Broad meadows

In the last installment, we came across a “cup of wrath” in Isaiah 51 and Jeremiah 25 and I will be seeking to expand on that in this writing.

After the last supper, Jesus and the disciples (minus Judas) go into the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus begins to pray. In Matthew 26:39 Jesus says, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” He shows his submission to the will of the Father again in verse 42, subsequently taking the wrath of God on the cross. But this also brings up an interaction between Jesus and James and John’s mother Matthew 20. In this account, she requests that her sons be allowed to sit at his right and left in his kingdom. Jesus then asks James and John if they can drink the cup he is going to drink. They answer “yes” and he responds that they will indeed drink from his cup, and as we have seen, this is a cup of wrath. To help us understand why this is the case and how God plans to use these symbols we will need to go back to where I left off at last writing, Isaiah 51 and Jeremiah 49.

Therefore hear this, you afflicted one,
made drunk, but not with wine.
This is what your Sovereign LORD says,
your God, who defends his people:
“See, I have taken out of your hand
the cup that made you stagger;
from that cup, the goblet of my wrath,
you will never drink again.
I will put it into the hands of your tormentors,
who said to you,
‘Fall prostrate that we may walk on you.’
And you made your back like the ground,
like a street to be walked on.” Isaiah 51:21-23

In this verse, we see the promise of God to take the cup of wrath away and put it into the hands of their tormentors. This prophetic promise is found also in Jeremiah 49:12: “This is what the LORD says: “If those who do not deserve to drink the cup must drink it, why should you go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, but must drink it.”

So this begs the question of who are those who don’t deserve to drink the cup and who does? We have already discussed the prophecy of two distinct views of the cup in the church, one a cup that is secure and the other a libation of blood in Psalm 16. By subsequent history, we can then begin to see who the practitioners of each are, but is there more that we can derive from this prophetic symbolic line?

Lamentations 4:21 says, “But to you also the cup will be passed; you will be drunk and stripped naked.” I think another way to say this might be, “you won’t understand this, but something you’re hiding will be revealed. Another thing to note is that this cup will go from one entity to another.

Ezekiel 23:31-34 continues along these line when it says,

“You have gone the way of your sister; so I will put her cup into your hand.
“This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
“You will drink your sister’s cup,
a cup large and deep;
it will bring scorn and derision,
for it holds so much.
You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow,
the cup of ruin and desolation,
the cup of your sister Samaria.
You will drink it and drain it dry
and chew on its pieces—
and you will tear your breasts.
I have spoken, declares the Sovereign LORD.”

While one might wonder who these sisters are prophetically, I would draw your attention to the phrase “the cup of ruin and desolation.” There are only 14 times in the Bible that the word desolation is used, with five of those times being in the phrase “ abomination that causes desolation”. So is there anything else that might support that idea? Well, the words abomination, abominations and abominable appear only 9 times in all of scripture. The last two time are in Revelation 17:4-6, which states,

“The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery:
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.”

In these verses we have a woman drunk on blood with a cup in her hand filled with “abominable things”. Given that these are the last two appearances of the words abominable and abominations and given that there is no clearer definition for abomination that causes desolation in scripture, I think we can conclude that the consumption of blood is the abomination that causes desolation.

It’s important to realize that the abomination that causes desolation is set up on a “wing of the temple” at its introduction in Daniel 9:27 and that in Revelation 16:6 that they were “given . . .blood to drink as they deserve.” Many have already painted the Catholic Church as the harlot, but here we have the symbolic smoking gun. She clearly teaches that the cup is literally the blood of Christ and her checkered history in terms of the things listed Revelation 17 are historically and observationally verifiable. I will conclude this series in the next installment with one last incredible prophecy that I have been able to uncover by following the symbols connected to the Lord’s Supper.