Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

16:4-9
crammed with corpses, for not a man escaped. During
the days that followed a horrible stench hung over the
region, and it presented an equally horrifying spectacle.
The beaches were strewn with wrecks and swollen
bodies, which, hot and clammy with decay, made the
air so foul that the catastrophe that plunged the Jews in
mourning revolted even those who had brought it
about.” 7
4-7 The plague of the Third Chalice more directly
resembles the first Egyptian plague (and the Third
Trumpet: cf. 8:10-11), since it affects the rivers and the
springs of waters, turning all the drinking water to
blood. Water is a symbol of life and blessing throughout
Scripture, beginning from the story of creation and the
Garden of Eden. 8 In this plague, the blessings of
Paradise are reversed and turned into a nightmare;
what was once pure and clean becomes polluted and
unclean through apostasy.
The Angel of the Waters responds to this curse by
praising God for His just judgment: Righteous art
Thou, who art and who wast, O Holy One, because
Thou didst judge these things. We should not be
embarrassed by a passage such as this. The whole Bible
is written from the perspective of cosmic personalism –
the doctrine that God, who is absolute personality, is
constantly active throughout His creation, everywhere
present with the whole of His being, bringing all things
to pass immediately by His power and mediately
through His angelic servants. There is no such thing as
natural “law”; rather, as Auguste Lecerf has said, “the
constant relations which we call natural laws are simply
‘divine habits’: or, better, the habitual order which God
imposes on nature. It is these habits, or this habitual
process, which constitute the object of the natural and
physical sciences.” 9
This is what guarantees the validity and reliability of
both scientific investigation and prayer: On the one
hand, God’s angels have habits – a cosmic dance, a
liturgy involving every aspect of the whole universe,
that can be depended upon in all of man’s
technological labors as he exercises dominion under
God over the world. On the other hand, God’s angels
are personal beings, constantly carrying out His
commands; in response to our petitions, He can and
does order the angels to change the dance. 10
There is, therefore, an “Angel of the Waters” (in terms
of St. John’s zodiacal progression, this is presumably the
cherub of the fourth quarter, Aquarius); 11 he, along
with all of God’s personal creation, rejoices in God’s
righteous government of the world. God’s strict justice,
summarized in the principle of lex talionis, is evidenced
in this judgment; the punishment fits the crime. They
poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and Thou
hast given them blood to drink. As we have seen, the
characteristic crime of Israel was always the murder of
the prophets (cf. 2 Chron. 36:15-16; Luke 13:33-34;
Acts 7:52): Jesus named this fact as the specific reason
why the blood of the righteous would be poured out in
judgment upon that generation (Matt. 23:31-36).
The Angel of the Waters concludes with an interesting
statement: By the apostates’ shedding of blood, they
are worthy! This is a deliberate parallel to the message
of the New Song: “Worthy art Thou to take the Book,
and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst
purchase us for God with Thy blood” (5:9). Just as the
Lamb received His reward on the basis of the blood He
shed, so these persecutors have now received the just
recompense for their bloodshed.
God had once promised the oppressed of Israel that He
would render to their enemies according to their evil
works:
I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh,
And they will become drunk with their own blood
as with sweet wine;
And all flesh will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior,
And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. (Isa. 49:26)
This has, as usual, become reversed: Now it is Israel, the
Persecutor par excellence, that will be forced to drink its
own blood and devour its own flesh. This was true in
much more than a figurative sense: As God had
foretold through Moses (Deut. 28:53-57), during the
siege of Jerusalem the Israelites actually became
cannibals; mothers literally ate their own children. 12
Because they shed the blood of the saints, God gives
them their own blood to drink (cf. 17:6; 18:24).
Joining the angel in praise comes the voice of the Altar
itself, where the blood of the saints and prophets had
been poured out. The Altar rejoices: Yes, O Lord God,
the Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments!
The saints gathered round the base of the Altar had
cried out for justice, for vengeance on their oppressors
(6:9-11). In the destruction of Israel that prayer is
answered; the witnesses are vindicated. It is more than
coincidental that these prayers in verses 5-7 (along
with the text of the Song of Moses in 15:3-4) are
actually “based on the song sung by the priests and
levites during the interval between the preparation and
the offering of the sacrifice.” 13 Ironically – just as God
Himself is preparing for the Whole Burnt Sacrifice of
A.D. 70 – the very angels of heaven were singing
apostate Israel’s own liturgy against her.
8-9 The fourth angel now pours out his Chalice upon
the sun; and it was given to it to scorch the men with
fire. Whereas the Fourth Trumpet resulted in a plague
of darkness (8:12), now the heat of the sun is increased,
so that the men were scorched with great heat. This
too is a reversal of a basic covenantal blessing that was
present in the Exodus, when Israel was shielded from
7. Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War, iii.x.9.
8. David Chilton, Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion (Ft.
Worth, TX: Dominion pfess, 1985), PP. 18ff, 30f.
9. Auguste Lecerf, An Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics, trans. André
Schlemmer (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, [1949] 1981), p. 147.
10. Cf. ibid., pp. 147-49.
11. The mention of the Angel of the Waters also serves as another of the many
subtle connections between the Book of Revelation and St. John’s Gospel;
see John 5:3-4.
12. See Josephus, The Jewish War, vi.iii.3-4.
13. J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1975), p. 266.
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