The
Purposes of God. Rev. 7:1-3
Often when people are overwhelmed with the presence of sorrow, suffering
or injustice in the world, a question that has been raised is the question: How
can God let this happen? If we listen to the sub-text of that question there is
a clear assigning of blame or responsibility to God, that somehow God is not
watching, not looking, and how can God really let these kinds of things happen
to His creatures? In a broader sense this is a question that underlies the
doctrine and teaching that we find in Revelation chapter seven.
The question the unbelievers ask in chapter six is: Who can survive the
judgments that come as a result of the wrath of the Lamb? The answer is going
to be given in the seventh chapter and it involves two groups of people: the
144,000 people who are sealed and the group of martyrs from every tribe, every
tongue, and every nation. Notice that there are two groups of people that are
the focal point of chapter seven: God’s grace in salvation to a group of Jews
and God’s grace and salvation to Gentiles. Jews are mentioned first; Gentiles
are mentioned second. This fits the pattern of to the Jew first and then to the
Gentile, but it also shows a returned focus in the Tribulation period to God’s
plan for
It has been pointed out that there are four questions that we need to
address: a) the nature of God; b) the nature of evil and suffering; c) the
nature of justice (it has to start with the character of God and His judicial
outlook; d) history does have a purpose, God is working things out and we must
understand that He allows evil and suffering to continue to operate because in
His omniscience he knows all the facts and He is going to ultimately brings
things to a right conclusion.
God’s character, i.e. His righteousness, justice and love (His
integrity), is demonstrated most fully in the universe where evil is allowed to
continue for a time. This will, of course, entail injustice and suffering. We
are living in a fallen world, the cosmic system, where people are imperfect,
are fallen people with a sin nature which predisposes them to self-centredness,
to arrogance, to promoting that which is best for them over against anybody
else. In a setting such as this we are going to have all kinds of conflict.
Because evil is real and evil exists there will be conflict, suffering and
adversity. This does not mean that God is out of control but it does mean that
God knows more than creatures do and He is ultimately able to resolve evil and
we have to go back to His character to understand that and to rest in that.
Evil in the universe is temporary. The purpose for evil being allowed to
continue is in order for God to judge evil and end suffering. The first part of
this statement is designed to emphasise that no matter how out of control
circumstances in our lives may appear, or how profound the injustice may be,
God is still in control, His character does not change. The second part, the
purpose clause, indicates that there is a reason—we may not fully understand
because we do not have all the data, just a small portion. God knows all the
facts, all the details. He has a purpose to finally and completely judge and
remove evil and suffering, and He does this through the context of human
history. He is able to weave all of the details of history together for
good—Romans
Evil isn’t simply the absence of good. It is much more than that; there
is something substantive when it comes to the nature of evil. Justice is not
something that is creaturely oriented or circumstantially oriented but it is
related to the absolute standards of God’s own righteousness. So evil and suffering
have to do with a violation of God’s righteousness and a promotion of an agenda
and a standard that is contrary to God’s own righteousness. Justice, then, is
the outworking of God’s righteousness in His dealings with His creatures, and
all of this fits within the divine purpose of history.
Satan’s desire is to rule over all of creation instead of God; he thinks
he can do it better than God can do it. As we go through the Scriptures we
realise that he led a rebellion among the angels and led a third of the angels
to follow him in his rebellion. All of this happened before man was created.
But God judges the angels—Matthew 25:41 NASB “Then He will also say
to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire
which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.’” If God has already
created the lake of fire for the devil and his angels why aren’t they there? So
at this point we have to use our thinking in terms of all the details that
Scripture gives us related to this rebellion, the person of Satan, the
outworking of things related to the angels, and it is inferred logically but
with tremendous justification that apparently God postponed the execution of
that penalty in order to demonstrate certain truths related to creatures and their
service to God.
This raises several questions. How can a loving God send His creatures
to such a horrible punishment—eternity in a lake of fire? It seems like the
punishment far surpasses the extent of the crime. Another is, why doesn’t God
just give the devil a chance to see what he can do in running the universe?
These ideas are present within God’s demonstration of His justice and
righteousness throughout history. And that is exactly what God does. He creates
mankind as an experiment in the classic definition of the terms “experiment.”
