Revelation 8:6 Commentary and Bible Study

How have the seven trumpets been interpreted? That is really determined by the approach taken to the book as a whole. If the book is treated as history told in advance, then the interpreter must choose what event each element of the book applies to. Because that approach is so arbitrary and different interpreters choose different events, there is a great deal of variation and disagreement between this class of interpreters. The effect is to undermine the confidence of believers in their ability to ever properly understand the book.The futurist approach to the book limits the application of chapters 4 to 19 to the seven-years tribulation, a very period. The futurist tends to interpret in a very literal way. The elements of the vision are not symbols but descriptions of what John actually saw. What he writes in the book is what he sees. Sometimes he struggles to understand what he sees and sometimes he tries to record future things in terms of the understanding of his own day, but even so the descriptions are literal.The ideal view to the book assumes that the visions contain symbols, but it does not try to relate them to specific events in history. Instead it treats them as recurring patterns of things that take place in the world constantly. It recognises the typology of the Bible and is in harmony with it, and rounds up all the great types of the Old Testament, bringing them together and weaving them into a combined picture. On the whole they cannot be related to specific events in secular or church history. Of course God does intervene in human history and pre-eminently at the cross, so some symbols in the book relate to Calvary and others to a literal, visible, historic second coming. But other symbols are super-historical, above history. They describe things that are always true – the rebellion of the world, the persecution of believers and the patience required of them, their testimony to the world, and the appropriateness of God’s judgments on the world. But they do not relate to Constantine, the Reformation, Napoleon or the first and second world wars. Instead they give us patterns and principles of God’s dealings with his people, the world, and Satan.