Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Revelation 16 Interpretive Notes

< Revelation 15

And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your way, each of you. Pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.
Jerusalem upon the earth, in the Land of Israel, has made herself ready. Witnesses are positioned at their posts unto the ends of the earth.  As the final judgments come they will be in place to testify to the truth to all nations and peoples concerning them. The time is now come. The Voice of God commands that his final judgment upon the world should commence. 


The First Vial Is Poured Out

And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a painful and grievous sore upon the people who had the mark of the beast, and upon them who worshiped his image.

What in this heavenly revelation is called the worshiping of the image of the beast will most likely be called, in the time of its final manifestation upon the earth,
 being linked to the United World AI. The very first judgment falls directly upon the system of the beast and all its "citizens". The first judgment in Egypt was upon the river, which was the "system" of power for Pharaoh.  Here at the end of the ages the system of power of the imitation Messiah is the calculating system which links the nations, person by person, to itself.

The Second Vial Is Poured Out

And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead person: and every living thing died in the sea.

Today the oceans can visibly be seen to be in the process of dying.  It could even be asked whether this judgment were already poured out upon the sea.  To understand this better it needs to be understood that these judgments are given from a place that stands above time, not from a place that is in subjection to it.  The way in which the historical time, the starting point, process and completion of each judgment is measured is an ingredient of the judgment which is embedded within it.  We may assume, in the fear of the God of Israel, who judges the nations, that unless a tremendous repentance suddenly takes place in the world, that this judgment has begun and that the oceans will not recover but instead come to a point of no return in the near future.  In other words, we may assume that without such a repentance toward the word of God, specifically in our day toward God's word concerning the Biblical promise of Israel, which goes beyond the State of Israel, not only will we come to the complete state of warning, where 1/3 of the oceans have died, but we will come directly from there to the state where every living thing in the sea is dead.  And more than this, we will come to the full 1/3 measure of all the judgments and then directly to the full wrath of God upon the nations in the complete pouring out of the vials.



The Third Vial Is Poured Out

4And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.

Was the water of the Nile river turned literally into blood when God began to deliver Israel out of Egypt?  The most straightforward meaning is that as in the sea everything that lived inthe rivers and lakes died.  They all died together so that their blood filled and contaminated all the waters.  Such waters as that had still been drinkable were no longer drinkable. 


The fresh waters on the whole planet will literally become so poisoned that nothing can live in them.  The peoples of the world who refuse to trust in God to provide the waters of life come instead to trust in their own technique to provide the means of sustaining their lives.  Therefore they reap the reward of the poisonthat their techniques of life produce, which poison the whole planet by getting into the water cycle that God created to nurture the planet.



The Angel Provides The Key To The Judgments

And I heard the angel of the waters say, You are righteous, O Lord, who is, and was, and shall be, because you have judged in this way.

The angel is called the angel of the waters. It maybethat these angels which are called upon to pour out these vials are the very angels which otherwise would have responsibility for the health of the realm in which they now are called upon to pour out judgment.

For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink; for this is in accordance with what they deserve.

In Revelation 11:13 we see that Jerusalem repents.  Then in Revelation 12 we see she is able to flee into the wilderness to be hidden from the wrath of the beast.  But her children, the rest of the children of the twelve tribes of Israel are persecuted by the beast, even though help comes to them.

In the Revelation the final plagues start with the already revealed complete hardness of heart of the "Pharaoh". There is a correspondence between the plague of the firstborn in Egypt and the judgment upon Babylon the Whore in The Book of The Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach.

Because of the judgment upon Babylon the Whore there is an escape for Israel from the united world of the beast.  This corresponds to how due to the judgment upon the firstborn a way of escape was made for Israel from Egypt. The judgment upon the firstborn of Egypt pointed to the Lamb of God and the judgment upon the firstborn of God, which is to say the rest of the children of the woman of chapter 12, after that her male child is caught up unto God.

