The Judgments of Revelation Fall on All Creation

When we look at the judgments of Revelation, we need to understand what the judgments communicate about God: his sovereignty and his power over all creation. This theme is strong in the judgments, and the same theme runs through the whole book.

This article makes the case for that theme, and for the approach that brings the theme into view: stepping back to see the whole before working through the particulars. The first part traces a symmetry in the text and the theme that the symmetry carries. The closing sections then look at how other systems handle the same passages, and at questions a reader may have about the sequence.

All Creation in Chapter 5

In chapter 5, after the Lamb takes the scroll, all creation speaks. John hears “every created thing which is in heaven, and on the earth” (Revelation 5:13, URV), together with the created things under the earth and in the sea, giving blessing to the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. All of creation gives blessing.

Chapter 5 is the first place where the book names all creation by realms: heaven, the earth, under the earth, and the sea. The all-creation theme is tied to what is about to take place, because the seals of the scroll are opened next.

This first naming of all creation is important. As we move through the book, we may be tempted to view the judgments in their particulars and not as a whole. We try to determine what each thing means before we ask what the whole is about. The all-creation theme is the key to the whole.

For example, the text will speak of the earth, the sea, the fresh waters, and the heavens. If we focus on each one alone, we get lost in the details of what each particular might be. Looked at together, the case is clear: the four refer to all creation, the entire world, and not to specific items in a specific region. The total is the goal.

The whole does not mean one hundred percent of each part. When a third of the waters is struck, a third is not all of the waters. The whole means that every aspect that makes the earth whole is affected: the earth, the sea, the fresh waters, and the lights of heaven. Whether a judgment strikes in part or in full, no aspect of the earth is left unaffected. That is what “the whole earth” and “all creation” mean in this article.

The Sixth Seal and the Interlude

Chapter 5 makes a total claim about all creation, and the total claim leads into the seals. At the sixth seal the same kind of thing happens: “there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell to the earth” (Revelation 6:12–13, URV). The earth quakes, the sun and the moon are changed, and the stars fall. The earth and the heavens are struck together.

Chapter 7 is a parenthetical section. Chapter 7 sits on the page between the sixth seal and the seventh seal, but no seal is opened in chapter 7. Chapter 7 is an interlude and not a step in the sequence of the seals. Even in the interlude, the all-creation theme appears. John sees “four messengers standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree” (Revelation 7:1, URV).

The verse speaks of the four corners of the earth and the four winds of the earth, and the verse names the earth, the sea, and the trees. The mention of trees communicates the actual physical earth. Trees do not need to be a symbol for anything other than trees. If we assign a symbol to the trees too soon, we miss the point of the text. We can come back to the trees later if we like. But until we understand the whole system, we should not start interpreting the parts, or we will read each part disconnected from the context. Drawing out that context is the purpose of this article.

The Trumpets Come After the Seals

Chapter 8 follows chapter 7, and again we see all creation. But first, notice when the trumpets are given:

“And when he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about half an hour. And I saw the seven messengers who stand before God; and there were given unto them seven trumpets.”

— Revelation 8:1–2 (URV)

The seven messengers receive their trumpets inside the seventh seal, after the first six seals have already been opened. The text shows the trumpets being given at the seventh seal and shows no trumpets in the hands of the seven messengers before the seventh seal. So the seven messengers could not have blown trumpets during the first six seals. The trumpets are a new series, and the new series takes place after the seals.

The order matters because of a view called recapitulation. Recapitulation, applied to these chapters, is the claim that the seven trumpets retell the story of the six seals, so that the two series tell the same events twice. The seven trumpets do not retell the story of the six seals. The seals are numbered, the first through the seventh, and the trumpets are given at the seventh. For the trumpets to retell the first six seals, the giving of the trumpets would have to happen before the first seal. That is a reordering. And if we reorder the seventh seal to make a system work, we have decoupled the seals from their numbered sequence. Any of the seals can then be rearranged, which defeats the point of numbering the seals in the first place. For more detail, see the study note at Revelation 8:2.

The Trumpets Reach All Creation

Once the trumpets begin, the first four strike the earth, the sea, the fresh waters, and the heavens.

