And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets. And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed. And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!—Rev. viii.
There was an earthquake when the last seal was broken. Then self-willed power having passed through its different stages, and having exhausted itself, was reaching its natural consummation. There would be a judgment. It might end and a new circle begin. But a doom is now awaiting not the world’s city, but God’s city; that which has been set as a witness to the world against its idolatries, for the dominion of the righteous King. Such a downfall, comparatively insignificant in the eyes of the rulers of the earth though not quite so insignificant to them, is nothing less to the prophet than the end of an age or dispensation. It is the greatest catastrophe that has yet befallen the universe. There is silence in Heaven in the contemplation of it.
I. “And I saw the seven angels that stood before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.”
In no part of the Apocalypse are the allusions to the Old Testament so numerous as here. You must turn to the sixth chapter of Joshua for the meaning of these trumpets: “Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel; none went out, and none came in. And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thy hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour. And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns. And the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout. And the walls of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.”
The story preserved in that sacred book which told of the conquest of Canaan by the little band of slaves that had come out of Egypt must have fixed itself strongly in the imagination of every Jewish child. A strange sense of invisible, mysterious power, which could overcome the strength of walls and the force of armed men, will have been mixed with a feeling that their fathers were a set of righteous men, favourites of Heaven, who punished the wicked and accursed people of Canaan. The rabbinical education will have done little to distinguish what was right from what was wrong in these early impressions. It will have confirmed the wonder at the events that happened in the old time into a superstition; the exultation in the glories of the one nation into pride and contempt of other nations. The Jew escaping from that education; conversing and trading with foreigners; discovering that he was inferior in outward position to them, and not better than they in inward character; suspecting that the like was true of those whom Joshua led; acquiring a respect for ordinary discipline, material strength, the resources of an empire; learning that the heathen claimed more miraculous interpositions on behalf of their ancestors than had ever been claimed for his; would be likely to distrust in his heart, if he did not scorn with his lips, the lessons which he had inherited. In that unbelief, or in a violent effort to suppress it and to crush those who gave any signs of it, a majority of Jews were probably living in the days of St. John. There were those before and since who were more truly little children than they had ever been, and that because they had put away the mere childish things of the fancy, and risen to the thought and reflection of men. They had found in the account of the fall of Jericho the witness of a God who was not more the God of their fathers than of them; who in different methods, suited to different periods, was always asserting the subjection of material power to spiritual; who was always dooming cities to perish that stood upon a false foundation, be their apparent strength what it might; who had chosen a poor Syrian tribe, not (so their old lawgiver and prophet continually assured them) for their righteousness, but as witnesses of His righteousness; to put down races which were setting laws at defiance and polluting the earth with their crimes. Surely, if it were so, He would not treat that tribe upon any different maxims from those which He had applied to the tribes of Canaan.
There were such Israelites. St. John was one of them. And no one knew better than he did what worshippers of material force, what disbelievers in spiritual might, his countrymen had grown to be. Though living away from the holy city, he was aware that it had become an accursed city, given over to strife and hatred, probably to as much fleshly wickedness as had brought down the judgment on the Canaanites, certainly to a spiritual wickedness which they had not known. Yet he needed a special revelation to convince him that the same sentence which had been executed on Jericho was to be executed on Jerusalem; that the trumpets were sounding around her; and that they were blown not by mortal priests, but by the angels which stood before God.
I take this to be the simple interpretation of this vision; that which connects it most naturally with the one immediately preceding and with the one which follows. Holding that opinion, I cannot assent to any of the more ingenious explanations of the trumpets which transfer them to a later period, or to a series of periods, even if I thought they could be thus applied more directly to Christian uses. But I have no such thought. Let us hear what these trumpets said to the Israelites; then we shall listen with purged and open ears to the sound of any that may be uttering their warnings to us.
II. “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it on the earth; and there were voices, and thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake.”
