Revelation 8: The Seventh Seal: Trumpets!

Woodland Hills Church of Christ

The Seventh Seal: Trumpets!

Revelation 8

Introduction: 6:9-11 In the opening of the fifth seal we were given a picture of “souls under the altar” who had been killed because of the word of God and their testimony. Though they were told to “rest a little longer” until more of their fellow servants were killed, God began his answer to their prayer with the opening of the sixth seal and the picture of judgment on those who were persecuting.

But before Jesus completed his picture of judgment, we see 144,000, the perfect number of the saved sealed in order to protect them from God’s coming judgments. These saints are further comforted by a picture of a great multitude before the throne who had come out of the great tribulation and were shouting praise before the throne: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Now we are ready for the opening of the seventh seal, which will be God’s answer to the souls under the altar.

1. Silence in Heaven (8:1-5)
   1. When visualized, the drama of the silence in verse one is startling. With all the activity around the throne, suddenly silence! As usual, we know what this means when we see the same picture in the OT prophets:
      1. Habakkuk 2:20 gives a contrastive warning to those who follow “speechless idols”: “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” Following these words, Habakkuk 3 pictures judgment on the nations.
      2. Zechariah 2:13 When God prepared himself to attack the enemies of his people, the prophet wrote, “Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.”
      3. Therefore, the silence is a dramatic warning that God has had enough and is rising up to avenge the blood of his saints. As we will see in chapter 11, the opening of the seventh seal concludes with the seventh trumpet sounding, and God completes his judgment against the persecuting nation, Israel (Daniel 11).
   2. Seven trumpets are given to the seven angels that stand before the throne of God. We cannot be sure who these angels are, but no doubt they are significant servants of God ready to do his will against the persecutors. Please be aware of a simple fact: God is using angels to destroy Jerusalem, even though this was done through the Roman armies. This is another indication of spiritual forces affecting the nations.
   3. This is similar to Isaiah 10:5-6, when God sent Assyria against a wicked Israel. “Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.”
   4. “Trumpets”: In both Old and New Testaments, the blowing of a trumpet signals impending judgment.
      1. 1 Thes. 4:16 “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.”
      2. Jeremiah 4:5-6 “Declare in Judah, and proclaim in Jerusalem, and say, ‘Blow the trumpet through the land; cry aloud and say, ‘Assemble, and let us go into the fortified cities!’ Raise a standard toward Zion, flee for safety, stay not, for I bring disaster from the north, and great destruction.”
      3. Remember that the impending doom of Jericho was prefaced by trumpets being blown every day for seven days and the city falling on the seventh day.
   5. Now notice in verses 3–5 the word “altar” used three times.
      1. Vs. 3: An angel “stood at the altar with a golden censer…with the prayers of the saints…on the golden altar before the throne.”
      2. Vs. 5: “The angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth…”
      3. Now you can see how this connects to 6:9-11. The souls of those who had bee slaughtered for the word of God and their testimony were under the altar crying out “How long…” God’s answer is now being given as an angel stands at the altar and offers incense with the prayers of the saints.
      4. Vs. 5 shows us God’s answer to the prayers. As soon as the prayers are presented, the angel fills his censer with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth. And notice the end of verse 5: “there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.” These words parallel the conclusion of the blowing of the seventh trumpet in 11:19.
   6. Again, we see a similarity to when God previously destroyed Jerusalem during the days of the Babylonian Empire. Ezekiel 10:1-2, “Then I looked, and behold, on the expanse that was over the heads of the cherubim there appeared above them something like a sapphire in appearance like a throne. And he said to the man clothed in linen, ‘Go in among the whirling wheels underneath the cherubim. Fill your hands with burning coals from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city.”
   7. Judgment has begun!
2. Blowing the First Four Trumpets
   1. The first five trumpets correspond to five of the plagues of Egypt. This confirms even more that these are leading up to the final judgment against a persecuting nation. Each plague is added one on top of another until their complete destruction. 11:15 states, “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
   2. When we consider the purpose of the plagues on Egypt, we see the primary reasons for God’s judgments:
      1. Exodus 9:16. To Pharaoh God said, “I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” The spiritual forces coupled with wicked kings of the earth have constantly challenged God for supremacy (Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, etc).
      2. Revelation 17:14. Jesus is now proclaimed as the King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus’ purpose in becoming King is to bring all enemies in subjection to God. Thus, Psalm 2, “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.’ … Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.”
   3. First angel: hail and fire mixed with blood. A third of the earth is burned up.
