Interpreting the seven trumpets of Revelation

James Stuart Russell

1st trumpet

'The Doom of Israel; or, the Last Days of Jerusalem,' ... these things were 'shortly to come to pass.'

The Lord will avenge the blood of His servants; His wrath is kindled; swift retribution is at hand.

Probably they correspond with those phenomenal perturbations of nature to which our Lord alludes in His prophecy on the Mount of Olives as preceding the Parousia: 'There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth [land] distress of nations, with perplexity: the sea and the waves roaring' (Luke xxi. 25). These are the very objects affected by the first four trumpets, viz. the earth, the sea, the sun, the moon, the stars. Without endeavouring, then, to find a specific explanation of these portents, it is enough to regard them as the outward and visible signs of the divine displeasure manifested towards the impenitent and unbelieving; symptoms that the natural world was agitated and convulsed on account of the wickedness of the time; emblems of the general dislocation and disorganisation of society which preceded and portended the final catastrophe of the Jewish people.

The judgments under the first four trumpets are marked by what we may call an artificial character; they affect the third part of every thing,---the third part of the trees, the third part of the grass, the third part of the sea, the third part of the fish, the third part of the ships, the third part of the rivers, the third part of sun, the third part of the moon, the third part of the stars, the third part of the day, the third part of the night. It would be preposterous to require a historical verification of such symbols.

2nd trumpet

3rd trumpet

4th trumpet

5th trumpet

It is exactly as it is represented to be, the host of hell swarming out upon the curse-stricken land of Israel. We have before us a hideous picture of a historic reality, the utterly demoralised and, so to speak, demon-possessed condition of the Jewish nation towards the tragic close of its eventful history. ... The cloud of locusts issuing from the pit of the abyss---locusts commissioned not to destroy vegetation, but to torment men---points not obscurely to malignant spirits, the emissaries of Satan. The place from which they proceed, the abyss, is distinctly spoken of in the gospels as the abode of the demons.

6th trumpet

The loosing of these four angels sets free a vast horde of armed horsemen, with the strange and unnatural characteristics described in the vision. What is the real and actual that we may gather out of this highly wrought imagery? How is it that these horsemen come from the region of the Euphrates? How is it that four angels are bound on that river? Now it will be remembered that the locust invasion came from the abyss of hell; this invading army comes from the Euphrates. This fact serves to unriddle the mystery. The invading army that followed Titus to the siege and capture of Jerusalem was actually drawn in very great measure from the region of the Euphrates. That river formed the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, and we know as a matter of fact that it was kept by four legions, which were regularly stationed there. These four legions we conceive to be symbolised by the four angels bound at, or on, the river. The loosing of the angels is equivalent to the mobilising of the legions, and we cannot but think the symbol as poetical, as it is historically truthful. But, it will be said, Roman legions did not consist of cavalry. True; but we know that along with the legionaries from the Euphrates there came to the Jewish war auxiliary forces drawn from the very same region. Antiochus of Commagene, who, as Tacitus tells us, was the richest of all the kings who submitted to the authority of Rome, sent a contingent to the war. His dominions were on the Euphrates. Sohemus, also, another powerful king, whose territories were in the same region, sent a force to co-operate with the Roman army under Titus. Now the troops of these Oriental kings were, like their Parthian neighbours, mostly cavalry; and it is altogether consistent with the nature of allegorical or symbolical representation that in such a book as the Apocalypse these fierce foreign hordes of barbarian horsemen should assume the appearance presented in the vision. They are multitudinous, monstrous, fire-breathing, deadly; and so, no doubt, they seemed to the wretched inhabiters of the land which they were commissioned to destroy. The invasion may be fitly described in the analogous language of the prophet Isaiah: The Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle. They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land (Isa. xiii. 4. 5).

7th trumpet

In the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul, speaking of this very period, the end, and the sounding of the last trumpet, intimates that it is the time when the kingdom of God shall come, and when Christ shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father. This appears to be the very transaction represented in the scene before us. Messiah has overcome; He has put down all rule, and all authority, and all power, i.e. the hostile and malignant Jewish antagonism which has been the bitter enemy of His cause. But He has conquered the kingdom that His Father may be supreme. Accordingly the chorus of elders before the throne celebrate the resumption of the kingdom by the Father, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, because thou hast taken thy great might, and hast reigned. This is a coincidence so subtle, and, if we may so say, undesigned, as to give the force of demonstration to the views which have been propounded.

The next result of the last trumpet is the declaration that the time of the judgment of the dead is come, bringing recompense to the people of God and retribution to His enemies (ver. 18).

We have here condensed into a few brief sentences the essence of the eschatology of the New Testament. The wrath that so often was declared to be coming is now come. It is the time of judgment for the dead: which supposes their resurrection; it is the time for the vindication of the martyrs of Christ, whose expostulation was heard in Rev. vi. 9, and for the rewarding of all the faithful, both small and great; and it is the time of retribution for the enemies of Christ, the destroyers of the land. In fact, the whole catastrophe represents a time and an act of judgment, and the scene of that judgment is the guilty land of Israel, and the time is the end of the age, the termination of the Jewish economy.