(Revelation - Part 13): When the Seven Trumpets Sound — A.W. Tozer

Dear Lord Jesus, we are between heaven and hell in this spinning world, and our time is short and our days are few, and we so much need Thee. Thou hast put a light in the dark place, that we might not be as those who sleep and who sleep in the night, but that we might know, and be awake, and be informed, and alert.

We pray Thou wilt help us tonight, O God, in hearing. May we hear Thee speak, Lord. We've heard men, we've heard them, Lord, until there we're weary of them. We've heard men who know not whereof they speak, speaking of that whereof they know nothing.

Thou, O God, knowest all things. Speak Thou, Lord, to our hearts. May the people hear a voice, it's not only the voice of a man, but within it and back of it, may they hear the voice, Thy voice, and be conscious that they're listening to a proclamation, a trumpet, a voice.

Great God, make it so. Help us now tonight, in Christ's name, Amen. Now turn to the book of Revelation, please, the 8th chapter. The 8th chapter of the book of Revelation, and we'll see what we can find here for the lesson tonight.

The Seventh Seal and the Pause Before Judgment

The man of God said when he had opened the 7th seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And I don't want anybody to come up to me and say, What does that mean? Because I don't know.

If I knew, I would tell you, but I don't know what it means, silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And I've found that what we don't know, usually, is very fine material for some wonderful sermons.

But I refuse to preach about that of which I know nothing, and I know little about this, except that there was a pause there, perhaps it was a sort of a sila. You know, in the Old Testament, they're reading along in the Psalms, you come to the word sila.

Nobody knows what it means, some read it and some don't, but it means pause, stop here. Maybe a musical notation, we don't know. And God is working, the seals are being opened, and when the 7th seal is opened, there is a pause, a kind of a divine sila in heaven yonder, as though the wheels of judgment had ground for a little while to a merciful stop.

And then, after the passing of that space of half an hour, I saw the 7 angels which stood before God, and to them were given 7 trumpets. Now these 7 angels are pointed out here as being something special for the occasion, but they're certainly not all the angels, for we read of 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 of them.

And to them were given the 7 trumpets, but these 7 trumpets indicate that God was giving these special 7 trumpets to these special angels for a purpose, for there were other trumpets also throughout the word of God.

And when these trumpets were about to sound, I noticed something here which I wonder if you have ever thought of. Another angel came and stood at the altar, at the divine altar in heaven, this scene evidently takes place in heaven, and the angel stands at the altar, this angel or messenger of God probably was sent from the throne of God.

Some would think it was Christ himself, but there was given to this one a golden censer, and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.

You see, the earth is waiting, and God is watching the earth's cup of iniquity fill up. And the people of God are praying, and they have been praying ever since our Lord opened his mouth and said, When you pray, pray, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And the people of God have been praying, O God, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. And back in the 6th chapter, the souls under the altar have been praying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, how long?

And the saints have been in prayer, asking that the kingdom of God might come on the earth. And you know the kingdom, that prayer can't be answered, that prayer can't be answered unless there is first the judgment of God to shake loose the earth from the usurpers who now hold it and give it back over to the Son of God to whom it belongs, who created it and who bought it back with his own precious blood.

And the prayers of the saints were upon the golden altar, but they were for the time ineffective there, and I'd like to point out in passing here that there are times when the prayers of the saints are ineffective, that is, they are held for a while, as the seed is put into the earth in the fall of the year.

It doesn't die, but there's no evidence that it's there. The winter is on, and the snow comes heavy, and it melts and freezes, and more snow comes in the field where ten thousands of living grains lie ready to burst into blossom and bloom.

They are lying cold under the ice, dormant and for the time ineffective, and then when the right circumstances come, they suddenly break out, and you have a great waving field of grain. So the prayers of all the saints have gone up to God upon the altar, and they are kept there.

And then when they are mixed with prayer from off the altar, or with incense, much incense, when the prayers of Christ from the altar are mixed with the prayers of the saints living and dead, that is, those who are now living and dead, then the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel's hand, and the angel took the censer and filled it with fire of the altar.

I repeat that the earth is not going to have the talons of the usurper shaken loose from it until there is judgment and the fire of the altar, and it was cast upon the earth, or into the earth, and when it was cast into the earth, then there were voices and thunders and lightnings and an earthquake.

Men like to believe that this nation or that nation, this army or that army, this weapon or that weapon, this bomb or that bomb is going to hold the balance of power and determine the situation. But I tell you tonight, my friends, that the world's ultimate outcome, the outcome of things will be determined not by the nuclear bombs of men, not by armies and generals and summit conferences and general assemblies of nations, but the outcome will result from the prayers of the saints.