If the former words recall the ministry of the priests before Jericho, these recall the ministry of the priests in the tabernacle. That ministry transferred to the temple had been an abiding one. Jews did not merely read of it in a book, they saw it with their eyes. The altar and the sacrifice, and the incense and the daily prayers, associated themselves with the earliest thoughts of those who dwelt at Jerusalem; were probably more impressive still to those who only visited it at the solemn festivals. These too, like the historical record, must have had a twofold effect on the frequent or the occasional beholder. The acts of worship spoke of a communion between the visible and the unseen world. God was meeting men at the mercy-seat. The priest was the continual witness of the communion. But it was the worship of Jews. God had spoken to their forefathers. They had been told what He was, and how they ought to approach Him. Amazing gift! What nation had ever such a gift bestowed upon it! The growing boy was taught formally what the child had learnt with its heart. The awe of the service was changed for him into a kind of terror; that which he wanted in sympathy was supplied by appeals to his awakening pride. “The heathen know nothing of the right way of serving God; their priests are altogether wrong in the sacrifices which they offer. Their sacrifices will never be accepted.” Then must have come, in ten thousand instances, the revulsion of the mature Israelite against this indoctrination, or a cold inward indifference to it. “Why is one sacrifice better than another? Why may not their priests be as wise as ours? Why may not both be deceivers equally? How do we know that any intercourse with beings above ourselves is possible? How can we tell that they are the least affected by our propitiations? How can we tell that there are such beings at all?” And here also there was a passage through the struggles of manhood back to a truly infantine faith. “My prayers are not only worthless; they are often impossible. I cannot pray. But I want to pray. An irresistible impulse draws me to make the attempt. My sacrifices; what are they? Worse than beggarly. They seem wicked. I have no right to offer them. My mind is wrong, and I am trying to make God’s mind bend to it. And yet ought I not to make sacrifices? Ought I not to be a sacrifice? What if God is Himself moving me to pray, not against His will, but that His will may be done? What if He is stirring me to offer sacrifice, not that I may get something by it, but that I may be delivered from the greatest of all burdens—the burden of my selfishness? What if sacrifice is a surrender? What if He and not I is at last the author of the surrender? What if this was the meaning of my country’s worship? What if this was the reason why He ordained the sacrifice, why He made the atonement; why we can only come with our dead offering, confessing our sins? What if the knowledge of this truth is the great blessing of the children of Abraham, that with which we are to bless all the families of the earth?”
Those who had been led so far by an invisible teacher were ready for the revelation, mighty as it was, of the sacrifice of the Lord of man and the Son of God; the revelation of Him as saying, “Lo, I come,” not to alter thy will, but “to do thy will, O God.” But another revelation awaited them as the consequence of this: the revelation of a Judge. The prayers and sacrifices in the temple of Jerusalem had not been in vain. No incense that had ascended to heaven from any human heart had been in vain. The High Priest within the veil had presented every cry and groan to His Father. For what had these cries and groans been? That God would not judge the earth? That He would leave it to welter on in its crime and wretchedness? Such prayers may have been offered by those who knelt at Jewish or heathen altars. They were prayers for stones and not bread. They were the drink-offerings of blood—of bloody men—of which the High Priest says, “I will not offer them.” The prayers for right and justice did not avert thunders and lightnings, and an earthquake; thunders and earthquake now answered them.
When we read our Lord’s conversation with His disciples respecting the latter days, we are often tempted to strain the words from their obvious sense, and to say that they could not refer to a judgment upon that age and that city, though He says so solemnly that they did. Our disposition to trifle even with that Divine language is not without an excuse. If we assume that Jerusalem had no relation with the rest of mankind with the nations from which it had been separated, as well as with the nations which should be born when it had passed away—we cannot understand how words of such general import, pointing to distress and perplexity everywhere, should be accomplished by the downfall of a capital that had no longer any of its ancient glory, that was merely the dwelling-place of fierce rebel factions. But if that city had been the Divine centre of the old world; if there had been the witness of that Name, and that Kingdom, and that Will, by which the world had been governed, there too must be the key to its destinies. The meaning of the earthquake is not understood—its relation to the past and future is incomprehensible—till we know what it portended to the city in which David had reigned, and the Son of David had been crucified.
III. “And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.”
Everything indicates the greatness and importance of their function. It is not a city of the Canaanites which is to fall flat; it is the city which testified that the gods of the Canaanites were not the gods that ruled the earth; which testified of a King of righteousness and peace.
IV. “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire, mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.”
The book of Joshua supplied us with hints respecting the purpose of the trumpets; the book of Leviticus explained that part of the vision which had reference to the sacrifices and incense.
Here we are carried back to the plagues of Egypt, of which we were reading before Easter. This passage in Exodus occurs at once to the reader of the Apocalypse: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hands towards heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, upon man, and upon beast, and upon every herb of the field throughout the land of Egypt. So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, upon all the land of Egypt…. And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast, and the hail smote every beast of the field, and brake every tree of the field.”
