Concise Commentary on Revelation 15

Revelation 15:1

"And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God." (Revelation 15:1)

Revelation 15 is a direct primer for Revelation 16's detailed description of the Seven Last Plagues and accordingly opens with reference to said plagues, which are explained as demonstrations of the wrath of God against wicked humanity in the temporal realm, as opposed to His wrath in eternity.

As the seven last plagues, they represent God's final temporal judgments against the nations and will be therefore exceptional in their severity and scope, whereafter He will only deal graciously with the nations as the Kingdom age of Daniel 7:22, etc., promises, and the Philadelphian church grows and grows to conquer the whole world.

(See my article, Why the Age of Missionaries was NOT the Philadelphian Church Era).

To each plague is assigned an angel¹, that is, a holy messenger or emissary from God, and these angels proceed from the temple (Revelation 15:6) that is the church transcendent, as Gill agrees.

Revelation 15:2

"And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God." (Revelation 15:2)

Revelation 15:2 returns to the scene of Revelation 4:6’s sea of glass, which appears to be a play on the Jewish term for the Law of God, "the sea of the law" or "the sea of wisdom" (see John Gill on Revelation 4:6), and is, for me, a symbol of the perspicuity - to true believers - within the written Word of the doctrines of the Lord's faithful church transcendent (the Gospel of sovereign grace, the historicist eschatological model, the regulative principle, etc., though Gill limits it - wrongly - to the Gospel alone).

Whereas in Revelation 4 the sea of glass is mentioned without further descriptors, in Revelation 15:2 it is said to be “mingled with fire”, which has been historically challenging to interpret.

Gill, for example, while probably correctly interpreting the sea of glass, mistakenly thinks that the whole passage (Revelation 15 + 16) refers to a time at which the church is at peace and in the ascendant.

However, the plagues that ensue in Revelation 16 must both precede that glorious time and actually bring it on.

So returning to the fire mingled within the sea of glass, this could refer to:

1. The fire of persecution the church is going through when the plagues are unleashed (i.e. the silencing by wicked laws the Lord's public witness against error and sin in Revelation 11:7's killing of the Two Witnesses by the hyper socialist, globalist ruling elites in the West), because afflictive providences are a refining fire for believers that begets zeal and a purification of the church, or,
2. An upsurge in fiery zeal for doctrinal purity that will certainly occur during the sixth of the Seven Last Plagues (as Revelation 16:15 hints at), or,
3. The compelling argument for the fire of judgment to fall upon the ungodly emanating from logical conclusions derived from the pure doctrines of the church transcendent, or,
4. A stirring to a new, higher level of liveliness of the pure doctrines of the faithful church transcendent in readiness for their deployment and unprecedented success in the glorious Philadelphian church age that begins during the seventh and final of the Seven Last Plagues.

Personally, I take it to refer to all of the above, making it a quadruple metaphor, but with particular reference to the third and fourth interpretations due to the fact that this symbolism is expressed in connection with the unleashing of the Seven Last Plagues.

Meanwhile, they that have gotten the victory over the beast, its number, name and mark are said to stand upon the sea of glass, which means the true children of the Lord will not bow to the cult of the narrative, will not wave rainbow flags, and will not bow down to the godless power elites, and all because, by God's grace alone, they stand fast upon the pure, fiery, lively doctrines contained within the metaphorical sea of glass.

These are the only ones who truly worship the Lord because they rely on Christ alone for justification before God, they take pleasure in His glory, they acknowledge He created this world, their doctrine is pure and undefiled by Jesuit Arminianism and they don’t believe the lies of atheism and “science so-called” (1 Timothy 6:20) that have laid the basis for all of today’s abominations and ensuing judgments.

Revelation 15:3

"And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints." (Revelation 15:3)

These believers are, minimally, those who will be alive when the Seven Last Plagues get underway, or more correctly in my view, those who are alive right now, during the build-up to those plagues (which must follow upon the slaying of the Lord's public witness against sin and error, which is a process largely completed with mischievous laws in every western land, where arrests are routinely made for speaking in public or online against LGBT, Islam, abortion and all the other sacred cows of the atheistic globalist elites).

They metaphorically sing "the song of Moses", which was a victory song (Exodus 15:1) for deliverance from Egypt; here this refers to their God-enabled victory (Philippians 2:13) over the lures and temptations of the mystic Egypt (one of the two spiritual names for the modern West in Revelation 11:8), i.e., the current hedonistic world whose hollow pleasures and vacuous hedonism are key to holding the wicked in the grip of the beast (the godless power of the West) and its Image (the vile value sets it demands we bow down to) and the Mark (open expressions of loyalty and adherence to the Image); this is another proof that Revelation 15 is anchored in the present day, i.e., the final few years of the Sardis church state.

