Revelation 7:1-3

Welcome back to the Bible Study! It has been a crazy month of busy, busy, busy for me, working at the flooring store, being a multi-vocational pastor, and just being a regular person with a family! I apologize for being missing in action, but I won’t because there are only so many hours in a day, and I can only do what I can do. However, I am glad to pick it up again, right here at the beginning of Revelation chapter 7.

The last time we were together, we looked at the sixth seal on the scroll of the title deed to the universe, and we saw the devastating implications for all life that remained on Earth. Let us summarize where we are in the order of events. First, at some point after the faithful believers are removed from the earth, an event seen in more than one place in the Scriptures, the man of sin, who John in his letters called “the Antichrist,” has been loosed upon the earth. Then War took peace from the earth. Then famine, disease, and pestilence came as a result. After that, Death and Hell came riding, and a quarter of the earth’s population died as a result. Based on today’s population numbers, that is approximately 2 billion people, no small number. After that, we got a look at all those who were killed because they would not swerve from their faith in Jesus Christ as their saviour. These souls under the altar in heaven called for God to avenge their deaths, most of them probably violent and painful, asking how long it would be until God sought vengeance for them. Finally, great cosmic disturbances began to take place, and at this point, no one could deny that this was God Himself pouring out His wrath on a very deserving group of remaining humans, who to this point, have refused to turn away from their sins and toward faith in Christ. They call out instead to the rocks and hills to fall on them and hide them from the wrath of “Him who sits on the Throne and of the Lamb,” who are now exercising their wrath upon them all. Doctor John MacArthur points out in His commentary on this passage that the world will refuse to acknowledge the events revealed by the first five seals as acts of the wrath of Almighty God, despite the warnings of His people even while it happens, but the events of the sixth seal will be so horrific that no one will then be able to deny what is happening.

I will pause our narrative here to point out to our faithful viewers that this set of conditions need not be faced in terror! For those that will see their own sin and recognize that God loved you so much that He sent His Son to die to pay the penalty for YOUR sins personally on a Roman Cross as the perfect atoning sacrifice. God was so pleased with that sacrifice and atonement on your behalf; He raised Christ from the dead! All you have to do is accept that payment on your behalf by really believing it for yourself. If you can do that, you will avoid these coming terror-filled events.

That brings us up to tonight in the terror of the Great Tribulation events unleashed by the Lamb breaking the very first seal. As we leave the sixth seal, there is a kind of a parenthetical pause in the opening of the seals for the Lord to show John some important events as the seals are being broken. The sixth seal has been broken, and the seventh seal remains, but these events occur between the breaking of those respective seals. There is a kind of restraint in the progression of the wrath of God here, as if God is telling His servants to wait a minute while the final preparations for the rest of the judgment of wrath are made. That is in fact what we will look at over the next few studies, beginning this evening with the first three verses of chapter 7.

I broke the text down as follows:

KV3: A restraining, protecting pause

3: saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads.”

1: Four angels hold the wind back

2: A fifth angel holds the other four angels back

3: The sealing of the servants of God

This pause is not because God is not prepared. It is quite the opposite. This judgment has been prepared from before the world began, I suspect. God does nothing that he is not prepared to do, and He does it with full cognizance of both the actions and all of their extended consequences, and He does it when He is ready to proceed. He alone decided when that is, not us, nor any events, because God is the primary cause of everything, and nothing happens without it being His will. This is an implication of His attributes. Our confession of faith, the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 puts it this way: “God hath Decreed in himself from all Eternity, by the most wise and holy Councel [sic] of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to passe [sic]; yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin, nor hath fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the Creature, nor yet is the liberty, or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power, and faithfulness in accomplishing his Decree.” His omniscience, His omnipresence, and His omnipotence are all on display here.

What this may indicate is that God Himself is allowing a pause after all the terror-inducing events caused by the opening of the sixth seal. This too is a kind of mercy, even in His display of wrath. A moment of restraint even after the restrainer has removed Himself (that being the Holy Spirit) allows us all to catch our breath, and for some important reasons that we will see in a little bit.

KV3: A restraining, protecting pause

3: saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads.”

For those who see that the church is already in heaven with the Lord, we must say that after all of us are taken out of this present evil world, there will be believers on the earth right up until the return of Christ to earth, and some will even survive to enter the thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth. If you don’t believe there will be a thousand-year reign, I’m not sure how you got there, but I disagree (hopefully agreeably). This thousand years seems to be very specific, and I do not think it can be analogized away because of some of the other things that go with this. Also, was the virgin birth an analogy? How about the exodus from Egypt? I could go on, you know. No, I think it is a literal thousand years. If you believe that we are already in that thousand years, how do you get to that conclusion? It has been almost 2000 years since Christ physically returned to heaven. I mean, we’ve had a 1900+ year-long hour, so I guess it’s possible, but I’ve never heard of a 2000-year-long 1000 years. That would be like the Ben Affleck movie Pearl Harbour. It was a 2-hour movie crammed into 3 hours. No, I think this is in what is called real-time. That means we are near the beginning of the final seven years of the history of man before the return of Christ, and it is a time of trouble like no other.

