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§11 The Seventh Angel Sounds the Final Trumpet (Rev. 11:15–19)

The seventh trumpet blows a note of rejoicing in heaven. The heavenly chorus resumes its praise of God’s reign and God’s Christ, continuing the doxology sung at the Lamb’s coronation (cf. Rev. 5:13). Together with the great hymns of chapter 5, John brackets his vision of divine wrath and global devastation (6:1–11:14) with dissonant images of praise (5:13; 11:15–18) for rhetorical effect—to make it even more clear that God’s judgment of a sinful world is grounded in the triumph of the Lamb. The twenty-four elders who conclude this celebration with a second hymn of thanksgiving express the deeper-logic of John’s theological conviction: because God’s reign has begun with the exaltation of Christ (11:17), God’s judgment of the dead—of earth’s destroyers—has also begun (11:18). The profound summary of Paul’s “message of reconciliation” is centered by the same point: Christ “died for all; (therefore) the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:15a, 17b)!

Most commentators contend that the seventh trumpet envisions God’s future and final triumph at Christ’s second coming. Thus, these anthems of praise introduce the visions found in the following chapters, rather than conclude those of the previous chapters (Mounce, Revelation, p. 230). While the themes of God’s reign, wrath, and reward are strategic to what comes next in Revelation, they are hardly “introduced” at this point and are central to the whole composition. To justify their understanding of the seventh trumpet in terms of a futuristic eschatology, some even associate Paul’s “last trumpet,” which announces the coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:52; 1 Thess. 4:16), with John’s seventh trumpet (e.g., Beasley-Murray, Revelation, p. 187). While both Paul and John use the trumpet as an eschatological motif, they employ the motif in different ways with different meanings. In this passage, the trumpet accompanies hymns that consider the importance of Christ’s death and exaltation rather than his second coming. At this point in his vision, John is more concerned with a realized Christology than with a futuristic eschatology. Thus, the tense of the stanzas looks to the past in thanksgiving for what has “already been realized,” and not to the future in hope of what is “not yet real”: God has already begun to reign (11:17) with the exalted Lamb (cf. 5:10); and the time (kairos) of God’s wrath already has come (11:18) beginning with the vindication of the slain Lamb (cf. 6:16–17).

In accord with primitive Christian proclamation, then, John posits the assertion of God’s claim over the kingdom of the world (11:15) at the death and exaltation of Christ, and not at his second coming, which discloses and consummates God’s rule on earth. A consistent claim made throughout Revelation is that the Evil One does not reign on earth or in heaven (although many are deceived into thinking he does). The most problematic aspect of positing the seventh trumpet in the future rather than in the past is that it forces the interpreter to locate the “renewal” of God’s eternal reign in the future as well. If one supposes this is the case, then one must assume that the Evil One now has charge over earth and its ruling elite; and only heaven belongs to God. The theology of Revelation would challenge this assumption: if what is true in heaven is also true on earth, and if through Christ God has triumphed in heaven, then the Evil One has already been defeated and rules nowhere.

In maintaining this point, we must add the following qualification. John’s Revelation (with the entire NT) envisions a dialectic between a realized Christology and a futuristic eschatology. While death’s defeat has already been realized on Christ’s cross and verified in his empty tomb, death’s destruction, along with the evil kingdom, is still in the future. Therefore, until the future breaks into the present at Christ’s return, the effects of evil continue to distort the truth and to corrupt lives on earth.

11:15 / The first hymn, sung by presumably angelic (cf. 4:8; 12:10; 19:1) loud voices, looks back to the penultimate moment of salvation’s history and acclaims the essential truth of Christ’s death and exaltation: the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. Even though human existence has been corrupted by the world’s rebellious rulers, the sovereignty of God the creator can be reasserted because of Christ. Through the devotion of his faithful disciples, the kingdom of the world is challenged by a counter-kingdom of priests, made by Christ (5:10), to end the rule of those pretenders to God’s throne. It is John’s expectation that a life and faith that is an alternative to the world order will yield trials and tribulation. Evil is a defeated foe even though it continues to kick and struggle in the grasp of a victorious God. The first (i.e., present) stage of this new age of God’s salvation is dynamic and full of conflict simply because the realities of God’s salvation are breaking into the life of faithful disciples, while at the same time a defeated evil order is passing away against its wishes.

The radical theocentrism of John’s Revelation is not heard more clearly than here. The antecedent of he will reign for ever and ever is God rather than either Christ or both God and Christ. The effective result of the messianic mission of the faithful Jesus is to bring to an end the world’s rebellion against God and to provide God with the agent worthy enough to open the sealed scroll that declares and institutes God’s sovereignty over the evil powers forever. Apocalypticism is keenly interested in the formation of theological perceptions about God, about the social order, and about human suffering. By focusing the eschatological restoration of God’s people on the two essential moments of the Christ event—by what has been already realized (death and exaltation) and by what has not yet been realized (parousia)—John can express the relationship between present reality and what the future will bring in order to provide his readership with a way of seeing their own suffering and their surrounding community. This, then, is the essence of his pastoral program: to provide his audience with a “hermeneutic” that interprets the very real difficulties of living as Christian disciples within a non-Christian society. Recognition of Christ’s exaltation and of God’s triumph over the Evil One will evoke a response of either encouragement (if faithful) or repentance (if unfaithful). Human suffering, whether the yield of interpersonal or social conflict, is always the work of an “already defeated but not yet destroyed” foe.

