It Is Done!
These two chapters tell of the out pouring of God’s wrath on the earth through the seven bowls of the seven angels who come from the temple.
We have seen a great cosmic tale unfold told from the vantage of heaven and from the vantage of the earth; told in both the spiritual and natural realms. This tale matches the World against the Kingdom. Up until this point most of the calamity upon the earth has been brought about by the World itself. With this passage we see God take an active role in forcing the resolution of the conflict.
Of course He has always taken an active role from the very beginning. He drove Adam and Eve from Eden so they would not eat from the Tree of Life and be trapped forever in their fallen state. From that fateful day He prepared things for the arrival of His Son which event we celebrate this very day. Christ went to the cross to defeat the evil one and God raised Him from the dead. The Holy Spirit was sent to indwell and empower the Church and the individual believer. God has not exactly been idle.
Again the first four plagues seem to follow the genre of ecological disasters, only this time they are far more severe than what mankind has managed to do itself by following the World. The fifth and sixth bowls bring political implications. Perhaps the darkness of the fifth bowl is literal? In any even it reveals the total failure of the system of the beast. Even though people now know that it is completely bankrupt in every way they still refuse to turn to God. These are the ones who absolutely refuse to repent. The sixth bowl calls for the gathering of the armies of the earth for one “winner take all” battle.
The seventh bowl is poured out and while there is an unprecedented earthquake and hundred pound hailstones raining down upon the earth these are not the truly momentous results of the last bowl. That honor goes to three words uttered by a loud voice. “It is done!” Three terrible wonderful words every bit the equal of: “He is born” “It is finished” and “He is risen.”
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