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“HOW LONG, O LORD?”
Revelation 7
Bob Bonner
December 18, 2005
Since 9/11, terrorism has become a reality in the USA. Not a day has gone by that the subject of terrorism hasn’t been a front page article in local newspapers. However, no one knows as a race or a nation more personally about terror than the Jews. Throughout almost three millennium they have been rejected, scorned and hated around the world. They were run over by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans. In the past two hundred years alone, they have experienced the German Holocaust and religious rejection even in this country.
Trying to find a place they could call home, they returned to their land, to reclaim Israel, only to experience the rule of Britain, and then, finally, to gain their freedom and status as a country. But then came the Palestinian terrorists ruining any hope of Israel finding a lasting peace. In light of the recent world events, I wonder what the average Jew thinks concerning God’s care for them, amidst the suffering they have endured over the past 100-200 years?
Psalm 94 opens with the following words that, if you didn’t know better, you would think that the psalmist was writing about today. He cries out to the Lord with these words:
O Lord, the God to whom vengeance belongs, O God of vengeance, let your glorious justice be seen!
Arise, O judge of the earth. Sentence the proud to the penalties they deserve.
How long, O Lord? How long will the wicked be allowed to gloat?
Hear their arrogance! How these evildoers boast!
They oppress your people, Lord, hurting those you love.
They kill widows and foreigners and murder orphans.
“The Lord isn’t looking,” they say, “and besides, the God of Israel doesn’t care.”
Maybe you are here today, wondering the same thing. Does God really care? Or, maybe you know that He does care, but you are struggling with how to convince someone else that God really does care about them and has a plan for their lives. As I stand back and look at Revelation 7, I see the heart of God displayed, revealing that He really does care about Israel and you...probably when He would have every reason not to. In spite of the circumstances under which we live, God is still moving behind the scenes, because He does care.
Last week, we looked at the six seal judgments and their cataclysmic effects upon the earth. So destructive were these judgments, and specifically the six seal judgment, that we concluded that by the time the sixth seal was broken, human life on the planet couldn’t last much longer than a few days. As a result of the great destruction that is prophesied to take place during the last three-and-one-half years of life on this planet as we know it, the question is asked in 6:17, “Who is able stand?” The intention of that question is more than just who will be able to survive such events. It’s intent is to ask, will any who will live during these judgments be able to stand before God or be saved?
When discussing the subject of prophecy with others, I often hear this question asked, “Will anyone be saved after the Rapture?” Or, “During the Tribulation, can people still be saved?” In short, the answer is “Yes.” Immediately after the Church, the body of Christ is Raptured, there will be the realization by others, by both Jews and non-Jews who had heard about these prophecies and the Gospel, that Jesus was indeed their Messiah. As a result, there will be raised up new followers of Jesus after the Rapture and during the Tribulation. These new believers will proclaim the name of Jesus, and that only through Him can one be saved. It is significant to note that these new believers are never described by the term “church,” but they are called “saints” or God’s holy ones, those who have been chosen and set apart as belonging to Him.
However, the answer “Yes, people will go on being saved during the Tribulation” typically poses another question that needs to be addressed. This question comes from the information given us in 2 Thessalonians 2:7. Let’s take just a moment to look at that verse and explain its significance to what we are looking at this morning in Revelation 7. The verse reads, “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way.”
To understand what this verse is speaking to, one must grasp the meaning of the phrase, “the mystery of lawlessness.” A “mystery” in the New Testament refers to a new truth previously unknown, but presently having been disclosed. For instance: According to the Ephesians 3:3 the concept of the Church and its being made up of both believing Jews and non-Jews is said to be a “mystery.” The “church” was an unknown concept or a mystery to the Jews before Pentecost and Christ’s ascension into heaven in A.D. 33. Up until this time, the Jews never dreamed that the Temple worship and the required ceremonial laws would ever be discontinued. Furthermore, they never could have conceived that God would consider Gentiles on an equal plane as the Jews. It wasn’t until the Holy Spirit spoke to the apostles and explained to them the makeup and role of the Church that they understood this mystery of the church, something which God had understood all along.
