Vision of the Ages: The Message of Revelation

The Opponents of the Lamb

The Seven Trumpets Part 1

Revelation 8.2-14.20

The seven seals are immediately followed by another cycle or series of visions. These visions cover the same span of time between Christ’s ascension and Christ’s second coming. Each cycle reveals a slightly different perspective. The perspective of the seven seals is the current reign of Christ from heaven over all events on earth. Christ is the ruler of human history and is executing the eternal purpose of God on earth from His position in Heaven. The purpose of this vision is to bolster the faith of God’s people in the world who are often at the mercy of forces beyond their control. Many things are beyond our power but nothing is above the authority of God’s Christ.

But some of the things that transpire on the earth seem to contradict the authority of Christ. How can we believe that Jesus is reigning when the world still appears to be chaotic and evil? There are many people who cannot reconcile the Bible’s message about a loving God who sent His Son to save the world with the ongoing reality of evil in the world. Atheists usually bring up the perennial problem of evil as a way of explaining away the existence of God and any rational meaning for world history. What many people fail to understand is that the God of the Bible is opposed to evil and has promised to completely remove it from the world. The book of Revelation has much to say about this very issue and gives us a specific explanation for the evil in the world. The world has always rejected God. And now that God has exalted Christ, the world has continued its rebellion against God’s chosen King.

God has made Jesus the ruler of the world and exalted Him into Heaven, but the world order has no intention of submitting to Christ’s authority. The world’s rebellion against God and Christ is the reason for all the chaos and evil in the world. What is God going to do about this situation? How will God respond to the world’s rebellion and rejection of His Christ? The seven trumpets will answer these questions.

In the ancient world, trumpets were used to announce or signal that something important was about to happen. Trumpets were often used in battle to signal the beginning of an attack. The seven trumpets in Revelation are also signals that something is happening or about to happen. The trumpet call serves as a warning that is designed to capture the attention and cause a sense of readiness and alertness in those that hear the signal.

It might be best to study this section by reading it backward. If we begin with the seventh trumpet, we see the central theme emerge. Christ has been exalted into Heaven. God approves of His Son, but not every person in the universe is pleased. The enemies of Christ are revealed for us to see. And we also get to see how these enemies will go about their opposition to God and to His Christ. Obviously, the enemies of God and Christ are also the enemies of God’s people.

There is a great, cosmic conflict going on that began in Heaven. Here we get to see behind the scenes into the true nature of this great conflict. There are vast, spiritual forces at work. The fact that we cannot see the spiritual actors in the conflict does not mean they are not real. There is more to reality than what meets the eye and the book of Revelation is showing us those things that cannot be seen.

We are again reminded that what happens in heaven determines what then happens on the earth. This cosmic conflict spills over into the earthly regions and begins to involve human beings. Some people join in the opposition to God and His Christ. Every person on the earth is drawn into this cosmic conflict, even if they remain unaware of its true nature. No one can be neutral. Even God is not neutral and the seven trumpets depict God’s preliminary response to His enemies. In this cycle of visions, we will see the source of the opposition to God and His Christ, and then God’s preliminary response to this opposition.

The Source of the Opposition

We see the source of the opposition to God and Christ. Like the other cycles of visions in Revelation the point is theology rather than chronology. As the trumpets progress, there is more revealed. The seventh trumpet is the key to this entire cycle and helps explain what has happened in the previous six trumpets. The first six trumpets reveal God’s judgment on the world. The seventh trumpet shows us why these judgments have been necessary. The world has allied itself with the greatest source of evil and opposition to God. A cosmic rebellion that began in heaven has been brought down to the earth. The opposition to God and His Christ has a spiritual origin in heaven that has then been given a physical manifestation on earth. Men who oppose God and Christ on the earth are serving an evil agenda with a spiritual source that remains hidden to those under its power and influence. The world has been drawn into a great, cosmic battle. This cosmic conflict is the true meaning of world history and will determine the eternal destiny of every human soul.

The Spiritual Source: The Dragon

We begin with the spiritual source of the opposition to God and Christ. The seventh trumpet begins with the declaration of Christ’s reign: “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’” (Rev. 11.15). This is not saying that Christ will reign in the future as if this has not happened yet. It is a declaration of Christ’s current reign from heaven and takes us back to the vision in chapter five. It is after this declaration of Christ’s reign that the enemies appear. The ultimate source of all opposition to God and to Christ comes from the Dragon, or Serpent, who is Satan:

“And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child he might devour it” (Rev. 12.1-4).

