Revelation 16:17-21

There Will Be No More Time

A sermon by Pastor Joe Haynes

Preached on March 1, 2020 at Beacon Church. Updated July, 2021.

Every stone that makes you stumble

and cuts you when you fall

Every serpent here that strikes your heel

to curse you when you crawl 

The king of love one day will crush them all

And you will rise up in the end

You will rise up in the end

I know the night is cruel

but the day is coming soon

And you will rise up in the end

And every sad seduction and every clever lie

Every word that woos and wounds the pilgrim children of the sky

The king of love will break them by and by

If the thief had to come to plunder when the children were alone

If he ravaged every daughter and murdered every son

Would not their father see this? Would not his anger burn?

And would he not repay the tyrant in the day of his return?

Oh, wait. Oh, wait the day of his return[i]

The King came and is coming again. Oh, wait, oh wait the day of His return! Not in fear, but in hope! These final verses in Revelation 16 teach us that “on the Day of God's wrath all will realize too late that Christ has always been the world's only hope.” There will be no more time.

There will be no more time to repent

“The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done!’” (Rev. 16:17 ESV). Jesus was sent by God to save; He will come again to judge. No matter how badly you are caught in sin; no matter how much you have suffered as someone else’s victim; no matter how much wrong you have endured, hope in Jesus. For many lifetimes the mighty Egyptian empire had their boots on the necks of the people of Israel, forcing them to work as slaves. But a day came when God sent Moses to tell the tyrant, “Let my people go.” Every time he refused, God sent a plague. The sixth time, Exodus 9:8 says God told Moses stand in front of Pharaoh king of Egypt and take ashes from a kiln and “throw it into the air…”.[ii]

8 And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw them in the air in the sight of Pharaoh.  9 It shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and become boils breaking out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt."  10 So they took soot from the kiln and stood before Pharaoh. And Moses threw it in the air, and it became boils breaking out in sores on man and beast.  11 And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians.  (Exod. 9:8-11 ESV; emphasis added)

God said, “it shall become fine dust over all the land of Egypt…,” (Ex 9:9). All over the land. It spread plague to everyone in the land. Once again in this vision God gave to John, the judgement he saw uses a picture of one of the Egyptian plagues—Moses threw the ashes into the air, the seventh angel pours his bowl into the air showing that nobody in the land will escape this Day of Judgement. This is terrible new for all who refuse to put their hope in Jesus, but good news if you do.

One of the really intriguing things about this particular allusion to Moses throwing soot into the air, lying behind the action of the seventh angel pouring his bowl into the air, is the fact that in the case with Moses, that soot became a “fine dust” in the air spread over the whole land of Egypt causing a pestilence to break out on everyone in Egypt (Ex 9:9). It’s hard for any generation that lives through something like Covid-19 to not automatically see a possible fulfillment in a virus that spreads and covers the globe like this one has. But there’s nothing in this text that clearly points to what we’ve seen with Covid-19—that is unless the other parts of this prophecy begin to also become recognizable in world events. I think it’s likely that the angel’s action of pouring the bowl into the air does not point to a specific virus as much as to pandemic-like conditions, namely, that the judgments to follow impact everyone everywhere.

Before John even sees what happens when the bowl is poured into the air, the voice of God shouts from the Temple, from the Throne, “It Is Done!” This is God having the last word. He is finished His mighty work. In verse 1, God’s loud voice commanded the seven angels to start pouring out the bowls of His wrath on the earth, on His enemies. Now God says He has finished. In these verses, the cataclysm, the earthquake, the lightning, thunder and hail, these are not the things that should terrify us. It is God’s announcement. It is done. The most frightening words in the history of the world are the words God speaks at the end of the World.