Here, at the very beginning of that time, there is a pause. It seems to me like the pause where an athlete takes a deep breath immediately before starting the actual competition. Two billion are dead. More will follow. Before it begins, we now pause for station identification. Let’s get into the text.

1: Four angels hold the wind back

This verse has caused some of God’s gainsayers to criticize the Word of God by attacking so-called “scientific inaccuracies” in this passage. To that, I say a couple of things. First, the Bible is NOT a science text, though it will never contradict that which is true science. Second, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy! (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5) For those who like to cause disputes about silly things, this can be seen as apocalyptic language meant to be metaphorical in some measure. Besides, there are some reasonings here from actual science that you should learn. Let’s look at the text.

1: After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind would blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree.

I know of the group known as the Flat Earth Society, and I do not agree with their premise that the earth is flat, nor the rarer specialized view that the earth is a square or other rhomboid. I’ve been in a plane, and I’ve seen the curve, my friends. If you get much more than 300 feet up, you can see the curve. I’ve been up at 30K feet. I also grew up on a lake. We could see about a mile to the shore on the other side. My youngest uncle took the boat across the lake and made a mark on a tree where I told him through a walkie-talkie was the first place I could see him on the tree he was climbing. Using that height above ground and the distance from me to the tree, we calculated the approximate curvature of the earth. Other experiments have been done with shadows at noon in Egypt and a distance of 300 miles. Then there are the photos taken from orbit. The earth is clearly spheroid any way you want to measure it. So what does it mean when the Scripture says, “the four corners of the earth?”
It could be metaphorical for the four wind directions: north, west, south, and east. We have had this discussion in the past. Though the Scripture isn’t just poetry, there is poetry in the Scriptures, and that is a possibility. It doesn’t have to be from the corners of a flat square or other rhomboid.
Also, even if you allow that the earth is a spheroid, it isn’t a perfect ball. It is somewhat flatter at the poles, likely from the rotation of the earth. What this refers to in ancient language is the four quadrants [Gk., gōnias, “quarter”] of the planet. It means “all parts of the earth,” according to most scholars I saw in a Google search. Think of it as the four hemispheres.
Think of the earth as an engine that sustains life. The wind carries that life to all parts of the earth. The four angels mentioned in this verse are holding back that wind all over the planet, or they are at least interrupting this great engine. They hold back the four winds: north, south, east, and west. No wind blows. It is restrained. That wind will have more destructive power than our recent hurricane Helene on man’s culture of death. But it is held back for a time that the Lord has decided. It does not blow on land or sea. Waves will not be generated to the same degree, nor will the leaves of trees rustle in the wind. It is like the calm before the storm. And that storm is coming at us all at the speed of time.
Now why would I talk about the earth not being flat and compass directions? It seems a little mundane, does it not? It is because it all goes back to one issue here: Truth. The truth of the Scriptures is under a constant barrage of attacks from all quarters, and those continual attacks can shake our faith if you don’t research this! It can even do it unawares though things like modern music. One of the reasons we need to be careful of what we sing in church or anywhere else is because music bypasses your mind if you let it, and it is easy to do. Our hymns and spiritual songs should be filled with the truth, and not just any truth, but the truth as it is in Jesus, the highest form of truth. It is only then that we can walk with the Lord in peace and in Spirit. So when people come at you with flat earth stories, it is not only okay to be skeptical, it is a necessity. With that said, we must make an acknowledgement.
We don’t know everything there is to know yet, if we will ever arrive there. That means at the right time, God will reveal what parts of His word mean. He said it to Daniel in Daniel 12:9-10, “He said, ‘Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time. Many will be purged, purified and refined, but the wicked will act wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand, but those who have insight will understand.’” As near as I could tell, Daniel finished his scroll of prophecies in about 539 BCV. So here we are, more than 2500 years later, still making discoveries about what he wrote. John’s work is also apocalyptic in nature like Daniel’s. We can still, with His Holy Spirit, make discoveries in God’s word. In fact, this kind of revelation from the word as it is studied and put into its proper historical context should be the mainstream for Christianity. Regardless of what I could say about the rest of flip-floppity Evangellyfish, let it be the case among us, that as Paul told Timothy in 2 Tim. 2:15, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”
So what we are seeing in this verse is four aggelous, or angels, each standing over or at the four quarters of the earth, somehow restraining the winds of the judgment of Almighty God according to His will. Is this the “restrainer” of 2 Thess. 2? No, that’s a whole other individual, we think God the Holy Spirit, and that is a whole other discussion. Moving on.

