And I heard the number of those who were being sealed, 144,000, sealed from all the tribes of the sons of Israel.  Rev. 7:4.
 
    Revelation 7:4-8 echoes Old Testament passages that number the armies of Israel (see tomorrow's devotional).  The 144,000 are God's end-time army.  But it is a different kind of army.  It doesn't win victory by forcing its will on others.  Instead, the model of Christian warfare is the Lamb that was slain (Rev. 5:6).  Christians overcome not by intelligence or human power, but by the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 12:11).  In other words, Christian victory comes through weakness, not strength (see 2 Cor. 12:7-10).
 
    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent years resisting his captors in the Soviet gulag.  He sought to achieve some semblance of control over his schedule, his food, and other matters.  But when he became a Christian, he relinquished such attempts at control.  In so doing he "became free of even his captor's power."
 
    A Hezbollah leader reacted in shock when Brother Andrew offered his life in exchange for that of a prisoner.  The Muslim official became Brother Andrew's friend.  But observing the lack of commitment among most Christians, he later protested, "Andrew, you Christians...are not following the life of Jesus anymore....You must go back to the book, the New Testament."  What he meant was that the teaching of Jesus includes loving our enemies, something the Hezbollah leader had not experienced from Christians until he met Brother Andrew.
 
    An army requires close cooperation to achieve success.  So our lives together as Christians are an important part of our witness.  The genuineness of our experience reveals itself in how we treat each other (John 13:35).
 
    An army must be prepared for both offense and defense.  Sometimes the Christian soldier can do no more than hold a position against the devil's schemes (Eph. 6:11-14).  But God also issues Christians an offensive weapon: the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (verse 17).
 
    We are, therefore, called to do more than just worship and encourage each other in a church setting, waiting for the lost to come in.  The 144,000 take the good news of salvation outside the walls of the church into the "highways and byways" of our communities.  But revelation makes it clear that every "offensive" takes place in weakness, trusting in the power and the presence of our Lord.
 
Lord, I wish I were bolder in witness.  It is not that I am ashamed of You, but that I am afraid that people will think differently of me.  Help me to remember that in humiliation and weakness I am following Your steps.  I have nothing to fear, because Your path leads to victory.

   And I heard the number of those who were being sealed, 144,000, sealed from all the tribes of the sons of Israel.  Rev. 7:4.
 
    One of the most fascinating puzzles in the book of Revelation is what to do with the eye-catching number 144,000.  What or whom does this group represent and what difference might that make to those of us who read this text today?
 
    The most obvious thing in the passage, perhaps, is that the number derives from multiplying 12 times 12 by 1,000.  One 12 represents the 12 tribes of Old Testament Israel; 12, 00 come from each tribe, thus reaching a total of 144,000.  But the Old Testament uses the Hebrew word for "thousand" (pronounced eleph) in a variety of ways--it is not just a number.  As a number, of course, eleph would represent 144 groups of 1,000 people each.  Related to this, the word can also designate a military unit.  We would call that unit a brigade or battalion.  The Romans referred to it as a cohort.  A Roman cohort had about 1,000 men, 960 soldiers plus their officers.
 
    It appears that eleph ("thousand") could also apply to the administrative divisions of each tribe, something like countries or shires (Ex. 18:21, 25).  Ancient Israel had rulers over ten thousands (the number of men in each tribe totaled five figures [Num. 26:4-62], rulers of thousands (this would be like the county administration), and rulers of hundreds (villages), fifties and tens (extended families).
 
    Since the nation of Israel originally descended from a single family (see Gen. 49:1-28), such administrative divisions also represent a family tree: each of the tribes could be broken down into subtribes, clans, and families.  The eleph then would not represent a number, but the leader of a major tribal subgroup or clan.  The number 144,000 would stand for 144 heads of households, each ruling a clan numbered in four figures.  What is the point?  However you interpret the "thousand," the number 144,000 is a symbolic way of depicting the totality of Israel's people.
 
    So the 144,000 depict the people of God as a whole.  The book of Revelation expands Israel to include those who follow the disciples of the Lamb in their allegiance to the Messiah.  In the New Jerusalem (see Rev. 21) each gate represents one of the 12 tribes of Israel and each foundation stands for one of the 12 apostles (see Matt. 19:28).  So the 144,000 is not some elite group that leaves most of us out.  It is a symbol of everyone who has ever been faithful to the God of Israel, no matter when or where (Rev. 7:9).
 