So how do people answer God? Verse 21 says, “they curse God…” Hasn’t God been patient enough? God has given people times of peace and prosperity, and what did they do? Turn away from Him. He gave warnings and prophets and finally His own Son preaching Good News and dying to save sinners. And what did people do? They shouted “Crucify Him!” and they hunted down His followers. He gave more warnings, took peace away, brought down civilizations and brought in foreign invasions, and what did people do? Rev 9:20 says “the rest of mankind who were not killed… did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols…” So God showed how rotten people’s false religion was by showing what kind of fruit it produced. People turned against the priests and bishops of their former religion, and did they finally repent? Rev 16:9 says, “they did not repent and give [God] glory.” Rev 16:10 says, “they did not repent of their deeds.” Finally Rev 16:16 predicts that instead of repenting, people will gather at Armageddon and declare war on God. Even if God was patient for another thousand years it would not soften these hard hearts. So in verse 17, God says, “It is done!”

God has been giving the whole world a lot of chances to humble themselves and turn to Him, to say sorry, ask forgiveness, and receive His mercy. But they want nothing to do with Him. Maybe you think you are neutral—neither for God or against Him. But while you sit on the fence, you forget: it’s not your fence. You are a tenant in His Universe. You are squatting on His land. You are under His jurisdiction, and yet you keep on insisting He has no authority over you. If that describes you, you are not neutral: you are a rebel, an enemy living in God’s Kingdom. There are no fence-sitters. If the message Jesus gave to John to write down in the book of Revelation does not convince you to get off the fence you’re sitting on and bend your knee to your true King, then nothing will convince you. If mercy won’t get through to you, will fear? You might think your life has been long and hard, but your afterlife will be infinitely longer…and worse. You might think your sins are not that bad, not as bad as others anyway. But Jesus already died for your sins, yet you insist on rejecting His generosity and paying your own bill. There are a lot worse sinners than you who have received His grace; and there are a lot of people more religious, more hard-working, more pious, and more impressive than you who are going to find out too late that the only hope they had was to ask for mercy from the one on the Throne.

There will be no more time to boast

17 The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, "It is done!"  18 And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake. (Rev. 16:17-18 ESV)

What is in these seven bowls? God’s wrath. Now God doesn’t store His wrath in bowls, and these seven angels are not literal, but parts of the vision John saw. And though the bowls of God’s wrath are poured out on the Sun and rivers and the air, God is not angry with the Sun and rivers and air. As verse 1 reminds us, these things are all signs for real things on the earth. Likewise, the storm and the worst earthquake in history—they are signs that are easier to understand once we narrow down who exactly God is angry with, who is the object of wrath? The bowl poured “into the air”—just like Moses threw the ashes “into the air” (Ex 9:8-10), spreads to everyone “throughout all the land” (Ex 9:9). But what land? This is not about the “land of Egypt.” Verse 19 mentions a “great city” and then gives it a name: the city is called “Babylon the great.”

“The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath,” (Rev. 16:19 ESV; emphasis added).  King Nebuchadnezzar was feeling awesome. He was at the peak, the zenith, the pinnacle of power, success, of ambition. And one evening he was enjoying the air and the view from the rooftop of his palace in Babylon, and he looked out over all that was his, all that he had accomplished, all he took credit for and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan 4:30). And a voice from heaven rang out, and God took his kingdom away from him. Two Sundays ago, we saw how God took the kingdom away from the Popes of Rome. Today the popes are no longer kings, just bishops presiding over a false religion. For 1260 years the Popes were real kings so it’s no wonder they have trouble accepting what God has done. And still they sit in their little palace on a throne and boast of their dignity and majesty. But they are pretenders. They are not the true kings of anything, much less of Christendom. There is only one True King. There is only one Head of the Church. “There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof; [but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God.”[iii] Christians find comfort knowing everyone can pray now, and ask Jesus for mercy, for forgiveness we don’t deserve, for grace we could never afford. But Christians also believe Justice is coming. For the millions the tyrants have martyred, deceived, seduced, and abused. Verse 19 says the target of God’s anger is this ancient, world-famous city.

But the bishops of Rome have had a makeover. It’s hard to imagine these nice men we see in the News can be the villain John describes. Yet for centuries Christians experienced the atrocities the papacy now tries so hard to cover up, to pretend never happened.

"Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!" (Rev. 16:5b-6 ESV)

…And God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. (Rev. 16:19b ESV)

It is what they deserve and if we knew all the facts we would agree. The earthquake that’s coming will reveal the epicenter of God’s anger. Justice will fall. But I don’t expect this will be a literal earthquake. I don’t know how this will turn out, but it seems like the city of Rome and the one who claims to rule the Church of Jesus Christ, and those who have followed him, are in for a time of trouble like the world has never seen. In Bible prophecy, earthquakes stand for uprisings and upheavals of people.[iv] The earthquake is a symbol of the rise and fall of peoples and nations in Haggai 2, Amos 8:8, Joel 2:10, Isaiah 13:13, 24:18-20, and Jeremiah 10:22. I assume John is following the examples of the prophets in this prediction. But I am not clear what it means for the city to shake out into three parts—time will tell.[v]

The next plague, the Seventh Plague, was the plague of hail and is recorded in Exodus 9:13-35. In Revelation, in the seventh bowl, a “plague of hail” is mentioned in verse 21 but the Seventh Egyptian Plague of Hail is alluded to before that, in verse 18, where the great earthquake is described. It’s described using very similar wording to how the plague of hail was described in Exodus 9:18, 24. God told Moses, “Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now,” (Ex 9:18). Rev 16:18 applies the description of the severe plague of hail to the great earthquake. And then, in Rev 16:21, people curse God but not for the plague poured into the air, or the great earthquake, or the fall of the cities of the nations, or the punishment of Babylon the Great, or the vanishing islands and mountains, but only, as verse 21 says, “for the plague of hail, because the plague was so severe.”

So again, like in the Sixth Bowl judgment, two of the Egyptian Plagues are linked together here but not in terms of a direct cause-and-effect. I think they are linked together most importantly to show that when these verses come true these events are meant to be understood as the acts of God they are. Not as accidents of nature or any other kind of man-made catastrophe but as divine judgments. But secondly, I think the Sixth and Seventh Plagues of Egypt are included here because of how severely they devastated Egypt. After Moses prayed to God for the plague of hail to cease, Pharaoh hardened his heart again and God sent Moses back to Pharaoh with these words:

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the LORD.” (Exodus 10:1-2 ESV)

Moses warned Pharaoh that a plague of locusts was coming to devour whatever crops had survived the hail and when he left, Pharaoh’s advisors begged Pharaoh to yield, and I think this is the reason the sixth and seventh plagues are both linked together in the seventh bowl judgment in Revelation: because with them, the economy and prosperity of nations is brought to ruin. Here’s the relevant part from Exodus 10:7, just after the Plague of Hail was ended. “Then Pharaoh's servants said to him, ‘How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?’” (Exodus 10:7). It seems to me that this seventh judgment will be recognized as an act of God in connection with widespread economic ruin during the years when this is being fulfilled. That’s why the seventh bowl begins with an image from the Sixth Egyptian Plague and ends with imagery from the Seventh Egyptian Plague of hail.

And it’s worth noting that at this time in the year 2021, the first six bowl judgments can be seen to have now been fulfilled, except for the final effect of the prophecy in verse 16: “And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Har-Megiddon.” As we saw last time, Har-Megiddon is a very specific reference to Zechariah 12:11, and like that verse, isn’t really about the Valley of Megiddo but about the gathering of enemy nations against the City of Jerusalem. So if my interpretation here is right, then we should expect to see an increasing hostility among the nations rising up against the Jewish people in the City of Jerusalem, as the outcome of the sixth bowl, and meanwhile, the events of the seventh bowl will begin to unfold, leading to the economic ruin of cities and nations.

“…and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, "It is done!"   

