The seventh trumpet blows a note of rejoicing in heaven. The heavenly chorus resumes its praise of God’s reign and God’s Christ, continuing the doxology sung at the Lamb’s coronation (cf. Rev. 5:13). Together with the great hymns of chapter 5, John brackets his vision of divine wrath and global devastation (6:1–11:14) with dissonant images of praise (5:13; 11:15–18) for rhetorical effect—to make it even more clear that God’s judgment of a sinful world is grounded in the triumph of the Lamb. The twenty-four elders who conclude this celebration with a second hymn of thanksgiving express the deeper-logic of John’s theological conviction: because God’s reign has begun with the exaltation of Christ (11:17), God’s judgment of the dead—of earth’s destroyers—has also begun (11:18). The profound su…