The Fifth Trumpet and the Industrial Revolution

6474 words long.

Published on 2024-07-14

The Fifth Trumpet of Revelation 9

The story of the angel blowing the Fifth Trumpet appears in Revelation 9. It is the first of the three woes. That sets it apart from the previous trumpets. Chapter 8 devoted a mere seven verses in total to those first four trumpet blasts. The fifth trumpet is apportioned eleven verses. That makes it five times worse than its predecessors.

8:13 Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!”

9:1 And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. 2 He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. 3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.

7 In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. 10 They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. 11 They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.

- Revelation 8:13-9:11

The article 153 and the Fifth Trumpet analyzes the passage and comes to these conclusions:

• The fifth trumpet was blown in 1765. The historical event was James Watt's invention of the reciprocating steam engine, which began the Industrial Revolution.
• The time period is given as five months in 9:5,10. This matches the length of a previous judgment: the Flood of Noah lasted from the 17th day of the 2nd month to the 17th day of the 7th month. The most common length of five months is 153 days. Using a day for a year, that means that the plague of the Fifth Trumpet was to last 153 years, hence ended in 1918 AD at the close of the First World War.
• The image of a great furnace in 9:2 matches the blast furnaces used in the Industrial Revolution.
• The image of smoke in 9:2-3 matches the widespread air pollution caused by the burning of coal.
• The locusts are kingdoms bent on pillage. The Old Testament often referred to invading armies as locusts.
• The locusts had women's hair, so these pillaging kingdoms were ruled by queens.
• The scorpions had breastplates of iron. Iron symbolizes Rome, so their kingdoms were ones that split off from the territory of ancient Rome.
• The locusts were told not to hurt those with the seal of God on their foreheads. Thus these queens ruled over Christian nations.
• Since their teeth were lion's teeth, at least one of them ruled a kingdom symbolized by a lion. Great Britain's Queen Victoria ruled the greatest of the Christian empires, so she was their leader, the lioness. The remaining queens included several female Tsars of Russia (like Catherine the Great), and Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary. (The sum of the lengths of their reigns totals about 152 years, which is also about five months long.)
• By the end of this period, these locusts developed wings: airplanes whose spinning propellers sound like "the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle". Of course actual horses still rushed into battle in World War I.
• The sting of a scorpion is poison. One horrifying weapon that defined the First World War was the use of phosgene, mustard and chlorine gas to maim and kill. Many who breathed in those vile vapors lived on for years with painful and debilitating respiratory conditions, nerve damage and PTSD from the shell shock. The victims truly sought death but could not find it.
• A second candidate for the scorpion sting is the machine gun, manned by a soldier feeding it a string of bullets. To a man like John, the belt of ammo trailing out the back of the gun would look like a tail. It sure stung like one.
• The period ended in 1918 at the close of World War I. That war shattered Russia and Austro-Hungary, ending their empires. England was damaged and would lose its colonies after World War II.

The above list includes a few new connections I only noticed today. I doubt that I am the only one to posit a connection to World War I, but some of the observations above are original, especially the interpretation of five months as 153 years and choosing the start date as 1765 AD. The implications are frightful. God allowed a star fallen from heaven, either Satan or one of his demons, to direct Christians to wage war against non-believers and create a vast and powerful colonial system. The impact of this was to make third world peoples hate Christianity for all the atrocities committed by those ostensibly Christian rulers.

Habakkuk and other Jewish prophets were horrified that God used nations more wicked than Israel (like Babylon and Persia) to execute judgment against her. We should be equally horrified that God allowed the reverse: Christian nations serving the interests of Satan. His plan is incomprehensible. However, if God wants to judge part of the world, what better way than to alienate it from the only source of salvation? Even so, all of this was to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah:

Draw near, O nations, to hear,

and give attention, O peoples!

Let the earth hear, and all that fills it;

the world, and all that comes from it.

For the Lord is enraged against all the nations,

and furious against all their host;

he has devoted them to destruction,

has given them over for slaughter.

