Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
Series: Letters from Heaven · Talk No. 5
Seven Trumpets of Chaos
Sunday, 20 August 2006
You should all have been given this sheet on the Interpretation of Revelation. On it you will see that Proposition 1 states that there are 7 parrallel descriptions of the same historical era, that is the time between the first and second comings of Christ. Last week we heard from Neil about the opening of the scroll with its seven seals given in Chapters 6 and 7. In fact in thiose chapters only six of the seals were opened, the opening of the seventh seal at the beginning of Capter 8 intoduces the next parallel description, the Seven Trumpets of Chaos, in chapters 8 to 11 that we just heard.
In fact this pattern is repeated through the book, the opening of the seventh seal at the beginning of chapter 8 introduces the seven trumpets. The blowing of seventh trumpet at the end of chapter 11 introduces Seven Signs of Persecution in chapters 12 and 14 and so on.
The interpretation sheet also summarises the material on the number and colour symbolism that I introduced you to a couple of weeks ago.
When The seventh sealis opened there is silence in heaven before the blowing of the trumpets. These trumpets herald the judgment of God on the world which he has created but which has rejected him. The trumpets are only blown, however, after this period of silence and the ascent to heaven of the prayers of the saints. Although these prayers appear futile on earth they are the prelude to the outpouring of thunder and lightning from heaven which mark the beginning of the judgments which follow. They are a reminder to us that God has chosen to work through our prayers. It is important that we pray because God's plan of salvation and judgment are worked out as his people pray.
Many people cry out to God about all the terrible things they see happening in the world. Why doesn’t God stop the wars, the disasters, the injustices, the suffering. God’s answer is that we should pray about them.
It may be thought that what follows as the trumpets are blown is over the top, extreme, out of touch, unrealistic. As we read it the question is raised within our minds: what is our life, our existence, really like? Is it dark and gloomy or sunny and bright? The Revelation, both here and elsewhere, paints life on earth in dark hues. It doesn’t view life in a romantic way, through rose colured glasses. Life within history is described with both realism and insight and often this is not a pretty picture. But ultimately it is a message of hope. It is not a counsel of despair.
The chaos depicted as the first four trumpets are blown is in contrast to the serene, "good" heavens and earth created by God described in Genesis 1. But Genesis 1 was a world in which humanity, as God's image, was to exercise a thankful dominion over all things as God's representative on earth. Soon, however, human ingratitude, rebellion and outright disobedience led God to drive people out of the Garden. Thus people, that is this present generation, us, we now inhabit a world whose fabric is subject to profoundly destructive forces. We do not live in Eden, in paradise. We inhabit a world of disasters, wars, famine, suffering. You only have to watch the News on TV or read the newspapers to realize how true this is.
As the trumpets sound in turn, the various parts of the cosmos are bombarded. Terrifying destruction is hurled down or at earth . . . trees . . . grass . . . sea . . . rivers . . . waters . . . sun . . . moon . . . stars. Some of the vocabulary used in Exodus to describe the plagues against Egypt (for example hail and blood cf 9:22) is used by John. We see similarity between John's apocalyptic images and our TV news images. Awesome cyclones, torrential flooding, engulfing mudslides, storm-driven, mountainous seas, surging volcanic lava, and fiercely raging bushfires. The "forces of nature" unleashed in the world sometimes assume apocalyptic proportions. Men and women in John's time were even more helpless in the face of earthquakes, volcanoes and cyclones than we are. We, at least, sometimes have early warnings and some mechanisms for disaster relief. Nonetheless, when the heavens rage and the earth moves we have no strength to fight these great forces. We may only take shelter as best we are able, until they pass.
Despite their severity these events are not the end the world. One third is destroyed, to be sure, but not three thirds. Symbolically, the numbers mean "many, but not all". For when three thirds are destroyed that will indeed be the end. Trumpet-like, these outpoured horrors herald the end. They speak of wrath poured out into a world where men and women have rejected God. This is wrath within history, partially revealed, which points to a wrath to be completely revealed at the end of history. But these terrors also speak of God's severe mercy; two thirds of the world is spared.
