Revelation 15-16. The second Exodus: wrath is poured out on the world with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, culminating in the Day of the Lord.
The first scourges to be designated plagues were the fire, smoke and sulphur associated with the sixth trumpet, which were three in number. The seven last plagues bring the total to ten, as in the days before the Exodus. While the judgements of the trumpets also express God’s anger, these are worse. Israel will not be delivered from its oppressor until the tenth plague.
Fire is now involved in the judgement. ‘Conquering from [ek] the beast’ is grammatically clipped, but the vision parallels that of the multitude ‘from every nation … coming from the great tribulation’ (Rev 7:14; cf. 16:13, where the verb of motion is also omitted). Throughout, they conquer because they refuse to bow before the image of the beast or receive his mark, even on pain of death. Therefore they stand on the sea, which is solid to them; they stand without fear before the throne. Like the 144,000, they are safe in heaven.
The Pentateuch records two songs: one in which Moses celebrated Yahweh’s triumph over Pharaoh (Ex 15) and one in which, just before Israel entered the Promised Land, he foretold the nation’s prosperity, unfaithfulness, exile and final deliverance (Deut 32). The song of triumph is in mind. As God’s servant (Ex 14:31) and as though he were God himself (Ex 7:1), Moses inflicted misery on a country that had made Israel’s life a misery. The Lamb too was a ‘servant of God’ (Isa 53:7, Mark 10:45), acting with his full authority. Now he brings down judgement on the beast-Pharaoh. Those who have conquered sing a new song from a position after death, figuratively on the other side of the sea. It is from there that they observe God’s judgement of his enemies.
Some of the words come from Jeremiah (Jer 10:1-16), who avers that because God created heaven and earth, it is folly to worship images. The redeemed of Judah rejoice, and amplify their sound with lyres (citharas – also 5:8, 14:2). It is an interim state, for when Christ returns, they will return, and then every knee will bow before Almighty God in worship (Ps 22:27, 65:2, 86:9, 102:22, Isa 2:3, 45:23, 66:18, 23, Jer 3:17, 16:19, Zeph 2:11, Zech 14:16). He is king of the nations. Once men understand that, they cannot but fear him and glorify him.
The vision connects with the end of chapter 11, where the temple in heaven opens and discloses the ark of the covenant. Jerusalem’s Temple was built according to the same God-given pattern as the Tabernacle, for they embodied the same reality. The Tabernacle (Heb. mishkan) was where God chose to dwell before Jerusalem became the capital. It consisted of a tent (Heb. ohel), partitioned by a curtain or veil, within which was ‘the ark of the testimony’. The ark enshrined the tablet inscribed with the ten commandments, a summation of God’s law and covenant, and this inner tent was therefore called the ‘tent of the testimony’. The tent on the outer side of the veil contained the shining lamps of the menorah, symbolising the light of his word, and the bread, symbolising his daily presence. In due time, when the Word ‘became flesh and tabernacled amongst us’ (John 1:14), God extended his testimony to the Gentiles; Christ’s body was the temple of God because it housed his Spirit (John 2:21). After his ascension those who participated in his flesh and blood continued that witness as they took his word from Judaea to the ends of the earth.
Like the ‘one like a son of man’ (1:13), the angels wear a golden sash. Their golden bowls once held the prayers of the saints (5:8), but now they hold the wine of God’s wrath. The entrance to the sanctuary closes as the angels leave. As when Christ was crucified, his eye will not spare. He will show no pity.
‘Fury’ is thumos, a stronger word than orge, ‘wrath’ or ‘anger’. We have emotions because we are made in God’s likeness, and he has emotions. But anger is rarely good and we should not give it sway (Eph 4:26, Col 3:8). God continually exercises makrothumia, ‘patience’ (Rom 2:4), for he does not will that anyone should perish but that they should repent (II Pet 3:9). Were it not for that patience, we should have died the moment we became acquainted with evil. Judgement is deferred to the end of life and to the end of the age. “I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:48). But ultimately judgement must come.
The wrath of God has a double reference. First, it refers to the punishment of death (Rom 4:15, 7:9f), because in Adam all die. We are by nature children of disobedience (Eph 5:6, Col 3:6) and therefore of wrath (Eph 2:3, John 3:36). ‘All our days pass away under your wrath’ (Ps 90:9). A ruler who imposes the just sentence of death for a crime exacts the wrath of God on his behalf, for the sentence is the same (Rom 13:4); it is the fate of every soul at the resurrection who does not obey the truth but unrighteousness (Rom 2:5-8). But whoever is justified by the blood of Christ will be saved from wrath (Rom 5:9).
Second, it refers to the ‘tribulation and distress for every human soul that does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,’ at a particular moment in history. For the Jews, this came to pass in the Jewish-Roman wars of AD 66-70 and 132-135. More than a million lost their lives, including many who had congregated in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover; the remaining population of Judaea was enslaved and deported (Ezek 5:1-13, Zech 13:8, Luke 21:21-24, 23:28-30; Josephus, Wars of the Jews 6.9.3, Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.12.1-14.3). While the Jews brought these calamities upon themselves, ultimately they came from God, the Romans being his instruments. He had warned about them many times (Ezek 5:1-13, Zech 13:8, Mal 4:6, Luke 23:28-30). He rejected the Jews because they had rejected him (Matt 21:32-41).
