Revelation Bible study chapter 8

Revelation Bible study chapter 8

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that we may receive a commission if you make a purchase using some of the links posted.

So in this study we’re going to read chapter 8 of Revelation and we’re gonna try to answer the question: “What’s so bad about this chapter?” There’s a lot of different things that people complain about this chapter, and many of them have valid arguments. Let’s go through them.

One

Okay, first off, what is in this chapter? There’s only a very small section in chapter 8, and it’s a direct continuation of chapter 7. So the first thing that you should notice is that this section is very similar to chapter 7, and it’s not like these two chapters are separate. The only reason you may see a bit more of this section in chapter 7 is that chapter 8 is a continuation of it, so we have to read about it as well.

For example, John has written that in chapter 7, “we have received an order from the throne, saying to go out and make war”. In chapter 8 he says: “In the first…we went out to make war with the Lamb”. It’s kind of the same order, same chapter. So you need to read the whole chapter, or at least the entire section.

You also have to remember that the word “we” in this passage is meant in the book’s context, which is the seven bowl judgments, or “seven bowls”. That’s why we call it “seven bowl judgment”, not “seven bowls”. “We” is in reference to the seven bowl judgments, not the seven bowls.

Two

The second thing you need to be aware of in this passage is the context. We’re in the sixth bowl judgment. We saw in chapter 7 how he referred to the previous bowl judgments as an “order from the throne”, and in chapter 8 he said: “the Lamb has been given the seven bowls…”.

We also know that the Lamb is Jesus the Messiah. The Lamb of God is a reference to Jesus, the Messiah. Now in chapter 8, John is speaking to the seven bowl judgments as a whole, and in the previous bowl judgments, the entire judgment is on the entire world. Now we see the Lamb giving judgments to the entire world at the same time.

This shows us that we’re looking at an extension of the previous bowl judgments. This particular bowl judgment is looking at all the wickedness on the earth, or as John calls them in verse 14: “all the wicked”. They’re all going to be judged and then thrown into the lake of fire.

Three

Another thing to keep in mind is that a bowl judgment does not take place every time that John mentions it. There are “two or three days” periods between bowl judgments, and the only time in the entire book that John is describing a bowl judgment is in chapter 7.

We’re only looking at a partial list of bowl judgments here. He gives some additional bowl judgments in chapters 9 and 15, but he gives us the basic “two or three days” list here in chapter 8. So we’re only looking at the two to three days in this chapter, and we’re only looking at part of this list of judgments.

Chapter 8 in Revelation is very different from chapters 9 and 15. This chapter in Revelation is more on the theme of the Apocalypse, or the end of the world.

Four

What’s the title of this chapter? Why is it called chapter 8? This is a lot different from the book of Ezekiel where he talked about the “sackcloth of God”. This chapter is called “the bowl of wrath”. We talked about the “bowl of wrath” last week, and how John explained that in this verse in chapter 8: “the seven bowls are the bowls of wrath”.

This is in comparison to the bowl of God in Ezekiel, and why this chapter is called “the bowl of wrath”. Verse 14 is the key to that: “Then he will cause a plague to strike them…”. It’s comparing the judgment that we’re looking at here to the book of Ezekiel where God will cause a plague to strike the world.

This is not looking at something that God is going to do later on. This is looking at the judgment that the Lamb is going to come in and strike. Verse 14 is the key to understanding chapter 8.

Five

Another thing to keep in mind is that in chapter 8 the bowls represent the “seven last plagues”. The three previous bowl judgments represent the seven last plagues. We saw the three bowl judgments, and we’ll get to the sixth bowl judgment here. But we need to also understand that there are seven bowl judgments because he says that “The Lamb has been given the seven bowls…”.

The Lamb is giving the judgments that are going to take place on the whole earth in this chapter. He’s giving the judgments that are going to take place at the same time, and he’s using the bowls here to represent the judgments.

Six

Sixth, there is a theme that’s developed in this chapter, and that’s the number “666”.

The number 666, which is represented in the number “666” in the last two chapters of this book, is a number representing “seven times six hundred sixty-six”. Remember that 666 represents “seven times sixty-six”.

This book is telling us that the number “666” means something very important. The number “666” is a symbol of what the numbers in this book represent. We’ve talked about what the “7 times 6” is talking about in terms of the seventh bowl, but the numbers “6 and 666” are a reference to the sixth bowl judgment that we’re looking at right now in chapter 8.

Seven

The seventh thing that we need to understand is that this bowl judgment is looking at the “seven judgments that are written in this scroll”. This is something that I was talking about in my last post, and I’ll be talking about it again here.

Read more.....