Voice Like a Trumpet

REVELATION Number 23

Voice Like a Trumpet

Now, let’s dip our toes in the water of The Revelation as we hear from our Lord Himself.

Revelation 1:10-11 (NASB 2020)

“I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet, saying, “Write on a scroll what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”

Throughout the Old Testament, trumpets (or horns) are used to call the people to attention, to notify them that God is about to act or to speak. When God arrives in His glory, people fall on their faces, the earth shakes, and His voice is like the sound of a trumpet.

Exodus 19:16–19 gives us a good example. We read there, “So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the entire mountain quaked violently. When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him with thunder.” (NASB 2020)

The prophet Isaiah is instructed to get the people’s attention in Isaiah 58:1 God told him, “Cry loudly, do not hold back; Raise your voice like a trumpet, And declare to My people their wrongdoing, And to the house of Jacob their sins.” (NASB 2020)

Such announcements were not to be ignored or taken lightly as we see in Ezekiel 33:2–5 “Son of man, speak to the sons of your people and say to them, ‘If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the horn and warns the people, then someone who hears the sound of the horn but does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head. He heard the sound of the horn but did not take warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have saved his life.” (NASB 2020)

It is the same with the words of The Revelation. As we read at the outset in Revelation 1:3 “Blessed is the one who reads, and those who hear the words of the prophecy and keep the things which are written in it; for the time is near.” (NASB 2020) As we move forward in this wonderful book, let’s take heed. Let’s listen to see what the Spirit has to say to us.