God's Judgment on Earth Dwellers. Rev. 8:5-13

Revelation 8:5-7 ^NASB “ Then the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.   And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them. The first sounded, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.”

As we look at verse seven it introduces the first trumpet judgment. It is hail mixed with fire. If we are familiar with the Scriptures we will recognise that this is reminiscent of one of the ten plagues that God brought against Egypt when He brought the Jews out of Egypt in about 1446-1447 BC. The concept of hail, sometimes translated “hailstones,” in Scripture is referred to 31 times, 14 of which are in the book of Exodus alone, also four times in the prophets to speak of the future judgments associated with the day of the Lord, i.e. the end time judgment period of the Tribulation. Three times hail or hailstones are mentioned in the New Testament and all three of those are in Revelation—8:7; 11:19; 15:21. How are we to interpret this? Does it refer to literal hail mixed with literal fire and mixed with literal blood, or is it somehow symbolic of something else. We believe that the bible is to be interpreted in a literal manner but that does not mean we don’t believe in symbols or figures of speech or metaphors, it means that unless the passage indicates that there is some reason that we should take the meaning of the passage in some sort of symbolic sense we are to understand it in a literal manner. When we take our understanding of how hail is used in the Scripture we recognise that its normal meaning is to refer to physical hail, a meteorological event that takes place as a result of certain climactic factors. It is never used in Scripture as a pure allegory or symbol of something else.

What is important to note is that when God brought the judgments against the Egyptians they were not done apart from grace. The grace that was evident was the sending of Moses to Pharaoh to explain that it was time for the Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery so that they could go back to the land that God had given them. Moses made it clear what God was intending to do. It was Pharaoh who made the decision to resist God again and again through the series of judgments: Pharaoh hardened his heart. We know that his heart was already hardened because of an understanding and description in Romans chapter one that God has made His existence clear through creation, yet man in his rebellion against God and rejection of God substitutes a worship of God with a worship of the creation. This was true of Egyptian religion and its gods associated with the powers of nature, with the seasons, different events that occurred in people’s lives. This was all partn of their belief system and at the head of that belief system was the Pharaoh who was a god himself and considered to be divine. So the Pharaoh had already bought into believing this entire system of idolatry, false belief, and belief in the nature gods; therefore he had already hardened his heart against God. So God is going to bring judgment on them. And it is interesting to see how God multitasks when He brings judgment. He is not just trying to take the Israelites out, not just punishing Pharaoh for keeping them in bondage during this time, but at the same time He is going to use these plagues to completely destroy the Egyptian religious system and demonstrate that He alone is God and that he has greater power than any of these gods that the Egyptians worship. Each of these plagues can be related to the function, the operation and the sphere of operation of any of the Egyptian deities.

The first plague was where the water was turned to blood. This was specifically targeting the Nile which was viewed and regarded as a god who brought life to Egypt. So God was going to demonstrate His power and authority over the Nile. The Nile was also considered to be the bloodstream of one of the gods in their pantheon, the god Osiris. This judgment was going to have a tremendous consequence upon people’s health and upon the economy. It has been estimated that that it took about seven or eight months to bring about all of these judgments. The second plague was the plague of frogs described in Exodus 8:1-15 and again this is related to one of the goddesses in the pantheon, the one who was believed to have breathed life into the bodies of those who were created by her husband, also a god. So the frogs, then, were not to be killed. The swarms of flies, Exodus 8:20-32, represented another of the Egyptian deities. The death of the livestock was also associated with various different gods, and now the God of the Jews was destroying the livestock. The next plague had to do with boils, the first plague that directly affected the health of individuals. What God is doing is not only bringing discipline upon the Egyptians for their failure to release the Jews but He is also demonstrating His authority over their whole culture and over the gods and goddesses of their pantheon, demonstrating the complete falsity of their entire religious system.

When we get into the trumpet judgments five or six of these correlate to the judgments that occurred in Exodus. The point here is that if those judgments in Exodus were literal then we must be consistent in the Scriptures and also understand that these trumpet judgments are to be understood in a literal fashion and are not symbols. The use of hail in these judgment passages is common throughout the Old Testament. E.g. Isaiah 11:15 ^NASB “And the LORD will utterly destroy The tongue of the Sea of Egypt; And He will wave His hand over the River With His scorching wind; And He will strike it into seven streams And make {men} walk over dry-shod.” This is related to future judgment upon Egypt. [16] “And there will be a highway from Assyria For the remnant of His people who will be left [this takes place at the end of the Tribulation period when the Jews who survive are brought back to the land], Just as there was for Israel In the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt.” Note the comparison. The future is going to be just like what happened in the past. When the past is understood literally the future must be understood literally as well. Joel 2:30 ^NASB “I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, Blood, fire and columns of smoke.” This is a description of the judgments during the day of the Lord, a term used to describe the judgments in the Tribulation period. Cf. Psalm 105:32, 33 which relates back to the Egyptian judgments which were literal. Joel 1:15-20 ^NASB “Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, And it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Has not food been cut off before our eyes, Gladness and joy from the house of our God? The seeds shrivel under their clods; The storehouses are desolate, The barns are torn down, For the grain is dried up. How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle wander aimlessly Because there is no pasture for them; Even the flocks of sheep suffer. To You, O LORD, I cry; For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness And the flame has burned up all the trees of the field. Even the beasts of the field pant for You; For the water brooks are dried up And fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.”

