Revelation 8-9, "The Final Answer to Prayer"

For the next week and a half, everyone will be telling you, “your voice matters, so vote.” But it doesn’t feel that way to most of us. But in the kingdom of God, not only does your voice matter. It is the hope for justice and salvation in our time. Let’s explain using Revelation 8 and 9.

Your Prayers Matter

Revelation 8:1–5 (ESV)

When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

Six of seven seals have been opened on the scroll God handed to Jesus, the Lamb. The people of earth who will not worship God and follow the Lamb have sealed their final judgment and it is now beginning. There are horsemen bringing war and death. There are martyrs crying out to God. The whole universe shakes and collapses and people on earth calling out to the rocks and hills to hide them from God. The people of God, the followers of the Lamb, are sealed for salvation and sing songs of praise to Jesus with loud voices, joined by all the angels. Heaven reverberates with these songs while earth reverberates with cataclysm.

Then the seventh seal is opened, and…silence. There is anticipation, tension. What will God do next? How will He bring all this to an end?

Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.

Now we know what to expect. Trumpets mean a royal pronouncement, a call to arms, something big and important. But something else happens first.

And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne,

and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.

Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.

Before the trumpets pronounce God’s kingdom, the silence is God’s moment to listen. What is He listening to? Our prayers.

Right in front of God’s throne is an altar on which incense is burned to mix a pleasing aroma with our prayers to God. What John sees is the collective prayers of God’s people over millennia, “all the saints” (verse 3), thrown down as a ball of fire onto earth. What is the meaning of this vision? Prayer is our weapon for spiritual warfare.

Jesus wants you to know, and He had John write what He saw so you would know, He hears every prayer. They all matter. We pray for justice and peace on earth. We pray for the lost to be saved. We pray for healing. We pray that God will end all evil. When God does not answer our prayers according to our timing, we are tempted to give up or turn to the weapons of the world: conquest, control, fear, hate, substances, sex, money. Jesus is showing us that we should not give up.

All of our prayers will be used in His own time to bring the justice you long for. In fact, they are the most powerful weapon in the arsenal. The prayers of the faithful followers of Jesus bring down the unseen spiritual strongholds that Satan uses to keep people enslaved.

When God’s people humble themselves and pray, God can change the world. He can work with people who are surrendered to His will, doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with Him through tribulation. The churches Jesus is speaking to through John are seeing evil people prosper and righteous people suffer. His message is, “Keep praying. Your prayers matter. If I don’t answer right away, it’s because I’m storing it up for the big day, when I will give the final answer.”

What is that final answer? It includes us in another way.

Herald the Coming King

The Royal Air Force of the UK had the honor in May of 2023 to herald the new king, Charles III. Their website says, “trumpet-like instruments have been used in every corner of the globe to herald important dignitaries, occasions, calls to prayer or relay battle orders. The earliest known metal trumpets were allegedly found in Tutankhamen's tomb made of sterling silver and bronze. Instruments such as these and Roman equivalents closely resemble the fanfare trumpets we use today.”

The King is coming. O Worship the King! After the fiery prayers of the saints are cast upon the earth, the seven angels begin to blow the trumpets. Here, we need to go back to Hebrew biblical imagery for kingdom and trumpets.

The story of the Bible is that God created a good world, and created humans in His image to partner with Him in His dominion on earth. We were created to cultivate fruitfulness and make God known. But we rebelled against God and exalted the self, and the result is Genesis 11, the building of Babylon. Babylon is whatever kingdom ruling the world that opposes God, tries to keep God out. Satan uses Babylon to conquer and enslave people in the brokenness of sin. The gospel is that when God’s kingdom comes, Babylon, in whatever form it exists at the moment, is destroyed.

As the Bible goes on, the trumpets begin to sound. The Babylon kingdom for a while was Egypt, which had enslaved the people of Israel. God delivered Israel, and then came down on Sinai to meet the people of Israel. Along with the fire, smoke, thunder, lightning, and an earthquake, the sound Israel heard was a trumpet blast (Exodus 19:16). God was coronated as King of Israel.

God then leads Israel to the Promised Land. But the Canaanite kingdom there doesn’t want the kingdom of God. God commands that seven priests blow trumpets at the walls of Jericho, and they come down, and the people of God enter the land to establish God’s kingdom there (Joshua 6:4, 8). The seven trumpets show up again when the ark of the covenant, upon which is the mercy seat, representing God’s throne, is brought into Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 15).

Seven trumpets herald the coming of God’s kingdom.

The first four trumpets bring a repeat of the plagues God sent on Egypt. For example, the first is,

Revelation 8:7 (ESV)

The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth.

The message is the same as it was for Egypt. God is sovereign over this world. Authority, power, dominion, belong to Him. Rome is just the Babylon of its day. But the one true and living God sits in authority and judgment over them. He will overthrow their order.

And a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.

We are told over and over that “a third” of the earth and its trees, a third of the sea and its creatures (8:8-9), a third of the fresh water (8:10), and a third of the sun, moon, and stars (8:12), and finally a third of all people are destroyed (9:16). Numbers have meaning in apocalyptic literature. 12 is the number for God’s people, 7 is the number of completion, 6 is for man, and 3 is the number for wholeness and order, especially in community or relationships. Think of the wholeness and order in the heavens with the sun, moon, and stars, or the wholeness and order of creatures in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth. Husband, wife, children, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, it goes on and on.

