Episode Details

Dr. Kurschner started a mini-series giving reasons why the bowl judgments follow after the sounding of the seventh trumpet, and not before as the recapitulation framework would have it. His first reason in this first part focused on the pronouncement of the reclamation of the kingdom of Jesus.

(*One correction: I said in the program, “The seventh trumpet commences God’s wrath.” I meant to say, “The seven trumpets commence God’s wrath.”)

John’s message of Jesus’s reclamation of the kingdom is not a simple event, but a complex event. This is conveyed by the series of trumpet and bowl judgments, including the final battle. John is signaling through this complex-comprehensive whole that God will be glorified, not by some instantaneous judgment where everything is recapitulated and thereby collapsed into a simple event but rather there is an unfolding of a series of increasingly devastating judgments.

Incidentally, this is similar to how the plagues executed upon Egypt functioned, each one in a linear progression intensified and hardened the hearts of the objects of wrath, as God was glorified in this complex series of judgments. And not surprisingly we have allusions to the Egyptian plagues in our judgment septets as well as the wicked progressively hardening their hearts more as the intensifying progresses. This progressive outworking is also seen through the process of kingdom reclamation. The trumpet judgments conclude with the pronouncement of the retaking of the kingdom of the world for the Lord:

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.” Then the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, singing, “We give you thanks, Lord God Almighty, who are and who were, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.” (Rev 11:15–17; cf. 15:3–4)

However, recapitulation interpreters misconstrue the seventh trumpet, kingdom pronouncement in 11:15 as describing “the end” all wrapped up in that instantaneous moment, as if all the rebellion of the wicked and the kingdom of the beast is eliminated. Rather, the kingdom pronouncement is anticipating a complex phase of judgments. For example, Revelation 10:7 says, “but in the days when the seventh angel is to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as he announced to his servants the prophets.” John, however, portrays this pronouncement as the de jure reclamation of Christ, but the consequences of such an pronouncement is yet to be seen.