THE prophecy of the seven trumpets—symbols of war—portrays, in highly symbolic language, the breaking up of the Roman Empire, the rise and fall of the Mahometan power, and the prediction and time of the judgment of God. The explanation herein given will be brief, and for fuller explanation the reader is referred to “Daniel and the Revelation,” by the late Uriah Smith. The notes following the questions on the text will summarize the views therein set forth. We had thought of passing over this prophecy, merely referring the reader to the work above noted; but on further consideration it seemed best to give this synopsis of more than two long chapters. We believe there is more light still, and we entreat our readers to study the Word.
Questions on the Text.
After the opening of the seventh seal, what did the prophet next see?
“And I saw the seven angels that stand before God; and there were given unto them seven trumpets.” Rev. 8:2.
What was next shown him?
“And another angel came and stood over the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel taketh the censer; and he filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it upon the earth; and there followed thunders, and voices, and lightnings, and an earthquake.” Verses 3-5.
What did the seven angels immediately do?
“And the seven angels that had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.” Verse 6.
What followed when the first angel sounded?
“And the first sounded, and there followed hail and fire, mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.” Verse 7.
What followed the sounding of the second?
“And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood; and there died the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, even they that had life; and the third part of the ships was destroyed.” Verses 8, 9.
Of what was the third trumpet the precursor?
“And the third angel sounded, and there fell from heaven a great star, burning as a torch, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of the waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” Verses 10, 11.
What occurred when the fourth angel sounded?
“And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; that the third part of them should be darkened, and the day should not shine for the third part of it, and the night in like manner.” Verse 12.
What announcement was then made?
“And I saw, and I heard an eagle, flying in mid-heaven, saying with a great voice, Woe, woe, woe, to them that dwell on the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, who are yet to sound.” Verse 13.
Of what was the sounding of the fifth a warning?
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven fallen unto the earth; and there was given to him the key of the pit of the abyss. And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was said unto them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only such men as have not the seal of God on their foreheads. And it was given them that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when it striketh a man. And in those days men shall seek death, and shall in no wise find it; and they shall desire to die, and death fleeth from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared for war; and upon their heads as it were crowns like unto gold, and their faces were as men’s faces. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing to war. And they have tails like unto scorpions, and stings; and in their tails is their power to hurt men five months. They have over them as king the angel of the abyss: his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue he hath the name Apollyon.”Rev. 9:1-11.
What announcement followed this?
“The first Woe is past: behold, there come yet two Woes hereafter.” Verse 12.
What followed the sixth trumpet?
“And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the horns of the golden altar which is before God, one saying to the sixth angel that had the trumpet, Loose the four angels that are bound at the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, that had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, that they should kill the third part of men. And the number of the armies of the horsemen was twice ten thousand times ten thousand: I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates as of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone: and the heads of the horses are as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths proceedeth fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three plagues was the third part of men killed, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone, which proceeded out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails are like unto serpents, and have heads; and with them they hurt. And the rest of mankind, who were not killed with these plagues, repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of brass, and of stone, and of wood; which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk: and they repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.” Verses 13-21.
What solemn announcement followed?
“The second Woe is past: behold, the third Woe cometh quickly.” Chapter 11:14.
What did John see and hear when the seventh angel sounded?
“And the seventh angel sounded; and there followed great voices in heaven, and they said, The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ: and He shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, who sit before God on their thrones, fell upon their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give Thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who art and who wast; because Thou hast taken Thy great power, and didst reign. And the nations were wroth, and Thy wrath came, and the time of the dead to be judged, and the time to give their reward to Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear Thy name, the small and the great; and to destroy them that destroy the earth. And there was opened the temple of God that is in heaven; and there was seen in His temple the ark of His covenant: and there followed lightnings, and voices, and thunder, and an earthquake, and great hail.” Verses 15-19.
Note and Comment.
