With each Trumpet event, the more surreal the story! In the Seals we discover that when the Lamb broke each Seal an event occurred. Here, when an angel sounds, an event occurs. The symbolism of each image and activity represents a divine story! They are little segments of future history that play out the final scene of God bringing sin to an end.  

God is in charge when each Seal is broken. He influences when each Trumpet sounds. This conveys heaven’s absolute control over each segment of the end of time. Whether a message refers to the righteous or the wicked, God remains in sovereign charge.

“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters” (Revelation 8:10).

This great star also falls from the sky (“heaven”). As we see the fiery trails of meteors in the night sky as they enter the atmosphere, John is witness to similar imagery, noting a star, burning “as it were” a lamp.

This is so interesting. In the portrayal of Trumpet two, he saw “as it were” a great mountain. Here he finds the best way to help us visualize the brilliance of this star by asking us to think of a “lamp.” Since it is a “great” star, implying a large size, that “lamp” must be like a brilliant torch, streaking its way to the earth.

That is actually what the word here for “lamp” means (lampas – torch). In fact, some have translated it “a great meteor – flashing across the sky like a blazing torch.”[1] This appears to be a large meteor-like object.

What now happens is supernatural. That single star-like object fell on one third of the fresh water of rivers and springs of the world and poisoned them. Many try to “figure out” how that might happen. We need not tarry on that point. God directly associates that particular meteor with a plague on earth’s fresh waters. We don’t need to know how He did it.

Much of the earth’s food supply is gone. Sea commerce is disrupted. Now, fresh water is unavailable to one third of the earth. Devastation, death and desolation follow in the wake of this judgment.

Now, something so unusual is noted:

“And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter” (Revelation 8:11).

Some expositors claim that “wormwood” is Satan being cast out of heaven. That occurred long before and is graphically portrayed in Revelation 12. There would no longer be either the “need” or logistical reason to put Satan back into heaven to recast him out just before Christ’s second coming.

John neither personifies the star nor the name “wormwood.” Wormwood is a plant of the genus Artemisia, which occurs worldwide, including Palestine. It is a “bitter” herb and can be poisonous.

Anciently, God warned Israel that they would be destroyed by this herb, if they remained in apostasy (Deuteronomy 29:18; Jeremiah 9:15; Lamentations 2:15, 19; Amos 5:7). No star of antiquity or pagan mythology was named wormwood. It is an “ad hoc” descriptive name given by its effect on the world. It was not uncommon to describe calamities, sorrows or disappointment by plants in nature (Jeremiah 9:15, Lamentations 3:19).

A judgment using bitter herbs was a metaphor in the Old Testament for “the punishment meets the crime.” It was descriptive of Israel’s idolatry (Proverbs 5:4; Lamentations 3:15, 19; Amos 5:7, 6:12; cf. Hosea 10:4). God pictured them as polluting water, making it unfit to drink.

When He, in turn, used “wormwood” as a punishment (Deuteronomy 29:17-18), it was a rebuke to the covenant community of their idolatry and apostasy. It is in this third-Trumpet judgment that Babylon and its followers are punished for idolatrous practices.

The neurotoxin thujone is in this bitter herb and can be lethal at the proper concentration. The record of John says that many men died from these polluted waters.

By now we can imagine the world in terror! There is no place to hide from God’s wrath. Much of earth’s crust cannot support life. One can hear an echo still reverberating from the courts of heaven from the antediluvian era: “My Spirit shall not always strive with man” (Genesis 6:3). The slow withdrawal of divine grace is underway. Soon, the world will be filled with Satan’s unrestrained followers. We will see what his committed loyalists do to each other when they are permitted liberty.

What happens then? Stay tuned. When we hear the fifth and sixth Trumpets, Satan will be in full charge – and it’s not pretty. But first – the fourth must sound.

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