The judgment upon Babylon points to the judgment that begins at the House of Hashem. Why is this and how does it work? We need to understand this clearly and well. Hashem first brought his judgment down upon Israel according to the natural Adam in bringing them down into Egypt.  Then he brought his judgment down upon Egypt in bringing Israel out and bringing them up unto himself.  First Hashem showed that Israel was naturally the heir of Adam, and then he showed that Israel was the heir of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob only by promise, only by redemption and re-creation through the promise of another seed, not a seed that was simply the heir of Adam alone.  And this was the reason in the end for the separation of Egypt from Israel and the judgment against Egypt from which Israel was saved. Egypt was the heir of Adam alone and was not the heir of the promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In other words, the firstborn of Egypt were not the firstborn of God.  Rather, Mashiach, who was promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was set apart by Hashem to be the heir of the world, together with the fathers.  He was the appointed heir of Adam, and as such he subjected himself to the sentence of God upon Adam for sin, according to the covenant of promise that God made with Abraham, thus putting to death Adam's corporate headship and opening the place and position for the corporate headship of the Son of Adam, the promised Groom of Israel.  This is the Good News of Israel and Her Messiah which Moses and Aaron revealed in Egypt, which also began to be made known to all nations when Yehoshua laid down his life for Jerusalem.

Therefore the woman had a space in time in which to escape. Her space in time was very narrow. This reminds us of Israel's escape from Egypt into the wilderness.  It was said then, "Don't eat the leavened bread", because Pharaoh then, the king of Egypt, the king of the south, was a type of the Pharaoh to come the king of the north, the king of Assyria and then the king of the final beast.  In the final redemption the narrow space of redemption would not be one of time but one of faith, it would be through the narrow gate of faith in only God's promise.

In the way that the events unfolded in Egypt the pattern was being set that showed that 1.) God brought Israel down into Egypt [death], but:  2.) Egypt was to repent and "rejoice with His People", (Deuteronomy 32:43; Romans 15:10), ["life from the dead", Romans 11:15], and:  3.) seeing that Pharaoh was not going to do this required showing that he would not submit to the word of Moses until the combination of locust and hail.  This established that he would be moved by perceived self-interest.


In Exodus chapter 9 we read about the seventh plague in Egypt:the plague of Hail.

13 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 14 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. 15 For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. 16 But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. 17 You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go. 18 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. 


And when this had taken place...

27 Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. 28 Plead with the Lord, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.” 29 Moses said to him, “As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the Lord’s. 30 But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.” 31 (The flax and the barley were struck down, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud. 32 But the wheat and the spelt were not struck down, for they are late in coming up.) 33 So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. 34 But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. 35 So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.


And continuing into chapter 10...

1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them 2 that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord.”

When Pharaoh saw that the flax and barley crop had been completely lost and all other vegetation had been destroyed, and only the wheat and spelt which had not yet come up could be saved, he thought finally to repent, to relent and let, "his slaves," the nation of Israel, go, that there was nothing else that was in his self-interest at this point to do. But his repentance was false repentance. It possessed no element of desire to know the God of Israel. And therefore God designed that when Pharaoh saw in the light of the cleared and sunny skies that there was yet hope for Egypt in the wheat and spelt, he changed his mind once more.

Self-Interest motivated repentance is false repentance in the case of both Israel and the nations! This is the lesson of the plague of the hail, when Pharaoh would seem to repent but God "hardened his heart" to show that he did not truly repent.  When the plagues begin in the Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach, they begin at this point of the plague of hail, (Revelation 8:7), the point that was already established in Egypt as the place where false repentance is rejected and true repentance is commanded.  

This is because when Israel came out of Egypt, in the majority, it did so out of a repentance of self-interest.  The old Adam, the Pharaoh in the heart, the old nature, was not overthrown.  This was the reason why the children of Israel did not enter into the land directly by faith.  It was the reason for the captivity in Assyria and Babylon, the captivity finally in Rome and all the nations of the world.

There is, however, an aspect in which self-interest motivated repentance the final global collective unity of the nations in opposition to Israel becomes an ear to hear, an ear that should hear — and can be and is commanded tohear. For it is at that point of complete global opposition to God's Good News about Israel that it seems that what is at stake is the interest of world peace. And just as Pharaoh during the latter plagues desired to come to some kind of compromise with Moses and Aaron, so the self-interest motivated repentance of the global society of the beast will seek to compromise Israel by coming to some kind of compromise with Israel.

