Revelation 7.1-3. After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.”
In the opening of the sixth seal at the end of Revelation 6, we see the Green Light for the Day of Yahweh to commence. Interestingly, there the wrath of God is equaled to the wrath of the Lamb (a death-blow to those who argue that Jesus wasn’t divine). The question at the end of chapter six was, ‘Who can survive the great day of the Lamb’s wrath?’ In chapter seven, we receive the answer: the ones who will survive the day of the Lamb’s wrath are those whom God has identified and set apart by sealing them on their foreheads. Four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding onto the four winds of the earth, represent the ‘staying hand’ of God: though the battle is about to be fought, there is one more delay while God’s people are marked out for deliverance. These four angels are likely the same horsemen, for in Ezekiel 6, the four horsemen are identified with ‘spirits’ or ‘winds.’
This parallels what we see in God’s destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. There, God identified His own and separated them for safety (sending them to exile in Babylon; what looked like punishment was actually deliverance!). This fact was symbolically portrayed to Ezekiel in a vision of an angel marking God’s faithful with an ink mark on their foreheads. Following this marking, six angels with deadly weapons were dispatched against Jerusalem to slaughter its inhabitants (Ezekiel 9).
“What is this seal on the forehead?” The marking on the forehead, as we’ve seen, isn’t something unique to Revelation; it’s also present in the lead-up to Jerusalem’s destruction five hundred years earlier. The forehead is significant: in the Old Testament, ‘Holiness to the Lord’ was bound to Aaron’s forehead (Exodus 28.36-38); in Revelation, the name of the Great Harlot is bound to her forehead (Rev 17.15) and the mark of the beast was put on one’s hand or forehead (Rev 13.17). In Deuteronomy 6.8, God required His people to bind His law on their right hand or on their forehead; the mark of the beast, then, is a parody of what God requires of His people. Our allegiance to Christ should be as apparent to the world as our forehead.
Just prior to the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, the Jewish Christians in that city were warned by a prophetic oracle to flee from the city. Historian Eusebius writes, ‘The whole body, however, of the church at Jerusalem, having been commanded by a divine revelation, given to men of approved piety there before the war, removed from the city, and dwelt at a certain town beyond the Jordan, called Pella.’ Remember that in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 Jesus told his disciples the signs leading up to Jerusalem’s destruction, encouraging them to flee for safety when the time of Jerusalem’s desolation drew near (Luke 21.21). The early Christians did just that. God never sends His judgments in before the sealing angel does his work.
144,000 is a symbolic representation of the full number of Jewish Christians who escaped the doomed city before its destruction. That this group lived in the first century is confirmed in Rev 14.14, which calls this group the ‘firstfruits of God.’ Since the church age has been one long harvest of souls, the ‘firstfruits’ must have come in at the beginning. If this group referred to some future group of Jewish Christians living during the ‘End Times’ (as futurists suggests), one would expect them to be called the ‘last fruits.’ The fact that they are identified by the tribes of Israel is further evidence that this refers not to a conglomerate of believers from every tribe and tongue and nation but to Jewish believers. At the same time, because Christ selected twelve apostles and the church is elsewhere identified as the Israel of God (Galatians 6.16, Ephesians 2.12) it may be that the 144,000 represent not exclusively Jewish Christians but simply early Christians, regardless of their ethnicity and nationality.
“Why 144,000?” A basic military unit in ancient Israel was a chiliad, a thousand men (Numbers 31.4-5). If you take the number of tribes, which is twelve, and square that number, you get 144. Multiply by a thousand, and you have a symbolic number for the host of Israel.
It’s interesting that the tribes are listed out of their usual order. The tribe of Judah comes first, which makes sense, for it was out of the tribe of Judah that Christ came. The tribe of Dan is missing, and Joseph is listed as a tribe instead of Ephraim. They may have been excluded because of their checkered history of apostasy and idolatry.