2: A fifth angel holds the other four angels back

If ever there was a case for the “restrainer” to be an angelic being, this is the case, but I still say it must be God the Holy Spirit, by whom all such commands are given and carried out. John now sees a fifth aggelon calling for the others not to release the wind until a specific task is accomplished. Let’s look at the text.

2: And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea,

John sees another angel rising from the east. I must comment on this. Prophetically, the Lord Jesus says that He will return from the east when He returns to reign. East seems to be throughout Scripture as the cardinal direction from which all things divine arrive, usually as relates to Jerusalem. This should not surprise the student of Scripture because a simple reading of the books of the Bible has Jerusalem as the ultimate seat of God on earth. We know it didn’t start there, but with the building of Solomon’s Temple, it became a central point of focus on the planet. God’s seat is said to be the cherubim-covered ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies, the part of the temple sanctuary that the Jewish High Priest could only enter once per year and only on a specific date, and only to make sacrifice. God is said to have sat there. We read in this book that the Antichrist will proclaim himself to be God and defile that seat by sitting there himself. And then from the East, Christ the King will return to take that seat back, cleanse it, and sit there Himself. There will be some topographical changes that accompany that. When we see the angel ascending (rising) in the East, it means here that all of this is a part of that return of Messiah to take His rightful place. This angel says something that relates to the other four angels, but we will see that in the next section.
In the hand of this angel is something interesting. It is “the seal of the living God.” The word for seal here comes from the Greek word sphragida (in the text), a form of sphragis, a seal like what a monarch would use to secure and authorize their will in writing. Do you want an example? The seven “seals” that we are currently considering come to mind, but how about King Charles using his ring to affix a signature of sorts that identifies or secures a communication directly from himself? The seal of the King. Here, it is the seal of Almighty God. There will be more on that in a moment.
This angel calls out loudly to the four angels holding back the winds of judgment, and he says something very specific. Next section.

3: The sealing of the servants of God

Why are things sealed? It is an interesting discussion. In the days when such things were commonly used, a seal affixed to something indicated possession, protection, and authority for action. Sometimes it was applied to seal the orders shut because it was for a specific individual or group. Sometimes it was applied at the bottom of a letter as a sort of signature. Sometimes it granted protection, sometimes authority of action, and sometimes, orders for a person or group that were not secure or secret. What we learn in this verse is that God will seal His chosen servants for this time. Let’s see what the text says.

3: saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads.”

This is why I have been taking the position that these four angels in the four quarters of the planet are restraining the coming judgment in some way. The Restrainer, the Holy Spirit, has left the earth to its own devices by this time. However, because God is merciful, He still restrains Himself until a very specific point is reached. That specific point is after all of His douloi, his slaves because of His love for them, are sealed. What does that even mean? I hear you asking from the internet’s back row.
God is sending His angels to mark His servants as His own. Later in the book (14:1), that seal or mark is described as “His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads.” In ancient times, the seal here was not only about a mark of possession but of protection. These individuals will be marked out and protected as they perform their sacred and holy task given to them by their master. We will learn more about who these individuals are in our next study, but they are most decidedly belonging to God, all 144,000 of them. You can take that as a hint as to the subject of our next study of the text. I can tell you this: they aren’t from that group that followed Charles Taze Russell that formed what are today known as “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” who actually neither belong to Jehovah nor are His witnesses. We’ll say more next time as time and burden allow.
These four angels are being instructed to stop and restrain the winds of God’s judgment on the entire planet until such time as all of Yeshuah’s servants can be appropriately marked with His name and that of His Father Yahweh. For this probably very short period of time, all of the earth, everything in the sea, and anything in or on a tree are safe, while the men who are in this group are identified and sealed for their task.
In other words, God is marking His servants. It is the only mark such a servant will receive, and each will receive it from God’s holy angels at the sole command of God. Contrast this to the other mark that will be brought out for men at this time. God does not cause it; people will be forced to take it or starve or otherwise face execution for treason to the one who causes men to take it. Yes, we speak of the mark of that beast, Antichrist. He will have a mark to impose on all His servants, as well as God marking all of His own servants. You almost get the sense that there is a coming conflict between the two groups. Wait until the next study when we learn the battleground of that war, the spoils that will go to the winner, and just who the winner will be. Much could be said of each, but the chief contrast I see between them is over loyalty. God has already chosen those who will be loyal to Him and will mark each one accordingly. In the plan of the Antichrist, you have to prove your own loyalty to him by taking the mark to yourself. There are incentives of a sort for both. For God’s servants, it is eternal life. For the Antichrist’s servants, it is the escape from the dire consequences that the Antichrist himself will impose on those who will not turn to him. The problem with that is that to take that mark on yourself will doom you to be excluded from the real prize, eternal life in the presence of God forever, but I’m getting ahead of the topic.
We should also note that these are all heavenly angels doing the will of God. I have heard it said that the first four are possibly fallen angels because of the harm they will cause when the judgment hurricane is finally released. The fifth angel giving instructions tells us who they all are in this verse. “…until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads.” OUR God. First-person plural. Tou Theou hemōn in the text. That is what John recorded that they said that he heard. They are on God’s side.
I think it is later in the chapter we learn that it is their given duty to harm the earth with whatever means and powers God equipped them with, and they will be faithful as soon as they are given the final mission clearance. We are very near launch time with this verse. I call it seal -1 and holding, counting down the seals until the seventh seal is opened to unleash the incredible and horrifying judgement that will be poured out on all the planet and its inhabitants. That is what will happen after this interlude, which we should be in for the next two studies, the balance of this chapter of the book.

