Word of Salvation – January 2026

GLIMPSES OF HEAVEN (3): THE SEVENTH TRUMPET

Sermon by Rev. Dr Steve Voorwinde

Scripture Readings: Psalm 2; Revelation 11:15-19

Scripture Text: Revelation 11:15-19

Introduction

We are still on the threshold of a new year. As we look to the year that lies ahead of us, it is so easy to be worried, concerned, and anxious. There may even be questions that make you lose sleep at night. What will 2026 look like? What does the future hold for the world in general and for us personally?

• We live in an unstable, uncertain, and unpredictable world. That can easily make us feel anxious.
• Terrorism remains an ever-present danger. Think of the terror attack in Bondi in December 2025.
• Crime is on the rise. Every day we hear of another stabbing or machete attack or another road rage incident. The police and the government seem unable to stop the violence.

And then there are matters that concern us personally:

• We worry about our own health and the health of those we love.
• We may be troubled by loneliness, especially if we have outlived those who were closest to us for most of our lives.
• We don’t know when our end will come and some of us may still be unsure of our eternal destiny.

It is so easy for us to carry cares and burdens from one year to the next, only to find that the load keeps getting heavier. Is there any escape from our nagging worries and our lurking fears?

This is where our passage in Revelation 11 can bring us such comfort and relief. These verses look at all these problems from heaven’s perspective.

When the seventh angel sounds his trumpet, it puts us on a mountain peak. The book of Revelation is like the Himalayas. It has high mountains and deep valleys. In fact, it goes from mountain to valley, mountain to valley, seven times.

The first six trumpets signalled earthly disasters of biblical proportions. A third of all the trees and green grass is burned up. A third of the sea is turned into blood; a third of the sea creatures die; and a third of the ships are destroyed. A horde of locusts torture people and inflict them with agony for five months. It is one disaster after another. The world of the first six trumpets is a valley that is deep and dark and dangerous.

But then at last the seventh angel sounds his trumpet. Suddenly we are on a mountaintop again. We are back in heaven, where everything is great and grand and glorious.

This brings us to the end of chapter 11. As you may know, Revelation has 22 chapters. So this scene in heaven is right in the middle of the book. This is also the fourth of the seven Himalayan peaks. This means it is also the middle peak. This is the very centre of Revelation. And when you look at it closely, this passage is also a summary of the rest of the book. It points ahead to what is to come in chapters 12-22.

1. The first thing we notice when the angel has sounded his trumpet are loud voices in heaven (v. 15).

 A. This scene is really noisy. The angel’s trumpet blast would have been deafening, and the response of the loud voices in heaven is earth-shattering. Have you ever heard the roar of the crowd at Kardinia Park when Geelong scores? You can hear it blocks away. That would be a whisper compared to these loud voices in heaven. The last time we heard loud voices in heaven was from myriads and myriads of angels. This is the sound of a zillion angels making a majestic proclamation: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.” (v. 15).

B. But what is “the kingdom of the world”? Has there ever been a single kingdom that ruled the whole world? Many leaders of nations would like to have ruled the whole world. They wanted there to be one nation state. They would be its head, and it would cover the earth. That may have been the intention. That may have been their ambition. But, thankfully, it has never happened. Instead, it has been the fate of even the greatest empires to rise, shine and decline.

Never has this truth been more solemnly expressed than in the poem by P. B. Shelley. He called it “Ozymandias”. It’s about Ramesses II who died in the 13^th century BC and who was probably the most powerful of the Egyptian pharaohs. When Shelley wrote the poem a little over 200 years ago, Ramesses’ bust had just been purchased by the British Museum in London. The poem goes like this:

I met a traveller from an ancient land,

Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered figure lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that the sculptor well those passions read,

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand, that mocked them, and the heart that fed.”

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of kings.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

No thing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lonely desert sands stretch far away.