The voice from the temple is also said to be from the throne, leaving it very clear who is speaking. The allusion, once again, is to the way God spoke directly to Moses from the Mercy Seat on the Ark of the covenant in the Tent of Meeting, as we read in Numbers 7:89, “And when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him.” But what the voice says is mysterious. In Greek, it’s a single word meaning something like “it has happened.” It’s not the same word Jesus used as He died on the cross when He said, “It is finished.” (Jo 19:30) This word is the indicative, perfect, active, 3rd person singular of ginomai—“to become, or be”. So it means “It has happened.” It’s the word Jesus used when he said, "But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled."" (Mat 26:56 ESV) This precise form of the word is used in the Greek Old and New Testaments 71 times. But twice in Exodus 9 in connection with the plague of Hail in Egypt, where it reads, "I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now." (Exo 9:18 ESV) and, "There was hail and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very heavy hail, such as had never been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation" (Exo 9:24 ESV) The word from the throne announces that what is going to happen in the seventh bowl judgment is a unique event like nothing that has ever happened. It’s like saying, “the unprecedented” or “the unthinkable” has come to pass—it has happened.

The uniqueness of this end-time event is underscored by the phenomenal description in verse 18. “And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake…” The flashes of lightning is similar to the plague of hail in Exodus 9:24 but when you add the rumblings and thunder and earthquake it is nearly identical to one, grand and unique event in all of history:

On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The LORD came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. (Exodus 19:16-20 ESV)

What John describes here echoes the personal visitation of Yahweh God on the Mountain at Sinai. It’s hard not to see this as a suggestion that this is predicting another great and awesome Day of Visitation in the time of the seventh bowl. Then there is the description of the earthquake: “a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake.” I need to say two things about this earthquake. First, as I’ve explained before,

The symbol of an earthquake is used often in the Old Testament to predict God judging and overthrowing nations. A good example is Haggai 2:6-7a, where God says He is about to shake the heavens and the earth, then adds He will shake “the nations”, and then interprets this as meaning He will topple thrones and overthrow nations (Hag 2:21-22).[vi]

In practical terms, this is predicting a lot more of what we are now seeing in places like Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and now Lebanon.[vii] But second, the way this nation-toppling earthquake is described suggests a visitation from God. The wording in verse 18 repeats that formula we’ve seen already when prophecy is fulfilled and when great and unique acts of God occur—like when the Scriptures say “such as had never happened” and use that word used in verse 17, “it has happened.” But this time, the wording is a very close match to another passage that also predicts the arrival of One Like God at a time of terrible trouble culminating in the Day of Resurrection:[viii]

"At that time shall arise Michael [Heb lit. “Who Is Like God”], the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt," (Dan 12:1-2 ESV).

Verses 19-21 will add a lot more detail to this prediction but let me summarize what we are already seeing here. As this age draws to a close, we should expect to see that while hostile nations are turning against and gathering against Jerusalem, there will be a pandemic of economic ruin and an unprecedented toppling of nations heralding a visitation from God Himself, the time of trouble Daniel said would be followed by the Day of Resurrection. What you fear the most is what you most hope will never happen. If you’re most afraid of the collapse of civilization, losing your job or your savings or a loved-one, then your hope is in what cannot last. But if your hope is in the Lord and in His promise of eternal life, then, and only then, your hope is in something you cannot lose.

I assume John is following the examples of the prophets in this prediction. And in verse 19, the Greek doesn’t say “split” but just “the great city became three parts.”[ix] So, for example, if this is predicting the break up of the European Union into three blocks, it could be something like events that have already been taking place. The United Kingdom broke away from the EU with “Brexit” and very recently, Poland and now Hungary are being criticized and condemned by many of the other EU member states.[x] It’s not hard to imagine them choosing to split away from the European Union and forming a separate block. If you imagine a literal city being severely damaged by an earthquake so that deep chasms form in the ground, that still would not separate a city into three part: it would be one city with deep chasms in the ground. One reason why I see this as a union of nation states breaking apart is that this is how I believe a very similar earthquake was fulfilled back in Revelation 11:13. “And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell.” I’ve previously interpreted that verse as a prediction of the geo-political upheaval during the Protestant Reformation that resulted in England breaking away from its alliance with nations loyal to the Roman Catholic Papacy. This is being described in similar terms but with bigger results. And while at first, when these events begin to happen, it might appear like it is affecting the nation states of Europe directly involved, verse 19 seems to suggest that whatever forces are at work here, there will also be continuing, widespread, collapse of cities in various nations: “and the cities of the nations fell…” Which nations it doesn’t say but time will tell. In any case, all of this will have a catastrophic effect on the Roman Catholic State we know as Vatican State. I think that’s what’s meant here by “Babylon the Great.”

