The seven angels pouring out the seven bowls of wine each have their day. Their purpose is to fulfill the prophetic meaning of the drink offerings on one of the seven days of Tabernacles. Nowhere else in Scripture are the drink offerings explained prophetically, yet John reveals them with specific details. According to my own revelation, the seven angels are named as follows:

1. Redemption Angel

2. Cleansing Angel

3. Appearing of Sons Angel (or “the Angel of the Waters”)

4. All Consuming Breath Angel

5. Overcoming Flesh Angel

6. Angel of Pure Influence

7. Angel of the Approaching Fulness of God

Rev. 16:1 identifies the seven bowls as containing “the wrath of God.” The previous verse (Rev. 15:8) identifies these judgments as “the seven plagues,” which links the event to the divine judgment upon Egypt when God redeemed Israel from the house of bondage. The main difference is that there were ten plagues upon Egypt, but only seven on Babylon.

Today, the word “plague” means sickness or disease. But the meaning is broader in Scripture, for when the plagues hit Egypt, most of them did not involve sickness. The plague of hail, for instance, had nothing to do with disease, nor did the plague of darkness for three days. These plagues were designed to change Pharaoh’s will, so that he would set Israel free. That, too, is the purpose for the seven plagues upon Babylon.

Redemption Laws

Revelation 16:2 says,

² And the first angel went and poured out his bowl into the earth; and it became a loathsome and malignant sore upon the men who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image.

This “loathsome and malignant sore” is not literal. It is a spiritual disease that afflicts all who worship money—all who pursue wealth as a priority above the Kingdom of God. Such people are in bondage to the earth and to their own carnality.

In the beginning, when Adam and Eve sinned, God sold them to the earth because they were unable to pay their debt to the law. We know this, because a redeemer not only obtains a slave, but also is made responsible for the debt (“curse of the law”) incurred by that slave. God made the earth responsible for Adam’s curse in Gen. 3:17, saying, “Cursed is the ground because of you.”

Then He shows in Gen. 3:19 that the earth essentially owned Adam and would ultimately claim his body when he died. Nonetheless, God also provided redemption laws by which man could be redeemed by a near kinsman (Lev. 25:48, 49), thereby changing masters and allowing the slave to work for a kinsman who loves him (Lev. 25:53).

In the case of the Babylonian captivity, God sold His people to Babylon on account of their sin, and by extension their captivity lasted “seven times.” The release at the time of redemption is accomplished by the Redemption Angel at the end of the age.

The Angel of Redemption is obviously called to redeem the people of God from Babylon, according to the pattern established in the time of Moses. Deut. 7:7, 8 says,

⁷ The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in numbers than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, ⁸ but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

To redeem is to purchase property that has been sold to someone else, usually as payment on a debt. When Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from sin’s bondage, He paid a costly redemption price. He did not steal those people that He was redeeming. It was done in a lawful manner according to the laws of redemption.

So also, when God redeems His people from Babylon, He does not intend to steal them from the Babylonians, but to redeem them lawfully. Deut. 7:8 also tells us that God redeemed Israel in order to fulfill His oath, and this verse shows us that redemption was part of the New Covenant.

The redemption from Babylon was foretold in Isaiah 48:20,

²⁰ Go forth from Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! Declare with the sound of joyful shouting, proclaim this, send it out to the end of the earth; say, “The Lord has redeemed His servant Jacob.”

Essentially, Isaiah was prophesying of the events in Revelation 16, beginning with the first angel, the Redemption Angel.

Day 1: Psalm 105

On the first day of Tabernacles, at the time when the priest poured out the bowls of water and wine at the altar, they sang Psalm 105. This psalm rehearses the history of Israel’s redemption when God sent the various plagues upon the land of Egypt. Psalm 105:23 begins this section,

²³ Israel also came into Egypt; thus Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham… ²⁶ He sent Moses His servant, and Aaron whom He had chosen. ²⁷ They performed His wondrous acts among them, and miracles in the land of Ham. ²⁸ He sent darkness and … ²⁹ He turned their waters into blood… ³⁰ Their land swarmed with frogs… ³¹ He spoke, and there came a swarm of flies and gnats in all their territory. ³² He gave them hail for rain… ³⁶ He also struck down all the first-born in their land…

Psalm 105, then, speaks into the meaning and purpose of the first drink offering at Tabernacles. It is plain that the first purpose of the feast of Tabernacles is to bring plagues, first upon Egypt, but later upon Babylon, in order to redeem His people from the house of slavery.

The reason the plagues were necessary was because “He turned their heart to hate His people” (Psalm 105:25). In other words, God caused the Egyptians to “hate His people” in order to induce them to put Israel into bondage. But in the end, after ten plagues, Psalm 105:38 says, “Egypt was glad when they departed.”

We also read in Psalm 105:37, “Then He brought them out with silver and gold,” a reference to Exodus 12:35. This was to fulfill the law in Deut. 15:13, 14, 15, which speaks about freeing slaves:

¹³ And when you set him free, you shall not send him away empty-handed. ¹⁴ You shall furnish him liberally from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your wine vat; you shall give to him as the Lord your God has blessed you. ¹⁵ And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.

