The Seventh Trumpet
Revelation 11:15. And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.
Here,
finally, is the sounding of the last of the seven trumpets. The first six had ushered in various
events on the earth during the first half of the tribulation (Revelation 8 and
9). The last will echo throughout
the entire second half, the period of great tribulation.
There is an important reference to “the
last trump” in 1 Corinthians 15:52.
There it is said that, at this last sounding of the trumpet, the resurrection
of the dead and the immortalizing of the living saints will take place. In Revelation 11:15, and following,
there is no specific reference to resurrection. On the other hand, there is (verse 18) a reference to the judgment of the dead and the giving of
rewards to His servants, both of which presuppose a resurrection.
However, the “last trump” of this passage
in 1 Corinthians is obviously the same as the “trump of God” of 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17, whereas the seventh
trumpet of Revelation is the “trump of the angel.” These are obviously two different trumpets. In addition, of course, it has already
been demonstrated that the resurrection and rapture of those who are in Christ,
as described in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4, must take place before the tribulation period, whereas the seventh angel
will sound his trumpet at the middle of the tribulation period.
But if that is the case, why is the
trumpet of 1 Corinthians 15:52 called the last trump, when at least the seven
trumpets of Revelation will all be sounded later? Furthermore there is even a trumpet which is to be blown
near the end of the tribulation by God Himself. “And the Lord shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall
go forth as the lightning: and the Lord God shall blow the trumpet, and shall
go with whirlwinds of the south” (Zechariah 9:14). In context, this is a reference to God’s supernatural
deliverance of Israel right at the end of the tribulation. This event is probably the same one
mentioned by Christ in Matthew 24:29-31.
“Immediately after the tribulation of those days . . . he shall send his
angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
Thus, trumpets will be blown both by
angels and by God Himself after the “trump of God” which is the “last trump” in
1 Corinthians 15:52. The
terminology in this passage is clearly intended not to imply an absolute
chronology of trumpets, but one which is relative to its context. Similarly the “last day” of such verses
as John 6:40 (“I will raise him up at the last day”), John 11:24 (“… in the
resurrection at the last day”), and others is not the final day of the cosmos,
for time will never end.
The “last day” in which the resurrection
occurs, is the last day of the Church Age, and the last trumpet, which signals
the resurrection, is the last trumpet blown by God at the end of the Church
Age, but this does not preclude another last trumpet to terminate the
tribulation, or even another last trumpet to end the millennium and gather all
the unsaved for judgment at God’s throne.
Or, perhaps, one could infer that the “last day” will encompass over a
thousand years (2 Peter 3:8), thus including all the resurrection events both
before the tribulation, during the tribulation, after the tribulation, and
after the millennium (Revelation 20:4-6) within its scope. By the same token, the last trump may
not merely be one brief burst of sound, but a trumpet whose sound continues
long, as did the divine trumpet on Sinai (Exodus 19:19), enduring throughout
the entire duration of the thousand-year long “last day.”
In any case, this passage certainly
provides no justification for so-called “posttribulationists” and others to
contend, as they do, that the “last trump” of 1 Corinthians is identical with the
seventh trumpet of Revelation. The
latter is sounded by an angel releasing great judgments, but the former is the
mighty trump of God which raises the dead.
The sounding of the seventh trumpet is
accompanied by a great chorus of voices at the heavenly throne rejoicing in the
approaching climax of the Lamb’s great work of reclamation. The earth which He created, and which
He redeemed with His blood, will soon be His own once more, never to be lost
again.
The testimony given by the voices in
heaven anticipates and summarizes the results of the events set in motion by
the seventh trumpet. Like the
assurance that there would be no more delay (Revelation 10:6), so the
ascription of eternal dominion in this verse looks forward to the ultimate
fulfillment, in certainty that it will be accomplished and that the events
which will assure it have now been inexorably set in motion.
Note the implied reference to Psalm 2, as quoted in Acts 4:26: “The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ” (Acts 4:26). The age-long rebellion of the kingdoms of this world against the Lord and His Christ has been allowed because God is long-suffering, desiring men to come to repentance rather than to judgment, but He is not eternally suffering! The time is coming soon when all these kingdoms will become His kingdoms, and He shall rule forevermore.
Revelation 11:16. And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God.
The four and twenty elders had last been
noted at the beginning of the tribulation (Revelation 5:14), and now again at
its midpoint (the reference to them in Revelation 7:11 is looking forward to
the end of the tribulation, with all the tribulation saints gathered in
heaven).
As discussed earlier, these elders represent men and women who had been redeemed and raptured, believers of the ages prior to the return of Christ. During all the judgments of the first three-and-a-half years, the elders had remained seated on the thrones, intently observing events on earth. Just before the opening of the first seal on the great scroll, they had fallen on their faces to worship God (Revelation 5:14). Now once again they dismount their thrones, falling down on their faces to praise the Lord. This will happen once again at the end of the tribulation (Revelation 19:4).
Revelation 11:17. Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.