“Babylon the Great” has been mentioned before in Revelation 14:8. "Another angel, a second, followed, saying, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality."" (Rev 14:8 ESV) This is evidently talking about a city, like in Daniel 4:30 when King Nebuchadnezzar boasted about how great his city Babylon was and for which God severely punished him. And it is a city that is guilty of what the angel called “sexual immorality” which in the Old Testament prophets is a common symbol for religious idol worship by which people betray God. So putting that together, Babylon the Great is a city state that is profoundly guilty of exporting religious apostasy to many nations. To paraphrase the Puritan William Baxter’s comment about the Pope being the Antichrist, if the Vatican is not what John means here by “Babylon the Great,” it sure has bad luck to look just like her.[xi]

In his commentary, G.K. Beale’s interpretation of “Babylon the Great” is a prime example of the sort of way I’ve seen many writers explain this: as a ubiquitous system, which, in Beale’s own words, involves “the world’s cultural, political, economic, and sociological centers… the Babylonian world system… the evil world system.”[xii] However, I find it very odd that God would be so angry and aim such personal hostility against an impersonal and vague system. In verse 19, when John describes the “cities of the nations” that is pretty vague and impersonal but when he describes “Babylon the Great” that seems very specific and focused—not at all how I would expect him to refer to an “evil world system.” The cities of the nations here is a general description of the objects of God’s wrath in verse 19; Babylon the Great is the opposite of a general description: it’s a very personal and specific designation. God’s wrath generally falls on a lot of countries and cities and nations here. But God has something very terrible in mind for one last entity with whom He is very deeply and very personally offended: [read v19b].

Let’s step back now and see how this has filled in some of the detail in our outline of how we might expect all this to unfold at the end of this age. The sixth bowl predicted the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which was fulfilled by about 1920. It also hinted at the beginning of a mass migration of Jews back to Palestine, which has also been taking place for 100 years. It predicted a widespread spiritual corruption that would fill the land and propel world leaders toward a military confrontation with Israel over the city of Jerusalem—we can already discern how organizations like the United Nations and many in the EU seem obsessed with an unusual animosity toward Israel. As we learned before, Har Megiddon pointedly alludes to Zechariah 12:11 which isn’t really about the Valley of Megiddo at all but about the City of Jerusalem. So lastly, in verse 16, the sixth bowl predicts that enemy nations will eventually assemble at Jerusalem for battle. Meanwhile, while that story is developing, the seventh bowl adds more context to the picture of how events take shape at the end of this age. Some kind of unprecedented upheaval will shake cities and nations and spread economic ruin causing many of them to collapse in a final time of trouble just before the Lord Jesus returns. An alliance of nations in Europe, perhaps the European Union, will break apart into three blocks and in the midst of all that widespread ruin and collapse, God’s personal wrath will be directed at the Vatican in an unmistakable way. The next two chapters in Revelation expand on this and explain why this “Babylon the Great” deserves the fate that awaits her. But before that, verses 20-21 add a human side to this sweeping picture of upheaval at the end times.

There will be no more time to run

“20 And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found.  21 And great hailstones, about one hundred pounds each, fell from heaven on people; and they cursed God for the plague of the hail, because the plague was so severe. (Rev. 16:20-21 ESV) When we read this it’s hard to even picture what John is predicting. One commentator says, “It could hardly be fulfilled literally. Cities, though devastated by earthquake, do not split into three parts, islands do not fly away, and mountains do not get lost…”[xiii] What does “flee”? People flee.

