The major cycle of events which takes place between the reign of the beast from the sea and the Parousia is the seven bowls of wrath, introduced in 15:1 and detailed in chapter 16. Unlike the scenes in chapter 13, each bowl is a brief vignette, which apart from context could conceivably refer to any number of evil incidents in the last two thousand years. However, if chapter 13 has been interpreted correctly, the timeframe for these vignettes is significantly limited: all must take place during or after 1989, the first time any "conquerors originating from the (Communist) beast" could have been seen celebrating its demise (15:2).
There is also a potential geographical limitation for the bowls of wrath, since according to 15:7 all seven bowls are dispensed from one of the four "animals" introduced in 4:6-7. Similar beings appear in Ezekiel 1, but the latter have four wings instead of six, and each possesses all four of the semblances mentioned in Revelation. The most familiar explanation of these animals is an implausible correlation with the four evangelists. Proponents of this theory cannot agree concerning which animal symbolizes which evangelist. Traditional Christian art is based on the order Mark, Luke, Matthew, John; others follow the order of the Gospels in modern Bibles. In any case, it should go without saying that no distinctive attribute of Mark or Matthew would be signified by a lion, or in John's case by a flying eagle. The fact that there are four animals suggests an association with the earth, as in the four corners of the earth (Is. 11:12) and the four winds (Matt. 24:31). Some commentators have proposed that the animals are symbols of God's providence over four major aspects of earthly life: wilderness (lion), cultivation (ox), civilization (man), and atmosphere (eagle).
Taken together, chapters 4 and 6 contain evidence which suggests that the animals symbolize the four major continents in clockwise order: Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. That each animal in turn commissions the so-called "four horsemen of the Apocalypse" (the first four seals, 6:1-8) has been overlooked by most commentators. There are as a result three motifs associated with each animal to assist in its identification: the animal's semblance, the color of the horse it commissions, and the actions of that horse's rider.
| # | Animal Semblance | Horse Color | Rider's Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lion | White | Conquest |
| 2 | Ox | Brown/Yellow | Warfare |
| 3 | Human Face | Black | Agriculture |
| 4 | Flying Eagle | Pale/Neutral | Death |
The animal semblances appear to be major cultural symbols from each continent: the British lion, the Indian ox or cow, the distinctively African overemphasis of the human face in artwork, and the flying eagle of the Aztecs and the United States. Most commentators have ignored the precise description of the latter two motifs: face like a man, flying eagle. In traditional African statuary, the face is frequently one-third to one-half the size of the entire body. The flying eagle contrasts with most eagles employed as symbols of European states. Roman and German eagles are usually depicted perched; Byzantine and Russian eagles are double-headed.
The banner at the top of each web page contains the four animal semblances on backgrounds of their associated colors. The central panel, which is blue to symbolize the oceans which separate the continents, contains a logo symbolic of the Son of man. Lower case versions of the Greek letters iota and sigma, whose uppercase versions are a traditional abbreviation for "Jesus," are intertwined in such a way as to resemble a serpent (see John 3:14).
The horses' colors appear to designate the primary racial colors of each continent's human occupants. Concerning the color terms, purros (animal #2) is not red, as in most translations, but indicates a range of brown colors including yellow and orange, and chlóros (animal #4) is strictly speaking the insipid yellow-green color of chlorine bleach.
The riders' actions correspond to the distinctive behavior of each continent's dominant nations at the time when these continents became mutually aware of their existence: world-wide empires in Europe, militarism without world-wide empires in Asia, agriculture-intensive economies in Africa, and human sacrifice in pre-Columbian America. The seemingly redundant phrase "conquering and in order to conquer," which describes the first rider's purpose (6:2), indicates empire building for its own sake, rather than to plunder, retaliate against enemies, or provide sacrificial victims.
The pursuit of basic agriculture may seem a rather pedestrian characteristic of the third continent, yet this reflects the fact that it has no other obvious dominant trait, such as military prowess, religious extremism, or high technology. That the third rider's purpose should have been so widely misunderstood as announcing a famine is somewhat surprising, since this is hardly consistent with a declaration that olive oil and wine would not be harmed (6:6). This error is due to a severely inflated valuation of money in the first century. A denarius, the price of a quart of wheat or three quarts of barley, is almost universally asserted to have been "a day's wage for an average worker," but this is based solely on the use of the denarius as a parabolic motif (Matt. 20:2). If valid, this would mean that first century kings were in the habit of making loans equal to 165,000 years' worth of wages for an average worker (Matt. 18:24; 1 talanton = 6,000 denarii), yet few believe that the latter parabolic motif reflects actual economic conditions of the time. 200 denarii was proposed as the minimum cost of feeding the 5,000 (Mark 6:37; John 6:7), thus one denarius would purchase bread for no more than 25 people. For a large family such as Jesus' (Mark 6:3), the presumed "day's wage for an average worker" would have been barely sufficient to purchase bread for three meals a day, with nothing left over for other foodstuffs, clothing, housing, or taxes, much less non-essentials such as wine or perfume. This suggests a far lower value for the denarius, and thus a much more reasonable price for the third continent's grain.