1. Prayer and the Outcome.—Verses 3 to 5 of Revelation 8 are parenthetical. By the overturning of nations, by plague, calamity, devastation, and cruel war, God’s people would be affected, and earnest prayer would arise to the throne of Heaven for deliverance. Therefore, in the very beginning of the6 (198)prophecy, to the representative of God’s people, is revealed the care of the great and good Father over His children. Nay, more, He adds to those prayers His own effectual grace and merit, that they may come before Him as sweet incense. He speaks of them as tho they were actually material things, saturated with costly and deliciously fragrant incense offered by angel hands to God, and received by Him as a sweet savor, pleasing and refreshing. Holy angels, who live in God’s presence, filled with His Spirit, unite with human hearts and shape the human longings into acceptable petitions before the throne of God. And God hears and answers, and in the end will punish the world for its iniquity, and avenge the suffering of His people. Luke 18:1-8. Verse 5 carries forward to the final plagues of God’s wrath. Compare with Rev. 16:17-21.
2. The First Trumpet.—The first four trumpets have to do with the utter breaking up of the Roman Empire. The first invasion of Rome having this result was that of the Goths under Alaric, in the close of the fourth century. The fire and hail, symbols of destruction, fitly represent the devastation and ruin spread by these bold warriors from the North. Whole countries were laid in ruins, and cities were burned. Rome was pillaged, many buildings, both public and private, were consumed, and the streets filled with Roman dead. The Roman Empire was broken.
3. The Second Trumpet.—A scourge from the South, by the way of the sea. The great burning mountain symbolizes Genseric and his Huns, whose conquests were largely naval, during the period of A. D. 428-468. Great naval preparation was made to meet him by the Roman Emperor Majorian, but Rome was unable to cope with the bold pirates. Leo, emperor of the East in 468, fitted out a campaign with 1,113 ships, 100,000 men, at a cost of $26,000,000, but the whole fleet, nearly, was destroyed by the vandals, the ships set on fire by the “burning mountain.” The term “third part,” so frequently used in this prophecy, refers to the tripartite division of the Roman Empire.
4. The Third Trumpet.—Attila, with his hordes of Huns, who denominated himself “the Scourge of God,” who boasted that grass never grew where his horse’s feet had trod, whose operations were in the river section, and where the rivers had their sources, is the subject of the third trumpet. Bitter consequences followed his cruel raids.
5. The Fourth Trumpet.—The sun, moon, and stars are taken as symbols of the Roman Government, emperors, senators, and consuls, cast down by the barbarian ruler, Odoacer. The last monarch of Western Rome was Momyllus, called in derision the “little Augustus.” The empire fell in A. D. 476. Before the onslaught of Goth and Vandal and Hun, the great Roman Empire had fallen, dividing into ten divisions between the years A. D. 351 and 476.
6. “Woe, Woe, Woe.”—Fearful as had been the punishments and calamities of Rome under the first four trumpets, they were mild as compared with those to follow. The last three trumpets are harbingers of weighty woe upon the Roman Empire and the wicked world.
7. The Fifth Trumpet.—A prophecy of the Saracens. The devotees of the religion of Mahomet—a religion consisting of “a great truth and a great lie”—became the scourge of the apostate church of Rome. Persia and Rome had exhausted themselves in war with each other, when Mahomet and his Arab hordes (generally known by the Romans as Saracens), issued forth from the obscurity of the desert, as locusts from smoke, and conquered Persia, and scourged Rome. The fall of the Persian emperor Chosroes, likened to a star fallen from heaven, paved the way for Mahometan triumph, for the overrunning of the land by the Arabian followers of the prophet of Mecca. This false religion is well likened to smoke from the abyss of chaos, confusion. Their principal efforts were against the presumptuous priests and followers of Rome, while God’s true people, those having God’s seal, were not purposely on the part of the Saracens included in their work of destruction. (See decree of Abubeker, in “Daniel and Revelation,” p. 474.) The description of these locusts present striking characteristics of the appearance of the mounted Saracenic warriors. The “five months period”—prophetic time, 150 days, 150 literal years—dates from the time that the torment, the harassing, of Rome began under the Saracens July 27, 1299, when Othman the first king entered the Roman territory of Nicomedia. The period reaches to 1449, during which time Eastern Rome was continually harassed, annoyed, worried, tormented, by the continuous warfare and raids of the followers of Mahomet.
