Copyright © 2024 Michael A. Brown
So
how should we interpret the seven trumpets?
A
basic principle of Bible interpretation is that the inspired Scriptures are
relevant to every generation that reads and studies them (2 Tim. 3:16-17). When first generation believers in the seven
churches received and read through the book of Revelation, they would have
immediately recognised the clear relevance to their lives of the seven
letters. They would undoubtedly have
recognised Rome as the city set on seven hills (Rev. 17:9,18), and Roman
emperors such as Nero and Domitian as human figureheads of the Beast system of
Revelation ch.13 which persecutes believers.
And they would no doubt have drawn strong encouragement from the fact
that Satan is ultimately conquered, and that Jesus wins over sin and evil.
Later
on, in medieval times, Protestant believers often interpreted the idolatrous
Roman Catholic system of their own day to be the Beast, and again saw Rome as
the city set on seven hills.
These
simple examples illustrate briefly the fact that every generation of believers,
including our own, has looked at the book of Revelation and attempted to find
figurative, historical or symbolic fulfilments of these Scriptures that they
felt were relevant to their own day, because all of Scripture is
prophetically relevant to every generation. Indeed, the variety of different
interpretations which have been produced can seem bewildering and confusing to
any believer studying Revelation seriously for the first time. It was such confusion that put me off for
many years from studying this book in any real depth. If there are so many different
interpretations, I thought, then how can I be sure that any ideas or thoughts
that I have about Revelation are anywhere near correct?!
The
Idealist approach to interpreting Revelation emphasises the recurring
themes and principles of the book. So,
for example, evil is seen as a reality in this world, and it often underpins
the power structures that humans build up.
However, Christ ultimately wins over evil, and sin is judged. Also, God’s people will suffer at times for
their faith, but God is with them in their time of suffering, so in the end
faith triumphs. And so on…
Such
general themes and principles are recognised, agreed on and embraced by
everyone who studies Revelation.
However, because this approach tends to treat much of the book in a
non-literal, symbolic or allegorical way as ‘myth’ (in a literary sense), it
has nothing to contribute to a study which seeks to draw out a concrete
interpretation of the trumpets which is relevant to the end-times, such as I am
attempting to do in this chapter.
Another
interpretive approach, the Historicist, sees the book of Revelation as
being fulfilled through history since the ascension of Christ. It is often called the ‘chart of history’
approach, and it was common among evangelical Protestant commentators from the
time of the Reformation until the twentieth century. It saw much of the language in Revelation as
symbolic which it then attempted to interpret figuratively as historical
persons or events. However, a great
weakness with this approach is that it had to forcibly integrate historical
events with the text. So the seven
letters were directly relevant to the first-century churches they were
addressed to. The seven seals were then
fulfilled in the period up to around the fourth century AD. The first four trumpets were fulfilled as the
pagan hordes attacked Western Christendom as the Western Roman Empire fell. The fifth and sixth trumpets were fulfilled
as the Islamic and Ottoman armies overcame Eastern Christendom when the
Byzantine Empire fell. The
Antichrist/Beast was the Papacy of the medieval Roman Catholic Church.
However,
again, when it comes to the purpose of this present chapter, the Historicist
approach is redundant, simply because it believes that the trumpets were
fulfilled before the fifteenth century AD.
It leaves no room for an interpretation of them which is relevant to the
end-times, and this therefore renders it essentially irrelevant to this study.[1]
There
is another common approach to Revelation that interprets the trumpets
symbolically as acts of divine judgement through history since Christ’s
ascension. I would accept that there is
weight in this position, in that any act of judgement by God in history in
terms of a natural disaster is certainly a wake-up call to the world, that
people need to understand the fragility and brevity of life, and hence need to
repent and seek to be right with God.
This is true.
For
example, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe of April 1986 in Ukraine is held by
some commentators to be a symbolic fulfilment of the third trumpet, debatably
so, because the Ukrainian word for ‘wormwood’ is chornobyl.
Apart
from the number of people who died in the reactor explosion, and those who died
of radiation poisoning as a result of attempting to put out the fires, a huge
cloud of highly toxic radioactive dust and particles was quickly spread by
winds high up in the earth's atmosphere throughout Byelorusia, Ukraine, parts
of Russia, the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, and parts of Western Europe. This poisoned the land, vegetation, and
rivers over an enormous geographical area where the dust eventually fell.
Over
the next decade or so, the worst-hit country, Byelorusia, saw thousands of
people die from various forms of cancer and thousands of babies born with
serious physical birth defects, and it is still dealing with the ongoing
consequences of this disaster.
