An overview of my book
I have written a book. The
title is, The
Seven Trumpets and The Investigative Judgment. ISBN-13: 978-1-4796-0502. My book is in print and
e-book form. So I want to give a brief overview in case anyone out there might
want to read the book.
Introduction
Revelation chapters 4 through
11 form the core storyline of the book of Revelation. The chapters that follow
chapter 11 are brought in to expand and to add more details. The seals and
trumpets drama are not optional to understand Revelation, they form the vital
center of the last book of the Bible.
Chapter 1: Revelation chapter
4
This scene shows the throne
of God before sin began. Heaven was a happy place, a peaceful place, a holy
place. The praises to God concern creation only, His pleasure, His power, His
honor, in creating. And no praise mentions a Redeemer, because in those eons
before the great controversy, there was no need of redemption.
Chapter 2: Revelation chapter
5
Sudden change comes over the
angelic atmosphere of heaven. It’s the same picture with God upon His throne,
except that God has a mysterious book (a scroll) sealed up so tightly that only
the crucifixion of the Son of God could authorize its opening. This book is the
great controversy, the accusations against God and the issues over God’s Law.
God is on trial. Has He been the proper leader? Has His government offered the
best for the greatest happiness of the kingdom? Has He overreached His own Law
and become a dictator? These were accusations that Lucifer brought against the
Creator of heaven and earth. Christ crucified is the only one able to clear God
of His charges. Afterwards, the whole family of heaven and earth sing praises
to Him who sat on the throne and to the Lamb. Those praises are now about
redemption only.
Chapter 3: Revelation chapter
6
The Lamb takes the seals off
of the book (the scroll), one at a time. The first seal represents the church
during its apostolic period, ending at 100 AD when John dies. The second seal
(100-321 AD) represents a church period of intense pagan persecution until
Constantine stopped the persecution and allowed the church to become the
official religion of the Roman Empire. The third seal (321-538) represents the
dying church period when it, in order to please its government employer,
conformed its standards to paganism in order to let the pagans join the state
religion, Christianity. The fourth seal (538-1517) represents the dead papal church
period as it continued its trajectory to kingly greatness and exalted itself
higher than the kings of Europe. Satan possessed the Church that silenced
anyone who cried out against the Church’s corruptions and wickedness and inbred
spiritualism. Then Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation. The fifth
seal (1517-1755) represented the aftermath of the Reformation. During the
Counter-Reformation 900,000 Protestants were martyred. They are shown in the
Revelation as sacrificial lambs laid on the altar. This period ends at the
close of the sixth seal (1755-1844) represented the short period that begins in
an end-times conscious Protestant America and the Second Advent message by
William Miller. Just prior to the seventh seal is removed we see a scene of
Christ’s second coming. This was not the actual return of Christ—it was the
global Advent movement of the 1830s and early ‘40s. But, the people were not
ready for His coming. Before He can return, His people must be sealed. The
sealing will be the necessary preparation for the actual day that He visits His
judgments on the Protestant nation and the world that it has protected from the
papacy.
Chapter 4: Revelation chapter
7
This chapter introduces the
sealing. That is such a major issue that it pauses unsealing the sealed book
pageant to explain who will stand when the Lamb comes and who will run in
abject fear. The answer is: Whoever gets the seal in the conscience will go
with Jesus and leave this doomed world. And this chapter gives the first
picture of how happily the great controversy will end.
Chapter 5: Revelation chapter
8
After the chapter 7
intermission, we need to come back to where we left off when the 6th seal
closed. So, the Lamb removes the seventh seal. The sanctuary scene that follows
is connected with the seventh seal. Since the 6th seal ended and the seal of
God is shown ascending from the east in 1844, then, chapter 8 picks up after
the foretaste of all the happy celebration throughout eternity. Silence divides
the chapter 7 intermission from the chapter 8 sanctuary scene; it separates the previous
rejoicing at the end of the controversy from the solemn events to follow in
order to set up a new mindset in the reader. It is a reminder that our
celebration is promised, but not yet ours to have. We are the church militant
that must first endure the rigors of the trumpet dangers yet to come. Through a
special dispensation of faith by an abundant gift of His Spirit, Jesus gives us
a way of escape in the Latter Rain, so that we are able to endure the great
time of trouble.