Every time a soul in the Holy Ghost prays, "'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,' that prayer is registered there before God as a seed is put into the earth. But conditions down here in the world have iced over and piled snow upon those prayers for the time.

But a time is coming when God will pour out incense with the prayers of the saints, and the effective prayer of Jesus Christ will join with the effectual prayers of righteous men. And then, when God sees this, he will pour out of that censer fire of the altar upon the earth, and there will be voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake.

And then the seven angels, which had the seven trumpets, prepare themselves to sound.". Why are they sounding the trumpets? They're sounding the trumpets in order to announce to mankind that there's another world than this.

The Biblical Meaning of Trumpets

Now, let's look at the trumpets in the scriptures for a little while. 125 times in the Bible the trumpets are mentioned, 125 times. In ancient Israel, the trumpets served as a bugle in an army, as an army camp is always within sound of the bugle, so Israel in the wilderness could always hear.

If you were to blow a trumpet down in Toronto's downtown, people out where I live on the city limits couldn't hear it. But the camp of the army can be heard, the bugle can be heard, and the trumpets could always be heard in Israel.

It was small enough, that is, the city was small enough so that the trumpet, when it was blown, could be heard. And different calls meant different things. The trumpet blew a certain sound, it was alarm.

Anybody who has ever served in the army knows what old first call is, that miserable first call that gets you out of bed, and you know what the call to the colors is at night, you know what the call to mess call is when you're called to meals at noon and morning, noon and night, and you know what taps when it's good night when that's finished and the lights are out and everyone rests.

And so it was in Israel, they had a call that was the sound of the alarm, and they had another was a call to assembly, they had another was the call of the feast, they had another was a call to war, they had another that sounded forth the day of jubilee, or as our colored friends sing, the day of jubileo.

They sing for the day of jubileo, the day when God shall deliver all men everywhere from the bondage of iniquity. And the prophets carry that figure over and use it, blow the trumpet in Zion and sound the alarm and warn the people, cries the Holy Ghost through the prophets.

And Paul in the New Testament said, if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, how shall a man prepare himself to battle? You'll remember that on Mount Sinai the trumpet of God sounded with darkness and earthquakes and thunder and lightning.

And in the judgment time, I read here in the book of Matthew, immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heaven shall be shaken.

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn. And they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and he shall send his angels with the great sound of the trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of the heaven to the other.

And the trumpet shall sound, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, that the trumpet shall sound. Behold, I show you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet.

For the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed. Now, that's the reason for the trumpet, for that's the scriptural setting for it all. And when it carries over to this book of Revelation, it comes not as a new thing introduced, but as something with which any Bible student is familiar.

The Trumpets of Judgment and Humanity’s Rejection of God

Now the reason for the trumpets of judgment, I want to talk a little bit about that. God once walked and talked with men, and he spoke to them in the quiet voice of love. He spoke to them in the cool of the day, and they heard his voice as the voice of love walking among the trees of the garden.

But men sinned, and now we cannot hear or will not hear the voice of God. God has spoken and God is speaking in many ways. He spoke by the prophets, he speaks by the seers, he speaks in nature, he speaks by reason, he speaks in the scriptures, he spoke by holy men who were moved by the Holy Ghost.

He has spoken through holy men who have lived and preached and prayed and sang since the Bible was written, and he spoke most loudly and most clearly in his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. But sinning men are not listening, they are not listening tonight, and only an occasional believing ear at any rate will hear.

He that hath an ear, let him hear, says the Holy Spirit. He that hath an ear, let him hear. And in this hour of the world's agony, when men have filled a cup of iniquity and rejected the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, fouled the beautiful earth, and then gone out to do the like to other worlds, for I have no doubt that if we go out to other worlds we will foul them there as we are fouling them here.

You know that there is a new law, a new kind of law, not a new law, but a new kind of law. You know there is criminal law, there are the tax laws, there are the laws having to do with marriage, the laws having to do with real estate, laws having to do with immigration and our relation to governments, and there are patent laws, and the laws that I am interested in sometimes, copyright laws.

I don't like the copyright, but publishers won't handle it any other way. They copyright books, and so we have many kinds of laws. But there is a new kind of law, we have international law. There are treaties, for instance, between Canada and the United States.

Many things that are done are the result of treaties, laws that are understood and are valid between the two nations. Tomorrow morning at ten o 'clock I'll get in a little plane out here at Malden Airport and we'll hop down to New York, down across New York State, down over the boundary line and into New York, and the next day I'll get in a plane and hop back.

