"Difficult Passages: On the Rocks"

... let’s dig in and try to figure out what truth a passage about seven bowls of wrath contains.

Revelation 16:1-21

August 24, 2025

Dr. Todd R. Wright

It was not surprising that the group came up with a text from Revelation when listing difficult passages. After all, apocalyptic writings, full of bold poetic images and coded language, while catnip to some, are a mystery to many and frightening to most.

But not to Anna Carter Florence. She gushes, “It takes a writer of exceptional skill and prowess to use imagery as the author of the book of Revelation does:

Seven stars, seven lampstands, seven seals, seven bowls.

Angels and dragons, thrones and beasts, horses and riders, Alpha and Omega.

The lake of fire and the marriage supper of the Lamb.

A new heaven and a new earth: the jeweled city of God.”[i]

She continues:

“The writing is pure genius, and so is the use of imagery. It stirs and moves and enthralls and terrifies us, all at the same time. It also uncovers truth, which is what apocalyptic writing aims to do. No matter how discomforting or shocking or objectionable that truth might be: apocalyptic aims to inflame.”

So let’s dig in and try to figure out what truth a passage about seven bowls of wrath contains.

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Rob Bell reminds us that apocalypse can mean a couple different things:

“In the first kind of apocalypse, the world as we know it ends suddenly because of something catastrophic and unexpected. There are natural versions of this fear in which a meteor hits the earth or disease spreads unchecked or an earthquake causes the oceans to flood the continents. There are also divine versions in which God gets so fed up with humans making a mess of things that God finally says, Enough! And shows up to right the wrongs and bring judgment and clean some house.”[ii]

Our fear of the end of the world has spawned a whole genre of books and movies.

In most the hero shows up to save the day. Someone like Bruce Willis or Will Smith!

In this type we can’t control the timing of the destruction; we just hope to avoid the worst.

Bell continues, “The second kind of apocalypse is the kind we bring on ourselves … through nuclear bombs, our consumption of fossil fuels, our carbon footprint and chemicals dumped into oceans and rivers and lakes. Icebergs melt, wildlife [dies], rain forests [disappear].

[It is predictable.] It comes because we didn’t take our divine responsibility to be stewards of creation seriously enough. It happens because we ignored the evidence, we laughed at the people who warned us, and we refused to make the difficult changes needed.”

Bell shakes his head over the fact that people seem to spend a lot of time worrying about the type of apocalypse we can’t control (the first type) and mostly ignore the type we can actually do something about by loving our neighbor and taking better care of the earth.

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So which kind of apocalypse is Revelation?

Let’s be clear about the context.

“The Roman Empire had its own version of Alcatraz: a rocky island called Patmos. Prisoners banished to that hard-labor colony usually wasted away and died.”[iii]

Instead, John had a series of visions of God making all things right.

No other New Testament book resembles Revelation in style, but during that time apocalyptic books flourished – as if people needed to hear that evil would be destroyed and good triumph.

And make no mistake, John’s readers needed to hear that message.

One scholar writes, “It would have been a perplexing time for the tiny Christian groups who found themselves scapegoats in a crumbling social order.”[iv]

To drive home the point, another scholar sets up a hypothetical:

“Let’s say a friend of yours lives in Syria [or Ukraine or Gaza], in the next village over from a village that recently experienced a [devastating] attack. [Maybe it was chemical weapons, or the bombing of hospitals and power plants, or a calculated starvation.] What kind of a letter do you write your friend?”[v]

Do you write of pie in the sky in the sweet by in by?

Or do you pen a letter like Revelation, “which condemns evil and calls out the injustice of those who use their power to oppress others and inspires those in the thick of the struggle to stay strong and not lose heart because love is a stronger force than anything aligned against it?”

I think you know the answer.

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John draws on images from the long history of God’s interaction with humanity:

How God rained down one plague after another trying to convince Egypt to release Israel.

How God created the sun and the seas, the rivers and everything that lives in them,

and when necessary, made the sun stand still and the rivers dry up to make a point.

How God speaks again and again about justice and backs up those words with compassion, for

widows, orphans, and aliens in the land, the poor and the powerless, victims and the voiceless.

By the time John gets to chapter 16, it is evident that God is in charge and that God’s wrath is a carefully calculated response to those who oppose God’s rule.

John shares his vision with those who are suffering, to buoy their spirits:

At God’s direction, an angel poured out a bowl that left those marked with the sign of the beast with sores, so their faithlessness could be seen by everyone … and whenever they looked in the mirror.

The second bowl turned the sea into blood and every living thing in it died.

The third bowl did the same to the rivers, a graphic reminder of the spilled blood of the saints.

The fourth bowl allowed the sun to scorch people with blistering heat, but they didn’t repent.

The fifth bowl plunged everything into darkness, which might have seemed like a relief after the punishing sun, but it’s more of an echo of Jesus’ parable in Matthews about the wedding banquet when the guest who refuses to wear the offered robe is thrown “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”[vi] And still, like Pharoah, they did not yield or repent.

The sixth bowl of wrath was poured out on the great river Euphrates, and it dried up like a dusty wadi, so that the riverbed might become a highway for the invading armies from the east.

And the battlefield was called Armageddon!

When the last bowl is emptied, God announces final judgment.

Ninevah repented; the thief next to Jesus repented; but there is no repentance here.

Instead, what John describes is much like his account of the crucifixion:

At the end, Jesus whispers, “It is finished.” He has done what he came to do!

Or what Matthew described: “At that moment, [when Jesus cried out and breathed his last,] the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.”[vii] And John adds, “flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth.”

There was more in the vision: cities falling apart and hailstones the size of semi-truck tire!

Please note that this is the kind of apocalypse where people can act to change things, but don’t.

The people did not change their ways. Evil people clung to their evil. Those who worshiped Caesar went right on treating a man like he was a god. And those who oppressed John’s congregation of Jesus followers went right on kicking them in the teeth.

But John is convinced that the battle is over and God has won! It isn’t some future event in a place called Armageddon. The victory was won on the cross and confirmed at an empty tomb!

That’s the truth! Don’t let the violent images or language distract you. They are what John uses to capture the imagination of a people who have been battered and bruised by violence. The truth is that their God will go to any length to bring justice to the earth … and into their lives. Amen.

[i] Here and following from A is for Alabaster, pages 158-59

[ii] Here and following from What is the Bible?, page199-201

[iii] From the Student Bible, (NRSV), notes by Philip Yancey and Timn Stafford

[iv] From the New Interpreter’s Bible, commentary by Christopher Rowland, page 678

[v] Here and following from What is the Bible?, page 210

[vi] See Matthew 22:13

[vii] See Matthew 27:50-51