The bowls of wrath suggest an increase of momentum in the judgments of the Lord. The world, the flesh, and the devil attack and we should reveal that we are different in the face of the opposition. One day “It is done!” shall be proclaimed. Revelation 16; Revelation 18:20

Speaker: Thomas Schaller
Date: 2026-11-01
Time: Sun 11:00 am
Sermon #13232

P. Schaller –

Revelation 16 – I’d say this chapter isn’t our commonly preached on a Sunday morning in our churches, I would say, but it is filled with lessons and relevant information and concepts, thoughts that we should embrace and kind of process in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is our teacher. 

 

We are reading the book of Revelation and we’ll be moving into chapter 17 and 18 and the judgment on Babylon, the religious part of Babylon and then the economical part of Babylon. And we’ll cover that a little bit today. 

 

And then 19, Christ returning with the angels and with us to the earth. And we anticipate that and think about it. This morning I’d like to introduce or bring out in a practical way that your life is now being lived by Christ in you. Christ is in you by the work of Christ on the cross. That it isn’t something that you look forward to in the future that I will one day go to heaven, though we do, and we anticipate the kingdom on the earth coming. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Wow! Your name. Your name is great. Your kingdom come on earth as it is there. 

 

But it isn’t here now as it is there. Because we have the world. We actually have three enemies to the believer. The believer, we could draw a little picture. His life is like this and he has three enemies and they are, okay. The flesh, the world and the devil. 

 

But God has put in the believer, Christ. Christ is in us. We have the Spirit of God that dwells in us and we are told to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Also, we are told that now you are clean through the Word that I have spoken unto you, John 15:3. Sanctify them according to your Word, John 17:17. 

 

So, we are saved by grace and that’s sure. We have security with a witness in ourselves, 1 John 5:13. The Spirit and the water and the blood bear witness. And as you walk with Christ by faith, sooner or later you should have a witness in yourself that you are a child of God, for my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. 

 

We end up living a unique life, a different kind of life by faith because of Christ in us. And that’s the purpose of gathering together that we would drink the same Spirit. We would be walking in the anointing of God and we pray for our services that the Holy Spirit’s presence would be strong. That we would be bearing witness to the Word of God and hearing God in our hearts. We would say amen to what is said. 

 

When the Bible is telling us that we are born of God, that we’ve been regenerated, we’ve been justified by his grace, we have the witness from God that it is true. And in our hearts we are saying amen. 

 

But I have sinned on Friday night. Or last Monday. Or I don’t feel I am what I should be. I become very self-conscious of my failures. And sometimes very aware of myself. But there’s a great answer to that in 1 John 3. “If your heart condemns you, God is greater than your heart.” Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more, John 8. To the woman taken in adultery in the very act. In the very act. 

 

Why is that important? Because they knew that Jesus would not hear an accusation that was hearsay but there would be witnesses. She was caught in the very act. And when he was finished, he said neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. 

 

Romans 8:1, there’s no condemnation in Christ Jesus. You need to learn how to build yourself up in the grace of God and to know that God loves you. And on our website, go to the Greater Grace app and listen to messages from the past and the present. There’s a great one by Dr. Stevens called, “Just Let God Love You.” Be loved by God. Just let God love you. 

 

Build yourself up in the most holy faith, Jude 20. But you brethren, building up yourself in the most holy faith. I believe that’s why we come to church. I want to be built up in my most holy faith. I will confess my known sin, and he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

 

Now, tonight, we’ll give little lessons on Sunday night. Tonight, I want to give a lesson for our devotional life and I want to encourage you and ask you to come out to church. I want to build you up. I want you to have your own Bible. I want you to have a daily time in the Bible. I want you to be happy, joyful, blessed, encouraged. I want you to know how to build up yourself in the faith and walk with God in a personal way that is satisfying. Drinking from God. 

 

Now, I think I have a video. I’m not sure I sent it to the A.V. I’m not sure if they got it. Let’s see if it’s up there. Okay. Listen. Wow. That’s better than the one I sent! All right. I want to explain something to you. The book of Revelation is about the church on the earth, chapters 2 and 3. The church leaves and when the church leaves, something happens in heaven. 

 

The Father’s on the throne with the deed of the earth, and nobody can take the deed and open the seven seals. But then there is the one, the Lamb of God, who comes and takes the scroll out of the hand of the Father for he is worthy to take the scroll and open the seven seals. 

 

When he takes that, in a way and this is a metaphor for it, when the tree is at zero mile an hour, at the top of the tree it’s not moving. It’s not moving but it starts to move. And when it starts to gain momentum, how fast is it falling. 