But trumpets five, six and seven signal the coming of even worse judgments, which will befall, not the physical frame of the world, but its chief inhabitant, mankind. So the high flying eagle with panoramic view of the world utters the threefold "woe" to the inhabitants of the earth. “O horror! horror! How horrible it will be for all who live on earth when the sound comes from the trumpets that the other three angels must blow!”
The fifth trumpet in verse 1 of chapter 9 signals the spiritual torture experienced by mankind, as opposed to the physical sufferings that have been heralded so far. The source of this suffering is Satan who is called "destroyer" (Hebrew: Abaddon; Greek: Apollyon), the angel of the abyss. "The fallen . . . star which was given the key to open the abyss is not identified. It is probably no more significant in itself than the other objects hurled at the cosmos in chapter nine.
In writing of the smoke that rose as from a gigantic furnace causing sun and sky to be darkened John is likening the now-opened abyss to a volcano. Remember this would be the most awesome sight ever seen in the world of John’s time and the Mediterranian was a volcanic region. John was not prophesying the nuclear holocaust that some modern commentators like to imagine.
From the depths of the Abyss arise myriads of dreadful locusts whose sting, like that of the scorpion, and brought such agony that people sought, but did not find, death
Satan, Abaddon/Apollyon, is king over these stinging creatures. It is interesting that those tormented are those who don’t have the seal of God on their foreheads. That is Satan is afflicting those who obey and worship him. They suffer for five months which means for a period within history, not the whole of history which would have been 7 months.
It’s worth being reminded that Satan is not only the accuser of God's people; he is also the tormenter of his own. Remember the demon possessed man named "Legion" in Mark 5 who lived in tortured solitude at Gadara; he cried out throughout the night from the eerie tombs. Yet he knew within himself that all was not well. He was a torn, driven man; a tormented man.
The 1 John 5:19 declares that "the whole world is under the control of the Evil One". This means that, to some degree or another, everyone is afflicted and tormented by "the angel of the abyss". When people deliberately turn their backs on God and walk towards Satan, they place themselves in the hands of a tormenter, not a friend. Modern Western society has rejected the active expression of the Christian faith. The churches are but poorly attended. Many remain passive or nominal Christians, with still some intellectual assent to Christian beliefs, but most have moved to alternative belief systems, including the occult. For exampleIt has been claimed that there are more witch doctors in France than medical doctors.
The first woe we are told in 9v12 is the Satanic torture that mankind experiences. The first four trumpets heralded natural disasters; the fifth, satanically-inspired supernatural disasters. Now when the sixth trumpet is sounded the voice of God coming from the golden altar in response to the prayers of the people is heard. Again a reminder that God works out his puposes through the p[rayers of his people and also even these woes that John is describing are under God's control.
The sixth trumpet heralds the killing of mankind
The four angels who had been bound at the River Euphrates are released. The Euphrates was the home of the dreaded Parthians whose hordes of galloping cavalry, were feared even by the mighty Roman Empire. But the awful charging cavalry described by John are not a foreign invader, but the armies of Satan, coming this time not to torment but to kill. These horses, symbolically described, come from the four evil angels; they kill with mouth and tail. Their numbers, given symbolically as two hundred million means that they are really beyond calculation.
Despite the horrors described by John, however, the end is not yet. Many from within mankind are violently killed, again symbolically represented as a third. The greater majority, however, are spared. Will they understand that these evils are but portents of a coming judgment which will engulf all? Will they now turn back to God?
Part of the message for us is that people cannot create paradise on earth. Certainly we should seek early meteorological and seismic warning of natural disasters and take every step to improve health and educational services. But mankind never seems to learn, that there is no uniform progress towards Utopia. Progress and regress appear to exist side by side at every point in history including within our own times. Corruption and evil continue to increase in spite of our increasing knowledge and progress in many fields. Mankind is incapable of building heaven on earth. The New Jerusalem, we’ll see later in the series, does not arise out of the old; it descends from heaven as God's gift.
