then maybe bringing a sack of groceries to their house? What government is opposed to your helping someone with their rent lest they get thrown out of their house? Where are the laws against good works? Rulers are not a terror to good works and you know that was by and large, for the most part true, of civil Rome. The fact is that in most cases it has not been the civil governments that have so much been opposed to God's people or the saints. It's been religious people.

When you read through your New Testament, you will find that most of the persecution that fell on the church fell from religious people, not from the state.

Continuing in verse 3, "Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Will you then not be afraid of the power? Do what is good and you shall have praise for what you have done."

That's good, logical, common sense.

Paul continues in verse 4, "He is the minister of God." Now that doesn't mean a clergyman, of course, it means "He is a servant of God to you for good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain."

The sword! Well yeah, what he is saying is simply this, "The civil government has the use of coercive power, that is of violent force, the ability to use force, and even deadly force." The sword, in a sense, is a symbol of deadly force. He does not bear that in vain, he will use it!

Continuing in verse 4, "He is the servant of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil."

The civil government is the servant of God to execute revenge on people that do evil.

Well, you know when someone perpetrates evil, some guy breaks into the house of a little lady and beats her up real bad and steals the stuff she's got and goes away. I mean, who's going to avenge this little old lady? Who's going to execute wrath upon the person that did that? I can't do it. You can't do it.

You can't have private citizens doing that or the first thing you know anarchy develops and people start carrying out private grudges and executing them. No, that type of anarchy comes about because governments fail, because justice systems are not fair, because they don't take care of the weak and the downtrodden and when people see that they lose confidence in their government and they go out and begin to take matters into their own hands and before long, nations, governments, kingdoms, even empires, collapse.

Justice and fairness are the foundation stones of any successful or enduring kingdom or government.

And so Paul concluded this little section by saying in verse 5, "For that reason, you had better be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."

Obey the civil government, if you don't, the civil government is going to get you!

So now let's return to the book of Revelation, and to a God who is ready to exact vengeance. He has waited a long time to do it and He can no longer let it pass.

Verse eight of Revelation 16, "And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. {9} And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which had the power over these plagues and they didn't repent, to give him the glory."

They didn't repent. After all of this, they didn't turn around.

"And the fifth angel," {10} "poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness and they gnawed their tongues for pain, {11} And blasphemed the God of heaven because of the pain and the sores and they did not repent of their deeds."

You know this is something to consider, the objective of what God is doing here, is not rehabilitation, if it were, it failed. The objective was justice!

"And the sixth angel," {12}"poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. {13} And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the Dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. {14} For they are the spirits of demons, working miracles and they go forth to the kings of the earth and the whole world, to gather them together to the battle of that great day of God Almighty."

You and I know it is the battle of Armageddon.

And then Jesus says in verse 15, "Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame. {16} And He gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue called Armageddon."

All these nations will gather themselves together to fight against God. Plainly, they do not realize, what they are up against.

"And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air, and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne saying, "It is done." {18} And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. {19} And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath."

But the story of Babylon will have to wait till next time. Until then, remember, this is Ronald Dart saying, "You were Born to Win!"

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This article was transcribed with

minor editing from a Born to Win Radio Program by: Ronald L. Dart

Titled: The Book of Revelation -Program #22

Transcribed by: bb 01-14-25

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