The first four trumpets and bowls of Revelation forewarn of the degradation and destruction of earth’s lands, oceans, terrestrial waters, and skies removing life-sustaining resources necessary for earth’s biome. The removal of resources has been historically a sign of God’s judgment against humankind’s destructive law-breaking (Deut 28). This judgment sets the stage for the second coming of Jesus.
(or Revelation Poem or Revelation Song
Found in Revelation 8 and 16
words by B. A. Vannah
guitar chords: Am, D or Em, B7 or D, A, G)
STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING
AND
STRANGER THINGS WILL COME (2x)
(1) First trumpet sounds--a third of earth will burn
(2) Second trumpet sounds--a third of oceans die
[REFRAIN]Strange things are happening and stranger things will come
See Jesus in the clouds His face is like the sun
(3) Third trumpet sounds--a third of waters dry
(4) Fourth trumpet sounds--darkness fills the sky
[REFRAIN]
(1) First bowl pours out--the earth is filled with plagues
(2) Second bowl pours out--all the oceans dead
[REFRAIN]
(3) Third bowl pours out--from waters people die
(4) Fourth bowl pours out--global warming high
[REFRAIN]
Land, seas, and lakes
And all the skies of earth
All bringing death
The nations are all cursed
Jesus is coming back
And lawlessness will burn
All Christians rule with Him
So Eden will return
[REFRAIN]
Strange things are happening and stranger things will come (2xs)
See Jesus in the clouds His face is like the sun
Strange things are happening (3xs) and stranger things will come
The END
P.S. Please feel free to copy, use, rap, sing, read or perform these words. The only limitation is please do not sell the song or change the author’s name. God bless.
From the beginning, God warned that He would remove life-sustaining resources when people refused to stop breaking His laws in the Bible.
The Curse of Heat and Drought [1]
Death of Crops and Herds; Droughts and Famines; Diseases and Plagues from Ticks (Lyme Pandemic) Mosquitoes (Malaria) and Viruses (actual image of COVID-19 virus pandemic). All these are cause for death in Deuteronomy 28, the Bible.
“Covid-19 Virus” by NIAID-RML.
Moses’ prophecies in Deuteronomy 28 are repeated in Revelation; God sends plagues, removes life-sustaining resources, and civilization collapses.
The simplest way to know the future is to look at the past. God made it abundantly clear that His beautiful laws build us up and disobedience to those laws tears us down. At some point, if we do not turn back to God, He will stop us from not only destroying ourselves through lawlessness, but everyone around us. Instead of God’s blessings (that build up through obedience to His laws), we open the door to curses (that tear us down through disobedience to His laws).
The nation of Egypt experienced those curses through the ten plagues of Moses. The nation of Israel experienced those curses after many warnings by the prophets bringing the fall of Samaria in B.C. 722 and the fall of Jerusalem in B.C. 586. From the beginning, God forewarned all the major consequences of sin–curses that would tear down–in Moses’ fifth book in the Bible in the Old Testament (OT), Deuteronomy 28-29. All the nations of this earth will experience those curses–for all will have turned away from God in lawlessness (against the laws of God in the Bible, not the corrupted laws of men)–during the days of Revelation (the last book in the Bible in the New Testament (NT)) surrounding the second coming of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
For decades, we have been seeing the beginning of the curses of Deuteronomy gradually mounting across the world in dual fulfillment of both Moses’ prophecies and Jesus’ prophecies in the last book of the Bible, Revelation. In the first four (4) trumpets, bowls, and seals of Revelation, our planet’s lands, oceans, terrestrial waters, and skies are disintegrating and diminishing life-sustaining resources. These are the curses humankind brings upon ourselves because of our sins in combination with the judgment of God against those sins. Jesus declares, “Fear God, and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heaven and the earth and sea and springs of waters,” (Rev 14:7) for He alone can heal our planet. “If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land,” (2 Chron 7:14). The world will reject God and His laws (Psa 2). Even the church will fall away into apostasy (2 Thess 2:1-4). Jesus said that this global decline leading to catastrophe would come just like the days of Noah–plenty of warnings before the total collapse of civilization–and commands us saying, “Be ready,” (Matt 24:37-44).
Here are a few of God’s warnings of His judgement from the very beginning. The same principles apply. Such warnings and events began in the Pentateuch and continued throughout the prophets. What happened to one nation in the Prophets will eventually happen to the world in Revelation. Egypt’s fall in the day of Moses was only one such example. These Old Testament (OT) prophecies are the foundation filling in the details for the coming global judgment in Revelation. “For I, the Lord, do not change,” (Mal 3:6) “Fear God, and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heaven and the earth and sea and springs of waters,” (Rev14:7) Compare them to what we see happening on earth today. (I’ll do that later in depth in five chapters covering events today on the land, seas, waters, skies, and extreme weather.)
Deuteronomy 28 & 29 compared to Revelation
Scorching Heat on Land (Rev 7:16; 8:7; 16:8-9)
Deut 28:22 The Lord will smite you . . . with fiery heat.
Deut 28:23 The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you, iron.
Destruction of Waters (Rev 8:10; 16:4-6, 12)
Deut 28:24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; from heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
Deut 29:19 It shall be when he hears the words of this curse, that he will boast, saying, “I have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart in order to destroy the watered land with the dry.”
