Listen to the Trumpets

Series on Revelation

II The Viewpoint

B Cycle Two, The Seven Angels and Trumpets

2 The Trumpets

Text: 8:7-9:21

Introduction

Trumpets are not always bad. They can announce joyous events. In Israel’s worship the blowing of the shofar or ancient trumpet opened feasts. They were regularly used in the worship in the Psalms and were part of the music of the tabernacle organized by David. They announced things like the Day of Atonement, and the great Jubilee sabbath every fiftieth year. Charles Wesley wrote a great gospel hymn about this, “Blow ye the trumpet, blow! The gladly solemn sound let all the nations know, to earth’s remotest bound: The year of jubilee is come! The year of jubilee is come! Return, ye ransomed sinners, home. Jesus, our great high priest, hath full atonement made; ye weary spirits, rest; ye mournful souls, be glad: The year of jubilee is come! The year of jubilee is come! Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.” However they also called men to battle and the trumpets here are more like that. In fact, they are trumpets of doom and destruction. However, at the end there is a trumpet signaling The consummation of the age which will bring not only the final judgment, but also the final redemption, the hour for which all of creation is now waiting. In Romans 8 Paul describes the whole creation as groaning and travailing in the pains of birth as it waits for this momentous event. The Apostle describes this event in I Corinthians 15:51 and 52, Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. This is a trumpet we all wish to hear ushering in the new heavens and the new earth, the judgment and the resurrection. Until that moment there will be many trumpets of judgment designed to bring men to repentance and faith. The precise targets in this entire section are earth, sea, rivers and springs, sun, moon, and stars, the pit of the Abyss, the river Euphrates, and finally, lightning and hail. These are the exact same targets as those of the bowls or vials that are poured out in chapter 16. The limitation to one-third leaves room for more terrible destruction to come, whether in connection with the last three trumpets or the later visions. Still, one-third is more than one-fourth. In Chapter 6:8 with the opening of the seals in the first cycle only one-fourth of the earth’s inhabitants were struck but in this cycle the scale goes up to one-third. The author of Hebrews describes what it was like in Exodus when the children of Israel came to Sinai to receive the law in 12:18–19 as a “Mountain that could not be touched and that was burning with fire; a place of darkness, gloom and storm; a trumpet blast and a voice speaking words so that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them.” He says further in verse 26, At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. That is what we are witnessing in part in Revelation 8 and 9 and we should see in it the thundering of Sinai all over again. These are the sanctions of the law of Sinai being executed upon the unrepentant. Today we look at these, six trumpets, blown to warn of waste, woe, war and wickedness.

I Waste

The first four trumpets describe the decimation of God’s creation. The natural world including the earth, the sea, the people and the sky itself is laid waste. And we read in verses 7-12, The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water- the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night. Now we are doing a pretty good job of laying waste to creation ourselves according to the environmentalists, but although they have a good point most of them fail to see that this beautiful world that God created is going to be burned up. It will be dust and ashes. It will be laid waste. This, my friends, will happen not so much because we have mismanaged the natural environs, but more because we are spiritually corrupt and Paul says in Romans 8: 19-21, The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. In other words we laid waste to creation long before environmental concerns existed. We did it in Paradise. When I was in college I had to read a poem in modern free verse by T. S. Eliot, a Nobel Prize winning poet of the twentieth century, and the poem was “The Wasteland.” At the time I was too immature to appreciate all the allusions in the poem. This poem is a work of philosophy as well as literature and its themes are radical doubt and negation. Eliot writes of the degradation of modern culture, and he rebuts ideas of renewal and regeneration. Portions of the poem have been described as “urban apocalypse.” Basically although Eliot holds out no hope, he correctly describes our situation as a wasteland which is exactly what we are looking at in the blowing of the first four trumpets. A wasted world. You live in it so be sure you do not become too attached to it.