- Isaiah 34:1-2

God sent out the Christian Colonial Empires to destroy ALL the nations. By my reckoning, only five nations were never conquered or at least partially occupied by these empires. Then after that was finished, God executed judgment on the Christian empires, too. The World Wars were God's judgment against His very agents of destruction.

The Industrial Revolution in Prophecy

The baffling plans of God revealed in Revelation 9 are not the only events of this era prophesied in Scripture. What else was God up to in the years 1765-1918 AD? Between Peace, like Solomon Never Knew and Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace, I have uncovered over forty spiritual clocks. Many of them include one or two time periods that overlap the Industrial Revolution. Here is a sampling. No attempt will be made to define the referenced prophetic clocks or defend why the given passages are assigned to the range of years that they are. For those details, consult my books.

A time to speak. In Solomon's Celestial Clock, based on Ecclesiastes 3, the period 1800-1920 AD goes with "a time to speak". That covers the majority of the Industrial Revolution. What was being spoken? Missionaries left in large numbers to share the gospel with the world. During this era, inventions like telegraph, telephone, radio and motion pictures revolutionized communication. They enabled people to speak to listeners on the other side of the world almost instantly. These inventions were products of the Industrial Revolution. They helped Christians to speak to the world. Was anybody listening? The number of Christians tripled from 200 to 600 million.

The Church of Philadelphia. The Seven Churches of Revelation 2-3 match seven eras of history. The Church of Philadelphia goes with 1453-1990 AD. Part of it overlaps the Industrial Revolution. Revelation 3:8 says, "I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name." That open door was the door of Christian missions. God enabled this generation of Christians - during a time to speak - to have nearly unhindered access to the whole world so that they might share the Christian faith. They were even given "the key of David" (3:7) and would see "the new Jerusalem" (3:12). The next to last year of the Industrial Revolution era was 1917. In that year, Great Britain captured Jerusalem and facilitated the process by which control of the Holy Land was restored to the Jewish people. The City of David would be theirs again.

Solomon's Sondial. A second clock in Ecclesiastes makes reference to "a time to speak" and "a time to love":

Go, eat your bread with joy,

and drink your wine with a merry heart,

for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be always white.

Let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love,

all the days of your vain life that

he has given you under the sun, because that is

your portion in life and in your toil at which

you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand

finds to do, do it with your might,

for there is no work or thought or knowledge

or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

- Ecclesiastes 9:7-10

The reference to a beloved wife is a rare positive reference to women by Solomon. This points to a change in women's fortunes. During "a time to speak" women went out as missionaries in large numbers, began to be ordained as ministers, obtained property rights and in 1920, the last year of "a time to speak", gained the right to vote in the United States. During this time the church did mighty deeds, just as Solomon counseled. While the reference may be accidental, "let oil not be lacking" may refer to the discovery and exploitation of petroleum, the "might" of our civilization.

Job's Chapter Clock. Numerous clocks exist in Job. One matches each chapter to a generation of history. The Industrial Revolution era is touched by the prophecies from two chapters: Job 37 (1685-1804 AD), spoken by Elihu, and Job 38 (1804-1923 AD), spoken directly by God from the Whirlwind. These chapters are loaded with prophecies. Here are a few.

Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice,

to the rumbling that comes from his mouth.

He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven

and sends it to the ends of the earth.

- Job 37:2-3, NIV

That lightning was war and it reached the ends of the earth. This part of Job 37 touches the General crisis of the 17th Century, which spilled over into the early 18th. Over fifty million died by war and its effects. These wars engulfed:

• India (Mughal-Maratha Wars plus Deccan Famine left 12 million dead)
• China (25 million dead from the Ming-Qing dynasty transition)
• Japan (Sengoku period of 150 years of civil war)
• Germany (12 million dead from the Thirty Years War)
• England (Wars of the Three Kingdoms killed almost a million)
• Spain (War of the Spanish Succession - over a million dead)
• European Nations (France, Netherlands, Sweden, Russia, Ottoman Empire, Poland)
• Burma
• Southeast Asia (ports and islands including the Philippines captured by Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, British, French)
• The Americas (all indigenous empires had already been overthrown, now disease and war killed off the majority of the survivors)
• Africa (all large African empires fractured or conquered by Muslims and enslaved)
• England, France & Allies (the Seven Years War killed over a million in Europe, Africa, North and South America, India and the Philippines)

No period in history before the 20th Century, with its two World Wars and many smaller ones, was as savage as that time. When God (speaking through Elihu) said that he would send lightning to the ends of the earth, He did not exaggerate.