Classically an experiment is not something we do to see what will happen; an
experiment is done in order to demonstrate a known truth. What God is doing in
history is not introducing any wrong elements. Because of His omniscience He
knows exactly what will be demonstrated, and what is demonstrated is that the
creature cannot not ever do anything independent of the creator without causing
incredibly damage; and the unintended consequences are far more severe than the
act itself. The act of disobedience that was the issue in the garden of Eden
was just eating a piece of fruit. When they ate that piece of fruit it was that
simple innocuous act of disobedience to the creator. The result is what we see
around us: wars, famine, disease, and all manner of suffering and adversity. It
all came out of that simple act of disobedience to the creator. So God is
demonstrating in history through all the various dispensations is that no
matter what the circumstances might be, no matter how much God provides or how
little God provides, no matter how much revelation or how little revelation man
has, that sin permeates everything and creates a vast host of unintended
consequences. The only thing that can prevent it is total dependence upon God.
Eventually what God has to do is bring this to a judicial resolution,
which is what the entire book of Revelation is describing—how God brings evil
and injustice to account. Then we have the creation of a new heavens and a new
earth where there is no sin and evil and where there will never be an
introduction of sin and evil, and where sin and evil has been punished and
restricted to the lake of fire. So God has a plan and a purpose in all of this
and he is demonstrating all the various permutations. This is what God is doing
in history, and so history is directly related to the outworking of this
angelic rebellion that began with Satan’s rebellion with God before Genesis
1:2. This is why when we come to Revelation we see this tremendous emphasis on
angelic involvement. There are some 65 references to angels in the book out of
approximately 170 in the entire New Testament.
The scene in chapter seven has shifted. The scene in chapter six is
primarily on the earth but when we come to chapter seven we shift back to a
heavenly perspective. Revelation 7:1 NASB
“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.
Revelation 7:2 NASB “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.” That is what the releasing of these winds would do. [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.’”
The term “four corners of the
earth” is merely a term like “the rising of the sun” or “setting of the sun”
that is used in everyday language of accommodation, when we know that the earth
is rotating. We know that it is not the sun that is moving but the earth that
is moving. So the four corners of the earth is a reference, most likely, to the
four points of the compass.
This verse has long been
derided as reflecting a naïve “prescientific” concept of earth structure, one
that supposedly viewed the earth as flat with four corners…. In terms of modern
technology, it is essentially equivalent to what a mariner or geologist would
call the four quadrants of the compass, or four directions. This is evident
also from the mention of the “four winds” which, in common usage, would of
course be the north, west, south, and east winds.
Parenthetically, accurate
modern geodetic measurements in recent years have proved that the earth
actually does have four “corners.” These are protuberances standing out from
the basic “geoid,” that is, the basic spherical shape of the earth. The earth
is not really a perfect sphere, but is slightly flattened at the poles. Its
equatorial bulge is presumably caused by the earth’s axial rotation, and its
four “corners” protrude from that. Henry M. Morris, The Revelation Record, p. 126.
The four winds of verse 1 relate to the judgment that God is going to
bring about on the earth. Winds are often used in Scripture as a description of
divine judgment. So this is not talking about the normal wind but about the
winds of judgment. The question is whether this is occurring after the seals or
before the seals. We would argue that this happens at the same time or just
preceding the seals because it is going to answer the question: Who can survive
this judgment? Those who can live through these judgments are those who are
sealed. So it has to do with answering the question related to the judgments of
those initial six seals. The angel of verse 2 is going to be used to seal a
certain number of Jewish individuals for a specific purpose and the seal is
designed to protect them from these judgments. We know from later passages that
many of these 144,000 will be martyred during the Tribulation period so the
purpose of the sealing is to protect them from these particular judgments. So
the angel calls on them not to begin these judgments the earth until these
144,000 have been sealed. This is the grace of God operating during the
Tribulation. It is not a time simply of judgment, it is a time of grace and
salvation. These 144,000 become evangelists during the Tribulation period, and
it is through their witness and their ministry that millions of Jews and
gentiles will be saved. But it tells us that God is restoring His emphasis to