Over the years, I have heard countless pastors and teachers compare the plagues that fell on Egypt with the seven last plagues described in Revelation 15. Typically, this comparison is made to create the picture of an intolerant, severe, authoritarian god who uses his power to inflict punishments and torments on people because of their wickedness and disobedience. The message for those who take this view is fear—fear of this false god, fear of the future, fear of the plagues, and fear of the mark of the beast. But all of this fear-inducing terrorizing messaging is based on a lie—that these plagues are actually manifestations of God using power to punish and that they are comparable. They are not!

The interpretation one places on these Bible events all depends on the way one understands how God’s law functions. If one believes the lie that God’s laws are functionally no different than the types of laws sinful humans enact, made-up rules that require external legal oversight and infliction of so-called “just” punishments, then one reads these two events as God using His power to inflict punishment for sin and conflates the two to create a false god who looks like Satan in character.

But when we return to worshiping the Creator, whose laws are design laws, the protocols reality is constructed to operate upon, like the laws of health, physics, and the moral laws, such as the law of worship—by beholding we are changed—and the laws of love, truth, liberty, and more, then one realizes that God is acting therapeutically. His “judgments” are the accurate diagnostic judgments of what is wrong and the therapeutic judgments of what is necessary to bring healing when healing is possible.

The two events (the plagues of Egypt and the future seven last plagues) are similar only in that they are manifestations of God’s choices, actions, and interventions, which are called God’s “judgments”—what God judges or determines is the best action for Him to take at that point in time. They are similar only in that the people experiencing them experience distress from them.

But these two events are dissimilar in God’s use of power and the purpose of each event because the circumstances and conditions of the people are different and what God can achieve is different.

The ten plagues on Egypt occurred when God judged it was time to use His power therapeutically to expose the gods of Egypt as false in order to win both Hebrews and Egyptians to faith in Him and lead the faithful from Egypt to establish Israel as a nation through whom the Messiah would be born and who would be the repository and protector of the Scriptures. Therefore, God used power in Egypt to provide evidence that He was the only true God and the gods of Egypt were false. As a result, not only were the Hebrews set free, but a mixed multitude of non-Hebrews converted to Yahweh worship and also left Egypt to join the faithful to fulfill God’s purpose of saving the entire world through the coming Messiah; this included Bithiah, Moses’s adoptive Egyptian mother (1 Chronicles 4:18).

God’s use of power in Exodus was not done to punish sin; it was done to expose sin and falsehood through the revelation of truth and, thereby, win the people to trust in Him. Thus, God’s use of power in Egypt was saving, healing, and therapeutic—not punitive. As God said,

I did this so that you might know that I am the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 29:6 NIV84).

Even in the logic of those who hold to the false penal-legal model of salvation, the punishment for sin must come after the judgment—and God’s “legal judgment” in their model is a future event. So even within the legal model, the Egyptian plagues cannot be a punishment for sin. Further, the punishment for sin that God told Adam and Eve in Eden is death, not plagues. So again, these plagues are not a punishment inflicted by God for disobedience. It is God’s therapeutic action to reveal the falsity of the Egyptian gods and fulfill the covenant given to Adam (Genesis 3:15) and repeated to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The Seven Last Plagues

The seven plagues at the end of time are called God’s wrath poured out without mixture (Revelation 14:10; 15:1, 7; 16:1). And God’s wrath occurs when He judges that no more use of His power (which is a manifestation of grace) will save anyone, that every person is sealed either in loyalty to Him or rebellion against Him; there is nothing more God can do to save the lost, so He ceases His use of power. God’s wrath is described in detail by Paul in Romans 1:18–32 as His giving people up and letting them go to reap what they have chosen (vv. 24, 26, 28). It is the opposite of the wrath of Satan, the wrath that we creatures employ—we use power to inflict harm. (See my blog God’s Wrath Versus Satan’s Wrath—What’s the Difference?)