Now if you think that when the Bible says a mountain will be removed that it is predicting the face of the earth will be completely transformed, then I want to show you that I think you're overlooking how the prophets wanted you to understand what they were saying. For example, the prophet Nahum predicted, "The mountains quake before him; the hills melt; the earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him." (Nah 1:5-6)[xiv] But Nahum himself tells us that prophecy was not about literal mountains, or the whole planet: That was vv 5-6. Verse 1 says, [read Nah 1:1]. By using that time-honoured picture of God shaking the earth like never before, Rev 16:18 practically shouts to our time the same warning Nahum did to Nineveh: Who can stand before the indignation of Jesus on that terrible day? Why would any sane person not take shelter in Christ, pray to Him for mercy while you can? Because on that day there will be no more time to repent; no more time to boast; no more time to run. On the Day of God's wrath all will realize that Christ has always been the world's only hope.

In the end, on the last Day, God will not let anyone hope in anything or anyone else. There will only be one mountain. There will only be one refuge. Jesus is going to crush all pretenders so that on the battlefield, when the smoke clears, the only person left standing is Jesus Christ. No mountain or island, no army or government will be there to help on that day. Only Jesus. And will you be glad to see Him? Or terrified of Him? Whatever exactly is meant by these great hailstones, the hail again echoes the seventh Egyptian plague, where God warned Pharaoh, “Let my people go that they may serve me. For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth” (Ex 9:14). I can’t predict what that day will be like. I don’t know how it all will happen. But I know two things for sure: people will refuse to repent. And the whole Earth will learn that Jesus is Lord.

“And every island fled away…” As the seas are a common OT metaphor for foreign nations and mountains for kingdoms (e.g. Psa 46:2-3, 6), the imagery here is adapted from common usage to be more specific. In my sermon on this passage I referred to Isaiah 42:15 and 16, where Isaiah prophesies, “I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn the rivers into islands, and dry up the pools…” (Isa 42:15) The imagery isn’t a good fit, though, for what we read in Rev 16:20. Because in Isaiah 42:15 God makes islands appear and in Rev 16:20, God makes islands disappear. Let’s think about this some more. Isaiah is using that imagery to describe how God will remove every “obstacle in human society” (as the ESV Study Bible puts it)[xv] to bring His people to Himself once and for all. In Isaiah’s imagery, rivers and mountains are obstacles. Naturally, river “islands” are patches of high ground that appear as the river is being dried up. That’s what Isaiah graphically pictures happening in Isaiah 42:15. To understand this better notice Isaiah has used the symbol of a flooding river before.

According to Isaiah 8:7-8, the Assyrian Empire was going to invade and overwhelm the Kingdom of Judah like a river overflowing and flooding the land “up to the neck” (Isa 8:8). Jeremiah says almost the same thing about the Babylonian Empire invading and conquering Gaza in Jeremiah 47:2. The ESV Study Bible notes, “Babylon comes against Gaza like flood waters that overflow the land and all that fills it.”[xvi] Now in our study of Revelation, we’ve also seen a river used as a symbol for an empire: in Rev 16:12 where the drying up of the Euphrates River symbolized the decline of the Ottoman Empire. It was an obstacle in the way of God bringing the Jewish people back to their national homeland. Back to Isaiah 42:15, that’s also what the drying up of rivers and making islands appear is about: removing the obstacles that stand in the way of God bringing His people to Himself. In other words, God said, in Isaiah 42:15 that he would one day remove the empires that stood in the way of how He would save His people. So why then, in Rev 16:20, does “every island flee away”? Didn’t we just learn that the islands appeared and emerged because the river was dried up? It would appear, given the fact that God’s judgment on the Ottoman Empire in verse 12 was symbolized as the Euphrates River drying up, that the islands are what was left in its place. This is also in keeping with how the Hebrew word for “island” is very often used in Old Testament prophecy.

