The Third Bowl Of Revelation 16

This Revelation Timeline Decoded Bible study focuses on the 3rd bowl of Revelation 16.

Summary: The 3rd Bowl was poured out as the bloody French Revolution spread out from the major cities (seas) to the more rural areas (rivers and springs, smaller groups of people) where they had shed the blood of saints and prophets, and now it was time for them to drink the same fate.

To understand why the French people deserved the wrath of God, here is a summary of some of the persecutions of the saints in France:

1477 A.D. – When Pope Sixtus IV commanded a crusade against the Waldensian Christians in southern France, Roman Catholic soldiers responded by murdering many thousands of these Bible-believing Christians – men, women, and children. (1)

1540-1570 A.D. – Papal Rome sent army after army of Roman Catholic soldiers into southern France and surrounding areas in an attempt to exterminate the Waldensian Bible-believing Christians.

These Roman Catholic armies butchered up to 900,000 Waldensian Christians – men, women, and children – during that thirty-year period. (2)

Think of Monks and Priests, in holy garments — directing, with heartless cruelty and inhuman brutality — the work of torturing and burning alive innocent men and women, and doing it in the Name of Christ — by the direct order of the “Vicar of Christ!”

1572 A.D. – Roman Catholic soldiers butchered upwards of 100,000 French Protestants (Huguenots) during the St. Bartholomew massacre that started in Paris. Butchery of Protestants then spread to the countryside.

The (Roman Catholic) king of France had cleverly arranged a marriage between his sister and Admiral Coligny, the chief Protestant leader.  There was a great feast with much celebrating.  After four days of feasting, the soldiers were given a signal.

At twelve o’clock midnight, all the houses of the Protestants in the city were forced open at once.  The admiral was killed, his body thrown out of a window into the street where his head was cut off and sent (first to the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Lorraine, and then on) to the pope.

They also slaughtered many other well-known Protestants. In the first three days, over ten thousand were killed.  The bodies were thrown into the river and blood ran through the streets into the river until it appeared like a stream of blood. From Paris, the destruction spread to all parts of the country. Very few Protestants escaped the fury of the Roman Catholic persecutors.

At Orleans, a thousand were slain of men, women, and children, and six thousand at Rouen.

At Meldith, two hundred were put into prison, and later brought out by units, and cruelly murdered.

At Lyons, eight hundred were massacred. Here children hanging about their parents, and parents affectionately embracing their children, were pleasant food for the swords and bloodthirsty minds of those who call themselves the Catholic Church. Here three hundred were slain in the bishop’s house; and the impious monks would suffer none to be buried.

At Augustobona, on the people hearing of the massacre at Paris, they shut their gates that no Protestants might escape, and searching diligently for every individual of the reformed Church, imprisoned and then barbarously murdered them.

Upon hearing of the bloodshed in Paris, Pope Gregory XIII celebrated by declaring a jubilee day of public thanksgiving.

Guns were fired in salute and the Pope ordered the striking of a commemorative medallion.

Subsequently, Gregory XIII also commissioned a mural by Giorgio Vasari to hang in the Vatican depicting the wondrous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The king also commanded the day to be kept with every demonstration of joy, concluding now that the whole race of Huguenots was extinct. (3)

1685 A.D. – Roman Catholic French King Louis XIV, at the urging of his father-confessor, Jesuit priest Pere La Chaise, revokes the “Edict of Nantes” that had granted religious liberty to all Frenchmen. (4)

King Louis XIV then orders his murderous dragoons to persecute the French Protestant Huguenots which resulted in 500,000 innocent Protestants (men, women, and children) being butchered!

The Popish French governors in each parish declared that the king would no longer suffer any Huguenots (French Protestants) in his kingdom, that they had to change their religion and become Catholic, either freely or by force.

The Protestants replied that they ‘were ready to sacrifice their lives and estates to the king, but their consciences being God’s they could not so dispose of them.’

