Revelation 8-11: The Seven Trumpets

The Lambs opens the seventh seal, and there is a silent half-hour break in heaven before the next seven-long sequence commences: the Seven Trumpets, blown by seven angels. Seven is a holy number; John's Revelation uses it a lot.

Trumpet 1: hail and fire and blood rains on the earth, burning trees and grass.

Trumpet 2: a flaming mountain crashes into the sea, poisoning the water, killing a third of oceanic life and destroying a third of ocean-going ships.

Trumpet 3: the star called Wormwood falls from Heaven, poisoning a third of the world's rivers.

Trumpet 4: a third of the moon, a third of the Sun, and a third of the stars are obscured by darkness.

Trumpet 5: an angel, carrying the key to the bottomless pit, descends from Heaven and unlocks the abyss. Black smoke rises from the pit, darkening the sky. Demons emerge from the pit: they are like locusts the size of horses, with human faces, long feminine hair, and stinging tails like scorpions. They wear crowns of gold, and breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings is like chariots going into battle. These demons are led by Abaddon, AKA Apollyon, the angel of the bottomless pit. The demons are tasked with targeting those not graced with God's seal, and torturing them for five months. But they are not allowed to kill them.

Trumpet 6: The four angels bound in the River Euphrates are freed, and they lead an army of 200 million mounted soldiers (I'm imagining angels), whose lion-head mounts spew fire, and smoke, and brimstone, which kills one-third of the human population.

Revelation was written in the decades after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on the coast of the southern Italy. The mountain exploded with a deafening roar, shaking the earth. Dense black smoke rose from the crater, darkening the sky for 3 days, and poisoning the sea and rivers nearby. Molten lava rained from the sky. Not long afterwards, the Roman oracle Sibyl of Cumae, based nearby, issues an oracle that was widely circulated in the Roman world: earthquakes, darkening skies, and raining fire were signs the world was coming to an end.

This event may have been on John's mind as his own vision of the End of Days came to him.
Interlude: an angels descend to the earth, and says, depending on which translation you're using:
"There will be no more delay... When the seventh angel blows his trumpet, God's mysterious plan will be fulfilled."
or
“Time shall be no more... when the seventh angel is ready to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be completed."

The angel gives our delightful narrator a book, and tells him to keep prophesying to many people.

Are we ready yet to sound the seventh trumpet?

No.

There is some admin to take care of first. John measures the Temple of God, but not the outer court. He sees two unnamed prophets who have an assortment of powers: fire breath, rain prevention, turning water to blood, and smiting the earth with plagues.

When they have finished prophesying, the beast rises out of the bottomless pit to make war on them, and kill them in the city 'where our Lord was crucified' - Jerusalem. People are happy the prophets are dead, for they had been tormenting the people of the earth.

After 3 days, the prophets are raised from the dead and ascend to Heaven. An earthquake destroys part of the city.

Trumpet 7: a great voice in Heaven cries, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." The Divine Assembly praises God, and his Heavenly Temple is opened for business.

There is lightning, and thunder, and earthquakes, and great hail.

To be continued...

Revelation 6-8: The Seven Seals

The Lamb opens the first seal on God's scroll, and the first Horseman of the Apocalypse appears: he rides a white horse, carries a bow and wears a crown. He is sent forth to conquer.

The first Horseman is Conquest, who for some reason has been transformed by popular culture into Pestilence, the horseman who spreads disease. (In Gaiman and Pratchett's 'Good Omens', Pestilence has been replaced by Pollution, the former having quit after the discovery of antibiotics.) The original is more likely to represent imperial expansion, the subjugation of smaller nations by an evil empire - Rome.

The Lamb opens the second seal, and the second Horseman appears. He rides a red horse and carries sword. He has the power to take peace from the world, so that men shall kill one another. He is War.

John's Revelation was written shortly after the First Roman-Jewish War, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple. An extremely traumatic event for the Jews and Jewish Christians. Wars had been a regular feature of Roman life for decades; in the civil war of 68CE, four different emperors were crowned and assassinated.

