The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

while we may not be able to fix so definitely the date when the Kingdom power was
assumed by Christ, nevertheless the evidences are that the vision has been in process of
fulfillment for some years:
"Almost all expositors recognize that the seven trumpets of Revelation are symbolical and
not literal--indeed that this entire book is a book of symbols, and that so far it has been
symbolically fulfilled. Christian people in general understand that five of these trumpets
have already 'sounded,' and are in the past--we would say six, . . . The 'last trumpet'--'The
trump of God,' is as much symbolic as were its predecessors, and marks a much larger and
more important fulfillment than any of them. Its fulfillment extends through a period of
1,000 years; its events mark and coincide with all the various features of the Millennial
reign of Christ. . . .
"If now we have gotten a glimpse of the purport of the seventh trumpet, and are no longer
expecting its fulfillment as a voice upon the air, but in the glorious events of the Kingdom,
what shall we say respecting the 'great voices,' which, at its very beginning, are to
announce that the time has come for the establishment of the Kingdom? We answer that
we are not to expect them to be angelic shoutings in the sky, nor mutterings of thunder.
We are to remember that the voices are symbolic as well as the trumpets, and in this
direction we look for the fulfillment of this declaration which must be due about the
present time [time of writing]."
It is a startling thought to most Christian people that some of the visions that have
reference to Christ's exercise of authority in connection with the establishment of His
Kingdom will be in process of fulfillment and the world be unaware of it. Some students
and writers of the "sure word of prophecy," however, who lived nearly a century ago,
believed this would be the way the great event would be ushered in. Identifying the
seventh trumpet of this Apocalyptic vision with the "last trump" of St. Paul (1 Cor. 15:52),
one writer in 1856 thus expressed his convictions:
"That this seventh trumpet of John is 'the last trump' of Paul is evident from the events
which are attributed to the sounding of both. Paul says of 'the last trump,' that when it
sounds, 'the dead shall be raised and we shall be changed.' All agree that it refers to the
period of the judgment. And so also when John's 'seventh angel' sounded his trumpet,
'there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the
kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ; and the four and twenty elders worshipped God,
saying, Thy wrath is come and the time of the dead that they should be judged.' The last
trumpet, then, or the trumpet which is to usher in the scenes of judgment, is just such a
trumpet as were the six that preceded it; and its sounding is to be understood in the same
way that they sounded. . . . We can point directly to the several events to which they refer.
. . . The fifth refers to the Saracenic woe, inflicted by Mohammed and his fierce armies. The
sixth introduced the woes inflicted by the Tartar tribes or Turks, in their furious
devastations. . . . They certainly refer to occurrences . . . that have already transpired upon
earth, none of which have been ushered in by audible signals from the heavens. The
trumpets belong simply to the scenery on the panorama by which these events were