"The breath of God produces ice,

and the broad waters become frozen."

- Job 37:10

The coldest winter in 500 years hit Europe in 1709 AD, freezing over the Baltic Sea for four months and even the canals of Venice! France alone lost 600,000 dead. This was the depth of the Little Ice Age.

Moving on to Job 38, we get to God's speech, which prophesies events from 1804-1923 AD.

The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;

its features stand out like those of a garment.

- Job 38:14

During this era, the church led the fight to stamp out slavery. Democracy advanced. People began to gain religious, political and economic freedom. Some aspects of Christianity were violently stamped upon the world by God's power. Truly He molded the world according to His will.

Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?

Tell me, if you know all this.

- Job 38:18

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow

or seen the storehouses of the hail,

which I reserve for times of trouble,

for days of war and battle?

- Job 38:22-23

Explorers in this era journeyed to the remotest parts of the earth, with Roald Amundsen reaching the South Pole, the true storehouse of the snow, in 1911. The mention of "war and battle" is not superfluous. Napoleon suffered a devastating defeat due to the Russian Winter in 1812. Then torrential rain defeated him at Waterloo in 1815. Scientists now believe they know the cause of that rain: volcanoes. See Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo caused in part by Indonesian volcanic eruption

What did those volcanoes do? They made 1816 "the year without a summer". They did this by blocking the sun with their ash. But God already knew that:

Have the gates of death been shown to you?

Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?

- Job 38:17

The strangest effect of the volcano was on the ionosphere. The ash short-circuited the earth’s electric field, producing a pulse of cloud formation two months later on the other side of the world, handing the victory to Wellington and leaving England as Europe’s dominant power.

What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,

or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,

and a path for the thunderstorm,

to water a land where no one lives,

an uninhabited desert,

to satisfy a desolate wasteland

and make it sprout with grass?

Does the rain have a father?

Who fathers the drops of dew?

- Job 38:24-28, NIV

Yes, God prepared the snow and ice for “days of war and battle” and destroyed the Grand Armee, one of the largest armies ever assembled. He used volcanoes to disperse lightning and cause condensation, literally fathering the drops of dew. God also offered mankind this challenge:

Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?

Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens

when the dust becomes hard

and the clods of earth stick together?

- Job 38:37-38

In 1891, Louis Gathmann first theorized a means of seeding clouds using liquid CO2 to cause rain on command, to tip the water jars of heaven. Practical methods would become feasible during the next generation.

All that is wonderful, but none compare to this next prophecy. The laws of gravity were discovered during the previous generation, but during this time, men like Gauss, Faraday and Maxwell discovered the laws of electromagnetism. What does God say about this?

Do you know the laws of the heavens?

Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?

Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?

Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?

- Job 38:33,35, NIV

How amazing! It was during this generation that mankind learned just that – how to send lightning bolts on their way. Samuel F. B. Morse, Leonard Gale, and Joseph Henry created the Telegraph, which can report “Here we are” at great distances. This was followed by the telephone (by Meucci of Italy, Borseul of France, and Bell of America), and electrical power transmission systems of Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse. Truly, in those days, God spoke of his power – electric power. Even Bell acknowledged this, for his first Telegraph message was, “What hath God wrought?”

In Revelation 9, the locusts have women's hair and lion's teeth. In the Book of Job, God has something to say about that, too. During this period He thrust England into prominence as the greatest empire of all time:

“Do you hunt the prey for the lioness

and satisfy the hunger of the lions

when they crouch in their dens

or lie in wait in a thicket?