When one breaks the laws of life, the laws of health, external power is not needed to cause harm; instead, external power is needed to forestall and heal the harm the lawbreaking has caused. This is how God’s design laws work! The sinner injures himself, hardens his own heart, corrupts his own character, and cuts himself off from God, who is the source of life. But God in mercy, in grace, intervenes with His power to hold at bay the destruction that sin brings. He intervened by sending His Son to overcome and save us because we could not save ourselves. Moreover, throughout all human history, God has been using His power to hold at bay the principalities and powers of darkness to give humans every opportunity to partake of salvation in Jesus.

But when God stops using power, stops restraining or holding at bay the destruction that comes from sin, then destruction comes. Unrestrained sinners themselves cause the chaos when His presence is no longer operating in their hearts. It is the forces of evil unrestrained that cause the destruction. This is the punishment of sin—the punishment that sin itself causes and brings when God no longer protects us from it. As Paul wrote,

The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction (Galatians 6:8 NIV84).

And as James wrote,

Sin when it is fully grown brings forth death (James 1:15 ESV).

The seven last plagues are God’s stepwise withdrawal of His presence and power from the earth as people permanently harden their hearts and minds against Him and Satan is given more liberty (God un-restrains him) and gains more control over both people and the elements to act—much like we see in the book of Job when God removed His restraining hand and Satan began to destroy.

One of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church describes the future plagues as judgments of God coming as the outworking of the design laws the Creator has built reality to operate upon, exactly as I have just described:

“I was shown that the judgments of God would not come directly out from the Lord upon them, but in this way;

“They place themselves beyond His protection. He warns, corrects, reproves, and points out the only path of safety; then if those who have been the objects of His special care will follow their own course, independent of the Spirit of God, after repeated warnings, if they choose their own way, then He does not commission His angels to prevent Satan’s decided attacks upon them.

“It is Satan’s power that is at work at sea and on land, bringing calamity and distress, and sweeping off multitudes to make sure of his prey, and storm and tempest both by sea and land will be, for Satan has come down in great wrath. He is at work. He knows his time is short and, he is not restrained; we shall see more terrible manifestations of his great power than we have ever dreamed of” (E.G. White, Manuscript Release, vol. 14, p. 3, emphasis mine).

“Satan has studied the secrets of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows. It is God that shields His creatures from the destroyer. But the Christian world has shown contempt for His law, and the Lord will do what He declared that He would—remove His protecting care from those who rebel against His law and force others to do the same. Satan has control of all whom God does not especially guard. He will favor and prosper some, in order to further his own designs; and he will bring trouble upon others, and lead men to believe that it is God who is afflicting them.

“While appearing as a great physician who can heal all their maladies, Satan will bring disease and disaster until populous cities are reduced to ruin. In accidents by sea and land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish” (E.G. White, From Here to Forever, p. 360, emphasis mine).

Reject the Lies and Distortions

Sadly, those who choose to cling to the imposed-law view falsely teach that these two plague events are examples of God using power to inflict punishment, that God is the source of pain, suffering, and death. Thus, they sustain the lie that God is the one from whom we must be protected, thereby misrepresenting Him and obstructing the plan of salvation.

So I invite you to reject the imposed-law lies, to return to worshiping God as Creator, whose laws are the protocols He built life and health to exist and operate upon, to worship Him who is the source of life, the fountain of healing, the resource of restoration, the friend and Savior of sinners who will deliver and save all who trust Him. We have nothing to fear from God—we have everything to fear from unremoved sin operating in our own hearts and minds.

Jesus is coming soon, and all those who trust Him will be sealed in their hearts and minds to be at-one with Him, and He will send His angels to watch over them.

The wicked will receive what they have freely chosen and insisted upon—freedom from God—and they will reap the terrible devastation that it brings. But the righteous also receive what they have freely chosen: unity with God through Jesus Christ!

Just as the ancient Israelites, who experienced the ten plagues, faced the enemies of good as they were entering the Promised Land, so too, as we approach the heavenly promised land, we will be faced with enemies intended to frighten us, but we must remember what God told the Israelites, for it applies even more to us today:

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6 NIV84).

As the writer of Hebrews confirms,

God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (13:5 NIV84).

Place your entire trust in our Creator God as Jesus revealed Him to be and no matter what this world throws at you, you will never face it alone!