Revelation #20 Revelation 11:14-17 End Times: The 7th Trumpet
Revelation #20 Revelation 11:14-17 The 7th
Trumpet
The world is in
chaos. Ecological ruin. Men and women having turned their back on
God, are reaping the whirlwind of depravity. As a whole the choices that are
being made are morally corrupt and perverted.
There is a degeneration of civilization. All stoked by the abyss in the
hearts and minds of people. John sees
the entire population, governments, and nations, swayed into doing what they
want when they want without any forethought to the consequences of their
actions. Everywhere that people look for a solution to their problems is just
another dead end. Suffering and misery are rampant. The scripture proclaims “No one makes a fool
of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants
selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!— harvests a crop of
weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds!” (Galatians 6:7-8
(MSG). Humanity having rejected God is
destroying itself. In John’s vision even
worse is on its way.
Revelation 11:14 (MSG)
The
second doom is past, the third doom coming right on its heels.
From our vantage point, the first doom is
the 6 seals are ripped open.
The second doom is the 6 trumpets sounding. Ahead we will encounter John’s vision of 7
Bowls. Today after all this dark and terrible news, we will enjoy a glimpse of
the victory party when the 7th trumpet sounds.
Revelation 11:15-19 (MSG)
The seventh Angel trumpeted. A crescendo of
voices in Heaven sang out,
The kingdom of the world is now the Kingdom
of our God and his Messiah! He will rule forever and ever!
16 The Twenty-four Elders seated before God
on their thrones fell to their knees, worshiped, and sang,
We thank you, O God, Sovereign-Strong, Who
Is and Who Was. You took your great power and took over—reigned! The angry
nations now get a taste of your anger. The time has come to judge the dead, to
reward your servants, all prophets and saints, Reward small and great who fear
your Name, and destroy the destroyers of earth.
19 The doors of God's Temple in Heaven flew
open, and the Ark of his Covenant was clearly seen surrounded by flashes of
lightning, loud shouts, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a fierce
hailstorm.
The crescendo, the loudest point reached in
a gradually increasing sound of voices sing out The kingdom of the world is now
the Kingdom of our God and his Messiah!
Psalms 2:1-6 (MSG)
Why the big noise, nations? Why the mean
plots, peoples? Earth-leaders push for position, Demagogues and delegates meet
for summit talks, The God-deniers, the Messiah-defiers: "Let's get free of
God! Cast loose from Messiah!"
Heaven-throned God breaks out laughing. At
first he's amused at their presumption; Then he gets good and angry. Furiously,
he shuts them up: "Don't you know there's a King in Zion? A coronation
banquet Is spread for him on the holy summit."
The reason the crescendo is the loudest is
because all those who have bent their knee to Jesus and kept their faith are in
glory. That’s my speculation anyway.
The kingdom of the world represents “the
epitome of unredeemed creation” (Rotz, p. 178).
Unredeemed humanity is under the control of the prince of the power of
the air according to Ephesians 2:2. That
prince is the ruling power of government that has been subverted by the Abyss
(Ladd, p. 161). The Abyss is the depravity found in the human heart and mind
when a person rejects God. Satan, the
demonic, and evil spirits are the instigators of this unrighteousness. In
John’s black-or-white thinking, a person is either empowered to righteousness
or has succumbed to unrighteousness. It is here in the 7th event
that we find the words of Jesus realized:
John 12:31 (MSG)
At this moment the world is in crisis. Now
Satan, the ruler of this world, will be thrown out.
At the end of the 7th event,
God’s kingdom is consummated. Where it looks as if evil and chaos ruled the
day, we see that God is still sovereign and His will is accomplished.
When the 7th seal was opened
there was silence in heaven. Now with
the 7th trumpet that silence is filled with a massed choir of the
redeemed singing their praises to God for the victory He won through Jesus. The
24 elders join the celebration, falling again to their knees, they worship, and
they sing: “We thank you, O God, Sovereign-Strong, Who Is and Who Was. You took
your great power and took over—reigned!”
In chapter 1 verse 4 we received these
greetings: All the best to you from The God Who Is, The God Who Was, and The God
About to Arrive, and from the Seven Spirits assembled before his throne, and
from Jesus Christ—Loyal Witness, Firstborn from the dead, Ruler of all earthly
kings. Other translations render the phrase “The God Who Is, The God Who Was,
and The God About to Arrive” as “The God who is, and who was, and who is to come.” Here in chapter 11, with the 7th
event the “Who is about to arrive,” “Who
is to come,” has arrived.
