Pastor Glenn’s Weblog

          The other day I was pondering the destruction expressed by the trumpets of God’s wrath in Revelation 8.  When John saw the trumpets blown, a third of the earth was burned, along with a third of the trees and all of the grass; a third of the sea was destroyed with the creatures in it; a third of the water on earth became bitter and many died from drinking it; a third of the sun, moon and stars were darkened.  To people raised in an “earth-first” environmental mindset, this sounds wasteful.  But God created the universe, so it is his to do with as he pleases.  When it has served its purpose as is, God will destroy it for his greater glory.  This earth is not about environmentalism or humanism, as good as those causes might be; this earth, and the universe it is in, is all about the glory of God!  Rather than an “earth-first” mindset, we should instead have a “God-first” mindset.  The heavens declare the glory of God.

          On a related note, I see another place where the literal blow-by-blow interpretation of Revelation advocated by Dispensationalists contradicts itself.  In the first trumpet, all of the grass on earth is burned up; but in the fifth trumpet, the locusts were told not to harm the grass of the earth!  Again, we should read Revelation as “repetitions on a theme” and not as a blow-by-blow account of the end times.  For more of my thoughts on this matter, check out the other entries under the eschatology catagory.