The imagery here in Revelation takes us all the way back to the beginning of human history, to the Garden of Eden. It was there, after our parents had sinned, that God spoke these words in the presence of the man, his wife, and the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3.15). A man would be born who would deal a mortal blow to Satan. The old Serpent heard those words spoken by God in Eden and planned to destroy the Seed of the Woman. But the child was born one night there in Bethlehem, and despite all the efforts of Satan to destroy Him, God’s Christ has been exalted into Heaven.

Satan’s rebellion has failed and he is already a defeated enemy. That is the point that the book of Revelation is making. As soon as the Christ entered heaven, Satan was thrown down and defeated. The people of God can overcome the Dragon, not because they are so strong or wise, but because of the victory of God and His Christ. However, the final victory has not come yet, and the Dragon is still the enemy of God’s people. The final efforts of the Dragon will be directed against the people of God on earth. Satan can no longer directly attack Christ because He has been exalted into Heaven. So, the Dragon’s war will continue with a new strategy. The saints must remember that our ultimate struggle is not with other men. Our real enemy is the Dragon, even though he does work through people to oppose the saints on earth.

 

The Earthly Source: The Two Beasts

Now we can see the earthly source of the opposition to God and Christ. The Dragon will call upon two earthly allies to aid him in his final war against the saints on earth. The Dragon calls forth two beasts. These entities are called beasts because they are inimical to men and destructive to human life on earth. Satan’s objective is to destroy the people of God, but he also destroys the lives of the people he is working through. Evil is always self-destructive. We have seen the image of beasts before in Scripture in the visions of Daniel. Those beasts represented specific kingdoms of men that would oppress the people of Israel. A beast is an enemy with evil and destructive intent. These beasts are not something separate from men but represent a manifestation of evil working through men.

 

The Beast from the Sea: Corrupt Government

 

The first beast Satan calls up comes from out of the sea:

“And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. And to it, the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority” (Rev. 13.1-2).

In Scriptural imagery, the sea is a picture of the chaos and restlessness of the world. The wicked are like the troubled sea in their rebellion against God. Satan is not going to use unwilling people in his war against the saints. Satan can use the world because it is already corrupted.

This first beast is marked by its brutal strength and power. It will wage war by violence and awe-inspiring intimidation. The people of the world are impressed by a show of strength and power and they follow this beast. The beast wages war against the saints with violent and bloody persecution. One of the ways Satan has attacked the saints is through the power of the State, beginning with Rome. While God ordained human government to control the spread of evil, Satan has also found human government useful and willing to join him in his opposition to the people of God on earth.

 

The Beast from the Earth: False Religion

 

The second beast comes from the earth, as opposed to heaven, and it is different from the first beast in how it opposes God and His people:

“Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people, and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived” (Rev. 13.11-14).

This second beast uses deception and delusion to trick the inhabitants of the earth. Deception has always been Satan primary strategy and is usually more effective than brute strength.

So, Satan can work to intimidate people into joining his side or he can resort to trickery.

This second beast has a religious nature and seeks to cause men to worship the first beast. Another primary tactic of Satan in his war against the saints is to use false religion. Some of the greatest opponents of the people of God have been religious people. Religious people are useful to Satan because they are zealous in their work and believe that they are justified because they are doing God’s will. Remember that it was the religious people who killed Jesus. Many Christians need to learn that their greatest adversary is probably not secularism but is religion. It is not the atheist we must fear, it is the person who thinks he is doing God’s will when he is really serving the god of this world. Even secular people recognize that religious people have often been the source of great evil in the world. The book of Revelation reveals that religion has been and will continue to be a tool used by Satan to deceive the inhabitants of the earth and to persecute the saints of God.

 

An Effective Strategy

Either through political power or religious deception, Satan is looking to recruit an army of willing and devoted servants to do his will on earth. Of course, the people captured by Satan never know who is really behind the scenes pulling their strings. The Saints, on the other hand, are not impressed by the power of the first beast nor are they tricked by the deception of the second beast. But these two beasts will be very successful in recruiting the people of the world. One of the ways God judges the wicked world is by giving them over to the power of Satan. If the world will not serve God and do His will, it must serve the Dragon and do his bidding. Those who serve Satan and belong to his kingdom have his “mark” upon them and their lives reveal where their true allegiance lies.

The Dragon, the Beast from the Sea, and the Beast from Earth together form an unholy trinity in opposition to the Holy Trinity. (Another enemy who works with the Beast and is called Babylon is mentioned in this cycle and unveiled in the next.) Satan is a counterfeiter who seeks to turn men from God to idols. Satan does not care what men worship or even if they are religious just so they do not worship God. Satan knows that all men must worship. Worship is not optional, but our worship may be misdirected away from God to other objects of devotion.

