Mar,21, 2026 Sabbath-School Review

By Derek West

Source material, Seven Trumpet Luminescence, Book, 5.2, 2019

With this Sabbath School lesson we covered the THIRD and Fourth Trumpet from page 118 to 132.  This blog is supplemental and not substitutional for the book; thus, the full comprehension and grasp still requires careful study of its pages.  My overview, while giving some embellishment to its lessons, will attempt to give a brief synopsis of the highlights. 

The honor that Father has bestowed to Christ must be mentioned.  Their oneness in purpose is not an affirmation of oneness in personality; they are separate Beings.  Father, the highest, has a different and countervailing —albeit superior— perspective than that of Christ.  Christ’s special valor —which is above all others in the universe— comes by the sacrifice of His own will in deference to that of Father’s; thusly, He was gifted with power of attorney to represent Father.  This fulfills their oneness to effect universal order as well as human salvation.  The Third Trumpet gives deeper expression to this protocol of divine loyalty.  It begins by describing a star falling from heaven upon ‘the fountains of waters’. The name of this Star, representing Christ, is Wormwood.  It means the waters were made bitter.  It reads:

“¹⁰ 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; ¹¹ 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.” —Rev 8: 10-11  

Indeed, in fruition, Christ descended from heaven to achieve Father’s will, not His own.  The objects upon which He fell, the Fountain of Waters and rivers, are in contradiction to the sea, for, unlike salty sea water, they are the source of sustenance for human life.  Since Abraham was promised to bless the nations, then such commensurately shows that Christ fell upon the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob —please note, I did not merely say the Jews and we must learn the difference.  Ergo, it was Christ who orchestrated salvation of man by leading the Hebrews through bitterness.  This bitterness depicts the scheduled affliction, again orchestrated by Christ —not Jesus nor Father— as the prospective penalty to be heaped upon Israel should they violate the Covenant. This was also alluded to in the symbolism of the Second Trumpet, the mountain cast into the sea.  Bitter waters then defines the 3000 years of Hebrew affliction among the gentiles before they are to be resuscitated.  Paul put it best when he said, “¹⁵ For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” —Rom 11: 15.  To facilitate this understanding, all are called to remember: The gentiles had no standing covenant with Christ nor with heaven, for Christ only inherited Jacob.  This facet then accommodates the bitter waters made sweet for them; such depicts Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary. The metaphor of coffee without the sugar aptly portrays the bitter waters, a drink in need of sweet remedy. 

In fact, it is legally indemnified to become an eternal statute by way of the Egyptian Exodus, 3500 years ago.  In the wilderness of Shur, just before Elim and then the wilderness of Sin —itself a harbinger of Israel’s path— they murmured to Moses that the waters at Marah were too bitter to drink.  As a remedy, the Lord gave to us the remedial symbol of Jesus: Christ commissioned Moses cut down a tree and cast it into the water so that the waters be made sweet, per Exodus 15. Such was their path from slavery to oasis encampment in Elim, a final metaphoric path to Sabbath rest.  But more than that, this became a statutory remedy.  Paul again alludes to this metaphor in Rom 11: the summary of which was that Israel, cut off yesterday will, upon the upcoming day of their eventual belief, be grafted in again.  This makes the 144,000 the ultimate sweetener showing why Jesus will cast the golden censer to the earth.  He does so to reingratiate Israel, the 144,000, as the first fruits of Christ.  And this is the reason why Christ sacrificed His will in favor of God’s: He trusted Father to win for Him, Israel’s eternal resuscitation in the day when Jesus finalizes His own administration for the gentiles.

In contradiction to this theme, nominal Adventism claim that the falling star of the Third Trumpet, represents Satan.  This they reason simply because He was cast out of heaven.  They fail to realize that to fall from heaven to earth does not always infer a divine penalty or punishment.  Afterall, there is no other pathway from there to here that does not mandate a downward trajectory.  No, Satan did not prescribe this medium to save both Israel and the world.  He gave no sweetener to the bitter coffee of sin.  Thereby, their doctrine of the Star being Satan is the height of theological triteness, ripe with platitudinal presumption and devoid of Bible evidence.    The key to wormwood is that worms are the agent of human decomposition, and wormwood is bitter because, as a cathartic, it purges humanity of such agents of death. For Christ set man upon a 6000-year path to everlasting life, a relief from the worms that afflict us.    

Moving onward to the Fourth Trumpet, when blasted, it transformed the third part of the sun, the moon and the stars from light into darkness; to boot, three woes were pronounced upon those who were to suffer under the three remaining trumpets.  Such is proof that these trumpets, all of them but especially the last three, represent doctrine for any warning of an impending hazard —the exact meaning of a “woe”— can only come by way of a futuristic announcement.  Put another way, it must come by a doctrinal exegesis: else there could be no meaning to a ‘woe’ or warning.  The Sun represents Jacob —his posterity gave to the world the Bible.  The moon prefigures his wives: this since our night light comes by way of his reflection on them.  The stars are the Hebrew prophets for they give to us the truths to advance our spiritual growth.  Paul, with his validating use of Ps 69 as a proof text, confirms this conclusion in Rom 11.  This he does in harmony with MSC evidence. 

Thereby, the Gospel goes to save the gentiles for the next 2000 years of Hebrew “blindness”.  Such exemplifies the sacrifice of Christ and His people in deference to Father’s pre-emptive and preliminary zeal to save the world through Jesus.   He wanted to lend rescue to the gentiles.

May you join us in the upcoming week as this lesson gets deeper. 

Derek