3. No emperor has ever managed to conquer the whole world. And every empire that ever was, has eventually crumbled:

• Ramesses’ own empire of Egypt lasted for thousands of years, perhaps longer than any other empire before or since, but eventually it fell into ruin.
• The Babylonian empire was great and imposing, but it too fell into the dust, and for hundreds of years no trace of Babylon could be found.
• Babylon was taken by the Persians in 539BC. Their empire was made up of 127 provinces that stretched all the way from India to the Sudan in Africa. It was the largest empire the world had ever seen up till then. But by 323BC it had all been conquered by Alexander the Great.
• Alexander was a brave warrior and a smart commander, but he died at a drinking party celebrating one of his victories when he was just 33 years old. He had no children. So, four of his generals divided his empire between themselves.
• Then came the Romans. They were so powerful and their empire was so large that the Mediterranean Sea became a Roman lake. All the territory around it belonged to Rome, and much more besides. At its peak, the Roman Empire stretched from Britain in the north to the Sahara Desert in the South. It went all the way from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Persian Gulf in the east. It was so great that one of the emperors called Rome “the eternal city.” But in 410 AD Rome was sacked by the very barbarians the Romans had always so thoroughly despised.
• Then came the Byzantine Empire which lasted for over a thousand years, till its capital of Constantinople was taken by the Turks in 1453.
• The Turks then founded the Ottoman Empire which became the new superpower. It enveloped the eastern Mediterranean all the way from Greece around as far as Algeria. It went as far north as the Balkans and as far south as Yemen. But gradually it crumbled and by the end of the First World War it was no more.
• And shall I mention other great empires like the Spanish and the British, the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian, the Aztec and the Mayan? It’s all the same. They rise, they shine, and they decline.

4. Now if you take all these great empires and kingdoms and nations together, you have what our passage calls “the kingdom of the world.” This kingdom is the totality of all the other kingdoms. Then the loud voices in heaven declare something truly amazing – this kingdom “has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.”
5. You may ask, “But when did this happen, or is it still to happen in the future?” Good question! It can best be answered by another question: “When did Jesus’ reign begin?” Surely it was when he had finished his ministry here on earth and ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God! That’s when he was enthroned. That’s when the words of Psalm 2 were fulfilled, when God said,

“You are my Son; today I have become your Father.

Ask of me,

And I will make the nations your inheritance,

The ends of the earth your possession” (Psa 2:7-8).

When Jesus ascended to heaven, the world began to change. He poured out the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and the apostle Peter started preaching the gospel in Jerusalem. That day three thousand people believed. From there the gospel spread to Judea and Samaria. The kingdom of heaven became an unstoppable force in our world:

• It started in the Middle East, but in the next three hundred years it spread throughout the whole Roman Empire.
• After the fall of Rome, the kingdom continued to advance into northern Europe, and that of course included Britain. It has been said that when the gospel came to Britain, it had something for everyone. It gave the English something to talk about. It gave the Welsh something to sing about. It gave the Irish something to fight about. And it gave the Scots something for nothing! But the gospel continued its onward march. The last European country to become Christian was Lithuania in the year 1387.
• From Europe the gospel spread to the Americas – to Latin America in the 1500’s and to North America in the 1600’s.
• In the 1700’s and the 1800’s it came to this part of the world – to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
• In the 1800’s it gained a foothold in many countries in Asia, especially in India and China, in Indonesia and the Philippines, in Burma and Korea.
• Last century was the great century for Africa, with Christianity growing from 9 million adherents at the beginning of the century to around 350 million at the end. And the numbers continue to climb.
• Today the top four countries with the fastest Christian growth are Nigeria, China, India, and Indonesia.

6. Since Jesus ascended to heaven, the Father is giving the Son an inheritance of nations and the ends of the earth as his possession. The kingdom of this world is indeed becoming the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ. But these two kingdoms are very different in one fundamental respect. Every kingdom of this world, every empire, follows the same trajectory of rise, shine, and decline. But the kingdom of God will never decline, because “he will reign for ever and ever.” Do you hear the Hallelujah Chorus ringing in your ears? The myriads of angels have made their declaration, and what a mighty declaration it is! “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.”

