What are the seven seals and seven trumpets in the Book of Revelation?

After “the things that are” (Rev. 2 and 3), which close with the rapture of the Church, an event greatly longed for and daily expected by enlightened Christians, we enter upon “things which must be hereafter” (Rev. 4:1). Do the succeeding chapters in Revelation lead us to expect peace? Nay, we at once read of the unloosing of the book sealed with the seven seals by the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, even the Lord Jesus Christ, as a Lamb that had been slain. The seals speak of war, bloodshed, famine, pestilence, and earthquake, the upset of thrones and powers, and a state of unrest and political chaos of which we know very little, as the result of this war. Does this close the time of trouble? Alas it is but its beginning. The seven seals are followed by the seven trumpets or woes, judgments, not so much occasioned by God permitting man to chastise man, but by the direct inflicting of tribulation from heaven.

He takes the book and opens the seals one after the other. What a revelation it is, beginning with the sixth chapter. At the opening of the first four seals each of the living creatures calls, "Come." It seems to suggest that as Christ was rejected, He now sends the appropriate judgment. The first seal gives us the white horse, the cloud, and the bow, which signifies universal conquest on the part of some mighty hero in the last days. They would not have the Lamb, the true King, and they get one who suggests the beast, of the thirteenth chapter. The second is another, a red horse, signifying the carnage and bloodshed. As they would not have the peaceful ox, Christ as in Mark, now peace is taken from the earth. In the third, you have famine, the man on the black horse holding the balances. They refused the Man who would have fed them from the Father's house of plenty, as in Luke. Finally, in the fourth seal, you have that awful death and hades on the livid horse. They refused the eternal life, as in John, and now life is taken from those who dwell upon the earth.

The first four seals reveal one who goes forth "conquering, and to conquer," followed by general war, peace taken from the earth, and great slaughter, resulting in terrible famine, and still later in widespread destruction and desolation, figured by the power given to Death and Hades "over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." The fifth seal shows the souls of those who have been persecuted to death "for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." The sixth is followed by an earthquake, in which "the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casts her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind; and the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together," and kings and people hide themselves "in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains," that they may escape "from the face of Him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?"(Rev. 6.)

Sixth. At the opening of this seal the whole fabric of society is shaken to pieces. What a picture these symbols present, sudden and unexpected! the sun implying supreme government, and the moon that which should reflect it; stars high and eminent persons. What a scene of darkness and shaking! So terrible that all classes of men become intensely alarmed, and think that the day of the wrath of the Lamb is come. If we compare the opening of this seal with Matthew 24:29, the events symbolized are very similar; only we must note, that this hour of temptation, described in the sixth seal, is before the great tribulation; and in Matthew it is immediately after the tribulation. Thus we see at every step that this book is the revelation of that which had not been made known before. Thus chapter 6 describes the order of events that will take place on earth immediately after the Church is taken up to heaven: a time of rapid conquest, by one pretending to great righteousness. Then a time of general and terrible slaughter. Then blackness of mourning and famine. Then the four sore judgments of God let loose on a fourth part of the earth. Then great persecution, and the killing of the saints of that day. Then the most awful convulsion of society, so that men say, The day of wrath is come.

The Lamb opens one of the seals. He who, during, this long gospel day, has been the expression of the grace of God, is now in the very centre of the throne, the unfolder of the judgments; and, as it were, with the voice of thunder, not now the soft sweet whisper of mercy. The four living creatures command the judgments to commence. One says, “Come:” the words “and see” should be omitted. It is not an invitation to John to see; but a command, with thunder, “Come.” Now we shall find that the unfolding of these seals simply reveals to us the exact order of the providential judgments that will take place after the Church is removed.

The coming great events which overshadow all others are the Translation to Heaven (1 Thess. 4:16-17) and the Return from Heaven (Rev. 19:11-14). Paul alone treats of the former; John more fully than any of the other New Testament writers unfolds the latter. Now, in the interval between these two, the septenary series of judgments under the Seals, the Trumpets, and the Vials run their course. These divine chastisements increase in severity as we pass from one series to another. The judgments are not contemporaneous but successive. The Trumpets succeed the Seals, and the Vials follow the Trumpets. Strict chronological sequence is observed. The general symbol of the previous prophecy was a Seal; in the second series of judgments it is a Trumpet; in the third it is a Vial or bowl. These respective symbols impress a certain character on the events grouped under them. The Seals were opened in order that the successive parts of God’s revelation of the future might be disclosed, but to faith only the mass would regard the judgments as merely providential. Such things had happened before. But the Trumpets’ loud blast by angels intimates a public dealing with men of an intensely judicial character. These mystic Trumpets sound an alarm throughout the length and breadth of apostate Christendom. The public intervention of God in the guilty and apostate scene is thus intimated. Then in the third general symbol, that of the Vials or bowls poured out, the concentrated wrath of God overwhelms the whole prophetic scene under Heaven. Revelation 16 reveals a series of judgments hitherto unsurpassed in range and severity. During the progress of the Seal judgments the Lamb and His suffering people on earth are prominently introduced, but under the Trumpet judgments the Lamb wholly disappears, and saints are only incidentally noticed, and then as praying.