Lord, I am so grateful that everyone can be a part of the totality of Israel, no matter who they are or where they come from.  I commit myself to be part of Your Faithful end-time people.

     And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God.  He cried out with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to harm the earth and the sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads."  Rev. 7:2, 3.
    
    The setting of Revelation 7 appears in the last verse of chapter 6.  "For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" (Rev. 6:17, NKJV).  The purpose of Revelation 7 is to provide the answer to this question at the end of Revelation 6: "Who [at the time of the end] is able to stand?"  The answer comes in two parts: the 144,000 (Rev. 7:1-8) and the great multitude (verses 9-17).
 
    This passage has a chilling background.  The scene is Jerusalem, the year probably 586 B.C.  In a vision Ezekiel's companion summons the guards of the city.  The prophet watches as six terrifying men approach the Temple from the north with deadly weapons in their hands.  A seventh man accompanies them, and he has a writing kit at his side.  The seven men enter the Temple courts and stand by the altar of burnt offering (Eze. 9:1, 2).
 
    Then a stunning thing happens.  Visible to all, the shekinah glory of God rises up from the ark and exits the door of the Temple!  God Himself calls out to the man with the writing kit and says, "Go through the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it" (verse 4, NIV).  Then He orders the other six to follow him and slaughter old and young, male and female, without showing pity of compassion.  "But do not touch anyone who has the mark.  Begin at my sanctuary" (verse 6, NIV).  And the men begin to slaughter among the elders standing in front of the Temple (verse 7).
 
    The scene is one of the most frightening and sobering ones in all the Bible.  It is a symbolic description of events that took place almost literally in the destruction of Jerusalem in Ezekiel's day.  God drew a distinction between those who were on His side (sighing and crying for the abomination of the people) and those who would perish.
 
    Revelation 7 seems to offer a glimpse of the last events of earth's history: a final proclamation, symbolic marks on the foreheads, the world called into judgment, and God rescuing His people.  In the end His discerning eye can tell who is committed to Him and who is not.  His people have often suffered at the hands of others in His name.  At the end God will make it clear to all exactly who belongs to Him.
 
Lord, this scene of judgment is sobering.  Help me not to respond in fear, but in the sober sense that every choice and every decision matters to You.  I want Your seal even more than life itself.

   And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God.  He cried out with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to harm the earth and the sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads."  Rev. 7:2, 3.
 
    The words for sealing in the New Testament have multiple meanings.  First of all, you can seal a document to protect it from tampering.  You can do the same with a tomb or a prison cell.  When you seal a document or a place, you are concealing something or someone: examples in the Bible include the tomb of Jesus (Matt. 27:66); the heavenly scroll (Rev. 5); and Satan's confinement in the abyss (Rev. 20:3).
 
    Second, sealing can certify that something or someone is reliable: certified letters have a seal indicating that the information inside is trustworthy or has been delivered without tampering (cf. John 3:33; 6:27; Rom. 15:28; 1 Cor. 9:2).
 
    Third, sealing can indicate that God has accepted someone.  The Lord knows who belongs to Him, and He gives them the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 2:19; 2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13; 4:30).  Sealing, therefore, became associated with circumcision in the first century (Rom. 4:11) and baptism in the second.
 
    The sealing of Revelation 7 occurs just before the close of probation.  From John's point of view, sealing involves how people relate to God at the end.  In the broader sense, sealing is the indication that people are acceptable to God.  "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Tim. 2:19, NKJV).  So the New Testament does not limit the concept of sealing to the end-time.  But in Revelation 7 sealing occurs in an end-time setting.  The final proclamation of the gospel results in a great last-day sealing work.
 
    This kind of study doesn't make for light reading.  Sometimes Christians need to do heavy, detailed investigations of Scripture in order to understand God's ways.  We live in an age that prizes relevance more than learning, and many people have no patience with Bible study that doesn't have an obvious and immediate payoff.
 
    But I suggest that such investigation can lead to great joy.  If Christians want to understand the deep things of God, they must at times do detailed study, even though its immediate usefulness may not be clear.  But the long-term reward for such study is an understanding of the big picture that transforms everything you read in the Bible.
 
