Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling
the seven angels, ‘Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of
God’. So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and harmful
and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and
worshiped its image. The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it
became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing died that was in the
sea. The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of
water, and they became blood… The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun,
and it was allowed to scorch people with fire. They were scorched by the fierce
heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They
did not repent and give him glory. The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the
throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed
their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores.
They did not repent of their deeds. The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the
great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the
kings from the east. And I saw, coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out
of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three
unclean spirits like frogs. For they are demonic spirits… The seventh angel
poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from
the throne, saying, ‘It is done!’ And there were flashes of lightning,
rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never
been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake…
Revelation
16:1-18
Modern
insights about what God is going to do in the world need to correspond with
what we find in the Bible. While they may be helpful in casting new light on
certain passages, they can never undermine fundamental truths.
What I
find interesting about the modern forecasts of financial catastrophe is that
they do reflect what the Bible says about how God has acted in the past. To
this end, they rarely stand alone but are linked to warnings of other calamities, as did the warnings of the Israelite prophets and the
sorts of things we read about in Revelation, the final book in the Bible, that
describes the end of the world.
Of course, I realise
this works both for and against the credibility of modern insights, because they
could be seen as simply mimicking what we read in the Bible. Therefore, what St
Paul says in the extract at the start of yesterday’s Reflection is as important
as ever: the need for two or three people to speak and the others to weigh
their words. Or as St John wrote: ‘test the spirits to see whether they are from God’. In doing this,
however, we should be careful not reject something just because it is
uncomfortable or seems fanatical.
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans
2013.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
© 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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