The Vulture's Proclamation Text: Revelation 8:13
Introduction: The Gathering Storm
When we come to the book of Revelation, we must come to it with our Bibles open and our wits about us. For too long, this magnificent book has been the playground of newspaper exegetes and wild-eyed sensationalists, who treat it like a crystal ball for predicting the end of the world, usually scheduled for sometime next Tuesday. They have ripped it from its historical and covenantal context, turning it into a bizarre collage of helicopter gunships, EU barcodes, and whatever geopolitical boogeyman is currently trending.
But the book of Revelation was not written to us, first. It was written to seven churches in Asia Minor in the first century, and it was written about things that were, as John says repeatedly, "about to take place." The central, earth-shattering event on the horizon was not something in our future, but something in theirs. It was the final, cataclysmic end of the old covenant world, climaxing in the utter destruction of Jerusalem and her Temple in A.D. 70. Revelation is a book about the un-creation of apostate Israel and the enthronement of Jesus Christ as the king of a new creation, the Church.
The trumpet judgments we have been examining are God's covenant lawsuit sanctions being executed upon the land, the "earth" of Old Covenant Israel. The first four trumpets have brought about ecological and cosmic collapse, striking the foundational elements of their world: the land, the sea, the fresh waters, and the heavens. This is de-creation language, a systematic dismantling of the world promised to Israel, now being revoked because of her apostasy. But before the final, most intense judgments fall, heaven pauses. There is a dramatic interlude, a moment for the camera to zoom in on a terrible herald, a celestial town crier with a grim message. This is not a pause for mercy in the sense of relenting, but a pause for emphasis. God is about to turn up the heat, and He wants everyone to know it.
This verse serves as a great, clanging bell, announcing a shift in the intensity of the judgments. The first four were terrible, but they were, in a sense, the preliminary bombardments. Now, the direct assault is about to begin. What follows are not just plagues, but woes. This is judgment with a capital J.
The Text
Then I looked, and I heard an eagle flying in midheaven, saying with a loud voice, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!"
(Revelation 8:13 LSB)
The Herald of Doom (v. 13a)
We begin with the messenger John sees and hears:
"Then I looked, and I heard an eagle flying in midheaven, saying with a loud voice..." (Revelation 8:13a)
John's attention is arrested by a solitary eagle. Some manuscripts say "angel," but "eagle" is the better reading and fits the context far more powerfully. In Scripture, the eagle is not primarily a symbol of majestic freedom, as it is in our modern, patriotic imagination. In the Old Testament, the eagle is a bird of prey, a swift and terrifying agent of divine judgment. God warned Israel in the covenant curses of Deuteronomy that if they were unfaithful, He would bring a nation against them "from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down" (Deut. 28:49). The prophet Hosea declared, "Put the trumpet to your lips! Like an eagle the enemy comes against the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed My covenant and rebelled against My law" (Hosea 8:1).
This is not a bald eagle; this is a vulture. Jesus Himself uses this imagery in the Olivet Discourse, the miniature Revelation that provides the key to the whole book. He says, "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather" (Matt. 24:28). And what is the corpse? It is the spiritually dead, apostate body of Old Covenant Israel, whose generation had rejected and crucified their Messiah. The Roman armies, whose standard was the aquila, the eagle, were the historical vultures that God sent to pick that carcass clean in the years leading up to A.D. 70.
This eagle is flying in "midheaven," at the zenith, where it can be seen and heard by all. Its proclamation is not a whisper; it is a "loud voice." This is a public declaration of war. God is not doing this in a corner. The judgment on Jerusalem was to be a world-historical event, a spectacle for all nations to see the consequence of covenant-breaking. The fall of the holy city was the ultimate vindication of Jesus' claims and the definitive sign that the kingdom of God had been transferred from national Israel to the international Church.
The Triple Woe (v. 13b)
The eagle's message is stark and repetitive.