They additionally sing "the song of the Lamb", which is a reference to Revelation 5:9-10, as follows:

"And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth." (Revelation 5:9-10)

Yes, the truly godly, the faithful few who have kept their garments (of Reformed doctrine and practice) undefiled (Revelation 3:4), shall indeed reign on earth in the very near future in fulfilment of Daniel 7:27's promise of temporal power being transferred from the ungodly (when they reach Joel 3:13's peak wickedness) to the godly, who will execute what the English Puritans termed "Christ's spiritual reign" during the coming Philadelphian church age:

"And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." (Daniel 7:27)

And they conclude their praise of Christ by addressing Him as "thou King of saints", with appropriate topicality given that His Kingdom as expressed by the success of "the stone cut out without hands" in Daniel 2:34 is at hand and will commence just as the Seven Last Plagues approach their dreadful conclusion.

Revelation 15:4

"Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest." (Revelation 15:4)

The glorious Philadelphian era that will emerge from the Seven Last Plagues is referenced once more, here as a happy outcome of the dreadful judgments God is about to inflict on the nations.

And also implied (in the opening question "Who shall not fear thee and glorify thy Name?") is the coming worldwide success of the Gospel of grace after the Lord has finished with His final - and most severe - temporal judgments upon the wicked in this scene of time.

In other words, the world-shattering judgments from God in the Seven Last Plagues will herald the godliest and happiest era (the Philadelphian) that mankind will experience, and which will (I speculate) endure longer than any of the preceding church ages, the longest of which was Thyatira (752 years from 765 to 1517).

Revelation 15:5

"And after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened:" (Revelation 15:5)

"The tabernacle of the testimony in heaven" refers, just like the tabernacle amidst the Hebrews of old on their journey out of Egypt, to God's presence amidst His children (who constitute, in this passage's context, the heavenly realm here in this world).

This temple is said to be "opened" and according to Gill on his commentary on this verse is done so in prolepsis to, or perhaps (I might suggest) in readiness for:

1. The egress of the seven angels from its inner sanctum to despatch the Seven Last Plagues, and / or,
2. Events that ensue at the close of the Seven Last Plagues.

With respect to #1 above, the sense might be that these angels have been either diverted from their normal service ministering to the saints, or else it signifies they have been waiting for this mission for a long period, but in either case, now the time has arrived for their deployment of the Seven Last Plagues to begin.

Point #2, meanwhile might refer to the Gentile church being opened to receive into its midst (a) the Jews, who will convert to Christ en masse during the Gog-Magog event of Ezekiel 38-39 and (b) the heathen of the nations of the East, who will follow in the years or decades not long after, both of which groups the church transcendent has generally been shut to since the Apostolic age.

So which is the correct understanding?

While the second shall surely come to pass, I personally believe the actual meaning here is the first interpretation, due to the immediacy of the angels exiting the temple upon its opening.

Revelation 15:6

"And the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles." (Revelation 15:6)

The horrors of the Seven Last Plagues have already been explained in verse 1 as outpourings of God's wrath, i.e., righteous judgments on the nations, and this point is further underlined here by the "pure and white linen" (representing perfect righteousness) adorning the angels bearing these plagues, and girdled with gold to denote their loins are "girded up", so to speak, to perform a perfectly just, necessary and industrious work on behalf of the church transcendent.

And because these angels emerge from the Lord's temple, i.e., from the midst of the church transcendent, they have been construed by some as godly human agencies acting as executors of God's will here on earth, a view held by Gill and others who interpret them as "godly princes" (temporal rulers); however, that could only be the case if the godly had already been elevated by God to temporal power, which would be impossible before the last of those plagues occurs as it is that final plague that leads to the godly ascending to governmental authority in the first place (as my notes on Revelation 11:13 will hopefully explain).

That being the case, these angels bearing the Seven Last Plagues must symbolise something other than godly rulers here on earth, and I take them to be ministering spirits (Hebrews 1:14 - this invokes the classical Jewish understanding of "angels of the ministry" as Gill points out), i.e., literal holy angels, striking out from their normal operations amidst the body of believers to orchestrate terrible judgments on the nations for the ultimate good of the church whose interests and cause they serve in accordance with their primary mandate from Christ and, in this particular matter, under an implicit commission from the faithful pastorate (as the next verse indicates).

