(Will be taught through on 6/18/2017 at Curtis Baptist Church…out of order by about 2 weeks, but was not taught in class)
Hurricanes are huge water delivered storms with a curious twist. That curious twist is the center where ocean’s dark and powerful churning diminishes to a startling ease. That is the eye of the storm. Revelation 7 is like that eye in the storm.
Think back to the way how Revelation 6 concluded. The last scene was the opening of the sixth seal, and it proved to be an equalizer among mankind as acts of God shook the world. In the rattling and rolling great and small ran to the heedless hills, and once there called out for those hills to fall on them. In that time large swaths of the population showed their preference to be cavemen rather than “God-men.”
An eye in the storm
1 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. 2 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, 3 saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” (Revelation 7:1-3–ESV)
Don’t get tripped up by the symbolism here. No suggestion is being made that the earth is flat, or square, or that there are but four winds that sweep the earth. While some analogies may be drawn from this the greatest thing to see is the pause in earth’s destruction.
Four angels will first be sent to restrain the rattles of the earth while a fifth rises with the sun. As a tormented ship breaks through the inner wall of the hurricane and into an interlude so will the earth. That fifth angel will command the destroying angels to pause their destruction. When John uses the word until we know that this will be but a pause. [Read more…] about Revelation 7: An eye in the storm: Honor for Christ followers