 Yet from the witnesses of Hashem there will be only one command, the command to truly repent and let Israel go spiritually to be free of the delusion of replacement theology and all the imaginary ideas of the Great Babylon, to receive the Good News of Her Mashiach, the good news that he has submitted his inheritance in Adam to the sentence of death and has received for her the reward of life. For apart from this commandment for true repentance being addressed to that self-motivated repentance-mind of "Pharaoh" there can be no redemption of anything of Adam.

Babylon the Whore represents the religious imagination and ideology of the mind of the four gentile empires that thinks to exploit for their own gain the chastisement of Israel, (see Zechariah 1:15), even to exploit the death of Mashiach.Judgment upon this great Babylon condemns carnal repentance for what it is and shows that it's chastisement is to be turned over to become invested in its own self-exploitation until its own firstborn is consumed.  This Mystery Babylon is vulnerable to the word of judgment because there comes a time when the reasoning of the natural Adam concludes that its own good cannot save itself from its own evil.  

Anyone in this world who wants to leave a good inheritance to their offspring will, at the end of days, find that they are sacrificing their children to Moloch. It is for the sake of self-interested religion that the saints of God are martyred, that children are sacrificed. It is a pouring out of blood into the wine glass of the consumers of the creation stolen from God.  Therefore it is the right measure that these consumers in the judgment of God should be given blood, that is to say, death, to drink. 

This is the key to understanding the judgment of Babylon the Whore and it is primarily Israel - the children of Jerusalem, the woman hidden in the wilderness, that will recognize and acknowledge the truth of this judgment in the day of judgment upon that Babylon.  This is how 'Pharaoh' will be made to let Israel go, as we will see in the following two chapters.

And because this "Pharaoh" of the north will already be revealed to be a false king, to be one that does not truly care for the kingdom but only for himself, who lies to the kingdom to make it think he cares for the kingdom, it will not be as with the first Pharaoh, the king of the south, who only momentarily let Israel go before repenting of his repentance and gathering his armies to pursue them.  Instead this last Pharaoh will have been killing the children of Israel all along and will not stop, but the actual repentance that comes will be found within his kingdom, where there will be those who do not believe him.

 All of this struggle brings us to a place where the nations, as a whole, still believe the lie of the false king, but Israel as a corporate whole, though it has carnally believed the lie of the false king, repents and receives the Good News of the atonement that was made for Jerusalem through the blood of the Lamb of God.  This corporate repentance of Israel is the corporate repentance representing Adam that God will accept as being one with the sacrifice of Mashiach. Then there can be nothing but the final war against Jerusalem and against the repentant Israel.  And to end this war before it even comes to Jerusalem the Word of God will himself appear!

And I heard another out of the altar say, Exactly so, Lord God Almighty; your judgments are true and righteous.

The one who is heard speaking out of the altar is one of the martyrs themselves.  It is made clear by this exchange that they also are the audience of the Revelation, each vision, each stage.  They also, while they have passed on into the heavenly realm, yet stand in equal need with us to witness the Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach.


The Fourth Vial Is Poured Out

And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch people with fire.

We can already see the beginning of the judgements upon the sea and fresh water. We are also now speaking daily about climate change and the rising of the temperature of the planet. It is now time for those to get ready who will testify before the world that this climate change that is coming, that is now beginning, is not simply an accident or a side effect of technology and industry.  It is an act of God to turn human civilization over to this outcome.  It is a warning.  It is a final step toward the great revelation of the true Messiah of Israel, Jesus, Yehoshua of Nazareth.

And people were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, who has power over these plagues: and they did not repent to give him glory.

They Would Not Repent.  Not even when the heat of the sun was focused intensely upon them through a carbon polluted sky, as through a great magnifying glass. And even though they will still deny that he is the true and only God they will blaspheme the God of the Jews and attribute to him responsibility for these plagues.  For they will listen to and believe the great Adversary of God, who put himself in the place of God and claim that it is he who is the friend of Humanity, while it is the God of the Jews who is Humanity's true enemy.