The earth. At the first trumpet, “the third part of the earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up” (Revelation 8:7, URV). The text names particulars alongside the earth: trees and grass. Those particulars keep us from allegorizing the earth away. This is the physical earth. If we turn the trees and the grass into something other than trees and grass, we have converted them into symbols, and then we can run away with any interpretation we like. If we root ourselves in what the text says, we have proper constraints that keep us from inventing something that is not there.

The sea. At the second trumpet, “the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the created things which were in the sea, having lives, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed” (Revelation 8:8–9, URV). Notice what is destroyed along with the life in the sea: ships. The ships root the sea away from symbol and into a literal sea.

The fresh waters. At the third trumpet, a star falls “on the third part of the rivers and on the fountains of waters,” and “many of the men died from the waters, because they were made bitter” (Revelation 8:10–11, URV). These waters are not symbolic waters representing people. Rivers and fountains are the waters people drink, and bitterness is what a person tastes. The men die from the waters because the waters were made bitter, so the men and the waters are two different things. The waters cannot be people and also be what people drink. People do not drink people.

The heavens. At the fourth trumpet, “the third part of the sun was afflicted, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so that the third part of them should be darkened” (Revelation 8:12, URV). A third of the lights of heaven is darkened.

Looked at in totality, the four trumpets reach the whole creation: the earth, the sea, the fresh waters, and the heavens. Every realm is affected, a third of each.

What, then, are the first four trumpets communicating? God has the sovereignty and the authority to put his judgments on the whole earth. He is the Creator God of all creation.

I will not go into the locusts of the fifth trumpet here. But even the command given to the locusts is grounded in the physical earth. The locusts are told “that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, nor any tree” (Revelation 9:4, URV). Grass and trees mean the real earth, because the locusts are told not to hurt them. That command helps us understand what trees mean in chapter 7 and what trees mean in chapter 8.

The Oath in Chapter 10

In chapter 10 the swearing of the oath communicates all creation as well. The messenger “placed his right foot on the sea, and the left on the earth” (Revelation 10:2, URV). Then the messenger “lifted up his right hand to heaven, and swore by him who lives unto the ages of the ages, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things that therein are” (Revelation 10:5–6, URV).

One foot is on the sea, one foot is on the earth, and the hand is lifted to heaven. The messenger swears by the one who created all three. This is all creation, a theme the book has already established by this point.

Some read the earth and the sea as the land of Israel and the Gentiles. The text of chapter 10 does not define the earth and the sea that way. The Israel and Gentiles reading is made by stringing a set of passages together. I do not want to pass by that reading as though I were avoiding information, so a later section of this article, “What Other Systems Say About This,” explains why the reading does not hold and what the text says.

The Bowls Follow the Same Pattern

When we get to the bowl judgments, we see the same pattern we saw in the trumpets. The pattern is already established, so we do not need to walk through the literalness again. The pattern means the whole earth.

The first four bowls are poured out “to the earth,” “into the sea,” “into the rivers and the fountains of waters,” and “on the sun” (Revelation 16:2–4, 8, URV). A sore comes upon the men who have the mark of the beast, the sea becomes blood, the fresh waters become blood, and the sun scorches men with fire. The sun is not the one being judged at the fourth bowl. God uses the sun as the means of his judgment, and the men who are scorched blaspheme “the name of God, who has the power over these plagues” (Revelation 16:9, URV). Then at the fifth bowl the kingdom of the beast “became darkened” (Revelation 16:10, URV). The verse does not say where the darkness comes from, but darkness has to do with light. Whether in whole or in part, the heat and the darkness show God’s sovereignty over the lights of heaven. Again, all creation.

The likeness between the trumpets and the bowls is not a recapitulation of the same events. The likeness does not communicate that the trumpets and the bowls overlap in their timing. The likeness shows that the trumpets and the bowls overlap in their completeness: in each series, no aspect of the earth is left unaffected. Each series is a thematic communication of God’s sovereignty over all creation.

Stepping Back to See the Whole

These are only a few examples. We could use more, but we will stop here. The takeaway is that Revelation is not a book to read by fixing on each precise thing alone. Revelation requires us to hold the greater context of what is being communicated, so that we understand what the book is saying when the book gets specific. With the greater context in hand, we do not mistake a specific thing for an interpretation the text does not support. We step back to the 30,000-foot view first, and then we can begin to see the details accurately.