Many modern people have rejected organized, traditional religion. It is even in vogue for Christians to say that they are not religious. Spirituality is the buzz-word now, while religion has almost become a bad word. But all this misses the point. Every person is religious and every person worships, even if they do not worship the living God, and even if they do not belong to an organized or institutionalized form of religion. Mankind’s primary sin, always encouraged by Satan, is idolatry. As Paul wrote about the ancient pagan world in Romans 1, men have known about the true God but have tried to forget about Him and have chosen to worship created things rather than the Creator Himself. By turning from the truth of God, mankind has become vulnerable to Satan and his many delusions.

The Dragon and his evil allies are revealed to us so that we will know true nature of this conflict and how our enemy works. The people of God do not have to fear being duped by Satan because we are aware of his devices. If we cling to the truth and avoid being contaminated by the world we are ultimately safe from Satan’s domination. The people who are not safe from Satan are those who fail to love the truth or who attach themselves in their affections to this present, evil world. The Apostle Paul wrote about people who are open to Satanic delusion:

“The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore, God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Th. 2.9-12).

There are only two spiritual kingdoms and we must serve one or the other. God has His Kingdom, which is ruled by Christ. Satan has his kingdom of darkness. It is called a kingdom of darkness because those who are dominated by it are blind to their true condition and fate. Those who refuse to worship God will end up serving the Dragon and his hellish agenda, making themselves enemies of God and targets for God’s righteous wrath and judgment.

God’s Response to His Enemies

Now we can consider God’s response. The wrath of God is the theme of the first six trumpet blasts. These trumpets represent only a preliminary judgment of the world, and each trumpet only brings a partial judgment. But God is not content to allow the world’s rebellion to go unchecked. Starting with the seventh trumpet we now understand the reason for the first six trumpets. These trumpets all announce some disastrous calamity for the inhabitants of the earth. These judgments come because of the world’s rebellion against God’s Christ and because of the way the world persecutes the people of God. In fact, the whole cycle begins with the prayers of the saints going up to heaven, no doubt echoing the cries of the martyrs under the altar in the last cycle. The saints call out for justice against the world that mistreats them, and God answers from heaven with these judgments. We should remember that we are never to take vengeance for ourselves. When we are persecuted we are to pray for the ones mistreated us. And then we leave room for the wrath of God.

We must allow God to take care of our enemies. In this way, these trumpet judgments follow the Biblical tradition of imprecation. There are examples in Scripture of righteous people praying to God for the destruction of their enemies. Modern people frown upon these statements because they don’t understand what is going on. Instead of taking vengeance themselves, the saints pray to God that He will act and that He will “break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call his wickedness to account till you find none” (Psa. 10.15). God hears the prayers of His people when they call out to Him for justice and deliverance. When the people of Israel were in bondage in Egypt, the Scriptures say that God heard their groans as they labored under their taskmasters. In the same way, God hears the cries of his people against the wicked world order. The judgments that follow parallel what God did when he judged Egypt and sent the plagues on that pagan nation before delivering His people.

 

A Disruption of the Natural Order

How does God judge the world? The first six trumpets reveal a series of judgments on the wicked world, beginning with calamities in the natural world. God disrupts the natural order and shakes up the world. To most people, the natural world represents something that is solid, secure, and dependable. In fact, one of the sins of the pagan nations is that they tend to worship the creation rather than the Creator. So, fittingly, God begins to shake up the natural world and disturb those things that men think are so stable. The first four trumpets all depict God’s disruption of the natural world, which are judgments on the human inhabitants of the earth:

“The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth. And a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.

The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

The third angel blew his trumpet, and 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. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water because it had been made bitter.

The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and 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” (Rev. 8.6-12).

When we see natural disasters, which men sometimes call “acts of God”, we should remember that God is angry with the wicked world for how it has treated Him, His Son, and His people. The natural world is groaning under the burden of man’s sinfulness (Rom 8.19-22). The sun went black when Jesus died as if the natural world itself was appalled at man’s wickedness and sought to hide the shame of what men had done to the Creator. And we remember how the earth opened and swallowed Korah and the other men of Israel who rebelled against Moses, the one whom God had chosen to lead.

There are people who have no place in their theology for God to bring this kind of judgment on the world. To them, God is too loving to judge and they struggle to understand why bad things happen to innocent people. Of course, there are no innocent people in the world. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory and so God is perfectly just in punishing the wicked. If we are spared from calamities then we ought to be thankful for the mercy of God that He has not given us what we really deserve. Where do modern people get the idea that they deserve a good and happy life? God owes us nothing. If we did get what we deserve then we would all have to die in our sin.

