Revelation Chapter 15
VERSE 4 “Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before You, For Your judgments have been manifested.”
“The AIM of the saints throughout life is that all will glorify God’s name. Now the process is to begin which will ensure that goal — ALL NATIONS WILL WORSHIP HIM. The reason is that the REVEALING of His justice, as promised, will accomplish this. Once the plagues have been poured AND UNDERSTOOD, all will praise Him.”
“The fulfillment of this and the preceding verse is yet future—the very near future, it is believed! From the standpoint solely of the singers in the vision, the refrain concerning the judgment is of such recent past occurrence that the translators of the King James Version, apparently capturing the spirit, knowingly used the clause “thy judgments are made manifest” instead of “were made manifest” as most other versions state it. Here the KJV is more in harmony with the thrust of the vision on the part of those singing.
The world, witnessing the turmoil, the revolutionary and destructive phase of the Time of Trouble coming upon Christendom, will temporarily not understand the significance of these events; but later, when revelation dawns upon them, they will promptly submit to and willingly obey the laws of the Kingdom.
Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; . . . he [God] shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth. (Psa. 96:11,13)
Let the reader now return to the Exodus account in the Old Testament (Exod 15:1–19). One might wonder how the enormous heterogeneous multitude could utter with united voice the words and content of the song in such an intelligible manner that it could be historically and veritably recorded. Upon reflection cannot one suppose, with reasonable conviction, the following, which is stated in the present tense to allow the reader to experience Moses’ emotions?
During the calming of the waters of the sea and the ensuing silence, the normally sedate and dignified Moses hurriedly detaches himself from the multitude. From this position he then turns about to face his compatriots, pausing for the first opportunity to intrude. His hand is uplifted, ready to act as the nation’s cheerleader. With his powerful voice, notable on this occasion for its remarkable and unusual clarity of diction and accompanied with robust and rhythmic gestures, he now, by means of simple and single rehearsals, step by step, line upon line, in stanza-like fashion, channels and orchestrates the feelings and enthusiasm of the multitude, coupled with his own inspired and intelligent pronouncements, to sing in a measured, metrical cadence the words and melody of the fitting anthem of victory.”
A BREAK TO GET OUR BEARINGS
“It is easy to get lost in the detail of this chapter. We have, in short, just seen that the plagues are to be poured out and the glorified saints are jubilant in the significance of the beginnings of judgment against the old order in answer to Rev 6:10, 11. The REASON for the break between Verses 1 and 5 is to tell us what the glorified saints are doing during this century. It is NOT just the seven angels who are involved.”
We move on to Verse 5 in our next post.