The Angel High Priest is in
the Holy Place, ready to enter the Most Holy. But, first He casts His censer to
the earth and the 1st trumpet blows. We can say that the 1st trumpet is
connected with the previous sanctuary scene because the contents of the censer
and His blood are what fall from the sky onto the earth during the 1st trumpet.
The contents damage “the third part” of the trees and all the fields of grain.
This signified God’s overthrowing the denominations and the worst of the
Protestants who rejected the plain truth of the blessed hope of Jesus’ return.
The Bible often compares people to trees and grain.
The 2nd trumpet blew and Mt.
Sinai is quenched showing the churches abrogating the Law of God. Now most of
the Protestants had no protection from Satan’s spells.
So, the 3rd trumpet blew and
Satan is seen poisoning their hearts and minds, their whole way of viewing this
world and the providences of God. Faith, true, genuine faith is gone from every
American who remained in the new lawless Protestantism. Now that God is
fictionalized by the new Protestants’ rejection of His Law, this world is all
that most of them can live for.
The 4th trumpet blew and the
Sunday churches went totally dark spiritually, as institutions. But, the door
of heaven was still open to them individually. Scripture shows that the
darkened heavenly lights symbolize that the Bible is no longer understood by
Protestantism, and the Bible’s central importance is lost. Now that Protestant
America has lost its only resource for a spiritual compass in God’s word, an
angel flies over the earth, alarming the world of the three woes that come with
the last three trumpets.
Chapter 6: Revelation chapter
9
The 5th trumpet blew. God
looses Satan to ransack Protestantism and bring it, and the world it that has
blessed, into subjection to the powers of hell. Every Protestant not being
sealed, especially in Protestant America, is tormented with the same vexation
of spirit that Solomon and King Saul experienced when they apostatized from the
Lord. Moses forewarned of this for the whole nation in his curses of Leviticus
26 and Deuteronomy 28, 29. Specifically, Deuteronomy 29:18-22 speaks to this
5th trumpet, as does Revelation 14:9-11. In fact, the 3rd angel’s message is
all about the 5th and 6th trumpet plagues; the components of those two trumpets
make up the message of the 3rd angel of Revelation 14—the torment and
desolation of soul that comes from not fearing God as Judge and not getting to
know Jesus, preparing for His judgment and His final return.
The ancient false religion
that caused such havoc to Israel was Baal worship. But, Baal was simply one
face of thousands of false religions around the ancient world as well as our
modern world, all spawned from Babylon. It is a religion that dares to approach
God with the worshipers’ own contrived repentance and holiness. The modern
counterpart of Baal and Ashtoreth worship is Spiritual Formation. Set aside by Spiritual Formation are the Law’s
reproofs, which bring us to need a Savior from sin. Before Christ can be a
Savior, He must be a Prince who wields His glittering sword. God will have it
no other way. But, Satan, stepping in between God and His people, offers a more
comfortable redemption, without the messy humbling which God requires. By peace
and flattery he has destroyed many from the days of Cain; and now he is doing
the same in the Protestant churches and in the Advent movement. We are
repeating the history of Israel at Baal-peor, and many Adventists are falling
for it, including many of our leaders. This is the message of the 3rd angel and
it speaks of the 5th and 6th trumpet plagues.
The language of the 3rd
angel’s message comes from the 5th and 6th trumpets—another reason to believe
that the trumpets happen during the heaven-ordained Advent movement and
investigative judgment that precede the antitypical Day of Atonement.
It only makes sense that all
the seven trumpets should blow during the Advent movement that awaited the
heavenly sanctuary cleansing, since the typical feast of trumpets was connected
with the cleansing of the earthly sanctuary. There is a time period with the
5th trumpet—5 prophetic months, 150 years. I realize Ellen White seemed to say
that there would be no more time prophecies after 1844. But, that is not what
her statements say. She left no commentary on the seven trumpets. I believe she
only communicated what Jesus wanted her to give us at the time. If we had known
we would be here for 150 years we would have apostatized into pagan celebration
a long time ago.