- Job 38:39-40, NIV

Who was the lioness? Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India. Britain’s symbol is a lion, and Victoria ruled as its lioness for sixty-three years. She reigned longer than all her predecessors and oversaw a massive expansion of the British Empire. Many peoples fell prey to her navy. At one point, Britain devoted a quarter of all expenditures to fighting the slave trade on land and sea.

Have you ever given orders to the morning,

or shown the dawn its place,

that it might take the earth by the edges

and shake the wicked out of it?

- Job 38:12-13, NIV

It was once said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. For a time, a part of Britain was always seeing the dawn. She took the whole earth by the edges (roughly a quarter of all the world’s land and people) and shook the wicked – slave traders – out of it. And for her pride and thievery of the wealth of the nations, for exceeding the authority granted to her by God, England would be punished in the next generation by the Second World War, then be stripped of most of her colonies. As for this generation, it ended with the horror of the Great War.

Who provides food for the raven

when its young cry out to God

and wander about for lack of food?

- Job 38:41, NIV

God provided food for the raven - a carrion bird - from the corpses littering the battlefields of Europe. The end of Job 38 announced the end of the great kingdoms and empires of Europe.

A Concrete Example. In "Appendix E: The Plan of Proverbs", we find that Proverbs 27 corresponds to 1800-1920 AD. What did Proverbs prophesy would be invented during that time? Steel reinforced concrete! Fifty percent of the mass of everything built by humanity is concrete. For the details of this prophecy, see Proverbs 20 to 29.

The Cosmic Chiasm. One of my explorations (see Two Patterns in History) showed that history is symmetric about the middle (a point just before the time of Christ). This symmetry matches the periods 2123-2004 BC and 1804-1923 AD.

• The former period saw the beginnings of slavery.
• The latter period saw a major move to eradicate it.

The Seven Swords of Judgment. The chapter "Swords, Seals & Surviving to Saturday", demonstrated that God has drawn His sword of judgment seven times in history, once per millennium.

• The first sword was revealed when the angels drew flaming swords to keep Adam and Eve from returning to Eden after they fell. and were expelled.
• The second sword was drawn at the time of Noah's flood.
• The third by the "commander of the hosts of the Lord" (the pre-incarnate Christ) before the battle of Jericho.
• The fourth was drawn by God against Israel at the time of the Babylonian exile, as spoken by the prophets, who mentioned God's sword over a hundred times in relation to that event.
• The fifth sword was prophesied by Jesus, who said he came not to bring peace, but a sword. That sword was the Roman empire, given to the Church centuries later.
• The sixth sword is the sword carried by the rider of the Red Horse, the second Horseman of the Apocalypse.
• The seventh sword will be wielded by Jesus, for it says in Revelation 19 that "Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations".

The importance of this is that the sixth sword was associated with the Protestant Reformation. It was Protestants that did the most to spread the gospel to the earth during this era. Each of those swords was wielded by a different one of the Seven Spirits of God. As usual, the spirits went out in their Isaiah 11 order. That means that the sixth sword for the sixth millennium was wielded by the Spirit of Knowledge. The Renaissance, Age of Exploration, Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Space Age, and the dawn of the Information Age all fell within that millennium. Surely God has planned out history with precision and finesse.

The Parable of the Virgins. The analysis of this parable showed that there are periods in church history when the church encourages and trains up women to serve in the church, and other periods when it suppresses them. This era was one when the virgins were prepared. Protestants believed that all people must be able to read the Bible on their own in order to become faithful, well informed Christians. Thus they built schools to teach all people, rich and poor, male and female. This was part of preparing the virgins to serve.

The Confinement Calendar. This prophetic clock matches Bible statements about different dimensions of the oppression of women to future events in which that form of oppression began to be overturned. Several ancient statements map to events in this era.

