Revelation 8:13-9:12

June 28, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 19:05 in the audio file.

Or, The First Woe When Death Can’t Be Caught

P.G. Wodehouse once wrote to a friend about how there are some things in life that don’t break down very well into percentages, such as getting hit by a car. We’ve likewise past the point in the Apocalypse where percentages of interpretations work very well. It’s not quite all or nothing, positively past or fully future, but it’s close. We crossed the line when we left the Lamb around the throne in chapter 5. Doug Wilson made a similar point at the start of chapter 6:

“We also come to the point where Christian interpreters shake hands with each other in order to part company, not to be reunited again until the resurrection of the dead in chapter 20.”

There is just less percentage of compatible overlap between the approaches. It’s bad form to say, about the same verse, that it happened, it is happening, and it will happen. For example, the trumpets blew before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 (the preterist approach), or the trumpets continue to blow in every generation in their own ways (the idealist approach), or the trumpets have yet to blow, and we are all waiting for the great tribulation (the futurist approach).

We are examining the Revelation together. I have been, and plan to continue, raising some alternative understandings of the various parts. But as I said, it’s hard to share percentages here. It’s also more difficult to persuade someone who is in the middle of the ocean that it would make better sense if they were on a bike. But I’m accountable as a teacher, and we can all keep treating each other charitably because we’re all on Jesus’ side. (Plus, it’s good practice for dealing with the mask mandate, ha!)

Remember where we’re at in the book. The Almighty, seated on the throne, handed the seven-sealed scroll to the worthy Lamb, and the Lamb has broken all seven seals. The seventh seal initiates seven trumpets given to seven angels. In chapter 8 verses 6-12, four angels blow the first four trumpets which results in massive, but not complete, destruction on earth. These judgments are meted out in percentage, with a third of land and sea and sky taking hits.

As G.K. Beale points out, “the cosmic order of the luminaries is essential to the continued welfare of the world,” and so the welfare of the world is not so well. The material cosmos is becoming more of a chaos, and it reflects God’s judgment on the moral chaos among men. The created patterns are being un-patterned, not just as retribution on men, but in some sense as a reflection of man’s devolution.

That’s just the first four trumpets of seven. There is something remarkable about the final three trumpets as they are singled out and identified as woes. Unlike the first four, these are direct torments on men, and each receives almost as much attention as the first four combined.

In Revelation 8:13-9:12 we’ll see the woes announced, the first woe of demon locusts unleashed, and the announcement that the first woe has passed.

The Eagle’s Cry of Woes (verse 13)

This is an unfortunate non-chapter break, meaning that this verse doesn’t summarize the first four trumpets, it announces the final three trumpets.

Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!” (verse 13)

The eagle isn’t circling like a vulture, but it might as well be. Around the throne in Revelation 4:7 one of the living creatures had the appearance “like an eagle in flight,” but this creature is different. The only other time an eagle appears in Revelation is chapter 12:14, where a “woman was given two wings of the gre[...]