When the earth itself begins to shake and convulse, when there are earthquakes, famines, floods, storms, and fires, we should remember that God is the righteous judge of all the earth who is angry with the wicked world for its rebellion. “Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked because he was angry” (Psa. 18.7). The little floods, fires, and earthquakes are just reminders of the time when God will shake the entire earth so that those things which cannot be shaken will be all that remains.

A Disruption of the Moral Order

The trumpet judgments will steadily grow more severe, and we hear a flying eagle cry out “woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow” (Rev. 8.13)! When the fifth trumpet sounds, all Hell breaks loose on the earth:

And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth” (Rev. 9.1-3).

God sent locusts to devastate Egypt before the Exodus, and the prophet Joel also references a great locust plague in Israel. But these locusts in Revelation are not natural insects. This judgment depicts a supernatural plague of demonic evil being released on the earth. This increase in demonic activity results in an increase in wickedness and the corresponding misery that moral corruption inevitably brings to people. One of the ways God judges the wicked is by giving them over to their wickedness and then allowing them to suffer the consequences (See Rom. 1.18-32).

In our times, we have seen a rise in wickedness as all sense of moral restraint has been abandoned. This situation must be viewed as a judgment from God, who has removed all restraints and allowed evil to increase. People often think that removing all restraint results in freedom and happiness because people can be and do whatever they want. But when the moral order is disrupted people become enslaved to their passions and they end up hurting themselves and each other. There is no doubt that people who have given themselves over to various forms of iniquity are also vulnerable to demonic influences.

People who will not serve God will be given over to Satan who takes them captive to do his will. Satan is not interested in the welfare of his servants. Satan seeks only to destroy and those who become his servants will only find misery and death. We are living in a time when more and more people are living wretched, miserable lives, wishing that they could die and escape their torment. There is a sense in which the wicked who are under the judgment of God already suffer a taste of the torments of Hell, just as the Redeemed get to have a foretaste of glory.

 

A Disruption of the Social Order

In the Exodus of Israel from Egypt, God sent a death angel as the final plague. In the sixth trumpet, God sends four angels of death who descend on the world of men to kill and destroy. When the Assyrians were besieging Jerusalem, a single angel killed 185,000 enemy soldiers (See Isa. 37.36). What are four killing angels capable of doing? These passages are in Scripture to remind us of the weakness of men. If men cannot withstand angels, then there is no possibility of successfully opposing God!

Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." So, the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number (Rev. 9.13-16).

We need to understand that this is apocalyptic imagery for the destruction and death of war. This trumpet judgment parallels the riding of the four horsemen in the previous cycle who brought war and death to the world of men. One of the principles that the book of Revelation is illustrating for us is that there are spiritual forces at work in the world behind the scenes. What we might see is a political dispute that escalates into a war. But behind the scenes, there are spiritual forces moving these events. War and the destruction and death that follows is one of the ways that God judges the wickedness of the world. God is making the world suffer the consequences of its wickedness and rebellion.

We have examples of this all through the Old Testament Scriptures in God’s dealings with Israel. When the people turned away from God, broke the Covenant, and began to worship idols, God would raise up an enemy who would bring warfare to the people: “Behold, a people is coming from the north country, a great nation is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth. They lay hold on bow and javelin; they are cruel and have no mercy; the sound of them is like the roaring sea; they ride on horses, set in array as a man for battle, against you, O daughter of Zion” (Jer. 6.22-23)! There is little doubt that the two world wars of the last century were the results of God’s judgment for the modern world’s rejection of the truth.

God does not have to force men to fight each other. Strife is part of the sinful nature and when there is already an atmosphere of moral disorder, it does not take much for the social order to also be disrupted and men begin to fight and to kill each other. When there is an increase in iniquity in the world, there is also a corresponding increase in violence and social disorder. When people turn against God they inevitably end up turning against each other as well. Modern people want to throw off the restraints of God’s law, but at the same time, they want a just and peaceful society. You can’t have it both ways! When men rebel against God the moral order is disrupted which then causes the social order to be disrupted. It is like a row of dominoes that begins to topple over, throwing the world into chaos. This situation is evidence of God’s wrath:

“Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Rom. 1.28-31).

Those verses sound like they were just written! That is because the wrath of God is still being revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. But God’s response to wickedness while this world endures is small in comparison to the wrath that will be revealed at the end. For the sake of His own people, who are still in the world, God’s wrath is limited. Now it is still possible for men to be reconciled to God. But the time is getting short. “Kiss the Son, lest he become angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.” Or, as C.S. Lewis put it in one of his books: “Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.”