 

When it first starts, you just hear a crack. And that crack means there’s no turning back. It’s over. It’s going down. It’s going to happen faster and faster. When it starts, it’s very slow and then when it’s gone, it’s gone. 

 

And that’s like the book of Revelation. When the seals are open, like the first seal, the second seal, the third, there’s seven. Then there’s seven trumpets with the last seal. There’s seven trumpets and with the seven trumpet now, I mean, it’s going fast. And there’s seven bowls of wrath that are being poured out on the earth. We read it this morning. It’s powerful.

 

And in a way, it’s like terrible because nobody likes the wrath of God in one way. We are human beings and we are on this end of understanding it. But labor for it. Labor. Work at understanding the wrath of God because it goes with his nature. 

 

Cuz these angels are like gold. They’re dressed with gold. They are holy and there’s seven of them and they are high ranking angels. And they’re given a bowl of wrath that’s poured out on the earth. On the sea, it turns blood. Fresh water, it turns blood. It’s poured out on the sun. It’s poured out on the Antichrist’s government. Darkness. It’s poured out on the air. 

 

And these bowls of wrath, there are seven of them. And when the seventh is done, it is over. It is done. And we’re going to try and explain to you what is actually happening here. We go back to this picture. You should all understand your sin nature and what your sin nature is. 

 

We have a sin nature and when we are unbelievers, we all have a sin nature. Nothing else but our sin nature. But our sin nature, we can manage it to be bad and good. Bad and good. But we cannot be ultimately good without God. That’s why we must be born again. 

 

When you are born again, you receive another nature. The nature of Christ. When you’re born the first time into the world, you have only one nature. It’s my sin nature and I can judicially handle my sin nature. I can be bad but I’ll be bad in secret. Or I’ll be bad and it’s open but only before a few people. 

 

But I’ll manage my sin nature so I won’t be shamed or go to the jail or get into really deep trouble. But I will manage my badness on a Friday night or once in a year. I will manage my appetites and my flesh. I will manage it with my will power and my decisions that I make with maybe small groups of people or big groups of people. 

 

And I hope you would understand this because when you are born again and reading your Bible, you start to understand that the goodness that man has by nature when he’s tested, he’s not really that good. He is like the crowd that cried to Christ, Hosanna to God in the highest! Hosanna to God in the highest! And in a few days later, the same crowd is saying, Crucify him! Crucify him! And if you haven’t run into that with yourself and other people, one day you will. 

 

I love you. I love you. I love you. And then it suddenly changes. I’ve got issues with you. I have problems with you. Stay away from me. The nature of man. His heart is deceitful, desperately wicked. Who can know it? We change overnight. 

 

We change with hunger, when we go hungry. I’m hungry. When I’m hungry, I’m an angry man. When I’m hungry, I could steal bread. When I’m hungry, I could lie. When I’m hungry, I can be deceitful. When I’m starving to death, I have real issues and problems. The nature of man. 

 

But when it comes to Christ, Christ isn’t like that. Christ is clean and pure and holy, day by day, every day, every moment, in suffering, in good days and in bad days. Christ is Christ. Christ is God. Wow! 

 

You need him for this new life. And if you don’t have him, you don’t have eternal life. You don’t have a relationship with God. I mean in the sense of being a child of God. To as many as received him, he gave the legal power to become the children of God, John 1:12. Born not of the will of man but the will of God, vs. 13. Very important. 

 

Then as you are born again and you learn how to walk by faith, the Holy Spirit will show you and bear witness to you who you are and you will grow in him. And there is that element outside of your life. We could call it just large numbers of people, small groups and big groups. You have your community. Your school. Your family. You have your university, your working place. You have your social media platforms. You have smaller groups. You have big groups. But eventually, you have 8.5 billion people that are on the earth today. I think that’s about the number. 

 

And those people are operating on the basis of what we call the “world.” It’s the ideologies, the religions. It’s the philosophy. It’s the teaching, the habits, the traditions. A lot of it is good. It’s moral. But if you deeper into it, it’s not Christ. It’s the world. And it can be misled. And that is what’s happening in the book of Revelation. 

 

The Antichrist is deceiving the whole world, Revelation 12:9. And he’s doing it in the first part of the Tribulation. So, I have here the ideologies and the way of the world, and the believer. And my one point now in this message is you should have a sense that you are different from the world. 

 

The spirit of the world, the ways of the world, the ideology of the world, the habits of the world, the propositions that the world makes, habits and patterns of life that are in the world. I’m in the world but I’m not of it. Like a boat is in the water but a fish is in the water, too.

