(Daniel 8:14; Revelation 8:12; 14:14-20; 16:8-11)
Daniel said that “after 2,300 days the sanctuary will be cleansed.”1Dan 8:14 The fourth trumpet completes this cleansing.
When the fourth angel sounds, a third of the sun and moon and stars are darkened. These represent the Kingdom of Heaven, and this darkening represents the final cleansing of the lawless. Only the saints remain. The truth is fully restored, and the desolation of the Kingdom of Heaven has come to an end. This ends the war with the beast and the false prophet, as described in Daniel 9:26: “Till the end of the war desolations are determined.” All those in the Kingdom of God are now filled with the holy spirit.
The fourth trumpet is the hour to reap the harvest described in Revelation 14:14–20. The grapes are now fully ripe: “The fullness of the Gentiles has come in.”2Rom 11:25-26 Here, the angels reveal themselves as manifestations of the Spirit of Christ, to signify “one body.” One “like the Son of Man”3Rev 14:14 watches from the cloud. Another cries out “with a loud voice”4Rev 14:15 as the Archangel. In the last verse of Revelation 14, the Spirit of Christ as the Rider on the White Horse treads on the winepress outside the city, “and blood came out from the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles.”5Rev 14:20 His appearance at the end of Revelation 14 signifies that the saints are now in one body, as Paul said: “We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body.”61Cor 12:13 This one body represents the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer that we all become one.
There are two bowls of wrath that correspond to the fourth trumpet. In the fourth bowl of wrath, men are burned by the brightness of the sun.7Rev 16:8-9 The apostle Paul told us that Christ would destroy the lawless one through the brightness of His coming.82Th 2:8, see also Matt 13:43 In the fifth bowl of wrath, the angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was completely darkened.9Rev 16:10 The worshipers of the beast “gnawed their tongues because of pain.”10Rev 16:10 Their effort to show themselves as the elect of God is completely futile.
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