718. 17:1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me. This symbolizes influx now and a revelation from the Lord from the inmost of heaven about the Roman Catholic religion.

Up to this point the subject has been the state of the Protestant Reformed church at its end. Now the subject is the state of the Roman Catholic religion at its end. This also follows in order, as mentioned in the introduction [no. 717].

We do not call it the Roman Catholic Church, but the Roman Catholic religion, because Roman Catholics do not turn to the Lord or read the Word, and because they invoke the dead, and yet it is the Lord and the Word that make the church a church, and its perfection depends on its acknowledgment of the Lord and on its understanding of the Word.

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with John, because the seven angels who had the seven bowls symbolize an influx from the Lord from the inmost of the Christian heaven into the church in order to expose the evils and falsities in it (see nos. 672, 676, 677, 683, 690, 691, 699, 700 above). Therefore those seven angels here symbolize the Lord speaking from the inmost of heaven and revealing the state in which the Roman Catholic religion would be at its end.

That is also why one of the seven angels took John onto a high mountain and showed him the Lamb's wife, which is the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:9-10).

699. 16:12 Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl upon the great river Euphrates. This symbolizes influx from the Lord into the people's interior reasonings by which they defend justification by faith alone.

The sixth angel's pouring out his bowl symbolizes, here as before, influx. The great river Euphrates symbolizes interior reasonings, the same as before in nos. 444, 445, here the interior reasonings of the Protestant Reformed church which they use to defend justification by faith alone, because this is the subject in the verses that follow next.