Revelation 8:2-5

Revelation 8:2: “And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.”

Here we see that something new is going on: seven angels have been given seven trumpets. These are the trumpet judgments.

Revelation 8:3: “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
4 And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.”

If you will think back to Revelation 6, there was a group of saints in Heaven who were crying out for vengeance. God heard their prayer and promised that when the rest of them had been killed He would judge the world for murdering them. It may be that those are the prayers that this verse is talking about, and it is possible that the judgments that follow is the revenge that God promised. After all, there has just been another period of martyrdom on the Earth; countless souls have been murdered for their faith in God. (Sometimes I wonder if the martyrs in Heaven will outnumber everyone else. Given how many Christians will be murdered during this period, it is at least a possibility.)

Revelation 8:5: “And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.”

These judgments don’t sound that bad, but think about it. At this point there has been relative quiet on the world; aside from intense persecution, not a lot has happened. But now, out of nowhere, there are voices – and those voices are accompanied by thunder, lightning, and an earthquake. Voices from the sky are enough to scare pretty much anyone, and when accompanied by everything else it is surely enough to get the world’s attention.

That is all this is, though; it’s just a prelude to what is to come. This is a warning to those on Earth that a new batch of judgments are about to begin.