Revelation 15
-Devotion by Daniel Smead (MN)
Revelation 15 involves the seven angels who will soon pour out seven bowls of God’s wrath onto the earth, completing that wrath. We first meet them here, before they receive the bowls of wrath, but they are spoken of as possessing seven plagues (v. 6). This seems inconsistent, but it may show that the “plagues” do not refer to the effects of God’s “wrath,” and that what they poured onto the earth was a mixture.
This chapter also presents a hymn, sung to worship God, by the crowd of those who overcame the beast. The song is referred to as “song of Moses” but is not the hymn that appears in Exodus 15. There is some similarity, the Exodus hymn includes more narrative sections about how God aided the people, and some verses in the middle that praise God. The Revelation text is shorter, and entirely in the second person (all “You,” “Your” statements). I have seen a list of citations proposed that figured these few verses of the hymn cite at least five Bible books, including four Psalms.
At the start of the chapter John said he saw “another sign in heaven,” and his use of the term “sign” suggests not everything he describes took place as literal events. I think it is a bit unusual for Revelation that John mentioned the sign several verses before the sign enters his account. It would be more usual for him to write about something just when it shows up in the story. One of the most common phrases in Revelation, “I saw,” appears dozens of times. As it turns out, writing the way he did about the seven angels allowed John to bring the total references to “wrath” in Revelation up to seven (six about God, and one for the wrath of the Lamb).
The intense emphasis on “seven” in Revelation might serve to emphasize a contrast with the number of the beast, which ‘falls short’ of being sevens. That is one hypothesis, anyway. Dozens of sevens overlap throughout Revelation. More than twenty sets of items are easy to recognize, like stars, candlesticks, etc. Less obvious are combinations of words, and categories of thought, like the presence of seven blessings, and seven uses of the phrase “will no longer.” Revelation has a very complex structure. Aside from all of that repetition, it is estimated to use over 500 references to Old Testament scripture (while never actually quoting it).
It may be worth refreshing our memory of the way Revelation 11 ended (despite how recently you probably read that text). The angel with the seventh trumpet sounded it, and then loud voices in heaven announced that the kingdom of the world had become that “of our Lord and of His Christ.” The twenty-four elders around the throne fell in worship, and part of what they said was to thank God:
because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign. 18 And the nations were enraged, and Your wrath came, and the time came for the dead to be judged, and the time to reward Your bond-servants the prophets and the saints and those who fear Your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth.”
19 And the temple of God which is in heaven was opened; and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple, and there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder, and an earthquake, and a great hailstorm.
(Revelation 11:17b-19, NASB 1995)
First, notice the list of five points verse 18 gives:
Nations enraged
Arrival of wrath
Dead judged
Rewards for “the prophets and the saints and those who fear Your name”
Destroying “those who destroy the earth”
It’s a workable list. You might even say God has an agenda.
Second, at the end of chapter 11 things left off with the temple in heaven just having opened. And soon after John returns to describing the Temple, in chapter 15, the seven angels who will pour out the seven last plagues emerge from the Temple. (Their outfits, shining linen and gold sashes, take us back to the first vision of Christ; 1:13.) Almost immediately after this the Temple fills “with smoke from the glory of God and from His power,” after which no one can enter it until the plagues are finished (15:8).
It seems reasonable that this scene with the heavenly Temple would appear similar to events centuries earlier at the dedication of the Tabernacle of the Testimony in Moses’ time (Exodus 40:34-38; compare Numbers 9:15-16; 10:11-13), and the Temple in Solomon’s time (1 Kings 8:10-11; 2 Chronicles 7:1-3). In both cases the scripture tells us that fire descended (presumably to the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies) and a “cloud” filled the space. Our Revelation text refers to “smoke” rather than “cloud,” but perhaps we could think of the Temple as being filled with a ‘cloud of smoke’ and maintain both thoughts. The key element for us to keep in mind here is the glory of God; consider these verses:
In 18:1 we learn that an angel had sufficient glory to illuminate the earth while arriving.
In 21:11 we see that the New Jerusalem was brilliant, “like a stone of crystal-clear jasper,” illuminated from within by “the glory of God.” (Its wall and first foundation stone were clear jasper, v. 18-19. How does one recognize colorless jasper? I think that some of what a vision relays may just be knowledge that gets directly passed into the viewer’s awareness.)
In context, the other incidents of God’s glory entering the buildings seem like they were evidence of God’s approval of the buildings. In this case perhaps the glory is a sign of approval for the fact that judgment at last takes place. The entire fact of these verses of delay has to do with how momentous this situation is in history – this is the end of thousands of years of patience, this is judgment finally coming, the day of God’s wrath.
Prayer
Thank you, Lord, for your generosity. Reading about your glory, and thinking through the implications of your holiness and how different I am from you, I look at some of the darker portions of Revelation and have to acknowledge “there, were it not for the grace of God, might indeed be me.” You have done more than lift me out of miry clay, Lord, you have reshaped me. Help me to have all the patience it takes to handle the strains of your kneading hands, because I want to become what you intend me to be.
Thank you for being the kind of God I can trust with my heart.
Amen
Reflection Questions
- Does thinking about the “glory of God” texts help you consider how different God is from God’s creation?
- What traits of God stand out to you as the most unlike humanity, the most unlikely for us to replicate, or most difficult for us to comprehend? Do you see a day coming when your doubts or confusion on these points will be at an end?
- What does it mean to you that there are sections of hymns built into so many chapters of Revelation? (I have seen it suggested there are about a dozen hymns, and several doxologies as well.) Looking at them, how many can you recognize lyrics have been taken from for songs you know?
I have some new thoughts about the thing “like a sea of glass,” “like crystal” from Revelation 4:6. It didn’t really fit into the devotion well, so I wanted to set it down here as a note. For a long while I linked the “glass / crystal” thing in my mind with the “sea” in Solomon’s Temple and thought of it as like a storage container for water used in ritual washing. I now want to think of it more in terms of Ezekiel 1:22-26, as perhaps existing like a barrier between the throne and others. When Revelation 21:1 says “there is no longer any sea” I kept thinking of the comment in terms of God having made a new earth, but it may involve God having made a new heaven, with an adjusted layout. I’m unsure why the changes take place of it seeming to have fire in 15:2, maybe some interaction with God’s glory.
