NOTES for Rev 8:7

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⁷The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

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.

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For Rev 8:7-13

⁷The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

⁸And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;

⁹And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

¹⁰And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

¹¹And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

¹²And 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, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

¹³And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!

As is clear, Judgment for the world turns out not simply to be a cataclysm and not punishment in itself, but first of all... Read more

As is clear, Judgment for the world turns out not simply to be a cataclysm and not punishment in itself, but first of all a proclamation. The very image of angels with a trumpet (v. 6) undoubtedly goes back to the custom of blowing the shofar (a special kind of sacred horn) during the feast of Yom Kippur, which is above all a day of judgment and repentance; this is meant to remind every believing Jew of Judgment and of the need to be ready for it. And now the messengers of God announce that the day of Judgment has come, with the already familiar trumpet sound, which of course cannot be compared in scale with the sound of an earthly horn. But proclamation can be different: the Kingdom can be witnessed to both by the love that permeates it and by the power of God that it bears within itself. For those who are ready to receive it, the breath of the Kingdom becomes the breath of God's love, whether for a person, a stone, a tree, or an animal. Of course, a person and a stone will respond differently to God's love, but there will certainly be a response. For those who do not need the Kingdom, who do not want it and oppose it, its breath turns into the power of God, that fire whose action can, of course, transform the nature of the created world just as the action of love does, but now not without losses and not without destruction, if only because the sin and evil that permeate the fallen world are in no way compatible with the life of the Kingdom. Therefore, in the process of transformation, the world must be cleansed of them, and cleansed against the will of those who brought them into the world, whether people or fallen spirits.

It is no surprise that this cleansing turns into a cataclysm for the world, affecting all the basic elements of the universe known to the ancients: the earth (v. 7), the sea (vv. 8-9), the rivers and springs, which personified the life-giving power of the universe (vv. 10-11), and the sky, that visible sky which for every pagan embodied the universe itself, eternal and unshakable like the yearly cycle of the heavenly bodies (v. 12).

The Book of Genesis tells us about the creation of the cosmos, which was called to oppose the destructive force of chaos that broke into the universe on the "second day" of creation; it tells of dry land appearing from the waters of the world ocean, of trees and grass - symbols of life in its universal, cosmic dimension - and of the cycle of the heavenly bodies, which returned to the world the unshakable order that God promised Noah to preserve until the end of time (Gen. 1:9-19). And now, on the day of Judgment, everything collapses not because God has become disappointed in His creation, but because a world corrupted by sin cannot be remade in any other way. Evil has eaten too deeply into its flesh, so that radical measures, like a complex surgical operation, can no longer be avoided. But this is not the most frightening thing: God's messenger warns that on the day of Judgment the world awaits something even worse than the harshest actions God has undertaken for its cleansing (v. 13).

For Rev 8:7-13

⁷The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

⁸And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;

⁹And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

¹⁰And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

¹¹And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

People most often try to avoid being judged personally, to justify and whitewash the evil they have committed. And so... Read more

People most often try to avoid being judged personally, to justify and whitewash the evil they have committed. And so, speaking of the end times, the apostle describes how the universe perishes and every living thing dies in agony beneath the weight of the sin that humanity brought into the world. This is a battle in which the fallen angels try to resist the One who created everything. In this struggle, creation, having freely chosen death and evil, perishes because the laws laid by the Creator at the foundation of the world do not permit existence apart from the source of life.

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NOTES for Rev 8:7

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