The 144,000 whom John saw in the preceding verses represented the Jewish Christians escaping the ravaging of Judea and Jerusalem. Now John sees an ‘innumerable multitude’ who ‘come out’ of the ‘great tribulation’ (the ‘great tribulation’ isn’t some future event but those events leading up to and including Jerusalem’s destruction). Here we receive a picture of the Gentiles who will be saved as a result of God disowning His rebellious wife and children and seeking a new family. They are dressed in white – symbolizing purity – and holding palms – which symbolize victory. Their white robes have been ‘washed in the blood of the Lamb’ in that their holiness derives from being washed by His sacrifice. They ‘come out’ of Jerusalem’s destruction in the sense that their inclusion in God’s kingdom resulted from that event, at which time Judaism came to a formal end and the universal gospel was proclaimed to all nations. The destruction of Jerusalem symbolizes the end of the Old Covenant and of covenant membership being restricted to the Jewish people; now Jerusalem is a smoldering heap of rubble and covenant membership is open to all who submit themselves to the Lamb. It’s for this purpose that John uses ‘universal’ language – people ‘of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues’ – which is the sort of language we find used at Pentecost, that event in Acts which showed covenant membership opening to all people everywhere.
Some scholars believe that this ‘innumerable multitude’ doesn’t represent all converted Gentiles but only those who would be martyred for their faith. We know that vast numbers of Christians were killed by certain Roman emperors after the fall of Jerusalem.
Revelation 8.1-6: The Seventh Seal Is Opened. When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them.
God’s forces of destruction are arrayed for battle, storming ahead to do the Lamb’s work; God’s people have been sealed on their foreheads for deliverance from the ‘great tribulation’ about to lay waste to Judea; and now there’s silence in heaven for a short time (symbolically represented by ‘half an hour’). The ‘loud voices’ of the martyrs crying out for vengeance have ceased, for now the vaults of judgment have been opened and the horsemen are riding to usher in the Lamb’s victory, a conquest that will be marked with war, famine, and death for their persecutors.
This silence may also be an allusion to the siege of Jericho; the parallels are stunning. Joshua 6.2-5 reads, ‘Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”’ Just as there are seven trumpets in Revelation signaling the destruction of Jerusalem, so there were seven priests armed with seven trumpets. For six days the Israelite army marched around the city in preparation for battle against Jericho; similarly, the six seals of Revelation are preparing for battle against Jerusalem. On the seventh day, the priests were to march around the city seven times, blowing their trumpets; in Revelation, the seventh seal (representing the seventh days at Jericho) is divided into seven trumpets (just as we see with the army marching seven times around the city). When the seven priests blow their seven trumpets, Jericho will fall into Israelite hands; when the seven trumpets are blown in Revelation, Jerusalem will fall into the avenging hands of Jesus. When the Israelites marched around the city seven times on the seventh day, they did so in silence (Joshua 6.10), which parallels the silence heard in heaven before the blowing of the angelic trumpets.
An angel takes the censer, which was used in offering the saints’ prayers for justice and vindication to God, and fills it with fire from the altar before throwing it to the earth (or ‘land’ of Judea). In the Old Testament, when God’s people were commanded to destroy an apostate city, Moses ordered, ‘You shall gather all its booty into the middle of its open square and burn all its booty with fire as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God’ (Deut 13.16, Judg 20.40, Gen 19.48). The only acceptable way to burn a city as a whole burnt sacrifice was with God’s fire, or fire from the altar. Thus, when a city was to be destroyed, the priest would take fire from God’s altar and use it to ignite the heap of booty which served as kindling, so offering up the entire city as a sacrifice. It is this practice of putting a city ‘under the ban,’ so that nothing survives the fire (Deut 13.12-18), that the Book of Revelation uses to describe God’s judgment against apostate Jerusalem.
Commentators speculate over the identity of the unnamed angel. Most take it to be Christ, since His functions at the altar are priestly in nature. It would be odd for a mere creature to be representing the prayers of the saints to God; still less would it be appropriate for a mere angel to answer those prayers. The Bible tells us that Jesus is our intercessor (Romans 8.34, Hebrews 7.25) and our High Priest (Hebrews 4.14-16).
“Why trumpets” For Israel, the trumpet was an instrument used to rally the troops for war or to warn of an enemy invasion. Likening the upcoming judgments to the sounding of trumpets suggests that God Himself is making war against His enemies in apostate Israel.