In 2 Thessalonians 2:7, another such “mystery” as the Church is mentioned. This time it concerned how God was going to prevent, or keep in check, lawlessness from increasing, now that the Messiah, the prophesied ruler and judge had been rejected, crucified and had ascended into heaven.
What is this thing called lawlessness? As far back as the beginning of the Fall of the human race, there has been a movement against God, against His plans, against His laws, and against His chosen people. To put it simply, there has been an evil force that has been against God and all that God stands for. This evil force has been headed up by Satan. One of the outward evidences of this evil force at work in our world is seen in the self-centered practice of lawlessness.
Today, we see this practice of lawlessness being expressed in the belief systems that surround us. These systems declare ideas like: “There is no God and therefore you can live life any ol’ way you want to without fear of judgment.” Or, “If it feels good to you, do it, regardless if others are harmed in any way.” Or, the teaching that “There is no such thing as real truth. ‘Truth’ is relative.”
God knows that this attitude of unbridled freedoms and lawlessness left unchecked would lead to the total destruction of our world. Hence, God has created things like the human conscience and feelings of guilt to stir us up to seeing when we have done something that is wrong or against God. In addition, the Holy Spirit has moved throughout the ages to convict even non-believing kings and rulers of immorality. An example of this would be non-believing king Abimelech confronting Abram, the believer, about his lie that Sarah was his sister.
However, history bears out that over the centuries, the more lawlessness is allowed, the more God is ignored, the more seared people’s consciences become to the truth of right and wrong. In addition, with lawlessness comes the hardening of people’s hearts such that they become insensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the Old Testament ages, God used the human voices of the prophets to get through to people. But even then, sometimes people wouldn’t listen. As a result, God would bring judgment in one form or another, to get the world’s attention.
Those first century followers of Christ who understood the truth about what happens when unbridled lawlessness is allowed to exist because there is no voice of justice or of right and wrong, knew that when Jesus Christ, the “Sheriff of righteousness” was crucified and ascended into heaven, it would leave the door wide open for lawlessness to run unopposed. Hence, they questioned how was God going to prevent this lawless world from immediately destroying itself or from bringing His immediate judgment against the world.
God reveals His answer to that question in the second half of 2 Thessalonians 2:7. God says that He has a “restrainer” who right now is holding back the “lawlessness.” Who is that “restrainer?” In one sense, the restrainer is the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells us in John 16:8, that the Holy Spirit would come in a unique way after Jesus ascended to the Father, to “convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness and judgment.” One of the ways that the Holy Spirit does convict the world of right and wrong is through His indwelling and speaking through the lives of Christians, or basically, through the Church.
Although sociologists like to declare that the role of the Church as a preventative for evil in our world is non-existent, God says differently. The Church is and always has been a fly in the world’s ointment. During some points in history, it has been more prominent than others, depending upon the healthiness of the Church. In any event, the Holy Spirit’s work of restraining has been through the Church, through its evangelism and righteous living. Through His agent, the Church, the Holy Spirit works in society to hold back the swelling tide of lawless living. As an agent through which the Holy Spirit works, and as a result of this role of being society’s conscience, the Church throughout history has found itself unjustly persecuted and even deliberately misrepresented. That is not to say that the Church has always been right in the ways it has functioned in the world, and that it never deserved persecution. Yet, we are still a restraining agent of the Holy Spirit.
However, some people understand “the restrainer” to refer to the Holy Spirit, and thus believe that the Holy Spirit will leave the earth and no longer fulfill His role of convicting the world of sin. I disagree with that. The Holy Spirit can never leave the earth because He is God and omnipresent, or everywhere in the heavens and the earth, all at once. As God, there is never any place that the Holy Spirit isn’t present.
