Bowl Judgments

The Bowl Judgments (also called the Vial Judgments in the King James Version), as mentioned in Revelation chapter 16, took place within the last 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation in the Left Behind series and mostly affected those who have taken the mark of the Beast and have worshiped his image.

• The first Bowl Judgment was painful sores that appeared on those who have taken the mark of loyalty and worshipped Nicolae Carpathia's image. This happened around the time of Desecration and was shortly lifted prior to the air and land strike ordered by Carpathia upon those fleeing to Petra.
  • Surgeon General of the Global Community, Consuela Conchita, said during a public service announcement during the plague of boils that they were unable to specifically diagnosis the pandemic affliction. She said that the boils and carbuncles of the plague are typically caused by acute staph infections, but attributed the current plague to some unknown bacterial strain. The plague is unaffected by conventional treatment with antibiotics. She does say (correctly) that they have ruled out any causal relationship between the sores and the methods used to administer the mark of loyalty. She does acknowledge that the sores only occur on those with the mark of loyalty, but says that the connection is entirely coincidental. Thus, the idiopathic and iatrogenic boils on those with the mark of loyalty has no obvious etiology. It can be said that the administration of the mark of loyalty does not cause the boils because the means of administrating the mark (the biochip, hypodermic injection, disinfectant, topical anesthetic, and a tattoo) are not typically associated with a dermatological malady from prior experience, and that there is no theoretical reason to expect boils to manifest after taking the mark. There are no known familiar causes present among those with the mark that would cause the boils, but if God is omnipotent, then through His power, can decree that the mark of loyalty be almost invariably associated with an outbreak of boils (with a notable exception discussed below) without having any of the usual causes for boils present.
  • When facing Chaim Rosenzweig in the persona of Micah, Nicolae Carpathia told him that the Global Community medical experts had determined that "there is no connection between the application of the mark of loyalty and" the outbreak of boils (since Carpathia was unable to complete his sentence as Micah interrupted him). Carpathia's phrasing that there is "no connection" is patently incorrect since it is confuted by the obvious empirical evidence where individuals with the mark of loyalty would with near certainty suffer from the plague of boils, but it is technically correct to say there is no (obvious, naturalistic) causal connection between the mark of loyalty and plague of boils as elaborated upon above. The plague came about through God's power, and the naturalistic elements in the world are incapable to have caused it.
  • Micah told a frustrated Nicolae Carpathia that all of his workforce is incapacitated due to the plague of the boils, and if a given person is not, Carpathia might want to check the authenticity of their mark. However, Chang Wong did have an authentic mark of loyalty, but he did not receive it voluntarily as he got it when he was sedated as he tried to resist its imposition. He did not suffer from the plague of boils, aside from a small rash that he attributed to an insect bite or thought was psychosomatic. In order to maintain his cover as a Tribulation Force mole working with the Global Community Palace, Chang did feign that he was ill due to the plague of the boils and had manipulated electronic records to suggest that he was in the infirmary being treated for boils.

• The second Bowl Judgment turned all the seas into blood, causing all marine life in the waters to perish and affecting even the movement of ships on the sea. This happened in Desecration and The Remnant.
  • In The Remnant, the subpotentate of the United South American States ecstatically reported to Carpathia in a video conference call that his forces were able to discover and detain dozens of people without the mark of loyalty. Carpathia expressed disappointment because his fellow subpotentates had reported that they captured hundreds or even thousands of people, but the South American subpotentate responded that his forces were so dependent on being supplied by ships that were hindered due to the plague of the bloody oceans.
  • Carpathia's false messiahs do have the power to reverse the effects of the second and third Bowl Judgments on a small scale. In The Rise of False Messiahs, Judd Thompson, Jr. watched live internet feed of a miracle fair from a website the originated "somewhere in Europe". There was a crowd gathered around a large stage with a lone man in the center besides a table that had a gallon of blood in a container that was dipped into the ocean. The man pour the contents of the container into a glass and asked the crowd if someone wanted to drink it. The man then declared in the name of Nicolae Carpatha "this so-called plague to be a fraud". The man poured the liquid into a glass where the liquid in the glass became clear while the liquid in the container remained red. A young woman who volunteered to drink from the glass was able to quaff the water in the glass and enjoyed drinking it. A worker using a mechanical arm grabbed the container and hoisted it over the crowd. The miracle man tripped a level which made the bottom of the contain open to spill fresh, cool water on the crowd, which provided them relief during a hot, sunny day.