One thing is very clear,
Revelation 9:4 (the 5th trumpet) and 7:3 (1844) are unarguably speaking of the
same thing—the seal of God in the forehead. So, my conclusion is that
Revelation 7:3 introduces the sealing, and 9:4 explains how it is received (and
how the mark of the beast is avoided). Sr. White wrote volumes on every other
subject, while she wrote essentially nothing about the seven trumpets, evidently
because Jesus gave her no light on the trumpets. The time must wait until the
prophecy was completed before its meaning would come to light. That time has
arrived. I believe that the 5th trumpet time prophecy began as we were
hammering out our fundamental beliefs in the Sabbath conferences. In 1849, the
start of the 5th trumpet prophecy, the California Gold Rush altered the face of
Protestant America. In 1999, 150 years later, another gold rush closed the 5th
trumpet—the stock market gold rush of the late 1990s. These two gold rushes are
the bookends for the 5th trumpet.
In between those years
technology exponentially developed and drew the world-loving Protestant
multitudes permanently away from God and His Law. And that separation from the
Protestants’ God has tormented them like Jesus was tormented on the cross
because His Father had left Him. During those 5 prophetic months, the Spirit of
God had been leaving Protestant America and Satan had been moving in to fill
the void. Largely through the earthly agencies of Rome and her Jesuit masters
of deception temptations have stolen all the freedom and happiness that the
original Protestant Reformers passed down to Protestants in America. The
Jesuits and the Vatican are the locusts from the bottomless pit of the 5th
trumpet (they are called “the beast” in Revelation 11). Satan, driving them
across the earth, is the black smoke.
The 6th trumpet blew. Now
that Protestant Americans have departed from God and lived on His promised land
of refuge with total forgetfulness of the God of Protestantism, He allows for
their complete possession by the god they love so much, the god of this world.
As the 10 tribes of Israel lived for Baal for 200 years until the Lord vomited
them out of His land, so is He doing to Protestant Americans today. Soon, and
very soon, Protestantism’s old enemy of the Dark Ages will have conquered their
empire by locusts filling the leading offices of their CIA, FBI, NSA, FDA,
FEMA, AMA, the media, the Federal Reserve banking system, and the three
branches of the U.S. Government. I won’t be surprised if the Vatican initiates
the official desolation of free America when Protestantism is ended. By an
official declaration and documentation, the union of church and state began at
the healing of the Lutheran church and the Church of Rome on Protestantism’s
500th anniversary—Halloween 2017.
In the 6th trumpet, the
locusts can do what they were forbidden to do during the 5th trumpet, that is,
“kill” the soul. All of their torment until 1999 came from the work of
separating the people from the one true God of their Reformation fathers. Now
that the denominations are fully separated from the God of the Bible, they
commit the unpardonable sin by returning to the spiritualistic, pagan Vatican; and
they become a persecuting nation. This explains the unjust destruction of
Muslims based on the false premise that Islamists caused 9/11. All the evidence
of 9/11 points to specially placed and protected individuals within American
government agencies—Jesuits—who choreographed the 9/11 black flag operation under
the purview of Rome. (Dan. 8:12).
9/11 has set the stage for
the coming tribulation of all nations. We are in the very end of time. God has
just about finished His scattering of the power of the holy people (Dan. 12:7).
When the seventh trumpet will
blow, the 3rd woe will mean total world domination by Satan and his filling
every heart with his mean anger. Then, the few who in reverence took God, His
Law, and His redemption seriously will stand out from the demon-controlled
crowds. Everyone who played off the Spirit of Prophecy counsels as unneeded
during the 5th and 6th trumpets God will require it of them in the seventh
trumpet. This we see at the end of Revelation 11.
Chapter 7: Revelation chapter
10
This chapter begins to show
glory at the end of a long, dark, distressing tunnel of woe. It opens during
the unconscionable desolations by the conscienceless world of the Revelation
chapter 9 6th trumpet. Christ is seen clothed with a cloud of incense and
glory. The little sealed book (scroll) which He took from His Father in
Revelation chapter 5 is now opened after the trumpets have done their work of
scattering the power of faith in His Protestant people (which includes the
SDAs, as will be seen in Revelation 11). Christ roars like a lion because His
forbearing work as Lamb is finished and it is time to judge the world, and to
end Satan’s controversy against God. With infinite thunder, God agrees with His
Son.