Deut 29:22-23 They see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it, and will say, “All its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.”
Destruction of Crops and Herds (Rev 6:5-6)
Deut 28:24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; from heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
Deut 28:22 The Lord will smite you with . . . blight and with mildew, and they will pursue you until you perish.
Deut 28:30 You shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.
Deut 28:38-40 You shall bring out much seed to the field but you will gather in little, for the locust will consume it. You shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm will devour them. You shall have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives will drop off.
Deut 28:42 The cricket shall possess all your trees and the produce of your ground.
Migrations, Conquests, and Wars Involving Life-Sustaining Resources (Rev 6:2-4; 13:7)
Deut 28:25 The Lord shall cause you to be defeated before your enemies.
Deut 28:29 You shall only be oppressed and robbed continually, with none to save you.
Deut 28:31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat of it; your donkey shall be torn away from you, and will not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you will have none to save you.
Deut 28:33 A people whom you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground and all your labors, and you will never be anything but oppressed and crushed continually.
Deut 28:47-53 Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things; and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you. The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young. Moreover, it shall eat the offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed, who also leaves you no grain, new wine, or oil, nor the increase of your herd or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish. It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land, and it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout your land which the Lord your God has given you. Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.
Deut 28:64-66 The Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth; and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, which you or your fathers have not known. Among those nations you shall find no rest, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot; but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul. So your life shall hang in doubt before you; and you will be in dread night and day, and shall have no assurance of your life.
Deut 29:28 The Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath, and cast them into another land.
Diseases and Massive Death of Humans (Rev 6:8; 13:15; 16:2, 11)
Deut 28:21-22 The Lord will make the pestilence cling to you until He has consumed you from the land where you are entering to possess it. The Lord will smite you with consumption and with fever and with inflammation and with fiery heat and with the sword and with blight and with mildew, and they will pursue you until you perish.
Deut 28:26-27 Your carcasses will be food to all birds of the sky and to the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The Lord will smite you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors and with the scab and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed.
Deut 28:35 The Lord will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils, from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.
Deut 28:59-61 The Lord will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses. He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they will cling to you. Also every sickness and every plague which, not written in the book of this law, the Lord will bring on you until you are destroyed.
Deut 28:62-63 Then you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, because you did not obey the Lord your God. It shall come about that as the Lord delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the Lord will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you.
In Deuteronomy 28 and 29, God made it crystal clear that following His beautiful, edifying laws would build up a person or people, while disobeying them would tear down not just the individual–but as sin spread–the family, the neighborhood, the community, the city, and eventually the country. When sin spreads across country to country–think of today’s global communication, global transportation, global economy, global education, global travel, . . .–then as during the days of Noah, the whole world would be torn down. Human sin is poisonous enough, but when God adds pure justice through His judgment to stop the disease of darkness deteriorating the earth, Revelation says there will be a global collapse of civilization. This will be the end of man’s reign his way through to sin and destruction and the beginning of Christ’s reign on earth God’s way rebuilding the planet back to Eden. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.”
Deuteronomy 28 fills in details between the lines for Revelation’s declivity of earth’s ecosystems foreshadowing the first four trumpets, bowls, and seals. However, the ten plagues in Exodus provide the most powerful comparison to the plagues of Revelation. What God has done before (to one nation), He will do again (to all the nations on earth). In the next chapter, let us compare the ten plagues of Egypt to today’s global condition and the emerging plagues of Revelation on this planet today. We are forewarned.
[1] The Curse of Heat and Drought Image by Tumius on Pixabay: climate change, drought, environment, desert. “Tiger Mosquito” Image by Wikilmages from Pixabay. “Carcass” of Kudu by Ivko Horvat from Pixabay. “Tick” by Marc Pascual from Pixabay. Tick carries Lyme pandemic. Droughts and Crop Loss found on Wikimedia Commons for 2012 Drought in U.S. C.f. Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “Drought ranks second in terms of national weather-related economic impacts, with annual losses nearing $9 billion per year in the U.S.” https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/drought-and-climate-change.” “Starving Child” by Dr. Lyle Conrad, public domain. PD-U.S. Gov source at http://phil.cdc.gov/ image ID:6901. Picture of the Day on Wikimedia Commons on August 16, 2008. The innocent suffer from the sins of leaders. Personal note: I once picked up a child off a street in Bangladesh who looked just like this picture. No hospital would take him because doctors said, “He could die any minute.” With a lot of prayer and the family’s permission, an Australian orphanage eventually opened a place for him. A year later, I received a picture of Amin–fat, healthy laughing with friends, receiving education. God answers prayer.
[2] Actual image of real “Covid-19 Virus” by NIAID-RML. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH). Photo from scanning electron microscope showing SARS-CoV-2 (yellow), also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S. emerging from the surface of humans cells (pink/blue). February 30, 2020. Article: “New Images of Novel Coronavirus-SARS-CoV2 Now Available.” https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/novel-coronaviru-sars-cov2-images. nytimes.com coronavirus update on 7/17/20: In U.S., 3,512,700 infected and 137,000 died. In world, 13.5 infected and 583,960 died. John Hopkins CSSE: Top countries in infections and deaths: (1) U.S. (2) Brazil (3) Russia (4) Mexico (China is lower and leveling as government takes action).
