The Revelation of St. John the Divine

by A. H. Ames

It was by the trumpet, sounding long and loud, that Jehovah announced his presence at Sinai to Moses and the awe-stricken people, and bade them prepare to receive his law. It was by the blowing of trumpets that the approach of the jubilee year was announced—that very striking type of the redemption purchased by Christ. When the Israelites were marching around Jericho “seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns” went before the ark of the Lord; and on the seventh day, when, “at the seventh time,” the priests blew with the trumpets, the walls fell. And the prophet Joel says, “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people.” So familiarly has this symbolism passed over into the Christian Church that the preaching of salvation is very commonly spoken of as the blowing of the Gospel trumpet.

If the seals emblematize the truth that all things belong of right to Christ as Mediator, the question very naturally follows, How is this de jure ownership to be made a de facto one, and what instruments are put into the hands of the Church to enable it to establish the kingdom of Christ on earth? The vision of the trumpets is designed to be the answer to this question.

The trumpets, then, signify the instrumentalities by which men are called to the kingdom of Christ, or the measures which the divine Being employs to advance that kingdom. Their number, seven, indicates that these measures are complete and comprehensive, including every available resource and employing all possible methods of approach to man. God avails himself of every legitimate device to constrain a sinful world to accept the proffer of salvation ere he passes from chastisement and correction to retributive and final judgment. Thus those who reject the offer will be found without excuse, and the despisers of the wedding garment will be stricken speechless in the day of accounts.

The sounding of the trumpets, it will be noticed, is preceded by the “prayers of the saints;” for that “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” with God is one of the fundamental facts of the kingdom (Psalm xviii, 6–17). And the token of the hearing of the prayers is seen in the “voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake” that followed when the seven angels with the trumpets prepared to sound. The vision doubtless recalled to John’s mind the remembrance of that day when, as the disciples prayed, “the place was shaken where they were assembled together;” God revealing himself in the new dispensation as he had done at Sinai when about to communicate his law. The grandeur of the preparation suggests the importance of the tidings to be communicated.

It will be also observed that the episode of the “two witnesses” (chapter xi) falls within the section marked by the trumpet emblem. The appropriateness of this and the ease with which it takes its place here furnish no slight evidence that the explanation of the Revelation adopted in this essay is correct.

There are two modes by which the divine Being has chosen to communicate the knowledge of himself and of his will. These are his works and his word. The one is that manifestation of himself in nature of which Paul speaks when he says, “The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.” The other is supernatural, the revelation of himself as a power above nature and not limited by its laws. It is of this that Peter says, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy.”

The most searching and subtle analysis to which knowledge and its sources have been subjected has resulted in this—that even in the alembic of modern doubt, after the most biting acids have tried their solvent power, there is left as the residuum a conviction that, besides this known and knowable universe, there exists a first cause or force. At the beginning and basis of all things a duality must be acknowledged. If human thought by its unaided light is incompetent to go beyond this, it is not allowed to stop short of it. “The momentum of thought,” Herbert Spencer says, “inevitably carries us beyond conditioned existence to unconditioned existence.” “The certainty that, on the one hand, such a power exists, while, on the other, its nature transcends intuition and is beyond imagination, is the certainty toward which intelligence has been from the first progressing. To this conclusion science inevitably arrives as it reaches its confines.” This power, which science may know only as “an infinite and eternal energy,” is the Being whom the Scriptures reveal to us as the Lord God, of whom and through whom and to whom “are all things: to whom be glory forever.”

From this first Cause knowledge comes to us through two channels—his deeds and his words. The first of these is accessible to all mankind; for the Gentiles, which have not the law, “show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.” But as that which is constant and habitual soon ceases to attract attention, and the orderly and uniform processes of nature excite less interest and awaken feebler curiosity than the anomalous and occasional, in like manner it is most frequently by calamities, adversities, seeming withdrawals of God’s face that men are brought to reflection, consideration, and obedience. “When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” It is this truth that the vision of the trumpets symbolizes. It signifies the warnings in the field of natural providence which the divine Being gives to men, in order to show the evil and peril of sin and thus draw back their souls from the pit. The second of these channels of knowledge is found in the oracles of God, the Scriptures committed to the chosen people. And these are symbolized in the episode of the “two witnesses,” which forms a part of the trumpet section.

The details of the trumpet scenes are not, it must be confessed, easy of interpretation. They seem to be selected from various parts of the Old Testament, and grouped according to some plan not explained to us, suggesting the thought that the interpretation of them is not to be found in any single event, but in some common truth embodied in many events.

The conjunction of “hail” with “fire” (viii, 7) is also found in Exodus ix, 24; that of “fire” with “blood” (viii, 7) in Joel ii, 30; while all three of these elements are separately mentioned in many passages. The moving of mountains (viii, 8) is referred to in Psalm xlvi, 2, and Isaiah liv, 10; and a burning mountain in Jeremiah li, 25. “Wormwood” (viii, 11) occurs in Jeremiah ix, 15, and Amos v, 7. The darkening of the heavenly bodies (viii, 12) is found also in Isaiah xiii, 10; Amos viii, 9; and Joel ii, 31. “Locusts” (ix, 3) are mentioned in Exodus x, 4; Nahum iii, 17; Joel i, 4.