So, Jesus swears by His
Father that the delay of the 6th seal is all but complete—the sealing is almost
finished—when He can finally come in power and glory. But, first He will give
humanity one last opportunity to be saved, as He gave it the antediluvian
world. He commands John to eat the book (the scroll) of the great controversy
and to “prophesy again.” But, if we use scripture to interpret scripture, then
this is not speaking of the Millerite Great Disappointment of 1844; it is
speaking of an event within the final chapter of the seal/trumpet chronology.
When do we see any
prophesying taking place since Revelation chapter 4? We don’t see any prophesying
up to Revelation chapter 10. But, we do see it in the next chapter, almost
immediately following the command of chapter 10 to prophesy again. We see it in
Revelation chapter 11.
Chapter 8: Revelation chapter
11
This chapter concludes the
seal/trumpet story that is the core of Revelation. The chapter introduces its
intent to judge the church by John being given a measuring rod. The church is
found guilty of apostasy, except for a very small remnant that defends the
truth “in the days of their prophecy” (Rev. 11:6). The prophesy of that very
small remnant sweeps through 2,000 years to include the apostolic church, the
church in the wilderness, and the Reformation. The fire of truth shoots out of
the mouths of God’s champions and devours the enemies of His gospel, like their
Master (Isa. 11:4; 2 Thess. 2:8). This campaign against Satan continues
successfully until 1849 when the hosts of darkness fly out of an opened
bottomless pit (Rev. 11:7). Then, the Lord’s witnesses are warred against,
later overcome, and eventually cease their prophesying. In the lengthy
Revelation 11 prophecy, this victory over the prophesying witnesses by the
beast from the bottomless pit is where the Revelation 10 scene occurs. It is
giving the greater historical context of Revelation 9 when the locusts have
desolated the mighty and holy people, and led them to repentance and the
sealing. Thus, it is time for them to prophesy again.
Satan cannot immediately kill
the Advent movement while Ellen White lives. But, he first makes war (also seen
in Rev. 12:17), then he overcomes, and finally he kills the Advent movement. We
lay dead in the aisles of the church for a period of time that figuratively
expresses judgment on God’s people (Luke 4:25; Jas. 5:17). Then, when God has
accomplished our total humbling and all of our self-sufficiency is gone, then
He resurrects His two witnesses (a leaner Advent movement), gives them the Latter
Rain, and the earth is reaped. This ends the 2nd woe, and the seventh trumpet
blows. Total chaos rules the world and the last we see is an empty Most Holy
Place in heaven because Christ has left there to come and get His people. The
mystery of God’s character of love and fairness, as written in the little book
(scroll), is finished. His judgment is finished, and He is exonerated by His
character perfectly reflected in His sealed children.
This ends the core of
Revelation. I hope it wasn’t too hard to follow. The rest of the book of
Revelation expands upon the main storyline of chapters 4 through 11.
I’ve heard much about chiasms
in Revelation, which describe it as a tiered literary structure, the first
vision being similar to the last vision, the second vision similar the
second-to-last vision, etc., a ABCD…DCBA pattern. Centuries ago, the subject of
chiastic structures in the book of Revelation began small and gradually grew in
acceptance. I’ve looked at charts that show the chiasms of Revelation, and it
all seems good. But, I see that the primary view of Revelation must be a
concise storyline for the first half of Revelation, and detailed visions given
afterwards to be fitted into the basic story. I see Revelation chapters 4 to 22
simply as basically two halves of one book. In the first half, we have the core
first 8 chapters that give a bird’s eye view of the book, such as this overview
does for my book. Then, the next 11 chapters give details that must be brought
in at the correct places of the core storyline of Revelation, chapters 4
through 11.
The Spirit’s organization of
the Revelation visions in a simple story format seems very wise. A simple
storyline I can handle. But, chiasms are a little too complicated for me (which
is not to say that they don’t exist in the Revelation).
Even children can understand
the simple core storyline of Revelation. Of course, the symbology is a deeper
subject, and that makes the Bible a challenge for adults. But, I’m thankful
that Revelation is much more understandable than most people think because of
the way it was laid out as a simple story by the Spirit of God.
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