Well the reason I can do that and have nobody bother me is because of treaties between the two countries. I find I pay my taxes both places, sorry to learn that, but I do, and that's because of a treaty they tell me down in Washington, that I pay some here and I pay some down there and I get kicked around both places.

That's because of a treaty. But there's another kind of law that is coming out, and that is space law. That is how far up is up, and how far up does Canada go? And if somebody says, well Canada goes as far as space goes, well wait a little while, the earth turns around and pretty soon up isn't Canada anymore but some other country or the Pacific Ocean, and so we go, there's got to be laws all worked out.

And there'll be laws one of these times about the moon and there'll be laws about the planets. Pretty soon we'll be having wars and quarrels and fights and summit conferences and cold wars over what we do when we get to the moon.

United States sent up something the other day and it blew up on them and fizzled and landed in the ocean, but when they get it perfected, and they always do, they have a few blunders, and then always get it perfected, they'll send a man over there to the moon.

And when he lights over there in that cosmic dust, lands over there in that cosmic dust, well he'll want to plant the American flag there or else he'll be told by international law, no you can't do it, this is international territory.

Another kind of law, we're not satisfied with making a hell on earth, we're going to make an earth of the planets and the moon and up there, and when we do we're going to foul it up the same as we've fouled everything up here, and in this hour when the cup of iniquity is filling up, that's a figure of speech, a frightful, alarming figure of speech used in the scriptures, the cup of iniquity is almost full.

When the cup fills, God watches it fill up, watches it from his silence, watches it from his heaven above, and when the cup of iniquity is just about ready to brim over, God speaks to the seven trumpeters, and they come forth and start blowing their trumpet.

And God, in the hour when the world has gone over to Antichrist and enslaved a major portion of the world and violated every natural and spiritual law, even the judgments of God will be considered something else and be explained away.

I have no doubt about it at all, but the judgments of God are going to be explained away. Remember when God spoke out of heaven to his Son? The people around heard a voice and they said it thundered, but it was the voice of God, and men are refusing to believe that God speaks even when he speaks because of our unbelief.

Scientific science is explaining it all away. You consider the amazing and terrifying things that are being done in the realm of biology now. You consider that it can be, for too many generations have passed away, that marriage may be abolished from some countries altogether and babies will be in test tubes, just as the famous Englishman said in The Brave World of Tomorrow, I read it but can't remember the title.

He went a long way out, and he wrote it a few years ago, and I heard him on the air the other day. He said it was so fulfilled so completely now that it wasn't new anymore, that the thing had been not this particular thing, but it's being fulfilled.

And everybody is saying, instead of saying, listen, listen, God is speaking, they are having wise men come up and adjust their eyepiece, whatever that's for, and explain it. And so, my brother and sister, it's going to take the concord of God to arouse us.

It's going to take something out of this world. And when God shakes the world loose from her scientists and her politicians, when he shakes the world loose from her playboys and her pleasure lovers, when he shakes the world loose, I say, and turns it over to the one to whom it belongs, Jesus Christ the Lord, he's going to do it in a way that everybody will know that it is a miraculous manifestation.

Some say that we can believe the book of Revelation now because of nuclear bombs and because we have now found the secret of nature. I believed it long before the time of the nuclear bomb. I lived not too far, preached for 31 years, a good-sized stone folk who had a good arm, from where the nuclear bomb was created, from where it was born.

And yet, I don't believe for one minute that God is going to allow Khrushchev or anybody else to take any credit for all of this. When God gets ready to take the earth over and send out his angel to say, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and Lord and of his Christ.

In that hour, everybody in heaven and earth and hell is going to know this is not a man, not a scientist working in a laboratory. Or should I say laboratory and being silent, because I notice people here do it based on the radio.

But I was taught to say laboratory, said it for 60 years, and I don't know how I can change now without violence to my dentures. So I'll say laboratory. And no laboratory anywhere is going to compound the fire that God pours out on the earth.

The First Four Trumpets: Fire, Blood, Bitterness, and Darkness

This didn't come out of Russia, this didn't come out of Oak Ridge, this came out of heaven. And the first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth, and the third part of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.

Men loved fire, and God said, all right, blow the trumpet and give them all the fire they want. The second angel sounded, and where a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, and the third part of the sea became blood.

Men loved blood and said, God, blow your trumpet and give the world all the blood they can take. And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life died, and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and fell upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of water. And the name of the stars was called Wormwood.

And the third part of the waters became Wormwood, and many men died in the waters because they were made bitter. Men loved bitterness and hate, and gave it to them. The fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon and the third part of the stars, so as the third part of them was darkened.

