It's the End of the World As We Know It: The Trumpet Judgments, Part 3

Hail.  Fire.  Blood.  Demons.  These are the fun things in store for those on earth during the first Six Trumpets.  And while I believe (not claiming certainty, here!) that the blast of the Seventh Trumpets follows the Rapture, what we know for certain about this Trumpet is still pretty intense.  Let's back up and put this in context:

The second woe is passed; the third woe is coming soon.

The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:

"The kingdom of the world has
     become the kingdom of our
     Lord and of His Christ,
and He will reign for ever and
     ever."

And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying:

"We give thanks to you, Lord God
     Almighty,
   the One Who is and Who was,
because you have taken Your great
     power
   and have begun to reign.
The nations were angry;
   and Your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead,
   and for rewarding Your servants the
     prophets
and Your saints and those who
     reverence Your Name,
   both small and great - 
and for destroying those who destroy the earth."

Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and within His temple was seen the ark of His covenant.  And there came peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm (11:14-19).

The two witnesses have ascended, the "second woe" has finished, and the last trumpet sounds.  This doesn't seem particularly bad, however, because, aside from (yet another) earthquake and hailstorm, all that appears to happen is that the elders and angels in heaven break out in song, right?  What is so "woeful" about that?

Notice their song:  "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ."  Wait, that doesn't sound so bad either, right?  Isn't that what we are all waiting for?  Believers, yes, but for the world - for those who have taken the Mark of the Beast, who have set up their hopes and security in this world and it's god - the coming of Jesus is a terrible thing.

Let's take a moment and reflect on this term, "woe."  It isn't one we use much in our culture today, but what it signals is a deep, relentless anguish of the soul.  When Job lost his family, his wealth, his health, and his friends and wife all turned against him and tried to persuade him to disavow God, Job became woeful.  He lost everything, and those he trusted tried to take God from him, too.  When the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of Christ, the world will experience woe.

It's humiliating enough to be confronted with being wrong, but to be confronted by Jesus Himself, in the flesh, when you have totally rejected Him?  It's the worst kind of "I Told You So" imaginable.  But I think that what adds insult to injury is that it also heralds the series of events that lead up to Jesus' return and establishment of His Kingdom:  the Seven Bowls of God's Wrath.  Each of these bowls is specifically meant to remove power and authority from the kingdom of the Beast and bring an end to his rule.  And, just like pruning a bush means cutting out part of a living organism, pruning a person and a kingdom can be very, very painful, even if that person and that kingdom deserve to fall.  And of course, as we mentioned just a moment ago, it all leads to that the final moment when the heavens are torn open and Jesus Himself appears and says (much more eloquently, of course), "I told you so."  But all of that - every single moment of it - begins with the blowing of the Seventh Trumpet.

The last and final Trumpet of Revelation heralds the pouring out of God's Wrath on the earth.  The preceding judgments?  Just the warm-up, so to speak. The global move to Satanism, the downward spiral we see beginning even today, all of these things are shaken up and interrupted by God's Seals and Trumpets, but they are utterly destroyed - and many of the people involved with them - by a sequence of events heralded by the Seventh Trumpet.  So while it's "only" an earthquake, but mostly a song, don't pass over this Trumpet so quickly.  Let it sink in that this is the beginning of the Day of the Lord.  For those who are in Christ, it truly is an awesome, praiseworthy thing, but for the rest of mankind, it's a horrifying, terrible thing.  It is, in fact, woeful.