John comments, with more than a suggestion of sadness, that those who were not killed still did not repent of worshipping demons or the idols made by their own hands, blind, deaf and immobile though they are (9:20). Satan is, of course, the god of this world standing behind the demons and the gods worshipped by these people. Even though he torments and kills them, they continue to bow down before him. Nor is there any turning from the accompanying evils of murder, magic arts, sexual immorality, or theft.
It is not, however, that John expects that mankind will simply turn from idolatry, demons and ungodly behaviour on account of the plagues that befall them. The plagues of themselves do not point away from Abaddon/Apollyon to God. What is needed is prophecy, the word of God, to explain and interpret to mankind that the plagues give warning of a coming, eternal wrath, which will fall on everybody. Prophecy will also extend to the hearers deliverance from sins and the power of darkness through the blood of Jesus. In Chapter 10 it is to the matter of prophecy that the Revelation now turns as it enters an interlude before the seventh trumpet is sounded.
John sees a mighty angel holding a little scroll which lays open in his hand. His towering stature as God's messenger is in contrast to the perception that the cause of Christ on earth is small, pitiful and ineffectual. The next sequence of seven thunders which were about to begin at his shout were broken off. What did this sequence contain. We don’t have a clue because John is told not to record it and no more is heard of it.
This massive angel who overarches land, sea and sky, swore by the name of God that there is to be no more delay and that the sounding of the seventh trumpet will reveal at last the mystery of God. God's servants, that is the New Testament prophets, already know this mystery, but will they declare it in the midst of a world which is marked by tyranny, martyrdom and chaos? Will the prophets be brave enough to speak the word of God and the testimony of Jesus at a time of such suffering and danger for them? Surely being exiled on bleak Patmos is bad enough? Why should John invite further pain or even death?
John then hears the voice of Jesus summoning him to take the scroll from the hand of the mighty angel. This is a renewed commissioning of John. The scroll will turn his stomach sour but it will be as sweet as honey in his mouth. Here is the great insight that prophecy is bitter and sweet, painful and pleasurable. The question is: will John and others among his readers take the scroll and speak that prophetic word to men and women in a cosmos surrounded by chaos, torment and death?
Are we willing to proclaim the gospel to our world, our society, our community?
In obedience to Jesus' command John took the scroll and ate it, that is, he digested the prophetic word that God directs to people. It should be noted that while prophecy in the Old Testament was directed to Israel, New Testament prophecy is about many peoples, nations, languages and kings. Prophecy, which is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, is now for all peoples in the world created by God, not only for Israel. Prophecy is God's word, the gospel, directed to men and women living in our world in chaos. And in this John was God's obedient servant, despite the scroll's bitterness to his stomach.
In the first 14 verses of chapter 11 we see why the message of the prophet is bitter. Two prophets are killed in the streets of the city where they are prophesying. Clearly it is dangerous and painful to be a prophet. But who are these two prophets and what is the city in which they met their deaths? John is both allusive and elusive in what he now writes, perhaps to throw would-be persecutors of his time off the scent. It appears that his original readers knew who he was referring to, even if we don’t.
The city in verses 1-6 is called the holy city and appears to be Jerusalem; John thinks of it in two separate parts ,the temple of God, altar, worshippers and , the outer court and the Gentiles.
John is to measure the temple and altar and count the worshippers, that is, protect and preserve these for heaven. Chapter 11 concludes by stating then God's temple in heaven was opened. God's holy place is no longer on earth, but in heaven, as Jesus said it would be. Jesus' death and resurrection spelt the end of the great earthly shrine in Jerusalem. No longer would there be a holy place on earth for God's people to gather. Believers now gather by faith in the temple in heaven, in the presence of the Enthroned One and the Lamb who was slain for their sins. When we come to the final two chapters of Revelation we’ll see that the new temple is the New Jerusalem, the City of God which is to come down from heaven.