What
of the 9.1 Tōhoku earthquake off the coast of Japan in March 2011, which caused
a massive tsunami which killed around 20,000 people and devastated many towns
along the coast of N.E. Japan, as well as causing the Fukushima nuclear
disaster, the ongoing consequences of which are still being dealt with?
And
what of the unprecedented, enormous and terrifying wildfires in Australia in
2019-2020, which killed several hundred people, destroyed thousands of homes
and buildings, burned untold hectares of forest and land, and killed billions
of animals, destroying their natural habitat?
Although
these disasters – and we could all undoubtedly list many others! – were not
fulfilments of the end-time trumpets of Revelation ch.8 (because these happen
after the rapture), yet were they not figurative trumpet blasts which were
deeply sobering wake-up calls for people to recognise the fragility and brevity
of life on earth, and to get themselves right with God while they can? I believe they were.
However,
I would say that, regardless of how the trumpets may have been fulfilled
symbolically through history, such a symbolic interpretation is insufficient in
terms of finding what is the actual eschatological, post-rapture fulfilment of
the trumpets.[2] The ultimate outworking of the meaning
of the trumpets in the experience of life on this planet is fulfilled after the
rapture, and it is not symbolic.
So
the Futurist approach to interpreting Revelation is really the only one that
carries any meaningful weight for what I am discussing in this chapter. The Moderate Futurist approach allows us to
draw prophetic parallels with historic events, and it certainly sees the
prophetic relevance of the seven letters for today’s Church, and yet it also
sees the part of Revelation from around chapter seven onwards as being in the
future, in the post-rapture period.
Therefore, it seeks to identify the specific eschatological fulfilment
of the seven trumpets in the period after the rapture. It is then, after the rapture, and only
then, that the trumpets will find their actual and ultimate fulfilment.
So the question that I am trying to dig away at in this chapter is this: regardless of how the book of Revelation may have been interpreted down through history, and regardless of how much partial truth there may or may not have been in such interpretations, how will these Scriptures play out and be fulfilled in the end-times? Specifically, therefore, how will the trumpets be fulfilled in the time after the rapture as the world enters these judgements and goes into the Great Tribulation? This is a crucial question, because it is after the rapture that they will receive their ultimate fulfilment. And this is the question that we must be bold enough to ask and to seek to answer in a concrete way, because, if we are living as close to the fulfilment of these end-time events as I believe we are, then it is one of the most practical and relevant questions that we can ask of these Scriptures in our own generation. Therefore, the only meaningful way in which we can find an answer to this question is to interpret Revelation using a Futurist approach, and I seek to provide an answer to this question in the following chapters.
[1] I do not address
the Preterist interpretation in this section. This is for the simple reason that it argues
that, apart from its last three chapters, the book of Revelation was all
fulfilled before 70 AD. Therefore, it is
redundant to this study. This erroneous
interpretation was developed in the early 1600s by a Jesuit priest specifically
in response to the Historicist approach of the Protestant Reformers, as
part of the Counter-Reformation.
[2] One such symbolic
method of interpreting Revelation is the so-called Prophetic Parallelism
approach advocated by William Hendriksen in his well-known commentary More
Than Conquerors. His amillennial
approach splits the book of Revelation up into seven parts each of which,
according to him, give us a symbolic overview of the whole period from the
ascension of Christ to his Second Advent (the interadventual period). So these seven parts run concurrently through
history.
Therefore,
effectively, what Revelation gives us is an overview of the whole
interadventual period seen from seven different perspectives at the same time,
much as a film crew could film an event from several different positions at the
same time. This would give several
different perspectives on the same event, which taken together would form one
complete view of the whole event. So
Hendriksen interprets the seals as giving a symbolic overview of this whole
period seen from one perspective, then the trumpets as seeing the same period
from another symbolic perspective, and then similarly with the bowls.
However, this
amillennial approach wrongly conflates the sixth seal with the Second Advent
and the day of judgement, rather than seeing the sixth seal as a
pre-tribulation event which happens several years prior to the Second Advent
and at which the rapture occurs.
Furthermore, although Hendriksen emphasises the trumpets as having
general symbolic significance as divine judgements and warnings through
history, yet his approach has nothing to contribute to a study of how the
trumpets play out specifically in the end-time period following the rapture,
simply because, for him, there is no such thing as a pre-tribulation rapture at
all.
No comments:
Post a Comment