The 7-bowl Judgements: (Chap. 16)
The bowl judgements have some similarities with seal and trumpet judgements but with many more differences especially in the degree of devastation. The bowls are universal, more intense than the previous judgements and are called “the last judgements (15:1) and the 3rd woe, showing they do not go back in time to repeat earlier plagues.
The first bowl: (Grievous sores) (16:2): The first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth. Immediately loathsome and malignant sores came upon those who have rejected Jesus Christ. The sores will not affect believers, whose names have been “written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain (13:8). This judgment reminds us of the sixth plague in Egypt (Ex. 9:8-12). Only those who have submitted to “the beast” and who have rejected the warning of the first angel will experience this judgment (Rev. 14:6-7). Also these sores do not disappear; for by the time of the fifth vial, people are still in pain from the first judgment. Yet their pain will not cause them to repent. William R. Newell used to say, “If men are not won by grace, they will never be won.”It is an awesome thought to consider almost the entire population of the world suffering from a painful sores that nothing can cure them. Constant pain affects a person’s disposition so that he finds it difficult to get along with other people. Human relations during that period will certainly be at their worst.
The second bowl: waters turned to blood (16:3-6)
Before the sores of the first bowl could heal, “the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea and it became blood like that of dead man; and every living thing in the sea died.” This judgement is similar to the 1st plague in Egypt (Ex. 7:20-24) and the 2nd Trumpet judgment (8:8-9), but this time the effects will be much more intense. Since the oceans cover appr. 70% of the earth’s surface, the effects of this judgement will be worldwide. The effect will again be similar to what happened to the Red sea, the toxic species of algae kill higher forms of marine life, including shellfish, fish and marine mammals.
The stench from the dead, decaying bodies of every living thing in sea (only partial death occurred at the 2nd Trumpet) will be unimaginable. Heaven gives justification for this terrible judgment: the earth-dwellers have shed the blood of God’s people, so it is only right that they should drink blood. In God’s government, the punishment fits the crime. Pharaoh tried to drown the Jewish boy babies, but it was his own army that eventually drowned in the Red Sea. Haman planned to hang Mordecai on the gallows and to exterminate the Jews; but he himself was hanged on the gallows, and his family was exterminated (Es. 7:10; 9:10). King Saul refused to obey God and slay the Amalekites, so he was slain by an Amalekite (2 Sam. 1:1-16).