The Sounding of Judgment Text: Revelation 8:6
Introduction: Heaven's Declaration of War
The book of Revelation is not a crystal ball for predicting the headlines of the 21st century. It is not a secret decoder ring for identifying a European antichrist or calculating the date of a secret rapture. To treat it that way is to abuse it, to wrench it out of its native soil and turn it into a playground for sensationalism and eschatological panic. This book was written to first-century Christians who were facing the very real teeth of persecution. It was written to give them courage, to show them that their crucified and risen Lord was ruling from Heaven, and that His judgments were righteous, timely, and certain.
We have come to the hinge point between the seven seals and the seven trumpets. The seventh seal was opened, and what did we find? Not a cacophony of chaos, but a profound and weighty silence in Heaven. This was the silence of the holy place, the silence of a courtroom before the verdict is read, the silence of an army before the charge is sounded. It was the deep breath before the plunge. And as we saw, the prayers of the saints, particularly the martyred saints under the altar crying "How long, O Lord?", were mixed with incense on the golden altar and cast down to the earth as fire. This is the key. The judgments that are about to unfold are not random acts of divine petulance. They are the direct, covenantal answer to the prayers of His persecuted people.
God is answering the prayers of the saints who suffered under apostate, first-century Jerusalem. The trumpets are God's declaration of war against the city that had rejected and killed His Son and was now filling up the measure of its guilt by persecuting His Church. The trumpets are the sounds of covenant lawsuit. They are the Jericho trumpets, signaling that the walls of the old, defunct covenant order are about to come crashing down. So when we read this verse, we are not looking to the future; we are looking back at the past fulfillment of God's righteous judgment against those who broke His covenant.
The Text
And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them.
(Revelation 8:6 LSB)
The Heavenly Preparation
Let us break this down. We have seven angels, seven trumpets, and a preparation to sound them.
"And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets..." (Revelation 8:6a)
First, the agents of this judgment are angels. This is crucial. This is not a political process, it is not a natural disaster in the secular sense, and it is not the random ebb and flow of history. This is a direct, top-down, heavenly operation. God is sovereignly dispatching His ministers to execute His will upon the earth. The number seven, as we have seen repeatedly in Revelation, is the number of covenantal perfection and completion. This is not a partial or haphazard judgment. This is a full and final settlement of accounts with the Jerusalem that had become a harlot.
And what are their instruments? Trumpets. In the Old Testament, trumpets were used for several key purposes. They were used to call the assembly of Israel to worship or to move out (Num. 10:2). They were used to announce the beginning of festivals and sabbaths (Lev. 23:24). And, most significantly for our context, they were used as a call to war, an alarm that judgment was coming (Jer. 4:19; Amos 3:6). When the trumpet sounded in a city, the people were to be afraid, because it meant the Lord was visiting them in judgment. Think of the siege of Jericho. Seven priests with seven trumpets marched around the city, and on the seventh day, they blew the trumpets and the walls collapsed (Joshua 6). John's vision is deliberately evoking this history. The trumpets are a declaration of holy war against a city that has been devoted to destruction.
The Readiness for Judgment
The verse concludes with their posture.
"...prepared themselves to sound them." (Revelation 8:6b)
There is a solemnity here, a deliberate readiness. This is not a hasty or chaotic reaction. This is the measured, orderly, and inexorable execution of a divine decree. The fire from the altar has been cast to the earth. The prayers of the martyrs have been heard and answered. The time for waiting, the "little season" mentioned under the fifth seal, is over. The moment for action has arrived.
This preparation signifies the certainty of what is to come. When God's angels prepare to act, they act. There is no force in heaven or on earth that can stop them. The judgments that are about to fall upon the land, the sea, the rivers, and the sky are not accidents. They are appointments. They are the systematic dismantling of the world of apostate Judaism, which had become like Egypt in its rebellion. Just as God sent plagues upon Egypt, He now sends de-creation plagues upon the land of Israel as a sign of His covenantal divorce. The sounding of these trumpets is the beginning of the end for the temple, for the sacrificial system, and for the entire old covenant administration which was, in its rebellion, standing in the way of the progress of the gospel.
This was the great tribulation that Jesus foretold in Matthew 24, a time of judgment so severe that nothing like it had been seen before, nor would be again. And it was directed at "this generation," the generation that crucified the Messiah. The trumpets are the historical unfolding of that judgment, culminating in the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 by the Roman armies, who were unwittingly the instrument of God's wrath, His de-creation army.
Application for a Distant Generation
So what does this mean for us, two thousand years removed from the events? If this was all fulfilled in the first century, is it just a history lesson? Not at all. The principles of God's covenant dealings are perennial.
First, we must learn to see history as God sees it. History is not a meaningless cycle of events. It is a story, and God is the author. The central event of that story is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All of history before that event was leading up to it, and all of history since is the outworking of its implications. The destruction of Jerusalem was a monumental event because it was the public vindication of Jesus' enthronement. It was God's visible "Amen" to Christ's finished work. It demonstrated that the kingdom of God had been transferred from national Israel to the international Church, the new Israel of God.
Second, we learn the power of the prayers of the saints. Do not think your prayers are unheard or ineffective. The prayers of a handful of persecuted Christians in the first century brought down an entire religious and political order. The fire on the altar is still burning. When the church cries out to God for justice against the proud and the wicked systems of our own day, whether it be the abortion industry or the godless secular state, we should know that those prayers ascend to God. And in His time, He will answer with fire.
Third, we are reminded that God hates covenant unfaithfulness. The severest judgments in Scripture are reserved for God's own people when they apostatize. Jerusalem was judged so harshly not because it was pagan, but because it was privileged. It had the law, the prophets, the covenants, and the Messiah, and it rejected them all. This is a sober warning to the Church in every age. If we, who have been grafted into the olive tree, become proud and unfaithful, God will not spare us either (Romans 11:21). Judgment begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). We must therefore walk in faithfulness, clinging to Christ alone, lest we also become a synagogue of Satan and face the sounding of the trumpets.
Finally, we take heart. The God who answered the prayers of the martyrs and vindicated His Son in the first century is the same God we serve today. He is on the throne. His angels are prepared to act on His behalf. The kingdoms of this world are being shaken so that the unshakable kingdom of our Lord may advance. Therefore, let us not be like the world, which trembles in fear at the shaking. Let us have grace, and serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, knowing that our God is a consuming fire, and that His kingdom cannot be moved.