How to Interpret Revelation
from an exposition of Revelation 8-0
When the lamb opens the seventh seal, in 8:1, it is the end. So, when He does, there is silence in heaven for half an hour, like something truly awe-inspiring has happened, the prayers have been answered, God’s Kingdom has fully come. The end. It’s greeted with total silence as if there are no words that can express what this means. Some things are so far beyond words that the only thing you can do is be quiet. “The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him” (Habakkuk 2:20). Then the praise will start again. After all, this is the end.
But, you think, ‘This can’t be the end!’ This is only chapter 8, and we’re in a 22-chapter book. We still have a lot more. We’re still nearer the beginning than the end. No. Know where you are. You’re in Revelation, and this book is not meant to be sequential, linear, like one long narrative, that doesn’t reach the end until chapter 22. We’re at the end now, in chapter 8. And now, we start over, approaching the end from another route. Like if you asked how to go to a nearby city and were given three different directions. All three are correct. All three will get you to your destination, the end. But they are different.
Here, we’re going to the end, first through seals. Then we start over and go through trumpets. It’s a different way to the same destination. We see patterns and parallelisms, how some seals are like some trumpets. But there are differences too. We’ll see some different things on our different routes to the end.
The point is that Revelation is not to be read linearly, one event after another, in chronological order, as if it is the tick-tock, the sequence of events, as if the seven seals lead next to the seven trumpets and then to the seven bowls and so on until finally, through all that, we get to the end. I don’t think so. I think it shows us several paths to the end: the seals path, the trumpets path, the bowls path. Each of them overlaps, showing us some of the same things from different angles, and each of them shows us some unique things.
“Then,” in Revelation 8:2, we start over. We’ve come to the end with the seals. Now let’s go another way to the end. We start over with John seeing seven angels who stand before God, each given seven trumpets. Meanwhile, another angel comes to the altar, the true one in heaven, “with a golden censer”: a gold pan meant to hold burning hot coals onto which incense is put to burn, letting out a plume of wonderfully smelling aroma. He is given much incense “with the prayers of the saints.” The “saints” are not especially holy, heroic stars of the past, but any true Christian, a “holy one,” one of God’s people. We already saw, in Revelation 5:8, that the true incense is the prayers of the saints. Here is another way of saying the same thing: incense and prayers are mixed together and offered before God. What are the prayers? Among other things, “Your kingdom come.”
You think all those years you prayed for something, for a family member to be converted, for righteousness to prevail, for justice, that nothing happened. No, it is offered to God as if it were incense, and “the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel” (8:4). It will bring about the trumpets.
The angel fills the censer with fire — setting your prayers on fire — and throws it onto the earth, where God’s kingdom is coming. “And there were peals of thunder, rumblings — literally voices — flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.” These are manifestations of God, like at Mount Sinai, when God came down and gave Moses the Law. The mountain shook, it was obscured by smoke, and lightning flashed out. When Jesus was transfigured, there was a voice from heaven — “This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him” — and a cloud descended. When Jesus was on the cross, an earthquake occurred. God was revealing Himself. Here, He reveals Himself through the trumpets. So, with God manifesting Himself, the seven angels set the trumpets to their lips (8:6).
At the first trumpet, there is hail and fire mixed with blood. God often uses fire to judge, as against Sodom and Gomorrah. The blood shows the death that will result. Here, the result of the first trumpet is that a third of the earth is seared, a third of the trees are burned. There are now a lot of thirds with the trumpets; a third is a substantial number, but not all, not even most, although all green grass is burned up.
Now, the literalists will say that this, and all the trumpets, have to be interpreted literally. There’s going to be a massive hailstorm, which wouldn’t be too unusual. What’s really weird is that the hail is mixed with fire, which would melt the ice. Hail is ice, so how can there be ice and fire mixed? And there’s blood mixed in, too. Where does the blood come from? How does blood get up into the atmosphere to fall back down with hail and fire, which somehow is not melting the hail? I’m not mocking or criticizing the Bible. I believe the Bible. I’m mocking the literalistic interpretation. I’m showing that it doesn’t make any sense. And think what it does to people who believe we have to wait for a sign of a massive hailstorm with fire and blood mixed in before the end comes. They’ll think the end is never coming.
Then, what are we to make of this? I believe this trumpet and the others are not meant to be pressed for details, as though every little detail will literally be fulfilled, or even that it symbolizes something, like this is about bombing from the air, the hail is bombs, maybe nuclear weapons that bring fire and blood (death). Probably not. I think, first, it’s meant to convey a general feeling, a mood of foreboding, great disaster. Hail was the seventh plague that struck Egypt (in Exodus 9). God is judging again, like that. There might be a nuclear war that brings fire to burn up a third of the earth and all green grass, but this trumpet in verse 7, and the other trumpets, aren’t meant exactly to predict it but to predict the enormous catastrophes that happen in this time, this interlude before the end, this great tribulation.
Revelation employs vivid symbolism and metaphorical language to communicate a sense of how things will be, not necessarily the facts of what they will be.
Know where you are! You’re in Revelation. Revelation employs vivid symbolism and metaphorical language to communicate a feeling, a sense of how things will be, not necessarily the facts of what they will be. Reporting a half-hour of total silence in heaven communicates a feeling of awe. A hail-storm that strikes one-third of the planet and comes with fire and blood, destroying a third of the vegetation and all grass, conveys a sense of cataclysm and terror. Trumpets were often used in those days to call attention to an announcement. In Joel 2, “Blow the trumpet in Zion,” sound an alarm because God is bringing judgment. Trumpets warned, like the Israelites blowing trumpets as they encircled Jericho. The trumpets here, then, give a sense of warning, danger.
The second trumpet brings “a great mountain, burning with fire” that is thrown into the sea. Is it a volcano or an asteroid striking the ocean? I don’t think that’s the point. The point is that devastating disasters come to the seas. The third trumpet brings “wormwood” to the fresh water, thus showing that all of the environment is being struck. Some people who say they are literalists claim the fifth trumpet — bizarre “locusts” — are attack helicopters. Of course, that’s not a literal interpretation at all but a modern re-interpretation. And that misses the point. The point is the demonic infiltration that torments people who are not God’s people. Revelation pictures this not with details, like a photograph, but with impressionistic pictures meant to convey a feeling: horror.
Instead of focusing on literalistic details and obsessing over what it specifically means in our time, seek the spiritual truths they show, that God is answering the prayers of “Your Kingdom come”; that He is sovereign, all-powerful, fearsome, and gracious.
For the full exposition of Revelation 8-9, listen:
Covenant Reformed Baptist Church is Danville’s & Caswell County’s Reformed church.