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Bern Zumpano introduces Revelation Chapter 8, which begins with the breaking of the Seventh Seal. This event is marked by a profound silence in heaven for about half an hour, interpreted as a moment of awe and anxiety among the heavenly host, who anticipate the far more severe Seven Trumpet Judgments that the Seventh Seal unleashes. Before the trumpets sound, another angel, identified by Zumpano as Jesus Christ (our High Priest), mediates. This angel takes a golden censer, adds incense (representing the prayers of the Tribulation saints/Jews) to it, and throws the censer's fire onto the earth. This action symbolizes Christ's mediation for the saints and his immediate response to their prayers for deliverance is the initiation of judgment on their enemies—the unbelievers on earth, marked by thunder, lightning, and an earthquake.

The subsequent sounding of the first four trumpets brings escalating, literal, and localized judgments. The First Trumpetbrings hail, fire, and blood, burning up a third of the earth's vegetation and causing severe ecological damage, mirroring the seventh Egyptian plague (Exodus 9). The Second Trumpet sends "something like a great mountain burning with fire" (interpreted as a fiery meteor) into the sea, turning a third of the sea into blood and destroying a third of the marine life and ships, recalling the first Egyptian plague (Exodus 7). The Third Trumpet brings another meteor, the star called Wormwood (the Russian word for the plant), which pollutes and makes a third of the fresh waters bitter, causing many deaths and echoing God's previous judgment in Jeremiah 9. Finally, the Fourth Trumpet strikes the heavens, darkening a third of the sun, moon, and stars (Exodus 10; Luke 21), a prophetic sign of Christ's imminent return. After the fourth trumpet, an angel declares "Woe, woe, woe", announcing the three final, and most severe, trumpet judgments (the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh), which bring literal hell to earth, beginning with the Fifth Trumpet that releases a plague of demonic locusts from the Bottomless Pit (Abyss), to torment, but not kill, unbelievers for five months.

Episode 55: Understanding the Book of Revelation, Chapter 8-9, Vol. 14 | By Dr. Bern Zumpano