And to reiterate, though these plagues shall be incomprehensibly terrible, yet being delivered by angels in ministration to the church transcendent, are designed to prepare conditions in this world for the church's ultimate victory over the beast system (i.e. the ungodly system that controls every western government) and for the flourishing of the church that shall follow thereafter when Philadelphia gets underway, a signal reminder of the fact that "all things [even the Seven Last Plagues!] work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).

This, however, is not to say that collateral impacts from these plagues will not prove painful to the church, especially to those who stand in need of severe afflictive chastening, and some belivers might not survive them; but God will preserve His church in general and so, if we know what these plagues shall consist of and when they shall strike, it would be prudent of us to do what we can to minimise their impact on us, and entrust the consequences to God.

Revelation 15:7

"And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, who liveth for ever and ever." (Revelation 15:7)

As Gill states in his commentary on Revelation 4:7, these four holy beasts represent one and the same concept as the cherubim of Ezekiel 1, i.e., four fundamental aspects of the Lord’s faithful pastorate here on earth, as follows:

1. The first was like a lion, which denotes confident strength, i.e. boldness in preaching the Word to a cynical world, and is agreeable to the character of the pioneering work of the Ephesian-era church;
2. The second was like a calf (or ox, as it should be rendered), which refers to laboriousness and industry in the Lord’s service, again very much in keeping with the works of Ephesus (Revelation 2:2), Smyrna (Revelation 2:9), Pergamos (Revelation 2:13) and Thyatira (Revelation 2:19);
3. The third had a face like a man, which I think refers to public civility and perhaps sociability; Gill thinks humanity, rationality and manliness, all of which well describe the qualities of the Reformers and the effects of their ministry (set against the inhumanity and superstition promoted by the Antichurch of Rome) when Sardis began;
4. The fourth was like a flying eagle, denoting astute observation from its lofty vantages (Gill adds swiftness to perform God’s will as an additional meaning, but I reject that because eagle’s wings are not noted for imparting swift flight); it also points to the wings of a great eagle in Revelation 12:14, given to the Woman (the church transcendent) to carry her into her wilderness retreat, meaning, the faithful pastorate exercises the power to urge the faithful few to withdraw to and abide in the spiritual wilderness in times of marginalisation or persecution, which has been the case for most of the 1,260 years since the Romish Antichrist reached maturity in the 760s.

And so it is the fourth of those holy beasts, representing the Lord's faithful pastorate / proactive servants in the church's present wilderness, "fringe" condition (i.e. the faithful few ministers and ministering laymen who both love God and abide rigidly to Reformed soteriology), that is referenced in verse 7 of Revelation 15, for it is only they who are able to see with eagle-like precision and clarity the spiritual landscape below them as it really is.

It is then said in this verse that one of these godly beasts gives the seven angels seven vials frull of the wrath of God; that is, one vial is given to each angel, and while it may be reasoned that this godly beast acts corporately in that matter for both itself and the other three, I take it rather to refer specifically to the fourth and final of the four beasts, the one that had the wings like an eagle, and the sense I think is that the other three aspects of the Lord’s faithful pastorate at the time of the unleashing of the Seven Last Plagues will be greatly dampened, it being toward the close of Sardis, when the Lord’s public witness against sin and error (i.e. the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11) lies dead in the public realm in the West (as is largely the case today through demonic laws, leaving as fully functional only the "retreated-to-the-wilderness" and "observing-from-high" attributes of the Lord’s faithful pastorate (and ministering laity), that is, the fourth holy beast.

And so the seven angels figuratively receive their commission to deploy the Seven Last Plagues from the present-day faithful shepherds who long and pray for the tide to turn in the world and an end to this evil age's extreme wickedness and false religions, especially Satanic presentations of Christianity.

In effect, this is God honouring and answering the prayers of His true servants by sending forth seven specially commissioned angels, as ministering spirits, advancing out from their normal operations in the midst of the church to perform this special, but terrible, work in its defence; because if God were not to intervene in the present day in which we live, the trajectory is a total control grid of dystopian oppression and cruelty that would extirpate the church from the face of this earth entirely; this is certainly what the elites who comprise the beast system in its final scarlet, globalist, crypto-communist condition intend.

And what are the prayers of the faithful few who have kept their Reformed garments clean?

