Comments on Revelation, Chapter 8:
The 7^th Seal

The Seventh Seal is a collection 7 current disasters. Seven angels blow their trumpets one after another and each time the prophet describes a vision of another disaster using symbols connected to the four elements. Together they announce the end of our age in chapter 8, 9 and 11. Chapter 8 contains the first 4 of them:

1. When the first angel blows his trumpet, people adopt a ruthlessly destructive attitude towards the earth. The environment is damaged, forest fires sweep across the countries and grass, an important raw material for food production, is destroyed.

2. When the second angel blows his trumpet, destructive carelessness and greed becomes more rampant. The sea becomes polluted, fish and other life in the sea becomes seriously damaged. The importance of this apocalyptic scenario for the end-times is highlighted, when the prophet has a similar vision about the sea in chapter 16.

3. When the third angel blows his trumpet, destructiveness becomes even worse: Jewish-Christian culture is completely perverted. The rivers and other sources of drinking water become poisoned. This vision comes back in chapter 16 as the third bowl of God's anger. Lack of clean drinking water is an increasingly serious threat to the survival of many people on this planet.

4. When the fourth angel blows his trumpet, chaos becomes complete: The sun, the moon and the stars, night and day, the very foundation of life on earth are affected. Whether we want to understand this symbolically or literally does not make much difference after all.

5. Before the fifth angel blows his trumpet in the next chapter, the prophet has a vision of an eagle. As in Isaiah 46:11 the eagle is a messenger from God who warns humanity about worse apocalyptic disasters in the future. The eagle is the sign of various countries, among others Germany, and the author of what you read here happens to be German.