When do the plagues happen? When God's mercy ceases, when God withdraws his protection, when the angels are told to "No longer combat Satan in his efforts to destroy". Is it God that is destroying? NO. Satan. JN Andrews, "Before the four winds are loosed, the servants of God are sealed. The seal is placed upon them, that the destroying angel may not cut them down.". Satan is the destroying angel, the active agent in the plagues.

The 7 last plagues are the wrath of God. The wrath of God is His withdrawl of his mercy, the letting go of sinners, the removing of His protection. This is His wrath. When this happens, destruction comes. Everything we can know about God is revealed by His Son, Jesus. If God is the active agent that tortures the inpenitant in the plagues, please show me this from His life? You can't, because this is not what God is like. It is a pagan idea that has God torturing His creation.

If our views of what happens to the wicked do not jive with what we know about God from the life of His son on earth, then that view must be rejected. Haskell is just like the other founders of our faith, who understood the character of our God.

What is God's wrath? His giving up, letting go, handing over. (Romans 1)

When the seven angels with the seven vials full of the wrath of God are poured out, what really happens? God's overruling Spirit is withdrawn, and then utter destruction results.

Is God the acting subject? NO. God is removing His protection from the world. Only the saints will still have His protections. The universe will see what Satan's rule would really produce! And it is awful. Sin only produces violence and death. Satan is the destroyer. God is the restorer.

Isn't there somewhere in Revelation something about His wrath being complete in the plagues?

Do you believe that God is the acting subject in the plagues?
Do you believe that God is the one inflicting pain and hardship on sinners?
If so, for what purpose?

I have been following these discussions and I see clearly that living by the crumbs that fall off the table in form of short quotations provides a life in spiritual poverty.

It is only when you study the Great Controversy in pictures from Creation to the fulfillment in Revelation you see the total picture and discern the meaning of the last three words in the book The Great Controversy.

With that background you enter the final stages of this great conflict in Revelation. You see how Satan has held even Christians in his grip with his pagan dualism and other tricks to get the blame for sin off his neck. By hanging your soul on spikes of quotations instead of on Jesus Christ he keeps your mind incarcerated in his darkness until after the Millennium.

Read the Word of God as a whole and not in minute bits, and let the Holy Spirit lead you to worship and honor your Creator and see His true love and dealing with mankind through final events of the history of this world.

It takes patience, and here is the patience of the saints, to go through all the prophetic pictures in Revelation to learn how God deals with sin, and how Satan extols with his mark of the beast. See the importance of worship, of Sabbath and Sunday and the plagues. It is an awesome picture. Thank God for giving it to us in Revelation, revealing hos Satan succumbs to his own pride together with his fallen kingdom.

Therefore we will live a life, eternal life, in gratitude to our Creator and Redeemer.

Rev. 15:1. But the word there is thumos.
In Revelation there are other passages which speak of the wrath of God in connection with Christ's coming (after the plagues) - like Rev. 6:16, 17. Also in connection with the judgment/lake of fire - Rev. 14:10 (after the millennium). The word used in these passages is orge.
The wrath of God, for APL, is primarily related to sinners; to me, it's primarily related to sin.

Rosangela - - You do not understand... God's wrath is not like our wrath. His wrath is His withdrawal, the removal of Himself. Not to punish, but because He has been rejected. But once He is removed, then there is nothing to check the effects of sin, and those that have clung to their sin will feel the punishment of sin! I have repeatedly said that God is not against sinners, only to have Green pop in and say that Hitler needs to be punished much more than he has and that the resurrection of the wicked is primarily about punishment. I understand sin to be something real and physical. I'm not sure what you think sin is, or how it is that sin not only affects humans, but all life. I don't recall you ever answering the question of how sin causes all life to suffer together. Do you have an answer to that question? Yes, sin is transgression of the law. What law? And how is it transgressed?

Would you be suggesting there is a wrath of completeness for sin and then another complete wrath of completeness for sinners?

APL,
This is your (or Maxwell's) definition. Anyway, it's related to the sinner - God's withdrawal from the sinner.
But the definition given by the Bible and by EGW is that God's wrath is the manifestation of His displeasure against sin.


I don't see any difficulty in that question. What made man and animals immortal before sin? Was it something in the DNA? If it was, man would need no tree of life for his life to be preserved. God's power preserved all creation, and added to this was the fact that there were no disease-causing agents or processes. When Satan assumed the control of earth, he began to alter nature.

He has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows.… He will bring disease and disaster (GC 589).

Satan is working in the atmosphere; he is poisoning the atmosphere (2SM 51).

Did he employ genetic manipulation to degenerate nature? This isn't impossible, but more probably there occurred bad mutations and genetic selections, which may have occurred naturally and/or with human help. Take a look here.

But there is no "sin" in animals and plants, or in their DNA. There is sin only in man, and in his mind.