Since the animal of 15:7 is not otherwise identified, the specific continent where the bowls of wrath occur cannot be determined at this point. Nevertheless, as will be seen, correlations of the first six bowls of wrath can be made to events from 1989 onward in the North American continent.
The most obvious candidate for the "wicked and evil wound" (16:2) is the AIDS epidemic, which began before 1989 and in a different continent (Africa), but continued unabated thereafter, especially in the United States. No other major disease has had such a recent origin and expansion.
The "blood like that of one dead" (16:3), indicating a darker color than normal, appears to correspond with the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, which literally killed every living thing in the sea.
The "rivers and the springs of the waters" where "blood came into being" (16:4) would describe the massive Mississippi River basin floods during the summer of 1993.
The "great scorching" (16:9) is the least specific image, but apparently refers to the unusually hot weather of this period which spawned innumerable fires in the West, especially in Southern California during late 1993 and in several national parks during the summer of 1996.
The "throne of the beast" (16:10) in this context would be Cuba, the one North American outpost of the Communist Empire. "Its kingdom became dark" would describe the near total shutoff of electrical power production in that country after its loss of Soviet subsidies. This was detailed during coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympics in background stories about Cuban athletes.
The sixth bowl begins with the drying up of "the great Euphrates" (16:12). Not surprisingly, the unmodified word "Euphrates" refers to the river of modern Iraq (e.g. Jer. 13:4). By contrast, the phrase "great Euphrates" is uniquely employed in Scripture with regard to the ancient promise to Abraham that his descendants would occupy territory "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates" (Gen. 15:18). Only briefly did Israel ever rule all the territory from Egypt to Iraq (during the reign of Solomon, 3 Kgdms. 4:21), and possession of this area, to the exclusion of other parts of the planet, is not presented in Scripture as the ultimate expression of the "promised land."
Few seem to have considered that, whereas we today regard a river as having ended when it opens into a larger body of water, there is no evidence that the biblical writers did so. To view the Persian Gulf or even the Indian Ocean as separate bodies of water rather than as extensions of the Euphrates is nothing but an arbitrary geographical distinction. The replacement of "the river of Egypt" with "the western sea" (that is, the Mediterranean) in later quotations of the Abrahamic legacy (e.g. Josh. 1:4) increases the likelihood that the biblical writers saw these as two names for the same body of water. Since "the meek will inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5), not merely a fraction of it, and since the word translated "land" in both testaments is the same word elsewhere translated "earth" (gé, Hebrew eretz), it may be posited that the original promise to Abraham, far from being a limited bequest of Palestine to his descendants, conferred upon them everything from the Atlantic Ocean (the final destination of the Nile) around the globe to the Indian Ocean (the final destination of the Euphrates).
Since "waters" indicates "peoples, crowds, nations, and languages" (17:15), the water of the Euphrates would mean people bordering the Indian Ocean in Asia. The result of the drying up of this water is enhanced power for "the kings of the sunrise," apparently referring to Oriental governments. Within the timeframe suggested by the previous bowls, the most obvious example of a transition from people centered to government centered life in Asia would be the transfer of its last British colony, Hong Kong, to the control of China in July, 1997.
The next subscene in the sixth bowl of wrath are three "frogs" (16:13) which come respectively from the dragon, the beast, and the "false prophet," a previously unmentioned character. In 19:20 the latter is described in language reminiscent of the beast from the land (13:12-14, 16), which would suggest China. However, the beast for whom it prophesies is the scarlet beast of chapter 17, not the beast from the sea. In the modern context, the most obvious candidate for the title "false prophet" would be Mohammed, whose claim to be the ultimate prophet of God is the foundation for the most popular alternative to Christianity. The three sources of the frogs would then be Nazism, Communism, and Islam.