In advance of the appearing of the Messiah, John the Baptist also warned of the wrath that was to come. Though he could not say when it would happen, it would befall Jew and Gentile alike (Luke 3:7, 3:17). Elsewhere it is described as the time of their ‘visitation’ (Luke 19:44, I Pet 2:12). Jesus briefed his disciples about both episodes (Matt 23:32-24:30). So now it is the turn of the Gentiles. The boils on the skin, the extreme thirst, the intolerable heat anticipate in the land of the living the subsequent fate of the wicked, when they rise from the dead and are thrown into the lake of fire. Those in Israel who have survived up to this point are protected from the radiation by a canopy of cloud (Isa 4:3-6).
The seven seals, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls all have the same structure, 4 + 2 + 1. So do the seven days of creation. During the first four days God formed the environments of the earth, during the fifth and sixth he created the animals to live in them, and on the seventh he rested. The seven trumpets and the seven bowls of wrath describe the undoing of creation – this wonderful, beautiful world.
| Seven days of creation | Seven seals | Seven trumpets | Seven bowls of wrath | |
| 1-4 | Light, water, land, sun | Four horsemen | Land, sea, water, sun | Land, sea, water, sun |
| 5 | Animals of air and water | Persecution | Demonic locusts torment | Pains and sores |
| 6 | Animals of the land | Day of vengeance | Demonic horses kill | Armageddon |
| 7 | Sabbath | Silence | Redemption | Destruction |
God looks down to see if there are any who seek after him. All have corrupted themselves, all have turned away (Ps 53). With the seeing eye and the hearing ear, with his belly and his genitalia, man enjoys everything that God has given him, but the wealthier he becomes, the greater the sense that he owes it all to himself. The more he understands scientifically about nature, which he freely acknowledges to be wondrous, the less he sees God and the more he believes in his own intellectual power. He shows no gratitude. He shuts him out, refusing to ‘worship him who made the heaven and the land and sea and springs of water’ or even to acknowledge that he exists. The vineyard of Europe is no longer producing fruit.
Although it seems unthinkable that God would destroy what he has made, our collective unwillingness to change our lifestyles has resulted in our destroying it ourselves. According to the most realistic projections, by 2100 the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will have reached three times what it was in 1900, and the rate of increase continues to increase. As temperatures rise, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, plant and animal extinctions become more frequent. Thus by casting fire on the earth, God concentrates into a few months the devastation that was set to happen anyway. Man learns that the creation cannot be taken for granted. One by one the bowls of wrath are poured out onto land and sea, the bodies of drinking water, the sun and the air.
In the sixth plague of the Exodus, the boils that broke out on people’s skin were caused by a fine air-borne dust. The pouring of the bowl onto the land from somewhere above the earth also indicates a physical cause. Possibly it will be an increase in X-ray and ultraviolet radiation arising from the weakening, if not collapse, of the planet’s magnetic shield, the effects on the body exacerbated by extreme heat. The plague is part of the torment warned about (14:10f), directed chiefly against those who associate themselves with the beast.
An animal is a being that has the breath or spirit of life (Gen 1:21, 30); as such it is a ‘living soul’. The judgement of the second trumpet was restricted to a third of the sea or ocean; now the whole ocean is affected, its surface filled with the blood of dead animals. Again, the physical cause is not stated, but heat-induced anoxia might be suggested.
Terrestrial life depends on fresh water. In the catastrophe of the third trumpet, only a third of the rivers were polluted. By implication, the judgement has become total. “I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness and make sackcloth their covering” (Isa 50:2f). Rivers and springs choke with the dead animals.
And I heard the altar say, “Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!”
The angel does not address God as ‘he who is to come’ because he has come, with his appearance at the seventh trumpet (11:17). And he has come, first, to judge.
Outside of grace, God’s concept of justice is not fundamentally different from man’s. “As you have done, so shall it be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head” (Obad 15). “By the judgement you judge by, you will be judged, and with the measure you measure with, it will be measured back to you” (Matt 7:2). The beast and his associates polluted the land with the blood of the saints and the 144,000 prophets; now God pours out his fury on them by giving them blood to drink. Righteousness and justice are interrelated, because right action and the penalty for not acting rightly have to do with following or breaking God’s law; the nouns translate the same word, dikaiosune. From the altar the long-suffering martyrs voice their approval: at last God has given them justice (Luke 18:7). ‘They are worthy’ is an ironical echo of the acclamation of the Lamb in 5:9.
The sun is the light of the world. Without it there would be no photosynthesis – no oxygen, no food. It rises on the evil and the good alike, and life depends on it. Spiritually, the Son of God is the light, the sun of righteousness; whoever follows him does not walk in darkness (John 8:12). The visible reflects the invisible.
