Seven: Revelation 15

All is in readiness for God's people to take their place in His Kingdom. Eternal life has not been formally bestowed yet (I don't think). For, there is still some final work to do, to eliminate all the bad, from the former age.

Seven angels appear, with seven plagues. Since this is the wrap-up of the Bible, and of Scripture, I automatically thought about other events in Scripture, that came in sevens. The best example is at the very beginning, where God made the Earth in six days, and rested on the seventh.

I wondered if the seven angels and plagues represent seven days worth of clean-up. Seven days to create it all, and seven to destroy all the wickedness, or to re-create the world, if you will.

And I saw another sign in the sky, huge and wondrous, seven angels bearing seven final plagues, because they were to be the culmination of God's fury.

Culmination. Completion. Resolution.

The final fury is done in plagues. But it is easy to see that, after all that has taken place on the earth: war, natural disasters, financial collapse - plagues would naturally follow. What is left of earth will waste away. So that, the events of Revelation are less an application of God's active involvement in things. When you think about it - all of these events are things that we will bring upon ourselves.

Just the other night, I saw something on TV, advocating funding and support for a new pill that prevents AIDS from being passed on from mother to unborn child. It said something like "We can wipe out infant AIDS by 2020 if we can get this pill to all that need it."

We can wipe out AIDS entirely, if we can get people to follow God's plan for sexuality and marriage.

But we don't care about that. We want our sex. So one wonders how terrible the next plague will be, since AIDS isn't bad enough.

We bring the seven plagues upon ourselves, as if we are sending engraved invitations to those seven angels.