Sermon Central
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The Seventh Seal [end Times / Tribulation] Series
Contributed by Jerry Shirley on Aug 27, 2006 (message contributor)
Summary: If you think the first 6 seals were bad you haven’t seen anything yet. Now the 7 Trumpets begin to blow, including the 7 Bowls of Wrath. Bottom Line: You don’t want to be here! Link included to formatted MS Word text and PowerPoint.
The 7th Seal
Rev. 8:1-6
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In the previous 2 chapters, we’ve seen a description of the 7 year tribulation period as God’s judgment is poured out upon sinful man.
Thru the apostle John, the Lord Jesus reveals to us things about the tribulation period in series of 7’s.
7 seals / 7 trumpets / 7 bowls of wrath
We’ve already seen 6 of the seals broken in God’s scroll, and each one ushered in a specific judgment of a Holy God upon a Christ-rejecting world.
The 4 horsemen of the apocalypse delivered the first 4 judgments: Dominion, Division, Depravation, and Death!
The 5th and 6th seals revealed the people left on earth praying to the rocks of the mountains to fall on them--they were wishing they were dead.
Then in ch. 7 there is a break between the 6th and 7th seals, the lull before the storm, and judgment was withheld from the earth for a space of time that God might seal the 144k Jewish Evangelists, and turn them loose on the earth, winning souls in great numbers, souls who had never heard the gospel before the rapture took the church away!
One seal is yet to be opened, the 7th--and it is by far the most terrible of the tribulation horrors. The opening of the 7th seal brings to pass 3 dramatic results:
Preparation--Desolation--and Liberation
Time will allow us to look at the first tonite, the¡K
Preparation of the 7th seal¡X
Let’s look at the eerie silence, and then the awesome supplication.
The eerie silence:
v. 1 A strange, eerie, but awesome silence. It is no doubt the longest silence that the joyful place of Heaven has ever known. This silence will stand in stark contrast to the Heaven we see in ch’s 4 and 5, as those gathered around the throne cry Thou art worthy, and a choir of 100 million declare: worthy is the Lamb, and they cease not day and night crying holy, holy, holy!
And then for 30 minutes all of heaven is dead silent! What does this silence stand for? [some have suggested there will be no women in Heaven¡Kbut I wouldn¡¦t dare say that! :-)] Seriously--why does heaven come to a standstill? What does this silence represent?
I believe that all of Heaven is holding its breath. I believe that what they see at the opening of the 7th seal is so terrible, so horrendous, so incredibly frightening, that no one in heaven dares to breathe a word--like the silence in the courtroom, just before the verdict is read--it’s like the silence in the executioner’s chamber, just before he pulls the switch, or administers the lethal injection!
It reminds me of Zephaniah 1:7
7 Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD: for the day of the LORD is at hand.
13 Be silent, O all flesh, before the LORD: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.
20 But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.
At this point in the book of Revelation, judgment is about to come to the earth like never before. The storm is about to break in all of it’s fury, and the enormity of what is about to happen causes even God to pause--and soberly assess what must be done--and so for 30 minutes, nobody says a word! / takes a breath / moves!
What do they see at the opening of the 7th seal that is so awesome it brings about this eerie, deafening silence? We¡¦re given just a glimpse of it in v. 2¡K
v. 2 In the Bible, a trumpet stands for several things. A trumpet is very significant when it comes to the nation of Israel. The trumpet was used to sound the alarm / call God¡¦s people to work, to war, to worship.
The trumpet sound meant that God was getting ready to intervene into the affairs of men.
It was a trumpet that sounded on Mt. Sinai¡X10 commandments
¡KI and II Kings, when kings were anointed and enthroned
¡Kwhen the walls of Jericho came tumbling down
In Rev. 1, the voice of Christ was like the sound of a trumpet
In ch. 4, the sound of the rapture trumpet called the apostle John to heaven!
No wonder heaven stood still for half an hour, when they saw 7 angels preparing to sound 7 trumpets in a row! Something big was about to happen! / enormous proportions!
Wanna hear those trumpets blow? You¡¦ll have to come back on Wed. night!
Tonite, we¡¦re talking only about the preparation, Wed. we¡¦ll look at the desolation!
