Sunday School Notes: Revelation 16:10-11

¹⁰ And the fifth poured out his bowl upon the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became darkened, and they gnawed their tongues from the suffering, ¹¹ And they blasphemed the God of heaven out of their sufferings and their sores, but they did not repent from their works.

The first bowl was poured onto the earth; the second onto the sea; the third onto rivers and springs; the fourth onto the sun. Now the fifth angel pours his bowl onto the throne of the beast. We quickly reviewed what we know of the beast from chapter 13. First, he receives power, a throne, and great authority from the dragon (i.e., Satan) (13:2). The beast is a false Christ that leads the world to worship the dragon as well as itself (13:3-4). Also, the beast blasphemes God and heaven, and conquers the saints and has authority over all people. The beast’s worshipers are all people whose names are not in the Book of Life of the Lamb (13:5-10).

So the fifth bowl is the out-pouring of God’s wrath on the earth-dweller’s object of worship: the beast, his throne, and his authority. In other words, God is exerting His power and His authority over the beast. This is a recognition that no matter how powerful the beast becomes, he only has as much power as the dragon gives him. And the dragon’s power is under the direct control of God. No-one and nothing has supremacy over God. When the Lord calls time on the beast, there is nothing he can do to stop God’s judgment.

The result of the wrath of God being poured on to the beast’s throne is that the beast’s “kingdom” is darkened. We can infer from this that only those who belong to the beast suffer from this sudden and devastating removal of light. This judgment reminds us of the fourth trumpet, where the sun was struck causing one-third of the earth to become dark. Here, however, it’s not the sun that was struck (though, as with the Egyptian darkness plague which this no doubt parallels, it would make sense that the sun was affected), but the beast’s throne.

In the Egyptian plague (Exodus 10:21-29), the darkness was such that the Egyptians couldn’t see one another. Miraculously, the Israelite dwellings had light. In the Egyptian context, the darkness plague was not only a judgment against Pharaoh and his people, but also the Egyptian sun god Ra. It demonstrated God’s supreme authority, even over the false “gods” of Egypt. Symbolically, we can’t avoid the obvious use of “darkness” in other writings by John–i.e., the Gospel and his letters. The meaning of “darkness” in John is summed up by the saying of Jesus found in John 8:12: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” The beast and his people are deprived the light of life, and they are left to wander around in darkness.

With regard to the beast’s “throne,” we saw back in Revelation 2:13 Jesus refer to Pergamum as the place “where Satan’s throne is.” Pergamum had been an important city during the days of Greek dominance. When the Romans took over, Pergamum managed to keep its status and built up such a good rapport with the new Roman overlords that it was the first city in Asia Minor to receive the Imperial cult. Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century, says that the city was the most important in the province.

What does this mean for our interpretation of the beast’s “throne”? First, while we recognize that the “beast” symbolizes ungodly power and authority opposing the Lord and His people throughout the church age (i.e., since Jesus’s ascension), certain governments and authorities throughout history seem to have particularly embodied the “beast.” For John and his readers, Rome was certainly in view. But we can look to Hitler’s Third Reich, ISIS, and many other such ruling powers in the past. And there will be others to come. The message of the fifth bowl is that, no matter where or how the beast manifests himself, God is the final authority, and the beast and all who worship him will perish under His judgment.

Those who suffer under the darkness from the fifth bowl “gnaw their tongues.” This sounds like what you might do when you’re enduring intense pain but don’t want to scream. What kind of pain or anguish might be intended here? It could be physical, but aside from people running into things because they can’t see, I’m not sure how else they could be physically affected. Perhaps it’s better to go back to the spiritual implications of “darkness” (as in John 8:12), and consider the emotional and psychological torment that comes with being constantly in rebellion against God and the laws He put in place for human flourishing and soundness.

This idea of mental anguish as a result of being in rebellion against God is, I think, supported by verse 11. Just as Pharaoh would not repent after God sent the plagues, so the earth-dwellers refuse to acknowledge God’s power and authority and give Him the worship he’s due. Rather, they blaspheme Him out of their anguish, and do not repent of their deeds (i.e., their idolatry, blasphemy, etc.). Reference is also made to “their sores,” looking back to the first bowl. We suggested there that those “sores” were physical symbols of mental torment. Their inclusion here along with the “agony” from the darkness seems to support that interpretation.

More than once in Revelation we are told that the recipients of judgment refuse to be moved. They are as hard-hearted as Pharaoh, justifying their status as earth-dwellers, and demonstrating the justness of God’s judgment against them. One example of this is with the sixth trumpet (Revelation 9:13-21), where, after one third of mankind has been killed by thousands of troops on fiercesome horses, the survivors will not repent of their works, their murders, their sorceries, their sexual immoralities, their thefts, and their idolatry.

We might wonder how, after such an obvious display of God’s supremacy, and seeing the result of their own sin in the judgment of others, they could dig their heels in so much. But this accords with what Jesus tells us in John 6:44: “No-one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” We also recall the words of Abraham to Lazarus in Jesus’s parable, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Of course, this doesn’t mean we despair of evangelizing. What it means is we should evangelize knowing the Lord will lead His people to repentance. That’s His work, not ours. We should reach out to the lost, not wanting any of them to face these horrendous judgments. But we should likewise recognize that nothing we do can convince a hard heart to repent. Only the Spirit of God can work such miracles.

We will look at the sixth bowl next time…