Framework: Section 2C -
'Last days'? eschaton (part 1), Gospels (part 1)

One of the disturbing aspects of Revelation is the repetitive catastrophes of the seals, trumpets and bowls (the septets) which begin and never end – until the very end.  By putting these into the Creation – New Order context in the proposed macrostructure their presence is explained as cycles of disasters that cover 2000 years (to date).  Details of the septets are considered in the Construction sections of Frameworks 1 to 4.  The first disasters began in John’s ‘present age’, at the Cross when the slain Lamb takes the scroll from the right hand of the One-seated-on-the-throne (5:7) and he opens its seven seals (see Framework 1).  Grant Osborne suggests there is a transfer of authority to the Lamb with the scroll (Osborne, 2002:257) and this is confirmed by 12:10-11:

     ‘Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming, ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.  But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death’.

This is illustrated in time-parallel 1 (Framework 1).  When the Lamb opens the first four seals, four horsemen are released – bringing with them conquest, civil war, social unrest and famine, plague and wild beasts invading decimated communities (6:2-8).  Such outrages occurred before the Cross but they intensified afterwards, with the expansion and control by the Roman Empire: persecution of the faithful as witnessed by the martyrs rejoicing (fifth seal, 6:9-11) and the catastrophic earthquake (sixth seal, 6:12-21) perhaps represents the besiege and fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.  Four angels held back the four winds at the four corners of the earth until the 144,000 servants of God from all the tribes of Israel were sealed (7:1-8), so the trauma was somewhat mitigated at that time.  The impact of the four horsemen is endless; conquest, war, famine and death continue today.  This study proposes that John saw visionary events on earth in their true form – as an inter-twining of the spiritual (the horsemen) and the physical (the resulting torments).  In John’s day, a sealed contract was usually opened when it was ready to be implemented and by opening the seals the Lamb initiated the new era of messianic authority.  The counterpart of 4:1-8:12 is 12:1-18 in the proposed macrostructure, and Richard Bauckham calls 12:1-14:20 the ‘messianic war’ (Bauckham, 1993a: 94).  The Cross did not create the seal torments, the seals are part of that war.

After the hiatus of the Silence of the seventh seal (8:1) and the ‘times of the Gentiles’ (Lk. 21:24), i.e. 2000 years later (to date), the Censer is thrown to earth and ‘the age to come’ (the eschaton) begins and the trumpets sound (8:7-11:19).  They affect the same physical-spiritual space as the seals, and the first four trumpets follow a similar pattern: burning land, sea contamination and a third of the sea creatures and ships are destroyed, contaminated fresh water and there is darkness; and the spiritual elements are the trumpet blasts themselves, and perhaps the combustion welling up from within the horses, like the smoke which rose when the abyss opened (9:2).  Two ‘woes’ follow on the physical-spiritual earth, when the abyss and earth open (9:1-21, fifth and sixth trumpets) and satan’s beasts appear on the biblical earth (13:1-18) (Framework 3, time-parallels 2 and 3).  A lot happens when the sixth trumpet sounds, during the second woe: four angels are released at the Euphrates, John meets the ‘mighty angel’, he hears the seven thunders’ message, he measures the Temple, he sees the ‘two witnesses’ (10:1-11:14) and when the seventh trumpet sounds, John sees the heavenly sanctuary open (11:15-19).  Trumpets traditionally sound warnings so it is likely that the seven blasts warn of imminent disasters – but they do not create them.  In other words, they may herald imminent judgement but they are warnings designed to give people time to act.  In Revelation, the action required is repentance, but some people continue to worship demons and idols and they do not repent of their evil ways (9:20-21).  The focus of the idolatry is on the recently installed, speaking image of the abyss beast (13:14-15) and they see fire as a sign from heaven endorsing the authority of the earth beast (13:13).

If the trumpet blasts are warnings of imminent judgement, the seventh trumpet may stop sounding when the Lamb appears on Mt Zion (14:1-5) because his appearance on the biblical earth immediately follows the blast on the physical-spiritual earth (Frameworks 3 and 4).  The proposed macrostructure indicates that the sign of the seven plague (bowl) angels appears (15:1) when the ‘two witnesses’ are appointed and killed in Jerusalem, during the time of the sixth trumpet (11:3-10; time-parallel 5).  The angels are given golden bowls full of the wrath of God (15:6-8) and the torments associated with the first four bowls are similar in nature to the equivalent seals and trumpets: sores, contaminated water, cosmic disturbances and scorched earth (16:2-9).  This is the beginning of the long anticipated Day of God’s Wrath (since 6:12, and in the Hebrew Bible).[1]   In the Gospels, this period is like the times of Noah (Lk. 17:26-27, Mt. 24:37-39) or Lot (Lk. 17:28-33) (see 2C.c).  The bowls are the ‘third woe’ that was anticipated before the seventh trumpet sounded (11:14).

Timescales for the septets are very different. The first six seals may have ended in 70 A.D. but the seventh seal continues for 2,000 years (to date).  How long the first four trumpets will sound is unknown but, if the interpretation in this study is correct, satan’s abyss beast appears on the biblical earth during the fifth trumpet (time-parallel 2, Framework 3) and his operational time is very short (13:5).  After the seventh trumpet sounds, the bowls empty very quickly and when the fifth bowl empties people are still suffering from the pains and sores from the first four bowls (16:9-11).  During the sixth bowl, armies gather (17:17-19) and during the seventh bowl Babylon falls in an hour (18:10, 18:17-19; time-parallel 10) and she is ruined by plagues, famine and fire in a single day (18:8), i.e. a very short time.  Satan’s beasts are defeated in the Great Battle, which is the climax of the Day of God’s Wrath (19:20-21; time-parallel 15, Framework 5).  This is consistent with the Gospels’ reference to ‘one generation’ witnessing events (Lk. 21:32, Mt. 24:34, Mk. 13:30), i.e. a single generation witnessed events at the inception of the kingdom of God, and another single generation will witness the Parousia and see its fulfilment.

[1] For example, Zech. 14:1-5: ‘See, a day is coming for the Lord (…) For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, (…destruction, exile …) Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations (…) On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives (… earthquake …). Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.’