• Owning property and deserving respect. Mary Magdalene helped support Jesus' ministry through her own means and was the first to see the risen Lord, but her testimony was not believed. She corresponds to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who organized the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's suffrage meting in the United States. In the same year (1848), New York passed the Married Woman's Property Act, allowing women to own property separate from their husbands.
• Permission to Teach. Paul the Apostle in 1 Timothy said that He did not permit a woman to teach. (See Reconciliation for a full prophetic analysis of this passage. It does not mean what you think it means!) The matching person is Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who in 1853 became the first ordained woman minister in America, followed in 1876 by Anna Oliver, the first to receive a bachelors of Divinity from an American Seminary (Boston University School of Theology).
• The Right to Vote and Serve on a Jury. Despite fierce opposition, Saint Jerome retained the story of Jesus freeing the woman caught in adultery in his Vulgate translation of the Bible in to Latin. That woman was judged by a jury consisting only of men. The matching events were women gaining the right to vote in 1920 and the slow move toward permitting women to serve on trial juries, such as was enacted in Louisiana's constitution of 1921.

When God purposed to set the slaves free in this era, He did not exclude women.

The Grand Father Clock. "A Grand Father Clock & a Silver Cord" reveals a different prophetic clock in Ecclesiastes that runs from Creation until the end (instead of from the dedication of Solomon's Temple until the end). A key section of that clock is found in chapter 10 of Ecclesiastes. It uses the extended metaphor of building a house to describe the building of modern Western Civilization. A larger section of that construction project is described in Building a House.

This verse commends the noble rulers of the era 1680-1780 AD:

Blessed is the land whose king is of noble birth

and whose princes eat at a proper time-

for strength and not for drunkenness.

- Ecclesiastes 10:17

This verse is a prophecy for the lazy rulers of the period 1780-1880 AD:

Through laziness, the rafters sag;

because of idle hands, the house leaks.

- Ecclesiastes 10:18.

The contrast is stark. The earlier era included the great kings and queens of the Enlightenment. The most prominent were Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia. Their reforms greatly improved the lives of their people.

The latter era was the beginning of the collapse of the great monarchies, with France the first to fall in their revolution in 1789. (As I write this section, it is Bastille Day, 2024.) Starting in 1790, the number of monarchies began to decline first in Europe, then in the whole world. During this era, the number of European monarchies fell from roughly fifty to twenty-five. In the next era it plunged by half again. The raw statistics may be found in Why Monarchy? The Rise and Demise of a Regime Type by John Gerring et al.

The tail end of the Industrial Revolution overlaps one more verse from Ecclesiastes, which spans the years 1880-1980 AD:

A feast is made for laughter,

wine makes life merry,

and money is the answer for everything.

- Ecclesiastes 10:19

Those words hint at the massive increase in wealth that occurred during that century. One estimate of that increase is twenty-fold. No previous century in history ever brought such an increase to the whole world. Calling money "the answer for everything" describes not God's true valuation of money, but ours. Can you think of a more succinct description of capitalism?

Psalm 135. In "Psalm 135: Four Harvests", history from King David onward is condensed into four eras, representing four harvests. They demonstrate God's sovereignty over four aspects of the world:

• Sovereignty over the Human Heart (135:3-4)
• Sovereignty over Nature (135:5-7)
• Sovereignty over the Nations (135:8-12)
• Sovereignty over the Human Mind (135:13-18)

The third passage concerns the era from 980-1980 AD. That was when Christian empires conquered most nations of the world.

He it was who struck down the firstborn of Egypt,

both of man and of beast;

who in your midst, O Egypt,

sent signs and wonders

against Pharaoh and all his servants;

who struck down many nations

and killed mighty kings,

Sihon, king of the Amorites,

and Og, king of Bashan,

and all the kingdoms of Canaan,

and gave their land as a heritage,

a heritage to his people Israel.

- Psalm 135:8-12

Relative to Israel, the four defeated kingdoms, of Egypt, the Amorites, Bashan and Canaan, command the four points of the compass. Thus they symbolize the whole world.

