Restoration of the Jews. Rev. 7:4-8

God is allowing all the suffering in history is because He is demonstrating something. God’s character is demonstrated most fully in a universe is allowed to continue for a time. He is ultimately in control even of evil. He limits it to some degree but he has to allow creatures to work out their negative volition and their rebellion because in that he demonstrates the principle that there can only be genuine peace and harmony and stability when the creature is one hundred per cent dependent upon the creator. So God’s character is demonstrated most fully in this universe where evil is allowed to continue for a time in order for God to fully judge evil and end suffering. So there is a purpose to evil and suffering and there is purpose to evil and suffering in our lives, and in the judgments of Revelation. Understanding that ultimately can only be the product of someone who knows every conceivable fact that can be known. He would have to be omniscient. Satan and no other creature is omniscient, so only God knows all the facts and when anybody questions the goodness of God they are basically saying they know more facts than God knows. That’s arrogance. God will always do what is right because He knows all the facts, and He is omnipotent so He has the ability and power to control everything to bring things about the right way. This is what lies behind history and is the very core of understanding what is going on in Revelation chapter seven.

What happens in almost every non-biblical formation of the answer to this question about the existence of evil and suffering is that we have finite human beings dealing with some sort of fini8te understanding of God from a limited, diluted view of evil and suffering, and some inadequate view of justice. They also have a very poor view of history. History is the laboratory in which God is working out this experiment to demonstrate His integrity, that He is omniscient, omnipotent, righteous, just, love, and that there is a greater good that is achieved. So allowing this kind of suffering and evil in history is justified.

The concept of “sealing” in Revelation 7:3—sphragizo [sfragizw], the same Greek word that is used in passages such as Ephesians 1:13; 4:30 where it refers to the sealing of the church age believer by the Holy Spirit. It was used in legal literature. What God is demonstrating to Satan is that He has laid out in clearly defined terms at the very beginning of time that He lays things out within what the Bible reveals as His covenant framework, His covenants or contracts. So everything that God is doing is related to absolutes of divine law in terms of His character and revelation. So this legal idea becomes the framework for everything that God does. It is the idea of putting a seal on a legal document. It has been practiced through the ancient world where they would put wax on a document and then take a stamp which was then pressed upon that wax, and that would be a legal seal. So this idea of sphragizo, the verb, the seal, means to seal; it refers to a seal of a signet ring, it would indicate a mark of ownership, sometimes a family, and it was used to sign legal documents in the same way that we do today. The point is that what God is doing is sealing these 144,000 and just as the Holy Spirit secures us and protects us in our salvation this is going to protect and secure them in terms of their role and mission in the Tribulation period. They are going to be protected from being harmed in these judgments that God pours out, but they are not being protected from the persecution and attacks from those who are hostile to God because most, if not all, of these are going to be martyred before the Lord returns.

Another thing to note about this is that the seal is placed upon their forehead, and this was typically the location in the Roman world where they would put the mark or the brand of a slave. This is stated in the text. They are marked out as bond-slaves or slaves “of our God.” It is very much in line with what was going on in the ancient world. This idea of sealing has an Old Testament background in Ezekiel 9:4-6 where there is a picture of judgment. God is about to judge Judah and Jerusalem for idolatry. Prior to His judgments He sends out an angel who is told to go through the midst of the city to put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all of the abominations that are done within it. In other words, these are those who do not go along with all of the idolatry in Judah. Those who do not have the seal are those who come under the judgment that is brought by God at that time.

Then there is this emphasis three times on the earth, the sea and the trees. What is going on here is that God is going to judge the creation because this is what pagan man turns to, to worship in place of God. Idolatry is worshipping something in the creation rather than God and this is exactly what is described in Romans chapter one, verses 20ff. So that which is worshipped in idolatry is brought under judgment.

Revelation 7:4 ^NASB “And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel.” Then in vv. 5-8, listed in a somewhat repetitive formula is the listing of each of the twelve tribes: “from the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand {were} sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand, [6] from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand, from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand, from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand, [7] from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand, from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand, [8] from the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand, from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand, from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand {were} sealed.”