Lord, thank You for the depth of the challenge in Your Word.  Encourage me to take up that challenge and open my mind to comprehend the immensity of Your wisdom.

   After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, in order that the wind might not blow upon the earth, upon the sea, or upon any tree.  Rev. 7:1.
 
    Our text affirms God's ability to exempt people from judgment.  He is able to hold back destructive winds and preserve His people in any circumstance.  Not a deist God, who wound up the universe like a clock and then went on vacation, He is intimately concerned about His people and arranges for their protection.
 
    The heavy shelling that occurred some time ago in Brazzaville, central Africa, demonstrated His ability to intervene.  The bombardment ruined most of the large stores and hotels.  Many Christians and others crowded into the large church building, and thought everything around it was destroyed, the structure itself remained undamaged.
 
    But life is not always that simple.  What about the many situations in which the righteous do not get protected?  For example, a pregnant woman in the Philippines and the child she carried miraculously survived several shots in the torso from a high-powered weapon at close range.  But 17 other victims gunned down with her died.  Emma Moss, the daughter of the founders of the Salvation Army and active in ministry work, was the only person to die in a train accident.  Spencer Perkins, a strategic player in the racial reconciliation movement, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 43.
 
    Sometimes we face death because of our own choices and actions.  Other times we do so because we have ignored proper warnings.  Perhaps we perish because we didn't realize the warning we received was from God.  Occasionally death simply seems to be the result of the random course of events.  But often God is at work in tragic circumstances in ways that we may not clearly recognize until much later.
 
    William Wilberforce, for example, lost his father at age 9.  His aunt and uncle were childless.  But the combination of the two circumstances exposed Wilberforce to the evangelical preaching of the abolitionist John Newton.  Ultimately Wilberforce became the leading champion of abolitionism in England until, on his deathbed, the entire British Empire outlawed slavery.  So we must trust in God's ability to protect and deliver, knowing that in a given situation it may not occur.  But even if death or tragedy does happen, we know that God can bring something good out of it in the long run.
 
Lord, thank You for the abundant evidences of Your protection in the past.  I trust You and place myself in Your hands today.  I know that You have my best interests at heart.

   And they said to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One sitting on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.  For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"  Rev. 6:16, 17.
 
    A friend of mine received an invitation to teach a class in Bangkok, Thailand.  One of his students was a pastor in the northeastern part of the country, close to the Cambodian border and about 400 miles from Bangkok.  Since one of his children had become sick, the pastor decided to head home for the weekend and invited his teacher to travel with him. 
 
    After an all-night bus ride, which was an adventure in itself, the two men arrived in the beautiful and tranquil rice fields of rural Thailand.  The pastor's home was located on the same property as the church, and they had a delightful Sabbath school and worship service with the local people.  After a refreshing potluck and conversation, the two men set out to visit some members in another district.
 
    It was a most rewarding experience for Jim to see the homes of these hospitable people and eat a traditional Thai meal of sticky rice dipped in various sauces, which range from mild to painfully hot.
 
    When he and his student got home, they were preparing to get some rest.  The pastor's wife was in the bathroom area where the family kept their washing machine, preparing a load of clothes.  The floor was wet as she adjusted the electrical plug.  Suddenly powerful jolts of electricity surged through her.  She screamed for her husband.  Fortunately he was not only near but had the presence of mind to shut off the current instead of touching her and adding himself to the shock treatment.
 
    It took about an hour for the wife to recover from her almost deadly encounter.  Although my friend didn't understand any Thai, he could tell the next day that she was excitedly telling everyone she met about the previous night's escape from certain death.
 
    In our text the very presence of God and the Lamb provides the equivalent of an overwhelming jolt of electricity to those who experience the coming of Christ.  Without the mercy and protection of Jesus our Savior, sinners will not be able to endure the shock of God's presence.  But Revelation 7 makes it clear that the 144,000 and the great multitude will be able to stand in that day.  For those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:14), He functions as an insulator to the overwhelming power of God's presence.  And even now His ability to save us is just a prayer away.
 
Lord, I am so grateful that You reckon the purity of Jesus' righteousness to me each day.  Help me to be fully aware of my need for Him.

    And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One sitting on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.  For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"  Rev. 6:16, 17.
 