"...Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth..." (Revelation 8:13b LSB)
The threefold repetition, "Woe, woe, woe," is for terrible emphasis. This is the superlative of doom. Each "woe" corresponds to one of the remaining three trumpet judgments. The fifth trumpet is the first woe (Rev. 9:12), the sixth trumpet is the second woe (Rev. 11:14), and the seventh trumpet unleashes the third woe, which encompasses the seven bowls of God's wrath. The judgments are about to become more direct, more demonic, and more deadly.
And who is the target? "Those who dwell on the earth." Now, we must be careful here. This is not a reference to every human being on planet earth. In the covenantal language of Revelation, "the earth" (he ge) is frequently a technical term for the land of Israel, the promised land that was now under a curse. "Those who dwell on the earth" are the covenant-breakers, the inhabitants of Judea who had rejected their king. They are the ones who said of Jesus, "His blood be on us and on our children!" (Matt. 27:25). God is about to take them at their word.
These are the people who are "of the earth, earthy." Their hearts, their treasures, their hopes are all invested in the earthly Jerusalem, the city that had become a spiritual Sodom and Egypt (Rev. 11:8). They are contrasted throughout the book with those who dwell in heaven, whose citizenship is not of this world. This is a targeted judgment, a precise and focused act of covenantal justice against those who had committed spiritual adultery and murdered the prophets, culminating in the murder of God's own Son.
The Impending Trumpets (v. 13c)
The eagle concludes by identifying the source of these coming woes.
"...because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!" (Genesis 8:13c LSB)
The reason for this triple woe is the sounding of the final three trumpets. The fifth trumpet will unleash a demonic horde of locusts from the abyss, a tormenting spiritual plague (Rev. 9:1-11). The sixth trumpet will unleash a demonic army from the Euphrates, a killing plague that annihilates a third of mankind (Rev. 9:13-19). These are not just natural disasters; this is hell being given a limited release. The judgment is escalating from the ecological to the demonic. The apostate nation had aligned itself with Satan in rejecting Christ, and so God judges them by handing them over to the very powers they implicitly chose.
This is a terrifying principle of divine justice. When a people or a nation turns its back on God, He does not just leave them alone. He gives them what they want, good and hard. They want to live without God? He will withdraw His restraining grace and let them experience the full implications of their choice. They flirt with demonic lies? He will send them strong delusion. The woes that are coming upon Jerusalem are the bitter harvest of seeds she herself had sown over generations of rebellion.
Conclusion: The Vulture and the Cross
So what are we to do with this terrifying image of a vulture crying woe over a doomed land? First, we must see in it the absolute seriousness of God's covenant. God keeps His promises, all of them. This includes His promises of blessing for obedience and His promises of curses for rebellion. The destruction of Jerusalem is the most graphic display in history of the fact that God is not to be trifled with. If God did not spare the natural branches, let us not be arrogant, but fear (Rom. 11:20-21).
Second, we must recognize the nature of the world we live in. We live in the age after this judgment. The old covenant world has been dismantled. The earthly temple is gone, the sacrificial system is obsolete, and the kingdom has been given to a people producing its fruits. We are that people. We now are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and our lives are the spiritual sacrifices. The new Jerusalem has come down from heaven and is found wherever the people of God gather in the name of Jesus.
But the principle remains. The warning of the eagle still echoes. For just as there was an "earth" of the old covenant, so too can men create their own little plots of earth to dwell in. Any person, any church, any nation that builds its identity on something other than Jesus Christ is an "earth-dweller." Anyone who clings to the things of this world, who rejects the lordship of Christ, is setting themselves up for a woe. The vultures are always circling, waiting for a corpse. The only way to avoid becoming a corpse is to be joined to the one who is life itself.
The ultimate woe fell not on Jerusalem, but on Jesus Christ at the cross. He became a curse for us. He absorbed the full, undiluted trumpet blast of God's wrath against our sin. He endured the ultimate woe so that all who flee to Him could be spared. The eagle's cry is a terrifying warning to all who remain on the earth, who trust in their own righteousness or in the stability of their own man-made kingdoms. But for those who have taken refuge in the cross, it is a stark reminder of the judgment we have been spared, and a call to live as citizens of heaven, not as dwellers on the earth.