pain | Stephen Nielsen

After about six months of burning heat (from the fourth bowl), this plague will begin without warning; the sun will suddenly be completely blocked out, leaving the earth, or at least part of the earth, in thick darkness. We don’t know, but I suspect that, though there will be a relief from the scorching sunburn, the heat will still remain—like being trapped inside of an oven.

Now the Scriptures say that this plague will be poured out on the throne of the beast—on his kingdom. But where exactly is that? Some say that it will be the rebuilt city of Babylon, which is in Iraq. Others insist that it will be in the city of Rome. But I wonder if it will not extend further that just the city where he resides. How far is considered his kingdom?

Another question I have is: how long will this darkness last? I don’t think it will last to the end of the Tribulation, when the war of Armageddon if commencing, because they will need some light to fight. But I think it will be at least a few months, which I’m sure will feel like a long time.

One author suggested that people won’t even be able to produce electrical power to see in their homes, because most electricity is produced from rivers and bodies of water, and God will have shut that off (as you may have deduced from the second and third judgments). But I suspect that they will at least be able to light candles or use a flashlight. I don’t know. We don’t know how much God will allow.

One thing we do know is that the darkness will be felt and will produce pain—so much that people will gnaw their tongues in pain. That sounds to me like some kind of a nervous disorder. In Exodus 10:21, in the nineth Egyptian plague, it is written that the people felt the darkness. Also, in the prophetical book Zephaniah (Zeph. 1:15), it is written that in the coming day of the Lord it will be “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.” I’m not sure if there has ever been this kind of darkness on the earth. I’m sure that it will be terrible.

Surprisingly, it will not cause people to repent of sins. They, I suppose, will love their sins too much to repent. And, as in the previous bowl-plague, they will curse God because of their pains and sores.

This first bowl describes the plague in only one verse. It is a plague of a “loathsome and malignant sore on [all] the people who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image.” We can’t be exactly sure what this plague will be like, but we can get a good idea of its nature from three sources: from Job (Job 2:7), from the sixth plague of Egypt (Ex. 9:9-11), and from the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Lu. 16:20-21).

First of all, we know that in these three cases, the word for “sore” is the same as in this bowl judgment. In the New Testament case with Lazarus, it is the same Greek word helkos; and in the two Old Testament references, the same Greek word from the Septuagint is used.

In the earliest case of Job, the plague is described as “sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.” It was a terrible infection of the skin directly caused by Satan, to test his loyalty to God. In this particular case, Job found some relief from his suffering by scraping his boils with a piece of broken pottery, perhaps to break the boils open and release the infection.

In the case of the sixth plague on Egypt, it is said to be “boils breaking out with sores on man and beast.” Here it seems to be the same as in Job’s case and in the Tribulation, except here the animals will be infected too.

Putting these together, we may conclude that in the Tribulation the sores will be similar, but I can’t help thinking that it may be worse. And though it will be a punishment by the Lord, He may use a man-made means to cause the boils like radioactivity in the air. Hal Lindsey writes,

This rash of malignant sores could easily be caused by the tremendous radioactive pollution in the atmosphere. After the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima thousands of people developed hideous sores because of the radioactivity.

As to the duration of this first bowl-plague, we can’t be sure that it will last for the entire length of the Great Tribulation (for three and a half years); however, it seems clear from verse eleven, that during the fifth bowl, people will still be suffering from their sores.

But there is one thing we can be sure of; the plague will affect only those unbelievers that took the mark of the beast and who worship his image. All true believers will be supernaturally protected as were the Jews in Egypt in the days of Moses.