• That Sardis would remember, per Revelation 3:3, that which it first received and heard (the Reformation).
• That the Reformation's soteriology of sovereign grace (Calvinism) and its historicist eschatology would recover, grow and exclusively own the name of Christianity.
• That the Kingdom would come, as the Lord's Prayer's opening petition says, and the happy outcomes of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 would be realised.
• That atheism and false religion would be removed and the wicked no longer exalted.
• That the ungodly would be ejected from power and influence and maximum justice executed against them for promoting abortion, LGBT, Islam and all the other crimes against the Word of God that comprise the Image of the Beast.
• That the Jews would have their eyes opened so that the house of Jacob will return to the Messianic fold.

All of the foregoing will ensue upon the deployment of the Seven Last Plagues because, as we shall see when we come to review those plagues in turn, they are going to transform the world's spiritual and geopolitical landscape to an almost unimaginable extent.

Revelation 15:8

"And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled." (Revelation 15:8)

This is not the smoke of incense that is the prayers of the saints², but rather is explicitly said to be the smoke from the glory of God and from His power, a smoke that fills the temple (the church transcendent), and the meaning I think is that all of His children will be aware of His glorious judicial presence, regardless of how they interpret it with respect to prophecy; that is, Christians everywhere are about to sense (as of the time of writing this piece) that God is moving in a grand manner in judgment against the world, and external evidences of this are abundant in the influx of unwanted Islamists along with other lawless third world immigrants, and the drums of global war being beaten at ever major flashpoint around the world.

(Gill further suggests in his commentary on Revelation 15:8 that this smoke refers to the final round of afflictions to be brought upon the church to sift it, and it is my conviction that this idea has some truth in it, at least as far as the Lord will surely avail of the Seven Last Plagues to weed out the false professors of faith from the true during the great distress and turmoil these judgments will bring to the world; these plagues will increase the faith of the truly godly (as all trials do), and some commentators have interpreted Psalm 46 ("God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, etc.") as applying specifically to this coming distress upon the world; but the plagues will also serve to only harden and increase the damnation of the ungodly, among whom shall be many who have professed faith in Christ, only to fall during this coming hour of temptation).

Finally, it is said that no man can enter into the temple until the Seven Last Plagues are fulfilled; this Gill thinks is a reference to the inability of inquirers, at least in his day (the mid 1700s) to comprehend the actual interpretation of the Seven Last Plagues that follow.

However, it may point to:

• Public evangelisation being pretty much impossible due to the Lord’s public witness against sin and error lying "dead" at that time (as is presently the case here in the UK and in much of the western world), means that either no, or else only very few, new additions to the church transcendent through the public preaching of the Gospel of Grace will happen during the short period from the unleashing of the first of those plagues until the seventh and final; or,
• A parallel to the glory of God filling the tabernacle in the wilderness, to such a degree as to prevent Moses from entering it (Exodus 40:35); likewise, the Levitical priests were by the same means unable to enter the temple in Jerusalem in 1 Kings 8:10, and so the sense seems to be either (a) that the Lord's faithful ministers will not be able to enter in (by prayer) with a view to making intercession for the ungodly or (b) the cries of the ungodly themselves to the Lord for relief will not succeed; either way, God will be not be entreated for leniency or deferral in His execution of these plagues, but nonetheless will thereby be seen as working gloriously for His church by executing these truly dreadful judgments.

I am inclined toward the second interpretation above as it aligns better with the Old Testament accounts its imagery is modelled on.

Closing Thoughts

In closing this brief treatment of Revelation 15, I would summarise the chapter by saying that it is describing:

1. The distressed and civically marginalised state of the church transcendent during the short period in which its public witness shall lie silent.
2. Its faithful few believers’ resolute fidelity to, and upholding by, pure doctrine, despite the duress and pressure they are under to conform to the beast system’s demands (the utterly godless and Christ-hating agenda of the western power elites).
3. Their private prayers for a remedy being answered by the sending forth, to act on behalf of the wider church transcendent, holy angels who have been assigned the mission of bringing increasingly evil providences upon the world that will reshape the geopolitical landscape in readiness for the commencement of the Kingdom age described in Daniel 2:44.
4. The acute sense among Christians at that time that God is moving against the world in judgmental wrath.
5. The total or near total cessation of effective evangelisation of sinners during this time.
6. The vials of wrath appearing to contain commissions from God to the delegated angels to release the Seven Last Plagues that they have the art or skill or other God-given ability to perform.

This all sets the scene for the details of the Seven Last Plagues described in Revelation 16 which you may very well wish to brace yourself to receive!