I wonder if it would be, I wouldn't attempt to say and I wouldn't introduce here anything that I could not back with scripture, so I'm only doodling now as I talk here for the next minute and a half, and wonder if it won't be because of what man has done out in space that God will finally take his sponge and mop the skies as well as the earth, and God will take his divine detergent and cleanse the heavens as well as the earth below, and cleanse space as well as the earth.

Fourth angel sounded, and the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon and the third part of the stars, so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

The Present Voice of Invitation Before the Trumpets of Woe

Then I beheld an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels which are to sound.

Next week I shall talk about Abaddon and Apollyon and the destroyer and the scorpions that come up out of the pit, but I want to talk a little bit now about this woe, woe, woe, and God says if today you will hear his voice.

You and I are not listening for trumpets now. We sing about that, and we poetically talk about listening for the trumpets, but we have another voice to listen to, you and I. It is not the voice of the judgment trumpets, not the voice of the trumpet blown by one of the angels marked out, but it is another voice altogether.

I want to say to you there will be manifestations from heaven that cannot be mistaken. There will be. There will be manifestations from heaven. God says, Christ our Lord said and is written for us in the Gospels that the time would come when it should be and men should be filled with great fear for things that are coming upon the earth.

I don't know that time is upon us yet, but I know that time is coming. All the prophets say so, and our Lord says so, and all the apostles say so, and the book of Revelation says so, and the Saints down the centuries have believed it and still believe it.

But do you know what has happened? We have talked about these things until we have reached a point of diminishing return now. You can talk about a thing often enough and long enough and carelessly enough and spiritlessly enough and pretty soon you will reach a point of diminishing return.

And it has no effect anymore, no meaning anymore, and that is what has happened to us who are evangelicals. Between the First World War and the Second World War, men ran out everywhere with their charts and their pointers and their tickers and their films, and they were telling us more than the prophets knew, and we finally got hardened over.

Now we have reached a point of diminishing return. You hand your baby a glass of milk now and you don't know whether it is good milk or whether if you put a Geiger counter it would click and show that it was filled with radiation.

You don't know. And we don't know when we look up and see something bright in the sky whether God put it there or whether man put it there. And we are getting so we are not frightened anymore, and we are not scared at all.

I understand that Russia is preparing to send a man around the moon right after the first of the year. I wouldn't doubt they will do it. They have not refined things, but they have powerful things. The United States is sending up refined instruments and earning a great deal scientifically.

Russia cares less. Russia is sending up vast, huge things and whirling them around up there. So I wouldn't wonder at all they will send a man up there and he will go out there and spend two and a half days going and two and a half days coming back, and the world will go wild over the man who has been to the moon.

Well, I know that these manifestations that we are now seeing that man is creating are such that we are losing our ability to be afraid anymore. There is no awe left in the earth. You know when you get scared enough, you stop being scared.

And when you have been frightened often enough, you stop being frightened anymore. The old story of the wolf, the boy that cried wolf when there was no wolf and cried it so often that he reached the point of diminishing returns.

And when he cried wolf, when the wolf came, nobody listened to him and the wolf stole the sheep. It's simply a wise old man who knew the human psychology, wrote that little fable, and it's true enough.

And Christians hardly believe the prophets anymore. Our Lord said, O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. We don't believe. And it's been the result of ignoring. We have ignored.

We're ignoring God now. And we're living like twentieth-century fatlings in a stall. And we're ignoring the truth now. How long since you've read the prophets and wept over them? How long since you've read the prophets and even been worried about them?

How long? How long since you've heard a real sermon on a prophecy and the end time and the coming of the Lord and the winding up of this world, these world things and world events? If Noah had not believed in that hour, the human race would have been wiped out.

Noah believed. If Noah had listened and listened and not believed, and God spoke and spoke and Noah hadn't believed, thank God one man believed. Thou hast found grace in my sight, said the Holy One to Noah, and Noah believed.

Preachers tell about how Noah suffered persecution as he was building of the ark. I don't know. It doesn't say that in the Bible. But knowing humanity, I suppose that he did. I suppose that when Noah stood out there tall and gaunt and thin with a scraggly beard and a fiery eye and said, he was a preacher of righteousness, you know, we're told in the scriptures.

And when he said, The flood is coming upon the world of ungodly, I can imagine that nobody believed it at all. Nobody but his own family believed it. And if Lot had ignored the warning when the angels came down and took him by the arm and said, Come, get out, haste, get thee away, for the fire is going to fall on Sodom and Gomorrah, if Lot had ignored the warning, I am sure that the world would have been a different world and the scripture would have had a different story there.

But Lot believed. He believed enough. He wasn't too good a man, but he believed enough to get up and get his family, some of his family together, and said, Come on, let's get out of here. Knowing what his wife did afterwards, I imagine he had a hard time getting her away.

