Copyright © 2024 Michael A. Brown
Readings:
Revelation 11:15 – 14:20 and 17:7-14
The
third and final woe
The blowing of the seventh trumpet
introduces us to the third woe, which is the culmination of the previous
two. This third woe describes the events
of the second half of Daniel’s seventieth week, a period of time that is also
commonly known as the Great Tribulation.
So, in terms of the events it describes and of its length in time (3½
years), we know that this seventh trumpet/third woe is certainly
chronologically subsequent to the sixth trumpet/second woe.
We
are told several times in the word of God that the Great Tribulation will last
for ‘a time, times and half a time,’ i.e. 3½ years, or 42 months, or 1,260 days
(Dan. 7:25,12:7; Rev. 11:2,12:6,13:5).
However, we should distinguish this from the period of 1,260 days (the
same length of time) which was Part C of the sixth trumpet, otherwise known as
the first half of the seventieth week and which we looked at in the previous
chapter (Rev. 11:3). These two periods
of time, although they are the same length, are the two chronologically
consecutive, and therefore different halves of the seventieth week.
So
one simple, but important point that should be made here is that the Great
Tribulation lasts for only 3½ years, not for seven years. It has become commonplace for believers to
refer to the seven-year period of Daniel’s seventieth week as ‘the
tribulation.’ Indeed, I did this myself
in the first part of this book which dealt with the rapture, for the simple
reason that this is the way in which ‘the tribulation’ is often understood by
so many people. However, for the sake of
correct understanding, it is necessary at this point to make clear exactly what
we do mean by ‘the tribulation.’
Although there will certainly be thlipsis (meaning ‘distress,’ ‘trouble’ or ‘tribulation’) in the world in the first half of the seven years, yet, to be exact, the period that should be called ‘the tribulation’ is the second half of the seven years. So it lasts for only 3½ years, and it should really be called ‘the Great Tribulation.’ It will be a time of great and widespread distress on planet earth, the worst there has ever been and the worst there will ever be (Dan. 12:1, Matt. 24:21). As we saw in the previous chapter, Daniel’s seventieth week is a week of years, and it therefore lasts for seven years altogether. So it is not the same thing as the Great Tribulation. The Great Tribulation is only the second half of Daniel’s seventieth week. This is illustrated in Figure 21.1 below:
Figure 21.1 The two halves of
Daniel’s seventieth week
The first statement in Revelation
10:6-7 below, that there will be no more delay, suggests that, in God’s
purposes, the blowing of this seventh trumpet, the final one which leads into
the period of the Great Tribulation, has in some sense been held back and that
God has been reluctant to give the world over to the reign of Antichrist and
the Great Tribulation:
‘There will be no more delay! But in the days when the seventh angel is
about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he
announced to his servants the prophets.’
(Rev. 10:6-7)
This
delay and holding back of things reflect the patience and long-suffering of
God, his yearning desire that people should repent and turn to him through
faith in Jesus. Although his call to
repentance and faith so often goes unheeded, yet still he perseveres for a time
with blind, fallen humanity even in their wilful rebellion against him, in the
hope that at least some may repent and be saved eternally. He wants people to be saved, not to be
lost! He knows all too well what the
dreadful alternative to his salvation is, and where rebellious humanity will
inevitably end up in eternity without Christ (2 Peter 3:3-10).
However,
there will come a time when there will be no more holding back of judgement and
wrath, no more delay out of patience and long-suffering. Just as he did in Noah’s day and also in
Lot’s day, God will ultimately draw a line in the sand and say enough is
enough, and he will finally give the world over to the unavoidable consequences
of her sin: the reign of Antichrist and the Great Tribulation. And so the mystery of God will be
accomplished and brought to its conclusion.
This
period of the Great Tribulation will actually be relatively short. It will last only 3½ years. However, as I said above, it will be the time
of the greatest distress ever experienced by humankind on planet earth. Indeed, if the Lord had not limited this
period, then Jesus said that simply no-one anywhere would survive it. That’s how bad it will be!
‘There will be a time of distress
such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then.’
(Dan. 12:1)
‘For then there will be great distress,
unequalled from the beginning of the world until now – and never to be equalled
again. If those days had not been cut
short, no-one would survive...’ (Matt.
24:21-22)
In
addition to the points that are described in the sections below, and
contemporaneously with them, as the time of the Great Tribulation wears on
there will be an ever-increasing regularity and intensity of the birth pains
described in Matthew 24:4-8. This time
of the Great Tribulation will culminate in the outpouring of the seven bowls of
God’s wrath, and these will then be followed by the Second Advent of Christ.
Will
the bride of Christ go through the Great Tribulation?
Those who believe in a
post-tribulation rapture believe that the bride of Christ will go through the
Great Tribulation. One of the ways in
which they try to justify this wrong belief is by saying that, because believers
are not exempt from the normal pressures and distresses of life (including
times of persecution), then why would they be exempt from going through the
Great Tribulation? After all, the same
Greek word thlipsis which is often used in the New Testament to describe
times of distress, pressure or trouble is also used in Matthew 24:21 to
describe the Great Tribulation.
However,
what they fail to understand is just how different the Great Tribulation will
be. It will be the worst time of
distress by far that planet earth has ever experienced, in which the restraint
on evil will have been removed, and in which God’s wrath will be poured out on
a wilful, unrepentant humanity. Indeed,
as I stated above, if it were not for the fact that those days will be cut
short, not a single human being would survive it (Matt. 24:22)! The sections below (and the following
chapter) describe what happens in the Great Tribulation, and they make clear
just what a unique time it will be in the history of the world.
So, no, I do not hold to that
viewpoint. As I have shown in this book,
the bride of Christ will be raptured away before Antichrist arises. Antichrist cannot arise until after the
rapture has taken place.
