Revelation 15:4

“And I saw another sign in heaven” opens a new vision. The word for sign, sēmeîon, means a sign, mark or token, something that points to a meaning beyond itself. It is used of quite ordinary tokens elsewhere, and here it is a sight in heaven that carries God’s message to John. “Another” ties it to the signs John has already seen, above all the woman and the dragon of Revelation 12:1, and it marks the start of a new and decisive stage of the vision.

The sign is “great and marvellous”. thaumastós comes from the verb thaumazo, “to wonder”, and means wondered at, wonderful or marvellous. The sight is awesome and fearful at once, because of what it brings. The saints use the same word in verse 3 for the works of God, so the sign of judgment and the praise that follows share the one description.

The seven angels hold “the seven last plagues”. In Revelation seven is the number of completeness, and these seven make up the full and final set. They are the seven bowls of God’s wrath poured out in Revelation 16, and they are called “last” because they are the closing series of judgments. The seals and trumpets before them were often partial and served as warnings, while these bring God’s wrath to its end. The angels act as God’s appointed servants, carrying out his will with his authority.

The scene follows Revelation 14, where the Lamb stands on Mount Zion, three angels give their messages and the earth is harvested in judgment. Chapter 15 turns from that harvest to the instruments of the final judgment. The word “plagues” recalls the plagues on Egypt in Exodus 7–12, the great story of God judging an oppressor and setting his people free. John wrote to believers suffering under the Roman Empire, and they could read here that the God who brought Israel out of Pharaoh’s grip would act for them against those who oppressed them. The whole book holds this view from heaven, from the throne room of Revelation 4 to the new Jerusalem of Revelation 21: the events on earth are ordained and watched from God’s throne, and his purposes will stand.

John sees “as it were a sea of glass”, telling us what the sight was like. The sea of glass first appears before the throne in Revelation 4:6, “a sea of glass like unto crystal”. The word hyálinos comes from the word for glass and means glassy or transparent. The picture is one of clarity, purity and stillness around the throne of God, and it stands in contrast with the restless sea that in prophecy pictures the chaos of the nations.

Scripture gives this picture a long background. At Sinai the elders of Israel saw under God’s feet a paved work like sapphire (Exodus 24:10). Solomon’s temple had its great bronze sea (1 Kings 7:23), the tabernacle had its bronze laver for washing (Exodus 30:18), and Ezekiel saw above the living creatures a firmament with “the colour of the terrible crystal” (Ezekiel 1:22). Each speaks of the purity and greatness of the God who dwells there.

Here the sea is “mingled with fire”. Fire in Scripture speaks of God’s consuming holiness and his judgment, as in the pillar of fire that led Israel (Exodus 13:21) and the fire in which the LORD came down on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:18). It may also picture the fiery trials the saints have passed through. Most of all it points ahead to the bowls of wrath about to be poured out, joining this scene of triumph to God’s judgment on evil. His holiness purifies his people and destroys his enemies, and both are in view here.

They are the believers who stayed faithful under the beast’s persecution and refused to give him their allegiance, even when it cost them their lives. “Them that had gotten the victory” translates nikáō, a verb meaning to subdue, conquer or overcome. Revelation uses it again and again for believers who hold fast to Christ under pressure, and every letter to the churches ends with a promise to the one who overcomes (Revelation 2–3). The first of those promises is “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” Their victory is faithfulness kept to the end, whether or not they survived. Earlier John heard it said of them, “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11).

The beast is the power described in Revelation 13, which persecutes God’s people and demands worship. The word thēríon means a wild beast or animal, and though it is diminutive in form it carries the ordinary sense. Its use for this tyrannical, anti-God power belongs to Revelation. The four things they overcame are listed one by one: the beast himself, the image set up to be worshipped, the mark that showed allegiance and was tied to taking part in economic life, and the number of his name, a hidden token of who he is and of his power. For John’s first readers in Asia Minor this pressure came through the cult of the emperor, which demanded worship and bound a person’s livelihood to that allegiance, and refusing it brought severe persecution and often death. The vision also looks to the final persecution at the end of the age. Through every age the victory is the same, refusing to worship anything but God.

These victors stand on the sea of glass. Their place speaks of their purity, of their vindication and of their nearness to God’s presence. This scene belongs beside the 144,000 who stand with the Lamb on Mount Zion (Revelation 14:1–5) and the great multitude from every nation before the throne (Revelation 7:9–17).