Psalm 136: A Nation Reborn. In "Psalm 136: Requiem Aeternam", a connection is made between King Jehoshaphat and Psalm 136. Thus the prophetic clock in this psalm started ticking during his lifetime. Two verses overlap the Industrial Revolution (136:22-23) and one follows it (136:24). Those verses tell a single story in three parts. That story is the transformation of a people. Transformation comes to us in three parts: mind, heart and hand. New knowledge gives us hope, and with hope we find the emotional strength to apply that knowledge to improve our situation through hard work.

a heritage to Israel his servant,

for his steadfast love endures forever.

It is he who remembered us in our low estate,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

and rescued us from our foes,

for his steadfast love endures forever;

- Psalm 136:22-24

Verse 22 runs from 1680-1800 AD. That era brought the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment. It was the intellectual reawakening of the Jewish people.

Verse 23 runs from 1800-1920 AD. God remembered the Jews and provided a safe place for them to flee, reviving their spirits. By the millions they left Europe for America. Then in the middle of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire reformed their land code and permitted Jews to buy land in Palestine and have their names appear on the deed.

Verse 24 runs from 1920-2040 AD. The foe was Adolph Hitler. God rescued a remnant from Europe and restored to them their homeland. In 1948, Israel was reborn and in 1967 they recovered the rest of Jerusalem as well.

The Bible has many promises for Christians, but they do not negate the promises the Lord made to Israel. The Industrial Revolution ended with the conclusion of World War I. That war scattered the locusts but also shattered the seventh empire of Revelation, the Ottoman Empire, Islam's last Caliphate. That enabled the Jews to go home.

Matthew 20: The Laborers in the Vineyard. In Matthew 20, Jesus tells a parable about workers recruited by a landowner to labor in his vineyard. This parable is analyzed in detail in Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. The owner calls for workers five times. The first are called "early in the morning", which I take to be the first hour. The owner recruits more at the 3rd, 6th, 9th and 11th hours. Prophetically, each hour is 175 years, so these correspond to:

• First hour: 30 AD. Apostolic Age.
• Third hour: 380 AD. After Rome Christianized by Theodosius I.
• Sixth hour: 905 AD. Northern expansion (Scandinavia, Russia, etc)
• Ninth hour: 1430 AD. Colonizing the New World.
• Eleventh hour: 1780 AD. William Carey and the modern overseas missions movement

The harvest of the parable is church evangelism. The grapes are saved souls. In each case, leaders were called and prepared for twenty-five years before the new wave of missions began. During the Industrial Revolution, the fifth and final wave began. The newfound might and wealth of the Christian empires was a gift from God enabling the church to project missionaries to the whole world. That was the grand purpose behind the Fifth Trumpet. Oh, and the workers will be paid at dusk. That falls sometime between 2130 and 2480 AD. Precision is difficult because dusk comes earlier later in the season. Grapes are normally the second harvest, when dusk comes later, but every analogy breaks down at some point. Dusk can come anytime from the 13th to the 15th hour.

Matthew 22: The Parable of the Wedding Banquet. In this parable, a king delegates servants to send out invitations to his son's wedding. The wedding invitation is the gospel message and the invitees are sinners who need salvation. The previous parable told us when each of the five great missionary expansions would occur. In this parable, servants are also sent out five times. It tells us how each group of servants would be received and what the king (God the Father) would do in response. A full analysis of this parable may be found in The Parable of the Wedding Feast.

The fifth and final sending begins during the time of the Industrial Revolution and is described this way:

Then he said to his servants,

‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy.

Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast

as many as you find.’

And those servants went out into the roads and gathered

all whom they found, both bad and good.

So the wedding hall was filled with guests.

- Matthew 22:8-10

That matches the general invitation to the whole world that began in the 19th century. This final missionary push was the largest in terms of number of people saved, consistent with the language of the parable. It also indicates an indiscriminate growth of the church in which the sincerity of many answering the call is questionable. The king notices this and acts:

“But when the king came in to look at the guests,

he saw there a man who had no wedding garment.

