Word of Salvation – Vol. 45 No.37 – October 2000

 

The Trumpets

 

Sermon by Rev L Douma on Revelation 8 & 9

Scripture Reading: Revelation 8 & 9

 

Beloved in the Lord.

I wonder if we always realise what it is that we pray for.  For example, we would regularly pray “Father, your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth…!”  But we see violence and destruction, sexual corruption and abuse, devastation and hunger, sickness and death, lying and stealing.  We see despair and we wonder why doesn’t God answer our payer?  Have you perhaps thought that He has, that in the terrifying events of the world He is answering the prayer: “Your will be done on earth…!”

You see, there are two sides to the gospel.  On the one hand, we know that through Christ and His death and resurrection, there is forgiveness and new life, hope, joy, peace.  But on the other hand, if Christ is rejected, then there is only judgment and hell.  The reality of the gospel is that the church, by God’s grace, is given a taste of heaven on earth.  But the world which refuses to repent is, by God’s judgment, given a taste of hell on earth.  That’s the sort of clear and dreadful message we are given here in our text as we look at the trumpets.

John tells us in Revelation 8:1 that Jesus “…opened the seventh seal.”  Remember the context?  Christ holds the scroll which is the will of God for the coming of the kingdom.  As He opens the seals, things happen – the will of God is done.  We saw the first four seals brought the four horses of sin, war, poverty and death.  The fifth showed the souls of martyrs in heaven crying for justice.  And the sixth seal showed the judgment and destruction of the whole universe.  But we had to wait for the seventh seal.  There was an interlude as Jesus showed the church that they were sealed by the Spirit.  The church was guaranteed that they would all reach the new earth – the whole uncountable multitude.  But now we are back to the seventh seal.  The suspense builds.

What is this seventh seal?  As Jesus opens it, we see (9:2) “seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets” (9:2).  Now we have to realise that the events that are unleashed by these seven trumpets do not occur after those in the six seals.  Because the sixth seal showed the complete collapse of the creation.  Remember Revelation keeps going back to the start in an overlapping pattern, constantly building up the details of the vision.

So the seven trumpets cover the same ground as the seven seals.  They run parallel.  They show the other side of the coin.  Whereas the seals showed events from the church’s perspective, the trumpets show events from the world’s perspective.  The seals showed the suffering of God’s people and their response.  The trumpets show the unbelievers, the world’s suffering, and their response (cf.9:4 & 9:20).

John tells us that when the seventh seal was opened, “…there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.”  That would have been a long time for John in this vision – a total awesome silence – all heaven waits.  The “…seven angels who stand before God” also wait before they blow their trumpets.

Why this long awesome silence?  All heaven is waiting for “…the prayers of all the saints”.  “All the saints” refers to the whole church.  And prayer is symbolised in the Old Testament imagery of incense rising to God.

And what is the main thing that all the church prays for?  When we remove our immediate personal needs (and selfish requests), and our prayers are purified by the Spirit, what is it that all the church longs for?  Lord, bring your salvation to the earth so that you may be truly glorified.  “Your kingdom come, your will be done…!”  As we saw in chapter 6, the souls of the martyrs “cry out, ‘how long before you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’”

And what we see is that the prayer of the church is answered.  That’s what it means when John says, “Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth, and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and earthquake” (8:5).  These are all symbols of God’s presence, of His coming judgment.  And the sounding of the trumpets spells out what that judgment is.

The plagues that come from the trumpets remind us very much of the plagues in Egypt, when God set His people free.  Then God had said, “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry… and I have come down to deliver them.”

Well, here in Revelation, God has heard the cry of the church.  It’s the prayer of the church that sets the terrible judgments on the earth in motion.  You and I may feel rather small in relation to the powers of the world.  The church may seem insignificant, out of date, even persecuted, in parts of the world.  But where is the real power in the world?  It’s with Jesus, the holder of the scroll, the Saviour and Lord of the church who listens to the prayers of His people.

With the seals we saw the church suffering and Jesus assured her of safety.  But now we see God’s dreadful judgment on those who cause the suffering of His own.

I wonder if we recognise these as the answer to our prayers.  If we don’t, is it because our prayer life is too concentrated on ourselves and our own needs, or because we have become too close and too tied up with the sinful world?  If Israel had identified itself with Egypt, they would not have seen the plagues as an answer to prayer.

