God's Anger Brought to a FInish - Darkness and Gnawing Pain

 The kingdom of this wild beast has been in spiritual darkness ever since its beginning. ( Compare Matthew 8:12; Ephesians 6:11, 12.)   The fifth bowl brings intensified public announcement of this darkness.  It even dramatizes it, in that this bolw of God's anger is poured out upon every throne of the symbolic wild beast.  "And its kingdom  became darkened, and they began to gnaw their tongues for their pain, but they blaspheme the God of heaven for their pains and for their ulcers, and they did not repent of their works ." -REVELATION 6:10b,11.

The fifth trumpet blast is not exactly the samme as the fifth bowl of God's anger, since the trumpet blast heralded a plague of locusts. But notice that the release  of that plague of locusts, there was a darkening of the sin ad the air.  (Revelation 9:2-5; and at Exodus 10:14, 15,  we read concerning the locusts with which Jehovah plagued Eygpt:  "They were vey burdensome. Before them there had never turned up in this  locusts like them, and there will never turn up any in this way after them. And they went covering the visible surfact of the entire land, and grew dark." Yes, darkness!  Today, the world's spiritual darkness has become all too evidennt as a resullt of the sounding of the fifth  trumpet and the pouring out of the fifth bowl of God's anger.  The stinging message proclaimed by the modern-day locust swarm brings torment and pain to those wicked ones who "have loved darkness rather than the light." - JOHN 3:19.

As world ruler, Satan has caused much unhappiness and suffering. Famine, wars, violence, crime, drung abuse, immorality, sexually transmitted dsease, dishonest, religious hypocrisy-these and more are the hallmarks of Satan's system of things.  (Compare Galatians 5:1921.)  Even so, the public exposure of Satan as the god of this system of things  caused pain and embarrassment to those who live by his standards. "They  began to gnaw their tongues for their  pain," especially in Christendom.  Many resent that the truth exposes their lifestyle.  Some find it threatening, and they persecuted those who publish it. They reject God's Kingsdom and revile Jehovah's holy name.  Their religously disease, ulcerous condition is laid bare, so that they blasphee the God of heaven.  No, they do not "repent of their works."  So we cannot expect a mass conversion before the end of this system of things. - ISAIAH 32:6.

Next time:  God's Anger Brought to a Finish - The River Euphrates  Dried Up 

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