Overview of my book on the Revelation trumpets

I have written a book. The title is, The Seven Trumpets and The Investigative Judgment, by David D. Burdick. In several ways it takes a different approach to The Revelation, compared to that of traditional Adventism. In particular it looks at the spiritual issues contained in the seven trumpets that are much deeper than our traditional interpretation of military conquests. The deeper issues are that of the everlasting gospel, which is especially the case in the 5th and 6th trumpets. And I see that, by a pervasive rebellion in humanity against the Law of God, we are nearing the final end of the 6th trumpet. It is almost time for the Revelation 10:11 pronouncement in heaven.

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 heart 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 holy place, a peaceful place, a joyful 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 His 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 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 period as papal church 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 its corruptions and wickedness, and its 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), which 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 from the scroll 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 Roman papacy.

Chapter 4: Revelation chapter 7

This chapter introduces the sealing. That is such a major issue that it pauses the removal of the seals from the sealed scroll 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 in chapter 6, and the seal of God is shown ascending from the east in 1844 in chapter 7, 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; the silence separates the previous rejoicing at the end of the controversy scene of chapter 7 from the solemn chapter 8 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 as Paul groaned for (Romans 8:23). We are the church militant against self 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 in the Latter Rain, Jesus gives us a way of escape 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 the start of the Christ’s work of sealing by His sparing some of the trees (leaders of Protestantism), and His work of marking by 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 compares people to trees and grain.

The 2nd trumpet blew and Mt. Sinai is thrown into the sea and 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, and their whole way of viewing this world and the providences of God. Faith, true, genuine faith leaves every American who would remain 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 to Protestants. 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. Christ forewarned his people of this in His Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, 29 curses. Specifically, Deuteronomy 29:18-22 speaks to the Revelation 5th trumpet, as does the 3rd angel’s message of 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 our Judge and not getting to know Jesus as our merciful Advocate, 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 among the thousands of false religions around the ancient world as well as our modern world, all spawned from ancient Babel. It is a religion that dares to approach God with the worshipers’ own manufactured repentance and holiness. The modern counterpart of Baal and Ashtoreth worship is Spiritual Formation.  Spiritual Formation sets aside 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 that God requires. By peace and flattery he has destroyed many since 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 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 actually say. She was speaking of time proclamations, as William Miller gave. She left no commentary on the seven trumpets. I believe she only communicated what Jesus wanted her to give us during the time of the 150 year time prophecy. If, in the 1800s, we had known we would be here another 150 years and beyond, we doubtless 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 holy transformation—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, therefore, 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 He would bring its meaning 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, and bringing his bitter wormwood spirit with him. 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 (Rev. 9:3) (they are called “the beast” in Revelation 11:7). Satan, driving them across the earth, is the billowing 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 enemy from the Dark Ages will have conquered the United States by locusts filling the leading offices and agencies in the U.S. Government.

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 is almost finished scattering of the power of His 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 seriously received God, His Law, and His redemption 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 from 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 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 living 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 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, Revelation chapter 11.

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 prophecy 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 wilderness church champions of truth, and devours the enemies of His gospel, like their Master did (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 are 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. Revelation 10 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 the mighty and holy people 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, 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 a Most Holy Place in heaven empty of a High Priest 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 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.

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.