Even though the Lord is not yet literally
reigning, the resurrection of His two witnesses has demonstrated beyond
question, at least to those in heaven, that He has power to do so. The last great judgments, irrevocably
inaugurated by the blowing of the seventh trumpet, will certainly accomplish
His purposes. The elders and all
the saints in heaven acknowledge Him again as the Almighty One, the only
self-existing God, the one who alone has been God from eternity, before the
world was.
And this God, of course, is none other
than the Lord Jesus Christ. The
same identity, in the same terminology, was claimed by the glorified Christ at
the beginning of John’s encounter with Him (Revelation 1:4, 8). The one on the heavenly throne had also
been described in the same terms by the four cherubim (Revelation 4:8).
The term “reigned” is better rendered “shown thyself as king.” Christ at this point has not yet actually taken the earthly kingdoms and inaugurated His millennial reign, but He has demonstrated Himself to be the eternal and omnipotent Creator, and therefore absolute sovereign of all.
Revelation 11:18. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.
Seven great events are thus anticipated by
the elders as they worship on their faces before Christ, the Almighty Lord:
1. He
has displayed His mighty power over all creation;
2. He
has demonstrated Himself to be King of all kings;
3. He
has observed the implacable anger of all nations against Himself;
4. He
has manifested His righteous wrath against all those living in rebellion;
5. He
has prepared the final judgment for all the unsaved dead;
6. He
has provided a gracious reward for all who believe and obey Him;
7. He
has ordained eternal destruction for all who have corrupted the earth.
This is the
same Lord Jesus who was meek and lowly (Matthew 11:29) and from whose lips
proceeded words of grace (Luke 4:22).
But He is also the one to whom all judgment is committed (John 5:22) and
who will tread the great winepress of the wrath of God (Revelation 14:19, 20;
19:15).
The nations
have all sealed their rejection of Christ by willfully yielding their own
sovereignty to His greatest enemy, the beast, the one who executed His two
witnesses (see Revelation 13:7; 17:13).
Though there may be still some hope of snatching individuals from the
fire, as it were, the nations as such have all passed far beyond the point of
no return and can only experience now “a certain fearful looking for of
judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” (Hebrews
10:27).
The time (or “season”) of the dead, when
they will be raised for judgment, is not to be consummated for a thousand years
(Revelation 20:11-15), but the time is set and the judgment sure. The rewards for His prophets, and the
saints, and for all who fear His name, have in some measure already been given
at the judgment seat of Christ (Romans 14:10-12; 1 Corinthians 3:11-15; 2
Corinthians 5:10) which followed the rapture, but there are still tribulation
saints and millennial saints who are to be rewarded, possibly at or near the
end of the tribulation and the end of the millennium, respectively.
It is significant that special attention
is called to the judgment of those who “destroy the earth.” God’s first great commandment to
mankind had included an injunction to “subdue the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Man was to exercise dominion over all
the earth, but this was to be a dominion of stewardship and service – not one
of despotism and exploitation.
Adam and his descendants were to organize and utilize the creation for
man’s benefit and God’s glory.
Furthermore, this great commission had
been renewed to Noah after the Flood, and it has never been withdrawn. Mankind is still responsible under God
and this primeval mandate to exercise proper stewardship over the earth and all
God’s creation.
But instead, men have all but destroyed
the earth. Instead of caring for
the animals and plants committed to his dominion, man has become their enemy,
and many kinds have been exterminated.
Wars have devastated the forests and scorched the lands. Human greed has yielded polluted waters
and noxious air. Nutrients have
been leached from the soils and lands have been overcultivated and
overgrazed. Landscapes have been
blighted with open mines and urban slums.
All of these deteriorative processes have
even been hastened by God’s judgments on man’s sin. The great Flood, for example, had not only demolished the
ideal antediluvian environment which God had created for man’s use, but had
left behind tremendous numbers of dead plants and animals in the thick
sediments deposited by the deluge.
Many of these had, as a result of intense heat and pressure, been
converted through various physical and chemical processes, into materials
which, in the latter centuries of man’s occupation of earth, would be burned as
his fuels. These so-called “fossil
fuels” are notoriously inefficient and pollution-generating, for God had
certainly not created at least His animals for such purposes.
Worst of all had been man’s wickedness, both to his fellowman and against God. The word “destroy” is the same, actually, as “corrupt.” Man had destroyed the earth by corrupting the earth, using it not for God’s glory, but instead to satisfy his own greed and lust. Therefore God must finally destroy the destroyers and corrupt the corrupters. “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still,” he will say; “and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still” (Revelation 22:11). For it is He who “is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).
Revelation 11:19. And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.
John’s attention is still directed
heavenward, where he has just heard the praises of the twenty-four elders
bowing before the throne. Shortly
before, however, the Lord had called his attention to the earthly temple in
Jerusalem (Revelation 11:1-2) which now had been completely taken over by the
beast for his own uses.