11:16–18 / The second hymn, sung by the twenty-four elders, is more specifically addressed in thanksgiving to the Lord God Almighty. The naming of God, Lord God Almighty, recalls the Trisagion (4:8; cf. 1:8). But in this use of the traditional formula, John omits its third item, “is to come,” and reverses the remaining two: the One who is and who was. In doing so, John emphasizes the past rather than the future, further evidence that the seventh trumpet issues a commentary on the realized effects of the Lamb’s death and exaltation. God’s great power does not refer to the “final conflict in which God overpowers all his enemies” (Mounce, Revelation, p. 231); rather, it refers to the power exerted when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted him in heaven (cf. Eph. 1:19–20)—the moment when God “began his reign.” On the basis of a realized Christology, God (who was), has taken his great power … to reign into our present (who is).

The second stanza is a more sweeping celebration of the new age, from its beginning to its consummation. John begins by rehearsing Christ’s death, when the nations were angry and conspired against the Lamb of God (cf. Ps. 2:1–2). God responded in kind: the seals were broken and the trumpets were sounded to announce that God’s wrath has come. The elders express three certain results of the triumph of God’s reign: your wrath has come … for judging the dead, and for rewarding … saints … and for destroying those who destroy the earth. In one sense, this triad of verbal infinitives (in Gk.) picks up the regressive results of God’s wrath, when a fallen creation becomes more and more intolerable for human life and culminates in God’s destruction of the old order. In another sense, the same triad picks up the progressive results of God’s blessing, when a community of God’s servants … and saints … both great and small are rewarded, culminating in their new life as the new Jerusalem.

This future and final judgment of the nations’ rebellion and the complete vindication of the church’s faithfulness reflect a sense of fairness. As Caird points out, this is an essential aspect of John’s idea of salvation. Not only will the faithfulness of martyrs be gloriously vindicated, but those who ravage the earth will themselves be ravaged by God. Yet, this is not revenge; it is rather an act of liberation from evil so that the faithful are free to worship God and to live in shalom through eternity according to the intentions of a good creator (Caird, Revelation, p. 144).

11:19 / The opening of God’s temple in heaven represents a problem for those who want to place the sounding of the seventh trumpet at Christ’s parousia, since John finds no such temple in the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21; 22); and. even now the faithful Christian community is the “true” temple of God (cf. 11:1). To resolve this difficulty, some scholars are inclined to follow Minear’s lead and begin the next section of John’s vision at 11:19 rather than at 12:1. This clever move makes John’s reference to the ark of the covenant his preface to the battles of the current age, narrated from 12:1 to 14:5. However, the grammar makes this interpretation difficult: the opening And (Kai) connects this verse to the preceding anthem rather than to what follows. Most translations, including the NIV, are clear on this point. Furthermore, the opening formula of chapter 12, “A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven,” indicates the beginning of a new vision, distinct from previous visions.

In our view, the temple imagery adds a final element to the meaning of the seventh trumpet that concludes John’s visionary narrative of the Lamb’s exaltation and marks the transition into the visions of the current age. Where else but in a heavenly temple should one expect to find the Messianic Lamb who was slain to purchase a people for God? In fact, the notion that the first and second temples were built according to a heavenly pattern was common to Judaism’s Second Temple period, especially among hellenistic rabbis. John is no doubt familiar with this teaching and draws upon it in a manner similar to the author of Hebrews (cf. Heb. 8:1–10:18) to interpret his vision of a “third” temple. The foundational philosophical assumption of rabbinical teaching in this regard is that the heavenly realm asserts what is ultimately true and real (i.e., perfect and permanent). In this sense, the theology of the cross is about the renewal of Israel’s eternal relationship with God, which Christ’s exaltation proves. John’s use of the heavenly temple symbolism establishes the basis for Christian hope that God’s salvation will win out in history: what is true in heaven will be true on earth. Further, the symbolism of the ark, which points to the covenantal relationship between God and God’s people, delimits ultimate truth as essentially spiritual and relational in nature; and this too will be perfected in human experience.

If we are correct that the temple motif symbolizes a perfect and permanent realization of God’s covenant with Israel within history, then we can explain John’s interpretation of his vision of the heavenly temple in terms of the church’s eternal relationship with the Lord God Almighty (cf. Rev. 11:17 and 21:22) and the Lamb (cf. Rev. 21:22). The ark of his covenant, on which John’s sight falls, signifies the promised presence of God in the midst of a forgiven people. Since the ark stands in the inner sanctuary, where no one enters except the high priest on the Day of Atonement (cf. Lev. 16:17; Heb. 10:1–19), John’s reference to it here underscores the status of the faithful: their sins are forgiven and their relationship with God will stand firm to the end because of Christ’s atoning death. In this regard, we should note the opening line of the preceding hymn that calls eschatological Israel to worship. The invocation, we give thanks (eucharistoumen) to you, encompasses the very attitude required of the worshiping community’s celebration of Christ’s death in the Eucharist: “this is the blood of the new covenant.”

The concluding phenomena, flashes of lightning … and a great hailstorm, symbolize God’s reign (cf. 4:5). They remind the readers that the heavenly temple, its ark, its altar (cf. 8:5), its slain Lamb, and all those who are purchased by his blood are ultimately for God (cf. 5:9), and must therefore bear witness to God’s triumph over all who oppose the testimony of Jesus Christ and his people. Significantly, the only other place in Revelation where a “hailstorm” is found is at the onset of the seventh bowl (16:21), which marks the final destruction of the anti-God kingdom. The heavenly temple is linked in this way to Babylon’s fall on earth, since both events are results of God’s triumph in Christ.