It's the transgression of the moral law, and it has to do with the mind, not with the body.

The law of God is as sacred as God Himself. It is a revelation of His will, a transcript of His character, the expression of divine love and wisdom. The harmony of creation depends upon the perfect conformity of all beings, of everything, animate and inanimate, to the law of the Creator. God has ordained laws for the government, not only of living beings, but of all the operations of nature. Everything is under fixed laws, which cannot be disregarded. But while everything in nature is governed by natural laws, man alone, of all that inhabits the earth, is amenable to moral law. To man, the crowning work of creation, God has given power to understand His requirements, to comprehend the justice and beneficence of His law, and its sacred claims upon him; and of man unswerving obedience is required (PP 52).

Rosangela, consider:

Gal_3:19 Why then serves the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.

What law was added?

This is your (or Maxwell's) definition. Anyway, it's related to the sinner - God's withdrawal from the sinner.
But the definition given by the Bible and by EGW is that God's wrath is the manifestation of His displeasure against sin.

Yes, but what is sin? By your defintion, sin is inmaterial.

I don't see any difficulty in that question. What made man and animals immortal before sin? Was it something in the DNA? If it was, man would need no tree of life for his life to be preserved. God's power preserved all creation, and added to this was the fact that there were no disease-causing agents or processes. When Satan assumed the control of earth, he began to alter nature.

Alter nature and man?

He has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows.… He will bring disease and disaster (GC 589).

Yes he will use the elements! Do you believe that it is Satan as the active agent in the last plagues, or it is God?
Are you saying that sin does not cause disease and disaster? EGW: "The earth also was cursed because of their sin." {CD 145.2} How did that happen?

Satan is working in the atmosphere; he is poisoning the atmosphere (2SM 51).

Even the air, upon which their life depended, bore the seeds of death. {Ed 26.3}

What causes death? SIN!!!

Man is God's property, and the ruin that has been made of the living habitation, the suffering caused by the seeds of death sown in the human system, are an offense to God.-- Letter 73, 1896. – Medical Ministry, page 229. {Te 87.5}


Did he employ genetic manipulation to degenerate nature? This isn't impossible, but more probably there occurred bad mutations and genetic selections, which may have occurred naturally and/or with human help. Take a look here. 

The article claims that this domestication is evolution at work. Do you believe that? The article you posted discussed briefly the Russian tame fox exeriment. Are you familiar with it? Was there a genetic change in the foxes? What kind of genetic change? Did the DNA code change? NO. What changed was an epigenetic change. What is interesting is that as the foxes became more domesticated, they also looked a lot more like dogs. But the DNA code did not change, it was all epigenetic. Darwin's finches also did not experience genetic code change, but epigenetic changes, which are reversible.

What is the major cause of mutations? Copy errors? Or added DNA in the form of mobile genetic elements. Viruses are an example that everyone should recognize. Did God create viruses? Can you name one good thing that viruses do? There are other mobile genetic elements. Did God create those? Do you know that mobile genetic elements are probably the underlying cause of all disease? ALL life has been infected by mobile genetic elements. And "infection" is a good term.

But there is no "sin" in animals and plants, or in their DNA. There is sin only in man, and in his mind.

There is no sin in animals or plants? Do plants and animals die? YES. WHY? SIN!

There is a divinely appointed connection between sin and disease. No physician can practice for a month without seeing this illustrated. He may ignore the fact; his mind may be so occupied with other matters that his attention will not be called to it; but if he will be observing and honest, he cannot help acknowledging that sin and disease bear to each other the relationship of cause and effect. Did you read that? Sin IS the cause, and disease IS the effect. Do animals and planets experience disease? YES. Is sin only in the mind of man? GC569 - Satan is constantly misrepresenting the nature of sin...

Q:Yes, sin is transgression of the law. What law? And how is it transgressed?

It's the transgression of the moral law, and it has to do with the mind, not with the body.

Rosangela, consider:

Gal_3:19 Why then serves the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.

What law was added?

The law of God is as sacred as God Himself. It is a revelation of His will, a transcript of His character, the expression of divine love and wisdom. The harmony of creation depends upon the perfect conformity of all beings, of everything, animate and inanimate, to the law of the Creator. God has ordained laws for the government, not only of living beings, but of all the operations of nature. Everything is under fixed laws, which cannot be disregarded. But while everything in nature is governed by natural laws, man alone, of all that inhabits the earth, is amenable to moral law. To man, the crowning work of creation, God has given power to understand His requirements, to comprehend the justice and beneficence of His law, and its sacred claims upon him; and of man unswerving obedience is required (PP 52)

God's law is written by His own finger upon every nerve, every muscle, every faculty which has been entrusted to man. {SpM 40.6}
How is God's law WRITTEN? Where is it stored?

Conflict after conflict must be waged against hereditary tendencies. {COL 331.1} What gives us hereditary tendencies?