    It was a defining moment of my life.  Fifteen years and two months old, I was at a teen camp for boys and girls ranging in age from 13 to 15.  While I'm not sure if I was the oldest in my group, if I was, it was by a couple weeks at the most.  As our unit prepared for bed that first Sunday night, one thing was missing.  We had not yet had a counselor assigned to us.  That may sound like a teenager's dream vacation, but it was a bit unsettling nevertheless.
 
    At 2:00 in the morning a group of counselors gently shook me awake, took me outside the cabin, and told me that the camp staff had chosen me counselor of my unit.  What a daunting task!  I was roughly the same age as my group, and they would wake up thinking I was just one of them.  How would I assert any measure of authority?
 
    The ultimate challenge occurred a couple day later.  A 14-year-old locked me in the bathroom of the cabin at a crucial point of the day.  When he refused to open the door at my request and then my command, I broke out with a crash.  In a rage I ordered him to take off his shoes and run 10 times up and down a gravel path on a nearby hill.  After a couple trips his feet were scratched and bleeding a bit.
 
    I was mortified as I realized that I had overdone the punishment.  But if I went back on my sentence no one in the unit would respect me.  Instinctively I made a decision.  I joined him in his punishment, finishing the 10 laps up and down the hill with him.  That week I had no further trouble with my unit, and the camper who locked me in the bathroom became my most admiring and loyal subordinate.
 
    The concept "wrath of the Lamb" sounds like an oxymoron.  Can you really imagine a "raging lamb"?  What would that look like?  The slain Lamb, of course, represents the cross.  The wrath represents God's unwillingness to compromise with sin.  On a very small scale my experience with the camper mirrored the problem God had in the universe.  The "campers" were rebelling.  While He could back off on His authority, that would lead to chaos.  But simply being the "Great Counselor" would mean everyone would serve Him out of fear.
 
    So at the cross He joined us in reaping the consequences of sin.  In so doing He won the love of the universe as well as its respect.  And in the end a "raging Lamb" who brooks no compromise with sin, yet identifies with the sinner, proves able to heal a broken universe.
 
Lord, I respect Your integrity, and love You for Your sacrifice.  I want to be like You in my treatment of everyone I meet.

    And I saw, when he opened the sixth seal, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black like sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became like blood, and the stars of heaven fell to the earth, like a fig tree drops its unripe figs having been shaken by a mighty wind, and the sky was split open like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place.  And the kings of the earth, the great ones, the captains of thousands, the rich and the strong, and every slave and free person hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains.  Rev. 6:12-15.
 
    The sixth seal portrays the end of the cosmos as the ancients understood it.  The seals begin with the four horsemen, who depict the kind of judgments that repeat themselves again and again in the course of history (Rev. 6:1-8).  The passage above, however, includes the absolute dissolution of the heavens (verses 12-14) followed by the world's recognition of that event and its condemnation by the wrath of the Creator (verses 15-17).  This seems to express the end of history as we know it.
 
    The ancients used to sum up the totality of humanity in contrasting opposites, such as "rich and poor," "slave and free,"  "male and female."  In our text John lists representatives of the entire social order.  Absolutely no one, from Caesar on down, will escape final judgment.
 
    How we relate to a passage like this could be influenced by the culture in which we were raised.  The Shona of South Africa, for example, traditionally believed that earthquakes resulted from God walking around on the earth.  Other tribes attribute earthquakes to the work of special deities.  To them a passage like this expresses God's full control over everything that happens on earth.
 
    God's ultimate power over earthquakes has proved comforting to Christians living near the San Andreas fault in California.  "God just clapped His hands," announced one witness of the Bay Area earthquake of 1989, an earthquake that claimed more than 60 lives and billions of dollars in property damage.  Because John's audience in Asia Minor knew and feared earthquakes (the Roman province of Asia was in the middle of an active seismic area), a passage like this would prove unnerving rather than comforting.
 
    The overall impact of today's text is to terrify anyone who has too much confidence in the material things of this world.  We have no security, no firm ground to stand on, nothing in the universe to depend on except God Himself.  The creation, and everything in it, will one day collapse.  If our confidence rests only on that which we can hear, see, and touch, our lives are tenuous indeed.
 
Lord, teach me the uncertainty of money, land, education, and everything else I am tempted to trust in.  I place my confidence today in You--and in You alone.       