The theme is that God is sovereign over all creation. Every created thing gives blessing to God and to the Lamb, and the judgments of God reach every realm of creation. The judgments are arranged that way. The oath that the messenger swears by the Creator of all things is positioned that way. The subject is God as sovereign over all creation, and not only a small event in Jerusalem.

What Other Systems Say About This

Two readings from other systems touch the passages above. Here is each reading set beside what the text communicates.

Recapitulation. Some systems hold that the series of judgments retell one another. The text communicates a sequence. The seven messengers receive their trumpets inside the seventh seal, after the first six seals are opened, so the trumpets follow the seals. And the likeness between the trumpets and the bowls has an explanation that does not need the same events told twice: each series reaches all creation, and the repeated pattern communicates that completeness.

The land and the sea. Some systems read the earth and the sea as symbols, the land as Israel and the sea as the Gentiles. The issue with that reading is the way of reading. When things are converted into symbols in order to make a system work, the reading loses consistency. The text becomes literal where literal is appropriate to the system and symbolic where symbolic is necessary to the system. A reading like that has to explain why the rule changes from one line to the next. That inconsistency is why this study does not take that approach.

The reading also has to keep converting. Once the earth and the sea are symbols, the trees, the grass, the ships, and the bitter waters have to become symbols as well, and those symbols are then strung along to convert other things into symbols. If the land and the sea mean Israel and the Gentiles, then the reading has to explain what the ships are, and what the grass and the trees are that the locusts leave alone.

Within Revelation, the one verse that interprets water as people is in chapter 17: “The waters which you saw, where the whore sits, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues” (Revelation 17:15, URV). But that verse speaks of the waters where the woman sits. The verse does not say “sea.” The waters where the woman sits can be a sea, but the main text used to support the reading does not contain the word that the symbolic conversion uses. The verse does not include the land, and the verse does not say that the land is a people. The verse also does not separate Israel from the Gentiles. The verse names peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues together. To arrive at the land as Israel and the sea as the Gentiles, the statement has to be split up and carried into other chapters as evidence. That is a stringing together of symbols that seem similar enough to swing around and use as one likes.

The Old Testament does set the sea beside the nations, and that correlation is real. Isaiah compares the peoples to the sea: “the uproar of many peoples Who roar like the roaring of the seas” (Isaiah 17:12, NASB 1995). In Daniel’s vision, “four great beasts were coming up from the sea” (Daniel 7:3, NASB 1995). But neither passage interprets the land as Israel. In Daniel, the beasts that come up from the sea are explained as “four kings who will arise from the earth” (Daniel 7:17, NASB 1995), so Daniel’s vision does not divide the sea from the earth as the Gentiles from Israel. For the land and sea reading to work, the two halves have to be seen together in the same frame: the sea as the Gentiles and the land as Israel, side by side. One half cannot be pulled from one place and the other half from another place and then joined. That is importing ideas from different places to make a point.

The text supplies constraints of its own: trees, grass, ships, and waters that men die from. Those constraints keep us in what the text says. Stepping back to the 30,000-foot view, the earth, the sea, the fresh waters, and the heavens are what the text calls them, and together they present the whole earth.

Questions About the Sequence

This section is not here to explain away hard questions. These are the logical questions a reader will have about how the events can occur in the order the text gives.

Working through the logical sequences in Revelation can feel like completing a Sudoku puzzle. We are not sure where everything goes, but enough numbers are in place to work out the rest. Revelation is not a Sudoku puzzle to be solved. Revelation is a story of God’s judgment. But the story should not be made to contradict itself, and that is the goal here. The particulars get complicated no matter which view a reader holds. So the higher-level pattern comes first, and the particulars come after.

The Pattern First

A reader can come to the sixth seal and think, “That looks like the end, so that must be the end.” But that reader has not yet accounted for the whole book. The issue is one of layout and assumptions: leading with an assumption and not with what the book lays out. We need to see how the book lays out the plagues first. Then we can make sense of the particulars.

The series are numbered. Each series runs from the first through the seventh. If the plagues were a number of unordered events, the numbering would have no purpose. The sequencing is important, and we should not disregard the sequencing.

Each series hands an object to the next series. Under the seventh seal the seven messengers appear and are given trumpets (Revelation 8:2), which means the trumpets have not yet been blown. The remainder of the seventh seal concerns the censer that is cast to the earth (Revelation 8:3–5). Then the trumpet series opens with the same seven messengers: “the seven messengers who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to blow” (Revelation 8:6, URV). The seven messengers are the connective tissue between the seals and the trumpets.

