Re-Reading Revelation, Lecture # 13: The Quest for History in the Seven Trumpets

The seven trumpets have been mined for information about specific historical events. This is true for all the main "schools of interpretation," whether "preterist," "futurist," or "historicist," especially the latter. We can easily see that proposed fulfillments have been influenced by the situation of the interpreter. To the historicist interpreter Uriah Smith, the imagery of the sixth trumpet suggested Turkish (Ottoman) guns and gunpowder in the nineteenth century. To futurists in our time, the same images have suggested Cobra helicopters used in Vietnam. This presentation focuses mostly on the historicist "school" and claims to historical specifics in the trumpet sequence, a version called "Old Historicism" and one described as "New." Are the proposed referents, whether in the old historicist school or the new, large enough to fill the shoe of Revelation's symbols? And is the message one of retribution, as the "new" historicism seems to believe? This presentation will answer an emphatic "No" to both questions.