The nations represent all people who have
rejected God. They have done everything within their power to rid the world of
God. They have ignored all His statutes, they mocked His order of creation,
they ridiculed His commands, and denied His existence. The nations have raged against the rule of
God, and taken out that rage on the followers of Jesus. But now is the time of
reckoning. Up until this moment, God's
prevenient grace extended an invitation to all of humanity to enter into a
right relationship with Him. Now time to
do so is no more. The invitation is
withdrawn. The choice to stand outside of grace has been made.
We can also think of the nations as “the
rulers, … the authorities, … the powers of this dark world and … the spiritual
forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12 (NIV). These spiritual forces of evil are made
impotent. They thought they could disobey their creator and do what they
wanted. But their time has come to an
end. They are going to get what they deserve.
One of the attributes of God is justice. God’s
justice upholds morality and order in the universe. One of the spiritual laws of justice is “the
soul that sins shall surely die” (Ezekiel 18:20) and “the wages of sin is
death” (Romans 6:23). It is a mandatory
judgment. There is no appeal. The death
being addressed is a spiritual death. A
spiritual death is an eternal separation from God. While there is no appeal, there is an
atonement. God’s desire to redeem humanity from spiritual death is proclaimed in
the gospel of Jesus Christ and actualized when one bends their knee to the
Lordship of Christ. Grace, the desire to
be and the power to do, is lavished upon humanity enabling each person to
choose to enter into a right relationship with God. People who reject God’s grace are subject to
God’s justice. From the perspective of the grace rejectors, it appears that God
is being vindictive and punitive. Truth proclaims that God is light and life,
rejecting God brings darkness and death. It’s not personal, it’s just the way
things are.
It appears John sees a time when God’s grace
to humanity is withdrawn. For the God
rejectors, this is the time of God’s anger.
But it’s not God being angry as much as God being just. Among the
God-haters, the Messiah rejectors, and the oppressors and murders of Jesus'
followers comes a time of reaping what they have sown.
Revelation 11:18 (MSG)
The time has come to judge the dead, to
reward your servants, all prophets and saints, Reward small and great who fear
your Name, and destroy the destroyers of earth.
In the 7th event, our glimpse of
the end, John reveals that it is a time
of judgment, reward, and destruction. I
know it sounds very pessimistic, but my speculation is the reason John sees the
dead coming before God to receive their reward is that all the servants of God
on Earth have been killed. They have traveled the path of Christ from death to
life eternal. If we affirm that the two
witnesses represent the entire Church, the Beast, slaughters the members of the
Church. For a time, it looks like the
forces of evil have won. No need to fear
or freak out, many scholars would
disagree with my opinion. I hope they
are correct. One of the opposing ideas is that only some believers will be
executed for their faith, as later in the Revelation we will read of Jesus'
great harvest from the Earth. So you can hope for the best while you prepare
for the worst.
For the dead to be judged there has to be a
resurrection. The faithful will be rewarded, and the destroyers of the earth
will be destroyed. Lost in Translation is another play on words. Destroy in one
sense means “demolish” while in another, destroy figuratively means “defile,
corrupt, or pervert (Rotz, p. 181). John
is telling us that at the time of judgment, those who defiled, corrupted, or
perverted righteousness will be demolished and that those who revered God,
obedient till the end, are rewarded.
Revelation 11:19 (MSG)
The doors of God's Temple in Heaven flew
open, and the Ark of his Covenant was clearly seen surrounded by flashes of
lightning, loud shouts, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a fierce
hailstorm.
Solomon’s Temple helps us to understand what
is going on. The Ark of the Covenant was
placed in the Holy of Holies, an area sealed off from the Court of the Priests
by a 30-foot-high dense fabric curtain.
The Ark represents the presence of God. The curtain was a barrier
between the people and the presence of God. When the Babylonians destroyed
Jerusalem the Ark disappeared. The Ark having gone is a powerful symbol of an
end to the special relationship that God had with the people known as the
Jews. When John sees the Ark it means
the Creator Creature relationship is restored, God has kept His Covenant
promises.
When times are incredibly difficult we find
here in the Trumpet glimpse of God’s end-game assurance that everything is
going to be alright in Christ. We can
trust that God’s promises are true even when the preponderance of evidence
suggests otherwise. The scales are balanced.
Evil is dealt with, those who have promoted evil find themselves
demolished by the very types of things they did. Evil always eventually destroys itself. The faithful are rewarded, theirs is to live
in the presence of God in a restored creation.
Psalm 27:13 (NIV)
I am still confident of this: I will see the
goodness of the Lord in the land of the Living.
Evil will do everything it can to defeat you
In the fight remember righteous will prevail
Remember in the circumstances you will
overcome.
Remember you are God’s voice proclaiming
salvation
Everything wrong will be made right.
Use your faith to Grow deep, grow up, and
grow fruit
And you will secure your seat at the victory
table.
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