Chapter 5.
Getting Uncentered.
When I began this project I confessed that I wasn’t certain where I should begin it. If I were to take the various subjects in the order in which discovered them, I would have begun here. When I first asked the Holy Spirit to guide me in my understanding of Revelation, I was increasingly aware of the importance of numbers and very quickly found myself being sidetracked by getting too detailed and complicated.
But then...
"Hold on," I thought, for hundreds of years people mostly heard Revelation being read, not having their own copy to study at depth. If numbers mean something, it must have been obvious to the listener what was being referred to as the numbers were employed. There may have been common understandings of the meanings of different numbers two thousand years ago which we don’t have now, but having Revelation in front of me to study, I bet I can rediscover what they mean.
There are many groups of things or events in Revelation which consist of seven things, or can be made into groups of seven, but there are only three which are actually numbered. Why don’t I start there? Duhhh.
I couldn’t resist the temptation to be detailed and complicated. I made charts. Many charts. Pie charts, tables, bar graphs, the whole bit. It was an embarrassingly long time before I noticed that each of the first four seals referred to one of the living creatures. The lamb broke open the first seal and one of the living creatures cried, “Come!” We have, over the centuries, become so preoccupied with the four horsemen that we have pretty much ignored the ones who called them forth.
Each time one of the first four seals is broken, one of the living creatures call forth a rider. Realizing that was a beginning. I wondered if the last three seals were related to other "actors" in the heavenly scene. Guess what I found.
When the fifth seal is broken, we are directed to the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They are impatiently crying out for vengeance. Ha! Humans! More about their behavior later.
The space devoted to the sixth seal is much larger than the others. The key thing mentioned is that creation itself begins to come apart. There is much detail, which I am omitting here, but if the actions related to the breaking of the seals corresponds with the personages in the heavenly scene, then the sixth seal is linked to the lamb, Christ, the Lord of creation. And the lamb is mentioned here by name. "Who can withstand the wrath of the lamb?"
Well, what about the seventh seal? Actually, that's a good question. There has been so much activity with the sixth seal that we forget about the seventh. But we find it at the beginning of Chapter 8. When the lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven one half hour.
The one seated on the throne calls a pause in the action and returns our attention to heaven.
So in order, the seven seals correspond to the four living creatures, whose identities we can guess at, but we won't right now; the humans, taken all together; the lamb, Christ, the Lord of creation; and the one upon the throne, God, the first and the last. Put another way:
1. Creature one.
2. Creature two.
3. Creature three.
4. Creature four.
5. The 24 elders.
6. The lamb.
7. God.
When we look at the next two series of seven numbered events, the blowing of the trumpets, which follows immediately, and the pouring out of the bowls of wrath, which follows much later, the above seven are not clearly identified. That connection has been made. The next two series give added depth of meaning to them.
Getting Uncentered.
When I began this project I confessed that I wasn’t certain where I should begin it. If I were to take the various subjects in the order in which discovered them, I would have begun here. When I first asked the Holy Spirit to guide me in my understanding of Revelation, I was increasingly aware of the importance of numbers and very quickly found myself being sidetracked by getting too detailed and complicated.
But then...
"Hold on," I thought, for hundreds of years people mostly heard Revelation being read, not having their own copy to study at depth. If numbers mean something, it must have been obvious to the listener what was being referred to as the numbers were employed. There may have been common understandings of the meanings of different numbers two thousand years ago which we don’t have now, but having Revelation in front of me to study, I bet I can rediscover what they mean.
There are many groups of things or events in Revelation which consist of seven things, or can be made into groups of seven, but there are only three which are actually numbered. Why don’t I start there? Duhhh.
I couldn’t resist the temptation to be detailed and complicated. I made charts. Many charts. Pie charts, tables, bar graphs, the whole bit. It was an embarrassingly long time before I noticed that each of the first four seals referred to one of the living creatures. The lamb broke open the first seal and one of the living creatures cried, “Come!” We have, over the centuries, become so preoccupied with the four horsemen that we have pretty much ignored the ones who called them forth.
Each time one of the first four seals is broken, one of the living creatures call forth a rider. Realizing that was a beginning. I wondered if the last three seals were related to other "actors" in the heavenly scene. Guess what I found.
When the fifth seal is broken, we are directed to the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They are impatiently crying out for vengeance. Ha! Humans! More about their behavior later.
The space devoted to the sixth seal is much larger than the others. The key thing mentioned is that creation itself begins to come apart. There is much detail, which I am omitting here, but if the actions related to the breaking of the seals corresponds with the personages in the heavenly scene, then the sixth seal is linked to the lamb, Christ, the Lord of creation. And the lamb is mentioned here by name. "Who can withstand the wrath of the lamb?"
Well, what about the seventh seal? Actually, that's a good question. There has been so much activity with the sixth seal that we forget about the seventh. But we find it at the beginning of Chapter 8. When the lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven one half hour.
The one seated on the throne calls a pause in the action and returns our attention to heaven.
So in order, the seven seals correspond to the four living creatures, whose identities we can guess at, but we won't right now; the humans, taken all together; the lamb, Christ, the Lord of creation; and the one upon the throne, God, the first and the last. Put another way:
1. Creature one.
2. Creature two.
3. Creature three.
4. Creature four.
5. The 24 elders.
6. The lamb.
7. God.
When we look at the next two series of seven numbered events, the blowing of the trumpets, which follows immediately, and the pouring out of the bowls of wrath, which follows much later, the above seven are not clearly identified. That connection has been made. The next two series give added depth of meaning to them.