This language, like that we have considered before, had been turned to a fatal use by the self-conceit of the Jew. Pharaoh and the magicians had been humbled, for the sake of his fathers. Their lawgiver was able to do rarer miracles than those who were called the wise men of Egypt had done. The laws of nature had been suspended, that their race might be delivered. The passage before us afforded food for this self-complacency. Egypt had suffered by the hail and fire; Goshen had been exempt. And thus the great lesson which these plagues were bearing to the world was wholly missed. Not the I AM, the Eternal Lawgiver who had revealed Himself to His servant Moses, was speaking and acting in them; but a capricious being, like in all essentials to those gods which the magicians honoured. Moses had not claimed the powers of nature by which they were enslaved as the ministers of a God who was mightier than the tyrant; who cared to deliver the outcast. He had not taught the Egyptians, of whose government such plagues testified when they occurred at other times. All was turned into a mere trial of strength between a Jewish prophet and the Egyptian magi; laws were set at naught by both equally. Now comes the restoration of the old record to its true force. The trumpet of the angel proclaims that the plague of hail and fire is a message to Goshen more than to Egypt. Jerusalem is to hear in that trumpet a sure declaration, that the just Judge and the Saviour is judging Israel, that the world may be saved.
V. “And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died, and the third part of the ships were destroyed.”
The first trumpet, if we take the simplest sense of the symbols, indicated a withering of the produce of the earth, a decay of vegetation such as might be caused by some sudden calamity, the result and punishment of neglect and heartlessness. The passage I have just read, whatever force we may give to special clauses in it, points as distinctly to disasters that affect the sea and the commerce of nations. The third part of the ships were destroyed. That specific form of suffering might impoverish great emporiums, like Alexandria or Ephesus; only in its secondary consequences would it reach the Palestine of the first century. But the trumpets of the angels, like the words of our Lord, teach the Israelite to associate the doom of his country with the common woes of mankind. That city was set upon a hill to be a testimony to the world of a God who rules earth and sea; who has appointed men to subdue the earth and to traverse the sea; who cares for those whom He has made in His image, more than for all the treasures which they dig out of the ground or barter in their traffic. The message had not been borne; the Jew had as much worshipped these treasures, had as little cared for man, had as little believed in a just God, as the heathen round about him. Therefore earth and sea lifted up their voices against him more than against all others; they said to him, not to Pharaoh or Belshazzar, “Thy kingdom has been taken from thee; thou hast been weighed in the balance, and found wanting.”
VI. “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. And the name of the star is called Wormwood, and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.”
That we have here the hint of some visitation which affects the internal life and health of nations as that we spoke of last affected their intercourse with each other, most, I think, will agree. I do not know that we should gain much if we could interpret the special points of the description more exactly. The wormwood which makes waters bitter, and destroys life, would be an apt and no exaggerated symbol for miseries that have befallen countries in the East and the West, at various times; that such would have been felt among the other woes that were afflicting the world in the disastrous years preceding the fall of Jerusalem, we may well believe, if we had no testimonies to the fact. What concerns us is, that the calamity was a message to the Jew. It told him that he was the Jonah in the vessel. It was another blast of the trumpet which declared that the walls of his city were to fall flat.
VII. “And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.”
It would be easy to take this as a description of a moral and not a physical darkness. But I believe we shall be departing from the general purpose of these revelations, and violating the consistency of them, if we adopt that interpretation.
The sounds of these first four trumpets all point, it seems to me, to the connexion of physical life and physical decay with moral life and moral decay; to the way in which physical agents become the instruments of punishing moral transgression; to the truth that earth, and sea, and rivers, and sun, and moon, and stars obey eternal laws; but that they are laws given them by Him who has created voluntary beings, and whose highest kingdom is over them. These were the truths which the Jewish nation had been called, out of all nations, to declare by its words, its services, its continual life. These are the truths which it was to declare by its ruin and death.
But if I say this, it is not because I doubt that there are evils far more portentous than any which earth, or sea, or air, or sun and moon can inflict, or that these were at work when Jerusalem fell, and were causing her fall. Such darker evils, I believe, are pointed at in the words which follow.
VIII. “And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpets which are yet to sound.”
That these trumpets point to moral sins, to spiritual wickedness, and to their political consequences, I cannot doubt. The inhabiters of the earth had need to know that such woes are the greatest of all woes. The heathen had as much need to know it as those to whom pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law and the promises, of whom as pertaining to the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed for ever. If any can need it more than they, it is those who have inherited a better Covenant, a fulfilled law, a higher promise—the members of Christ’s body, the inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. May He who caused the deaf to hear enable His Church to take in His message! May He who caused the dumb to speak enable His ministers to deliver it!