B. The only proper response to a statement like this is one of worship, and that is exactly what the 24 elders do. They come down off their thrones and fall flat on their faces and they worship God:

1. They begin their worship with thanksgiving, in these words:

“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,

Who is and who was,

Because you have taken your great power

And have begun to reign.” (v. 16).

Notice who it is who has begun to reign. It is the Lord God Almighty. He is now going to display his might as perhaps never before. As the 24 elders sing in their hymn of thanksgiving, “because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign.” Now his kingdom has arrived in all its fulness.

You and I know that we are not there yet. We are still praying the Lord’s Prayer, where first we say, “Thy kingdom come.” We are still praying for God’s kingdom to come. It’s still future. But in that same Prayer we also say, “Thine is the kingdom.” The kingdom of God is already here. But how can that be? A kingdom that already is but has not yet come? How is that supposed to work?

I once had a student who asked me that question. At that time his wife was pregnant with their first child. So I asked my student, “Are you already a father or not yet a father?” I could see the penny drop and he got my point. In the same way that he was a father and not yet a father, the kingdom of heaven is already here but still to come. With the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus God’s kingdom arrived in this world, and for those who have eyes to see, the kingdom of God is all around us. Its effects are everywhere. But we are still waiting for more. We are waiting for the kingdom of God to come in all its fulness.

Then God’s power will be displayed for all to see – every human being, all the heavenly hosts, and the whole satanic realm of devils and demons. They will all see God’s power for what it really is. Then God will no longer be “the one who was and who is and who is to come,” he will simply be “the one who is and who was.” The future that we have been waiting and praying for will finally have come. And in that future kingdom “our Lord and his Christ . . . will reign for ever and ever.” (v. 15). Then, as the elders sing, “he has taken his great power and begun to reign.”

But how does God begin his reign, and how does he make use of his great power?   The rest of the elders’  song answers that question in two ways – first negatively and then positively.

2. The first way God uses his great power is in wrath and in judgment. The elders’ song continues,

The nations were angry;

And your wrath has come.

The time has come for judging the dead . . .

And for destroying those who destroy the earth.

We seldom like to talk of God’s wrath and judgment. We would much rather dwell on his love and mercy. But let’s think of it this way. In our society today we don’t think very highly of lenient judges. We hate it when criminals get off with light sentences, or when they are quickly given bail or are out on parole only to offend again. And our hearts go out to the mother who cries, “They killed my child, and they only get three years! Is my dear child’s life worth only three years?” There is outrage in the community, when a judge hands out too lenient a sentence. “Where is the justice?” people say, and rightly so.

But when justice is served, we feel vindicated. It’s only fair that the punishment fits the crime. And that’s exactly what we have here. God is angry with the nations who are angry, and he destroys those who destroy the earth. The punishment fits the crime, and justice is served.

I said that God first responds negatively, but maybe his response is not so negative after all. He is the perfect Judge, and he gets it right every time. His verdicts fit the offences committed and he gives justice to the orphan and the widow, the victims of crime. How many widows are there in Ukraine because of Putin’s dirty war? How many in Europe were left orphans because of Hitler’s Holocaust? The day will come when both these men will have to face the wrath and judgment of the Almighty!

3. When God has taken his great power and begun to reign, it will also be the time for rewarding his servants the prophets, and his saints and those who reverence his name, both small and great. This is the other side of the coin. When God’s kingdom comes, there will be those who will face his wrath and judgment and others who will receive their eternal reward.

