“The Trumpet Calls for Repentance”
August 3, 2014
Church of the Valley,
Pastor Mike Clark
Apple Valley, CA
The key truth for us to understand in our study of the end times is to know that God sits on the throne with
everything under His control so that His people will inherit His eternal kingdom. The entire book of
Revelation proclaims God’s victory over wrong, evil and death. As we move rather quickly through
Revelation, we shared that Chapter 6 describes the beginning of God’s judgment to defeat evil for all time
as the 6 seals are removed from the scroll book of the end times. In chapter 7, a pause between the
opening of the 6th and 7th seals, brings assurance to the people of God that they will be safely preserved
from the wrath of God’s judgment.
Today, we look at chapters 8 & 9. Chapter 8 includes the 7 trumpets of God that intensify the war between
the forces of evil and God’s angels. However, before the trumpets blow, an angel of the Lord presents the
prayers of God’s people to God. Revelation 8:3-5, Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood
at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in
front of the throne. 4The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before
God from the angel’s hand. 5Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it
on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.
What do you think God’s people requested in those end time prayers? I am sure they prayed the same
prayers we pray today. What do we pray for today? Since we ask you to share your prayers with us each
Sunday, and about half of you each week write prayers, I have a good idea of what you pray about. I am
not sure you realize this, but you pray consistently for justice. You pray for things to be made right. You
pray for healing for physical ailments and in relationships, the end of conflict and war, the removal of evil
and suffering from our lives, and that God’s will occurs here on earth as it is in heaven with more love, right
and good in our lives. You also pray for people to come to the Lord in repentance for His eternal gift of life.
All of these are prayers of justice: praying against wrong in our lives and seeking God’s right for our lives.
In the events of our world today, we pray for God’s justice. We pray against senseless terrorism that shoots
downs passenger planes full of innocent travelers. We pray against the suffering of Christians in Iraq who
flee their homes from the death threats of the Islamic ISIS extremists. We pray against the plaque of the
Ebola virus in West Africa. We pray for the cessation of the war in the Gaza strip that inflicts casualties on
innocent civilians and children. We pray against the victimization and enslavement of children trying to
cross the US borders. (I encourage you to pray the headlines of the news for God’s right in this world.)
Those in the end times will pray these requests with greater passion, for they will witness an increase of
evil, suffering and wrong in our world. They will ask fervently for these hardships and pains to be removed
from the world. They will pray for God’s will to be done so that His greater good will prevail.
Yet to pray these prayers against wrong and suffering in this world - to pray for God’s will to be done - to
pray for justice against evil - we actually pray for God wrath. God’s wrath is the power of His justice that
removes wrongs, injustice and evil. God’s wrath reveals God’s power at work to purge our world of the
things that harm humanity. So to pray for justice is to pray for God’s wrath.
So we need to ask – do we really want God’s wrath? Do we really want God to intervene in our world to
purge it of all who do wrong and harm others? Sure we want the tyrants and terrorists of this world to be
removed, but how far does that wrath go? Aren’t we all to some degree afflicted with evil? Don’t we still too
many times harm others with our actions? We may not be world class tyrants, but honestly, to some degree
we can act like little tyrants in our own relationships. So if God’s wrath comes against this world’s evil, that
means we who still have some evil within us will be removed too. We remain part of the problem when
even a little evil remains in our lives. Who knows what will happen if our little evil is allowed to grow.
Remember that one bite of a piece of fruit by the first humans led to one of their sons killing another. No,
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for true justice and the end of all wrong to occur, all evil, even the smallest amount of it, must be
eradicated forever. Just like the Ebola virus must be contained so that it may be eliminated where it is,
every errant cell of this virus must be killed. If one cell remains, it can multiply to cause great suffering and
death. So every inclination of evil in our hearts and minds must be removed so that those impulses will no
longer result in harmful actions against fellow humans. So must we be removed in God’s wrath too?
We do want the end of evil, harm and suffering, but we would like to go on living. How do we call for God’s
wrath and still hope for better life for each of us? We need God to give us a way of rescue! And of course
He provided for our rescue in His son Jesus. If we realize our need for God to remove the evil from within
us, we don’t need to experience His wrath. Instead we can experience His grace and forgiveness. We can
ask Jesus to take God’s wrath for us. We can ask Jesus to transform us in the last days into people who will
never do wrong again. We can repent of our life without God and through Jesus turn back to God and live
with Him forever. So we can pray for God’s wrath, but also ask God to keep offering opportunities for
repentance in our world, so more people can be saved for eternal life. The good news is that the Lord gives
every opportunity for repentance. The Lord will not come in complete wrath to wipe out evil until every
person who desires God’s greater good will be given every chance to repent and receive the gift of God’s
mercy and grace.
But what if there were no more people willing to repent? What if all those who will come into God’s
kingdom have already responded to His invitation? Well, that is the drama of Revelation 8 and beyond. Are
there any left who will repent and turn back to God? The trumpets announce a series of plagues worse than
the seals before but not as bad as the bowls to come. These plagues bring answers for the prayers of God’s
people. God’s wrath has begun and the last opportunities for repentance are offered.
The plagues of Revelation 8 & 9 parallel the plagues God brought against unrepentant Pharaoh and Egypt
in the book of Exodus. Both were intended to call people to God for repentance, but also show the
consequences of living against Him. God confined the plagues against Pharaoh to Egypt; here He sends
them out worldwide as warnings of His greater wrath to remove evil. The 1st trumpet brings hail and fire as
did the 7th Egyptian plague. The 2nd trumpet brings waters of blood as happened in the 1st Egyptian plague.