 

When a fish is in the water, the fish is in the water and of the water. Meaning it’s part of the whole thing. But a boat is in the water but not of it. I use that to illustrate how it works for you. We are in the world but not of it. We have a different spirit. God is our Father. And the love of the world is not the love that is of God, 1 John 2:16. Love not the world. If I love the world, the love of the Father is not in me. 

 

When Jesus was here, he had the love of the Father, and he did not have love for the world or the love of the world. He had the love of the Father. So, when he was here, he was different. And you and I need to realize and we will and we do if we walk with God, that we are in the world but there are certain things that we don’t accept. There are things, doctrines and teachings that are unacceptable. 

 

Because one of the things that the Holy Spirit does for us is to teach us this book. The world will say, that book is old fashioned. Get rid of the book. You don’t need the book. But we say, no. Jesus told us heaven and earth will pass away but not one jot or tittle out of the book, out of the Bible, not one letter or stroke of the pen. Heaven and earth will pass away but not one jot or tittle of the Word of God. 

 

The world will say, you know, in our day and age, we just sleep around. You can sleep with anybody you want to in this day and age. We say, no. No. I don’t accept that. Why? Cuz Galatians 5:19. Mark 7:21-23. No, Ezekiel 16, adultery and fornication, all those sexual sins are linked to – Ezekiel 16:15. Let’s put it up for me on the screen. 

 

This is adultery, fornication is connected with idolatry. It’s written in this text, vs. 15 – 34. But let’s just read vs. 15-16. This is Israel. Do you know what God said? This is incredible. He said a harlot, like a man will pay the woman for the prostitution, for the sexual encounter. The man will pay. 

 

But he said Israel, but you are so bad, you are a woman that’s paying the man to have it. You’re paying the man. And he said, this is because you are – the words are sounding similar, adultery and idolatry, but they are different. This is because of idolatry. 

 

And what is idolatry? It’s when I have something else other than God. For if you have God, you have the Spirit of God, mind of God, and you’ll say, no. No. that’s not my life. No. I have the authority from God. I have authority from God so that I am not playing the harlot. I am not adulterating myself. I’m living in the purity of God and his nature and his holiness. I have found Christ in my life. 

 

Now, how does this relate to Revelation? Quite a bit because – let me finish reading. Vs. 15-17. Male images made out of gold and silver that I have given to you and you played the harlot. Why is all this sexual stuff written here in the Bible? Why is this all – it’s like loaded with it. It’s Jeremiah. It’s Ezekiel. It’s Isaiah. It’s the main theme.

 

Well, when we go to the book of Revelation here in 17 we have Babylon the mother of harlots, the mother of abominations, the mother of harlots. And what it is, is the Antichrist’s crown method of getting everyone on the same page and the world system operating in idolatry. 

 

And the world system and you can see it in our time. We are not there yet socially, but we can see global warming and globalism and we can say for the need for a world economy and we can see kings and the Antichrist coming and being the leader. And he’s using religion, the harlot, Babylon, and she is riding the beast and the beast is in control of her but she feels she is in control of him. She is riding this animal, this beast, which is the Antichrist, the world government at the time. 

 

Cuz the world government goes like this. There’s seven years. There’s a beginning. We can call this the crack of the tree and then it finally ends with the crash of the tree and it increases in intensity. It’s coming down and you cannot reverse it. And it’s coming fast. And there’s this terrible world that is increasing in its wickedness and its evilness.

 

We will not be there then. But can you see living in the world now that I need God’s mind living in this world so that I can organize my life and live my life and bear fruit and glorify our heavenly Father by living in his righteousness and the knowledge of God.

 

Do you have the knowledge of God. Can you say like with all your heart when you kneel down and you have your quiet prayer before God. Let me teach you a little lesson. It’s before you go to bed or when you get up in the morning or both. During the afternoon. In the afternoon. 

 

You get very quiet. Very quiet and put away everything if you can. Nothing bothers you. Don’t listen to anything. You’re coming before God. And you just submit everything to God. All your worries, all your cares and you’re relying on him. And fill me with your Spirit, God. And just stay there in surrender. 

 

You are not that important. I am not that important. I am not the point. God is the point. My stuff it doesn’t matter. My stuff is just stuff. I have God. I make God big in my heart. God, Almighty God. Imagine. Holy God. Living God. Wise God. 

 

Lord, I am not any of that but you are and I have you. I just stay there before God, trusting, worshipping him, listening to him, trusting him, being quiet before God. And then just saying simple things like help me. Help me, Lord. Please don’t lead me into temptation. Keep me. Help me, Lord. Answer my prayer. 