(a) Notice who will receive this reward. It is the small and the great. It includes the major prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and the minor prophets like Haggai and Obadiah. It includes the great saints like Ambrose and Augustine, and the obscure saints like Larry, the eight-year-old boy who was converted at a beach mission and died two weeks later of a rare heart disease. In fact, it will include all those who reverence God’s name. It includes those who were persecuted and tortured for Christ as well as those who repented and were converted on their deathbeds. Remember the first petition of the Lord’s prayer, “Hallowed be thy name”? All those who hallow God’s name and do his will receive their reward.

(b) And what is that reward? The reward is the kingdom of God, that is described so beautifully at the end of Revelation. It is a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells. It is the perfect society where God is King; where there is no sin, no evil, no injustice, no more war. Try to imagine this world without any sin and without the effects of sin. You will feel totally safe. You will never be the victim of crime – no thefts, no break-ins, no murders, no scammers. Everything will be made new – no sickness, no diseases, no disability, no death. Nature will be restored. There will be no more floods or bushfires or famines or earthquakes or cyclones or hurricanes. There will be nothing to harm you. Why? Because you are a citizen in the kingdom of God!

Back in 1971 John Lennon of the Beatles wrote the song, “Imagine”. It started like this:

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today.

Lennon then invites us to imagine:

• No countries
• Nothing to kill or die for
• No religion
• No possessions
• No greed or hunger

With all of that gone, we can realise the dream:

• People living life in peace
• Sharing all the world
• The brotherhood of man
• Where the world would live as one.

Lennon has a dream but it’s not original. He borrowed it from the last two chapters of the Bible. So much of it comes from Revelation 21-22. There are only a couple of basic differences:

a) Lennon dreams of an earthly paradise of people living for today. As another song puts it, “Heaven is a place on earth” (Belinda Carlisle). At the end of Revelation, the apostle John sees a new heaven and a new earth. He has a vision of the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God (Rev 21:10). Lennon imagines a utopia on the old earth. John is shown a new paradise on the new earth.

b) The other difference is that for John Lennon man can make his own paradise. If only it put its mind to it, humanity can create its own utopia. But the Bible says that only God can create the conditions where people can truly flourish. Only God can create a paradise. Only God can bring the utopia that is the new heavens and the new earth. And that’s what makes the nations mad. “We can do it without you, God. We can create utopia by ourselves. We will invent our own version of paradise, thank you very much. So, butt out of our lives and leave us alone.”

c) That’s what the nations were saying in Psalm 2. That’s why the 24 elders can say, “The nations were angry; and your wrath has come.” John Lennon was a dreamer, but he was wrong. He wrote a great song, but its message was awful. Human efforts at creating a utopia always end in disaster. They inevitably turn into dystopias. Tragically, the 20^th century was littered with them. Soviet Communism’s efforts to create a “workers’ paradise” ended up in the Gulag, the death camps of Siberia. Hitler’s dream of “a pure race” cost the lives of 50 million people. Less known is the fact that the same number of people died of hunger in China under Chairman Mao. John Lennon was a great songwriter, but a poor student of history. Human attempts at utopia always fail. We need God! And we need God not so much to help us as to do it for us. And he does. The new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God.

III.  We get our first glimpse of it in the last verse of our passage (v. 19), where it says: “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of the covenant.”

 a) God’s temple here means God’s sanctuary. This was a sacred space that no human being was to enter, except the high priest and then only once a year. It was called the “Holy of Holies”. For the Jews this was the most sacred place in all of Israel. This is where God dwelt with his people. The tabernacle in the wilderness had a “Holy of Holies.” So did Solomon’s temple, and so did the second temple that was built after the exile and that was still standing at the time of Jesus. In each case it was separated from the other parts of the structure by a thick curtain. When Jesus died on the cross, that curtain tore in two, from top to bottom. The way to God was now open.

b) But now the real thing, God’s temple in heaven, God’s sanctuary, is opened to public view. What was once hidden behind a curtain, what was such a private space, is now open to all. Later in Revelation, a loud voice from the throne proclaims, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev 21:3). That is the heart of the covenant, where God says, “I will be your God, and you will be my people” (cf. Jer 31:33b; Ezek 36:28; 37:27; Heb 8:10b).

c) It is only natural that the attention should now focus on the ark of the covenant. The ark that was built at the time of Moses was simply a rectangular box (Exod 25:10-22). It measured just four feet long by two and a half feet wide and two and a half feet high (approx.120 x 65 x 65 cm). It was made of acacia wood and overlaid with pure gold. In it were two copies of the ten commandments.