With the third seal opening, the third Horseman appears. He rides a black horse and carries a pair of balances. A voice cries out, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!” Roman citizens would have recognised this as inflation, caused by food shortage: Famine. The oil and wine are unaffected, because the Horseman only targets essentials. At the time Revelation was written, inflation was escalating throughout the empire.

The fourth seal releases the fourth horseman: Death, who rides a Pale Horse. Hades, the Greek god, has a cameo appearance here: he follows Death. The duo is given the power to kill with sword, with hunger, with disease, and with the beasts of the earth.

As the fifth seal is opened, souls cry out to God for vengeance. They were killed on Earth for holding to God's testimony, and now they want their blood avenged on the earth-dwellers. They are told to wait: the time for vengeance will come.

The sixth seal opens. An earthquake. The sun blackens. The moon reddens. Stars fall. The richest men hide themselves in mountain dens, terrified that the Day of Wrath has come at last.

There is a delay before the the seventh seal can be opened. An angel descends carrying the seal of God; he must seal the foreheads of Gods servants before the end of the world can continue in earnest. The angel seals 12,000 virgin men from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, and a great multitude of people from other nations, who wear white robes and praise God before his throne.

It is time to open the seventh seal...

Revelation 1-5: Ascending to Heaven

Over the past few days I've been re-reading the Book of Revelation. When I read through the Bible a few years ago, I sped through Revelation, not taking it in very well. It's a trippy, angry, difficult book - not one of my biblical favourites. But it has now become extra-relevant to the fiction-in-progress, so here I am, re-reading and organising my thoughts on it.

The book is a letter, a history, and a prophecy of the future; three books in one. Written and circulated around 100CE, Revelation contains references to events and politics of the time, obscured by symbolic imagery and numerology. At this time, Judaism and Christianity were not so thoroughly split: this book, like the Gospel of Matthew, belongs to the Jewish Christian tradition which emphasizes the importance of the tribes of Israel, and looks down on Gentile converts to Pauline Christianity. It is steeped in Jewish lore, chock full of references to other Jewish prophetic works. Hidden meanings and obscure references make it difficult for the modern reader.

In the first chapter, John describes his meeting with Jesus on the isle of Patmos:

"one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and this face was like the sun shining in full strength."

Jesus dictates instructions to the 7 churches of Asia Minor, and commands John to write about his coming visionary experiences in a book. The epistolary prologue doesn't interest me very much. In the section addressed to the church of Pergamon, John's Jesus commends the congregation for holding on to their faith while living in the shadow of 'Satan's Throne': historians believe this refers to the Great Temple of Zeus, the Pergamon Altar, which was once the pride of the city. Early Christians believed the pagan gods were demons tricking humanity away from the true God.

Once John's Jesus is done telling off or congratulating the 7 churches, our narrator turns around and sees a door leading to Heaven. He ascends and sees the throne of God, which is similar in appearance to when it was seen by the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel:

'A throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald... From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and... before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty."'

In front of the main God Throne there are 24 smaller thrones, where 'elders' sit, wearing white robes and gold crowns.

At God's right hand there is a scroll, sealed with seven seals, and none could be found to open this scroll containing the future, and our narrator was sad.

“Weep no more", says one of the elders, "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Oh great, thinks our narrator, the conquering Jewish Messiah has come. Those familiar with Jewish lore of the time would have understood the Lion of Judah to be a reference to the expected Messiah, a fierce warrior who would restore Israel to glory.

John looks up, and sees a slain Lamb take the book, causing the divine assembly to burst into song: "for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation," etc.

In the aftermath of Jesus' crucifixion, ideas about the Jewish messiah had to change. The conquering Lion messiah had not come; instead there had been Jesus, a Lamb slain on Passover, a sacrifice whose blood washed away sins and redeemed humanity. John's vision here illustrates these changing ideas, and confirms Jesus the Lamb as identical to the expected Lion. But his conquest is not over the living enemies of Israel, but over Death and Sin. The Messiah has already come.

The Lamb starts opening the seals...

(To be continued...)