It is in this context that John first sees
(or at least writes about) the temple in heaven. He had noted the throne and the sea of glass (Revelation
4:6) as well as the altar (Revelation 6:9; 8:3-5). He had also made reference to the future service which would
be rendered by the tribulation saints in the heavenly temple (Revelation 7:15). Here, however, he first calls attention
to the temple itself and to its chief component, the holy place.
That there is indeed a temple in heaven is
confirmed in both Old and New Testaments.
Isaiah the prophet saw it in his vision (Isaiah 6:1), and the writer of
Hebrews makes it clear that the earthly tabernacle (and, later, Solomon’s
temple) had been patterned after “the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched,
and not man” (Hebrews 8:2). The
service of the priests in the temple on earth were “unto the example and shadow
of heavenly things” (Hebrews 8:5).
The sacrifices on the earthly altar were mere types of the one sacrifice
for sins forever on the heavenly altar, for it was “necessary that the patterns
of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things
themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with
hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear
in the presence of God for us” (Hebrews 9:23, 24).
This is the real physical temple, in a
real physical city, where Christ now appears in His real physical, glorified
resurrection body. The city, with
its temple, had been brought with Him by Christ when He “descended from heaven”
(1 Thessalonians 4:16) to resurrect and rapture His saints into His presence
there.
And, like the earthly temple when the price for sin had
finally been paid (Matthew 27:51; Hebrews 10:19-20), the very holiest place in
the inner heart of the temple is now opened, in the heavenly temple as well.
There, in the holy of holies, where God
Himself dwells (and where He met with the high priest in the earthly
tabernacle), John saw an amazing thing.
There was the ark of the covenant!
The ark was the most sacred aspect of the temple, for it was there that
God could commune with His people, above the mercy seat which covered the ark,
between the overshadowing cherubim.
Within the ark was a pot of manna, and Aaron’s rod, and (most
importantly) the two tables of God’s law (Hebrews 9:3-5).
The ark of the covenant disappeared when
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple and carried Judah captive into Babylon 600
years before Christ. At that time
“all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the
house of the Lord” were also taken to Babylon (2 Chronicles 36:18), as were the
brass and other metals that adorned the temple (2 Kings 25:13-20). No mention, however, was made of the
ark, the most important and perhaps most costly (the ark was overlaid with pure
gold, and the mercy seat and cherubim were of pure gold) item in the temple, as
well as certainly the most significant item to the writers of the accounts in 2
Kings, 2 Chronicles, and Jeremiah (chapter 52, as well as the book of
Lamentations). Neither was there
any mention of the ark when Cyrus commissioned the rebuilding of the temple and
sent back all its vessels as well (Ezra 1:1-11).
It seems impossible that God would have
allowed the ark to be destroyed.
When it was captured earlier by the Philistines, in the days of Samuel, Saul,
and David, God saw that it was providentially kept for almost a hundred years
until David finally returned it to the tabernacle in Jerusalem (1 Samuel 4:4,
11, 22; 1 Chronicles 15:28; 16:1).
Men through the centuries have been almost
as intrigued with the search for the ark of the covenant as they have with the
search for Noah’s ark. The ark was
not in the restoration temple, nor the temple of Herod, nor in the tribulation
temple. Neither is there any
mention of it even in the millennial temple described in Ezekiel 40 – 48. People have rumored it is preserved
somewhere in a cave in Ethiopia, or in the Arabian desert, or somewhere else.
But there is no mystery as to where it
is. God showed John, when He
revealed to him the Apocalypse, that it was safely stored in the heavenly
temple. No doubt the two tables of
the Ten Commandments are there as well.
If God could translate Enoch and Elijah to heaven, and if the
resurrected Christ could ascend to heaven, He would be quite able to have an
angel remove the ark from Jerusalem before Nebuchadnezzar’s armies sacked the
temple, and then have him carry it safely to the true tabernacle in the New
Jerusalem under construction in heaven.
And there it will remain, until after the
millennium, when the New Jerusalem (which itself is the true tabernacle –
Revelation 21:3) will descend from God out of heaven to the earth. Since the city is itself a tabernacle,
and especially “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Revelation
21:22), there will be no temple within the city. But the ark of God’s covenant will be there, with its mercy
seat possibly constituting His very throne, or at least representing the throne
whereon He will meet with His people forevermore.
Accompanying this grand revelation once
again are manifested lightnings and voices and thunderings in heaven,
accompanied by a great earthquake and hailstorm on earth. These heavenly phenomena occur at the
beginning of the tribulation (Revelation 4:5), here at the middle of the
tribulation, and finally at the end of the tribulation (Revelation 16:18).
The great storm and earthquake that occur
at this time presumably affect the whole earth, supplementing the earthquake in
Jerusalem at the resurrection of the two witnesses. The later had pronounced a three-and-a-half year drought on
the earth, and the inhabitants had cried for rain. But the drought is broken instead with a great hail. The angels who had restrained the winds
and rains suddenly release them as the witnesses return to heaven, resulting in
a terrible storm on earth which still further testifies of God’s power and His
wrath against all ungodliness of men.