When we look at the vision of the sounding trumpets we see that God answers the prayer of the church in an awesome and devastating way.  The first four trumpets (8:6-12) form a unit, just as the four horses did with the first four seals.  Now it has to be said that interpreting exactly what the trumpets means is very hard.  But there is a definite pattern.  The first four trumpets have all to do with the natural environment.  Human beings are affected (indirectly) by the devastation to the environment because we are so dependent on the land, its crops, the waters, the sun, etc.

The first trumpet sounding reveals “hail and fire” that burns up a third of the earth, the trees and all the grass.  Does it refer to terrible electrical and hail storms (we know the effect of that in South Sydney!) that devastate crops and homes.

The second reveals “something like a huge mountain all ablaze thrown into the sea.”  Is this volcanic activity?  (Remember the story of Atlantis.)  Whatever is the cause, it is the sea that is affected – a third of the sea turned to blood (reminds us of the plague on the waters of Egypt), a third of the sea creatures and ships were destroyed.

The third trumpet reveals “a great star, blazing like a torch”, falling from the sky on a third of the rivers and turning them bitter (“wormwood” means “bitterness”) and poisonous so that many people died.  Is the blazing star a meteorite?

The fourth trumpet revealed a third of the sun and the moon and the stars are struck so that a third of the day (and night) was without light.  Are we dealing with an eclipse?  Or cover caused by volcanic ash cloud?

John’s symbolism is hard to pin down.  But perhaps we don’t need to.  What was important with the plagues that struck Egypt was precisely that people could not understand how they happened.  They had to admit God was at work.  The magicians finally could not match what God was doing and had to admit, “This is the finger of God.”  What is clear is that throughout history there have been, and will be, devastating environmental catastrophes that have significantly affected human life.

The way John sees it in the vision, it is clear that these catastrophes are far beyond human control or doing.  John sees them as judgments of God – they occur as the seal is broken and the trumpets are sounded.  It shows how Jesus controls the destiny of nations.  If there is a hurricane that destroys a country’s crops, or a bitter winter and insufficient sun to grow a good crop, that can affect the balance of power.

How was the Roman Empire eventually destroyed?  By the Goths and Huns – who were ferociously driven by the Mongols because of a devastating food shortage in Mongolia.  Yes, we see in the first part of John’s vision that fearful damage is done to the land and its vegetation, the sea and its ships, the water which people drink and the light by which they see.  So in a sense their environment, their commerce, resources, and vision are all affected.

But notice the damage is partial – it’s not total.  Repeatedly with these first four trumpets were are told that it is a third that is destroyed.  So the trumpets are sounding a warning, not the final doom.  The majority of mankind is allowed to survive.  Why?  Because what God is doing here is an act of kindness, of grace.  The world is given a taste of the dreadful evil and brokenness in the world – all due because of the curse of sin.  The world is given the chance to see the devastation of sin – the anger of God – and it is being given the opportunity to repent – to come to God and admit how the creation has been messed up by us all.  Let it never be said by anyone that God is not gracious.

After the first four seals we see the souls of God’s martyrs crying out for vengeance.  And now after the parallel four trumpets we see that God is offering the world, which persecuted the church, mercy.  God is doing everything, even the devastation of his own once perfect creation, to bring men to their senses.

But does the world repent?  No.  But let them not think that they can mock God.  Because they still rebel does not mean they have the upper hand against God.  Verse 13 shows an eagle or a vulture flying high in the sky.  When do vultures do that?  When they sense doom and death.  The bird cries out, “Woe!  Woe!  Woe to the inhabitants of the earth because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels.”

God’s judgment and warning is not finished yet.  In fact it will get worse.  Like after the first four seals, there is a change.  The four seals dealing with the earth changed to the spiritual – the scene in heaven.  Now the four trumpets change from the natural environment to the spiritual – but this time the demonic.

John tells us that he saw a “star that had fallen from the sky to heaven”.  This is taken to refer to Satan who is given a “…key to the shaft of the abyss.”  The key is given – so we see that even with Satan’s involvement, he is under Christ’s power.  When Satan opened the Abyss (which is the place of the dead, not hell, that is the lake of fire introduced later) we see that lots of smoke pours out that darkens the sky.  From the smoke come locusts.  Now we don’t take them to be literal locusts, because we are told (9:4) that “they were 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 forehead.”