How do we interpret the trumpets? Some scholars believe they represent, in general terms, the destruction the Lamb thrusts upon Judea and Jerusalem; in this interpretation, there’s no reason to take them in chronological order. The ‘woes’ are reserved for the ‘worst of the worst’ representations. Another theory, which I hold, is that the first four trumpets refer to a series of disasters that devastated Israel in the events leading up to Jerusalem’s destruction, and the last three trumpets – called ‘woes’ – refer specifically to Jerusalem’s destruction. They are called ‘woes’ not merely because they are worse than the other trumpets but because they are against God’s chosen city.
The first trumpet likely represents several years of ravaging and pillaging prior to the destruction of Jerusalem itself. In this period, after the outbreak of the First Jewish War, the land suffered terribly. The historian Josephus recounts how the Romans laid waste to the land around Jerusalem: ‘And now the Romans… raised their banks in one-and-twenty days, after they had cut down all the trees that were in the country that adjoined the city, and that for ninety furlongs round about… And [the] very view itself of the country was a melancholy thing; for those places which were before adorned with trees and pleasant gardens were now become a desolate country every way, and its trees were all cut down; nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change; for the war had laid all signs of beauty quite waste.’ Other interpreters believe the burning of the trees and grass doesn’t represent actual literal events but is symbolic of men, trees being kings and princes and rulers whereas grass represents ordinary folk.
Hail, fire, and blood? The plagues mentioned here are reminiscent of those God leveled against Egypt at the birth of the Hebrew nation; here they mark the end of the nation’s lifespan, and they carry ominous undertones: just as Yahweh had steeled Himself against pagan Egypt, now He is steeling Himself against pagan Jerusalem. This theme – Jerusalem being treated in the same manner as Egypt and other pagan nations – is picked up again and again, honing in on the point that Jerusalem has become ‘paganized’ and will be dealt with in the same way that God dealt with other pagan nations in the past.
A burning mountain cast into the sea? Symbolically, the image of a mountain in prophecy often refers to a government or a kingdom. The nation of Israel was God’s Holy Mountain, the Mountain of God’s Inheritance (Exodus 15.17). Mount Zion was an accepted symbol of the nation. The great mountain burning with fire likely represents Jerusalem: the city was burned by the Romans in the literal sense, and in the symbolic sense, fire represents judgment. This mountain was cast into the sea; in prophetic imagery, the sea is often used as a symbol of the Gentile nations. Thus this graphic image represents the Jewish state collapsing, Jerusalem going into the hands of the Gentile Romans, and the resultant dispersion of the Jews throughout the Gentile world.
In Matthew 21, Jesus curses a barren fig tree in the presence of His disciples, which symbolized the cursing of the fruitless nation. When Jesus’ disciples pointed out the withered fig tree, Jesus commented, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt… if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea, it will be done.’ (Matt 21.21) Since the comment is connected to the cursing of the fig tree, which itself is connected with the cursing of the Jewish nation, the ‘mountain’ which Jesus speaks of is Jerusalem itself. Remember that when Jesus says this, they are at Jerusalem; ‘this’ mountain isn’t just any mountain but the mountain on which they sat. With the second trumpet blast, Jesus’ words are being fulfilled: judgment is coming to Judea, and the mountain is being cast into the sea.
Death and destruction in the sea? While the first part of the second trumpet is obviously a cryptic prophecy of Judea’s impending judgment at the hands of the Romans, it’s possible that the back half – the part referring to the sea becoming blood, a third of the creatures in it dying, and a third of the ships destroyed – has a literal fulfillment. Josephus describes a battle in which the Romans pursued many Galileans onto the Sea of Tiberius (the Sea of Galilee) and slaughtered them there:
‘And for such as were drowning in the sea, if they lifted their heads up above the water they were either killed by darts [arrows], or caught by the vessels; but if, in the desperate case they were in, they attempted to swim to their enemies, the Romans cut off either their heads or their hands; and indeed they were destroyed after various manners everywhere, till the rest, being put to flight, were forced to get upon the land, while the vessels encompassed them about [the sea]; but as many of these were repulsed when they were getting ashore, they were killed by the darts upon the lake; and the Romans leaped out of their vessels, and destroyed a great many more upon the land: one might then see the lake all bloody, and full of dead bodies, for not one of them escaped. And a terrible stink, and a very sad sight there was on the following days over that country; for as for the shores, they were full of shipwrecks, and of dead bodies all swelled; and as the dead bodies were inflamed by the sun, and putrefied, they corrupted the air, insomuch that the misery was not only the object of commiseration to the Jews, but to those that hated them, and had been the authors of that misery.’