• The third Bowl Judgment turned all the fresh water springs into blood, denying drinkable water to those who have taken the mark of loyalty and worshipped Carpathia's image, for God considered it just due to those who shed the blood of His saints. As a result, this caused deaths among the loyalists through dehydration. Those who had the seal of God on their foreheads, however, were able to get clean water from the bloody springs. The authors may have interpreted Revelation 7:16 as indicating that God has conferred immunity from the blood plagues and heat to the Great Multitude. This lasted for about a year or so in The Remnant.
  • Shortly after the onset of the third Bowl Judgment, the "wonder worker" that lured many of the undecided in Petra was able to conjure a spring that produced cool water that gushed over the heads of the assembled. When the wonder worker revealed that that his mission is to lure them away from Petra and kill them with a swarm of vipers, the spring's water turned into blood.

• The fourth Bowl Judgment caused the sun to be scorching hot to those who have taken the mark of loyalty and worshiped Carpathia's image. This also resulted in the polar ice caps melting, causing tsunamis that wash rotting sea animal carcasses further inland. It seems that the heat affected everything, as exposed water boiled and animals also spontaneously combusted, as opposed to the destructive force of the heat only affecting unbelievers. Those with the seal of God only experienced higher-than-normal temperatures but were supernaturally immune to the destructive force of the heat. The plague allowed believers to travel in the daytime without fear of hostility from the Global Community. This lasted for about a year or so in The Remnant.
  • Revelation 16:8 states: The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was allowed to scorch people with fire. It seems that the authors took the part where the sun scorches people with fire literally. The narrative says that the heat plague resulted in elevated temperatures but no specific temperature was stated. The effects that the heat has on materials suggest an ambient temperature in the hundreds of degrees Celsius, since the heat's effects cannot be explained by a "modestly" elevated ambient temperature of 100°C, which would render Earth uninhabitable within hours. For instance, if one were to place a potato in an oven at 450°F (232°C), the potato would likely not spontaneously combust, since the temperature is too low to overcome the activation energy barrier for combustion. An pulse of extreme thermal radiation, such as from the flash of a nuclear explosion, results in third-degree burns and flammable structures igniting. Nuclear explosions only emit a flash for a few seconds at most, and if the sun were to emit that concentration of thermal radiation, the equilibrium temperature of the environment illuminated by that radiation for a few hours would be much higher than 100°C. Even a 10 percent increase in solar luminosity is expected to render the earth uninhabitable to complex life, as such as increase in luminosity is predicted to happen 1.1 billion years into the future, even before the sun has exited the main sequence, since solar luminosity has increased 1 percent every 110 million years in an almost linear trend.
  • The heat plague not only harmed the persons of unbelievers who were directly exposed to the sun, but also affected any flammable structure that is unoccupied by a believer. In Heat Wave, Vicki Byrne, Judd Thompson Jr., and Westin Jakes rescued a young believer named Howard. He was hiding with a group of believers in an Indiana library during the heat plague. Eventually, the Global Community and the Carpathianist locals took over the library because it was the only building for blocks that was still standing. The believers had to evacuate, but Howard did not leave the library with the group, so he was trapped in the library with the marked locals. When Judd investigated the building, he inferred that there was no GC in the building because the building would have burned down. After Howard was rescued from the hostile GC, the library's windows began to shatter, the roof started to buckle, and smoked billowed from it. As they drove away, screams can be heard from the library.
  • During the heat plague, Nicolae Carpathia had a telescope and a recording device installed in the courtyard of the penthouse of the Palace. Due to his immunity to the heat plague, Carpathia was able to use the telescope to see the dancing flares from the surface of the sun before the instruments melted. It is unknown if there were any reports of astrophysical indications of the heat plague, as the quoted scripture suggests that the heat plague worked directly on the sun as opposed to it being a meteorological phenomenon. Examples of such indications include a spectral shift of the sun towards G1V (the sun has a G2V spectral type and a surface temperature of 5772 K), an increase in the size of the sun, an increase in the solar constant, or an increased output of solar neutrinos during the heat plague. The former two result in increased luminosity due to Stefan–Boltzmann law. An instantaneous increase in solar neutrino output, however, will not result in an immediate increase in luminosity since it takes about tens of thousands of years for a photon generated from fusion to reach the surface from the solar core, while, in contrast, neutrinos have an extremely low cross-section for interaction with matter, which allows them to easily escape the sun.