Hence, in our redemption from Babylon, God will again fulfill His law by providing for the redeemed ones “liberally.” Babylon has indeed been blessed by the labor of God’s people, and for this reason Babylon is to give generously to its freed slaves “as the Lord your God has blessed you.”

Many have received this revelation of the transfer of wealth, but few understand it in terms of the law of redemption. Even so, it does not require men’s understanding for God to fulfill His word that is prophesied in His law. The fulfillment is based on the New Covenant promise, vow, or oath that God has made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to all the prophets and apostles in later years who received similar revelation.

The earlier part of the same psalm tells us specifically that this redemption was part of the New Covenant, which was made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Psalm 105:7-10 says,

⁷ He is the Lord our God. His judgments are in all the earth. ⁸ He has remembered His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations, ⁹ the covenant which He made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac. ¹⁰ Then He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant.

The ultimate purpose of Israel’s redemption is seen in the conclusion. Psalm 105:43, 45 says,

⁴³ And He brought forth His people with joy, His chosen ones with a joyful shout… ⁴⁵ So that they might keep His statutes, and observe His laws. Praise the Lord!

According to the laws of redemption, a redeemed slave was not given the freedom to do as he willed, but became the slave of the one who redeemed him. Lev. 25:53 says,

⁵³ Like a man hired year by year he [the slave] shall be with him [his redeemer]; he shall not rule over him with severity in your sight [because the slave is a near kinsman].

For this reason, the Apostle Paul himself, who understood clearly that Christ had redeemed him from the slavery of the old Jerusalem, called himself “a bond-servant of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:1). He refuted the idea that the grace which had saved him had also given him the freedom to sin (Rom. 6:1, 2).

He explained this further in Rom. 6:19, saying,

¹⁹ For just as you presented your members [body parts] as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness [anomia], resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.”

What Christ has done for us on a personal level, redeeming us from bondage to lawlessness, sets the pattern for a release on a greater level—a world-wide release from the slavery of the Babylonian (“beast”) systems of man’s unrighteous government.

Therefore, when Babylon is overthrown by the seven angels, and when God’s people are released from captivity on this large scale, the Kingdom of God will be established in the earth—in actual territory—and the laws of God will become the standard of righteousness and justice for all to obey. All must obey the laws of the King who has redeemed them, and they will lose the freedom to sin.

At the present time, many have thought that true freedom is the right to sin, but God will change their hearts. Then they will understand that the very desire to sin puts men in bondage to lawlessness in the Babylonian system. But Christ came to redeem them from bondage to their own carnal desires and release them “as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.”

The First Bowls Poured out in 2000

In October of 2000, we were led to hold a Tabernacles conference in Champaign, Illinois. There we poured out the first bowls (water and wine) upon the earth as a witness to the beginning of the judgment upon Babylon and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon mankind. As I wrote earlier, this came at the end of the seven trumpets of the Jubilee Prayer Campaign against Mystery Babylon (1993-2000).

During the year 2000, we received much revelation about roses, the Rose of Sharon, and weddings. Then we scheduled our Tabernacles to be held at a newly remodeled hotel in Quincy, Illinois. However, a group of ministers came from Chicago to threaten the hotel owner for allowing us to meet there. They believed we were some kind of “hate group,” because we dare to call homosexual behavior a sin and because we do not believe that the Israeli state is the fulfillment of the biblical prophecies of the regathering of the House of Israel.

Even so, when these Christian ministers had their meeting with the owner of the hotel in Quincy and brought up the fact that we did not believe that the Israeli state was true Israel, a rabbi at the meeting told them that we were correct. He said that the Jews were Judah, not Israel. The manager told us that this rabbi was then ignored and treated as a pariah for the rest of the meeting. How ironic that we would be condemned by Christians and defended by a rabbi!

The Christian ministers even threatened to pressure the city fathers of Quincy to withdraw the license to operate the hotel. So he had no choice but to cancel our meeting. So thanks to these ministers, we were led to the place of God’s’ choice—Champaign, Illinois. This was how we came to understand the connection between the first bowl of wine and the wedding feast of Cana. We had to have Champaign for the wedding feast of Cana.

About ten minutes after changing the location for the meeting, I had a phone call from a woman in Idaho asking if I could perform the wedding ceremony for her and her fiancé at the conference. Her name was Sharon, of course, and, like Champaign, it means “a plain.” We knew then that God had arranged a wedding at Champaign in order to parallel the wedding feast of Cana.

And so I performed the wedding on October 20, 2000 at the start of the Tabernacles conference. This wedding signified the time when David was crowned king over all Israel, after he had ruled in Hebron for 7½ years over the tribe of Judah. A monarch is said to be “married” to the nation, and so we knew that the overcomers (“David”) had been crowned with full authority on this date in 2000. We had done the Jubilee Prayer Campaign with partial authority since 1993, but the full authority was needed to complete the work of pouring out the seven bowls of water and wine from 2000-2006.