Blasts

Revelation 8

Let’s review where we have come from so far in Revelation. This book starts out with John’s vision of Jesus, who gives him the seven letters for the seven churches. Then we have the vision of the throne in heaven, attended by the four living creatures and the 24 elders offering worship and praise. Then we have the scroll with seven seals, which only the Lamb is able to open. And we have the worship of the Lamb by every creature in heaven and on earth. As the Lamb opens the first four seals four horsemen are summoned by the four living creatures: a white one representing conquest, a red one for war, a black one for famine, and a pale one carrying Death, followed by Hades (or hell) and given power over a fourth of the earth, to kill by violence, starvation, disease, and attacks by wild animals. So we have a picture of all the bad things happening on earth, down through history, under the control of Almighty God.

The opening of the fifth seal leads to the martyrs calling out for judgment and being told to wait for their number to be complete. The sixth seal brings the great earthquake, affecting the sun, moon, stars, the sky, mountains, and islands, and leading to panic among people in anticipation of the coming judgment.

Then chapter 7 takes a break from the seal opening and describes the sealing of the 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel and the uncountable multitude coming out of the great tribulation to be with God, to serve him and praise him.

Today’s passage, chapter 8, starts with the opening of the seventh seal, which leads to seven angels sounding seven trumpets. There are sevens within sevens in Revelation. This is the complete wrapping up of history. Seven is the number of completeness in the Bible. So we can see Revelation as the culmination of God’s whole story. That is why it is important to understand it in light of the rest of scripture. Carl pointed out the many images that are taken from the Old Testament and reflected in Revelation. When we see these connections they can help us to understand the symbolism, and then it doesn’t seem so odd and mysterious. We’ll see many references to the Old Testament in today’s passage.

So today we have the opening of the seventh seal.

“When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” --Rev 8:1

How does silence make you feel? Uncomfortable? What do you think it might have felt like to John? (He doesn’t say.) Was it a foreboding silence? A worshipful silence? A puzzling silence? We don’t know, but there seems to be a sense of expectancy. Something is about to happen. A big buildup – now what? In chapter 6 we had the dramatic appearance of the various horsemen, the earthquake, and the stars falling. Chapter 7 has the innumerable multitude worshiping around the throne. All this noise and commotion and now, silence. It doesn’t say how John felt, but I wonder if it might have been somewhat confusing at the time. We expect God to do something big and instead there is just silence. In the circumstances, half an hour would seem like a long time. Nothing much happening. Are you experiencing this kind of silence right now? You know God wants to and will do something, but you are not sure when. What do we do at such a time? I am encouraged by Psalm 46. This psalm starts out with a picture of the earth giving way, the mountains falling into the heart of the sea, nations in an uproar, the earth melting at the voice of the Lord. Then comes verse 10: “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” In the stillness we realize who God really is. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lord, exalted over all the earth. Nothing compares to him, nothing will thwart his purpose. We need the times of glorious praise – and we need the times of stillness, to just stand in awe of who God is. Our busy, noisy lives sometimes keep us from appreciating the greatness of God and realizing that he is indeed involved in all the intimate details of who we are and what we do. He longs for us to acknowledge him.

So when the trumpets come, after this time of silence, they are all the more awesome.

“And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.”—Rev. 8.2

The angels are God’s messengers, as we know. And what are the trumpets for? Historically, trumpets have been used to announce something. In Leviticus 25 it says that a trumpet was to be sounded throughout the land to proclaim the year of jubilee, when debts are cancelled, slaves are freed, and property is returned to its original owners. Trumpets were also used to assemble the people for worship or for war. Joel 2:15 says to blow a trumpet in Zion to declare a holy fast and call a sacred assembly. Hosea 5 speaks of sounding a trumpet and raising a battle cry. And 1 Corinthians 15:52 says that the dead will be raised at the last trumpet, and we will all be changed. Similarly the trumpets in Revelation are about to announce some huge events.

But before we have the sounding of the trumpets, we see another angel offering incense.

“Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.” –Rev 8:3-5

God’s judgment is in response to the prayers of his people. Carl has already mentioned this. We should be praying for God’s judgment to come, as we see in so many places in the Old Testament. We pray for judgment not to be vindictive, but to see justice done, God’s justice. We ask God to take action against the evil in our world.

The angel comes up to the altar of incense before the throne of God. The tabernacle of Moses had an altar of incense. It was covered with pure gold. Aaron would burn fragrant incense on it morning and evening, according to Exodus 30, and make atonement on it once a year. Later on in the temple, a similar altar of incense stood in the Holy Place. When incense was burned, its smell would permeate the whole place. We don’t worship with incense here, so you may not have firsthand experience of what this is like. Nepalis use incense frequently in their worship. We were in the home of a Nepali friend this week and the smell of incense filled the whole house. The smell is hard to ignore and difficult to escape, and I’m sure you know how evocative smells are. Smells bring back memories like nothing else. When I was a child we used a particular brand of soap called Cinthol, made in India. Even now, if I get a whiff of that kind of soap (and it is quite rare now, with all the other options on the market), it instantly takes me back 40 years to the house in Kathmandu where I grew up.