They hold “the harps of God”, instruments given for his praise. Their suffering ends in worship, and worship is the work of the redeemed in his presence.

The victors sing “the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb”. The song of Moses is the hymn Israel sang after God brought them through the Red Sea and overthrew Pharaoh’s army (Exodus 15:1–18), the founding song of a redeemed people and a song of God’s judgment on their oppressors. Moses is called doûlos, from a verb meaning to bind, a slave or bondservant. Here it is the title of willing, devoted service, and it honours Moses’ loyalty to God and his part as the one chosen to deliver Israel and give them the law. The victors who sing his song follow his example.

The song of the Lamb is the new song of Revelation 5:9–10, sung to the Lamb who was slain and by whose blood people are redeemed. The two are named together because they tell of one salvation. What God began when he brought Israel out of Egypt, he completes through the death and resurrection of Jesus, who sets his people free from sin, death and every evil power. Jesus is the greater Moses (Hebrews 3:1–6), and he is the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6), established through his own blood. In this song the old covenant and the new meet, and God’s people from both praise the same deliverer.

The words of the song are addressed straight to God. “Great and marvellous are thy works” uses mégas for great and thaumastós, the word of verse 1, for marvellous. His works take in creation, his care over all things, and above all his mighty acts of salvation and judgment.

He is named “Lord God Almighty”, kýrios theós pantokrátōr. pantokrátōr joins pas, “all”, and kratos, “strength” or “might”, and means the all-ruling, all-powerful one. It is a title given to God, and it comes often in Revelation. To believers living under Rome it said that God rules over every empire and does all that he purposes, in judgment and in salvation.

“Just and true are thy ways” turns from his works to his character. díkaios means equitable, righteous or right, and said of God it speaks of his moral perfection and his fairness in judgment. alēthinós, true, speaks of his faithfulness, reliability and constancy to his promises and to his own nature. His “ways” are his dealings with people, his judgments among them. So the song declares that every one of his acts, even the severest judgment, agrees with his righteous character. Moses said the same of God long before: “He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4), and the whole of Psalm 99:1–9 praises the LORD who reigns in justice.

“Thou King of saints” calls him the rightful King of his redeemed people. The saints are the hágios, the holy ones, who receive his just and true ways and the benefit of his saving works. Some manuscripts read “King of the nations” or “King of the ages” here.

This song is sung before the bowls are poured out. The saints declare that God’s judgments are right before the judgments are seen, and that sets the frame for all that follows in Revelation 16.

The question carries its own answer: everyone ought to fear the Lord and glorify his name, and in the end everyone will. The verb phobéō means to frighten or to be alarmed, and by extension to be in awe of, to revere. Here it is reverent awe at God’s power, authority and majesty, the fitting response of the creature to the Creator. That fear leads to glorifying him and obeying him, as the wisdom books teach: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). To glorify his name is to give him honour, praise and adoration, declaring who he is and what he has done.

The verse gives three reasons, each with “for”, and they show why the whole world will end up fearing and praising him.

The wrath of God that is filled up in these plagues is the very wrath that Jesus bore at the cross for his people. Paul writes that “being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Romans 5:9). John calls Jesus the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2), the one who turns God’s righteous anger away from all who believe. He is “Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10), for “God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). At the cross God showed his justice and his mercy together, being just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus (Romans 3:25–26). There Christ, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15).

That is why the victors can stand pure on the sea of glass. Their victory over the beast is the victory of the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:6), shared with them. They have “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14), and his righteousness gives them access to God’s holy presence. The same Christ will return as the righteous Judge to carry out this final wrath on the ungodly, with the name “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:11–16), and to his people he remains the Lamb who was slain for them.

The holiness the song praises was revealed in him, for the Son is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). In the Word made flesh we have seen the glory of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

The order of this chapter is a gift to God’s people. Before John sees a single bowl poured out, he sees the faithful safe in God’s presence, and he hears them declare that God’s works are great and his ways are just and true. The last judgments are fearful, and they are certain, and the people of the Lamb stand on the far side of them with harps in their hands.

The passage shows us a God whose patience is long and whose justice is sure, who alone is holy, and who will one day be worshipped by all the nations. It shows that faithfulness to him under pressure is victory, however it looks at the time, and that the end of the believer’s road is praise. Those who sang Moses’ song by the Red Sea and those who sing the Lamb’s song in heaven praise the same deliverer, and the song of these verses belongs to all who trust in him: “Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.”