The Seven Trumpet Angels

Also known as: The Seven Angels with Trumpets, Seven Angels Before God, The Seven Trumpeting Angels, Trumpet Angels of Revelation, The Seven Angels Who Stand Before God

The seven angels who stand before God and are given seven trumpets in the Apocalypse (Revelation 8–11). As each sounds his trumpet a judgment falls upon a portion of creation — earth, sea, rivers, the lights of heaven, then the demonic locusts of the abyss and the horsemen loosed at the Euphrates — until the seventh trumpet proclaims that “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ” (Revelation 11:15). Orthodox tradition understands them as faithful ministers who execute God’s righteous judgments, never as independent powers: the judgments are God’s, the angels His obedient heralds. Their trumpets gather up the trumpets of Scripture — Sinai, Jericho, the Day of the Lord — and Revelation 8:2’s “the seven angels who stand before God” echoes the seven holy angels of Tobit and 1 Enoch, whom the tradition connects to the archangels. Scripture never names them, and the Church — which receives Revelation as canonical yet does not appoint it for liturgical reading — commemorates them on no feast.