When a third of the created order is destroyed, God is reversing the created order. He is turning order into chaos. Environmental collapse is a trumpet call. These will culminate in the sixth seal, the killing of a third of mankind by not four horsemen, but ten thousand times ten thousand. 100 million troops from the armies of the nations from the four corners of the earth waging war, and the ensuing death of a third of all people. The imagery represents the total breakdown of world peace. And He is using the power of empires against one another to bring them down. God is in control and He is trying to get the world’s attention.

Even after all of this, the people on earth will still not repent.

Revelation 9:20–21 (ESV)

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Apparently there is still hope of repentance. God wants all people to repent and believe. But many people simply will not. Why?

Trumpets 5, 6, and 7 are called “woes” in 8:13. They are especially fearful because these directly affect people, where the first four were directed at the earth itself. We will have to wait for trumpet 7, but 5 and 6 both picture the evil powers at work destroying humans the closer we get to the end.

John spends a lot of time describing the plague of locusts that comes with the fifth trumpet in 9:1-12. This trumpet takes more space than the first four combined.

The description of these creatures from the Abyss, led by a king named “Destroyer”, is like nothing we’ve ever seen (9:7-10). People have tried to say, “if John was seeing attack helicopters, from his first century perspective, this is how he would describe them. And the horses of the sixth trumpet judgment are tanks. This is obviously some invading army on the move.” But nothing really fits the bill. Better to say John is using prophetic imagery (horsemen, locusts, plague, fire) to describe the demonic onslaught in the spiritual battle in which we all live. In 9:10, we are told,

Revelation 9:10 (ESV)

They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails.

The locust horde torments people with some kind of poison.

Revelation 9:4–6 (ESV)

They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.

They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone.

And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.

Could this be the onslaught of demonic soul poison we are inundated with right now in our society? People are tormented with their addictions to drugs, entertainment, pornography, news, gender confusion, serial relationships, anything to try and deal with the chaos our sins have created. None of them cures it, but they can’t stop. So the torment goes on. Most people have been overcome by the delusion and confusion of the spiritual evil that pervades our world.

So, what’s the answer to all this? The gospel.

The trumpet is also connected to the fall season. October 2 was Rosh Hashanah, which is Yom Teruah, the Feast of Trumpets. Israel blows trumpets to mark a new year and the ten days of awe which are for personal reflection leading up to the Day of Atonement, the day on which all your sins would be forgiven.

“Rabbi Saadia Gaon compiled a list of 10 reasons for this special mitzvah:

1. On Rosh Hashanah we coronate G‑d as King of the world. The shofar’s trumpeting call heralds this exciting event.

2. Its piercing wail serves to awaken slumbering souls that have grown complacent.

3. It evokes the shofar blasts that were heard when G‑d descended on Mount Sinai and gave us the Torah.

4. It echoes the cries of the prophets who urged Israel to mend their ways and return to G‑d and His commandments.

5. It reminds us of the war cries of our enemies as they broke into the Temple in Jerusalem and destroyed it.

6. Made of a ram’s horn, the shofar recalls the near-sacrifice of Isaac, who was saved when G‑d showed Abraham a ram to bring as an offering in his stead.

7. Its loud piercing sound humbles us and fills us with awe before G‑d.

8. It foreshadows the day of judgment at the end of days, which the prophet describes as “a day of shofar and alarm against the fortified cities and against the high towers (Zephaniah 1:16).”

9. It gives us hope, mirroring the sound of the “great shofar” that will call together the Jewish people who are scattered to the corners of the earth at the time of the coming of Mashiach.

10. It reminds us of the Revival of the Dead, about which we read, “dwellers of the earth ... a shofar is sounded you shall hear (Isaiah 18:3).” (chabad.org)

The trumpets are the herald of the gospel of the kingdom of God. The gospel, the good news, is that the kingdom of God is breaking into our world through Jesus the Messiah. Babylon in whatever form it exists will be overthrown along with those who follow her ways. Now is the time to repent and believe the good news of Jesus. His death on the cross was for your forgiveness. His resurrection is for your justification. His ascension is for your comfort and help because He hears your prayer. His soon return is your hope that He will set the world right.

All of your prayers for justice, salvation, deliverance, healing, are all heard and kept by Jesus. If you haven’t gotten your answer yet, the final answer will be more glorious than you can imagine. In the meantime, if you are a believer in Jesus, you are the herald of the King for your time. You are the herald of good news. Use your voice to wake up the slumbering souls who have become complacent, who have given in to the delusion and confusion of the demonic hordes. Salvation comes through Jesus Christ. Repent and believe the good news.

Communion

Questions for Discussion

What are you praying about this week? What are some prayers it doesn’t seem God has answered yet?

What is the value of silence in a time of prayer or a worship service? What seems to be the connection between silence and prayer in Revelation 8:1-5?

How have you witnessed the power of prayer in your life?

The trumpet judgments in Revelation 8 and 9 bring terrible destruction. What do we see God doing in that? What does that teach us about God?

What does our passage tell us about people?

How will you respond to the passage this week?

Who is someone you can share this passage with this week?