The seal of God.
Then I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds so they did not blow on the earth or the sea, or even on any tree. And I saw another angel coming up from the east, carrying the seal of the living God. And he shouted to those four angels, who had been given power to harm land and sea, “Wait! Don’t harm the land or the sea or the trees until we have placed the seal of God on the foreheads of his servants.” – Revelation 7:1-3 NLT.
The Seals had focused on the unrighteous, but the “interlude” focuses on God’s people as part of the 6th Seal. This is the global end-time “sealing” of the people of God.
This text affirms God’s ability to exempt people from judgment. He is able to hold back destructive winds and preserve His people in any circumstance. Jesus is intimately concerned about His people and arranges for their protection.
We have all heard stories of people being saved miraculously. But life is not always that simple.
What about the many situations where the righteous are not protected? Sometimes we face death because of our own choices and actions. Sometimes we do so because we have ignored proper warnings. Sometimes we face death because we didn’t realize the warning was from God. Sometimes death simply seems to be the result of the random course of events. But often God is at work in tragic circumstances, in ways that may not be clearly discerned until much later. When my first child died at birth it was no body’s fault. We live in a world that has been affected by the curse of sin. Death is every where and often that curse is random and unexplained.
William Wilberforce, for example, lost his father at age nine and his aunt and uncle were childless. But through a combination of these two circumstances, Wilberforce was exposed to the evangelical preaching of the abolitionist John Newton. Wilberforce ultimately became the leading champion of abolitionism in England until slavery was abolished in the entire British Empire. So we must trust in God’s ability to protect and deliver, knowing that in a given situation it may not occur. But even if death or tragedy does occur, we know that God can bring something good out of it in the long run.
True faith is trusting the outcome to God. Sometimes we need to have the faith to not be healed or delivered. Many of God’s faithful were not delivered! Their sights were on a far better outcome.
The opening of the seven seals shows us that every person who claims to believe in Christ will receive blessings for faithfulness or curses for unfaithfulness. The first four seals describe God’s disciplinary means to rouse His people from their spiritual lethargy and make them victorious. Yet, God’s people also suffer injustice and oppression in a world hostile to the gospel. At the opening of the sixth seal, God is ready to deal with those who harmed His people. Chapter 7 is an interlude inserted parenthetically between the sixth and seventh seals. The sixth seal brings us to the second coming of Christ. As the wicked face judgment, Revelation 7 answers their question about who will stand on the day of Christ’s coming: those who have been sealed, the 144,000.
The other characteristics of the 144,000 are given in Revelation 14:1–5. There is also an interlude inserted between the sixth and seventh trumpets (Rev. 10:1–11:14). This interlude, which commences with the Second Great Awakening and the birth of the Advent movement, coincides with the same time period as the opening scenes of chapter 7 and focuses on the experience and task of God’s end-time people.
Thanks for that Ross…you ll have a baby to bring up in a perfect environment..how good is that..l ll have a little brother too whom lve never met Thomas was stillborn. Rosie
Ps lm remarried now. God sent 🙏 a lovely sda man to help me Steve. Been married a month now..
WOW that’s wonderful