On my other blog, Thinking Out Loud, I get a lot of traffic each Christmas for a 2010 item I wrote concerning whether or not audiences should continue to stand for the Hallelujah Chorus in G. F. Handel’s Messiah. There are currently 6-dozen comments reflecting different sides to the debate.
The song itself is actually rather sparse lyrically, but in those few words there is great, great power.
Hallelujah!
For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
The kingdom of this world
Is become the kingdom of our Lord,
And of His Christ, and of His Christ;
And He shall reign for ever and ever.
King of kings, and Lord of lords
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Musicians can and do try to analyze the piece musically. But we know different. The force of the song is in the lyrics, taken from Revelation 11:15
And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become [the kingdoms] of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. (KJV)
Other translations — even the NLT and The Message — stay with this overall form, but the New Century Version simplifies it for younger ears:
“The power to rule the world now belongs to our Lord and his Christ, and he will rule forever and ever.”
This occurs in Revelation at the end of what we call The Seven Trumpet Judgements.
The second cycle of judgments (8:2–11:19) closes with a second description of the Second Coming by focusing on the last judgment (v. 18) and the triumph of God’s kingly rule (vv. 15, 17). (Reformation Study Bible)
Go deeper with the IVP Bible Commentary:
We all know the feeling summed up by the expression “the future is now.” It may be graduation, marriage, the birth of a first child or a long-awaited trip to some faraway place. Someday it will be retirement, and one day it will be the hour of death. It is something we knew was coming, something anticipated and imagined for years, with excitement and joy or with dread. Sooner or later a time comes when it is upon us, and we experience either realization or disappointment or relief, depending on what our expectations were and how closely their fulfillment matched them.
John’s expectations about the seventh trumpet must have been a strange mixture of excitement and dread, not unlike those of any Christian facing simultaneously the mystery of death and the hope of heaven. On the one hand John had been warned of three terrible “woes” to come on the earth, but had only witnessed two of them (8:13; 9:12). One remained, possibly the worst of all, and it was to come “soon” (11:14). Yet he had also been told that “when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets” (10:7). Now that he hears the trumpet, it sounds more like the fulfillment of a promise than an oracle of woe. Loud voices in heaven announce that the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever (v. 15).
Clearly the announcement introduces a major division in the book. At once the twenty-four elders in heaven, who have not been heard from as a group since the opening throne-room scene in chapters 4-5, fall on their faces in worship, just as they did twice in that opening scene (4:10; 5:8), offering thanks to God for what he has done and what he is about to do (vv. 16-18). It appears that these verses form a kind of inclusion with chapters 4-5, framing the seven seals and seven trumpets and preparing the way for still more visions to follow.
At the same time, the singular expression, the kingdom of the world, echoes the prophecy just completed about “the great city” of this world, “which is figuratively Sodom and Egypt” (v. 8). The world has many cities and “many peoples, nations, languages and kings” (10:11), but John knows, just as Augustine knew in his City of God, and Bunyan knew in The Pilgrim’s Progress, that these are all one city, all one kingdom, whether we call it the City of Man or the City of Destruction or Vanity Fair. Only when that city’s citizens “were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven” (v. 13) was it possible to say, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. The seventh trumpet is significant, therefore, both in relation to chapters 4-11 generally and to the end of the sixth trumpet in particular…
How do we end this consideration today? Perhaps with these words familiar words from The Lord’s Prayer:
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.
Christianity 201 