The 7th Seal (Part 2)

See the series here

Revelation 8:1 predicts silence in heaven for about half an hour, when The Lord will open the 7th, final seal on His scroll. There are no direct references to any impacts on Earth. But since the very next verse references preparations for the 7 trumpets judgments on Earth, Bible scholars generally conclude (a) the half hour of silence is merely a brief prelude to the trumpets judgments; and (b) the reference to heaven is the realm of God. Those perspectives appear to miss some key strategic insights. 

Time perspective challenge:

 

2 Peter 3.8 notes a day with The Lords is as a thousand years. That is clearly a metaphorical statement, since Isaiah 57:15 reveals The Lord inhabits eternity. 

Ergo, we have no time-based means to comprehend the duration of John’s reference to half an hour. Moreover, we know not every part of John’s vision reflected a perfectly sequential progression. (For example, chapter 12 is clearly historical, not futuristic.) 

 

Definition challenge:

 

The New Testament was written in ancient Greek—one of the most complex languages. From it, we have 3 significantly different definitions of ‘heaven’. Yet the Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) of The Bible generally uses ‘the heaven’ to refer to each definition—earth’s atmosphere, universal space, and the realm of God, often called the 3rd heaven.

 

How to Read Revelation

 

The real challenge to reading and understanding Revelation is not its rich diversity of metaphorical images and symbols, or its complex narrative that is difficult to sequence, etc.. The most ardent challenge to understanding it is our tendency to read it without understanding it is:

 

Akin to the CLIMAX of a book of 65 earlier chapters

that weave together Heaven’s perspective and prophecies

of and about humanity over the past and future ages of human history! 

 

Thankfully, we have free access to the entire ‘66 chapters’ to help us sift, sort and shape the storyline of John’s vision. Added to that, we have access to The Holy Spirit Who enhances our imaginations into His intentions. To do this, He uses a spate of iterative, Biblical patterns and prophecies, all of which will culminate in Revelation. 

Think of Revelation as summarizing the fruits of those patterns and prophecies. Those patterns and prophecies are provided to enable us to ‘decode and flesh out’ John’s vision, and to intuit the likely sequence of events described therein. 

 

John didn’t write his vision in chapter and verse format. That format was added much later by medieval scholars. In doing so, those editors no doubt wrestled with where to divide the dense text. They also, no doubt, fell into the traps of definition and spatial biases. For example, the Greek language has 3 vastly different meanings for the word, heaven, yet without distinguishing those meanings, The Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) most often uses ‘the heaven’.  That likely magnified the problems medieval editors faced—why would  YLT’s ‘the heaven’ in chapter 6:13, signify one Greek definition of heaven, but the very next mention of ‘the heaven’ in chapter 8:1, signify a totally different Greek definition of heaven?? If issue might reflect ‘spatial biases’—presuming the proximity of ‘the heaven’ in 8:1 to angels standing before God automatically meant 8:1 pointed to the Greek 3rd meaning of ‘the heaven’, vs. the 2nd meaning. 

 

This ‘flashback referencing’ pattern’ in John’s writing is reflected elsewhere. For example, in v. 20:4, his pronoun, they, flashes back to the saints previously mentioned in chapter 19, who had attended the Marriage Supper of The Lamb, and who comprised the armies of Heaven. Yet in the same verse, he flashes back to the multitude of 4th age saints whom the anti-Christ regime had beheaded—a clear reference to the last half of chapter 7! This writing style has triggered many misinterpretations about aspects of Revelation, including which saints from which age(s) will serve in The Lord’s Millennial Reign kingdom.

 

Only insights from across The Bible can help us to avoid and clear-up such issues.

 

See Part 3

Duration and Significance on Earth (continued)