Silence for Half an Hour
Three Trumpets are Three Woes
Armageddon as a Religious Event
Revelation 8
This archive displays the most recently added endnotes first. Click the first post, Revelation 8 Endnotes, to access each endnote in its order encountered in the text.
Armageddon as a Religious Event
Rev 16 describes the seven bowls of wrath, and the interval period (Armageddon) of spiritual events between the sixth and seventh bowls (The Three Woes, pg. 66).
“The intervals of all three predicatory schemes (Seals, Trumpets, Bowls) predict historical events which are altogether religious in nature affecting the course of human events. The first interval between the sixth and seventh seals was of the rise of the Christian Church in unprecedented dimensions after the victory over paganism at the time of Constantine. The second interval under the trumpets included several such religious events… The interval between the sixth and seventh bowls predict… gathering all nations to fight against God. Armageddon symbolizes the last and decisive battle in which the enemies named will be overthrown.… Because the design of the book is that the symbols of the intervals have a religious significance more than a secular significance, we must then conclude that the Armageddon symbols signify religious events in a secular context.”
Fred Miller, Revelation: A Panorama of the Gospel Age, Ch. 9, “The Seven Last Plagues.”
Three Trumpets Are Three Woes
The three remaining trumpets (fifth, sixth, and seventh trumpets) herald three woes to come (The Three Woes, pg. 65).
“The three remaining trumpets (ch. ix-xi) are usually called the woe-trumpets, in reference to the proclamation of woes, ch. viii. 18…. The three extend… as it is supposed by the writer himself (ch. xi. 15), to the period when ‘the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdom of Christ,’ embracing a succinct view of the most material events that were to occur, particularly in a secular point of view.”
Albert Barnes, Notes on … Revelation, p. 239.
Silence for Half an Hour
“When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” Rev. 8:1 (The First Four Trumpets, pg. 55).
“Mr. Daubuz regards the silence here referred to as a symbol of the liberty granted to the church in the time of Constantine…”
Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament, Explanatory and Practical: Revelation, p. 191.
The Roman empire did have peace for a short space of time commencing with the reign of Constantine up to the sounding of the first trumpet, as we will see.