Thinking in 3’s - Revelation 8:13 - Woes Compounded

Thinking in 3’s - Revelation 8:13 - Woes Compounded

This is a post that I don’t want to write, because I don’t want to think about it. This is a post that you may not want to read. Here we are, in the midst of a pandemic that even the experts do not understand. It is wreaking havoc on peoples’ lives and livelihoods, and we do not know how it will manifest itself in the future. Then we read our Bibles, and in the Book of Revelation, we find a 3-fold presentation of woe’s - woes compounded. 

In fact, we are hearing something of this from a distance, even now. In eastern Africa, there is the growing presence of the coronavirus; they are now beginning to see a second wave of locusts; and they are continuing to experience vicious outbreaks of tribal/religious warfare. How will they handle it all? Well, they won’t. They do not have the health care systems, food delivery systems, or security systems to deal with any of these woes. Many will die. Many more will suffer, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

And the Book of Revelation sounds worse. I have more questions than answers about specific issues of interpretation in this book, and yet, it does say what it says. The first four trumpets blast in chapter 8, and the land and the seas and the waters and heavenly lights are decimated by a third. How do we measure these things? I don’t know, but does it even matter? It speaks of massive devastation.

Then, after those four trumpet blasts, there is the pronouncement of three woes at the blasts of the three remaining trumpets. These upcoming troubles will not be environmental, as were the first four trumpets. They will be spiritual. No, not spiritual in any good sense, but in an evil sense.

The shaft of the bottomless pit is opened, and ghastly things emerge, sent specifically to harm “only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.” That is a vast portion of the population of the earth. Then four avenging angels are released to kill a third of mankind. Their description sounds like science fiction, but whatever their actual form, they will be real.

There is then a parenthesis in our text, and a couple other stories are told, before the last trumpet sounds at the end of chapter 11. When this last trumpet sounds, there is first the presentation of the heavenly scene that we have seen before in chapters 4 and 5, and then another story about the birth of the Messiah and the life of the church, and the opposition of Satan. This is where we find the next (last) woe (12:12), in which “the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world - he was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.” He is prohibited from defeating the “woman” and her “male child,” and so, in fury, “he went off to make war on the rest of her offspring on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” 

In this passage, “those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus” are not left defenseless. They are kept by God, whose Christ has already achieved victory, though difficulties may remain. To be with Jesus, in any and every situation, is always the best place to be. To be anywhere else would be woeful. And one day, sin, and death, and the devil, will be put away forever.