Big Idea: God sometimes allows evil powers to serve his purposes of judging wicked human beings.

Understanding the Text

The fourth trumpet ends with a plague of darkness, a regular symbol of judgment and destruction in the Bible (e.g., Isa. 13:10–11; Joel 2:1–2; Amos 5:18; Mark 13:24). Now we see how dense and thick that spiritual darkness can be with the final trumpet judgments. After the first four trumpets, where God’s judgments are poured out primarily on creation (8:7–12), now an eagle warns of three approaching “woes” and links them with the final three trumpet blasts (see 9:1, 12–13; 11:14). In the fifth and sixth trumpets, God judges unbelievers (i.e., the “inhabitants of the earth”), who respond with a stubborn devotion to wickedness and refuse to repent (9:20–21). The seventh a…