Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

15:5-7
St. John is telling the Church, will bring about the
salvation of the world (and St. Paul extended the logic:
Israel’s fall must therefore eventually produce her own
restoration to the covenant; Rom. 11:11-12, 15, 23-
32).
The Sanctuary Is Opened (15:5-8)
5 After these things I looked, and the Temple of the
Tabernacle of the Testimony in heaven was opened,
6 and the seven angels who had the seven plagues came out
of the Temple. They were clothed in linen, clean and
bright, and girded around their breasts with golden
girdles.
7 And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven
angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God, who
lives forever and ever.
8 And the Temple was filled with smoke from the Glory of
God and from His power; and no one was able to enter
the Temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels
were finished.
5 Now the scene changes, and we are shown the
Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony in heaven,
the “true Tabernacle” (Heb. 8:2), the divine Pattern, of
which the Tabernacle on earth was a “copy and
shadow” (Heb. 8:5; 9:11-12, 23-24; 10:1; Ex. 25:9, 40;
26:30; Num. 8:4; Acts 7:44). St. John is very careful to
use correct technical expressions for his imagery here,
based on the Old Covenant order. The basic treaty
document of the Covenant was the Decalogue; this was
often called the Testimony, emphasizing its legal
character as the record of the Covenant oath (Ex.
16:34; 25:16, 21-22; 31:18; 32:15; cf. Ps. 19:7; Isa. 8:16,
20). The Tabernacle, in which the Testimony was kept,
was therefore called the Tabernacle of the Testimony
(Ex. 38:21; Num. 1:50, 53; 9:15; 10:11; Acts 7:44). As
we have seen, in Revelation the Temple (Greek naos)
is the Sanctuary, or Holy Place (cf. 3:12; 7:15; 11:1-2,
19; 14:15, 17).
A major aspect of St. John’s message in Revelation is
the coming of the New Covenant. In his theology (as
in the rest of the New Testament), the Church is the
naos, the Temple. The writer to the Hebrews shows that
the Mosaic Tabernacle was both a copy of the heavenly
Original and a foreshadowing of the Church in the
New Covenant (Heb. 8:5; 10:1); St. John draws the
conclusion, showing that these two, the heavenly
Pattern and the final form, coalesce in the New
Covenant age: The Church tabernacles in heaven.
And, if the Temple is the Church, the Testimony is the
New Covenant, the Testimony of Jesus (1:2, 9; 6:9;
12:11, 17; 19:10; 20:4).
6-7 The seven angels who had the seven plagues
came out of the Temple, in order to apply the Curses
proclaimed by the Trumpets. As priests of the New
Covenant, these angel-ministers are clothed in linen,
clean and bright, and girded around their breasts with
golden girdles, in the image and likeness of their Lord
(1:13; cf. Ex. 28:26-29, 39-43; Lev. 16:4).
And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven
angels seven golden Chalices; presumably, this cherub
is the one with the man’s face (4:7), since the other
three have already appeared on the stage of the drama,
and since St. John is proceeding systematically through
the quarters of the Zodiac. We saw that he began in the
Spring (Easter), with the sign of Taurus governing the
Preamble and the Seven Letters; moved through
Summer with Leo ruling the Seven Seals; continued
through Autumn under Scorpio (the Eagle/Scorpion)
and the Seven Trumpets; and now he arrives in Winter,
with Aquarius, the Waterer, supervising the outpouring
of the wrath of God from the Seven Chalices.
I have called these seven containers Chalices (rather
than vials [KJV] or bowls [NASV]) to emphasize their
character as a “negative sacrament.” From one
perspective, the substance in the Chalices (God’s
wrath, which is “hot,” cf. 14:10) seems to be fire, and
several commentators have therefore seen the
containers as incense-bowls (5:8; cf. 8:3-5). Yet the
wicked are condemned in 14:10 to “drink of the wine
of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in
the cup of His anger”; and, when the plagues are poured
out, the “Angel of the waters” exults in the
appropriateness of God’s justice: “For they poured out
the blood of saints and prophets, and Thou hast given
them blood to drink” (16:6). A few verses later, St. John
returns to the image of “the cup of the wine of His fierce
wrath” (16:19). What is being modeled in heaven for
the Church’s instruction on earth is the final excommunication
of apostate Israel, when the Communion of
the Body and Blood of the Lord is at long last denied to
her. The angel-bishops, entrusted with the Sacramental
sanctions of the covenant, are sent from the heavenly
Temple itself, and from the Throne of God, to pour out
upon her the Blood of the Covenant. Jesus warned the
rebels of Israel that he would send His martyrs to them
to be killed, “so that upon you may fall all the righteous
blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to
the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you
murdered between the Temple and the Altar. Truly I
say to you, all these things shall come upon this
generation” (Matt. 23:35-36). Drinking Blood is
inescapable: Either the ministers of the New Covenant
will serve it to us in the Eucharist, or they will pour it
out of their Chalices upon our heads.
Austin Farrer explains some of the Old Covenant
imagery behind the symbol of the Chalices. “The
‘bowls,’ phialae, are libation-bowls. Now the libation, or
drink-offering, was poured at the daily sacrifice just
after the trumpets had begun to sound, so that by
placing bowls in sequence to trumpets St. John
maintains the sequence of ritual action that began with
the slaughtered Lamb, continued in the incenseoffering
and passed into the trumpet-blasts. Because the
drink-offering had such a position, it was the last ritual
act, completing the service of the altar, and was
proverbial in that connexion (Phil. 2:17). The drinkoffering,
as St. Paul implies, was poured upon the
slaughtered victim, burning in the fire. Because there is
no bloody sacrifice in heaven, the angels pour their
libations upon the terrible holocaust of vengeance
which divine justice makes on earth.” 9
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