The sun is no longer beneficent. If previously only implied (8:7), it is now explicitly the source of the fire, as it spews forth superhot plasma. The atmosphere heats up, plants are reduced to tinder and wildfires multiply. Men are aware that God is the ultimate cause of their tribulation, but unlike innocently suffering Job, they curse God. The mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart. Repentance would glorify him through being an acknowledgement of his justice and holiness.
Clouds of smoke and ash envelop the earth, day turns to night (Rev 6:12), and even the moon does not shine (Isa 13:10). God seems utterly remote. Men gnaw their blaspheming tongues and go on blaspheming, despite the pain.
The scorching heat dries up the Euphrates, the new boundary of Israel, preparing the way for the kings to take the land, just as the Jordan became dry for Joshua (and contrast Isa 40.3). Presumably earthquakes have destroyed all bridges. ‘From the rising of the sun’ (also at 7:2) means ‘from the east’, but in Greek idiom ‘of the sun’ (absent at 21:13) is optional: the phrase is ironic because the sky is dark, and it is Christ, King of the nations – associated with the sun at 1:16, 10:1, 19:17 – who will rise from the east (Matt 24:27). The invisible dragon, the ‘son of destruction’ and the falsely prophesying ‘beast with two horns’ (13:11) constitute a trinity analogous to the God of heaven, his Christ and Christ’s two witnesses.
The great day is the ‘Day of the Lord’ foreseen by Israel’s prophets (e.g. Isa 13:1-16, 24:21-23, Joel 2:31, Zeph 3:8, Mal 4:1, II Pet 3:12). It is the end-of-the-age equivalent of the ‘day of vengeance’ – lasting some years – which, in the 6th century BC, Yahweh visited upon Egypt, Philistia, Tyre, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Syria, Arabia, Elam and eventually Babylon itself, after the kingdom of Judah was judged (Jer 46-51, Ezek 25-32, Zeph 2). Those countries were the ‘whole world’ at that time (Jer 25:26). Their descendants are, presumably, the ‘whole world’ whose leaders are persuaded by supernatural signs to gather at ‘Armageddon’, the hill or mountain (Heb. har) just west of Megiddo. Although they gather there, it is not necessarily where the final battle will take place. Other texts indicate that the battle will be at Jerusalem. Since the inhabitants themselves are no threat after three and a half years of foreign occupation, it must be that the kings recognise that the Messiah’s arrival is imminent and expect to defeat him by force, as when Sennacherib came up against Jerusalem in the reign of Hezekiah.
The interjection “Behold, I am coming like a thief!” recapitulates warnings given to the churches at Sardis and Laodicea, apposite here because it is the Day of the Lord that comes like a thief (I Thes 5:2, II Pet 3:10). Briefly its light will be sevenfold (Isa 30:26). The interruption in the text is as unexpected as the event itself. The day has a double meaning, for it is also the moment when Christ comes for his own, to harvest the wheat rather than burn the chaff. It is either the day of rapture or the subsequent day of wrath. “Be vigilant, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming. Know this, that if the master of the house had known the time of night when the thief was coming, he would have been vigilant and not let his house be broken into” (Matt 24:42f). Jesus exhorts us to make sure we do not get left behind.
Lightning, noises and thunder – effects of the solar wind interfering with the earth’s magnetic field – have been going on since the first trumpet, but with this last bowl, poured on the air, they intensify. The earth and its works are burned, in accordance with the ‘wrath of God from heaven’ revealed in the gospel (II Pet 3:10, Rom 1:18). The threshing-floor is purged (Luke 3:17).
The earthquake is that which caused mountains to crumble at the opening of the sixth seal. Earthquakes occur when tension is released between tectonic plates near the surface. Most originate near the surface, all are local, and the shallower their origin, the greater the damage. A global earthquake could be triggered only by something deeper, involving movements in the liquid outer core of the planet – the same kind of movements as generate its magnetic field. In the last thirty years the rate at which magnetic north has shifted across earth’s surface has accelerated from 0-15 km to 50-60 km per year. The shift is linked to accelerating movements in the core, though exactly what is happening there remains unknown.
It has happened before. Just as the walls of ancient Jericho disintegrated and, 80 years ago, Hamburg, Berlin, Coventry, Tokyo, Nagasaki were brought crashing to the ground, so will today’s cities be. Men will look at the mountains and every tall building as it collapses and cry to the rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the wrath of God!” (Rev 6:16). The heavens also shudder (Joel 3:16, Hag 2:6). The hailstones are meteoroids, for a hundred pounds weight is far heavier than stones congealed from ice could be. They fall on the earth like figs shaken by the wind.
Then the wrath of God is finished (Rev 15:1), as it finally was for Jesus at the crucifixion (John 19:30). The Greek words ‘there was a great earthquake’ are the same as in Matthew 28:2, referring to his resurrection. The earthquake which brings down Babylon the Great will also bring up Israel’s dead (Ezek 37:7).
The following chapters (17-19) reveal the character of Babylon the Great and utter a lament for her fall. Those deceived by the beast and his prophet are reduced to carrion, while those attending the marriage of the Lamb feast and rejoice.
