Commentaries:
According to these angels, part of the reason for Christ's return is to pass judgment on those who have polluted, defiled, and marred God's creation! God has great patience, but by that time He will have seen enough of man's blatant disregard for the work of His hands. He will strike with a vengeance that mankind has never before even imagined (Matthew 24:21-22), and the guilty will pay with their lives.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Bible and the Environment
This world does not want to change. Man desperately wants to preserve the society he has established upon this earth. Men do not want God to intervene and teach them the way to world peace and prosperity. Instead, they want peace on their own terms—even though man's ways to "peace" lead inevitably to more wars and eventually cosmocide.
When Jesus Christ comes to stop world suicide, the nations will quickly drop their own quarrels. The joint military forces of the world will then turn their efforts against Christ and attempt to fight and destroy Him!
The returning Christ will be forced to deal with the nations of this rebellious world in the only language they will understand—overwhelming force! What a paradox that men will at first have to be forced into trying the way of life that leads to happiness, prosperity, and abundance.
The Sensational Return of Jesus Christ!
We need to expand our thinking on the word "earth" and understand that it figuratively, metaphorically, represents all of creation. It is not just the earth, the orb that is spinning around through space on its appointed path, but all of the things that are on the earth. Above all , it refers to mankind, which lives on the earth.
God says He will destroy those who destroy the creation, and that includes themselves. When man does that, he is telling God that we do not appreciate what He has given us. We have a love of beauty without the love of doing what is right in order to maintain correctly what He has given to us.
By far and away, the most important abuse in all of creation deals with man's relationships with God and fellow man. We abuse our relationships because we do not love righteousness along with beauty. Rather than dressing and keeping the relationships through a love of righteousness, we use and abuse them, too.
We can see this in the divorce rate. People do not get divorces because they love one another. It is because one or the other spouse, or both, have abused the relationship. So the marriage, which was created by God to be the environment in which His spiritual creation would be carried out, is destroyed! Again, God is going to destroy those who destroy the earth, His creation.
The basic reason this occurs is addressed in I John. It is the lack of love for God and of God that is causing this. Loving God is a choice that is open to all Christians. If one does not consider God beautiful and choose to love Him, the only alternative is self-centeredness.
We turn our love in on ourselves, and instead of seeking to please God within a relationship with Him, we instead choose unrighteousness or sin, abusing the relationship between Him and us. All love for fellow man begins first with the love for God. This is why I John tells us it is impossible to love man without loving God first.
We must start thinking about what are we doing in our lives to build our relationship with God, because that relationship is salvation! Is God beautiful to us? Is God's way beautiful to us? If it is not, the self-centeredness will lead to abuse. Self-centeredness is the hallmark of worldliness.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Laodiceanism
Jesus Christ will return to earth for the purpose of setting up the Kingdom of God and judging the nations. This time, He will not come meekly but with God's wrath against a rebellious mankind! The nations' political rulers will be furious when they realize that Christ has come to abolish the governments of this world and to establish the Kingdom of God, which will rule over all the earth from headquarters in Jerusalem.
Note also that all English translations of the first part of verse 18 speak of "the time of the dead, that they should be judged. . . ." This is an error and is disproved by Revelation 20:5, which shows that the time of the dead to be judged is after the 1,000 years are over. The later Greek manuscripts do have the expression "the dead" in Revelation 11:18, but earlier manuscripts and the official printed Greek text of the Greek Orthodox Church have "the time of the nations that they should be judged. . . ."
Feast of Trumpets: Why the World Won't End in Cosmocide
This last—seventh—trumpet announces the coming of Christ, the establishment of God's Kingdom, the judgment upon the nations, and the rewarding of the saints. They occur simultaneously!
The last trumpet sounds when Christ returns, not 3½ years before! If we compare verses 11-13 (the resurrection of the Two Witnesses) with verse 19, the "great earthquake" ties the resurrection of the saints with the beginning of the Kingdom (see also Revelation 16:18). In addition, an angel tells John in Revelation 10:7 that when "the seventh angel . . . is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished." There will be no more mystery about man becoming God when the saints are resurrected or changed to eternal spirit beings!
Matthew 24:30-31 also verifies this scenario, showing that the trumpet sounds to send the angels to gather the elect from all over the earth to meet Him upon His return. To clinch the argument, verse 29 very plainly says, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days. . ."! Isaiah 27:12-13, Joel 2:1-11 and Zechariah 14:3-5, 9 also confirm these events.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Caught Up in the Rapture
Revelation 11 is inset material. The only possible period of time when the Two Witnesses could testify is during the three and a half years that precede Christ's return—the time of the Tribulation and the Day of the Lord.
Most of this period of time has already been covered by chapters 6 (the fifth and sixth seals) and 8-9 (the trumpet plagues). Chapter 11 clarifies what has already occurred in the narrative, answering how people can possibly be converted during the Tribulation and the Day of the Lord. The answer is that they are hearing a message thundered by the Two Witnesses! Revelation 7:9-17 suggests that by their preaching, an innumerable multitude will be converted.
The information is given in a digression—an inset chapter— from the main story flow. Inset chapters clarify what is happening within the time sequence.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Revelation 10 and the Laodicean Church
All the inset chapters are introduced in a significant way: by an angel coming down from heaven or a spectacular and unusual vision of someone or something, such as a woman clothed with the sun, moon, and stars or a Beast rising up out of the ocean.
Chapter 11, however, does not begin this way because it is not the beginning of the inset. The inset actually begins in Revelation 10:1 where the spectacular vision occurs. Chapter 10 does not follow chapter 9 in time sequence anymore than the material in chapter 11 does. Chapter 11 merely continues the vision begun in chapter 10.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Revelation 10 and the Laodicean Church
Other commentary entries containing this verse:
Judges 2:11-15
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
Isaiah 41:21-24
Habakkuk 2:3
Matthew 22:1-14
1 Corinthians 15:50-52
1 Corinthians 15:52
Revelation 6:10
Revelation 7:9-17
Revelation 11:15-18
Revelation 14:5
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