THE CUP OF WRATH

By

Bertrand L. Comparet

In studying Bible prophecy since early 1933, I have been greatly impressed by the extreme accuracy of the prophecies. In a correct translation of the original language, we always find Yahweh says exactly what He means. Often the significance of apparently quaint or peculiar expressions is not seen until the time for fulfillment approaches, and then we see the great precision of expression. One of the prophecies, which has come to partial fulfillment, concerns the cup of wrath. Yahweh's anger against wickedness is often spoken of as a cup from which the wicked must drink. For example Psalm 75:8 records, "For the cup is in the hand of Yahweh, with foaming wine, thoroughly mixed and he pours it out to one and another. Surely all the wicked of the earth must drink and drain its dregs". Smith and Goodspeed translation.

Beginning in the time of the prophet Jeremiah, Yahweh's judgment on the nations began, in accordance with the principle that "Judgment must begin at the house of Yahweh", I Peter 4:17. Israel and Judah were already under captivity, but all the nations of the world were rank with wickedness, so worldwide judgment must come. Until the time of the end however, another principle was followed, there would not be a single, universal judgment, but one nation punishing another one at a time. The great prophet Jeremiah, recorded in Jeremiah 1:10, had been commissioned by Yahweh to root out, to pull down, to destroy and to throw down many nations.  Now Jeremiah was commanded to begin this work.                                 

Jeremiah 25:15, 27-29 says, "Thus saith Yahweh, the God of Israel, to me, Take from My hand this wine cup of wrath and make all the nations, to whom I am sending you, drink it. And when they drink it, let them reel and behave like madmen, because of the sword, which I am sending among them. So I took the cup from Yahweh's hand and made all the nations, to whom Yahweh had sent me to, drink it. Then Yahweh said to me, And you shall say to them, thus saith Yahweh, the God of Israel Drink yourselves drunk till you vomit and fall to rise no more, because of the sword, which I am sending among you. And if they refuse to take the cup from your hand to drink, you shall say to them, Thus saith Yahweh, drink you shall. For if I begin My work of destruction with the city which bears My name, how can you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith Yahweh".

Yahweh's judgments upon nations have taken various forms. Sometimes it would be years of drought, resulting in famine, such as Deuteronomy 11:17, I Kings 17-18, Jeremiah 3:3, Hosea 2:3 and Haggai 1:10-11 record. Or famine from other causes as recorded in II Kings 8:1, or pestilence as in II Samuel 24:10-16 & Amos 4:10. But this new judgment, or rather series of judgments, was to be by the sword.

Upon whom would this judgment fall? As we have already seen, it began with Yahweh's own people. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been conquered by the Assyrians and deported, just over a century before. Now the Babylonians were moving in, sweeping the land clean, in the southern kingdom of Judah besieging the final island of resistance, the heavily fortified city of Jerusalem. Jeremiah 25:18,19 records Jeremiah telling the nations which he was commanded to make drink of the cup of Yahweh's wrath. "Jerusalem and the city of Judah, to make them a desolation and astonishment, a hissing and a curse; as it is to this day. Pharaoh, king of Egypt and his servants and princes and all his people. Egypt had already suffered heavily at the hands of the Assyrian invaders. Beginning about 741 B.C., Egypt was conquered and ruled for almost a century by Nubian negroes and it never recovered from the negro blood acquired by its population during this period, for its history went rapidly downhill from that time.

Just about the time Jeremiah was writing this great prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army had defeated the Egyptians under Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish and the doom of Egypt was sealed. A few years later Nebuchadnezzar's army invaded and conquered Egypt, as Jeremiah prophesied and is recorded in Jeremiah chapters 43 & 44. It was of minor importance after the Babylonians withdrew. Egypt was later conquered by Persia, then again conquered by Alexander the Great, and thereafter was always ruled by alien dynasties. It became and still is, the basest of kingdoms, as Ezekiel 29:15 prophesied.

