Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #2 of Revelation, chapter 16, and we are going to read Revelation 16:1-2:

And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth. And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

I will stop reading there. Once again, this is the time of God’s wrath. It is the time in which He has given His messengers seven vials full of the seven last plagues. Back in Revelation 15:1, it said, “for in them is filled up the wrath of God.” These vials are given to the “seven messengers,” which points to the perfection or fullness of the messengers of God; they are the reapers. We saw that they are the true believers. They are clothes in pure and white linen, which we saw is the “righteousness of saints,” in Revelation 19:8. They are now sent and commanded: “Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.” This means that when we go forth and hand out tracts, as the EBible Fellowship team did when they went to Quito, Ecuador and passed out thousands of tracts, we were doing exactly what God would have His people to do in the Day of Judgment. Each tract they distributed was a fulfillment of verses like these, as God says, “Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.” The vials have to do with the Word of God, just as the pouring out of the Holy Spirit during the church age or the pouring out of the Holy Spirit during the Latter Rain involved the sharing of the Word of God.

Likewise, the Word of God, the Bible, is now pouring out wrath and judgment because it is the day of the punishment of sinners, so when we share what the Bible says, we are pouring out wrath. The wrath is not coming forth from the individual believer, in the sense that we have any anger in our hearts. We are not to be wrathful toward anyone. We are not to point the finger and judge anyone. The commandments of God, which directs the course of our lives and how we relate to other people remains in effect – we are to love our neighbors and love our enemies. We are to love all people. We are to be kind and gentle. The servant of the Lord is not to “strive” or fight or argue. We do not point the finger at anyone and say, “You are under the wrath of God and you are being punished.” That is not our role. We simply share what the Bible says and let the Bible do the judging. We let Christ, who is the Word, do the judging. We are messengers. We are simply carriers of the vial of this message of God’s wrath to the world. So we very gently share information with the individual walking down the street.

What is in our minds as that person walks toward us? Do we think, “Let me hand this person a tract that says there is no more salvation, so they can experience God’s wrath upon them and they can be judged by the Word of God”? That is not our mindset. The mindset is, “Maybe this person walking toward me is one of the great multitude God saved out of the Great Tribulation period. Could it be that the Lord had mercy on this person? I am commanded to feed sheep, so let me share this information with this person, with the hope that maybe this is one of God’s elect.” The person takes the tract and we have no way of knowing if they are God’s elect, just like we could not know before May 21, 2011 when the door of salvation was still open. When someone walked toward us, if you look at the odds, the overwhelming majority of people would remain unsaved. Although God saved a great multitude out of the whole of mankind, it is still a remnant. We were not thinking, “This person coming toward me is likely one of those the Bible will condemn, so let me hand the tract to this individual even though there is very little hope.” Our mindset then was, “Oh, I hope God will save this person, so I will give this person a tract and maybe God can use His Word that is contained within this tract to spark a new soul within that person.” So we shared the tract and we did not know if the person was elect or not elect; we left that with God.

It is exactly the same thing today. We have truths from the Bible in our tracts and as a person comes toward us on the street we have no idea what the spiritual condition of that person may be, so I can hope, “Oh, Lord, I hope this is a person you have saved.” That is the only difference in our thinking. It is not that God will save this person, but, perhaps, God did already save this person, so I look forward with hope that this person did become saved and the tract will serve to spiritually nourish the individual. This is the idea and this is why the true believers are sharing this information.

At the same time (and only God could have designed this program) as we share this information and we prophesy, once again, to the nations of the world the things we have learned from the Bible in the Day of Judgment, we can carry forth the Word of God without breaking God’s commandment in other areas in regard to judging our fellow man. So God designed this simultaneous command to both feed His sheep and to publish the things concerning Babylon’s fall and pour out the vials of the wrath of God, going forth as reapers. This dual command to feed the elect and publish the information that will condemn unsaved mankind has allowed the true believer to continue on with an attitude of love toward his fellow man. From our perspective, we can share this information with kindness and hope because we do not know who God has saved. We do not enter into wrathful or vengeful thinking in any way. We are not permitted to do something like that. There is one Lawgiver, the Bible says, and there is one Judge and it is not us. It is only Eternal God.

Let us go back to Revelation 16:2:

And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth;

This is the second time this was said because it was just said, “Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.” In these two verses, God is stating His command and then repeating that the target or object of His wrath is the earth; it is the pouring out of the wrath of God upon the earth. The Greek word translated as “earth” is “ge” and it is also translated at times as “land” or “country” or “ground,” but most often as “earth.” How do we know? What if it said to pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the ground or upon the land? Could that not refer to the churches? Is it possible it refers to a particular land and not the entire earth? The answer is “No,” because the context normally determines whether it should be translated as “land” or “ground” or “earth.” Oftentimes, when the Greek word “ge” is translated as “land,” it would be in the context of a specific land, like the land of Judah or the land of Sodom or the land of Egypt, and so on. So the translators knew that this word was being used along with specific places like Judah or Sodom or Egypt, so they narrowed the focus of the word because it was conditioned by this other information.