The outer court, that is, the remainder of historical Jerusalem, is not to be measured. It is to be given to the Gentiles who will trample on it for forty two months or three and a half years, a long but not unlimited historical period. John is here alluding to the Romans' destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in AD 70. Josephus the Jewish historian has recorded vivid eye-witness descriptions of these events.
Jerusalem as an earthly city has no ongoing place in the purposes of God. It did not receive its long-awaited king when he came, instead it crucified him. Apart from its interest to historians, archaeologists and tourists Jerusalem has no further theological significance.
John calls the holy city Sodom and Egypt. By its killing of Jesus Jerusalem has proved just as pagan and hostile to God's people as Sodom and Egypt had been. John probably has in mind also other cities in more recent times where God's servants had been rejected-places like Rome where Peter and Paul and many others were killed in AD 64-65. Also the cities of Asia-minor that are mentioned in chapters 2 and 3 where persecution has now broken out because Christians will not participate in the worship of the Roman emperor.
The great city in which prophecy is declared does not refer to one specific city. It represents any metropolis hostile to the word of God, whether Jerusalem, Rome, Ephesus, Smyrna or Pergamum. And of course the hreat cities of the world today.
The two witnesses, also called lampstands and olive trees, stand for those individuals or churches who prophesy faithfully in their cities. The duration of the period in which they will prophesy is also three and a half years (1260 days), a lengthy but not eternal span.
The "Destroyer" from the abyss, Abaddon/Apollyon, will attack overpower and kill them. In their apparent helplessness their bodies will lie in the street of the great city and men will refuse them burial The deaths of the prophets will result in gloating and celebration by the inhabitants of the earth. The reference to the resurrection and ascension of these martyred prophets after three and a half days points to the fact that even Satan is not able to stop the proclamation of the gospel.
Finally the seventh trumpet is to be sounded. The mystery of God, long hidden, will now be revealed. There is no more delay. It is a mystery which could never have been guessed at, for it has been revealed not at the end of all things but in the midst of all things. This mystery has been revealed during, not at the conclusion of, the chaos in the cosmos. It has happened while God is bombarding the earth, while the hordes of Abaddon/Apollyon torment humanity, while the fiendish horses destroy a third of humanity. What is this mystery ?
As the trumpet is sounded, loud voices in heaven call out: The kingdom of the world and has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ he will reign for ever and ever. This statement is equivalent to that made back in Chapter 5, namely that the Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered. The conquest of the Lion and the now-arrived Kingdom of God are present realities based on past events. This is the witness that cost the two prophets their lives, the bitter/sweet message which John shrinks from declaring, but which the world in its pain needs to hear and believe. It is not the message of a still-to-come, last battle. Rather it is the message of the Lamb that was slain to liberate men and women from their sins and from the power of evil. It tells of a battle already fought fought and a victory already won , by Christ on the Cross.
This great evangelical utterance is answered in thanksgiving by the twenty four elders.
“Lord God Almighty, the one who is and who was!
We thank you that you have taken your great power
and have begun to rule!
The heathen were filled with rage,
because the time for your anger
has come, the time for the dead to
be judged. The time has come to
reward your servants,
the prophets, and all your people,
all who have reverence for you,
great and small alike.
The time has come to destroy
those who destroy the earth!”
The reign of God does not lie in the future. It is indeed a present reality based on the great saving events of the first Easter.
This is the source of the conflict between the Roman Imperial authorities and the people of God in John’s time. It is the source of the conflict between Christians and the rest of mankind today. Because God has begun to reign in the lives of people, the nations were and are angry with God and his people.
With the 7 Trumpets we start off with a depiction of terrible things that will happen, not just in John’s time, but throughout history. Satan is afflicting the world, not just the Christians who oppose him but even his own people. In the midst of these the followers of God are called upon to proclaim the gospel in spite of opposition both spiritual and earthly. The last trumpet shows that that God not only will triumph but in the death and resurrection of Jesus, has already triumphed.
Let us pray.