The 3rd trumpet brings bitter waters instead of fresh and people die from drinking it. This is the reverse of
when Moses changed bitter water into fresh for the wilderness people of God to drink and live. The 4th
trumpet brings greater darkness as light is dimmed from sun, moon and stars, like the 9th Egyptian plague
when darkness covered Egypt. The 5th trumpet brings a plague of locusts like the 8th plague of Egypt. Yet
this trumpet plague brings evil demons with greater destruction and terror. The 6th trumpet brings death
like the 10th plague of Egypt. All these plagues offer last opportunities to repent and turn to God, while at
the same time showing the consequences of living in evil against God.
The end of Revelation 9 reveals a chilling scene in which those still left alive refuse to turn to God in spite
of the terrible consequences they endure. Revelation 9:20-21, The rest of mankind who were not killed by
these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and
idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of
their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.
The people will not repent. They will not give up their harmful ways. They will not stop following demons.
They refuse to do what is right. They remain intent on hurting, even murdering others. They selfishly seek
their own foolish desires and pleasures, taking delight in the downfall of others, and ruin their relationships.
They fill their lives with materialistic, temporary things of this world that in no way have the power to help
them live better lives. Their senseless idols cannot help them. They continue to worship them anyway in
their vain state of unbelief. The will not repent. They won’t seek God and His grace. God won’t force His
grace upon them, because that is not loving grace. So, all that is left for them is to receive the wrath of
God. If they refuse to be part of the solution and remain part of humanity’s problem of evil, suffering and
death, they must be removed to solve that problem.
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Psalm 115:4-8 gives a terrifying depiction of what these people are like, not only in the end times, but
around us today. But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. 5They have mouths, but cannot
speak, eyes, but cannot see. 6They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. 7They have hands,
but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. 8Those who make
them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them. The people become like their idols: unable to
speak, see, hear, smell, feel, walk, unable to even make a noise. They were people who have turned into
statues, no longer alive. They refuse the gift of God that made them human, so they regress into a state of
inanimation. So sad! Like Pharaoh long ago, their hearts have turned to stone.
I wish this fate upon no one, nor does God. God desires that none should perish. (2 Peter 3:9) I pray that
people will see the error of their ways in living without God. That is why I am so glad this is still a day to
proclaim the grace of God, not His wrath. We are not yet in the end times. We still have time to turn away
from our wrongs. We still have time to know the forgiveness and cleansing of Jesus. We still have time to
share this great news of the Savior before more hearts turn to stone. We have time to pray for more people
to come alive rather than revert to death.
Evil seduces so many, placing a spell upon them, turning their hearts cold, and turning them from living
beings into senseless statues. But Jesus can still bring resurrection! Jesus can transform stone hearts back
to beating hearts. Jesus can open the eyes of the blind, make the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, the
lame to walk, and the blind to see. Don’t give up on the power of Jesus to overcome evil in our own lives
and the lives of our friends and neighbors around us.
I will end with a reading from one book of the best children’s series ever written: from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe. In this scene, Aslan the Lion, (the great Jesus of Narnia), goes about turning
statues, which had been frozen by the wicked witch, back into living creatures of Narnia. This is what
happens when Jesus transforms those cursed under evil back into living sons and daughters of God:
“What an extraordinary place!” cried Lucy. “All those stone animals—and people too! It’s— it’s like a
museum.” “Hush,” said Susan, “Aslan’s doing something.” He was indeed. He had bounded up to the stone
lion and breathed on him. Then without waiting a moment he whisked round— almost as if he had been a
cat chasing its tail— and breathed also on the stone dwarf, which (as you remember) was standing a few
feet from the lion with his back to it. Then he pounced on a tall stone dryad which stood beyond the dwarf,
turned rapidly aside to deal with a stone rabbit on his right, and rushed on to two centaurs. But at that
moment Lucy said, “Oh, Susan! Look! Look at the lion.”
I expect you’ve seen someone put a lighted match to a bit of newspaper which is propped up in a grate
against an unlit fire. And for a second nothing seems to have happened; and then you notice a tiny streak
of flame creeping along the edge of the newspaper. It was like that now. For a second after Aslan had
breathed upon him the stone lion looked just the same. Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his
white marble back— then it spread— then the color seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a
bit of paper— then , while his hindquarters were still obviously stone, the lion shook his mane and all the
heavy, stone folds rippled into living hair. Then he opened a great red mouth, warm and living, and gave a
prodigious yawn. And now his hind legs had come to life. He lifted one of them and scratched himself.
Then, having caught sight of Aslan, he went bounding after him and frisking round him whimpering with
delight and jumping up to lick his face.
Of course the children’s eyes turned to follow the lion; but the sight they saw was so wonderful that they
soon forgot about him. Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a
museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing round him till he was
almost hidden in the crowd. Instead of all that deadly white the courtyard was now a blaze of colors; glossy
chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs
and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls
in fresh, transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow. And instead of
the deadly silence the whole place rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings,
squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.”
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Lewis, C. S. (2008-10-29). The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: The Chronicles of Narnia (pp. 167-169). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Such is the miracle of resurrection in Jesus Christ. This is the miracle of life in His grace. Come and
celebrate with the living not the dead. Come and enjoy the company of the eternal children of God. Come
and be part of what our Lord Jesus is doing here at COV. Come and share in His changing our lives for the
greater life forever and ever. Go out in His name and share the great news that we have a Savior. Amen.