Read with Me
Revelation 7:1-8 (NET)
After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so no wind could blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, who had the seal of the living God. He shouted out with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given permission to damage the earth and the sea: “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees until we have put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Now I heard the number of those who were marked with the seal, 144,000, sealed from all the tribes of the people of Israel:
From the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed,
From the tribe of Reuben, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Gad, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Asher, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Naphtali, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Manasseh, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Issachar, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Zebulun, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand,
From the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed.
Listen with Me
Even though God’s judgment on those who were persecuting the Church is waiting in the wings and has been foreshadowed by the signs and omens at the end of chapter 6 (remember that the chapter breaks were added in the ninth century, more than 800 years after John wrote these visions down – there is no break in thought between 6:17 and 7:1), there was one more thing that needed to be done before it was unleashed. God needed to make sure that His people were shielded from His wrath.
Throughout history, God has not protected His people from every tragedy, or even from mistreatment by others. Those are tools of the enemy that God allows in order to strengthen and test His people. But He protects them from His wrath as long as they are walking in obedience with Him.
Two clear examples of this are the way He protected His people from the impact of the ten plagues that He brought on Egypt (Exodus 7-12), and the protection of His people during the siege and fall of Jerusalem. For the second protection, God gave Ezekiel a vision similar to John’s (Ezekiel 9) in which those who were following God were marked on their foreheads with a seal. God’s wrath was then unleashed, but it only fell on those who did not bear His seal on their foreheads.
In this case, the Israelites who had received Jesus are purposefully singled out for recognition. Some have tried to spiritualize this so that the 144,000 (12,000 from each of the twelve tribes) indicates all believers. But that is not the way that this was read at the time it was written, and it is not necessary. The sealing of these 144,000 Jewish believers does not indicate that no one else was sealed. It simply indicates that a huge number of the Jewish people had received Jesus and were following God, fulfilling His promise to redeem the people of Israel. Thus, those Jews who chose Jesus were protected from God’s judgment and His wrath that He was about to unleash, unlike those Jews who had rejected Jesus and were actively participating in the persecution of the Christians.
Pray with Me
Father, I know that You have often protected Your people from Your judgment, sometimes in ways that we don’t even realize until after the fact. And it is a promise that You have fulfilled for Your people, Jews and Gentiles alike, over and over again, not just in the time covered by the Bible, but in the 2,000 years since. Your wrath may fall on people all around me, but as long as I am following You, sealed on my forehead with the mark that identifies me as one of Your people, that wrath will not fall on me. Instead, as Psalm 91 shows, I will be able to witness Your judgment falling while remaining safe under Your protective shadow. Thank You, Lord, for these amazing promises and, more than that, for the ways in which I can see them illustrated over and over again in history, and in my own life. Amen.