Re-Reading Revelation, Lecture # 20: The Seven Bowls

The events described in connection with the seven trumpets (8:6-9:21) are painstakingly replicated in the seven bowls (16:1-21), blow by terrifying blow. There are minor differences, but the parallels are too striking to be ignored. We asked in the trumpet sequence whether the scenes depicted are good or bad, or better, good or evil? The answer was clear: they are bad; they are evil. Then we asked who was doing it, or by whom it was done, God or Satan. Again, the answer was clear: we see a demonic power at work. It is not God; it is the Evil One. The trumpet sequence names him: Wormwood (Poison), Abbadon (Destroyer), Apollyon (Destroyer). The entire sequence amounts to a forceful indictment and unmasking of evil. Our third question is this: Do we see revelation or divine retribution? The answer is unambiguous: We see revelation in the form of unmasking of the demonic reality. At the end of the trumpet sequence, God instructs the good angels to release the evil angels that are bound at the river Euphrates (9:13-19). These angels have been raring to go. Until now, they have been under restraint. Now, when God lets go of restraint, they can show their true character even more clearly. This is a key concept in Revelation's view of the wrath of God: it comes to completion when God lets go of restraint (15:1). And now to the bowls. They parallel the trumpets except that they are worse. And the same questions apply: What is depicted, a good or an evil reality? The answer, again, is that we see an evil reality, horrendous evil. Who is doing it? The trumpets' exposé of demonic agency cannot be erased or retracted when similar activities are depicted in the bowl sequence. In the former (the trumpets), evil was unfolding under divine restraint. Now the restraint has been removed (9:13-19), and the calamities are worse. The closest parallels are the scenes associated with the sixth trumpet and the sixth bowl. Revelation does not miss a beat: We see the Dragon, the Sea Beast, and the Earth Beast, as a demonic threesome, mobilizing for one last blaze of demonic deception, gathering the kings of the earth for battle on the Great Day of God the Almighty (16:12-16). Just as in the trumpet sequence, the seven bowls must be understood within the paradigm of divine revelation, not divine retribution. God's wrath comes to completion when God lets go of restraint. We read it in the Song of Moses and the Lamb (15:2-4): God's ways are counterintuitive. God's sense of what counts as "right act" differs from ours.