The Seven Trumpets

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 4

The seven trumpets, described in Revelation 8, 9, and 11, seem to portray various political events in the world that can serve as warnings to the church.  In my opinion, C. Mervyn Maxwell’s explanation of the first four trumpets is more biblical and consistent than Uriah Smith’s.  Smith, in his book Daniel and the Revelation, has the trumpets representing non-chronological events associated with the fall of Western Rome, while Maxwell, in God Cares Volume 2, shows how the trumpets represent significant events that took place during each of the time periods represented by the seven churches and seven seals.  My understanding is that the first trumpet represents the fall of Jerusalem, the second trumpet represents the fall of Western Rome, while the third trumpet represents the rise of the Papacy as a political power, and the fourth trumpet represents the Dark Ages.  The last three trumpets are special, called trumpets of “Woe”, and represent respectively the Arab forces, the Ottoman empire (not Otammari, but almost!), and the Second Coming.  There are many fascinating prophecies contained in the seven trumpets, and I would recommend their study to anybody interested in the book of Revelation, prophecy, history, or the Bible in general!

So, what does all of this have to do with answering the question of why Jesus hasn’t come back to earth yet, which we started this study series with?  Well, actually, a lot!  The seven churches, seven seals, and seven trumpets all cover time from Christ’s first Advent to His Second Advent, and I believe that each of them contains a piece of a key that will unlock our understanding on this issue, a piece of a picture that can show us what needs to happen before Jesus can return to get His church.  

The series of seven seals and seven trumpets both contain a very prominent break or interruption in the story-line.  It seems that either John was getting very distracted in his writing, or he needed to explain something important that needed to take place before the final seal could be opened or the final trumpet blown.  


Since John was clearly anything but distracted in writing Revelation, the last book of the Bible is written just as it is for a very specific purpose.  The breaks in the depicting of the seven seals and trumpets contain what I call the pause on the brink of eternity, the interlude that must occur before Jesus will return.  The seven churches don’t contain a break like that, but we will come back to that later on.

I like to save the best part of a Bible study for last, so let’s do that here by taking the three key-pieces in reverse order, starting with the mystery of God, then going to the seal of God, and finishing with the Laodicean message.

The interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets is filled with prophetic descriptions of two important historic events: the Advent movement of 1833 to 1844, and the French Revolution.  Again, abbreviating the matter so dramatically is making a long and interesting story extremely short.  For more detail, please read the books I have listed above.

In the middle of a description of events surrounding the Millerite movement of the 1830’s and 1840’s, John sees an angel come down from heaven and make a statement that has made this one of my absolute favorite passages of the Bible.  When I get started on this subject, I get so excited!  I was first shown this prophecy in the summer of 2002, and every time I have re-studied it since then, I just get more and more on fire!  

Standing on the sea and on the land, this angel declares that there will be no more time, or no more delay, according to various translations.  See Revelation 10:6.  Literal time continues in the narrative, and it seems that probationary time does as well, so the time spoken of, or the delay that would no longer be, must refer to the end of specific prophetic time.  The statement must mean that the people of God will never again have a prophetic message based on definite time, after the longest time prophecies of the Bible reached their ends in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s.  Any message claiming to tell us the timing of the return of Jesus is un-Biblical and misleading, and will be wrong, as so many such messages have already been.  Jesus is not waiting for a specific date to return, thus there will be “no more delay.”  Remember Y2K and all the hype, even by Adventist preachers around that time?  To be honest, I wanted Jesus to return at that time, I wanted to go to heaven so badly, but He didn’t come, and when I got to understand Revelation 10, I understood that no such message can be trusted.

So, if Jesus isn’t waiting for a specific time prophecy or date to come before He can return, what is He waiting for?  Back to the original question in this study, Why hasn’t Jesus come back to get His church yet?  If He wasn’t waiting for the year 2000, or 2008, or 2010 (or 2012), what is He waiting for?  Does Revelation 10 give us an answer?  Yes, it does!  Praise God!  This is why I love this chapter so much, why I have considered writing a book on this subject.  

Perhaps we should quote from the chapter itself, so you can see the answer for yourself.  Here it is, from Revelation 10:5 through 7.  “And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there should be no more delay, but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God would be fulfilled, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.”  Did you see it?  Isn’t it wonderful?  Right there in the Bible is the answer as to why Jesus hasn’t come back yet.  Isn’t that fantastic?  What is going to happen before Jesus returns?  “The mystery of God would be fulfilled,” or “finished” as other translations say.  Isn’t that great?

Or, are you sitting there shaking your head as most of my students usually do?  “What in the world does that mean?  What is the mystery of God, and what does it mean that it will be fulfilled?”  Oh, yeah, we should probably look to see what the Bible has to say in other places about what the mystery of God is, and see if that helps us to understand Revelation 10 better.