In this short pause in the main events, the pouring out of the terrible judgment of God and the Lamb on the earth, we still see God’s mercy. Until all of these special servants of God Almighty are marked with His name and the Name of His Father, everything will be as safe as it ever was.

But what about you, viewer? Are you safe with the mark of God’s love for His servants? Do you know His name or the Name of His Father? You can know for certain if you do not. 1 John 5:13 tells us, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life,” not just hope, guess, pray, or wonder. If you are not certain that you are His, you can resolve that right now. Are you saved and on your way to spend eternity with Him? If your answer is a no, then listen for a moment. If you answered, “I hope so,” it betrays your heart, and you should listen as well.

You are a sinner, and you deserve eternal suffering in hell for your own sin, not to mention the original sin of all men that we are accountable for as a race. Disobedience to God demands that we all die, that is, be separated from God for all eternity. Death is that separation. Physical death is the separation of you from your body. Spiritual death is separation from God for the rest of all eternity. Death is what the Bible calls “wages” in Romans 6:23a. “The wages of sin is death,” it says. Wages are what we earn for our work, our deeds, if you will. Our deeds, our words, and our thoughts are all sinful before a holy and righteous God, who is the original “victim” of the original crime, disobedience of His command. We deserve nothing but His justice for that crime, and we must die to satisfy that justice for our cosmic treason against this holy and wrathful God that we have offended.

But God loves us. In fact, the Scriptures tell us that He loves us so much that even when we were His enemies, He [God the Father] made Him [God the Son] who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him [God the Son]. He sent His one and only Son to become human like us, to live a holy and righteous life under the Law of God (that He probably wrote anyway), and then at the right time, while we were still His enemies, He laid down that life as He was put to death on a Roman cross as a perfect atoning sacrifice for all of our sins. This pleased God so much that He rose from the dead to prove it!

What you must do to enter into this all-time cure for sin, death, and hell for eternity is this: Repent by admitting you are a sinner and you have sinned. Be as specific as you need to be and tell God you are sorry, not because you got caught, but because those things were wrong. Then really believe what He did on the cross was for you, to take your place and die for you because you could never pay the penalty in an eternity of Sundays. He did that for you! And if you believe that, and you tell Him you believe that, and let it change you from the inside out, the Bible says that “with the heart, man believes, and with the mouth confession. Is made, resulting in salvation.” He who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved.

There is nothing you need to do, nowhere you need to go, no deed you must accomplish, no spell you must cast, no amount of money you can pay, no incantation you can give to earn this. He has already done this for you. All you need to do is believe it, and you will be doing the works of God, according to the Lord Jesus. Everything I say can be found in the Scriptures, and those of you who have been around for a while have discovered all of it with me. That is how you can know you also have eternal life. Hope, guess, pray, or wonder no longer.

This is essential because of something we have all noted. Jesus is coming back for us who believe to take us to be with Him by His own miraculous power. If you miss that event, not to quibble about the details like timing, then you will go through all of the terrible and horrifying events that we will be describing as we continue our study of this book. It doesn’t mean He can’t save you or won’t save you, though it could if you will not turn from your sin, but it will mean you missed the best opportunity to join Him there will ever be before it gets rough here on Earth. Why would you want to miss out on that?

Next time, we will look at verses 4-8 of this chapter, and we will learn the identity of the servants that God is having the angels place His name and the Name of His Father on. Depending on if you look ahead or not, you may already know, but I think it is significant, and we will talk a little about why…next time. As for tonight, that’s what I saw in the text.