Douglas F. Kelly on the “Seventh Trumpet” in Revelation

Here is another gem of an excerpt from Douglas F. Kelly’s commentary on Revelation. In this passage, he speaks of the assurance the Christian can have that Christ will successfully subdue all his enemies as his Kingdom expands throughout the earth. Every false political system or religious system that does submit to the authority of Christ will eventually fail. Kelly writes, 

In Revelation 11, the seventh and the last trump of the angel celebrates the victorious, never-ending reign of the enthroned Lord Jesus Christ. It is a celebration of the new creation which starts with the expansion of the Spirit-baptized church. This is good news, for once the seventh trumpet, the last trump, is sounded it means that no power, Satanic or otherwise, can stop the expansion of the glorious reign of the Lord Jesus Christ on earth. That is why we can be certain the year will come that Communism will fall in China, just as the Berlin wall came down and the USSR came apart – the trump has sounded and evil systems that seek to stop the expansion of the gospel will eventually fall. That will be the case with Islam, which seems so powerful with all its oil money and wishes to use it to stop the gospel. Down it must go, because the seventh trump, the last trump, has sounded at the glorious reign of Christ: he will be victorious over all his enemies. 
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So it will be with the secular humanism (really atheism) that is largely in charge of America and the Western world. It has rejected the Christian faith, and seeks to exclude every influence of Christianity from the public forum. Secular humanism, for all its strength and pride, will break apart; it will come down because the last trump has sounded, announcing that Jesus is victorious. The working out of his final victory in space and time in on God’s timetable, not ours, on God’s clock and God’s calendar, not ours. But victory is on the way.

Kelly writes with a postmillennial hope that Christ will be victorious in subduing all that the Father has given him as his inheritance. He writes with the postmillennial hope that Christ will actually save the world that he came to save. He writes with the postmillennial hope that the Great Commission will be fulfilled – all the nations will be discipled and know the Lord. Praise God for the victory we have in Christ!

Kelly, Douglas. Revelation: A Mentor Expository Commentary. Ross-shire, Scotland: Mentor, 2012. p. 208-9.