Instantly the troops seized the gates and avenues of the cities, and placing guards in all the passages, entered with sword in hand, crying, “Die, or be Catholics!” And they practiced every wickedness and horror they could devise to force them to change their religion. (4)

You can read the gruesome details as recorded in Fox’s Book of Martyrs.

So you can clearly see that the French people had obeyed the orders of the Popes of Rome, to shed the blood of the saints in France; and now it is time for their blood to be shed, as Messiah exacts vengeance for His saints.

Revelation 16:4-7, Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying: “You are righteous, O Lord, The One who is and who was and who is to be, Because You have judged these things. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, And You have given them blood to drink. For it is their just due.”And I heard another from the altar saying, “Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”

The French armies killed many saints around the Rhine, Danube and Po River Valleys.  Lutherans, Moravians, Hussites, Albigenses, Waldenses, Vaudois, and Huguenots, willingly laid down their lives for the true faith of Jesus Christ

Now the French people would have their blood shed in the very same places. And the rivers were filled with their blood.

Piedmont, in northern Italy, which had all but exterminated the Waldenses, and turned their wild and lonely valley into a slaughter-house, was overrun by merciless invaders, and filled with the horrors of ruthless spoliation and bloodshed.

Albert Barnes in his Notes on the Bible points out that four points as to this vial are clear:

1. That is would succeed the first mentioned, and apparently, at a period not remote.
2. That it would occur in a region where there had been persecution.
3. It would be in a country of streams, and rivers, and fountains.
4. It would be a just retribution for the bloody persecutions which had occurred there.

In this interpretation of it he follows Elliot, who says, “During the year 1792 war was declared by France against Germany, and the next year against Sardinia; consequently all those towns watered by the Rhine and Alpine streams became scenes of carnage. Metz, Worms, Spires; the towns formerly desolated by Attila, suffered. Another French army entered upon the countries situated on the Meuse, a branch of the Rhine; a third advanced into Piedmont, the Alpine frontier.”

In 1797 Bonaparte attacked the Sardinians and Austrians. The course he tracked was from the Alpine rivers through Northern Italy, till he reached Venice. Every river was a scene of carnage and he crossed seven in succession. The Alpine rivers were turned to “blood.”

Again in 1799 the “fountains of waters” were dyed in blood, the French having suffered reverse and been driven out of all the placed they occupied in North Italy with much bloodshed.

Was it not so that the cruelties – of the French and Piedmontese, and the rulers of Savoy, against the Waldenses, the Huguenots and Calvinsits, from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, and of Austria against the Hussites, the Waldenses and Lutherans in Lombardy, Moravia, and the Netherlands already related – did call out for retributive justice? “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth.”

From The People’s New Testament Commentary, 19th Century

There are two marks given which help us to locate the seat where the plague of the third vial is poured. 1. It must be a region of rivers and fountains of waters. 2. It has evidently been the scene of terrible persecutions of the people of God.

This very region which was full of rivers, was the home of the Albigenses. Against them the Papacy had hurled its fanatical legions from generation to generation. The blood of the Protestants of the Alps had for centuries dyed the rocks and streams with crimson

Sources:

1 – Christianism.com  http://www.christianism.com/additions/33.html

2 – Grace Gems – Evil Popes http://gracegems.org/D/evil_popes.htm

3 – BibleStudyTools.com Book of Martyrs -The Bartholomew Massacre at Paris, etc.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/foxs-book-of-martyrs/the-bartholomew-massacre-at-paris-etc.html

4 – THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY MASSACRE  http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Religion/sbart.htm

References:

The 7 Vials of Revelation by Graeme Hotter

Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible Revelation 16:4-7

The People’s New Testament Commentary – Revelation 16?

History Unveiling Prophecy by Henry Grattan Guinness?

The Book of Revelation by Charles A. Jennings, p. 190

The Present Reign of Jesus Christ by Robert Caringola. p 220-221

Next Revelation Timeline Decoded Bible Study: Revelation 16 – 4th Bowl Judgment