The Holy Spirit still will be at work in our world. The Holy Spirit will continue to convict people of sin and draw people to Jesus during the Tribulation just as He did before Pentecost, when He convicted non-believers of their need for a savior. Furthermore, notice that, after the Church is removed, it only takes the seven years of the Tribulation for the human race to destroy the world as we know it today!
Having covered that important background information, we now come to our study of Revelation 7. Chapter 7 is a parenthetical passage that does not advance the chronological narrative. I refer to it as parenthetical, because there are seven seals, and chapter six dealt with only the breaking open of the first six seals. Then, comes Chapter 7, to be followed right after with 8:1 and the breaking of the final seventh seal. In chapter 7, John stops to answer the question raised in the last verse of chapter 6, verse 17. That question being, “Who can stand?” meaning, “Who can stand before God, not being judged, but being saved during this time?” Or, even more concisely put, the heart of the question is, “Can any be saved during this time?”
The answer given in this chapter, to “Who will be saved?” is divided into two parts, each part dealing with a different group of people. The first class, mentioned in verses 1-8, are the redeemed Jews who have been seeking after their Messiah and finally, after the Rapture, realize that Jesus was their Messiah. The second class of people saved is mentioned in verses 9-17, and they are the redeemed non-Jews, or Gentiles that come from all over the world.
Let’s continue our study by reading verses 1-8, which point to this first group who will be saved, the redeemed, believing Jews. “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. 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, 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.’” Before God’s judgments against the world were to begin, God established that He was to set apart a remnant of believing Jews, to protect them from death during these horrible three-and-a-half years.
The “sealing...on their foreheads” is a reference to His setting apart for protection, those who are “bond-servants of God,” or those who have been saved during this period. We read later, in 14:1, that this sealing will take the form of having God the Father and Jesus, the Lamb of God’s name written on their foreheads.
There are several precedents in Scripture for such a protection of God’s chosen people during times of judgment. For instance: When God sent the Flood upon the earth, the remnant of Noah’s family survived in the Ark. Later, when God brought down Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his daughters were protected. When God was using Israel to destroy Jericho, Rahab the harlot was protected.
In the verses which follow, we are told that these bond-servants will number 144,000 Jews from the twelve tribes of Israel. We read, “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: 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.”
These Jewish believers appear again twice in Revelation: First, in 14:1-5, and once more, along with the multitude of Gentile martyrs at the time of the resurrection in 20:4.
A key point is being stressed here that we should not overlook. God is clearly indicating to the nation of Israel, that even though the world will be in a period of intense judgment and chaos, God will continue to fulfill His purpose for the nation of Israel. He has not forgotten them and His promise to have their Messiah reign on earth over them during the Kingdom age.
There appears to be an indication in the rest of Scripture that there will be more than 144,000 Jews saved during the Tribulation. These 144,000 are singled out because, different than the other Jews who will trust Christ during the Tribulation, only these will be alive and spared death during these final three-and-a-half years of the Great Tribulation. We read about the other martyrs of this period in 6:9-11, some of whom were more than likely Jews. In 6:9-11, those who had died for their faith were asking God “How long O Lord, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood?”
Different than those martyrs mentioned in chapter 6, we are told later in chapter 14 that these 144,000 will be triumphant at the end of the Tribulation when Christ returns. They will survive the Tribulation and welcome Christ in His return to earth.
In the second half of this chapter, we read that not only will many from Israel be saved, but so will many Gentiles come to Christ during the Great Tribulation. We read, 9After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; 10and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” This multitude of Gentiles who will be saved is so large that it will be beyond human computation. They come from all over the world. Their “white robes” point to them being one and the same with those who wore white robes in 6:11, indicating their approval and righteous standing before God. The waving of “palm branches” was an oriental custom indicating triumph. The fact that they are the martyred saints who died during this period is mentioned later in chapter 7.
