Many people today have come to take for granted the salvation of God. They fail to appreciate what exactly they are saved from. When Christians speak about being saved, they specifically refer to being saved from God’s wrath. Salvation has become a cheap thing in the eyes of many simply because of a failure to appreciate the dangers of God’s wrath. They do not appreciate what an omnipotent omniscient God will dish out on the wicked. God has reserved seven bowls of wrath He will pour out on people who disobey Him in the end. You can expect each bowl to inflict a sizable measure of pain on those who experience them; a measure of pain that is meant to get our attention. Every person should come to appreciate the calamities that await those who disobey. People killed for their faith will be better off than those who live to see God’s wrath. Once every believer is removed from the world, God will no longer spare the wicked. He will heap calamity upon them and that without remedy. No one will be able to say that God is not true and righteous in his Judgements. According to your own ways, God will judge us. For whatever a man sows, that He will also reap. He will allow whatever we sow in life to come to fruition. He will do this to teach us the folly of our own ways. People suffer needlessly because they do not consider their destiny. If you sow to your flesh, you will reap corruption. In the end God will give you what you deserve. He will repay what is your just due. Learn why it is really a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God.
A summary description of the pains a foul and loathsome sore can afflict on the body.
When the first bowl of wrath is poured out, God will first make a foul and loathsome sore break out on all those who take the mark of the beast. Through his angels, God forewarns everyone not to take this mark lest they too experience the full strength of God’s wrath. Many will not heed this warning only to suffer the consequences of such a decision. To those who disobey, God promises to plague them with the boils of Egypt (Dt 28:27). Josephus describes them as terrible boils, breaking forth with blains (inflammatory swelling), while they were already inwardly consumed. Consumption was an old medical term to describe the wasting away of the body. This means that the onset of pain would commence before the patient would erupt in breakouts. Think of a condition similar to a bad case of shingles or chicken pox. Symptoms before a breakout can be described as itching, burning, stinging, or an acute sharp stabbing pain. Some describe the feeling as being on pins and needles at times. In extreme cases, these pains, by itself, can be debilitating. The condition can also make the sensory nerves hypersensitive. Feeling the slightest touch or gentle breeze near the affected area can put the subject in excruciating pain. A similar Greek word to describe this affliction is used to describe the ulcer sores on Lazarus that the dogs would lick. This means that in the eruptive phase, fluid filled blisters would develop, break, ooze out, and scab over. To say they are foul implies they will smell. To say they are loathsome implies they will be unsightly. Because these breakouts erupt from the deeper dermal layers of the skin, they often scar. After the breakout runs it’s course, an extremely unpleasant itching sets in and lingers long after a bad scab has healed.
A summary description of the pains inflicted when people are forced to drink blood
By the time the angels pour out the second and third bowl of wrath on the earth, God will turn all the seas and fresh water into blood. Because the world has spilled the blood of his saints, He will make them drink their blood. We know what kind of pain this may inflict, because God has done this before. In Egypt, the water was also turned to blood. The historian Josephus records any Egyptian who ventured to drink the blood suffered great pains and bitter torment (Antiquities XIV). Current medical knowledge can explain the phenomena. Aside from blood being able to transmit bacteria and disease, the fluid itself irritates the mucosal lining of the human digestive tract and dehydrates it. People who drink blood in an effort to satiate their thirst will only find it to accentuate that feeling. Conventional knowledge says drinking any more than a pint of someone else’s blood really brings on the symptoms. The human body can readily adsorb iron from foreign blood and quickly bring on an overdose condition referred to as HemoChromatosis. Iron toxicity symptoms closely resemble those of an iron deficiency including nausea, weakness, fatigue, anemia, stomach aches, lethargy, and impaired cognitive thinking. A high iron content impairs the heart, decreases circulation, and can make the skin pale. All of these factors can also contribute to a photo sensitivity to light.
How to optimize the pain level when scorching men with the Sun’s heat.
By the time of the fourth bowl of wrath, God will empower the sun to scorch men with fire. After photo sensitizing men through blood toxemia and blistering sores, he afflicts them with scorching heat from the sun. Burn depth thickness is normally classified by degree. As the number goes up, the burn severity into the deeper layers of skin gets worse. First degree burns are equivalent to a normal sun burn. Normal sun burns are superficial burns where the outermost layer of skin is still intact and functioning properly. The term scorch implies the severity of the burn will be such as to only altar the color and texture of the skin. This would be second degree burn. Second degree burns occurs as the outermost epidermal layer of the skin is destroyed. They are the smallest degree of burn that would develop blisters as a protective measure against further damage. Third and fourth degree burns may cause more severe damage to the body, but they also happen to destroy sensory nerve cells to the point a person would not feel any pain from the burn. Because of this, second degree burns happen to be the most painful burn. If God is interested in optimizing the pain someone would experience from a burn, then simply scorching them with a second degree burn would be the way to do it. Singed but not fried is the idea. God does not wish to destroy anyone, but He will want to light a fire under these people in an attempt to get them to repent of their ways.
What it means to experience a darkness that can be felt.
By the time of the fifth bowl of wrath, God will turn the lights out for the unbeliever. The Darkness that God brought over the land of Egypt was a darkness that could be felt (Ex 10:21); a thick darkness that not only obstructed their sight but also their breathing (Antiquities XIV). No one likes the feeling of not being able to breathe. Gasping for air and then gagging from the feeling your airway is obstructed is enough to drive anyone crazy. The panic attacks would quickly set in knowing the entire world is shrouded in darkness with no relief in sight. Suffocation or Asphyxia makes a person feel like they are drowning. Countries would use water boarding as a means to simulate the same effect of torture. What else can men do but gnaw their tongues in an attempt to cope with the agony? A protruded tongue between clenched teeth is a common finding among hanging deaths. Of course, all of this occurs at a low enough level to deny anyone the reprieve of death leaving them in a constant state of utter agony.
The same discipline that softens the heart of some will harden others.
When taken together, each of these judgements are designed to amplify the pain of an individual on every level. God does this in an attempt to get unrepentant people’s attention and make them change. All of these pains are enough to make just about anybody crazy. It should come as no surprise then that any unrepentant person who suffers such things and knows God is doing it would only want to blaspheme Him. In fact, all this torment will be the driving force for why unbelievers will assemble for war against the Christ and his saints in the battle of Armageddon. Naturally, hurting sinful people will only want to hurt those who hurt them. All of the pain inflicted on them up to this point will only harden them further. Of course, when they gather for war against God, they will come to find their troubles are only just beginning. I will save the details of Armageddon for a separate post. Suffice it to say, God does not willing afflict the children of men but He would rather die than not see Justice done. After all, He did send his beloved Son to be crucified on a cross for us in order that justice might be served. The only people that will suffer God’s wrath are those who are stubborn and persist in their sin. Give up your evil ways and God will have mercy on your soul. God does not delight in the death of anyone. He would rather that a person turn and live. Leave your sins and they will not be your ruin.
No comments:
Post a Comment