Jeremiah goes on to list other ancient kingdoms, many of them already small and easily falling under the rule of whichever great empire was at the time invading Palestine. Moab, Ammon, Dedan, Tema and Philistines, Ashekelon, Azzah, Ekron and Ashdad, these all fell by the sword and were all minor casualties in the great ebb and flow of military history. Jeremiah also mentions some, which were still great and powerful in his day. These seemed likely to defend themselves against any invader, such as the great commercial seaports of Tyre and Sidon. Tyre was one of the great cities of ancient times built on an island hundreds of yards offshore. Its walls could not be attacked by land armies and it could not be besieged. It was supplied by sea and its navy was able to beat off all naval attacks.

Tyre successfully resisted powerful Assyrian attacks at the time when Israel was conquered. Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian armies attacked it in vain. Jeremiah prophesied that it would drink from the cup of wrath with judgment by the sword. Ezekiel 16:4-5, written about 15 years later prophesied, "They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it saith Yahweh".

This actually happened in 332 B.C. Alexander the Great besieged Tyre for 7 months, built a causeway out to it from the shore, captured it, destroyed all its buildings and scraped the top of the island bare, so fishermen spread their nets there to dry. Note the accuracy of Yahweh's prophecy. Not merely the fall of the city, but the manner of its final ruin, something, which could not have been anticipated except by the foreknowledge of Yahweh. Sidon, another great commercial city, likewise was judged by the sword, as Jeremiah prophesied. In 351 B.C., it was captured and set afire, 40,000 people perished in the flames.

Jeremiah does not stop with the ancient kingdoms then prominent. While he does prophecy their doom by the sword, he is also speaking of the great empires still in the future. Jeremiah 25:25 states, "All the kings of Elam and all the kings of the Medes". Media formed the western portion of what later became the great Persian Empire. It reached its end under Darius (Gobryas) the Mede, who captured Babylon in the time of the prophet Daniel. Elam was the eastern part, the forerunner of Persia. All the greatness and power of this empire was still in the future when Jeremiah prophesied. It took over the lands of both the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. It extended into Asia Minor (modern Turkey), down through Palestine and ruled Egypt. It extended on the east into Afghanistan and northwestern India. Yet it drank of the cup of wrath and fell by the sword, when Alexander the Great conquered all of it between 334 and 331 B.C.

So fell the ancient empires by the sword. As Yahweh told Jeremiah to say to them, "Drink yourselves drunk, till you vomit and fall to rise no more, because of the sword I am sending among you". Not all would easily take the cup. Tyre and Persia held out for centuries against attacks by great empires. Even to them Yahweh said, "Drink you shall! For if I begin My work of destruction with the city which bears My name, how can you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, for I am sending a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth". Even these had to meet their prophesied doom.

Why do I spend so much time on ancient history? Because this prophecy is not finished. It also takes in all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth, Jeremiah 25:26. Its great climax is yet to come, at the great and dreadful day of Yahweh, a time in the near future. I have covered its early history so that we might see its accuracy before we go into it application in the present time.

Next, the prophecy is directed to "All the kings of Arabia and all the kings of the mingled people that dwell in the desert." This was no minor kingdom. Until the coming of Mohammedanism to unite them, there had been many small Arab kingdoms fighting among themselves. By the end of the 7th century A.D., the expanding Arabian empire swept first over Egypt and Syria. Then they went on to Turkistan, Persia, all of northern Africa, Sicily, Spain and they even briefly invaded southern France. Yet the sword broke their power. Spain expelled them before 1500 A.D. Turkey took all their empire east of the Mediterranean and into Egypt, the rest crumbled into petty bandit kingdoms.

Finally, the all-inclusive prophecy for our own time, the end of the days. Jeremiah records in Jeremiah 25:26 it is spoken to all the kings of the north, far and near, one after another and all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth; and the king of Babylon shall drink after them." Now we know the great empire of ancient Babylon fell just 70 years after this prophecy was made. Why then was Babylon's turn to come after all these others? It was because Babylon was more than a city or an empire. Babylon was and is a system, religious, economic and political which was not destroyed when the city of Babylon fell. It was adopted into the later empires and still prevails in our own day.

