Revelation 16:3-9 -- On Tragedy and Preparation

"And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.
And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.
And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.
And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.
And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory."
Revelation 16:3-9


This stuff is all scary, last-days stuff, but interesting, and maybe something we should prepare for, as much as possible at least, since we are living in the latter days and we can't predict the Lord's timetable.

The first vial seems like a plague (unrelated to Covid) that we can't mitigate except by avoiding worship of anything but the true God, so good idea there. The ones talked about in this excerpt are ones that we might be able to prepare for in other ways, at least to some extent. It is so horrible and sad to think of everything in the sea dying, and rivers becoming unusable/poisonous. Both of those things though might be able to be mitigated, in part, by food storage (which the prophets have already suggested, numerous times), especially water storage.

The scorching part sounds like living in Phoenix, but worse, and everywhere, although the extent of it I doubt I am doing justice to, and I don't mean to diminish the impact of these acts of God. I wonder though if mitigation in this case could include temperature proofing our houses to whatever extent possible and working on incorporating solar power and thermal battery technologies, which seem like they would thrive in conditions like that. We've already learned through the pandemic how to survive at home to some extent, but if going outside means being scorched, that's probably a lesson that we need to keep in our back pockets and make sure we have the technologies (and back ups) necessary to stay inside if the outside temperatures become unbearable at some point.

And of course, let's not blaspheme the name of God when we are suffering. Instead, let's think and prepare, and remember that God delivers us after the trial of our faith, if we stick with him and follow his path. Bad things are going to happen... that's why God is warning us with these scriptures. Trials and storms and really scary things are going to come. Life has never been pain-free, and God doesn't advertise it as such. The heroes have to suffer through a lot of things until they learn how to conquer their fears, overcome the challenges and monsters that face them, and triumph... but in a good story, they always come through in the end. And God never writes tragedies. Every single character in his story gets a happy ending if they keep working towards it and don't give up. Let's trust, repent, pray, and prepare.