There are several problems that have arisen in trying to understand this particular passage. The first and most fundamental problem is simply that of interpretation. How is it that we are to understand who these 144,000 are? From the middle of the third century up until the seventeenth century Christendom as a whole was dominated by an allegorical or spiritualised way of interpretation. There was an amillennial view of the future, no literal Millennium, no literal thousand-year kingdom, and as they interpreted prophetic passages the numbers weren’t taken literally. So we have either people who have a consistent literal interpretation or those who are inconsistent or just don’t have a literal interpretation at all. Those who understand these numbers to be literal realise that passage is talking about 12,000 Jewish males from each of the twelve Jewish tribes listed and that they will be sealed by the Spirit of God, which also indicates their salvation, a total of 144,000. This is a select group of Jewish males for a select purpose in the Tribulation period. Those who hold to a somewhat of an inconsistent view, a symbolic view, or a spiritualised view have all kinds of different interpretations. For example, the so-called ten lost tribes, of which there is no such thing.

Notice that the list given in vv.5-8 does not have the tribe of Dan or the tribe of Ephraim mentioned. Joseph was blessed by God with a double portion. He had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and so we never see Joseph listed in a tribal list. What us usually seen is the other brothers listed plus Ephraim or Manasseh. In nineteen listings of the names of the tribes they each differ from one another. There is always some variation and we have to look at the context to see what is being emphasised and why, and who is being left out and why. Sometimes Joseph’s name is placed instead of Ephraim and Manasseh. Sometimes Ephraim’s name is used and there are various reasons in each particular context, and none of the lists even follow the same order. Here is Revelation is one closest to the list given in Ezekiel 48:31-35, and that list includes Levi and Joseph as does this particular list.

Why are Ephraim and Dan left out? The best answer is that both of those tribes were identified with idolatry in the Old Testament.

The other question we have to address is, Why this emphasis on Israel? This goes to the question of God’s character, because God in the Old Testament promised to Abraham that He would give him a piece of real estate, a specific promise and a specific piece of real estate, and God would give it him and his descendants. If God is going to be God—remember Satan wants to be god—He has to be able to bring about His promise. If Satan can block God from fulfilling His promise to Abraham then Satan shows that God can’t be God and he can be god—he has out-manoeuvred God. So this is why the Jews are at the very core of history and why anti-Semitism is such egregious thinking, because when a person is anti-Semitic they are on Satan’s side. Satan is trying to destroy the Jews, destroy Israel, and keep God from fulfilling His promises to Israel. These go back to the basic covenants that God established. God has defined his relations with man on the basis of these legal contracts. The Abrahamic covenant was given in a succinct form in Genesis chapter twelve and includes the promises of land, an eternal seed, and a promise of blessing through the seed. These are expanded later on in three distinct covenants: the land or Palestinian covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the New covenant. If Satan can keep God from fulfilling these covenants then he is going to say that he has won.

There is one other aspect that goes back to a promise in the Old Testament related to the Law. God had promised within the Mosaic Law that if Israel succumbed to idolatry he would scatter them among all the nations. But He embedded within those promises a prediction that He would bring them all back to the land as a regenerate people. For example, Deuteronomy 4:26-29 ^NASB “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You shall not live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD drives you. There you will serve gods, the work of man’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find {Him} if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.” Deuteronomy chapter 30:1-3 talks about the fact that he will scatter them among all the nations: ^NASB “So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call {them} to mind in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you, and you return to the LORD your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the LORD your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you.” That is what God is doing in the first part of Revelation chapter seven. Through the calling out of these 144,000 God is going to send them as missionaries, as evangelists, to Israel, to proclaim the gospel that Jesus Christ is the Messiah; and it is eventually through them that large numbers of Jews will finally turn to the Lord. Those are the ones who will be brought back to the land as a regenerate people at the end of the Tribulation period.

This calling out of Israel is a tremendous example of God’s grace to rebellious Israel down through the ages and it reinforces God’s faithfulness to His Word—He never breaks His promises—and it reinforces the fact that character is so crucial in leadership, especially when it comes to who is God, because God is going to show that He is able to fulfil the promises. Satan cannot block Him and God will win. That is the focal point that we will come to at the end of the Tribulation period. The Tribulation period wraps up this angelic conflict, demonstrating Satan’s inability to fulfil his claims to be God and that only God can be God. But it reinforces for us that no matter what suffering we go through, what adversity takes place, that God is always going to be true to His promises just as He is always true to His promises to Israel.

Illustrations