As we read, you will see that these martyred saints join in with the heavenly host to worship and praise God and the Lamb. We read, “And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen.’ Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, ‘These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and where have they come from?’ I said to him, ‘My lord, you know.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His tabernacle over them. They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.’”
It’s obvious from what John writes in verses 16-17, that these martyred saints have gone through a great deal during the Great Tribulation. By the way, there is no mistaking that these died during the Great Tribulation. In verse 14, the literal translation of that verse emphatically reads, “These are those who came out of the tribulation, the great one.” Furthermore, the Gentiles here are identified by the same white robes mentioned in chapter 6 of those saints who had died during the Great Tribulation. The fact that verse 14, identifies them as such, strongly suggests that the first four seals that led to the death of the saints also took place during the Great Tribulation.
Jesus realizes what it took for these Gentile believers to face not just the human strife and wars and natural disasters, but their persecution til death, because of faithfully standing up for Him. That’s why He treats them with such honor and tenderness when they arrive “home.” We first read of His placing them right “before the throne,” a place of prominence. Then God grants them the place of privileged service, day and night in His heavenly tabernacle, serving Him. Then, Jesus “spreads His tabernacle” of safety and comfort over them. He provides what they need, relief from hunger and thirst, and relief from the elements of heat that they had to live under while on earth, extreme heat caused by the astronomical disasters of the falling stars.
But here is the kicker! The sacrificial Lamb will then become their Shepherd, the same shepherd of 23rd Psalm fame. Who could best know what other lambs need than the sacrificial Lamb of God? Who better than the Good Shepherd?
Keep in mind who it is that is observing this scene and who it is that is writing down these words. The apostle John is one who has seen terrible injustices suffered against other Christians. He has seen the Lamb executed by crucifixion. He has seen friends martyred for their faith. He presently, in his 80's is in exile on Patmos, separated from any family and friends. Once again, this very author of John 10, which spells out Jesus’ comments on the “Good Shepherd” is forced to be reminded that the Lamb is the Shepherd.
Take a moment and read with me the 23rd Psalm, which depicts King David’s understanding of the nature of God. As you do, keep in mind what this must have meant to John. As well, what is God saying to you, in the light of your very own circumstances about God as He relates to you right now.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.”
Literally, God’s reputation is at stake in what He does for us, as it is for those who will live through the terrible times in the future. Does He treat us justly? Does He fulfill His promises, like those concerning our basic needs for food, shelter and clothing? The obvious answer is “yes,” and the fact that the hosts of heaven in chapter 7 worship and praise His name reveals that God is worthy of our trust and praise. God makes sure that even the hurt and pains that come across our path will be used to conform us to be more like His son, and thus, they are not wasted, unnecessary or cruel.
Through the rest of the Psalm, notice how David changes the way he refers to God. No longer is David speaking of God as “He.” Now, David speaks warmly, affectionately and directly to God, for David knows that God loves him very much. He continues,
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
Whether David is referring to his own death or a death of a loved one, David is declaring that God has proven Himself faithful. That though he walks in times of distress, he declares the truth that God has not abandoned him, no matter how bleak and maybe even alone he may feel at times.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over.”
Regardless of the difficulty of his life, David admits that God is not just his protector, but his provider.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.”
The shepherd of David’s 23rd Psalm is the same Lamb/Shepherd we read about here, in Revelation 7. This same Shepherd, the Chief Shepherd as Jesus calls Himself in 1 Peter 5, will guide, feed, give drink and rest to these weary souls who have suffered so through these horrible events of the Great Tribulation. He will so love them that He will wipe away every tear, and it’s my conviction that with every tear Jesus wipes away, He will also wipe away the memory that would have caused the sorrow in the first place.
The most important fact taught here is that as God promises to continue to watch over Israel and other believers during the Great Tribulation, so also, Jesus, the Good Shepherd watches over us now! He doesn’t change character over time. He is the same today, tomorrow and forever. Even in the midst of life’s harshest circumstances, God has not abandoned us. God is still at work in us and those situations that surround our lives.
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