    And I saw, when he opened the sixth seal, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black like sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became like blood, and the stars of heaven fell to the earth, like a fig tree drops fig having been shaken by a mighty wind, and the sky was split open like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place.  Rev. 6:12-14.
 
    Today's passage lists a series of six items.  The first and last of the six are earthquakes, the latter being so great that every mountain and island shifts position, a truly cataclysmic event.  In between the two earthquakes occur four heavenly signs: the sun darkens, the moon turns bloody red, the stars fall to earth, and heaven itself splits up.
 
    The images are either literal or spiritual.  I am not aware of a compelling case to treat the sun, moon, stars, and sky as symbolic here.  So we should probably interpret them literally.  In the Greek of this passage the word hos (in bold above translated "like") usually compares something literal with something figurative.  The pattern is that the sun becomes black "like sackcloth of hair," the moon becomes "like blood," the stars fall "like a fig tree drops its unripe figs," and the sky splits open "like a scroll being rolled up."  So we should take the sun, moon, stars, and sky literally and whet happens to them figuratively.
 
    Events like the first three have taken place in the past.  In 1780 an incredibly dark day spread across North America in which animals came home early, thinking the day was already over, and roosters crowed at odd hours.  The event was so unusual that many people took note of it.  Then in November 1833 a meteor shower was so spectacular that many people wrote their local newspapers announcing that the end of the world must be at hand.
 
    God used the events to stimulate tremendous interest in the prophecies of the Bible around the world.  But interpretation of this text cannot stop with the nineteenth century.  The descriptions in verse 14 go way beyond anything history records.  The sky ripping apart and every island moving out of its place are events not yet seen.  They point to the time just before the return of Jesus.
 
    We find the spiritual message of this text when we examine the Old Testament passages it echoes.  "Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed" (Isa. 54:10, NIV).  The assurance is that no matter what, God will never forsake His people.
 
Lord, I crave a calm confidence that my whole life is sheltered in Your caring hands, no matter what the circumstances I may face today.

 And each of them was given a white robe and was told that they should rest yet a little while, until their fellow servants and brothers, who are about to be killed as they were, should be made complete.  Rev. 6:11.
 
    The above translation reflects some puzzling aspects of this text.  First, what are the "souls under the altar" (Rev. 6:9, 10) supposed to be doing?  They are to "rest, wait, relax for a while."  Instead of acting, they must remain passive until something else happens.  In most translations that something else is waiting for a certain number of martyrs to be reached ("until the number...was completed" [verse 11, NIV]).  But the word "number" isn't in the original.  Instead, as mentioned yesterday, the translators have put it in to make sense of the passage.  But the passage does make sense as it is.  The "fellow servants" are being "completed," perhaps a reference to their character in the final crisis of earth's history (Rev. 19:7, 8).  They are waiting for God to act in some special way for them.
 
    Being told to "relax" is a bit surprising in a message from heaven.  When I "relax," bad things often happen (read "procrastination").  For example. I have a sizable patch of grass not far from the septic tank at me house.  I don't know if it is the type of grass planted there or the proximity to natural fertilizer, but it seems to grow twice as fast and twice as thick as anywhere else on my lawn.  Particularly in the month of May we have plenty of both sunshine and rain, the grass is seeding itself, and the plants' metabolism is at peek efficiency.  But what is good news for plants becomes bad news for me if I "relax" more than a day or two beyond my mowing schedule.
 
    Other parts of the lawn are not as dense and grow more slowly.  The grass there is not difficult to mow even if I skip a few days.  But this patch in the back quickly becomes nearly impossible to cut down to size.  If the grass is the least bit damp (and we have dew almost every day), the mower clogs almost instantly.  I have the nasty task of having to raise the mower on all four wheels (and lower it later) and then mow a couple square feet at a time, stopping to clean out the underside of the machine every couple minutes.  Not fun.
 
    My point is that waiting or relaxing can be a foolish thing.  Yet heaven instructs the souls under the altar to relax for a while in order to let God do His work.  It would be nice to have a voice from heaven telling us when God wants us to relax or when relaxing would be procrastination.  But wrestling with God's will and His timing can teach us valuable lessons.  While relaxing may feel like procrastination, it can also be an expression of faith in God's action.
 
Lord, my day is already overfilled.  I need Your guidance to know what things will improve if they don't get done today.  Help me trust that You are working even when I am not.