The Hebrew word for “islands” (אִיִּים / "iyyîm") is apparently a loan-word from Phoenician and can be translated as “coastlands” or “islands.”[xvii] And not only is the word itself from Phoenician but in later OT books, like the prophets, it’s often connected with Phoenician peoples in the coastal cities of the Philistines (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath), but also Tyre and Sidon. So for example, in that passage in Jer 47, when Babylon invaded like a flooding river, Jer 47:4 said it was, "to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every helper that remains. For the LORD is destroying the Philistines, the remnant of the coastland of Caphtor." (Jer 47:4 ESV) The Philistines then were descended from a seafaring people from the island of Caphtor (called Crete today) and related to the Phoenicians in Tyre and Sidon.[xviii] Now this seems significant in our passage for two reasons.

First, speaking in terms of the symbolic imagery, when the “great river Euphrates” dried up, as verse 12 predicted, certain “islands” emerged. Second, certain of those “islands” are located in places that used to be Philistine territory. Not including the State of Israel, which emerged later, some of those ancient Philistine cities include what today is still called Gaza, as well as the coastal cities of modern Lebanon, Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut. Another one of those ancient Philistine cities was Ashdod. And in Isaiah 20:6 that Philistine city is called an “island” in Hebrew. The verse says that “the inhabitants of this island,” i.e., Ashdod (see KJV for the trans. “Isle”) lament that they had “fled” from Assyria but have nowhere to escape. You see? When Isaiah prophesies of residents of Philistine Ashdod, on the western coast of Palestine, running for their lives from Assyria, the image is “inhabitants of an island fleeing”. The Greek Old Testament (LXX) in fact uses the very same word “island” for Ashdod, that John uses here in Rev 16:20. When Assyria conquered Ashdod, apparently the king fled but could not escape.[xix] Therefore, when John describes “islands fleeing away” in verse 20, I am led by all this to conclude that he may well be predicting that many people who live in formerly Phoenician and Philistine cities will become refugees. Because these cities in modern times belong to what emerged as the flood waters of the Ottoman Empire dried up: modern states and territories like Gaza, and Lebanon. Now, having said that, there is another possibility: Holladay’s lexicon says, the word for “island” in Hebrew can mean “coast” or “island” and can be equivalent to talking about Phoenicians, or it can mean “(far) islands, shores” like “the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean…”[xx] So it’s just as possible that the people who become refugees, in verse 20, are the inhabitants of “coastlands” like Greece or Italy. But the country of Lebanon is currently in freefall and on the brink of total collapse, while Gaza is also nearing collapse as its leaders care more about destroying Israel than they do about rebuilding their society. So I lean toward seeing these “islands fleeing” as a reference to the Philistine/Phoenician cities like Gaza and those in Lebanon.

That gives some idea of the possible sorts of ways the words “every island fled away” could be fulfilled. I think this will be easier to interpret in time so let’s move on. “…And no mountains were found…” In Ezekiel 38:20, part of God’s vengeance on the invading forces of Gog from the land of Magog is described in terms of “mountains” being “thrown down”. But here they are simply gone—“no mountains were found.” And that makes me think the passage being mainly alluded to is Daniel 2:35, which uses similar language for the empires displaced by the coming Kingdom of the Lord Jesus: "Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth." (Dan 2:35 ESV) In that verse, as you can see, the previous empires—Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, become like chaff that is blown away “so that not a trace of them can be found.” And that’s what this verse is saying about the mountains. But can those empires also be thought of as symbolic “mountains”? Yes. Isaiah describes the coming Kingdom of God as “the house of the Lord” and pictures it as a “mountain” that rises up higher than all other mountains—so other mountains are symbols for other, lesser, earthly kingdoms: “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills…” (Isa 2:2). This might be predicting the severe collapse of the lands of those formerly great empires—now in Iraq, Iran, Greece, and Italy. Or it could be more general about similar great empires that exist today. So then what does Revelation 16:20 tell us about the future?

