The importance of seals and the number of trumpets – 2nd Part
“for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first” – 1 Thessalonians 4:16
In the previous article we compared the Lord's words about the time of the end and the "sign of His presence" with the account in Revelation - Matthew 24:3
This showed us how the description made actually concerned the seals: everything that comes after is no longer part of the Lord's discourse.
This allowed us to make a series of reflections.
1) The seals described in Revelation cannot be simple "previews" as initially this blog had assumed but they are evidently decrees that show God's will
2) The great tribulation that He mentions concerns Jerusalem and is not to be confused with the one that will concern the whole world because of the expulsion of Satan from heaven - Revelation 12:12
3) As we have speculated in the past, the trumpet judgments have a similar purpose as the plagues of Egypt - Exodus 3:10; 7:4; Matthew 24:31
...and other things that will surely be covered in future articles.
And obviously we have remarked what should have been obvious: there are only seven trumpets.
In fact, it would have been enough to read attentively what is said at the sounding of the seventh trumpet: and he will reign for ever and ever."
And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, "We thank you, Lord God Almighty, who are and who were, that you have taken your great power into your hand. , and established your kingdom. The nations were angry, but your wrath has come, and the time has come to judge the dead, to give their reward to your servants, to the prophets, to the saints, to those who fear your name, small and great, and to destroy those destroying the earth" - Revelation 11:15-18, New International Version
The reward is none other than the resurrection, for those who have died, and the seventh trumpet is not only "seventh" but also "the last", as confirmed by the apostle Paul - 1 Corinthians 15:52
That is also the moment in which the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of God and of his Christ, as it is logical that it is.
The deep and solid internal harmony of the Bible, therefore, has allowed us to understand that the translation that says that the Lord would send angels "with a great sound of the trumpet" is incorrect while those that report that the Lord sends angels are correct. “with the big trumpet”.
In Revelation we clearly see that it is the opening of the seventh seal that "sends the angels", who each have a trumpet - Revelation 8:1, 2
In this concluding article, we will see what the guiding scripture reveals about the seventh angel.
Before doing this, let's see if the things written above give us a solid basis and a guide for the correct interpretation.
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| Who is the seventh angel of those who "stand before God"? |
The seven laps around Jericho
Some critics claim that it was Joshua and his army that brought down the walls of Jericho.
They assert that the word "to play the trumpets" is a military slang meaning "to set fire to fagots", or pieces of wood tied with ropes and other flammable material.
According to them, Joshua and the army would have worked for hours or days to insert this flammable material around the walls, at least in the nerve centers of the walls.
These critics, however, forget an important detail in their thesis.
An unknown number of archers were stationed above the walls because this was the way to protect a city in ancient times.
The walls could be torn down by large battering rams and set on fire by various means.
No one, in the past, would have ever thought that the walls alone would have been sufficient to protect a city.
When Babylon made this mistake, she bitterly paid the price.
Sentinels existed for a reason.
Is it reasonable to think that the inhabitants of Jericho would have stood by peacefully as Joshua and his army poured large quantities of flammable material right under their walls?
Wouldn't they have been riddled with arrows or buried by boulders?
Of course, we are not implying that it could not be done: Joshua and the army could have done such a thing even at the cost of numerous human lives; it is only intended to highlight the inconsistency of the criticism. Either the entire narrative in the book is claimed to be false (which is difficult to do given the historical artifacts) or you can't extrapolate a single scripture and say it means something else entirely. The eventual inventor of the story of Joshua would not have been particularly smart to omit all the details relating to the siege of Jericho (just to make believe in a divine intervention) and then say "Set fire to the fagots!"Those who do not believe in the Word of God try to attach themselves to anything in order to diminish or bring back to their concept of "realistic" any biblical expression or narrative but this should not be said by those who claim to be Christians.
The Bible plainly says that on the seventh round of the seventh day... “ So the people cried out, and the priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sounding of the trumpets they gave a great cry, and the walls fell down” – Joshua 6:20
After six consecutive days of turning and trumpeting, the walls of Jericho collapsed on the seventh turning made on the last day: the seventh.
Who brought down the walls?
Of course, it wasn't the sound waves produced by the horns.