The only other biblical use of "frog" is in connection with the second plague upon Egypt (Ex. 8:2). This suggests a phenomenon far less potent than a major war or disaster, which nevertheless wreaks havoc by its "signs" (as in 13:13, a term indicating unexpected displays of power). An obvious possibility would be terrorism, such as that which has recently occurred in the United States. Indeed, three major terrorist campaigns have taken place in recent years, whose perpetrators were identified in the same order as listed by John: neo-Nazi Timothy McVeigh (arrested on April 19, 1995 for bombing the Oklahoma City federal building on the same day; convicted on June 2, 1997), Marxist environmentalist Theodore Kaczynski (arrested as the Unabomber on April 3, 1996; plead guilty on January 22, 1998), and Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden (masterminded the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998). The destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, also attributed to bin Laden, may simply be the culmination of this section of the sixth bowl. On the other hand, given its impact, it could well be the fulfillment of an early motif in the seventh bowl: the "great earthquake (seismos, "shaking") such as had not occurred since men came into being upon the land, such a very great earthquake" (16:18).
The result of the three frogs' activities is that they gather "the kings of the entire civilization (oikoumené) for the battle of the great day of almighty God." In context, these "kings" would especially include the leaders of the United States. Recent terrorism has indeed greatly enhanced American unity in military and foreign policy issues, in contrast to the divisiveness of the Vietnam War era.
Quotations of Jesus dominate the first three chapters of Revelation, as well as the epilogue beginning at 22:6. By contrast, the main section of the book, which details "the things which must happen after these things," that is, after the first century (4:1; see also 1:19), contains no presumed quotations of Jesus whatsoever, except for 16:15. There is no obvious reason for placing this seemingly pedestrian statement about Jesus' sudden advent (compare 3:11 and 22:12) at this point, interrupting as it does the sequence of the bowls of wrath and the sixth bowl in particular, unless it is intended as some sort of major interlude or pause marker. Indeed, based on the analysis of chapter 13 as Communism, no definitive correlation to completed events is currently possible beyond this point.
It would appear that the church today is very specifically being asked to "wake up and do maintenance on its garments" in anticipation of the Parousia. This "awakening" of course would include the study of Revelation and eschatology, but even more importantly is a call for the purification of the Christian Gospel, which sadly is almost universally distorted by legalism and various schemes to limit the impact of Jesus' atonement 2,000 years ago. As a result, it is of comparatively little concern that anyone should be unconvinced by this research. If someone believes and teaches the Gospel incorrectly, whatever happens in the future will only be a horror to him, even if he has rightly anticipated it. But if someone does believe and teach it, he will receive what he hoped for as the greatest triumph, and what he dared not even imagine as the greatest surprise.
This verse, the only biblical reference to "Armaggedon," has nothing to do with a battle between armies or any sort of natural disaster. Indeed, it is a positive and spiritual event, a gathering of believers by either the speaker of the previous verse ("Behold, I come like a thief," etc.) or its recipient ("the one who awakens and maintains his garments"). In English Bibles, v. 16 is translated as though v. 15 didn't exist. Its subject is sought rather in v. 14, specifically the three unclean spirits, which results in a linkage of Ar Magedon to "the battle of the great day of God Almighty." In Greek, a neuter plural subject such as "spirits" (pneumata) takes a singular verb form, which has given translators a pretext to change "he gathered" (sunégagen) to "they gathered" in v. 16. Some may also have been influenced by Codex Sinaiticus, in which the plural form sunégagon appears.
The exact entailment of the term armagedón is a longstanding mystery. It is commonly rendered as the Hebrew phrase Har Magedon, in which the first word means "mountain." The second word could signify: a) excellent or pleasant, from the noun meged; b) division or assembly, from the verb gadad, "to divide," often used of putting troops into divisions and thus assemblying them; or c) Megiddo, a town ten miles southwest of Nazareth near which King Josiah was mortally wounded (2 Chr. 35:22-24). There is however no such place in Palestine as "Mount Meggido," and attempts to find one have more to do with an unbiblical Zionism than with any textual necessity.
Many translations and commentaries have failed to note that ebraisti, despite its appearance, does not mean "in Hebrew," but rather "in Aramaic," a similar Semitic language which had predominated in Palestine since the time of the Babylonian exile. This term, which occurs in the New Testament only in Johannine literature, is never associated with uniquely Hebrew vocabulary. Where specific words are cited, one has the same form in either language (Abaddon, Rev. 9:11), and the rest are uniquely Aramaic (Bethzatha, John 5:2; Gabbatha, 19:13; Golgotha, 19:17; Rabboni, 20:16). If the search for sources of armagedón is restricted to biblical Aramaic, the only possible meaning is "the cutting down of the adversary," from ar ("adversary") and gedad (similar to Hebrew gadad, "to divide," but employed in biblical Aramaic only in a destructive sense). This may well name a spiritual position rather than a geographical location, an event which identifies the true church as the Parousia approaches (see Peter's discussion of where the judgment begins, 1 Pet. 4:17-18).
