If the video above is not available, here are two other ways to view:
Short Clip
But this sequence of seals, trumpets, and bowls always makes me wonder. How can Revelation swing from Heaven and worship to Earth and horribly destructive judgment? We can see the answer by understanding the explanations God has given. First, we can see twice mentioned collected prayers of the saints. See them mentioned in Rev. 5:8 and again in 8:3? Revelation is showing us, God, as he finally launches: The Answer to Centuries of Prayers–For twenty centuries God’s servants have prayed obediently: “Thy Kingdom Come”. Now, all of those prayers, collected by God, in bowls at His feet, in v. 8 are scooped up and the wrath begins.
But the mystery has always been: why does God wait? One of the greatest expositors of the last century was W.A. Criswell who pastored First Baptist of Dallas for almost 50 years, preaching 4,000 sermons. Here are his words, on this moment of God’s wrath sent forth:
The mystery of God is the long delay of our Lord in taking the kingdom unto Himself and in establishing righteousness in the earth. The mystery of God is seen in these thousands of years in which sin and death run riot.
The pages of history, from the time of the first murder until this present hour, are written in blood, tears, and death. The mystery is the delay of God in taking, the kingdom unto Himself. That is the most inexplicable mystery that the mind could dream of, the mystery of the presence of evil.
For these thousands of years, God has allowed Satan to wrap his vicious, slimy, filthy, cruel tentacles around human life and around this earth. Does God know it? Is He indifferent to it? Is He not able to cope with it? Oh, the mystery of the delay of God! That mystery has brought more stumbling to the faith of God’s people than any other experience in all life.
The infidel, the atheist, the agnostic, and the unbeliever laugh and mock us, and God lets them mock and laugh. The enemies of righteousness and the enemies of all that we hold dear rise and increase in power and spread blood and darkness over the face of the earth, and we wonder where God is. Our missionaries are slain, our churches are burned to the ground, people in this earth by uncounted millions, and millions are oppressed, living in despair, and God just looks. He seemingly does not intervene; He does not say anything, and He does not move. Sin just develops. It goes on and on.
Oh, the mystery of the delay of the Lord God! But somewhere beyond the starry sky there stands a herald angel with a trumpet in his hand, and by the decree of the Lord God Almighty, there is a day, there is an hour, there is a moment, there is an elected time when the angel shall sound and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.”
What Revelation illustrates is what the rest of the Scriptures have already shown us.