II Woe

Up to this point the target has been man’s environment, but nobody is listening, so the target basically shifts to man himself to warn him to listen with the prophetic watchword, “Woe,” in verse 13, As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!” The triple woe is unique in Revelation, for in both Old and New Testaments the single woe occurs. The word woe is a key word in prophetic pronouncements. It occurs 58 times in the Old Testament prophetic discourses. And before you say that belongs just to the Old Testament, you should know that Jesus uses it thirteen times in the Gospel of Matthew, eight times in just one chapter, 23. In the Hebrew idiom the three fold repetition is a superlative, and thus when we say God is Holy, Holy, Holy we mean is the most holy, in fact he is so holy that it exceeds the ability of language to describe it. When you apply this to woe it is not a pleasant prospect. The woes are explained here as the two trumpet blasts of the two angels in the next chapter, but these are only the first woe as we discover in reading on. In 9:12 we read, The first woe has come. Look, still two more come after these things. Then in 11:14, The second woe is past. Look, the third woe is coming soon. John does not number the third woe, but 11:14 and 15 would seem to indicate that the blowing of the seventh trumpet is the introductory signal for the coming of the third woe, The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon. The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.” In a nutshell the whole point of the woes is to get people’s attention and warn them of the disaster of impending judgment. As we shall see it is not working in Revelation anymore than it worked through the Old Testament prophets. People’s ears are stopped up. They are all “positive thinkers.”

III War

The fifth and sixth trumpets introduce visions of what is best called war in 9:1-19, The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them. The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon. The first woe is past; two other woes are yet to come. The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number. The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury. We could spend years examining all the details of these visions trying to find what they represent. Actually, they represent an apocalyptic vision of the decimation of war, and the war is spiritual yet it has physical effects. As we look at this Scripture we should be mindful of the symbolic spiritual meaning. Ridiculous efforts have been made to find actual counterparts to these in our experience. Some futurists have attempted to find tanks and cannons and other weapons of warfare in these visions. That totally misses the point. These kinds of descriptions were common in the literature of the ancient world. For example, in the words of an Arabian proverb, “Locusts have the thigh of a camel, legs of an ostrich, wings of an eagle, breast of a lion, and a tail like vipers. So let us consider here two plain teachings, the origin and the objective of these judgments.

A The Origin

Plainly these are demonic forces out of the pit unleashed by Satan, their king, also called Abaddon or Apollyon, to torment the people. This is a description of hell itself in which people seek to die but realize that death is eluding them, During those days men will seek death, but will not find it. Their mental and spiritual suffering is without end.

B The Objective

Notice there is no damage to the environment under the fifth trumpet because the damage is to men’s spirits. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. Thus, while the initial battle is for men’s minds when the sixth trumpet blows these same demons are inspiring outward acts of violence among men and the men die. Probably this is referring to actual wars inspired demonically which should not be hard to believe given all the horrors of war that are perpetrated and that we read about in the news. The sixth trumpet shows the complete control demons have over human beings, who then perform every evil act imaginable. In 9:14 we read, Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. In the Old Testament the great river Euphrates marks the boundary of the Promised Land. It is the border between God’s people and the enemies of God. In this context the name marks the boundary between good and evil, between the kingdom of God and that of Satan. When the four angels are released at the great river Euphrates, all hell breaks loose in a worldwide war. In Old Testament times, God used this figurative expression to describe the land of his people overrun with their enemies. Both of these trumpets have already blown along with the first four.

IV Wickedness

In the face of all these judgments we read in verses 20 and 21, The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts. After innumerable warnings Israel did not repent. In fact before the time of Christ they were bringing God defective and insufficient offerings, and when God spoke to them about it through the prophet Malachi, and we read in Malachi 3:7 and 8, Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. “But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’ “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ “In tithes and offerings. The Devil is so diabolical and sin so deceptive that under the most severe calamities, instead of repenting, men curse God. Instead of blaming themselves, the blame God. Do you get tired of hearing the same refrain every time there is a natural disaster as in the first four trumpets. Men ask, “How could God do this?” Children die, people suffer, our sons and brothers and fathers die in wars we don’t understand and if they come home they are physically or psychologically disabled, but always the question is the same, “Why does God permit this?” Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, toronados, floods, occur and we blame God. We do not see that the world is broken and the earth is cursed because of our sin, and the innocent suffer along with the guilty. We harbor bitterness and resentment in our hearts when things are not as we think they should be and then we need somebody to blame and guess who is the primary target. This is not new. Do you remember Adam in Paradise? God asked him why he had eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree. Adam answered in Genesis 3:12,“The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Guess whose fault it is. You did it God! With the passing millennia things have not changed at all. Do you hear the trumpets blowing?