The turning of fresh water sources bitter and toxic may be in part a literal result of the decaying corpses that lay in the Sea of Galilee and in the river as a result of the war. It may also refer to the polluting of wells and cisterns.
Other commentators believe it’s a reversal of the classic story in Exodus in which God turns bitter water sweet. When Moses brought the children of Israel away from the Red Sea in Exodus 15, they came to a place called Marah. It was called that because the water was bitter. God showed Moses a tree there which he threw into the bitter water in order to make it sweet. With the third trumpet, the pattern is reversed: the waters are sweet, and God throws a great star, burning like a torch, into the water in such a way as to make it bitter. Remember the warning given to the Israelites at Marah, in which God warned them, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.” (Exodus 15.26). If the Israelites kept God’s commandments, they would not be visited with the diseases He’d inflicted upon the Egyptians; they wouldn’t take the place of Egypt. Of course, they failed to keep God’s commandments and violated His covenant with them; and so they took the place of Egypt. The vision of the third trumpet combines biblical imagery from the fall of both Egypt and Babylon. As we will see, the plagues visited upon Egypt will symbolically fall upon Jerusalem. She has not kept God’s covenant, has thus become an Egypt, and will suffer for it.
The name of this fallen star is ‘Wormwood,’ a term used in the Law and the Prophets to warn Israel of its destruction as a punishment for apostasy (Deut 29.18, Jer 9.15, Lam 3.15 and 19). The term literally means ‘bitter.’ By combining these Old Testament allusions, the point is clear: Israel is apostate and has become an Egypt; Jerusalem has become a Babylon; and the covenant-breakers will be destroyed, as surely as Egypt and Babylon were destroyed. In Amos 5.6, it was the sin – turning judgment into wormwood, or perverting justice – that invited further judgment from God. This was precisely the great sin on the part of the Jewish people: in the worst perversion of justice in human history, they condemned Jesus to a cross of wood, where he was offered a bitter drink (vinegar mixed with gall). What was this but the crime of turning justice into wormwood? This is what invited the cataclysmic destruction of AD 70.
Revelation 8:12: The Fourth Trumpet. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night.
The imagery used here was long used in the prophets to depict the fall of nations and national rulers (Isaiah 13.9-11, 19; 24.19-23; 34.4-5; Ezekiel 32.7-8, 11-12; Joel 2.10, 28-32; Acts 2.16-21). Many commentators argue that this refers to historical political turmoil not only within the Jewish provisional government – remember different factions were warring with one another and no political party held absolute control – but also of political turmoil within the Roman government. During and around the time of the First Jewish War, Rome was going through political infighting and civil wars. A number of emperors came and went, and none of them passing by old age: Nero, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius killed their predecessors one after another.
An eagle flying is a reading better attested in the manuscripts than an angel flying (as some translations have it). This is critical: the prophets warnings of Israel’s destruction are often couched in terms of eagles descending upon carrion (Deut 28.49; Jer 4.13; Lam 4:19; Hos 8.1; Hab 1.8; Matt 24.28). Interestingly, a basic aspect of the covenantal curse that God promised would fall on Israel if it went rogue was being devoured by birds of the air (Gen 15.9-12; Deut 28.26, 49; Prov 30.17; Jer 7.33-34, 16.3-4, 19.7, 34.18-20; Ezek 39.17, 20; and Rev 19.17-18).
These woes refer to the destruction of Jerusalem. The first woe refers to the seditions among the Jews themselves, the second woe to the besieging of the city by the Romans, and the third woe the taking and sacking of the city and the burning of the Temple. This last woe was the greatest of all the woes, as in it the city and Temple were destroyed, and nearly a million men lost their lives.
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