² Listen to me and make up your minds to honor my name,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “or I will bring a terrible curse against you. I will curse even the blessings you receive. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you have not taken my warning to heart.

⁹ He burned down the Temple of the Lord, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem. He destroyed all the important buildings^[a] in the city.

16 Then I heard a mighty voice from the Temple say to the seven angels, “Go your ways and pour out on the earth the seven bowls containing God’s wrath.”

² So the first angel left the Temple and poured out his bowl on the earth, and horrible, malignant sores broke out on everyone who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his statue.

³ Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse. And everything in the sea died.

⁴ Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs, and they became blood. ⁵ And I heard the angel who had authority over all water saying,

⁷ And I heard a voice from the altar,^[a] saying,

⁸ Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, causing it to scorch everyone with its fire. ⁹ Everyone was burned by this blast of heat, and they cursed the name of God, who had control over all these plagues. They did not repent of their sins and turn to God and give him glory.

¹⁰ Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. His subjects ground their teeth^[b] in anguish, ¹¹ and they cursed the God of heaven for their pains and sores. But they did not repent of their evil deeds and turn to God.

¹² Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great Euphrates River, and it dried up so that the kings from the east could march their armies toward the west without hindrance. ¹³ And I saw three evil^[c] spirits that looked like frogs leap from the mouths of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet. ¹⁴ They are demonic spirits who work miracles and go out to all the rulers of the world to gather them for battle against the Lord on that great judgment day of God the Almighty.

¹⁶ And the demonic spirits gathered all the rulers and their armies to a place with the Hebrew name Armageddon.^[d]

¹⁷ Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air. And a mighty shout came from the throne in the Temple, saying, “It is finished!” ¹⁸ Then the thunder crashed and rolled, and lightning flashed. And a great earthquake struck—the worst since people were placed on the earth. ¹⁹ The great city of Babylon split into three sections, and the cities of many nations fell into heaps of rubble. So God remembered all of Babylon’s sins, and he made her drink the cup that was filled with the wine of his fierce wrath. ²⁰ And every island disappeared, and all the mountains were leveled. ²¹ There was a terrible hailstorm, and hailstones weighing as much as seventy-five pounds^[e] fell from the sky onto the people below. They cursed God because of the terrible plague of the hailstorm.

¹⁸ One-third of all the people on earth were killed by these three plagues—by the fire and smoke and burning sulfur that came from the mouths of the horses. ¹⁹ Their power was in their mouths and in their tails. For their tails had heads like snakes, with the power to injure people.

²⁰ But the people who did not die in these plagues still refused to repent of their evil deeds and turn to God. They continued to worship demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood—idols that can neither see nor hear nor walk! ²¹ And they did not repent of their murders or their witchcraft or their sexual immorality or their thefts.