If an object from the seventh of one series attaches that series to the next, we should see the same thing in the trumpets, and we do. At the seventh trumpet “the temple of God which is in heaven was opened” (Revelation 11:19, URV). Before the bowls are poured out, “the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened,” and the seven messengers with the seven plagues come out of the temple (Revelation 15:5–6, URV). The opened temple is the connective tissue between the trumpets and the bowls.

The bowls connect forward in the same way. Within the sixth bowl the text says, “Behold, I come as a thief” (Revelation 16:15, URV), while the kings are being assembled “to the war of the great day of God, the Almighty” (Revelation 16:14, URV). At the seventh bowl Babylon is remembered before God, to give her “the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath” (Revelation 16:19, URV). After the parenthetical section about Babylon, the rider on the white horse comes in chapter 19. The kings are “assembled to make the war with him who sat on the horse,” and the rider “treads the winepress of the wine of the fury of the wrath of God” (Revelation 19:19, 15, URV). The coming, the war, and the wine connect the end of the bowls to the rider. That connection anchors the coming on the white horse at the end of the bowls, and away from the sixth seal and the events before the bowls.

The judgments intensify. The answer to “How are these things possible?” is simple: the book demonstrates an intensification in the judgments.

The intensification runs through the series. At the fourth seal, Death and Hell are given power “over the fourth part of the earth” (Revelation 6:8, URV). The sixth seal is the beginning of the transition. Then the trumpets blow, and the measure is a third: a third of the earth, the sea, the fresh waters, and the lights of heaven, and then a third again within the three woes, where “the third part of the men was killed” (Revelation 9:18, URV). In the bowls the third is gone. The sea becomes blood and “every living life died, the things in the sea” (Revelation 16:3, URV).

The way each series ends intensifies as well. Under the seventh seal, before the first trumpet blows, there are “thunders, and voices, and lightnings, and an earthquake” (Revelation 8:5, URV), with no hail. At the seventh trumpet there are “lightnings, and voices, and thunders, and an earthquake, and great hail” (Revelation 11:19, URV). At the seventh bowl there are lightnings, voices, and thunders again, with an earthquake “such as was not since man was on the earth” and “great hail, as a talent-weight” (Revelation 16:18, 21, URV). The text notes the size of the hail, which fits the intensifying.

If we recapitulate the series, the intensification falls away. The same event would be weaker in one telling and greater in another telling. If the series were all the same events, we would expect the series to communicate the same level of intensity, and the levels are not the same. The sequencing points to a linear path across all the plagues, not a recapitulated path, and the linear path combined with intensification makes better sense of the text.

The Particulars

With the pattern in place, we can look at the particulars and ask whether each one has a reasonable explanation. The answer is yes.

If the stars fell at the sixth seal, how are stars struck again at the fourth trumpet? The text does not say “all the stars.” The text says “the stars of heaven fell to the earth” (Revelation 6:13, URV). The same passage does use a total word where a total is meant: “the whole moon” and “every mountain and island” (Revelation 6:12, 14, URV). No total word is attached to the stars. So the sixth seal can be a moment when stars fall and darkness comes. That moment passes, a new thing comes, and more is struck: “the third part of the stars” at the fourth trumpet (Revelation 8:12, URV). We have to be careful not to make a statement broader than the text makes that statement.

Do the earthquake and the mountains show the same thing? Yes. At the sixth seal there is “a great earthquake,” and “every mountain and island were moved out of their places” (Revelation 6:12, 14, URV). The mountains are moved, but the mountains are still there, because men hide “in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains” (Revelation 6:15, URV). At the seventh bowl the earthquake is “such as was not since man was on the earth,” and “every island fled, and mountains were not found” (Revelation 16:18, 20, URV). From the sixth seal to the seventh bowl there is a difference in amount. The sixth seal leaves places for people to hide, and the seventh bowl does not. If that is true of the mountains, the same can be true of the stars.