 

And then I don’t know what to pray. I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know what to pray. And then I say that to God. I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know what to pray but I am here before you. I am on holy ground because of Christ. Christ made me a child of God. Christ is in us. Christ is our guide, our leader. Christ is the one living. The living Christ. We’re trusting him. 

 

You know, it depends on your state of mind or how it is. I don’t know how to describe this to you but I’m trying to say something. That you could actually stay there. It is so peaceful. He is loving you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. Is there stuff about me that is ugly or bad? Yes. I am a sinner. 

 

Who am I? I am nothing. I am a sinner. Yes, so now I don’t feel it. I’m not thinking about that. I made my confession and then I’m just there and he’s taking me and encouraging me. He’s loving me. He’s helping me. He’s answering me. He’s my Father. He pities me. He loves me. 

 

How could a mother forsake her child? So, I will never forsake you. He said, yeah, she might, but I will never forsake you, Isaiah 38. You see. Okay. Now, when you have a relationship with God like this where you’re able to wait upon God, he will renew your strength. He will help you live in the world. 

 

But in the Tribulation period, we are not here. We are gone. But there will be Christians through the period, and they will be facing these difficulties and these temptations. Actually, 144,000 start because they are sealed by God and the same group survive it at the end. It looks like that, Revelation 7 and Revelation 14. 

 

There are also two witnesses half way through and they’re bearing witness and maybe there are some people saying this world is like hell. Is there any answer? Is there any message? There will be two prophets preaching in Jerusalem in the middle of it. They will be killed but then ascend into heaven in the presence of everybody that sees them, maybe on TV or however it goes. 

 

The Antichrist will really get working and there will be Babylon, the woman, he will get rid of her. I don’t need you anymore. I don’t need you anymore. You got me. I got the whole world deceived and, and I used you and your false religion and the message of idolatry. And I got the whole world walking with me, the Antichrist.

 

Then I wanted more control and I actually want the world to worship me, so I get rid of you. But I use you. I use you for my purposes. What a classic picture. Evil will use evil for its own purposes and once it’s done with you and they got what they want, then you are thrown away. And that’s Revelation 17. 

 

And then the increased, the seven bowls at the end which will rapidly change life. And then Christ returns. The battle of Armageddon happens and then Christ returns. What can we say about this? When in heaven, 18:20, could we put that Scripture up? Revelation 18:20. After the seventh bowl is poured out in heaven God says, rejoice. Revelation 18:20, we would say the world is in such bad condition we should weep over it. But God is saying, no. Rejoice over it. It’s over. It’s done. 

 

The world system doesn’t have any more future. There’s a new world order. Christ is in charge. The glory of God will cover the earth like the waters cover the sea in Isaiah 11. A man’s life will be the life of a tree. It says that in Isaiah 65. How old do trees live? One hundred years? One hundred and fifty? I looked it up. Different ones. Seven hundred and fifty years. A thousand. Some trees live to be 2,000 years old. Trees.

 

What’s it mean? Longevity. People on the earth in the Millennium who survive the Tribulation period will live long periods of time. People that are born in the Millennium period will live long periods of time. We will live forever with a glorified body coming and going on the earth in the Millennium. And that’s a promise to us. 

 

We’re anticipating the coming kingdom. We are not making it up. It’s to a fantasy. It’s reality. It’s the wedding of God in heaven and his world with this world and it will be without the sin, without the tears, and without the sorrow one day at the end of the Millennium. 

 

We are watching God judge the world one day and when it happens, God is going to say in heaven that verse, Revelation 18:20. Rejoice. Let’s put it up again. Vs. 20. You were killed, murdered by the world. The world murdered Christ. In a way we could say the spirit of the world murdered the Apostle Paul. Murdered the Apostle Peter. Thomas. Through the century, saints. 

 

The spirit of the world that doesn’t understand or accept us and what we believe and so on. The world and us, we are different. We are in it but we are not of it. Our doctrines are not from the world. They are from the Word of God. Our way of life is not from the world. It is from the Word of God. It’s from God. You have a new life because of him.

 

And I want to encourage you today that no one likes pain. No one is happy about it. But we are happy when wickedness ends. We are happy when the wickedness is over. When you get really hurt by it, one day when you get hurt really badly by the world. They laugh at you. They mock at you. They throw you away. You mean nothing to them. They could care less. When that happens to you, you cry out, Justice, Lord. When is justice coming? When is there going to be justice? When will there be a better world? When is it coming? 

 

And God is telling us it’s coming. One day the tree will crack and it’s going to come faster and faster and it will be done. And Christ and his angels and Christ and the church will come back, will come here and we’ll be on the earth with a better world. That’s going to happen by God’s great plan. Amen. 

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