what the trumpets of revelation tell us about revelation

I doubt that I have to tell anyone that revelation is a difficult book to interpret. I certainly dont claim to have the one true interpretation but I did want to mention one thing about the trumpets that seems to me to be very significant.

after the fifth trumpet john writes that a star fell to earth and opened the abyss and smoke came out of the abyss and locusts came out of the smoke. I've always taken this on face value but it seems to me now that the star actually fell to earth back during the third trumpet (or maybe even sooner) and the smoke arose from the abyss back in the fourth trumpet. the fifth trumpet is actually about the locusts.

so why did john write it the way that he did? because he was seeing a vision with many many things all happening at once and he didnt have time to write it all down. he jotted down what he thought was the main event at each stage but when he got to the fifth trumpet he needed to explain where the locust came from (the smoke) and then he had to explain where the smoke came from so he had to backtrack a little.

so the significance of this is that the events we read in revelation arent always in the same order that they occurred. something to bear in mind when trying to understand revelation.

:-)