Revelation 16:1-21

What Fulfilled Prophecies Should Teach Us about the Future

By Joe Haynes

July 21, 2021

My wife and I have a Kia minivan. It comes with a lot of great safety features, which definitely influenced our decision to buy this van. One of those safety features though that we tend to take for granted is the mirrors located on both front doors. They are nearly useless if you use them wrong but if you use them as intended they are very helpful. In fact, it’s funny how much you miss those mirrors if one of them is broken. When you’re sitting in the driver’s seat, you almost always look forward because you spend most of your time driving forward. But when you need to reverse, or when you just need to know what’s around you, then those mirrors are important. Studying the Book of Revelation is a little bit like driving in my minivan. Most of the time we go forward but if we forget to look back from time to time it could actually hurt our progress. The more I’ve studied Revelation, especially these last number of sessions in chapter 16, I’ve been feeling more and more need to check the mirrors. We’ve covered so much ground in our study that I think we need to spend some time looking back. We need to get our bearings and get a better idea of our present location in light of the progress we’ve made and in light of our current surroundings. I think if we take the time to do this it will help us in our progress.

Whenever we talk about the bigger picture in the whole book of Revelation, we need to remember the three sets of seven that make up the basic skeleton of the book: the seven seals on the scroll that the Lamb opens—the first six in chapter 6 and the seventh in chapter 8; when the seventh seal is opened, seven angels appear with seven trumpets and they blow those seven trumpets—the first 6 in chapters 8-9 and the seventh in chapter 11; the next set of seven appears in chapter 15 when seven more angels appear with seven bowls of God’s wrath, also called, “seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished” (15:1)—those seven bowls of the wrath of God that are the final plagues are each poured out in chapter 16. That’s a simple look at the main structure of Revelation but let’s not forget that each of those seals and trumpets and bowls symbolically predicted real events that must happen on earth. And we learned from Revelation 1:1 that those events were going to start happening very soon after John wrote the Book of Revelation. The 3 sets of seven symbolic predictions weren’t going to happen all at once—they are revealed in sets of seven, and they are numbered, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh—for the seals on the scroll, for the trumpets, and for the bowls, because there is an order to them.

Moreover, even the 3 sets themselves are in order: the next trumpets are introduced only after the seventh seal is opened, and likewise the bowls are only introduced after the seventh trumpet is blown. You’ve probably heard some pastors teach that each set of seven covers the same events, as if they are three parallel series rather than three consecutive series. But that seems to ignore the author’s intent that they be taken in the order they come. It makes better sense of the obvious structure of Revelation to interpret these in the order John presents them: three consecutive sets of numbered predictions in order. So they don’t all happen at once, or even in the space of a short time like seven years at the end of world history. No, they happen in order but they started happening “soon” as verse 1 said: "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place." (Rev 1:1 ESV) And again, John was told in Revelation 4:1 that the things he was about to be shown would actually start to happen after he saw his vision: "And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this,'" (Rev 4:1 ESV) John had his vision in 95AD. So “after this” means that his readers should expect the symbolic predictions in the seals, the trumpets, and the bowls to at least start being fulfilled very quickly, around the end of the first century.

Whenever I have to visit a doctor’s office and they have one of those anatomy charts on the wall, I find it fascinating to study. You know, where the overlay labels where all the organs are on the body —the liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, etc. It’s so strange to see a picture of what’s on the inside of our bodies. But you can picture the structure of Revelation like that—an overlay you place on top of history that shows you what God’s Word has revealed.  The seals, the trumpets, and the bowls add prophetic labels to events we can read about in history and they reveal that God has a purpose and plan in those events. They reveal order behind what otherwise might seem random and they also put events in right proportion. Some events in history always seem momentous to those who live through them but as time passes, they might not seem so important after all. Whereas other events barely get noticed by many who witness them happen while later on they prove to be very significant. We’ve learned that the seals were fulfilled in the era from the dawn of the Second Century through the end of the Fourth Century—from the glory days of the pagan Roman Empire to the chaos of civil wars, economic ruin, social breakdown and disease and finally to the collapse of the traditional Roman religious institutions that propped up the government and the Christianization of the empire. We’ve seen that the trumpets predicted the waves of invasions that finally brought down the Roman Empire in the 5th century and changed the landscape of Europe; that the fifth and sixth trumpets foresaw the Islamic conquest of much of the Christianized Byzantine Empire, including Palestine and Syria, that began in the 7th century and then the Turkish invasion of Anatolia to the fall of Constantinople itself in 1453.