And he said to him,

‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’

And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants,

‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

For many are called, but few are chosen.”

- Matthew 22:11-14.

We are approaching the time when the King will cast false believers out of the church. His typical means for doing so is persecution. Only true believers refuse to deny their Lord when the cost becomes great.

Matthew's Monthly Planner. In "One Greater than Solomon", every chapter of Matthew is matched to an era of history. The chapter that maps to the core of the Industrial Revolution is Matthew 23, ranging from 1799-1879 AD. The most profound prophecy found there is:

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,

and lay them on people's shoulders,

but they themselves are not willing to move them

with their finger.

- Matthew 23:4

This verse is a charge to abolish slavery and lift the burden off the poor and oppressed. A second reference to slavery is less obvious:

so that on you may come all the righteous blood

shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel

to the blood of Zechariah the son of Berekiah,

whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

- Matthew 23:35

If Zechariah was righteous and was killed for his message, what message was that? It was the message that God would set the prisoners free:

As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,

I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;

today I declare that I will restore to you double.

- Zechariah 9:11-12

How powerful those words! May we all be "prisoners of hope".

Additional prophecies that touch on this industrial era are also found in Matthew 24, which covers the years 1879-1959 AD.

• For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. (Matthew 24:7) This surely matches the two World Wars, the Holodomor (Soviet engineered famine in Ukraine), and the Great Chinese Famine (1958-1962) which killed an estimated fifty million Chinese.
• For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Matthew 24:27) While the Second Coming did not occur, this matches the development of electric lights and power transmission (1870's onward).
• And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14) It included a continuation of the great missionary era.

Verse 24:27 is commonly taken to be a reference to the Second Coming of Christ. As such, it refers to an event outside the time frame of the chapter as given by the prophetic clock. I believe that this verse does double duty. The event anchored in time is the development of electric power and lighting, which did happen in this era. That is not telling us when Christ will return, but how we will see him. The anchored event tells us that modern telecommunication methods will broadcast the return of Christ in the future when he does return. It is likely that this sort of thing happens a lot in prophecy. One partial fulfillment of a prophecy earlier in history supplies details that help us to understand the next fulfillment.

Church Commandments Clock. Between my two most recent books, there are multiple clocks based on the Ten Commandments and the Plagues on Egypt. In each, a commandment is matched with a plague. One starts with Babel, another Moses, and this one with the birth of Christ. These clocks are devastating. In this one, found in "Aftertaste: Donner & Blitzen", it is the church being judged. The sixth commandment is against murder and the sixth plague was of boils. When applied to the church in the era 1200-1440 AD, the result was the Black Plague, which produced boils and black tumors. Do atheists and people of other religions find fault with how Christians have behaved through the ages? So does God! The Black Plague was an act of judgment by God to enforce his sixth commandment against murder. It is (so far) the worst plague in history. God's response to the church's sin is proof of the truth of Christianity, not its falsehood.

The time of the Industrial Revolution matches God's judgment for the eighth commandment, "You shall not steal." That era ran from 1680-1920 AD. What was the matching plague against Egypt? It was the plague of Locusts. We began this article by speaking of the Fifth Trumpet and its plague of locusts. These are the same locusts, the European Colonial Empires. The era ended in 1920. Surely the judgment against those locusts was World War I. The war claimed 16 million and the influenza plague that it spread claimed 50 million more.

God's justice is real.

Had Enough?

That was just a taste of the many prophecies that touch on this crucial era in history. The prophecies discussed above touched on God's love in setting slaves free and relieving the oppression suffered by women. It showed bits of God's plan to send missionaries to the world to spread the gospel. This required advancing human learning in ways alluded to by Job and the other prophets. It also showed God's judgment against the world for its wickedness and against the church for its pride and greed. Fear God. Worship him. Obey Him. Believe Him. Hearing these words, there is no way to return to the idea that God has not told us His plans. They are here in Scripture if we are willing to dedicate the time to study them and learn what they have to say to us today.