8. The Sixth Trumpet.—When the first woe ended, the second began, at the end of the “five months,” July 27, 1449. “The four angels” represent the four sultanates of Iconium, Bagdad, Aleppo, and Damascus. They had been restrained, but in the providence of God they were loosed. The last Greek emperor of Constantinople was Constantine Palæologus, who came to the throne on the death of his brother John Palæologus VII. But Constantine took the kingdom by the consent of Amurath the Turkish Sultan, thus conceding the sovereignty of the Turks. The words of the Scripture are a vivid description of the Turkish forces, generally mounted warriors, with firearms, the discharge of the weapons in front seeming to proceed from the horses’ mouths. The prophetic period of an hour and a day and a month and a year, in prophetic time represents: A year, three hundred and sixty years; a month, thirty years; a day, one year; an hour, fifteen days; or three hundred ninety-one years and fifteen days. In the great Advent movement of 1830 to 1840 Josiah Litch published in 1838 an exposition of this prophecy, in which he declared that Turkish sovereignty would come to an end August 11, 1840. The three hundred ninety-one years and fifteen days, added to the one hundred and fifty years of the previous trumpet, amount to five hundred and forty-one years and fifteen days, the period between July 27, 1299, when Othman entered Nicomedia, to Aug. 11, 1840, when the Sultan of Turkey, in order to save his dominion from the power of Egypt with whom he was at war, placed his case in the hands of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, thus relinquishing his sovereignty, and practically saying as had the emperor of Eastern Rome to the sultan in 1449, “I rule by your consent or support.” Under these conditions terms were offered to Egypt by the powers and the ultimatum was placed in the hands of the Pasha Mehemet Ali, Aug. 11, 1840. The sultan of Turkey was told that he need not worry as to the outcome as the powers would see to that and meet any contingency which might arise. This fulfilment of Litch’s exposition in 1840 gave a mighty impetus to the Advent movement. Altho this Mahometan scourge had been upon apostate Rome for six centuries, the apostates learned not the lesson, and repented not of their sins.
9. The Last Woe.—The opening of the last trumpet is preceded by an announcement of woe; but a little space intervenes before its sounding, covered by the word “quickly.” This is practically four years, as will be seen by a study of the work referred to above. Between the sixth trumpet and the announcement of the last woe two prophecies intervene, that of the mighty angel of chapter 10, and the two witnesses of chapter 11. These, tho intimately connected with the trumpets, and occurring in part under the sixth trumpet, are omitted from the prophetic view till the close of that trumpet. These we will consider in future issues.
10. The Seventh Trumpet carries us to the great day of God’s wrath, the closing work of the Gospel, the solemn hour of the judgment, and the wrath and destruction of the nations. It is the closing act in the great drama of sin. Under its sounding Satan’s reign ceases, and the kingdom is given to Christ. Dan. 7:13, 14. He will renew that kingdom by His own power, and reign forever. The anger of the nations, manifest in their preparation for war, the manifestation of God’s righteous anger against sin, the judging of the dead and living, the reward of God’s people, are all a part of the last great act. Verse 19 is a revelation to the church and the world that the law which God gave here to His people, written on tables of stone, deposited in the ark of the testimony (witness to God’s character) or testament (His will concerning man) in the sanctuary and temple of old, was but the transcript of His law in heaven. At that very time the attention of God’s people was called anew to His law in every part, and out of this has grown the agitation in both Church and State over the Sabbath question. It is of infinite importance to which view we take. The right side is loyalty to God and His law.