Revelation Chapter 15
VERSE 1 continued “Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous: seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete.”
“The seven plagues allude to the ten plagues visited by God at the hand of Moses upon Egypt incidental to the departure of the Israelite's from that land. More particularly, the vision of Verse 1 focuses attention upon the last seven of the ten Exodus plagues. Special note should be taken of the fourth plague, the plague of flies: “And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end thou may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth” (Exod. 8:22). This plague was different from the first three of the ten in that the Lord excluded the land of Goshen where the Hebrews dwelt; thus, a distinction was made between the Egyptians and the Hebrews. In other words, the fourth plague was the first plague in which no harm befell the Jew, and the same distinction holds true for all seven remaining plagues of the ten.
The reference in Verse 1 to God’s Old Testament dealing with Egypt is as follows: Just as the plagues that were inflicted upon Egypt happened prior to the final deliverance of the Hebrews from that land, so the seven plagues of Revelation, Chapters 15 and 16, are poured out prior to the final and collective whole salvation of spiritual Israel, God’s holy nation—namely, the true Church of Christ—from Satan’s domain here on earth to their heavenly inheritance beyond the veil of human experience.
To the Egyptians the plagues were a most grievous affliction, a torment of pain and death; but to the Hebrews in Egypt, dwelling separately in Goshen, these same plagues were harbingers of hope, portending coming release from bondage. In a similar sense, the plagues of this and the succeeding chapter of Revelation are messages of gloom and doom to spiritual Egypt, i.e., religious orthodoxy (Rev. 11:8), but are foregleams of better things to come for true spiritual Israel.
From this latter standpoint the plagues are styled “great and marvelous.” The setting of the scene, therefore, is the end-time or harvest of the age when the pronouncement goes forth, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of HER plagues” (Rev. 18:4). This is a call for both a separation of spirit from the world and a departure from a worldly Church (Ezra 10:11).
In this next you will note that Brother Shallieu holds a slightly different interpretation then that which was presented in our first post as to who or what the seven angels bearing the plagues consist.
The seven plague-bearing angels of Verse 1 are not the seven Gospel Age individuals or messengers to the Church (Rev. 1:20) but are an allegorical representation of seven messages indicating divine displeasure with—even indignation against—ecclesiasticism and its teachings.
The plagues represent, as it were, an expression of indignation and wrath. They are but precursors of the coming actual dissolution of all false religious institutions, which are to be replaced by the Kingdom and religion of Jesus Christ, soon to reign.
The plagues represent the subject matter in these messages, whereas the angels bearing the plagues are the separate pronouncements or titles of these messages. The plagues are similar in character to the smiting messages that tormented orthodoxy in Rev 11:10, 6—messages from the two prophets, the Old and the New Testaments (plural), the Word of God.
We move on to Verse 2 in our next post.
