First Four Trumpets - Revelation 8

8:1 - Now Jesus opens the seventh seal, and we all know that this is where it hits the fan, and “there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” I had a Sunday school teacher once do the math of “ok, if one day to God is 1,000 years, then each hour is about 41.7 years, so half of that would be a little over 20 years.” It made sense at the time and even now still does, but I think trying to pin down a date when everything is going to start to go wrong is spending our energies in the wrong way. Interestingly, the IM notes “Zephaniah described a similar period of silence that preceded the ancient destruction of Judah. The Lord’s judgment and intervention are described as times when the Lord does not keep silent.” Let’s just get a couple of my reservations out of the way at the beginning. First, I struggle to accept that our global society is more wicked than any other time since the flood. Looking at the Greek empire, Persians, Romans, all of these were brutal and violent, conquering and enslaving. I think compared to all the civilizations throughout human history, we are at least not worse than any of them. The second thing I struggle with is that there are the “righteous” who are the ones who have accepted the gospel and made and keep covenants with God, then the implication is that everyone else is wicked. This is hard to accept because I believe the vast majority of people are good and just want to make a living and be with their family. So when the “destruction of the wicked” is discussed, it seems to be referring to those who are simply not members of the Church, which can be for any number of reasons, none of which are their fault. 8:2-5 - At the end of the half hour of silence, John sees “seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.” An eighth angel comes to stand before the altar “having a golden censer” and he had “much incense” to offer “with the prayers of all saints” upon the altar. This incense is burned into fiery chunks which the angel takes off the altar and “cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.” That’s a pretty intense visual and certainly there must be some sort of symbolism of the prayers of the righteous being used to destroy the wicked. That’s interesting, I’ll have to think about that. 8:6-7 - In D&C 77, there is a back and forth question and answer about the book of Revelation meaning and the Lord, and concerning the sounding of the seven trumpets by the seven different angels, the Lord tells us “the sounding of the trumpets of the seven angels are the preparing and finishing of his work, in the beginning of the seventh thousand years- the preparing of the way before the time of his coming.” It’s interesting to consider that the destruction of the wicked is necessary before Jesus can return again, let me think about why that is. I understand the reason why the wicked can’t be there during the millennium, but do they have to be destroyed in such a violent and consequential manner? Can’t they all just have heart attacks a few days before he shows up or something? Maybe this is part of Satan’s purpose, to do every single thing that he can to overturn God’s work, and that includes all this crazy stuff. The first angel blows his trumpet “and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.” There are many different ways this could be accomplished. This verse makes it seem like the trees and grass burning up are the consequence of the hail, fire, blood stuff, but it might be possible that they are just occurring at the same time, prompted by the first trumpet blow. There’s an explanation in the IM that helps us connect the world we know to what John is seeing. It says, “John used images familiar to him to describe war and destruction in the last days.” The IM quotes Bruce R. McConkie as expanding, “John here seeks to describe a war fought with weapons and under circumstances entirely foreign to any experience of his own or of the people of that day. Joel, subject to the same limitations of descriptive ability, attempted to portray the same scenes in (the words found in Joel 2:1-11). It is not improbably that these ancient prophets were seeing such things as men wearing or protected by strong armor; as troops of cavalry and companies of tanks and flame throwers; as airplanes and airborne missiles which explode, fire shells and drop bombs; and even other weapons yet to be devised in an age when warfare is the desire and love of wicked men.” With that in mind, hail and fire mingled with blood could be artillery rounds, regular gun fire, anything really. As far as 1/3 of the trees dying, that might be caused by the rapid deforestation of pretty much anywhere in the whole world and the drying up of all green grass might be drought. 8:8-9 - The second angel sounds his trump “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 1/3 of the sea animals die, and 1/3 of the ships were destroyed. I think this one is incredibly pertinent to our time because of the horrible things happening in our oceans right now. What if, instead of meaning actual blood, those words just mean death, 1/3 of the ocean dies, and as far as I know, we are way past the 1/3 part and are well on our way to completely destroying every living thing in the ocean. The burning fire mountain could be anything from a volcano erupting, which happens, or a fire in the great garbage patch, or a fire in the water that’s fueled by an oil spill or a gas line break. The 1/3 of ships lost could be the incredible amount of left over fishing gear that is left in the ocean by the large fishing conglomerates from China mostly, but other countries too. 8:10-11 – The third angels sounds his trumpet and a great star called “Wormwood” falls from heaven, “burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of water,” and many people died from drinking this water “because they were made bitter.” I’m sure the people didn’t die because the water tasted bad, but surely because it was poisoned. The IM notes that the word “Wormwood was a plant with an extremely bitter taste.” Again, surely we aren’t talking about simply a bad taste, but poison. A great star falling from the sky and poisoning the water, that could be nuclear fall out, Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc. It could be factories with their fiery towers dumping toxic waste into the drinking water or ground which soaks into the water table, or general pollution, chemical spills, factory explosions, etc. 8:12-13 - The fourth angel sounds his trumpet and 1/3 of the sun, moon, and stars are “darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.” Maybe it’s just something I haven’t connected before but back in John’s day, there were probably thousands of stars seen every single night, whereas now because of light pollution, etc. I have to go hours out of town in order to see several stars. If John were to come to our day, it very well many appear to him that a third of the stars “were smitten” because we couldn’t see them. I’m from Los Angeles so there were many days when the sunlight was significantly diminished because of the smog, and the same with the moon, smog and light pollution. I can only imagine how powerful the light from the sun, moon, and stars were anciently in John’s day, and how compared to ours, yeah, I could see him describing it as being a third smitten. Apparently a different angel is “flying through the midst of heaven,” warning the people of earth of the awfulness of the other 3 trumpets. It seems like the first four trumpets were less specific “signs” of the time, less conspicuous, more vague. I just described how every single one of them could have happened already and none of us would have been the wiser, we would have just assumed it was how the world is now. But I think this is where the “inconvenience” wears off and the real horror starts overcoming the earth. Another thought that I just had was the imagery of an angel of God blowing a trumpet and actively instigating blood and horror on the earth. I think that for some reason all this must be allowed to happen, but it surely isn’t God who is making it so. This is 100% Satan’s doing, but for some reason God is allowing us to think that it’s Him. Jesus as master psychologist.