It is evident that it was a supernatural event.
Who were the Israelites helped by?
We don't know the details but it is certainly interesting to read that, shortly before receiving the order to go around the city, he met the "chief of the Lord's army" - Joshua 5:13-15
Yhwh's army are obviously the angelic hosts and the leader of all these can be none other than the Archangel, a title meaning "chief of all angels" - see Matthew 26:53
So it was certainly he who brought down the walls of Jericho with the sound of trumpets, according to the will of Yhwh, on the seventh day.
The Eighth Trumpet Problem and the Trinity
Let's be honest.
An octave or even a ninth trumpet is a requirement for those who insist that Jesus is God.
Surely it is not the only reason but those who have this conviction certainly cannot accept that Jesus is seen as an angel.
Those who don't believe it, on the other hand, don't look for complicated turns of phrase to make Scripture say what it doesn't say.
We know that he is the Lamb who, after appearing before God (proving for the thousandth time that he is not that God) is the one who opens the seals ... and we know that he is the same rider on the white horse that is seen at the opening of the first seal.
It is not "the antichrist", who appears only in chapter 13, who certainly does not win and does not complete any victory and we do not give human explanations only because it is difficult for us to accept that it is God's will that these wars break out which will destabilize the system of Satan – Revelation 6:2
We well know that God has used, and many times, human wars to carry out His Will.
This, whether we like it or not, is in harmony with many judgments described in scripture - Exodus 15:3; Isaiah 3:25
God used the Babylonian empire to punish his people; in his time used the Medo-Persian Empire to punish Babylon and also punished Edom, Ammon, Assyria, Tyre, Egypt and many other nations large and small – Isaiah 11:14; 2.31pm; 34:6; Jeremiah 4:6, 7; 46:20-26 (See also Jeremiah chapters 47 to 49 which mention judgments against Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Chedar, Hazor, Elam, and Babylon; all of these judgments are carried out through human warfare.)
We have recently seen that He, Jesus. is not the Archangel Michael as we believed before* (see footnote) - (Revelation 12:7-12) but obviously there is no contradiction just as there is no contradiction in description of angel “like a son of man” who reaps the earth – Revelation 14:15, 16
While he is not specified to be an angel in this scripture, he reaps the earth exactly as does the "other angel" described in verse 17.
And of course they don't even want to insinuate that he is an ordinary angel - see Hebrews 1:1-8
Even if we now understand that in the celestial realms there can be multiple Archangels, who can be "chief of angels", that is, of all angels, if not the Son of God?
The son of God surely is seen several times throughout Revelation as both a Lamb and a "mighty angel."
Consequently, those who do not believe that Jesus is God do not find it particularly difficult to accept that the seventh angel (one of those who stand before God, and therefore not a generic angel) is really him.
Is it not a contradiction that He, as the seventh angel, "sends angels with the trumpet"?
Obviously not, only that while before we thought that He sent seven angels, now we understand that he can only send six since he is precisely the seventh, the head, the one who will initiate the resurrection and who will include the seven bowls that will give the final blow to the world of Satan.
Similarly to what happened in Jericho, the last trumpet blast will bring down the walls of Satan's world and the kingdom of the world will finally become the Kingdom of God and His Christ – 1 John 5:19; Revelation 11:15-17
As the guiding scripture of this article says “ with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, he will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first” – 1 Thessalonians 4:16
It is not necessary to find an eighth trumpet or even a ninth for those who are guided by Scripture and not by their religion.
The Archangel Michael, i.e. the potentate Jesus in the guise of leader, will certainly have a trumpet and will play it as well ... only that he will not play it to gather the other angels (an action that takes place when the seventh seal is opened) but will do it last, after the others have played theirs.
As we saw in the article dedicated to the gathering of the Ephraimites, shortly after the seventh trumpet, which gathers them from one end of the earth to the other, judgment comes upon them.
By then, both God's heavenly and earthly people will be gathered. This will begin the Millennial Kingdom.
Footnote. The article showing that Michael cannot be Jesus was published in December 2022. Before that, so even before this article was originally written, the author believed that Jesus and the archangel Michael were the same person. It was a mistake and we are happy to have made further progress in this respect as well.
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