Revelation15chapter 15

Revelation 15:1

Another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, matches the two signs of chapter 12, the woman and the dragon, completing a set of three great signs that frame the book's central visions. Seven angels carry the seven last plagues, the last because in them is filled up the wrath of God, teleo, brought to its full and final measure, language marking the vials as the series that ends what the seals opened and the trumpets advanced. The chapter announces the plagues before it shows them poured out, the book's own habit of naming a scene before staging it.

Revelation 15:2

The sea of glass first seen calm before the throne at 4:6 now appears mingled with fire, the crystal calm of that first vision now shot through with the judgment about to fall, and on it stand those that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name. These are the martyrs and overcomers of the tribulation's fiercest hour, standing rather than fleeing, holding the harps of God, an image of worship carried straight through persecution into triumph. Victory here, nikao, is the same overcoming word promised to every church in chapters 2 and 3, now shown fulfilled.

Revelation 15:3-4

The victors sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, two deliverances joined in one anthem, Exodus 15's song after the Red Sea and the Lamb's own redemption meeting as a single note of praise, Moses' exodus from Egypt's tyrant the pattern for the tribulation's own final deliverance from the beast. Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints, or King of the nations by the better reading, echoes Psalm 145 and Deuteronomy 32's own song of Moses. For all nations shall come and worship before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest looks forward to the millennial worship of the nations this site's futurist reading expects at Christ's visible reign.

Revelation 15:5-6

The temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven is opened, the specific title recalling Exodus 38:21's tabernacle of testimony, the tent that housed the law inside the ark, its heavenly counterpart now the source of the plagues about to fall on those who broke that law's own witness. Seven angels come out clothed in pure and white linen, priestly dress, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles, the same girding John saw on the Son of man himself at 1:13, marking these angels as ministers of a holy and not merely destructive errand. The plagues proceed from the sanctuary, not from chaos, judgment carried out by consecrated hands.

Revelation 15:7-8

One of the four living creatures hands the seven angels seven golden vials, phialas, broad shallow bowls rather than narrow flasks, full of the wrath of God, who liveth for ever and ever, the giver's own eternity guaranteeing the judgment's justice. The temple fills with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, the same glory-cloud that filled Solomon's temple at its dedication in 1 Kings 8:10-11 and Isaiah's own vision of smoke filling the house at his call in Isaiah 6:4, and no man was able to enter into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled. The shut door bars even intercession while the last wrath runs its course, a sobering close to the book's shortest chapter before the vials themselves are poured out.