7th Episode - The Seals, Trumpets and Bowls: Seven Observations from Revelation 6:1-16:21

 Between flights at the airport, a lady bought a small packet of cookies and sat down in a lounge to read her newspaper. She later heard rustling sounds and was shocked to see a well-dressed man helping himself to a cookie. Not wanting to make a scene, she leaned over and took one herself, hoping he would get the message. A minute later, more rustling as he helped himself to another one. She was too flabbergasted to say anything. Then, he broke the last cookie in two, pushed half across to her and left. Still angry when her flight was announced, she opened her handbag to get her Boarding Pass. To her horror and embarrassment, there she found her pack of unopened cookies. 

Like the woman, we will draw a wrong conclusion, if we are unaware that there are more than one of the same items. If the man had two of his own packs on the chair between them, she would have caught herself before making a wrong assumption. 

The Seals, Trumpets and Bowls present a similar issue. And before we focus on them separately, we must establish how they relate to one another. In this chapter, we examine them side by side, making seven essential points in order to interpret them correctly. 

The Seals, Trumpets and Bowls are given in a language of visions and dreams. A key biblical principle for interpreting them is Pharaoh’s two dreams. Pharaoh saw seven fat cows come up out of the Nile. Then he saw seven hungry cows come up and eat the fat ones. In his second dream, he saw seven full stalks of grain, but seven lean ones also appeared and swallowed up the healthy ones. Although his magicians could not explain the dream to Pharaoh, the key to Joseph’s interpretation is to recognize that the two dreams run parallel. Both dreams predict the same series of events. 

The seven fat cows and seven full stalks predict seven years of plenty. While the seven lean stalks and seven thin cows forecast seven years of drought. If Joseph did not realize that the corn and cows foretold the same events, he could have thought that Egypt was going to have seven years of plenty, then seven years of drought, followed by seven more years of plenty and another seven years of drought. Altogether that would call for twenty-eight years. In a similar vein, some assume that the Seals, Trumpets and Bowls cover twenty-one consecutive events in a chronological order. They do not realize that the Seals, Trumpets and Bowls cover a parallel period like Pharaoh’s two dreams parallel one another. “The dream is one,” and the dream was “doubled unto Pharaoh twice because:” • “The thing is established by God” • “And God will shortly bring it to pass.” I believe the vision of Seals, Trumpets and Bowls was tripled to John, because God established these as the last things, which He will soon bring to pass.