- The Unexplained Silence
You will note, as we return to the opening verse of chapter 8, that after the seventh seal was opened “there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” It will do you no good to ask me, “What does this silence in heaven mean?” I would tell you if I knew—but I do not know. It does indicate a pause, perhaps a kind of divine “Selah” in heaven, as though the wheels of judgment have ground to a merciful stop for a brief time.
John himself does not try to explain or interpret the heavenly silence. Instead, he proceeds to the next event in his vision: And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets. And there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. (Revelation 8:2; Revelation 8:5)
John describes this heavenly phenomena taking place even before the seven angels sounded their trumpets of woe. Earlier, in his vision of the heavenly throne, John reported the” flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder” that came from the throne (Revelation 4:5). I believe John is telling us in chapter 8 that the heavenly manifestations of justice and judgment first seen and heard at the throne of God have now reached the earth. The crucial time of trial and tribulation for mankind has come.
It is well for us to review here what we know about the trumpets of God in the Bible. The blowing of trumpets is mentioned in the Scriptures 125 times. God instructed His people Israel to use trumpets for warnings, to call an assembly and to announce the feast days. Trumpets were also to be used to mobilize for war. The Old Testament prophets, speaking by the Spirit of God, used the figure of the sounding trumpet in their appeals to a back slidden nation: “Blow the trumpet in Zion: sound the alarm, warn the people!”
Paul, addressing the Corinthian believers concerning the end of the age and the return of Christ for His living saints and there surrected Christian dead, had this to say:
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)