The Seventh Trumpet of Revelation: The Third Woe
The woes were God’s last three warnings to the Roman Catholic Church to change its ways. By October 1517, two of the three woes had been fulfilled, and the Catholic Church failed to heed God’s warnings. With the third woe, God would no longer target the governments of Rome and Constantinople. Because the Catholic Church had not repented for its sacrilegious practices, God would begin to focus all his vengeance on the Vatican itself.
Revelation 11:15-17
15 And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.
16 And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God,
17 Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.
After their October 31, 1517, publication, it took little time for the ideas of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses to spread. The German theologian Friedrich Myconius, a close friend of Luther’s, wrote, “Hardly fourteen days had passed when these propositions were known throughout Germany and within four weeks almost all of Christendom was familiar with them.” By no later than December, printed copies of the Theses in pamphlet and broadsheet form had appeared in the German cities of Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Basel.
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Even Martin Luther was surprised by how quickly his words spread. In a March 1518 letter to one of his Nuremberg publishers, he wrote of the Theses, “They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation.”[i] The Protestant Reformation had “come quickly” after the publication of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses brought a conclusion to the sixth trumpet.
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The Reformation called into question the dogma of Catholicism. Finally, more than twelve hundred years after Constantine’s apostasy, men measured the virtues of the church and found it to be anti-Christian. The Reformers quickly unraveled the fraudulence of the Catholic Church and exposed it as a pagan institution. Revelation 11:15-17 illustrates Heaven’s reaction to the Reformation, where the temple is opened and the twenty-four elders sitting around the throne celebrate and praise God.
Revelation 11:18-19
18 And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.
19 And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.
As illustrated in verses eighteen and nineteen, the Catholic world reacted far differently to the Protestant Reformation than Heaven did. During the Counter-Reformation, Catholic religious and political leaders responded with astonishing violence, persecuting Christians wherever Protestantism spread.
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[i] The Economist. 2011. How Luther went viral. December 17. Accessed November 5, 2023. https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2011/12/17/how-luther-went-viral.