Smell is intimately connected to memory. Other sensory inputs are mediated by the thalamus in our brain. Smell information travels directly to the olfactory hub or tubercle, in close proximity to the hippocampus, which is where memories are processed and stored for the long term. Smell is also associated with emotion. When you smell things, you remember your emotions. The olfactory tubercle is located next to the amygdala, the area of the brain related to the experience of emotion and emotional memory. Scientists say that we have at least 1000 different types of smell receptors, which regenerate throughout our lives and adapt to what we are used to smelling. The result is that we can distinguish many, many different types of smells, many more than we know how to describe. I was reading a BBC article in this subject, and it had this interesting statement: “Memory research has shown that describing things in words can aid memory, but it also reduces the emotion we feel about the subject.” So smells go beyond words. We can’t even think of the words to describe certain smells. They speak a nonverbal language of memory and emotion.

Verse 4 says that the smoke of the incense and the prayers of the saints rise together before God. The Greek text could also be translated that the prayers are the incense. In Psalm 141:2 David asks that his prayer would be as incense before God. Was he imagining it like a pleasant offering? Probably. But he also knew the impact that a smell can have. If our prayers rise to God as incense, they are much more than bare words. They trigger his memory; they remind him of how he feels about things. That’s how the Holy Spirit can intercede for us with “groanings too deep for words,” as it says in Romans 8:26. We don’t need to worry about having all the right words when we talk to God. He can connect with our emotions and the things that we are unable to put into words.

The angel does more than just offer the incense. He takes fire from the altar into the censer and hurls it onto the earth. The prayers for God’s righteous judgment become connected with the enactment of that process, as a preview of the disasters to come. The impact of the censer causes thunder, lightning, and an earthquake. The prayers have been heard; God is about to take action.

“Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them.

The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.” –Rev. 8:6-7

You may recall that Death on the pale horse of chapter 6 was given power over one fourth of the earth. Now one third of the earth is affected, a third of the trees, and all the green grass – burned up. So the destruction is not complete, but it is progressing toward that. The hail and fire mixed with blood remind us of the seventh plague in Egypt. Exodus 9 describes how hail and fire fell on the land, striking down everything that was in the fields, breaking every tree and plant and killing people and animals. The first plague had been the water of the Nile turning to blood and then all the other water sources in Egypt becoming undrinkable as well. These plagues are now extended to much more than Egypt. They extend over the whole earth, with the same intent of getting people to repent and turn to God. But we will see, as they were with the Egyptians, that they are similarly ineffective at getting people to change their ways. The first four trumpets affect natural objects; the latter three, coming in the next chapter, affect people’s lives directly with pain, death, and hell. There was a similar mix in the plagues of Egypt, which ended with the death of the firstborn.

All aspects of creation are affected by this first set of trumpets: land, sea, fresh water, and sky. These define the environment for people to live in, along with all other living things.

“The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.” –Rev 8:8-9

Some people have speculated that this blazing mountain describes a meteorite hitting the earth, and it does sort of have that image, but it doesn’t matter exactly what it is. Its description as a fiery mountain is meant to remind us of Sinai, where God descended to give Moses the Law. In Exodus 19: 17-19 we read:

“Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.”

We are reminded that God’s law, represented by Mount Sinai, is the basis of his judgment. As the people of Israel trembled at Mount Sinai, sinners today should tremble in the presence of a holy God. But often it seems that people are caring less and less about what God’s standards are.

“The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water—the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.” –Rev. 8:10-11

So here we have the fresh water being affected, with a third of it turning bitter and deadly. Wormwood is a type of bitter plant that is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. For example, in Jeremiah 23:15, the Lord says concerning false prophets: “Behold, I am going to feed them wormwood and make them drink poisonous water, for from the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land.” (NASB) When I was researching wormwood I came across the fact that the name Chernobyl comes from the Russian word for wormwood. When we think of a nuclear disaster like that and its ability to poison the natural environment, we realize what these bitter waters might be like. There is an exclusion zone extending about 20 miles in all directions from the plant where the nuclear reactor exploded. This is the area of highest radioactivity. Officials estimate that people will not be able to live in that area for 20,000 years.

So when this star falls from the sky, it brings an immense environmental disaster, like the two previous ones. We might want to associate a star named Wormwood with the nephew of Screwtape, invented by C.S. Lewis as an agent of Satan. Or we might remember Jesus’ statement in Luke 10:18 when he recalled seeing “Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” But we need to remember that this star in Revelation is not a satanic messenger, but part of God’s righteous judgment on the wickedness of the people on earth.

“The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.” –Rev. 8:12

With this trumpet, nothing happens to the earth directly but life is affected because all the lights are dimmed. We sense God, the source of all light, drawing back from the earth, portending the even greater disasters to come.

“As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!””—Rev. 8:13

So we start and end this chapter waiting for something to happen. The silence at the beginning is the transition from the glorious worship around the throne to a focus on judgment of the earth. We end with the eagle telling us to look out, the worst is yet to come. This is a rather somber place to stop. In chapter 9 we are reassured that these judgments are for the wicked and that believers will not be harmed because of the seal of God on our foreheads. Still, it is sad to think of the scale and impact of these disasters. God’s intention is to show that he is in control of the universe, and he will have his way. Up until the end, people have a chance to repent and turn to him for hope and salvation. The prophet Joel also wrote about “the Day of the Lord.” In chapter 2 verses 29-32 the Lord says this through him:

“Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.”

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So there is hope and the opportunity for salvation, even in the face of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. God’s grace and his justice are always perfectly in balance. The other passage that I thought of in this regard is from Hebrews 12:18-28.

“You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them…

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant…

See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.””