“And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound” (Revelation 8:13, King James Version)

This curious close to the record of the fourth trumpet is rendered differently in other versions (for example NASB, NIV, Wilson Diaglott, Marshall Diaglott, Rotherham). Rather than an angel coursing through heaven with this dire message, it is an eagle. The cause of the difference is a textual variation among Greek manuscripts. “Instead of [eagle] (which is decisively supported by Sinaiticus, Alexandrian … and most minuscules) the Textus Receptus … reads [angel]. The substitution may have been accidental … but more likely was deliberate since the function ascribed to the eagle seems more appropriate to an angel [for example Revelation 14:6] “ (A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce M. Metzger)

I think eagle is correct. But what sense does it convey?

The answer comes from two passages in the Old Testament.

(1) Deuteronomy 28. In verses 1 to 14 God explains the profuse blessings Israel will receive for obedience to Him. Verses 15 to 68 explain in detail the punishments sure to come for disobedience. It is in this section that Moses says “The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth” (verse 49).

(2) Centuries later, Hosea predicted this impending judgment to faithless Israel. “Set the trumpet to thy He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law” (Hosea 8:1). This prophecy came in the days of “Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah” (1:1), and the enemy which was the “rod” of God’s anger against his covenant people then was Assyria (Isaiah 10:5). No doubt the prophecy had an even fuller application when Israel was later subdued under the Romans, who sometimes used the eagle as their emblem.

The meaning in Revelation 8:13 draws from this usage. As God’s natural people transgressed, so his spiritual people transgressed. The first four trumpets, marking the same span as the first four churches, saw the full development of the Christian apostasy. The message to Thyatira, the fourth church, referred to Jezebel (Papacy) seducing “my servants to commit [spiritual] fornication, and [spiritually] to eat things sacrificed unto idols” (3:20). This was a time when the “depths of Satan” were experienced by the church (3:24). The woman had leavened the three measures of meal thoroughly by this time. (Matthew 13:33, the fourth of the seven parables of the Kingdom.)

It was time for judgment against faithless Christendom. The flying eagle, emblematic of God’s retribution against a wayward people, cried with a loud voice “woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the [nominally Christian] earth” Those three woes are trumpets 5, 6, 7. The trumpets are therefore logically divided into the first four, tracing the rise and entrenchment of Papacy, and the last three, tracing her weakening and demise. Notice that the first four trumpets are briefly described, while the last three are given at substantially greater length and detail. This strengthens the grouping of the first four as distinct from the last three. The seven seals of chapters 6 and 7 were segregated similarly. The first four seals give us the vision of the four horsemen, tracing the decline and corruption of Christian doctrine. In the last three seals the descriptions are of a different order, and given us in greater length and detail, just as with the trumpets. When we examine the details of trumpets 5, 6, 7 we indeed do find the “woe, woe, woe” predicted upon Christendom by the flying eagle.

Woe 1: Reformatory doctrines like locusts are freed from their dormant condition. They are loosed by the “star” fallen from heaven to earth, perhaps Luther who was excommunicated from the ecclesiastical heavens, but became of great influence among the Christian earth class. These doctrines inflicted much distress in Christendom, but of course did not hurt any who had “the seal of God in their foreheads” (Revelation 9:4).

Woe 2: From the great river Euphrates, which supported Papacy for so long, four angels were loosed for a great destruction. This woe struck when Papacy’s 31/2 times were coming to a close (Revelation 10:6 cf Daniel 12:7). At this time one of the ten toes, France, “the tenth part of the city” of Christendom, fell in a great earthquake-revolution, and Papacy fell with her (Revelation 11:13). Though Papacy recovered, her power to crown the state heads of Europe was lost forever.

Woe 3: The seventh trumpet, our day in history. “The Kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our Lord [Jehovah] and of his Christ” (cf Revelation 22:1). It is now the time for the saints and (gospel age) prophets to be rewarded, the angry nations subdued, and the corrupters of the Christian earth (Babylon) to be destroyed once and for all (Revelation 11:18, 19:2). This work has been progressing through the harvest, and will climax with Armageddon.

– David Rice

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