Verse 20 probably, in my view, predicts places like Gaza and Lebanon collapsing and the people becoming refugees and meanwhile, places that used to be the empires we read about in Daniel 2 and 7, will also be ruined and devasted—from Iran to Italy—a vast area including the recently failed or now failing states of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon—but also Jordan, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. Again time will tell. Moving on now to verse 21, John seems to allude to not one but three Old Testament passages as the background of these final symbols of the Seventh Bowl of the Wrath of God.

First, the first words about “great hailstones,” as well as the description of the severity of “the plague of hail” at the end of the verse, take us back to the seventh Egyptian plague in Exodus 9:18-26. God devastated Egypt with “very heavy hail” as a plague to rescue Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. 

Second, I want you to notice, in the second half of verse 21, an allusion to another hailstorm in the Bible: notice the words, “fell from heaven on people”. This alludes to Joshua 10:11, where God fought a pivotal battle for Israel, securing their victory over the military alliance of 5 Amorite kings—all of which were located in the region south and west of Jerusalem between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. And this is how it says God defeated them: “the LORD threw down [great] stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword." (Jos 10:11) It is worth noting that in Joshua 10:11 it first says it was “great stones from heaven” that “fell down on them” and then clarifies that they were “hailstones”. Even though hail usually falls from the sky, and the Hebrew word for sky and heaven are the same, this is the only place I could find in the whole Old Testament where it says hail fell from heaven. So God’s victory by hailstones over the five kingdoms in southern Palestine is the second background allusion in Revelation 16:21. 

That brings us to the third Old Testament allusion: the weight of the hailstones. The ESV says they weigh “about one hundred pounds each” but helpfully adds a translation footnote that says, “a talent in weight.”[xxi] And again, this seems to point to the only time in the Old Testament where a stone is said to weigh a talent. It points to a passage in Zechariah in which that prophet saw all the guilt and wickedness being taken away from Judah and sent in a basket to Babylon just before Babylon is punished for all of it (although interestingly, the prophecy calls Babylon by its older name, the land of “Shinar”). This is a rather bizarre image of God forgiving Judah and attributing their sins to Babylon, imputing all that wickedness to Babylon, and then judging Babylon as if it was all her fault. (You can read that vision and what follows by reading Zechariah 5-6.) 

But what’s so interesting for us is how that basket full of wickedness was sealed. "And behold, the leaden cover was lifted, and there was a woman sitting in the basket!  8 And he said, "This is Wickedness." And he thrust her back into the basket, and thrust down the leaden weight on its opening."  (Zec 5:7-8 ESV) Now where the ESV translates it, “the leaden cover” the Hebrew just says, “a talent of lead.” And where the ESV says, “and thrust down the leaden weight on its opening” the Hebrew just says, “and he threw the stone of lead on the opening”.[xxii] So putting verse 7 and 8 together, what the angel throws down is “a talent-sized lead stone”. The reason a talent-sized lead stone is used as the covering on this basket is evidently to keep what was in the basket trapped in the basket.[xxiii] It was heavy.[xxiv] 

The woman inside represents a pagan goddess personifying the idolatrous wickedness of Babylon’s religious corruption. And this reference to Judah’s sins being imputed to Babylon so that Babylon instead of Judah is held accountable for corrupting the people with her religious immorality—well it brings us back to verse 19, doesn’t it? "...And God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath," (Rev. 16:19 ESV).

The three hailstone references then are hard to visualize for all that they seem meant to communicate. They include,

• the seventh plague that ruined Egypt’s economy (see Ex 10:7); 

• the hail that defeated the 5 Amorite kings making way for Judah to move in and settle on that land; 

• and the talent-sized stone that sealed in the wickedness so that Babylon would then be punished for all if it. 

When we put this together with the islands fleeing away and the mountains being displaced, it gives us a very full picture of God thoroughly removing every enemy, every small and great nation or power that stands against His people, sealing in their wickedness so that the only ones who die are those who rejected the forgiveness of sins through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It hints at the final ruin of the formerly Philistine cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ekron, Ashdod, Gath, Tyre, and Sidon, and again at the final judgment of Babylon the Great (which is the theme of the next two chapters) and it practically shouts “there will be no more time.”