      1. We immediately see the parallel to the Egyptian plague of hail mingled with fire which caused a loss of a portion of the crops. In this case a similar “portion” is affected as a third of the earth is burned up with the trees and grass. Therefore, this is a beginning judgment, a partial judgment.
      2. Ezekiel also gives us a parallel when God also speaks of destroying his enemy nations: “With pestilence and bloodshed I will enter into judgment with him; and I will pour down torrential rains and hailstones, fire and sulfur, upon him and his troops and the many peoples that are with him.” (Ezekiel 38:22)
   4. Second angel: “a great mountain burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.”
      1. We again see the parallel to the Egyptian plague of water to blood with a third of the sea becoming blood and a third of the creatures dying and a third of the ships destroyed.
      2. “Mountains” are typically used by the prophets to reference nations. Jeremiah speaks of the fall of Babylon in this way: “Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, declares the LORD, which destroys the whole earth; I will stretch out my hand against you, and roll you down from the crags, and make you a burnt mountain” (Jeremiah 51:25). Therefore, we are seeing the overthrow of a nation affecting a third of the earth.
   5. Third angel: “A great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.”
      1. The result is a third of the fresh water is poisoned and people died because of drinking poisoned water. We see again the similarity to the plague of turning water to blood.
      2. A “great star”: In prophecy, “stars” often refer to angels, or angels who represent nations. In Isaiah 14, “Lucifer” is pictured as a morning star that fell from heaven. In Rev. 12:4, the Dragon “swept down a third of the stars from heaven and cast them to the earth.” Is this an angel or an evil angel that is cast to the earth to punish God’s persecutors? (Cf. 1:20)
      3. Jeremiah uses the same terms concerning God’s judgments on Israel:
         1. “Therefore, this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “I am about to feed this people wormwood and give them poisonous water to drink.” (Jeremiah 9:15)
         2. “Therefore, this is what the LORD of Hosts says concerning the prophets: I am about to feed them wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink, for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has spread throughout the land.” (Jeremiah 23:15)
         3. As we can see, each judgment leaves a painful result on those who are the cause of the saints under the altar.
   6. Fourth angel: “a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night.”
      1. The sun, moon, and stars not giving their light has always been a picture of a judgment on a nation. When Jesus spoke of the fall of Jerusalem and the nation, he said, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Matt. 24:29).
      2. Those words of Jesus were of Israel’s final judgment. But in each of these trumpet blasts, we only see partial judgments. This may be parallel to Jesus referring to the “pains” leading up the fall of Jerusalem as “birth pains” (Matt. 24:8). In fact, in Luke 21:11, Jesus spoke of the years leading up to the destruction, “There will be earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences, and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.”
   7. In order to keep these partial judgments in context, and understand who is being affected, we must keep in mind that the trumpets are an answer to the souls crying out under the altar asking “how long before you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
      1. Later, in 11:2, just before the seventh trumpet sound, we are clearly told that it is Israel especially that is the object of judgment in this first part of the book. They are “given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months.” A nearly direct quote of Jesus in Luke 21:24.
      2. And in Luke 21:22, Jesus said concerning Jerusalem and Israel, “These are the days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.”
   8. Verse 13: The eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead…”
      1. After the fourth trumpet sounds there is an obvious separation that is made between the first four trumpets and the last three trumpets. The first four were partial judgments, but these last three are catastrophic.
      2. An eagle is a sign of doom. Deuteronomy 28:49-50, “The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young.”
3. Lessons:
   1. This section has reinforced the repeated theme of this last book of the Bible. God is ruling and God is victorious. Therefore, “wait on the Lord.” I am reminded of the story of Hezekiah when Assyria had conquered all of Israel and Judah, and only Jerusalem was left. The captain of Sennacherib’s army bellowed and threatened about how they would all be destroyed if they did not surrender. Hezekiah was in a tizzy. He had been doing all he could to protect the city from this very moment, but to no avail. Finally, he listened to Isaiah’s plea to relax and trust the Lord. When Hezekiah saw that all was lost, he finally laid all the threats before the Lord. The Lord’s answer was amazing. He basically told the king that he might as well go to bed and get a good night’s rest. There is not a thing he needed to do. And when the morning sun rose, 185,000 Assyrian troops were dead. Same with these early Christians and our battle with the powers of this world. Relax. God has this. We overcome with the word of our testimony and loving not our lives even unto death.
   2. All of these judgments came out of the prayers of the saints that went before the throne of God. Don’t be afraid to pray for great things, even that “mountains may be moved from their place!”

Berry Kercheville

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