The phrase “silence before the storm” usually refers to a quiet period that comes before a time of destruction. Revelation 8:1-6 describes this period of 30 minutes of quietness in heaven that will take place in the middle of the 7-year Tribulation, before God unleashes His wrath upon the earth via the trumpet judgments. At the end of the 7-year Tribulation, the whole earth and all its man-made systems will be destroyed completely and the earth (that we know it today) will no longer exists. God will create a new heaven and a new earth, ruled by the Lord Jesus Christ and all believers will dwell in it.

Due to the severity and magnitude of the destruction that will take place, the heaven will be silenced. All the angelic beings and the saints in heaven (Rev 7:9) will be silenced. The song of praise unto God, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come” (Rev 4:8), will be stopped as they ponder and prepare for the great destruction that God is about to unleash on sinful earth.

The silence in heaven will also be for the saints who are living on earth during the 7-year Tribulation to remind them that God knows what they are going through as their prayers ascend up into heaven before God (Rev 8:4), and that God will hear their prayers, and will help and comfort them in their moments of great distress, persecutions and sufferings. This will strengthen their faith and encourage them to continue standing up, and living for, the Lord Jesus Christ during this perilous time of the second half of the 7-year Tribulation period. During the Tribulation, the whole world will be against the believers on earth.

The silence in heaven will also mark the start of the wrath of God to end the persecutions and sufferings that His saints on earth are experiencing. Man is precious to God because man is the only being that is created by God in His own image (Gen 1:27). The destruction of the earth, via the trumpet judgments (Rev 8:5-6), will end the misery of His saints on earth.

The destruction of this sinful earth is God’s divine justice to stop sin from further snowballing on earth. God has been merciful and longsuffering towards man. After sin entered the world through Adam (Gen 3), God had sent prophets and His Word to warn man of his sins. God had also given His only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come to live in this world and to die on the cross for the remission of man’s sins, so that man can be saved from condemnation.

Where will you be when this earth is destroyed by God and ceases to exist?