The cataclysms described by John, like every vision, are not a literal but a symbolic description of events taking place in the world. Nevertheless, the meaning of what the apostle saw is quite concrete and in no way...
The cataclysms described by John, like every vision, are not a literal but a symbolic description of events taking place in the world. Nevertheless, the meaning of what the apostle saw is quite concrete and in no way allegorical. A symbol is by no means always an allegory. An allegory is often conventional and used by the author only as an artistic device; such allegories are no more than the author's fantasies. Behind a symbol, however, especially when the matter concerns a prophetic or apocalyptic vision, there usually stands reality, though it may not look the way it is revealed to the visionary.
Yet the spiritual meaning of the events expressed by symbols does not change because the form of the symbol does not coincide with the form of what it symbolizes. So it is in the description of the angelic trumpets: its form is symbolic, but the spiritual meaning of the events behind the symbols does not change because of this, whatever they may look like outwardly. The image of the angels blowing trumpets is itself symbolic. Their trumpets recall the shofar, the sacred horn blown on great Jewish feasts.
This custom is rooted in deep antiquity; the custom of blowing the shofar is mentioned repeatedly in the Old Testament books, and there the sound of the shofar symbolizes nothing other than the voice of God, God's call, and the sign of God's intervention in the destinies of the world and of His people. Evidently, in the Book of Revelation too, the trumpet-blowing angels blow the shofar, announcing God's intervention in the destinies of the universe, now on a universal scale, with the goal of the complete transfiguration of the world and its final deliverance from the power of the dark forces. The process that began with the Savior's death on the cross and resurrection now comes to its logical completion.
Of course, for the world there is not only joy here, but also Judgment: it is about to meet God face to face, and such a meeting is always Judgment; the only question is its scale. Now the scale is universal; it touches not only humanity, but also the whole creation: the earth, the sea, the firmament of heaven. And it leads to an inevitable catastrophe: the world has come into contact with the Kingdom, with holiness, without having been cleansed to the end, and such contact means nothing other than defilement and destruction.
And yet the world does not perish completely: only a third of it is struck. Enough for irreversible changes, and not enough for complete destruction. This is understandable: God is not intending to destroy the world; He wants to transfigure it, to make it qualitatively different. Therefore the inevitable cataclysm must not be murderous and finally destructive, and by God's will it does not become so, though without God's intervention it fully could have become so.
8
8:7 And the first sounded - And every angel continued to sound, till all which his trumpet brought was fulfilled and till the next began. There are intervals between the three woes, but not between the four first trumpets. And there was hail and fire mingled with blood, and there were cast upon the earth - The earth seems to mean Asia; Palestine, in particular. Quickly after the Revelation was given, the Jewish calamities under Adrian began: yea, before the reign of Trajan was ended. And here the trumpets begin. Even under Trajan, in the year 114, the Jews made an insurrection with a most dreadful fury; and in the parts about Cyrene, in Egypt, and in Cyprus, destroyed four hundred and sixty thousand persons. But they were repressed by the victorious power of Trajan, and afterward slaughtered themselves in vast multitudes. The alarm spread itself also into Mesopotamia, where Lucius Quintius slew a great number of them. They rose in Judea again in the second year of Adrian; but were presently quelled. Yet in 133 they broke out more violently than ever, under their false messiah Barcochab; and the war continued till the year 135, when almost all Judea was desolated. In the Egyptian plague also hail and fire were together. But here hail is to be taken figuratively, as also blood, for a vehement, sudden, powerful, hurtful invasion; and fire betokens the revenge of an enraged enemy, with the desolation therefrom. And they were cast upon the earth - That is, the fire and hail and blood. But they existed before they were cast upon the earth. The storm fell, the blood flowed, and the flames raged round Cyrene, and in Egypt, and Cyprus, before they reached Mesopotamia and Judea. And the third part of the earth was burnt up - Fifty well - fortified cities, and nine hundred and eighty - five well - inhabited towns of the Jews, were wholly destroyed in this war. Vast tracts of land were likewise left desolate and without inhabitant. And the third part of the trees was burned up, and all the green grass was burned up - Some understand by the trees, men of eminence among the Jews; by the grass, the common people. The Romans spared many of the former: the latter were almost all destroyed.
Thus vengeance began at the Jewish enemies of Christ's kingdom;though even then the Romans did not quite escape. But afterwards it came upon them more and more violently: the second trumpet affects the Roman heathens in particular; the third, the dead, unholy Christians; the fourth, the empire itself.