Compare that to how futurists like Dr. MacArthur, for example, explain the prophetic symbols. Instead of the futurists' view of the seals as taking place during a seven year “tribulation,” the fulfillment of the first seal spans over 80 years of prosperity in Rome, the second seal a whole century of Roman civil wars, and so on.[i] The first four trumpets are fulfilled in waves of wars and migrations that took a hundred years to unfold; the fifth trumpet the 150 years from the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem to the stagnation of the Islamic Empire in Baghdad; the sixth trumpet the nearly four hundred years from the rise of the Turks to the fall of Constantinople. Seeing these vast proportions in how God fulfilled His Word in the prophecies of the seals and trumpets reminds us not to be surprised if, when the bowls happen, they will turn out to be events so big that many who live to see them happen could fail to recognize their monumental importance—at least, at that time. So for example, many historicist writers in the past were led, by their knowledge that the seals and trumpets had already been fulfilled, to realize then that the French Revolution was very important and certainly featured in some way with the seven bowls. But their closeness to the events of the French Revolution unfortunately made it seem like those events must be bigger in Bible prophecy than they really are. I have to admit that when Covid-19 suddenly changed the world in March and April of 2020, it was hard to resist the temptation to look at the bowl prophecies in light of how important Covid-19 seemed, rather than the other way around. Because if we’ve learned anything from the scale and proportion of the seals and trumpets and bowls so far, it is that current events should be interpreted in light of how God’s Word has been fulfilled so far.

So what do the first six bowls in Revelation 16 tell us about the likely scale and proportions of the seventh bowl? The first bowl revealed how the Roman Catholic Church would infect and corrupt European society in the centuries leading up to the French Revolution in 1789. The second and third bowls symbolized the bloodbath of wars that began in Europe and ended up with the deaths of tens of millions in World War I and II—over 150 years in fulfillment. The fourth bowl represents the anti-Catholic, anti-papal reaction of European society in the decades from the French Revolution to the 1860’s. (Notice that the fulfillment of the fourth bowl began after the beginning of the fulfillment of the second and third, but the fulfillment of the second and third lasted so long that the fourth bowl’s fulfillment was already finished by the time the second and third bowls were finished.) The fifth bowl predicted the end of the temporal power of the papacy and the end of the Kingdom of the Popes marked by the seclusion and isolation of the papacy for 59 years from 1870 to 1929. The sixth bowl foresaw the decline and collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the beginning of the regathering of the Jewish people to their homeland, and the spiritual corruption spreading from Europe wherever people abandoned God’s Word—an era spanning at least from the beginning of the 20th Century until at least the beginning of the 21st Century. This brings us to the seventh bowl of the wrath of God that stands both at the end of Revelation 16 and at the end of history as we know it.

It is difficult to resist the urge to see events in our own lifetime as disproportionately important. So what can we do to correct our vision? How can we watch and wait for the seventh bowl prophecy to be fulfilled without losing the perspective we’ve gained from how God’s Word in Revelation has been fulfilled in the past?

