The First Trumpet Sounds

Revelation


So far in our study we have seen that the Seven Churches and the Seven Seals all follow a sort of parallel journey. We need to study the seven trumpets in the same light to keep consistent.


Before the Seven Angels with their trumpets sounded we were given a very solemn scene in heaven where there was silence and then the prayers of the saints in smoke from incense was sent up before God. The censer fire was then tossed to the earth drawing our attention once more back to the earthly and out of the heavenly.


We know factually that with these goings on representing history that we are being pointed to an eventual time when we will all be sealed and Christ will return for us. That same conclusion must be drawn in the seven trumpets as well.


Because history has played a key part in the others and the angels are sounding their trumpets from heaven not leaving heaven just as the angels to the churches revealed, and the seals were loosed in heaven, lets see if history doesn't coincide in some manner with the seven angels trumpets sounding.


The trumpets announce things- some good, some bad. They call to battle, they call to feasts, and even as they call to those things they are announcing them are they not?


Can it be that the announcing these trumpets represent are showing battle scenes?


Let's go to history and see if there isn't a time such as this would describe- political struggles, wars.


Please note- greater minds than mine have studied diligently to produce the facts related here. In fact many great minds have studied this and the concensus seems to be that it 'fits'. So if I point you to a number of things that I haven't personally dug up in the sense that I've become a historian overnight, please understand that I still believe what is being said based on the facts that history reveals so much and God will guide us as He needs to.


In the Seven Seals we were shown a parallel history with the Seven Chruches that for the most part aligned with each other to review the Christian era throughout time, God's people throughtout time. The Seven Trumpets seem to take on a different point of view and tell the history of the political structure through time.

...
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 trees was burnt up
and all green grass was burnt up.
...

Taken from the book Daniel and Revelation by Uriah Smith-

'The First Trumpet.--The blast of the first trumpet has it location about the close of the fourth century and onward, and refers to these desolating invasions of the Roman Empire under the Goths.'

'Alexander Keith has justly remarked on the subject of this prophecy:

"None could elucidate the texts more clearly, or expound them more fully, than the task has been accomplished by Gibbon. The chapters of the skeptical philosopher that treat directly of the matter, need but a text to be prefixed and a few unholy words to be blotted out, to form a series of expository lectures on the eighth and ninth chapters of the Revelation of Jesus Christ." [1] "Little or nothing is left for the professed interpreter to do but to point to the pages of Gibbon." [2]

The first sore and heavy judgment which fell on Western Rome in its downward course, was the war with the Goths under Alaric, who opened the way for later inroads. The death of Theodosius the Roman emperor, occurred in January, A.D. 395, and before the end of the winter the Goths under Alaric were in arms against the empire.

The first invasion under Alaric ravaged the Eastern Empire. He captured the famous cities and enslaved many of the inhabitants. Thrace, Macedonia, Attica, and the Peloponnesus, were conquered, but he did not reach the city of Rome. Later, the Gothic chieftain crossed the Alps and Apennines and appeared before the walls of the Eternal City, which fell a prey to the fury of the barbarians in A.D. 410.

"Hail and fire mingled with blood!" were cast upon the earth. The terrible effects of this Gothic invasion are represented as "hail," from the northern origin of the invaders; "fire," from the destruction by flame of both city and country; and "blood," from the terrible slaughter of the citizens of the empire by the bold and intrepid warriors.

After quoting at some length from Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapters XXX-XXXIII, concerning the conquests of the Goths, Alexander Keith has presented an admirable summary of the historian's words emphasizing the fulfillment of prophecy:

"Large extracts clearly show how amply and well Gibbon has expounded his text in the history of the first trumpet, the first storm that pervaded the Roman earth, and the first fall of Rome. To use his words in more direct comment, we read thus the sum of the matter: The Gothic nation was in arms at the first sound of the trumpet, and in the uncommon severity of the winter, they rolled their ponderous wagons over the broad and icy back of the river. The fertile fields of Phocis and Boeotia were crowned [sic] with a deluge of barbarians: the males were massacred; the females and cattle of the flaming villages were driven away. The deep and bloody traces of the march of the Goths could easily be discovered after several years. The whole territory of Attica was blasted by the baneful presence of Alaric. The most fortunate of the inhabitants of Corinth, Argos, and Sparta were saved by death from beholding the conflagration of their cities. In a season of such extreme heat that the beds of the rivers were dry, Alaric invaded the dominion of the West. A secluded 'old man of Verona' [the poet Claudian], pathetically lamented the fate of his contemporary trees, which must blaze in the conflagration of the whole country [ note the words of the prophecy,--'The third part of the trees was burned up']; and the emperor of the Romans fled before the king of the Goths.

"A furious tempest was excited among the nations of Germany; from the northern extremity of which the barbarians marched almost to the gates of Rome. They achieved the destruction of the West. The dark cloud which was collected along the coasts of the Baltic, burst in thunder upon the banks of the upper Danube. The pastures of Gaul, in which flocks and herds grazed, and the banks of the Rhine, which were covered with elegant houses and well-cultivated farms, formed a scene of peace and plenty, which was suddenly changed into a desert, distinguished from the solitude of nature only be smoking ruins. Many cities were cruelly oppressed, or destroyed. Many thousands were inhumanly massacred. The consuming flames of war spread over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul.

"Alaric again stretched his ravages over Italy. During four years the Goths ravaged and reigned over it without control. And in the pillage and fire of Rome, the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies; the flames consumed many public and private buildings; and the ruins of a palace remained, after a century and a half, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration." [3]

After making this summary, Keith completes the picture by saying:

"The concluding sentence of the thirty-third chapter of Gibbon's History is of itself a clear ad comprehensive commentary; for in winding up his own description of this brief but most eventful period, he concentrates, as in a parallel reading, the sum of the history and the substance of the prediction. But the words which precede it are not without their meaning: 'The public devotion of the age was impatient to exalt the saints and martyrs of the Catholic Church on the altars of Diana and Hercules. The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issued from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.'

"The last word--Africa--is the signal for the sounding of the second trumpet. The scene changes from the shores of the Baltic to the southern coast of the Mediterranean, or from the frozen regions of the North to the borders of burning Africa. And instead of a storm of hail being cast upon the earth, a burning mountain was cast into the sea." [4]

[1] Alexander Keith, Signs of the Times, Vol. I, p. 241.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., pp. 251-253.

[4] Ibid., p. 253.

*

History by a renown scholar uncontested by others for it's factual content.

Also interesting is this website- http://www.pickle-publishing.com/papers/prophecy/seven-trumpet-chart.htm

*******

I'm no Bible scholar and certainly no historian, but I'm able to see when things seem to fit.


I could conclude that I'll never understand prophecy and stop looking, stop studying, stop reading, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to continue to pray and hope that the Lord will guide me to all the truth I need to know so that I may be His when He returns. If as some suppose these prophecies have nothing to do with history time will tell that too but for now as the pieces of the puzzle seem to be falling into place we have to trust that we are being guided in the right direction.


May the Lord bless and keep us in Him now and forever, may the Holy Spirit sent to guide us and keep us in truth do so now and forever, by the mercy and the grace of Jesus Chirst, our Lord and Savior.


Amen.