NOTES for Rev 8:7

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.