Who, then, is it that it the target for the commandment of repentance that is given at this time of judgment?In Egypt it was Pharaoh. Here it is not the king or ruler, the imitation Messiah, represented in the vision as the beast who is the one who is addressed by God's witnesses, as Pharaoh was addressed by Moses and Aaron. It is the people of the nations, who have become the beast in another sense in the vision, as the citizens who form the kingdom of the beast. It is the peoples of the world, both in the State of Israel and in all the nations, who are directly addressed by the witnesses of God.

When in Egypt the commandment to repent was addressed to Pharaoh and by extension to all Egypt, it was to repent from the act of holding onto Israel and not letting them go. The command to 'Let my people go!' implied the commandment to believe the Good News that God determined to redeem his people Israel.  This was good news for Israel but also for Egypt, because God had promised Abraham that through the redemption of his offspring all the families of the earth would be blessed. The command to repent was a command to believe this word of God; it was that which was being commanded of Egypt and of the world by Moses and Aaron.

Even as Pharaoh was in consultation with Joseph in bringing Israel down into Egypt into a place of protection, so the new Pharaoh ought to have come in repentance to Moses as soon as Moses was raised up in Pharaoh's house and consulted with him on how to let Israel return to the Land of The Resurrection of the Dead.  For it is the ascent that follows upon the descent which constitutes the whole Good News.


When Moses and Aaron spoke to Pharaoh they spoke by implication to Pharaoh's armies and to all Egypt.  It was not only Pharaoh but also his ministers and his army, and to some extent all Egypt who would not let Israel go... God had purposed that Israel be exiled into Egypt, but Egypt's bitter slavery of Israel was the prime example of "But you have helped more than asked for, even to the degree of evil!"  Zechariah 1:15


And by Zechariah God says, 
"Therefore this is what the LORD says: I am returning to Jerusalem with compassion: My house shall be built in it, says the LORD of armies, and a measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem." 

And to his witnesses he says,  
Again, proclaim this, saying: "This is what Hashem of armies says: 
"My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; and Hashem shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem!"


The Fifth Vial Is Poured Out

10 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,

Darkness and pain are brought together in a surprising way.  The judgment of darkness upon Egypt, was the next to the final judgment. if it was a judgment of pain for the Egyptians, it seems it was so indirectly, bringing fear, confusion and inability.  Here the darkness is directed upon the very seat of power of the beast.  What is this seat of power.  It would appear that this power was involved in keeping people from experiencing pain, probably because of keeping them from fear and confusion and giving them ability to take care of themselves. We can easily imagine today how this might be.  All technological and industrial systems are dependent upon, if not directly built upon the internet.  If, through a spiritual force, the internet when dark, went down, as we say, everywhere on the planet, not only would all electrical systems fail, all forms of power and productivity would fail, human and mechanical.

However, it seems there is more here.  A direct physical pain is experienced and the following verse suggests that there is something like lesions involved.  If this judgment of darkness upon the seat of the beast is truly a judgment upon the world wide internet and the beast's AI at its center, it is possible that here things have gotten to a stage that is only being talked about at high levels of industry and commerce today, a stage where, instead of just carrying smart phones in their pockets, people have embraced having smart nodes implanted directly in their bodies, in their hands and/or heads — in order to directly link with artificial general intelligence on the internet.  When the darkness of dysfunction comes to that system, therefore, people experience actual physical as well as mental and emotional pain.  Even cancers may suddenly occur in an epidemic way.

11 And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their tumours, and did not repent of their deeds.

This day and hour in all the earth will be characterized by nothing more than by the blasphemy of the God of heaven. In the name of all science and philosophy and world religion the God of Israel will be blasphemed, because of the tumours that come in connection with all of these judgments, which are felt to be like plagues, plaguing the mark of the beast marking the multitudes in all nations of the earth.