It also had a lid of pure gold. That lid was called the mercy seat. On both ends of the lid there were two golden cherubim facing one another. Their stretched-out wings covered the mercy seat. It was from above the mercy seat and between the cherubim that God would speak to Moses. Not only was this a very holy place, it was also a very intimate place. This is where God communicated with Moses face to face.

This ark was the only object in the Holy of Holies, and it was made after the pattern which was shown to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod 25:40).

d) But now in Revelation we get to see the real thing. Within God’s temple was seen the ark of his covenant. We get to see one of the most private and intimate spaces in heaven. We get as close to God as Moses was. This is what the new Jerusalem is all about. It is one giant Holy of Holies, where God lives with us and we with him, and that on the most personal and intimate terms. This is our eternal reward. This is the reward for all those who reverence God’s name, both the small and the great. What a wonderful future we have to look forward to! As a friend of mine used to say, “My future is so bright, I have to put sunglasses on!

e) Then in the second half of the last verse, it all comes to a grand climax. When the seventh angel blew his trumpet, there were loud voices in heaven, probably the voices of zillions of angels (v. 15). Now at the end, the vision ends with a bang, a very big bang. Maybe this is earth’s response to the loudness in heaven: “And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm” (v. 19b).

Now what’s this all about? I’ve carefully looked into this by examining how each term is used in both the Old Testament and the New. But it’s still hard to come to a definite conclusion. The evidence seems to point in two different directions. Thunder and lightning and rumblings, an earthquake and a great hailstorm could either demonstrate that God is in fact the Almighty. This is an almighty demonstration of divine power. It’s a reminder that God who relates so intimately and personally with his people is also a God of immense power.

But there is also another possibility. These displays of divine power could be pointers to the judgments in the remaining chapters of Revelation. When Babylon falls, it’s because of a mighty earthquake and horrific hailstorm with hailstones weighing about 100 pounds each (Rev 16:17-21). This is devastating. But it’s also a warning to those who are angry with God, to those who have destroyed the earth, and to those who haven’t listened to the first six trumpets. But maybe all these things are true. To those who reverence God’s name, it is reassuring to see his power on full display. To those who want God to butt out of their lives, it’s a warning that unless they repent, their end will not be pretty.

Conclusion

In closing, let me take you back to the beginning of this message. Yes, we do live in an unstable and uncertain world. In this world terrorism still raises its ugly head. In our cities crime is a daily reality. Our health problems are real, and loneliness can stalk us in the dark. All of these things are real, sometimes depressingly real.

But over and above them there is a far bigger reality. These things that can make us so anxious and afraid are all part of “the kingdom of this world” (v. 15). And this world is transient. It is fleeting. It doesn’t have the last say. It isn’t the final reality. The day is coming, and it can’t be very far away, when we will be able to say with all the angels, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (v. 15).

Under his wise and just reign, we will flourish and finally be the people we were always meant to be. Who would not want a future like that? We need to admit that we can’t make that future ourselves. Jesus had to come to rescue us from ourselves, and God had to make that future for us. That’s humbling but it’s true. Believe that, and it puts all your earthly problems in perspective. You can put up with a lot in this life, if you know that one day God will reward you. That reward does not mean sitting on a cloud and playing a harp. Far from it! It is having a close and eternal relationship with the One who is powerful beyond belief and who loves you more than you will ever know.

“Hallelujah, for the Lord our God the Almighty reigns!” (Rev 19:6).