Pray to escape the punishment of heresy

Sermon for Midweek of Easter 1

Revelation 8:1-13

John’s vision of the seven seals revealed the destruction that God would bring on the world in various ways leading up to the end, even as the Gospel would also be going forth, even as the believers on earth and the saints in heaven would be guarded in God’s safe-keeping. Chapter 8, before us this evening, has the seventh and final seal being opened by the Lamb, which serves as the introduction to the next vision, the vision of the seven trumpets.

Now, I’ll tell you, there’s a lot in this chapter that is hard to interpret. For the most part, we’re going to follow the interpretation of Johann Gerhard, the sound Lutheran teacher of the 17^th century. His understanding fits well with the text, with the larger context of Scripture, and with the ancient commentators on Revelation whom he cites repeatedly in his commentary, but it’s far different from the modern scholars and the modern fanatics. So be it. We’ll do our best, trusting ultimately in the Lord to guide us. And since this is a sermon and not a Bible study, we’ll focus on the main points and leave the details for a different setting.

The Lamb opens the seventh seal, and there’s silence in heaven for half an hour. It seems best to view this as a “pregnant pause” as the anticipation builds for the next vision, or as a “reset,” because the vision of the seals took us all the way through the New Testament era up to the end of the world, and now we’re going back to the beginning again in the vision of the seven trumpets.

The seven angels standing before God were given seven trumpets. These don’t need to be seven literal spirit-being angels. They’re messengers in the vision, set aside for God’s sacred purpose. And that purpose is, largely, destruction. It’s depicted as destruction rained down from heaven on the trees and grass, seas and ships, streams and rivers, and the sun, moon, and stars. But only a third of all these things are destroyed, which is clearly not literally possible. It seems clear that the destruction being described in this vision isn’t done within nature, but within the Church, namely, the destruction that’s brought about by heresy, by false doctrine. Not that God is the source of false doctrine. But He does use it as a punishment against those who refuse to love the truth of His Word. That’s the understanding we’re going to work with.

Now, before the seven angels blow their trumpets, we’re told of “another angel” standing at the golden altar, like the golden altar of incense that stood in the ancient temple. He offers incense combined with the prayers of all the saints, making them all pleasing to God. Now, who is this angel, and what is this incense that makes prayers acceptable to God? I think the best interpretation is that this angel is Christ Himself, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us, as Paul writes. Christ is the true High Priest of the New Testament who stands before the altar of God, holding His merit, His works, His worthiness before the Father on our behalf, so that we have access to the throne of God, so that our prayers are acceptable in His sight.

Our prayers are mentioned here because they, together with Christ’s intercession, are the best stronghold against the false doctrine and resulting persecution that are about to be unleashed on the world. “Prayers prevent heresies from advancing as far as Satan attempts to sow them.”

He fills His censer with fire from the altar and then throws it on the earth. That sounds like a bad thing, but not if this fire is the fire of the Holy Spirit, whom Christ pours out on His believers starting on the Day of Pentecost in order to spread the Gospel and strengthen us in these difficult days. The noises, thunderings, lightnings, and earthquake sound scary, unless they are the thundering of the Gospel in the world, the lightning of miracles done in the first century Church, and the earthquake of the world being shaken by the Word of God as it takes hold in the world and as the Christian Church fills the earth.

But what happened shortly after the Day of Pentecost, as the apostles the Gospel far and wide? Heretics arose. False teaching, already by the time of St. Paul and surely by the time of John’s writing.

The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up. Destruction rained down from heaven and destroyed the trees and the green grass. Some of this sounds similar to some of the ten plagues in Egypt, which brought destruction on the Egyptians while the children of Israel were kept safe. Here a third of the trees are burned up. If we’re right in identifying these calamities as heresies and the heretics who teach them, then we may be dealing, not with a single false teacher, but with certain groups of false teachers who appeared over the first few centuries, or who have appeared over and over again ever since then. Gerhard suggests certain heretics of the first and second centuries who may be represented by the hail and fire, but we won’t go into that here. The trees, then, would be prominent Christian teachers. Remember, Jesus compared prophets to trees that bear fruit, either good or bad. By their fruits you will know them. Not all teachers of the Church are wiped out by this heresy; the universal apostasy from the faith hasn’t taken place yet. But a “third” of them are.

Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. This may be another group of false teachers who followed after the first group. There were dozens of them in the early church, and some of them had large followings. The sea, in this case, would be the Church, and the creatures in the sea who died would be believers who allowed themselves to be led astray by the false teachers. The ships represent those who were looked up to for their understanding and for their holy lives. But a third, of them, too, were destroyed by false doctrine.

Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter. Don’t think of asteroids here, or of Armageddon by asteroid. I’m not aware of an asteroid that can target the drinking water in the rivers and springs. No, again, this is a spiritual destruction, the fresh drinking water that sustains men’s souls is the Word of God. But the Word of God is poisoned, made bitter and deadly, by the heresy of these false teachers. We still see the results of that poisoning today, don’t we?, among all those who claim to be Christians but whose perverted understanding of the Bible ends up killing any faith that was there to begin with, so that the water of life has become for them a water of death.

Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night. Christ, in Scripture, is called the Sun of Righteousness. The Church is sometimes represented with the moon that reflects the light of Christ to the world, and the stars are the teachers of the church, as in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. Many heretics in the early centuries of the Church obscured the doctrine of Christ and obscured the confession of the Church and of its teachers. The great apostasy and the universal falling away hadn’t happened yet. But you might say that a third of the world’s light sources were darkened by false doctrine in those early centuries of Christianity.

And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!”

Heretics and their false doctrine did terrible damage to the Christian Church in its early days. But more was to come, and that’s the theme of the next chapter. What do we take away from all this?

Well, instead of viewing all the false doctrine and all the different denominations in the world as sign that Christianity isn’t the true religion, or as some sort of problem that we have to solve, understand that the situation we see today and that we see throughout the history of the last 2,000 years is exactly what God said it would be: a Church that is assaulted over and over again by false teachers, who do tremendous damage, at least to the Church in its outward form. Those who cling to Christ as our one Mediator and Intercessor, who pray for God’s help, and who take His Word seriously will be kept safe through all this destruction. But those who have refused to love the truth, who have loved the doctrines of men more than the word of God, who have allowed themselves to be impressed by flashy teachers or by nice-sounding teachings—they will perish with the world.

So, cling to Christ as your one Mediator and Intercessor. Send up your prayers for God’s help to escape the punishment of heresy and the spiritual destruction that is already running rampant throughout the world. And keep taking His Word seriously, so that, as Paul wrote to the Ephesians, we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head, which is Christ. Amen.