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2. The Seven Trumpet Judgments (Revelation 8:7 - 9:21)
The Third Trumpet Sounds - Drinking Water Becomes Bitter
REVELATION 8:10-11
10 The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from the sky, burning like a torch, and it fell on one third of the rivers, and on the springs of the waters. 11 The name of the star is called “Wormwood.” One third of the waters became wormwood. Many people died from the waters, because they were made bitter.
Some interpreters see, as possible common cause of the judgments following the first, second and third trumpets, a comet falling to the earth which would devastate land and sea. A bursting comet would appear to be a torch, and like a burning falling star bring a hail storm to earth, with mass to destroy like a burning mountain. The discussion of possible meteorites striking our earth has once again heated up following July of 1994, when twenty pieces of the Schumacher-Levi Comet crashed onto the planet Jupiter.
The blows of judgment special to the third trumpet sounding in Revelations find their special significance in the name of the judgment star raging to earth: “Wormwood”. The Hebrew word for wormwood means “bitterness”, and describes a drug that is administered in the last stages of a sickness, in hope of perhaps still bringing recovery. The blows of judgment of an angry God are to be understood in this light.
In the Russian language wormwood is called “Chernobyl” – a catchword that flashes through hearts and heads like a bolt of lightning! Was the catastrophe at the reactor in Chernobyl in the Ukraine a prelude to the third trumpet's sounding? The radioactive mass in the destroyed reactor near Kiev has not been put out to this day, but only cemented in. The reactor can explode again at any time and cast radioactive material into the air.
Following the reactor explosion in the Ukraine winds drove contaminated clouds in different directions, so that from Turkey to Sweden, and from the Lake of Constance to the Ural, radioactive rain fell. Grass, mushrooms and trees were radioactively contaminated. Fish, mammals and people took in radioactive particles through the food chain, which still leave after-effects in many. Most of the people living near the reactor in 1994 are no longer living.
Above all, underground water, springs, rivers and seas were contaminated. The seas are also threatened by atomic submarines that have sunk, whose atomic bombs resemble ticking time-bombs, being subject to the laws of decay of radioactive material. Atomic contamination of our drinking water has become imaginable today. There is no certain protection from it. Even a unilateral atomic disarmament helps no further. All of the residents of earth are sitting in the same boat, whether they like it or not.
The carelessly administered core reactor near Kiev is not the only danger area for an atomic contamination of the earth. In the former East Block countries there are more of these susceptible reactor types left, which are being newly built in Iran. These reactors are not subject to the strict regulations of atomic power stations in Europe. Furthermore, Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Israel and other unstable countries possess atomic reactors, supposedly for the production of energy for peaceful purposes in the industry of these countries. Test explosions of atomic warheads in the area of the Indus revealed, however, other strategic planning. The reactors in these often emotionally and fanatically reacting lands, which show in part a low level of supervision over their atomic installations, represent a potential for danger that bypasses that of Chernobyl by far. Even a reserved and highly technical Japan has in the meantime admitted to several atomic accidents.
The excessively hoarded atomic, bacterial and chemical weapons in the world would be enough to destroy entire life on the earth fifty times over. In such a war enemy states would each be the first to extinguish the others atomic plants, an action which would amount to a Chernobyl many times over. The poisoning of drinking water reserves with consequences lasting thousands of years has become feasible even in the glaciers of Greenland and the Antarctic, as well as in the underground water of the continents. Such are the horrible depictions of the third trumpet's sounding. A humanity alienated from God can well destroy itself. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
Shutting down the atomic reactors is not the answer to the oppressing danger, but a revival of the church, so that it might live out the gospel and offer it to every man in his own language, to the end that the godless masses in all nations might repent and be saved. The atomic threat is ultimately a spiritual, and not a technical-political problem. Let us pray for reformation amidst all the churches!
PRAYER: Holy Judge, we regret that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded and rivers and lakes became poisoned. Forgive us our sins, and help us to walk in holiness, asking our colleagues and neighbors that they would come back to you, as we have done.
QUESTION:
- Why do we see in Chernobyl explosion a sign of the plagues of the Holy One against the falling away world?