She said, Listen, Lot, you're mayor of the city here, you sit in the gate, you're high up in politics and men bow to you, and we've been able by a little fast footwork to get ourselves fine property and nice wall-to-wall carpeting, and you want us to leave it here now.

You want us to leave it. But Lot said, I heard the voice of God. She said, You're an old fool, you've been drinking too much. You think you heard the voice of God? I wonder if you did. And he said, You're going with me now.

And the family's going. And she finally yielded under the heat of the pressure of it, and she went. But she looked back. She never wanted to go. She looked back and became a pillar of salt, and the scientists have talked about how a sudden jut of hot lava came up and covered her, and then when it hardened it was salty, and so she was a pillar of salt.

Those scientists are always prepared to explain everything, but there'll be something they can't explain one of these days when those angels, those mighty, all-inspiring angels of God, pick up the silver trumpets and blow, they'll be heard among all the planets and stars and everywhere on the earth, and nobody can say a thunder, they'll know better.

Hearing Christ’s Gentle Call to Repentance

Christians are now at ease in Zion, engrossed in luxuries and pleasures, forgetting to pray, forgetting to pray, and the result is we're not hearing the voice. You say, I'll hear the trumpet. When you hear the trumpet, it'll be too late.

It'll be too late when you hear the trumpet, when the book of God tells us that there'll be the seven trumpets, but when they start to blow, it'll be too late then. You'd better listen for another voice now.

Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, says the mighty voice. And that's the other trumpets are to sound. The one we'll talk about next week. But in the meantime, that isn't the voice we listen for.

We listen for another voice. It is the voice of Jesus calls me home. It is the voice of Jesus saying to me in this hour, this lull, this sela, this hour of man's hope and possibility and opportunity, this voice of God, as gentle as a mother calling in her firstborn, this voice of Jesus Christ is calling, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

And if we will not hear that voice, we may hear the voice of the trumpet, but we must hear this voice. We Christians must hear a voice. We must hear the voice of God saying that we are to beware, lest we be overcome with surfeiting and drunkenness in the cares of this life.

And so that day take us unawares, surfeiting and drunkenness in the cares of this life. What is surfeiting? Surfeiting is overeating. It's an ominous and awesome thing. What is happening in our day, an ominous thing that when you listen to the radio, it tells you that Canada's most, and the same in the States, for I've heard it there, our most serious disease is mental disease.

And mental patients take up more beds, I could hardly credit this, but I heard it. Mental patients take up more beds in Canadian hospitals than all the other kind of sick people put together. I'd want that verified, but I heard it announced.

You may have heard it. Strange isn't it, in this hour? Strange isn't it that one other disease or one other phenomenon that is causing a great deal of talk and a great deal of trouble and a great many jokes and a great many cartoons and making a lot of people rich and a lot of people miserable is overweight.

You have too much, we eat too much, we sleep too long, we settle down into the night, we enjoy the world too much, we have too many pleasures, and we expect to hear a trumpet, but it'll be too late. There's a quieter voice.

God is not calling men to him with a trumpet. It's written of him that he never cried aloud, nor lifted up his voice, nor made it to be heard in the streets. He has sent his messengers. He has sent the quiet voice of men.

He has sent the beautiful, sweet voice of song. He has sent the personal worker. He has sent the evangelist. He has sent the quiet old pastor, maybe now retired, but still able to point his soul to Jesus.

He has sent the simple housewife who teaches a Sunday school class. He's sent plain people. He's sent services like this, quiet services without any fanfare or hoopla. He's sent them. He's not sent the angel with the trumpet yet.

And the voice that we hear is not, Whoa, whoa, whoa! But the voice we hear is, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

The voice we hear is, Wake thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead, and God will give thee life. The voice we hear is, Repent, repent, it tells us back in this third chapter in this same book. Remember, therefore, for four points thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.

Then every time, seven times, he says, He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying unto the churches. I love people, I like children, and I like a little humor, and I am jovial sometimes, but I am a troubled man, and I am a serious man, and I am serious enough that if God were to whisper to me tomorrow morning, they will never hear you at Avenue Road.

I would phone my resignation in to the board that meets Tuesday night. I won't fool with people who won't listen. Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works. Here is the terrible thing, Brother Gray, the terrible thing.

The Danger of Religious Complacency and Being Passed By

I hear these things when I go to cities here and there. People gather and talk with me, and I lunch with them or meet them in church. We talk, and I hear how among the Episcopalians, Anglicans they call Episcopalians in the States, I hear among the Episcopalians, some are meeting God with old-fashioned baptism of the Holy Ghost, resulting in the healing of bodies.