The Book of Revelation Decodedનમૂનો

"When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them." – Revelation 8:1-2

Revelation 8 and 9 depict most of the seven trumpets, which will be blown from heaven by seven angels. Their piercing blasts will sound the alarm of further judgment from God throughout the earth.

Trumpet #1: Hail, Fire, and Blood (Revelation 8:7)

Upon the first trumpet being blown, a mixture of hail and bloody fire will fall upon the earth, completely burning up all the grass on the planet, along with one-third of the trees. In 1888, a hailstorm killed 246 people in Moradabad, India, and nearby Bareilly, marking history’s deadliest hailstorm. Considered the largest wildfire in history, the Black Friday Bushfire of 1939 burned through a staggering five million acres (seventy-eight hundred square miles) of Australia’s Victoria State, killing seventy-one people and destroying eleven hundred homes and other structures. In the United States, wildfires in California came close to beating that record in 2020, burning more than four million acres across the state. We can be assured the hail, fire, and blood falling from the sky during this first trumpet judgment will claim even more lives and cause far more destruction.

Trumpet #2: Oceanic Disaster (Revelation 8:8-9)

When a massive meteor, volcano, or fiery mountain is cast into the ocean after the second trumpet, one-third of the seas’ water will be turned to blood, killing a third of all marine life and destroying a third of the world’s ships. How exactly this will happen is a mystery; indeed, it is difficult to imagine how something falling into the ocean will logistically be able to wreck one-third of all the earth’s ships. We can only speculate what this will look like if it occurs in a literal way, and it also remains entirely possible that this calamity could happen in a spiritual sense.

But with changing ocean conditions, what is possible from a natural standpoint is largely unknown. In recent decades, the world’s oceans have been experiencing unprecedented warming, with a growing number reaching heat levels high enough not only to kill marine life and birds but also to produce cyclones and hurricanes strong enough to cause widespread devastation. As the ocean waters warm, coral reefs in the Florida Keys also have been losing their color, a phenomenon known as coral bleaching, and 95 percent of the kelp off the Northern California coast has died. Besides the oceans becoming more acidic and inhospitable to some marine life, a 2023 study found that more than half of the world’s oceans have shifted in color from blue to a greener hue, likely due to changing organisms in the water. Whether the disaster in verses 8 and 9 is physical or spiritual, those living during the tribulation will witness an unsurpassed oceanic disaster.

Trumpet #3: Toxic Water (Revelation 8:10–11)

Another falling meteor will poison the earth’s freshwater supplies upon the third trumpet, causing many people to die.

Trumpet #4: Darkening (Revelation 8:12–13)

At the sound of the fourth trumpet, the cosmos will be darkened by one-third, affecting both night and day, and thus the planet’s vegetation and crop supplies.

Trumpet #5: Demonic “Locusts” (Revelation 9:1–11)

Before we talk about the strange creatures released upon the earth at the blowing of the fifth trumpet, it is important to understand that what John saw cannot adequately be described using today’s language because what he saw was not of this world. Six times in the Book of Revelation, John uses the phrase “something like” to describe what he saw because there is nothing in this realm exactly like it. That is particularly true here when he describes the fifth trumpet’s release of one of the tribulation’s most terrifying swarms. When another massive meteor hits the earth, unimaginable creatures—a blend of locusts, scorpions, horses, lions, and humans—will come out of its crater to torment people everywhere. Life will be so miserable that even those who attempt suicide will be unsuccessful (v. 6). Those who “have the seal of God on their foreheads,” however, will be spared this demonic assault (v. 4).

Trumpet #6: Deadly Army and Plagues (Revelation 9:13–21)

At the sixth trumpet’s sounding, a third of all people on earth will be killed by a massive otherworldly army (two hundred million strong!) and horrific plagues.

Trumpet #7: Seven Angels With the Seven Bowls of Wrath (Revelation 11:15–19; 15:1–8)

Much like the seventh seal, the seventh trumpet will release the “contents” of the next category of judgments—which, in this case, is the greatest level of God’s wrath ever unleashed upon the earth. It’s definitely not good news for those still remaining, but for those who trust in the Lord, it is a completely different story (as we will soon see).