KEEP AWAKE!
KEEP AWAKE!
REVELATION 16:8-16
Does your lifestyle show that you are prepared or unready for Christ’s return?
Since none of the other heavenly bodies is here mentioned with “the sun” (16:8), there is no reason why we should not take it literally. A very small rise in the sun’s inner temperature could raise that of the earth to an almost unbearable level beside causing major natural disasters by the melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps.
The darkness over the beast’s capital (Babylon?) and the heart of its kingdom is doubtless to be explained as in Exodus 10:21. Drought and great heat—nor may we exclude the possibility of volcanic action (16:18-19)—create the conditions for a major sandstorm. The result of these two plagues justify the grape harvest of judgment (14:17-20). Those who do not respond to God’s love will not humble themselves before his judgments.
The Euphrates (16:12) seems to play a symbolic part in biblical thinking. It served as a kind of symbolic frontier between civilization and barbarism. Civilization, the world, is on the one hand a gift of God (Romans 13:1), on the other it has been twisted by Satan and evil people into an obstacle to the advance of God’s will and rule. We are probably intended to see the breakdown of civilization under the inrush of the underprivileged peoples from all sides; not only the east is intended.
Faced with the breakdown of all that satanic deceit, human pride and religious self-confidence had created, the three beasts plan a supreme comeback. Since the war on the saints (13:7) is not to be understood literally, neither should that on God. Armageddon is named as the mustering place, not the battle ground. Since it is the largest plain in Palestine, it points to the size of the forces involved. There is no suggestion of an attack on Jerusalem; we must beware how we try to piece different prophecies into a tidy unity, as though they were bits of a jigsaw. The mustering is done by “demonic spirits” (16:14), so it seems that a supreme effort is being made to get humanity to renounce God.
In spite of their horror, the plagues are merely intensifications of what has already happened, just as the plagues on Egypt were of natural troubles that have often struck the land.
So Christian readers are warned that the judgments of God are at large in the land and so they must keep awake (16:15; see also 1 Thessalonians 5:2-8). The temple area was a fortress and Levitical troops used to be on duty at night. At an unpredictable hour the “captain of the temple” used to make his rounds. Should he find a sentry asleep, he took a torch from one of the escort and set his clothes on fire; with morning light his burnt appearance proclaimed to all his companions his failure in his duty (see also 1 John 2:28).