But when there is no other information (such as the name of a country or city), it is translated as “earth” and, here, it is correctly translated as “earth” and it is revealing to us that the seven vials full of the seven last plagues are targeting the entire earth and not just the churches, even though the churches are part of Satan’s kingdom of Babylon and they are also experiencing the wrath of God in the Day of Judgment. But the target is not limited to the churches, but it is all the unsaved people in the world; it is the entire earth that is under judgment in the Day of Judgment. This becomes important because it says in Revelation 16:1: “And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.” All seven messengers are carrying a vial and all seven vials are to be poured out upon the target of the earth. As I mentioned, this will be helpful a little later on when we get to the seventh vial when some of the language might make us think it is, perhaps, judgment on the churches. God is very clear that it is judgment on the entire earth.

Again, it says in Revelation 16:2:

And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

“There fell a noisome and grievous sore.” Let us start by looking at the word for “sore” and then we will look at the words “noisome” and “grievous.”

The word for “sore” is Strong’s #1668 and it is only found three times in the New Testament. It is found here in verse 2 and it is also found in Revelation 16:11. I will read Revelation 16:10-11:

And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

The only other time that this Greek word translated as “sore” is found is in the Gospel of Luke in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. It says in Luke 16:21:

And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

This referred to Lazarus and it is the same Greek word. There is a related word, Strong’s #1669, and that is found in the previous verse in Luke 16:20:

And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,

Then the dogs came and licked his “sores.” These two words are closely related. So we have these two references and then we have the two references in Revelation, chapter 16. We wonder what the connection is between the pouring out of the vials upon the people who worship the beast and his image in the Day of Judgment with Lazarus, who is a picture of the true believers. Lazarus was a poor man and a beggar. He had nothing of this world and he was laid at the gate of the rich man. The rich man had everything and Lazarus desired to be fed with some of the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Lazarus was at the gate of the rich man and he never enjoyed the privileges and pleasures the rich man enjoyed while he lived. Lazarus had affliction and torment.

The word “noisome” in Revelation 16 is Strong’s #2556 and it is normally translated as “evil.” For instance, it says in Romans 9:11:

(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil…

This is a fairly common translation. So in our verse, it could really say, “And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous (evil) sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.”

What is interesting is that this Greek word translated as “noisome” is also found in Luke 16, in verse 25, so since this is bringing us back to the same passage, I want to pick up the context and we can understand what is going on here. I will read from Luke 16:19-25:

There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

The word “evil” is our word translated as “noisome.” We wonder what the connection is. Lazarus, a picture of the true believers, was laid at the gate of the rich man. The rich man was enjoying the riches of this life, but Lazarus was not enjoying the riches of this earthly life at all. He was without. He was at the gate and he was not entering in. It really is a picture of the true believers that are outcasts of this world. We are part of the world, in the sense that we are people that walk around this world and we have families and jobs. Yes, we are part of the world in that way, but in a significant way, the world wants nothing to do with us. They often separate the child of God from their company. And here is Lazarus, who in his lifetime experienced “evil” things – these “noisesome” things like being a castaway, someone outside of the company of mankind. He is despised and rejected of men because of the Word that Lazarus is identified with, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Word, and, therefore, Lazarus experienced the same thing for the Word’s sake.

But how does that relate to the pouring out of the seven vials? Remember what Abraham’s response was: “Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” The “evil” things that Lazarus experienced are not happening any more. He is in Abraham’s bosom, which indicates salvation, so he is in the kingdom of heaven, the most important thing. He is with God. Then the contrast is made: “But now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” For the rich man, it can now be said, “You are not in the kingdom of heaven. Just as Lazarus was at your gate, now you are at the gate of heaven outside the door, but the door is shut and you are not permitted to enter in. You are the outcast. You are the one that God has separated from Himself and now you are experiencing the ‘sores’ and you are the object of an angry God.”

I think that is how we can relate this, when we read in our verse, “and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast.” Now the word “grievous,” is also translated as “evil” or “bad” or “wicked.” It is a different Greek word, “Strong’s #4190, but it just adds to the awfulness of the spiritual condition of these men which have the “mark of the beast” and worshipped his image. Who would that be? If we go back to Revelation, chapter 13, when the beast came up out of the sea, we read in Revelation 13:4:

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

Then it said, in Revelation 13:7-8:

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

All that dwell on the face of the earth shall worship him – every unsaved person in the world – that had received the mark of the beast, which indicates they are the part of mankind that are in the kingdom of Satan. Ultimately, they did homage to him and worshipped him during Satan’s period of rule during the Great Tribulation.