What does this have to do with the day of the Lord? The day of the Lord is not one specific time on which every day of the Lord must fall. The day of the Lord is a type of day: the Lord shows up and makes himself known, and judgment is coming. At the sixth seal we see that showing up in signs on the earth and in the heavens, and the people of the earth ask to be hidden “from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:16, URV). They say that “the great day” of wrath has come (Revelation 6:17, URV). Revelation’s own name for the day is “the great day,” here and at 16:14. That is how we know the day has started. A separate article shows how the text supports this, and how Revelation counts some times and designates others: Is the Great Day of Revelation a 24-Hour Day? Read literally, the text presents a day of the Lord of that type, made known by real and observable signs in the heavens. These things happen in a literal sense.

This is not a claim that judgment waits until the sixth seal. The Lamb opens every seal from the first, so the earlier seals cannot be set outside of judgment. The point is that chapter 6 is the transition point. From there the seven trumpets and the seven bowls bring the day to fullness, to the completed judgments in their severity, when the mountains are not found and the earthquake is greater than the earthquake of chapter 6.

If the kingdom has come and the dead are judged at the seventh trumpet, how can the bowls still be ahead? At the seventh trumpet, voices in heaven say, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ,” and the elders say, “your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, to be judged” (Revelation 11:15, 18, URV). The oath in chapter 10 had already said that at the seventh messenger “the mystery of God is finished” (Revelation 10:7, URV). That language can sound like the end of everything, with the bowls still ahead.

The pattern has already placed the seventh trumpet. The seventh trumpet closes with the temple opened, and the temple is opened before the bowls are poured out. So the seventh trumpet announces that the appointed time has arrived, and the bowls carry the judgment out in full. The bowls are the seven plagues that are “the last, for in them is finished the fury of God” (Revelation 15:1, URV).

What, then, is “the time of the dead, to be judged”? To be judged does not have to mean that judgment is poured out on the dead. Judgment can be rendered on behalf of the dead. The fifth seal shows this. The slain cry, “How long, O Master, holy and true, do you not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” and the slain are told to “rest yet for a small season” (Revelation 6:10–11, URV). The oath in chapter 10 uses the same word for time: “there will be season no longer” (Revelation 10:6, URV). The season of waiting ends at the seventh trumpet. Read this way, the dead of the fifth seal, who asked God to judge, receive that judgment at the seventh trumpet, when God brings judgment in full through the bowls. The verse goes on to name reward for God’s bond-servants the prophets, for the saints, and for those who fear his name, and the time “to destroy them who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18, URV). For more detail, see the study notes at Revelation 11:18.

There are reasonable explanations for these things. Because of the depth of Revelation, the explanations can be difficult to reason through, and this article does not go further into the particulars. That is why the higher-level pattern has to be set first: the numbered series, the objects that connect one series to the next, and the intensification. From that higher level, the specific details can be placed without making the story contradict itself.

The Reward at the Seventh Trumpet and the Fall of Babylon

One more question belongs here, and this question is the difficult one. The aim is not to play Sudoku, and the aim is not mental gymnastics to make a system work. The aim is to discover what the system of the book is. That discovery can be hard, because the textual connectors are sometimes small. The footprint of the thing that connects one passage to another can be minimal and still be specific enough to be a direct link. When something specific is repeated in the same specific way somewhere else, we can ask whether those two points in the text are linked in time.

How to weigh a connection. The challenge is understanding how things are connected. Is a shared word strong enough tissue to join two passages, or can the two passages stand independent of one another? A consistent way of reading decides. We apply the same rule to every connection, place each passage where the connection points, and see whether a contradiction results. When two connections contradict each other, the weaker connection gives way, unless the text of the weaker connection is extremely strong.

The strength of a connection comes from how specific the wording is and how unique the wording is to those passages. “The small and the great” is not highly specific. The pairing of small and great stands five times in Revelation, of the saints and of those who are not the saints (Revelation 11:18; 13:16; 19:5, 18; 20:12). The opening of the temple is highly specific. The temple in heaven is said to be opened only twice in the book, at the seventh trumpet and before the bowls. One statement names “the ark of his testament” and the other names “the tabernacle of the testimony” (Revelation 11:19; 15:5, URV).

The pattern of transition between the series points the same way. At the transition from the seals to the trumpets, seven messengers appear inside the seventh seal and are given seven trumpets, and then the thunders, voices, lightnings, and earthquake follow (Revelation 8:2, 5). At the seventh trumpet the temple is opened, and then the lightnings, voices, thunders, earthquake, and great hail follow, so the opening of the temple stands inside the seventh trumpet (Revelation 11:19).