The Sixth Vial Is Poured Out

12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and its water was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

There is nothing left for human civilization at this point in the Revelation but to declare military war directly upon God by setting out to launch that war upon His people, Israel.  And the full force of Humanities military might cannot be marshaled without the armies of the kings of the east.  For the armies of the lands of Ishmael and Edom have, at this point, already been set in array against Jerusalem, and now also the armies of the kings of the east will be brought to the front lines.

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.

It was not without reason that Hashem began his judgments in Egypt with a judgment of frogs following directly upon a judgment of turning the waters of the Nile River into blood and death.For the frogs that come out of blood and death cannot be animated by life but only by the evil of death itself.  And these are the frogs that now come out of the mouths of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet.  And this is representative of the blasphemous words that the dragon and the beast and the false prophet speak, for they are words that bring universal blood and death. Their words are the cause of all the plagues of God's wrath.


14 For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

The Technique System of the dragon, the beast and the false prophet, with its core being the image of the beast, works many wonders and miracles, but all of them in the end only result in drawing all the nations up against Jerusalem to battle, in a grand scheme to complete the final solution of Nazi Germany, to exterminate the Jews, the People of God, the God who judges the world.


15 Behold, I come like a thief. Blessed are they who keep watch, who keep their garments, lest they walk naked, and people see their shame.

He did not come to end the Holocaust, and the nations will say, since he did not come to save the Jews then, why should we think he will come to stop our armies which we have brought to force the Jews into silence once and for all and to rid the world of their book? But like a thief who is not seen until he has done his work, he will suddenly appear!  The "garments" which must be kept and worn until that hour are the garments of the confession of faith as it is written in the Book of Israel.


16 And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

It is about this Armageddon that all the modern myths and stories of the "post-apocalyptic" survival of the human race are written.The truth is that this world will not be able to survive this battle of Armageddon. For it is the place of the death of this whole order of creation.  And for this reason God sees fit that the nations should be allowed to gather themselves together to that place, in order that the death of the old might lead to the creation of the new.For already this old creation has been judged, and the word of God who gave it life has died in order that he might live again and a new creation might live through him. When he therefore appears the power of the old will vanish from the breath of his mouth, and the remnants of the life of the old creationwill be no more.

The Seventh Vial Is Poured Out

17 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.

And this word is the greatest of all the plagues, of all the judgments upon the nations.  For when it is spoken nothing can be done anymore and nothing remains.  Everyone and everything that is then found upon the earth is sustained in a trembling anticipation of the next act of the God who is saving Israel.


18 And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since humans were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.

The voices of the heavens are trembling. The hidden messages of God in the hidden thunders are being revealed and terror ensues, for knowledge that their minds cannot stand to know is made fearfully known to them in flashes of lightning. The earth itself trembles to its core and threatens to wholly come apart under the judgment of Almighty God upon the children of Adam.  No one has breath. What is coming? What will the next action of God be?


The Great Babylon Comes Into Remembrance 

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 unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.

The great city is Jerusalem. Even though she is now discipleto the Lamb of God, she is still a city among the cities of the world which are all falling one by one and all at once, due to the great shaking of the earth in fear before its Maker. She does not fall like the other cities but is divided into three camps, and the fourth will soon come to her. In order for this to happen, the other great city, the great city Babylonmust not only fall but be killed and utterly destroyed. It is through this that the remnant of God's people, and the gentiles who are attached to them, will be able to come out of the great Babylon and be received by Jerusalem once again, forming the fourth camp of the city and making her whole.


20 And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.

So great is the shaking of the earth in that day that it is counted all as one earthquake, which levels the earth's mountains and sinks its islands under the seas.  For this is the measure of judgment that God will bring, just as it is written about God's judgment for Israel's salvation at the beginning, "I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and... performed my signs among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.”


21 And there fell upon people a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and people blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague was exceedingly great.

The first set of seven judgments brought through the seven trumpets began with the plague of hail and now the final seven judgment of poured out vials end with the plague of a great hail full of fire and lightning. For this is the symbol of the testimony that repentance must be true and complete in the heart and in the soul, and must bring about a true fear of Hashem and a desire to know him.Otherwise the judgment of God would not end and not even the elect could be saved in the hour of God's judgment upon the nations of the worldMatthew 24:22.




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