📖 SERMON 211 — THE FINAL OUTPOURING OF GOD’S WRATH
Preacher: Rev. G. S. Kok
Date: December 26, 1965
Scripture Reading: Luke 21:25–38
Text: Revelation 16:17–21
Title: The Final Outpouring of God’s Wrath
INTRODUCTION
There is nothing so amazing as the lovingkindness, mercy, longsuffering, and patience of our God. Sometimes it seems as if His patience has no end.
Year after year He sends His ambassadors, pleading with sinners to repent and believe. Yet people stubbornly resist the Holy Spirit and continue on in sin. They refuse to receive Jesus Christ as Savior.
But although God’s patience lasts long, the day comes when God says: “It is done.” Then His long-restrained, perfectly just wrath is poured out. This is what John saw when the seventh angel emptied the last bowl of wrath.
A. The last of the judgments treasured up for the ungodly
1. It is poured forth at God’s command.
2. Divine justice is now executed.
B. It is emptied into the air
1. All life depends on the air.
2. Without air there is only death.
3. The “air” is the realm of satanic principalities and powers.
4. Thus every living thing feels its effect.
C. Accompanied by the cry: “It is done.”
1. The same words Jesus cried from the cross — but with a different meaning.
2. Here it means:
a. The final outpouring of God’s wrath upon those who dwell on the earth.
b. The day of salvation and grace is ended.
c. The antichristian world is finished.
3. This is D-day for the unrepentant sinner — the one who resisted every pleading of a God who is love.
A. A great universal upheaval
1. Heaven and earth are shaken.
2. Lightnings, thunderings, and voices.
3. The greatest earthquake in history.
Every island flees; mountains disappear.
Nothing remains stable.
B. Great Babylon is broken up completely
1. Babylon represents the pride and power of the world — “the great Babylon that I have built.”
2. The antichristian world collapses politically, socially, economically — total ruin.
Divided into three parts — complete disintegration.
3. She receives the cup of the wine of the fierceness of God’s wrath.
C. Those who dwell on the earth are crushed
1. Their whole life was wrapped up in the ungodly world.
2. They gloried in its wealth, trusted in its power, lived for its pleasures.
3. Now that world falls — and with it, they fall.
A. A crushing hailstorm from heaven
1. They had stoned the righteous — Stephen being one example.
2. Now hailstones about the weight of a talent (~100 pounds) fall upon them.
3. There is no shelter, no escape.
B. Their response — they curse God
1. They do not blame themselves or the world.
2. They now know this is God’s doing — no atheists remain.
They confess His sovereignty — yet hate Him more.
3. There is no repentance.
Their heads are crushed, but their hearts remain stone.
They resisted the Spirit and rejected warnings. Now: “It is too late. It is done.”
CONCLUSION
When will this happen? In a sense, it happens every day.
Many were killed on highways today during the Christmas season. Many had heard the gospel; many felt God’s warnings — and resisted. Suddenly they died, and for them: “It is done.”
How long before this happens to you, unrepentant sinner? How long before your world collapses? How long before you fall into the hands of the living God?
It might be this very night.
Jesus said to the rich man who felt secure: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.”
Tonight — perhaps for the last time in your life — God calls you to repentance and faith, offering forgiveness and eternal life. But if you reject Him, you shall perish.
Will you yield to His call, or will you resist until your heart turns to stone?
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