Interpreting the seven trumpets of Revelation

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The Seven Trumpets

The Creation Concept

Charles D. Alexander
Herbert W. Armstrong
William Barclay
Gregory K. Beale
James B. Coffman
John Darby
A. C. Gaebelein
George Gifford
David Guzik
E. W. Hengstenberg
H. A. Ironside
B. W. Johnson
Alonso T. Jones
Jack Kelley
William Kelly
Don Koenig
Gordon E. Ladd
Clarence Larkin
Francis Nigel Lee
David B. Loughran
John MacArthur
Henry Madison Morris
Robert H. Mounce
John H. Ogwyn
David C. Pack
Jon Paulien
J. Dwight Pentecost
Peter Pett
Bob Pickle
Vern S. Poythress
John H. Pratt & Edward B. Elliott
Ken Raggio
James Stuart Russell
Tyconius
John Walvoord
Ronald Weinland
James White

James White

1st trumpet

The first sore and heavy judgment which fell on western Rome in its downward course, was the war with the Goths under Alaric, styled by himself, "the scourge of God."  After the death of Theodosius, the Roman emperor, in January, 395, before the end of the winter, the Goths, under Alaric, were in arms against the empire. ...It was thus that "hail," from the fact of the northern origin of the invaders; "fire," from the destruction by flame of both city and country; "blood," from the terrible slaughter of the citizens of the empire by the bold and intrepid warriors, "were cast upon the earth."

2nd trumpet

It relates to the invasion and conquest of Africa, and afterward of Italy, by the terrible Genseric.  His conquests were for the most part naval, and his triumphs were "as it were a great mountain burning with fire, cast into the sea."

3rd trumpet

Raids by Attila in Gaul and Italy.

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.  Its greatness, its burning course, the place, the severity, and suddenness of its fall, leave nothing more to be here explained, while its falling from heaven seems obviously to imply that it came from beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, on part of which it fell.  Allusion will afterwards be made to the significancy of the term, third part, which so repeatedly occurs.

But another verse is added, under the third trumpet, which, having thus seen the significancy of the former, we cannot pass over with any vague and general exposition, without calling on history to discharge its task, in expounding the full meaning of the words, which sum up the decline, and are the immediate prelude to the fourth trumpet, the death-knell of the western empire.

"And the name of the star is called wormwood." These words--which are more intimately connected with the preceding verse, as even the punctuation in our version denotes--recall us for a moment to the character of Attila, to the misery of which he was the author, or the instrument, and to the terror that was inspired by his name.

'Total extirpation and erasure,' are terms which best denote the calamities he inflicted.

4th trumpet

The power and the glory or Rome, as bearing rule over any nation, became extinct.  The name alone remained to the queen of nations.  Every token of royalty disappeared from the imperial city.  She who had ruled over the nations sat in the dust, like a second Babylon, and there was no throne, where the Caesars had reigned.

A new conqueror of Italy, Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, speedily arose, who unscrupulously assumed the purple, and reigned by the right of conquest. 'The royalty of Theodoric was proclaimed by the Goths, (March 5th, A. D. 493,) with the tardy, reluctant, ambiguous consent of the emperor of the east.' The imperial Roman power, of which either Rome or Constantinople had been jointly or singly the seat, whether in the west or the east, was no longer recognized in Italy, and the third part of the sun was smitten, till it emitted no longer the faintest rays.  The power of the caesars was unknown in Italy: and a Gothic king reigned over Rome.

5th trumpet

There is scarcely so uniform an agreement among interpreters concerning any part of the apocalypse as respecting the application of the fifth and sixth trumpets, or the first and second wo, to the Saracens and Turks.  It is so obvious that it can scarcely be misunderstood. ...  Like the noxious and even deadly vapor which the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse in Arabia, Mahometanism spread from thence its pestilential influence--and arose as suddenly, and spread as widely, as smoke arising out of the pit, the smoke of a great furnace.  Such is a suitable symbol of the religion of Mahomet, of itself, or as compared with the pure light of the gospel of Jesus.  It was not, like the latter, a light from heaven; but a smoke out of the bottomless pit. ... Mahomet, it may be said, has heretofore divided the world with Jesus.  He rose up against the Prince of princes.  A great sword was given him.  His doctrine, generated by the spirit of fraud and enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, as even an unbeliever could tell, arose out of the bottomless pit, spread over the earth like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.  It spread from Arabia, over great part of Asia, Africa and Europe.  The Greeks of Egypt, whose numbers could scarcely equal a tenth of the nation, were overwhelmed by the universal defection.  And even in the farthest extremity of continental Europe, the decline of the French monarchy invited the attacks of these insatiate fanatics.