So there is this thematic structure we see throughout Scripture. God uses these judgments to multitask in the way He deals with things. When we get into the Tribulation period he is not striking down a specific system of religion per se, like he did with the Egyptians, but he is still attacking their object of faith which is the creation itself. Cf. Romans 1:25. We see that today, the seeds of that, and it is prevalent throughout the world in terms of the way many people worship mother earth. Much of modern environmentalism is a worship of the earth. So God is going to take this object of their worship and is going to bring judgment upon it. There is a reason why God is going to bring judgment upon the earth during the Tribulation period and has to take the earth through all of these various judgments. Part of it has to do with destroying the object of their worship. They are worshipping the earth and the creation and God is showing His power and control over the earth and over the creation. It is also part of the fact that God has to bring this judgment as a form of purification and cleansing, even on the natural creation itself, because everything has been affected by sin. The sin of Adam did not just affect Adam and mankind. The sin of Adam had consequences that reverberated throughout all of natural creation. It changed the laws of physics as they existed prior to the fall. All of the natural disasters that we witness today are a product of living in a post-fall, fallen environment, and that environment also has to be judged and cleansed and purified in preparation for the establishment of the kingdom when Jesus Christ returns at the end of the Tribulation period.

This is what is referred to in Romans chapter eight. Romans 8:20 ^NASB “For the creation was subjected to futility [judgment as a result of sin], not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope [21] that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Nature itself is under bondage because of sin. [22] “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. [23] And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for {our} adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” There is this recognition that there is a redemption of our physical body. That is the connection there with the term “first fruits”. Redemption has to do not only with a spiritual realm but also a physical realm; that is why Christ’s physical resurrection was so important. It was that God was going to solve the physical consequences that came as a result of sin.

In the seal judgments the impact was on a quarter of the earth’s population but this is going to intensify to one third in the trumpet judgments. When we get to the bowl judgments it is everything. There is this graduated escalation of God’s judgment. The first trumpet judgment deals with the vegetation on the earth and then the second is going to deal with the seas.

Revelation 8:8 ^NASB “The second angel sounded, and {something} like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, [9] and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed.” If we understand this literally this great mountain is something like asteroid. Also a fiery asteroid is part of the third trumpet but this looked and had the appearance of a great mountain that was burning with fire coming into the sea. It is not a fiery mountain; that would be a volcano and would be a misreading of the text. So it is a huge fiery comet or asteroid that impacts the sea in a devastating way and a third of the seas become blood, just as the Nile became blood in the first plague against the Egyptians, and this is going to wipe out a third of the creatures that live in the sea and a third of the ships. It will have an economic consequence that is going to be devastating for most of the nations on the earth.

Revelation 8:10 ^NASB “The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters.” The second trumpet affect salt water, the third trumpet affects fresh water. So it wipes out the water supplies, the steams, the artesian wells that are used to provide drinking water for the people upon the earth as well as to water and fertilise the crops. [11] “The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.” Wormwood is a plant that grows in the Middle East that has a bitter flavour to it and when it is in water is destroys the use of the water. It is talking about the fact that it makes the waters bitter just as in the exodus from Egypt and the Jews came out and were clamouring for water, they came to the springs that were later called Meribah. The water was bitter and they complained against God so God told Moses to strike the rock and fresh water would come out. This is the reverse of that; the fresh water is made bitter. This is going to intensify the death and destruction during the Tribulation period.

Revelation 8:12 ^NASB “The fourth angel sounded, and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck, so that a third of them would be darkened and the day would not shine for a third of it, and the night in the same way.” This fourth judgment affects the heavenly bodies and this is going to diminish the amount of light that comes upon the earth. This light is necessary for the growth of plants and crops. This combined with the loss of water is going to increase the famine that began with the second seal judgment. The length of the day seems to shorten and this is probably from the vantage point of the people on the earth as they experience what has happened to the heavenly bodies.

Then there is an interruption of the progress. Revelation 8:13 ^NASB “Then I looked, and I heard an eagle flying in midheaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!” This is not an angel as per the KJV, based on a textual error in Textus Receptus; it is an eagle. The last three of the trumpet judgments are these three woes. It is a further intensification of the judgments that come on “those who dwell on the earth.”

We have seen that this phrase “those who dwell on the earth” in Revelation refers to those who harden themselves against God and refuse to respond to the gospel, refuse to respond to God’s grace, during the Tribulation period. They will never respond, will never believe in Christ, and what happens is that there is an intensification of these judgments, specifically upon “those who dwell on the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!” This takes us into the ninth chapter.

What we see from this is that God is going to bring these judgments during the Tribulation period, not merely as a way of bringing punishment upon those who have rejected Him, but He is multitasking; He is destroying the object of their worship which is the creation, the earth itself; He punishes them, for example, with fiery hail. The punishment under the Mosaic Law for idolatry was that an idolater was to be stoned, so in a way God is brining a stoning judgment against the unbelievers during the Tribulation period. But He is also demonstrating His grace because throughout this period he continues to have the gospel proclaimed. This eagle flying through the heavens announcing this judgment is one of many ways in which God announces ahead of time of the judgment He is going to bring. We will see in the bowl judgments that there are angels who are visible and audible during the final days of the Tribulation period who will fly through the heavens proclaiming the gospel to all who will dwell upon the earth, but these earth dwellers continue to resist and reject the gospel.

Illustrations