A locust usually eats only grass and plants.  And a locust cannot tell the difference between Christians and non-Christians.  Nor are we to see the locusts as hordes of Muslims coming from the desert.  Now again, it’s hard to determine who the locusts are with their strange and fierce looks.  But since they come from the abyss we take it that they are spiritual forces, fallen angels or demonic forces.  And we notice that though they are described as locusts, they affect people like scorpions (9:5-10).  “They had tails and stings like scorpions and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months”.

What does it all mean?  Well it seems God is releasing torment on those who reject Him.  When the gospel is preached it is never without effect.

Either we believe and are saved and sealed as God’s people, or we reject the gospel.  No one is ever “neutral” towards God.  When the gospel is rejected, then that person puts him or herself at odds against God.  They want nothing to do with Him.  In a sense it pushes them further from God.  A society that rejects God and His laws releases forces of Godlessness that makes the place worse to live in.  Instead of the Holy Spirit influencing the believers to good, there are evil spirits that drive unbelievers further from God.

Look at Western history.  There is the period of the Enlightenment – with science and rational thinking there is no need for God – we humans can reject the notion of God and be free.  But how has the human race developed in its “freedom”?  We have greater wars, worse atrocities and more devastating weapons.  We have the philosophy of the age that says “life is meaningless”.  We see despair and an ever-increasing desire for people to take their own lives.  This is what John means by the sting of the scorpion.  The power is in the tail.  It may all look good up front.  The locusts may look awesome and fierce (or they may represent our desire of power, wealth, lusts etc.) but its power is in the tail.

The godless world may think it has freedom – but as godless ways are followed, its soon discovered that it all leads to despair.  A scorpion’s sting is not fatal but the pain it causes can feel worse than death.  John says (9:6) “During those days men will seek death but will not find it.  They will long to die but death will allude them”.  How many in our world are already driven to despair – longing to die rather than face their lives.  How many have already had a taste of hell – slowly dying, but never dying.

The Christian is not affected this way because he has the hope of Christ and the work of the Spirit.  Again this suffering is an act of grace on God’s part – that their despair drives them to looking for something other than their godless life.  For the locusts, they are given power to torture “only for five months”, which can mean a few months – a short time – the life span of a locust.  This is not the final judgment, but a warning to bring repentance.

But it’s a warning that goes unheeded.  Because even with the sounding of the sixth trumpet we read, “The rest of mankind …  still did not repent” (vs 20).  The sixth trumpet sees the “four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates’ releasing “two hundred million mounted troops” that symbolise war and plagues that kill a third of mankind.  (The Euphrates is not a way of referring to the Russians or China – the hordes of the East).  In Old Testament times the river Euphrates was the natural eastern boundary of the Israelite kingdom.  The threat of destruction, of the worst of enemies always came from the east.  So what John symbolically says here is God’s last and most destructive warning.  It will be one of death and destruction.  The colours of the breastplates (9:17) and the horses remind us of war, poverty, disease and death.

Again the power of the horses is like the locusts – “in their mouths and tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads which inflict injury.”  Human desire to be without God will be its own demise.  The tail will sting.  The world longs for life, power, wealth – it worships demons and depends on its gods of gold, silver, bronze… that cannot see or hear or walk – any god but God.  But what do they get out of their desire to get away from God?  Death and destruction.  Death by tanks and planes, by road accidents and malnutrition, cancer and terrorist bombs.  The environment is polluted.  Resources are dwindling.  Despair is set in deep, but the world will not repent.

That is the key thing to see at the end of this scene.  All the pain and suffering that is inflicted on the creation by the sin and evil of the human race and used by God as strong and terrible warnings is just not heeded.  God in His mercy calls for repentance – but they will not.  Even the taste of hell on earth does not make a change.  People continue to deny God – worshipping their idols – and to abuse each other as there is a continuance of murder, sorcery, sexual immorality and theft.

Please let us make sure that we are not part of the world that not only rejects God but makes itself worse, tramples the grace of God underfoot.  God’s warnings, which we too can experience in life, show what lies ahead if we reject Him.  Life without God, rejecting your Maker, is not freedom and all things good, it’s hell, which this life can already give a taste of.

This particular vision of John is not a pleasant one.  But it gives us an interpretive tool to understand life in our time and world.  The vision and task are to challenge all of us to believe and receive the grace of Christ.

In the suffering and pain, “God is yelling” – listen, repent and believe.  Those of us who are sealed by the blood of the Lamb are safe.  We need not fear those who can kill the body but cannot touch the soul.  Rather we should fear Him who can condemn both body and soul in hell.

If we think life is hell now, you ain’t seen anything yet.  Repent and believe!

Amen.