6th trumpet

Amurath, the sultan to whom the submission of Deacozes was made, and by whose permission he reigned in Constantinople, soon after died, and was succeeded in the empire, in 1451, by Mahomet II., who set his heart on Constantinople, and determined to make it a prey.  He accordingly made preparations for besieging and taking the city.  The siege commenced on the 6th of April, 1453, and ended in the taking of the city, and death of the last of the Constantines, on the 16th day of May following.  And the eastern city of the Caesars became the seat of the Ottoman empire.

The arms and mode of warfare by which the siege of Constantinople was to be overthrown, and held in subjection were distinctly noticed by the revelator.

The army.
Verse 16:  "And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them."

Innumerable hordes of horses and them that sat on them. 
Gibbon describes the first invasion of the Roman territories by the Turks, thus:  "The myriads of Turkish horse overspread a frontier of six hundred miles from Tauris to Azeroum, and the blood of 130,000 Christians was a grateful sacrifice to the Arabian prophet."  Whether the number is designed to convey the idea of any definite number, the reader must judge.  Some suppose 200.000 twice told is meant, and then following some historians, find that number of Turkish warriors in the siege of Constantinople.  Some think 200,000,000 to mean all the Turkish warriors during the 391 years, fifteen days of their triumph over the Greeks.  I confess this to me appears the most likely.  But as it cannot be ascertained whether that is the fact or not, I will affirm nothing on the point.
"The color of fire is red, of hyacinth or jacinth blue, and of brimstone yellow, and this, as Mr. Daubuz observes, 'has a literal accomplishment;  for the Othmans, from the first time of their appearance, have affected to wear such warlike apparel of scarlet, blue, and yellow. Of the Spahis, particularly, some have red and some have yellow standards, and others red or yellow mixed with other colors. In appearance, too, the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, to denote their strength, courage and fierceness.'  Without rejecting so plausible an interpretation, the suggestion may not be unwarrantable, that a still closer and more direct exposition may be given of that which the prophet saw in the vision. In the prophetic description of the fall of Babylon, they who rode on horses are described as holding the bow and the lance; but it was with other arms than the arrow and the spear that the Turkish warriors encompassed Constantinople; and the breastplates of the horsemen, in reference to the more destructive implements of war, might then, for the first time, be said to be fire, and jacinth, and brimstone.  The musket had recently supplied the place of the bow. Fire emanated from their breasts. Brimstone, the flame of which is jacinth, was an ingredient both of the liquid fire and of gunpowder. Congruity seems to require this more strictly literal interpretation, as conformable to the significancy of the same terms in the immediately subsequent verse, including the same general description. A new mode of warfare was at that time introduced which has changed the nature of war itself, in regard to the form of its instruments of destruction; and sounds and sights unheard of and unknown before, were the death-knell and doom of the Roman empire.

7th trumpet

1. The seventh angel is the last of a series of symbols, and, for this, and several other reasons, is not the same as the "trump of God,"  [1 Thess. 4:16,] and "last trump,"  [1 Cor. 15:52,] which is to raise the just.
2.  The sounding of the seventh angel occupies a period of days.  "But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel," &c.  Rev. 10:7.  These days are doubtless prophetic, meaning years, in harmony with the time of the sounding of the fifth and sixth angels. But when the trump of God is heard, the sleeping saints come forth from their graves, and the living righteous are changed to immortality, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," and are caught up to meet their descending Lord.
3.  Under the sounding of the seventh angel a series of events transpires.  This was also the case with the other six. The events of the seventh angel necessarily cover much time.  Among them we find mentioned, "The nations were angry"--"Thy wrath is come"--"The time of the dead that they should be judged"--"Give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great"--"Destroy them which destroy  [margin, corrupt,]  the earth."

Copyright © 2010 by Douglas E. Cox
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