The seven messengers with the seven plagues are not named in the text of the seventh trumpet. But those seven messengers appear before the temple is opened, and they come out of the opened temple and are given seven golden bowls (Revelation 15:1, 5–7). If the opening of the temple is the link, then the seven messengers of the bowls appear within the seventh trumpet, in the same way the seven messengers of the trumpets appear within the seventh seal: before the trumpets are blown in the one case, and before the bowls are poured out in the other. The connecting tissue is what brings the seven messengers into the seventh trumpet.

So if the book uses a similar system at each transition, the question is which resembles the transition more: the small and the great, or the temple being opened. The opened temple does.

The parenthetical sections add to the difficulty. Part of the work is understanding what is parenthetical and what is not, and then following the flow of the main line to see where the parentheticals align. Once the layout is seen, the logic is easy to follow. On a first approach, the logic can come across as confusing.

The layout. Chapter 17 through the first part of chapter 19 is a parenthetical section and is not in the main line of the text. The main line runs from the seventh bowl to the rider on the white horse, joined by the wine of the fury of God’s wrath, as shown above. The explanation of Mystery Babylon is set between those two points.

The question. With the parenthetical set aside, when does the Babylon of chapters 17 and 18 fall? Does that Babylon fall at the seventh bowl, where “Babylon the great was remembered before God” (Revelation 16:19, URV)? Or does that Babylon fall at a different time? The Babylon of chapter 17 is described through the symbol of a woman. Because the description is symbolic, that Babylon does not have to be one particular place, though a particular place is possible. That Babylon is also not constrained to one time, because the seven heads on which the woman sits are “seven kings: the five have fallen, the one is, the other has not yet come” (Revelation 17:10, URV). So the position of the parenthetical has to be found from the rest of the book.

The shared words. The seventh trumpet and the Babylon parenthetical share words. At the seventh trumpet the time has come “to give the reward unto your bond-servants the prophets, and unto the saints, and unto those who fear your name, the small and the great” (Revelation 11:18, URV). After the fall of Babylon, a voice from the throne calls on God’s bond-servants and those who fear him, “the small and the great” (Revelation 19:5, URV), and the supper of the marriage of the Lamb is announced (Revelation 19:7–9). Those words connect. Are the two the same moment of reward?

The answer has to be no, because here two connections contradict each other. The shared words would join the reward of the seventh trumpet to the rejoicing after the fall of Babylon. The opened temple places the seventh trumpet before the bowls are poured out (Revelation 11:19; 15:5). If the Babylon of chapters 17 and 18 fell at the seventh bowl, the rejoicing and the marriage supper that follow her fall would stand at the end of the bowls. One moment cannot stand before the bowls and also at the end of the bowls. Joining the two would break the sequence. By the rule above, the weaker connection gives way, and the weaker connection is the shared words.

The other option. A reader could say that once the temple is opened, all the judgments pour out very quickly, and the reward follows rapidly. That option also strains the sequence. The reward would then be tied to the fall of Babylon, and the marriage supper would have to take place at that exact moment. But if everything happens at once, no time is left for a marriage supper, because the rider on the white horse is already coming. We could then end up conflating “the supper of the marriage of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9, URV) with “the great supper of God” (Revelation 19:17, URV), and those are two different suppers.

Chapter 14. That option is less likely for another reason. The cry over Babylon in chapter 18 also stands in chapter 14: “Is fallen, is fallen Babylon the great” (Revelation 14:8; 18:2, URV). In chapter 14 that announcement comes before the warning about the mark of the beast (Revelation 14:9–11) and before “the patience of the saints” (Revelation 14:12, URV), and both of those relate to the events of chapter 13. That order places the fall of Mystery Babylon more likely at the beginning of those events or before those events, and the marriage supper with that fall.

The result. These are two different moments of reward: the reward announced at the seventh trumpet, and the rejoicing and marriage supper after the fall of Mystery Babylon. These are also two different judgments on a city: the fall of Mystery Babylon, and the seventh bowl, where the great city is divided and Babylon the great is remembered before God. For the full case, see Mystery Babylon and Jerusalem.

So the sequence holds, and the theme holds with the sequence. God’s judgments fall on all creation.