Rev. 8:2. — “And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.” That the angels here referred to are a distinguished and select number seems evident from the insertion of the definite article, “The seven angels,” as also from the highly honoured place assigned them, “who stand before God.” “The seven” are distinguished from the seven who pour out the Vials (Rev. 15:1). Only of the trumpet angels is a special position (“before God”) predicated.

There are distinctions amongst the angelic hosts. They are distributed into various orders and ranks, but all, from the archangel down to the least, are servants. They have no relationship to God founded on redemption. They are servants, and never rise out of that position, nor do they desire it. The two great characteristics of angel life are unquestioning obedience and activity in service (Ps. 103:20; Heb. 1:7, 14). The “presence angels” is a familiar Jewish thought. They are supposed by some to be identical with the seven Spirits before the throne (Rev. 1:4), and by others the term is regarded as a borrowed expression from the apocryphal book of Tobit. Both are wrong. Why depart from obvious simplicity and force an interpretation for which there is really no adequate reason? What the angel Gabriel said of himself, “I am Gabriel, who stand before God” (Luke 1:19), is here said of these seven presence angels. As to the number, seven, they represent the full power of God in judicial judgment.

— “And seven trumpets were given to them.” The place of subjection is ever the place of even the most exalted of God’s creatures; the trumpets were given. Sovereign action is the prerogative alone of the Creator. But why trumpets? No wind instrument was more generally used in the national life of Israel than the trumpet. It convened them in public assembly. Its loud blast summoned them for war, and directed them when to advance and when to retreat. On the promulgation of the law “the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder.” In their solemn feasts the trumpet was largely employed. Its loud warning notes announced the near approach of danger or an enemy. By sound of trumpet the journeys in the wilderness were directed. The year of jubilee, and, in fact, on all important national occasions the trumpet was employed (see Lev. 25:9; Ex. 19:19; Num. 10:2-10; Lev. 23:24, etc.). The circumstances calling for the public interference of God in judgment, as detailed in our portion of the Apocalypse, are somewhat similar to the coming days of Joel 2:1-2, “A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness.” Both Joel and John refer to the blast of the trumpet, intimating that God is about to deal openly and before all in judicial chastisement with the iniquity before Him, a public and loud announcement that He is about to do so. “The seven trumpets” signify a complete and full announcement. The mystic trumpets of the Apocalypse must not be confounded with the literal trumpets of Old Testament times.

The judgments under the first seals had been of a providential character. However severe, they were similar to visitations which had fallen upon men at different times, such as wars, famine, and pestilence. In the judgments that are prophetically announced at the opening of the seventh seal we see a more direct and manifest intervention of God. The sound of a trumpet would symbolise the fact that God is directly announcing that His judgments are about to fall upon man.

When the seals are opened, a general providential ordering of events takes place; then, in the trumpets, we have bitterer judgments; and also judgments on men themselves, not merely on their circumstances.

The opening of the seals is then detailed. (Rev. 6:1-17.) After the first six there is a pause, and in Rev. 7 a remnant from the twelve tribes of Israel is sealed for preservation through the judgments which are about to follow, and a multitude of Gentiles are seen as destined to be brought through the great tribulation, and to occupy a special place of blessing before the throne of God, and to serve Him day and night in His temple, while He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them, and they themselves will be under the special shepherd care of the Lamb, and in the enjoyment of divine consolations. After this interval the seventh seal is opened, and is followed by the seven trumpets. (Rev. 8:2 - 11:18.) But between the sixth and seventh trumpets the episode is introduced of the "mighty angel," with a little book in His hand, taking possession of the sea and the earth, as He utters the solemn oath, that there should be no further delay (Rev. 10); and also of the measurement of the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein, together with the testimony. and the death and resurrection of the two witnesses. (Rev. 11) The seventh trumpet ushers in the end, and the world sovereignty "of our Lord and His Christ."

There are, it will be remarked, seven seals and seven trumpets. The distinction between them would seem to be that made by our blessed Lord, in Matthew 24, between the "beginning of sorrows," and the "tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." The first six seals introduce, therefore, preliminary judgments: these ended, there is a pause in heaven before the severer judgments, heralded by the trumpets, and which issue in the establishment of the world-kingdom of Christ.