The internal troubles of our own nation are largely traceable to the complete dominance of the Babylonian system in this nation today. The men who manipulate the Babylonian system and through it dominate and control all nations, freely come and go as alien immigrants into all lands. When one nation is too disastrously ruined to be a profitable prey, they just move over to another. Hence, the final destruction of great Babylon must come at last. It will be in the judgment of the sword upon all nations, for all will be undergoing judgment and there will be no place left to flee. As Revelation 18:21 says, "And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and cast it into the sea saying, Thus with violence, shall that great city Babylon be thrown down and shall be found no more".

In our time, the judgment will become two fold. First, there is the judgment by the sword of one wicked nation against another, as it has been in the past. Evil has now become so powerful these Jews would take over the whole world and conquer, enslave and destroy we who are Yahweh's people, if He did not intervene with His own judgment on all the wicked. Let us review the final situation.

Before Yahweh's intervention, we find the earlier stages of judgment progressing as before. "When they drink it (the cup of wrath) and behave like madmen, because of the sword I am sending among them, saith Yahweh." Certainly today all nations, including our own, are behaving as stupidly as drunkards or madmen, out of fear of the sword. Britain's greed to get rid of an economic competitor led to World War I being carried so far, that the only white Christian powers strong enough to block westward invasions by the enormous masses of Asia, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire, were destroyed. The path of invasion was then left open.

American money, as well as American soldiers, went into the plot against civilization, for it is well known that a great New York firm of international Jewish bankers furnished the money to finance the Bolshevik revolution in Russia to bring communism to power. International plots to strangle Germany economically, while financing communist revolutionary attempts within her, were the direct and only cause of the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Germany asked nothing of the world but to be left in peace while she removed the Red menace from her eastern border. The western nations tightened the economic noose around Germany's neck, until there was no choice left but starvation or war.

Meanwhile, Stalin massed over 1.5 million soldiers along Germany's eastern border. World War II was an attempt to complete the destruction of all Christian nations, which might oppose a communist Asiatic invasion, and enslavement of all Europe. We strengthened Russia's military even though Russia made no secret of her intent to destroy Britain, France and the United States as soon as she had destroyed Germany. Since then, our own diplomats have so engineered every treaty, every conference; every action or inaction, as to make sure that it resulted in a Russian success and in our defeat. Today, when only the greatest firmness and courage can stop Russia's march to complete world conquest, our foreign policy is one of vacillation and abject cowardice.

When we back down before a petty red dictator like Castro, how can we convince Russia that we really oppose them? After we have betrayed the anti communists, who trusted our promises of help, in Yugoslavia, China, Hungary and now Cuba, how can any of our allies trust our promises to them? We make a specious explanation that we do this out of such cowardly fear that we will sacrifice anything or anybody to avoid war. Yet, this encouragement of Russia in demanding ever more and more, is the very thing, which makes war certain to come. 

This is what the prophet Jeremiah was speaking of. We behave like drunkards and madmen in our international policies. We have strengthened Russia politically, financially and militarily. We have given the red dictator Tito of Yugoslavia, nearly $3 billion worth of weapons to use against us. Canada and Australia are selling red China all the wheat she needs to keep up her strength in time of famine. A famine sent by Yahweh to help us by weakening China so she could not attack us. We sell Canada the machinery necessary to deliver and unload the wheat that will make our enemy strong enough to attack us. Would drunkards and madmen do anything worse? Now the United States sells wheat to Russia, with American taxpayer's money guaranteeing the sale.

Yahweh will not allow us to destroy ourselves, for He has pledged His own word to save His people. Jeremiah 25:31-33 further says, "A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for Yahweh hath a controversy with the nations; Thus saith Yahweh; Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. And those slain by Yahweh shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth".

Both in the time of its fulfillment and in the nations, with which it deals, this prophecy merges into this vein in Ezekiel chapters 38 & 39, which I will cover in future lessons. These verses tell how Yahweh's own great weapons of madness, mutiny, pestilence, storm, earthquake, volcanic eruptions and the other mighty forces of nature will overthrow the satanic hordes which come against us in the next world war. War has been made inevitable by the folly of our leadership. Now we must return to Yahweh, for it is His help that will bring us through this next war.

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