Well to start with, we should probably assume that like in the previous bowls, the seventh bowl may have already begun to be fulfilled decades ago. The geo-political earthquake could very likely herald both the rise of the European Union as well as its future disintegration. It could also be about much more than that. The economic ruin of nations anticipated in the seventh bowl could also encompass the emergence of the globalized economy itself in the second half of the 20th Century. The punishment of Babylon the Great could definitely involve all the scandals that have for many years now increasingly brought to light the criminal corruption of the Roman Catholic Church in its sexual abuses, financial scandals, and more recently the reports of mass graves of murdered aboriginal children who were forced into its residential schools. The events of the last hundred years saw the former territories of the Ottoman Empire in the Levant carved up into new, man-made states and territories including the modern countries of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and others. Then there was the birth of the State of Israel, the wars it fought in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982 in Lebanon (Israel didn’t fully withdraw from Lebanon until 2000). There are many complicated factors involved but it is clear that if Rev 16:20 is predicting the people of places like Gaza and Tyre and Sidon becoming refugees, it all might happen not suddenly but as the culmination of events and processes going on already for nearly my entire lifetime! (I was born in 1971.) And if verse 20 also predicts the annihilation of those civilizations that are presently what’s left of the once great empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, well that also may well have begun with the Gulf War in 1991—it has brought Iraq to ruins and some signs suggest a similar future for Iran.

But then there’s the famous “Battle of Armageddon” suggested in verse 16—which turns out to be a prediction of nations gathering for war over Jerusalem. Revelation 19:17-21 picks up where chapter 16 leaves off and describes this war and how it turns out. And there can be little doubt that this war is also what is predicted in Zechariah 12 as a siege of nations gathered against Judah and Jerusalem (where Judah refers to the former Kingdom of Judah and so probably means the modern State of Israel since both have to do with the Jewish nation). And in that passage, in Zech 12:6, we read this prophecy that predicts not only that Jerusalem will once again be inhabited by the Jews but also that when it is, Judah will be like a flaming torch setting fields on fire—those fields are Israel’s neighbours: "On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves. And they shall devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples, while Jerusalem shall again be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem" (Zec 12:6 ESV) In other words, if the scale and proportions we have come to expect from past fulfilled prophecies in the seals, trumpets, and bowls of Revelation continue to hold for the seventh bowl, then it’s possible that “the battle of Armageddon” might turn out to be not be a singular battle as we think of it at all. It might be bigger than that. It might be, as Zech 12:6 seems to envision, all that happens when the Jewish people once again inhabit their ancestral homeland; when the new neighbours around them, created from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, seek and attempt to destroy the Jewish State but instead only hasten their own destruction. Because isn’t this what we’ve witnessed over the past century? Those who try to destroy the Jewish people and take their lands end up being destroyed instead. Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon were all functional countries up until 30 years ago. Today they are all failed states. Who is next? Jordan? Iran? Turkey? And then, if this prophecy is meant to be understood on such a large scale, then how will we know when the return of the Lord is drawing near? (It could also turn out that these predictions are fulfilled more obviously and dramatically than the above suggests, but I think we should be prepared for both possibilities.)

The rear-facing mirrors on the doors of my Kia minivan are great safety features but it’s easier to see where I’m driving by looking through the front windshield. When I am backing up and looking in those mirrors it’s much harder than driving forward because you can see a lot more through a windshield than you can through a rear-view mirror. But sometimes you need to see what’s around you and also what’s behind you. Sometimes we need to look back. In our study of Revelation, looking back helps us put things in perspective. And we need that perspective to help us evaluate current events with a better sense of proportion and in light of the prophecies God has already brought to pass. When we neglect this perspective and travel forward only seeing what’s right in front of us, every landmark can start to look like our destination.

I feel like I’m stretching this metaphor way too far but this does illustrate something important for you and me to keep in mind. If we are too focused on events happening right now in the world, it might seem like every event has apocalyptic significance. That’s why this review of what is now behind us can give us a much better sense of proportion when it comes to the fulfillment of prophecy. That, however, should never make us dogmatic in our own predictions. There’s a sticker on the passenger-side mirror on my minivan that says, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” The scale of these fulfillments, and the seeming smallness of the symbols seem carefully designed to frustrate the speculations of overconfident travellers. But for the careful reader, for the devoted student of God’s Word, the design of these prophecies could also mean that Jesus could be coming much sooner than we thought. As Jesus told His disciples 2000 years ago, “Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” (Matt. 24:42 ESV). This was not a suggestion but a command. One we are still obliged to obey.