• The fifth Bowl Judgment blanketed New Babylon in thick darkness, causing those who have taken the mark of loyalty and worshiped Carpathia's image to be blinded and have painful sores from which there is no relief. Those with the seal of God had limited visibility, of approximately twenty feet, and their experience was like seeing a room lit by a low-powered chandelier. This lasted for about a year or so until New Babylon was destroyed in Armageddon.

• The sixth Bowl Judgment dried up the Euphrates River in order for "the kings of the east" to bring their armies to Armageddon for the battle against Jesus Christ. It also caused Satan, Carpathia, and Leon Fortunato to spew forth froglike spirits into three bodies that resembled Carpathia that would perform miracles to bring the armies of the world to Armageddon. This took place in Armageddon, less than a half a year from the Glorious Appearing.
  • The conclave of the ten subpotentates in Baghdad where Carpathia would announce his plans to militarily defeat the Remnant in Petra and the Jews in Jerusalem with overwhelming force occurred shortly before the Euphrates dried up. Carpathia even anticipated meeting the Son during this campaign and asserted that the Global Community's military might would destroy Him. The subpotentates wanted to know how discouraged, injured, and sick troops can be rallied to participate in this military endeavor, and Carpathia responded that everyone in the room would lay hands and commission the Carpathia clones to go out to the ends of the earth to perform signs to gather the forces for this endeavor.
  • Nicolae Carpathia likely believed in the fulfillment of the prophecy of the sixth Bowl Judgment since he sanctioned the instillation of sensors in the river that recorded information to a Global Community mainframe. Chang Wong was able to remotely access the reading from the sensors in Petra. When the Euphrates dried up, Chang exclaimed that it happened instantaneously where the river bed is now as "dry as a bone" and one can walk through it without fear of mud or quicksand. The Global Community's armory is in Al Hillah, so military personnel there equipping their armies would need to cross the Euphrates which is to the west of Al Hillah. Also, Carpathia seemed to believe or at least acknowledge the others prophecies, since he said in his speech to enthrall the subpotentates to "let them shake the earth until it is level and drop hundred-pound chunks of ice from the skies" because Carpathia thought he would win regardless. In The Road to War, upon hearing a report that a Tribulation Force scout plane saw a vast amount of weapons and troops moving across the dried-up river, Lionel Washington thought that Carpathia had been reading the Bible but was too stupid to understand how the book ended.

• The seventh Bowl Judgment took place during Jesus' glorious appearing, where there was not only a major earthquake that leveled all the mountains of the continents except for Jerusalem (which was elevated), but also 100-pound hailstones fell upon the Unity Army, squashing them. Prior to this taking place, a voice from heaven said, "It is done".
  • In Triumphant Return, during the onset of the meteors, Enoch Dumas yelled that the people who bear the seal of God were protected from this judgment, as "none of the judgments from heaven harmed God's people". In contrast, the Wrath of the Lamb earthquake did kill members of the Tribulation Force and Young Tribulation Force, such as Chaya Stein and Donny Moore, while the second Trumpet Judgment killed John Preston as he was stationed on a Global Community naval vessel the The Peacekeeper One as the meteor struck the Atlantic Ocean.

Images

A depiction of the Second and Third Bowl judgment.