Therefore, faithful believers in the here and now do not have to live in
fear and anxiety about going through the Great Tribulation, or about facing the
pressure of being forced to take the mark of the Beast. This is simply because the bride of Christ
will be gone when the time of Antichrist, the Great Tribulation and the mark
comes. These are all end-time
expressions of the wrath of God, and Jesus will rescue us from that coming
wrath (1 Thess. 1:10).
The
events and prophetic allusions of the seventh trumpet
Commentators agree that the Great
Tribulation (and therefore the seventh trumpet) continues on until the Second
Advent, and that the seven bowls of wrath occur as the latter part of this
period. So the natural and proper
endpoint of the Great Tribulation is at Revelation 19:10, since the following
verse begins to describe the Second Advent of Christ. However, some commentators separate out the
seven bowls of wrath and consider these separately from the earlier events of
the seventh trumpet. This then marks a
break at Revelation 14:20. Yet other commentators include the bowls of wrath
and therefore place the end of the Great Tribulation at Revelation 16:21, but
they leave out the section which then follows (Rev. 17:1 – 19:10).
In
this chapter, I will use Revelation 14:20 as a useful break point in my
descriptions of the seventh trumpet, because, as I say further below, I will be
considering the seven bowls of wrath separately in the next chapter, even
though they are very much part of the seventh trumpet and the Great
Tribulation. However, I will also be
referring to the relevant parts of Revelation ch.17 in what follows.
So,
in Revelation 11:15 – 14:20, we are presented with a collection of descriptive
passages and prophetic allusions which relate to the various characters,
dimensions and events of the period of the Great Tribulation. When they play out on earth in the future,
some of these things will be happening pretty much at the same time, so the
order in which these descriptions and allusions are presented to us in
Scripture is not necessarily chronological.
I have separated them out here under different headings for ease of
understanding. The reader needs to take
this into account while reading through this chapter.
The
abomination that causes desolation
As I said towards the end of the
previous chapter, the setting-up in the temple in Jerusalem of the ‘abomination
that causes desolation’ is the sign that Antichrist’s end-times persecution of
the Jews and the final holocaust is about to begin. Jesus himself was quite specific about
this. When Antichrist proclaims himself
in the temple to be God and his image is set up, this abomination will be the
sign that the time has come for believing Jews to get out of Judea just as soon
as they can, because the time of the Great Tribulation with all its distress is
about to begin:
‘So when you see standing in the
holy place “the abomination that causes desolation”, spoken of through Daniel
the prophet – let the reader understand – then let those who are in Judea flee
to the mountains. Let no-one on the roof
of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no-one in the field go back to get his
cloak. How dreadful it will be in those
days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!
Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the
Sabbath. For then there will be great
distress, unequalled from the beginning of the world until now – and never to
be equalled again.’ (Matt. 24:15-21)
So,
although technically the abomination is set up between the two halves of the
seventieth week, and therefore just prior to the blowing of the seventh trumpet
in heaven, it is appropriate to mention it again here at the beginning of this
chapter. The description of the
persecution of the Jews and the attempted final holocaust follows on further
below.
Satan
is hurled down to earth
One
of the most terrifying aspects of the reign of Antichrist and the time of the
Great Tribulation, but one that is not perhaps always brought out by
commentators, is the fact that Satan (the ancient serpent and the dragon),
after the failure of his attempt to war against the kingdom of God in the
heavenlies, will be cast out and hurled down to earth along with one-third of
the angels.[1] These are the fallen angels that have
followed Satan in his age-old rebellion against God:
‘The great dragon was hurled down –
that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world
astray. He was hurled to the earth, and
his angels with him… His tail swept a
third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth… For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses
them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.’
(Rev. 12:9,4,10)
Scripture
emphasises that this will be a terrible woe for humankind:
‘But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!’
(Rev. 12:12)
The
fraction ‘a third’ which is used in Revelation 12:4 above, speaks again of
judgement, and it implies that God’s judgement is coming against the angelic
realm too during the Great Tribulation, not simply against the physical, human
realm.
By
this stage of history, Satan will be very much aware that his time is short,
and that it will not be long before he is chained up and thrown into the Abyss
for a thousand years (Rev. 20:1-3). He
knows that he cannot avoid this fate and that things are closing in on
him. So, when he and his angels are cast
down to earth at the beginning of the Great Tribulation, they will gather
around Antichrist and they will work to develop and strengthen his worldwide
system in its defiance against God.
Through this, in his desperation and uncontrollable rage, Satan will try
to bring as much destruction and do as much damage as possible to people on
planet earth, and in particular to Israel and the Jewish people (see the
relevant section further below), in order to deprive the Lord Jesus of his
earthly inheritance, if this were possible:
‘He is filled with fury, because he
knows that his time is short… Then the
dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of
her offspring – those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of
Jesus.’ (Rev. 12:12,17)
This
time of the Great Tribulation will therefore be ‘hell on earth,’ quite
literally. Not only will it be a time of
the outpouring of God’s wrath, it will also, subsumed under this, be the time
of Satan’s final destructive rage of hatred against humanity. So, as if the ‘steal, kill and destroy’
activities of the demonic realm were not enough for human beings on planet
earth, there will also be the fallen angelic realm to face, and Satan himself
will be let loose to do his diabolical worst (cf. Job chs.1-2).
Copyright
Notice
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
[1] Some commentators
believe that the hurling down of Satan from heaven described in Revelation
ch.12 refers to his original rebellion against God (cf. Ezek. 28:14–17). However, prior to the time of the seventh
trumpet, Satan still has access to the throne of God, where he accuses
believers (cf. Job 1:6–11, Zech. 3:1-2).
In Revelation ch.12, Satan and his fallen angels are hurled down to the
earth, so that he no longer has access to heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment