One of the problems people have in trying to understand this mystifying book of Revelation is the failure to see the pattern of revelation followed in the book. When we realize that this book is a retelling of what the author, John, saw and heard, it helps to understand it. This revelation came to him in the form of a vision – much like a movie or a video. It was a movie of a story, like a novel, only it is a true story showing John what is going to happen to the world in the future. However, it isn’t just a story about a few characters in a town, or even a country – it is about everybody and everything in this universe. John is seeing a vision, like a movie, about how the whole heavens and earth are going to come to an end as we know it. It is far greater in scope than even such apocalyptic movies as “Independence Day.” To tell such a story which is so huge in scope, the same techniques have to be employed as we see in most novels or even scientific accounts dealing with subjects or stories on a much smaller scale.   The story being told involves a rather vast number of events many of which are happening at the same time. A series of these events make up developments going from an early stage of development to a later more fully developed stage. But there are a number of such series of events and stages going on in parallel, all at the same time. It is of course impossible to write or even show in a movie all the parallel events and developments at the same time, and if you could the reader, or viewer, couldn’t follow all of them at the same time. The writer or movie producer has to take one set of events at a time and follow them through to a certain stage of development, then go back chronologically to another set of developments and follow them through to the same point. The intelligent reader can integrate the various descriptions and understand that they are actually happening in parallel, more or less simultaneously. Especially when they all obviously converge together into one later stage or perhaps final scene. The reader/viewer gets it that they were all going on at the same time, even though they may be covered sequentially in separate chapters or scenes.

More often than not the separate accounts of events and developments which are happening in parallel, are actually interrelated, usually having some kind of cause and effect relationships with each other – which is why they are all there in the same story. So it is with Revelation, and the accounts of the Seals, the Trumpets and the Bowls. While we see the Seals described first, and following that sequentially the Trumpets, and after that the Bowls, it does not mean that they are separate events all happening sequentially one after the other. Such an interpretation fails to give the reader the picture, the movie as it unfolds, in a manner that makes any sense.

For example, the sixth Seal describes a combination of events which are universally catastrophic and cataclysmic. The description of that sixth Seal actually matches the prophecies which appear several times predicting the end, the final event when the heavens and earth are completely destroyed – as in the sun is darkened and the moon turned blood red. And indeed we read there that the sun and moon are obscured, there is a huge earthquake and the stars are following from the sky like figs from a fig tree in a strong wind, and all the mighty powerful men of the earth are trying to hide in caves in fear. Are we then to believe that all the rest of the events of the book are still going to happen on earth after that? Actually what we see is that this 6^th Seal event of chapter six parallels closely the description of the seventh Trumpet in chapter 11, and the seventh Bowl in chapter 16 – all describing a globally catastrophic cosmic event, the end of heavens and earth as we know them.

Many if not most Bible prophecy scholars, who are literalists and futurists, do to some degree recognize that the 6^th Seal, the 7^th Trumpet, and the 7^th Bowl are describing the same event. Their explanation often is that the seven bowls are all included in the seventh Trumpet, and the seven Trumpets are all included in the 7^th Seal. But this explanation doesn’t really make much sense. The first four trumpets are about the “stars,” which are actually “heavenly bodies,” comets, or meteorites falling to the earth and causing widespread damage and destruction. This is including fires and pollution of both fresh and salt waters, and pollution of the atmosphere – over 1/3 of the earth. It makes no sense to say that after these disastrous events all the events and developments of chapters 12 and 13 are happening.   After the multiple collisions with comets and/or meteorites and all the destruction on the earth we are to believe that the Antichrist comes to global dominance and desecrates the temple and persecutes Christians, and sets up a global economy requiring everyone to take his mark (666) to survive? Nor does it make any sense to have Christ’s second coming in the 11^th chapter, followed by another coming in the 14^th chapter, followed by still another coming in the 16^th and 19^th chapters.

Furthermore it only takes a little bit of common sense to figure out that the events or developments of the first four Bowls are directly connected with and a further stage of development of the first four Trumpets. This is especially apparent in the second and third Bowls as the pollution of 1/3 of the earth’s waters now propagate to contaminate the waters around the globe. As it turns out when we consider the modern science of what we know would happen in the case of a comet or comets or meteorite strikes, all of these developments including the fifth and sixth Trumpets and Bowls could be all very much related to each other. This is explained in scientific detail in The Seals, Trumpets and Bowls Revisited, available as an eBook or paperback on Amazon, under J. Mike Byrd.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting it right with respect to the pattern. It may not bother a lot of theologians, but this engineer can’t take very seriously a book that is full of logical inconsistencies and absurdities. To suggest that we have the earth being destroyed several times with a number of catastrophic events happening repeatedly in a seven year time span, with several comings of Christ to save and to judge, makes it all quite unbelievable. But to see that this author, like most authors, used a pattern of introducing and sometimes giving an overview (as in the seven Seals), then going back chronologically and giving more detail and or focusing on a different aspect of the global developments – that does make a lot of sense. The fact is that John takes us up to the second coming of Christ several times, beginning with the heavenly scene in the fifth chapter, and again in the seventh chapter, then in the 11^th chapter, the fourteenth chapter, the sixteenth chapter, and the nineteenth chapter. These are clearly not separate sequential events and neither are the Seal, Trumpet and Bowl events and developments.

It seems that the Seals give the complete overview of this whole period, beginning with the four horsemen, which probably represent progressive developments in the human realm – from a peaceful conqueror to a very bloody one. The fifth Seal lets us know how God will take care of His own who will be martyred. The sixth Seal lets us know how it all will end, especially with respect to the heaven and earth itself. The seventh Seal lets us know how it will end for God’s own people, as described in the seventh chapter, using the symbology of quiet or silence, similar to when God rested on the seventh day after completing His work of creation. The first four trumpets give us details about what is going to happen on the terrestrial earth. The fifth and sixth Trumpets focus more on the human aspects – how they are affected by the developments. Then the Bowls give us even more details about these events and developments, but at a later stage of those developments – from 1/3 of the earth to the whole earth, from pollution of the atmosphere to its degeneration allowing harmful radiation to affect the humans. Finally the way is paved for the Antichrist, Satanically and demonically empowered, to muster his army and marshal his forces for the final battle of the period – HarMagedon.

Thus, if one can be forgiven for being logical, and scientific while still paying close attention to the details of scripture, as opposed to being purely theological per some doctrinal presuppositions, it all seems to make perfect sense, and is not really all that mysterious or mystical. In fact the accuracy of the science, details of which was completely unknown in John’s time, is a powerful testimony to the Bible’s claim for itself of divine inspiration – God is the real author, John just put it on paper (or papyrus).